The Erogamer by Groon the Walker

Category: NSFW, complete, original
Genre: Active Discussion Makes The Qm Happy, Initially Shy Protagonist, Lewds Inclewded, Noncon Is A Thing That Happens In Eroge, Original, Played Completely Straight, Plot With Porn With Plot, Surprisingly Serious, Treat Other Voters Nicely Though, Votes Are Not Life-Or-Death Real-World Decisions
Published: 2017-04-07 15:26
Updated: 2021-09-05 18:12
Packaged: 2022-09-13 02:20:42
Chapters: 195
Words: 770,651
Publisher: forum.questionablequesting.com
Summary:

The story of a human being who one day saw a status screen displaying her BOD, LST, SED, FUK, PRV, and ERO.

"This is more depth than I was expecting with my porn quest." --- all of the readers

"This is way more depth than I was expecting with my porn quest, even taking that statement into account." ---

Tags from Title: NSFW, complete, original
Tags from Forum: Active Discussion Makes The Qm Happy, Initially Shy Protagonist, Lewds Inclewded, Noncon Is A Thing That Happens In Eroge, Original, Played Completely Straight, Plot With Porn With Plot, Surprisingly Serious, Treat Other Voters Nicely Though, Votes Are Not Life-Or-Death Real-World Decisions

1.1.1: One Sunday Afternoon Like Any Other

The story of a human being who one day saw a status screen displaying her BOD, LST, SED, FUK, PRV, and ERO.

"This is more depth than I was expecting with my porn quest." --- all of the readers

"This is way more depth than I was expecting with my porn quest, even taking that statement into account." --- Sirrocco

Threadmark notation:
X.Y.Z denotes day #X, sub-arc #Y, chapter #Z.
[JD,JS] marks an appearance by recurring characters Jane Doe and John Smith.
Lewder chapters are marked with *, **, or ***.

Content warnings: Body shame, noncon.

Spoiler: More detailed content warnings.

Body shame: The protagonist's view of her universe does not always reflect her universe accurately. And her universe may not reflect the beliefs or values of the author. That said, this protagonist is definitely not fat-positive.

Noncon: Noncon is not a primary focus of this story, but it's something that happens in eroge, and it's explored to a sufficient extent that anyone who stays away from even non-poorly-executed noncon should stay away from this. By-chapter trigger warnings appear for heavy but not light triggers.

Further triggers may potentially be added if the story goes there. Loli/shota will never be a thing, and the protagonist is never going to get it on with her Mom.

Never forget, IRL there's no "dubcon", just con and non. Sane people use condoms and safewords.

Cinderella Sheen
"The Erogamer"
LVL: 1 (0%)

Stats:

DOM: 2/50
SUB: 15/180

BOD: 4 (+)
LST: 6 (+)
SED: 2 (+)
FUK: 3 (+)
PRV: 12 (+)
ERO: 10 (+)

Points: 5
Money: $1,220

Status Effects: 'Innocent' Virgin

Description: Cinderella Sheen is a sophomore at Norville U, making her 'barely legal' if anyone actually wanted her. She still resides at home with her mother between classes. Although inexperienced in both sex and love, her rejection of her current life and her yearnings for something deeper (ahem) have opened her up to the possibilities of the Erogame.

Skills:

Erogamer's Body (Lvl MAX): The biological ability to live your life as an erogame. Venereal disease doesn't exist for you, or periods or pregnancies or yeast infections. Arbitrarily large appendages can fit inside any of your orifices. You heal from all marks with a good night's sleep, ready for the next day's adventures. Other aspects of this skill depend on the BOD stat.

Erogamer's World (Lvl MAX): The consent of reality to live your life as an erogame. People are never too preoccupied to consider sex or romance, not while you're around. Bystanders won't ignore what you do, but they're unlikely to actually stop you. Those who do decide to involve themselves are drawn into the logic of the Erogame. If you go far enough that an authority sees no choice but to intervene… they won't treat you as a simple criminal. Other aspects of this skill depend on the ERO stat.

To Mine Own Me Be True (Lvl MAX): Even at the center of the Erogame, you are not just an erogame character, but a human being possessed of her own ---+++. Your mother will always be safe from you, and little children everywhere. Other aspects of this skill depend on #%##%%###%%%
#$()#*$#%#%(*%)$#
!)(*#)(%#($*)$#%

Perks:

But She Was Such a Good Student: If this were a different game, you'd be starting with a high INT stat. Throughout your scholastic career, your grades continue to reflect your actual knowledge of the course material, and you have no unusual difficulties mastering that material. Even if you miss classes or assignments for, uh, reasons.

Info // Status Effects:

'Innocent' Virgin: Merely existing in the age of the Internet has already raised your PRV stat above 10. Still, until you choose to lose your virginity, the Erogame will not force you to give it up.

Info // Character Stats:

LVL / Level: The quantified totality of your potency as an erogame character. The effect of this characteristic goes beyond just the 5 extra stat points you get per level, and the additional perk point you receive every 5th level.

BOD / Body: Your physical attractiveness, or lack thereof. At higher levels, your body becomes able to enact more exotic erogame events.
LST / Lust: The intensity of your sexual urges, or lack thereof. How easy it is to turn your keyhole.
SED / Seduction: Your ability to seduce others, to pique their interest and arouse their desire.
FUK / Fucking: Your ability to perform in bed and give others pleasure… or other sensations.
PRV / Perversion: Your descent into the world of naughtiness, fetish, deviance, and corruption.
ERO / Erogame Logic: The extent to which the world will bend---or can be bent by you---to create romantic and sexual situations in defiance of probability. Or at higher levels, physics.

DOM / Dominant Energy: Based off SED and FUK, fueling skills that invoke your dominance, sadism, or mastery.
SUB / Submissive Energy: Based off LST and PRV, fueling skills that invoke your submission, masochism, or service.

Info // Character Stats // Level:

At LVL 1, and 0% progress toward the next level, you're as pathetic as you'll ever be.

You can increase your level by completing the quests the Erogame offers you, or by causing romantic and sexual events to happen to you or around you. The more difficult the challenge, the greater the rewards.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

With the average being 10, and perfect 10s being 40, your paltry BOD of 4 makes you maybe a 1-and-a-half. There are still some men who'd be desperate enough to touch you, they'll just feel disgusted when they do.

You can increase this stat through exhibitionism, and other acts that invoke the pure beauty and power of… of those horrible slabs of flesh you fantasize about slicing away with a knife. It's a good thing you have stat points too, so you don't have to spend the rest of your life searching for someone weird enough to be attracted to your body, and honest enough to not be lying.

Info // Character Stats // Lust:

At a LST of 6, at least you're not asexual. You can appreciate hot guys, when you're in the mood. You've even masturbated now and then. But you've got a long way still to go, before you can fully enjoy the existence that you opened yourself to in the silence of your despair.

You gain in this stat while experiencing sexual urges that are unusually intense or that go on unusually long.

Info // Character Stats // Seduction:

Your SED of 2 makes it barely possible for you to convince a sufficiently deprived and desperate man to let you give him a free blowjob. Your certain knowledge that you're terrible at this isn't going to help.

You can increase this stat by arousing the romantic interest or sexual desire of others, and successfully pursuing them or being caught.

Info // Character Stats // Fucking:

Your FUK of 3 means you'd better be extra careful with your teeth while giving those blowjobs. As for other bedroom skills, have you considered trying to… well… move?

How do you increase this stat? Take a fucking guess.

Info // Character Stats // Perversion:

Your PRV of 12 despite your total romantic isolation is a sad commentary on the decadence of the third millennium. Nonetheless, casual exposure to a variety of naughty ideas has left you open to the thought of kissing a girl on the lips… or having your hair pulled during sex… or wearing thighhighs and high heels and nothing else… or maybe even… having sex with two men at once? And now you're embarrassed about thinking such shameless thoughts, ha, hahaha, you have no idea do you. Still, better than the average housewife from before the Internet.

You can increase this stat by being a little less close-minded about things, and acting accordingly.

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At an ERO of 10, your life has become an erogame taking place in a mostly realistic setting. What happens to you might seem unlikely to others, but it won't break their belief in a sane universe… yet. Witnesses will reach for explanations other than the Erogame, but they'll still notice the unusual events.

If you keep pushing probability to its limits, then probability will learn to be a bit more flexible down there, relax and take it in and not protest so much.

Info // Character Stats // Dominant and Submissive Energy:

If this were a different game, you'd have mana and hit points.

And they'd refill just from you sitting around on your ass doing nothing.

Lol.

You stare at the final "Lol" floating before you in cheerful violet-pink letters, your bedroom's light blue wallpaper faintly visible through the small translucent shapes. They stay in place, even as you turn slowly around to look at your bed, the closed and locked door of your bedroom with its dull mirror, the legacy bookcase and children's books from before the age of e-book readers, and the open window showing the sunny skies over Norville, California.

That's… all the obvious things to ask for Info on, that you saw in the Status screen.

"Settings," you whisper, your voice cracking a bit from being so low. Your Mom is home right now, what with it being Sunday right now. Then you whisper, "Options." Then, "Help."

A plethora of nothing continues to happen. The sun shines cheerfully on in the afternoon sky, casting a square of brightness on the gray carpeted floor.

"Info on settings. Info on options. Info on help. Hints. Info on hints. Tutorial. Tilde. Console. Difficulty. Controls. Audio. Subtitles."

Still nothing.

You draw a shaking breath. You've gotten all the info you can find. There's nothing in there that changed your mind.

Then you poke the + sign next to BOD.

5

Again.

6

You're sure you can feel it, something shifting inside you.

7
8

If this is a lie, if you're just crazy, then you're going to kill yourself. You can feel a little shred of hope where there wasn't any hope before, and if it dies when you look in the mirror on your door, you're going to die with it.

9

The available points reach 0. The plus signs vanish.

You look in the mirror.

"Hkkkkch…"

Mom is home. Stay quiet.

You sit down on your bed, kchhk, and, and you pick up your pillow through your blurring eyes and stuff it into your mouth, ahhhchk, and, and---

"Ahh. Ahh."

Horrible noises are forcing their way out of your throat.

You're not pretty. You looked in the mirror, and you're not pretty.

You're not ugly.

You're not fat. Just somewhat thick around your limbs and belly.

Your face is lightly sprinkled with acne. Only a few pockmarks left.

And you can get more stat points. It's not fixed, not yet. But it's not done. You can get another level and make that + sign reappear by the BOD attribute. Somebody might even, might even want you like this, a boy might be horny enough to, to want to look down your shirt if you didn't wear a bra, or whatever it is boys look at, and you could get more BOD points that way, maybe, if you did it often enough, if you didn't mind waiting however long it took to…

You need another level. You don't care what's going on, or about words like 'impossible', or about what the text is hinting might happen to you later. All that can wait until after your next level-up.

There's the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Then, "Cindy?" calls your mother's voice, coming from the other side of your door. "Are you all right? What's wrong?"

"I," your voice chokes, "I'm, all right, Mom," what are you going to say, "just, I think, my latest diet, I think it's working. I've lost weight. I'm crying, because, because I'm happy."

The concern hasn't left your mother's voice. "Would you mind opening your door for just a moment, honey?"

You push yourself up from the bed, your legs are shaking, your only-slightly-thick legs are shaking, and you have to hold your too-loose skirt and panties to your waist to stop them from falling down, hhhkkk, and you unlock the door and open it.

Before you stands your usual Mom, a little thick around her limbs, maybe, face showing more than a few signs of age; life hasn't been easy on either of you since Dad died.

Your mother gasps. "Cindy, that's incredible! You're so much thinner now!" She pauses. "I can't believe I didn't notice earlier!" She's staring at you.

You notice that you're holding your breath, and you make sure to start breathing again slowly, rather than gasping for air. "I," you say unevenly, "it must have been because I was wearing long skirts and long sleeves, mostly, I guess it wasn't obvious that way."

"Are you wearing a wig?" your mother says. "I don't remember your hair being that long."

You nod, your neck shaking only slightly. "I am, and I'm going to experiment with makeup, too," you say. "I think maybe I can make myself pretty if I try, now. Mom, I'd like to be left alone to cry some more. And, and I'm going to need some new c-clothes."

Mom blinks repeatedly. "That's…" She moves to hug you, one swift embrace, and you return it without noticing your skirt falling down around your ankles. "I'll leave you alone for a bit," your mother says, "but, that's wonderful, and I'm so proud of you!"

She closes the door and you manage to hold down the flash of bitterness that goes through you, dissipating some of the joy. Proud of you. Right. Like you'd managed to starve yourself this thin, just by trying harder. It wouldn't be worth buying new clothes for that, with how fast the weight would come back afterwards.

You look at the window now floating next to you.

Convincing your mother to accept your ridiculous explanation has caused your ERO to go up by 1!

You turn around to sit back on your bed again, almost tripping over the skirt puddled around your feet. You don't bother putting it back on, it wouldn't stay on anyway.

"Info, character stats, BOD." Your voice is steadier this time.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

At a BOD of 9, you can't be said to be a normal girl yet. 10 is average for a human being, not average for a teenage girl in the springtime of her youth. Still, some men are easy.

You can increase this stat through exhibitionism, or other acts that invoke the pure beauty and power of your feminine form.

You need another level NOW.

Your mind goes back to the horrible things the info screens said before. Words that would have been hurtful, if you hadn't known them all along. You could… to gain levels… if any sexual act counts toward leveling… it suggested that you, you could just…

Quest available: Thar she blows!

One of the boys at the mall might take you up on your invitation to a bathroom stall, despite your mediocre BOD and pathetic SED. He might even be backed-up enough to come in your mouth despite your low FUK.

Success: 2,000 exp; +1 sexual reputation, 'Daring'
Failure: 'Unwanted' status effect; -2 romantic reputation, 'Desperate'
Accept now? Y/N

You stare at the screen for a while, and then, a burning sensation rising in your throat, you touch "N".

The violet-framed window vanishes.

"Your Lust is not high enough for this quest," you whisper to yourself. The game doesn't have to tell you. You know you can't do this.

[ ] Get over to the mall and start offering boys blowjobs.
[ ] Take what funds you have to the mall, buy a shorter skirt, a low-cut shirt, high heels, walk around afterwards and hope someone watching you appreciates the BOD you have now.
[ ] You… should maybe try to raise your LST before continuing this game, if you want to stay sane through what it's hinted will happen to you. You remember reading about something called 'orgasm denial' and 'edging' that's supposed to make women hornier.
[ ] …a kiss. You think you could ask boys for a kiss. You think you could tell them it was a dare. At your low level, your first kiss ought to be enough to level up again and maybe get a point in SED.
[ ] You… don't need to be seen by a man to give him pleasure, right? There's such a thing as cybering. You might feel less horrible about trying to inflict real sex on someone if your FUK was higher first… god, can you even do that with a FUK of 3?
[ ] You'd be perfectly fine with browsing some of the, um, some of the more um parts of the Internet. Maybe if you do that for a few hours you can get enough exp to level up again--it might not be that difficult at this stage of the game. It could also net you another point of PRV, but apparently you're already 'innocent' and it's pretty clear where this Erogame is going to go.
[ ] What actually happens if you go outside wearing no shirt, just a bra? Would Mom stop you? People would still notice, but what would they say or do? Maybe the most powerful stat in the Erogame will turn out to be the ERO stat itself…?
[ ] Write-in.

1.1.2: A Woman's Best Friend

For what feels like hours, you waver around the thought of trying to get your first kiss, the most normal quest you can think of. Maybe it would set the game on a more… romantic track? Alternatively, you could go on Tumblr, and try to get another level without leaving your bedroom at all. Maybe by looking at more perverted things than usual? They say not to go with an overly generalist character build, don't they, and you already have the most points in PRV…

An image flashes through your mind of what a PRV-centered Erogame character build might look like.

And that mental image has to be wrong. That's probably, like, a character with a PRV of 20.

Going down this road might not be such a great idea.

It's just… if you can, you'd like your first kiss to be an ordinary boy, kissing a giggling cheerful pretty girl who says she's on a dare. Not you begging one boy after another, and having them look away, until someone takes pity on you. You don't want that, not if you can have better.

There might not be any point to beating yourself up about this. Maybe it's just not that hard to get another level when you're only Level 1. One more PRV point can't hurt that much.

You lie down on the bed, grab your Tab S 8.4, and flick open Chrome's bookmarks section to the secret, shameful list of Tumblrs you've sometimes masturbated to. Please, please, if the game can hear you, then please…

Quest available: Spread your horizons wider

Make yourself come to a fetish you've never fantasized about before.

Success: +100xp, +1 PRV
Failure: Shame at being unworthy to be titled the Erogamer.
Accept: Y/N

That's… fair. You press Y.

Is 100xp enough to level? Please let it be enough.

You open the first Tumblr on your hidden list and scroll down a page, hoping to see something that isn't already your thing, but could be your thing… okay, admittedly you've never previously masturbated to someone cosplaying Roxy from Homestuck, but you suspect that will not count.

After the third Tumblr on your list fails to suggest anything that you (a) don't already fetishize (b) think the game will accept (c) are remotely willing to contemplate, you close down the list of bookmarks and spend a few moments staring up at the ceiling.

Apparently you can't widen your horizons just by doing what you always do.

With a nervous swallow, you go to Google and---why are you nervous, you're not an innocent virgin you're an "innocent" virgin, your perversion is above average, you probably wouldn't have thought twice about typing this search term this one day earlier. Only the Erogame makes everything seem more serious somehow? Like, if you're doing it for experience points, it's real and that means the Google search results actually count.

You go to Image Search and type in "perverted images".

…that's not really providing you much in the way of masturbation fodder. It's almost entirely captioned images. Why, you have no idea. But, the hell with it, you can look through the captioned images for ideas on what candidate fetishes you might want to try on.

a kid looking up multiple skirts why
cuddle with a struggle you are not going there yet
I'm gonna Expectro patronum all over your face how did anyone type those words without dying of sheer self-loathing
otter tickling nope
furries remembering their abused childhoods noooooooo
big breast anime could that actually happen to you now
a modestly dressed woman, reflected in a mirror showing herself dressed in fetish gear… huh.

It doesn't have to be a fetish you've never seen before. It just has to be something you've never gotten off on. And you don't think you've deliberately masturbated to fetish gear before, and some of it looks reasonably elegant and pretty. The image you're looking at now, for example.

After searching for soft fetish gear tumblr and a couple of false starts on the first page of results, you are finally scrolling down elegantbondage. Some images are outside your comfort zone, and a lot of images are outside the zone of what you actually enjoy looking at, but that's the point, isn't it.

Looking at perverted pictures on Tumblr causes your PRV to go up by 1!

Success! Oh, wait, that wasn't the actual goal. You're supposed to come to this.

Your fingers go into your panties, over your entirely dry labia, with your mind suppressing the faint flashes of disgust so quickly you hardly notice. Hesitantly, you start rubbing.

Fifteen minutes later, you haven't gained any more PRV, and you're starting to suspect that the system makes the first point in each stat much easier to gain than later points. Also, after the utter absence of messages saying anything about LST, and your total failure to become wet, you're wondering if you can do this at all. Some fetish-gear images are nice and some are uncomfortable but they're not… turning your keyhole, as the system puts it.

You swallow. No. You are not giving up on this. Fuck your life if the Erogamer can't figure out how to masturbate correctly.

You type "not getting wet when I masturbate" into Google, and…

Don't get stressed fuck you.
Use lube addressing the symptoms but not the problem
Use a---

Vibrators. Vibrators are a thing.

Quest available: A woman's best friend

Norville isn't large enough to have its own Good Vibrations store. You're stuck with checking one of the adult bookstores in town, if you want a cheap-ass overpriced vibrator from CalExotics before Amazon can ship you a proper Hitachi Magic Wand.

Success: +100xp
Failure: "Anorgasmic" status, 2 days
Accept: Y/N

You flip aside your tablet and roll over in bed, just looking at the floating letters in front of you.

Did you seriously just get sent on a fetch quest to an adult bookstore for a vibrator so that you can finish your main quest of masturbating to fetish gear on Tumblr.

You flop back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling.

Then you hit "Y", get out of bed, and start trying on clothes. Nothing fits, naturally; but you find one tent-dress with a tie that tightens far enough. A safety pin between two folds of cloth tightens your panties' waist enough for them to stay in place. You don't want to be seen like this, still half-broken and not yet fixed… but you're just going to an adult bookstore. You're not going to be seducing anyone. You think.

"Going somewhere?" your Mom says, looking up from the reading couch.

"I'm going to the adult book store to get a vibrator."

Ha, no.

What actually comes out of your lips instead is "I'm going to the ah, ah, to the mall."

You just couldn't say it. Maybe your ERO score works to let you get away with that, maybe it doesn't, but you're just not there yet.

"Okay, Cindy honey," says your Mom. "Oh, and be sure to avoid the alleys between 4th and 7th up to Luther, there've been some assaults there recently… honey, are you okay?"

Quest: Refuse the giftsex

Vulnerable young girls shouldn't walk in the alleys near the mall, between 4th St and 7th St up to Luther Ave. It shouldn't be hard to stay away. Just don't go there. Simple.

Success: You continue to lead a boring life.
Failure: +20,000 XP; bonus perk point; increased relations with the Norville Redcaps faction.
Accept: Y/N

It takes uncomfortably long for your mind to restore itself from the total meltdown of your Mom having just NPCed at you and what she NPCed at you was a---

You are not dealing with this right now.

"Sorry," you say. "Just a brief brain freeze."

"Okay, honey," says your Mom. "Have a nice time at the mall."

It's the ERO stat. You're sure it's the ERO stat. You just saw that Mom still cares about you, not an hour earlier, when she heard you crying and came up to your room. She just… isn't going to notice some things, from now on.

Like when she mentions sexual assault and sees her daughter suddenly freeze up. That will just go right over her head. She won't make the connection. It doesn't mean she doesn't care.

You turn and walk out the door, heading for the bus stop; and pull out your phone to start looking for an adult bookstore open on Sundays.

Spoiler: Erogame random event roll

Threshold = Base ERO of 11, +30 for adult bookstore = 41
Negative event range: 1..(threshold/2) = 1..20
Positive event range: (100 - threshold/2)..100 = 80..100

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 45

For: Erogamer: random encounters

Rolled on: April-07-2017, 08:34pm

See dice roll details

45

There was a part of you that hoped that maybe someone on the bus would look at your body with desire, and you'd get the first easy BOD point. You're not that ugly now, are you? But you're not pretty enough either, it seems.

Two changes of bus and 55 minutes later, the adult bookstore is… not quite as seedy as you were afraid it would be, but still, not a nice part of town. The storefront is dirty as well as tawdry.

The inside of the store seems reasonably clean. Apparently this place doesn't have any… whatever lurks in the unspeakable backrooms of adult bookstores, you have a vague impression of video booths with sketchy people masturbating inside. They don't seem to have those in this particular store, or at least, the Erogame doesn't offer you any quests to do god knows what.

The man attending the counter doesn't offer you any come-ons or sneering smiles. He just stays quiet and doesn't particularly follow you with his eyes. It's like he actually cares about making the sale more than acting like an evil stereotype. There's one obviously gay man in the store when you enter, and a man probably in his late thirties who seems to be afraid that you might judge him. Nobody speaks to anyone.

The store isn't large, and half of what's there is magazines. The one wall of merchandise contains a lot of incredibly cheap and flimsy-looking lingerie in packets. Some spanking implements. A selection of condoms---you almost sensibly think about buying some to have on hand, before you remember the Erogamer's Body skill. Various lubes, of which you pick up the cheapest bottle on offer, because it was mentioned in two different web pages as a masturbation aid. A row of somewhat slimy-looking dildos for women, and two more rows of dildos for men.

A counter with a row of plasticky cards and flyers from local adultish...

Quest: Bare the Body, Bare the Soul

Sam's Strippers is always on the lookout for new talent. Good for a few bucks, and maybe something more.

Your stats are too low for this quest. Min BOD: 20. Min SED: 15. Requires ERO 20 or Fake ID perk.

You don't look at the other flyers.

You select three different cheap vibrators and take them over to the counter, because this needs to work on the first try. And the nicest-feeling of the female dildos, in case that becomes necessary. And two packages of $15.99 lingerie, a see-through catsuit plus a sexy nurse costume. Because if this works, god, please let it work, if it works you'll be able to wear things like that.

The cashier is ringing up the sale, and you're blushing. Why are you blushing. It's the third millennium. Women are supposed to own vibrators. Even you know that.

You pay for your purchases without any incidents, accept the plain brown bag offered you at the counter---

Quest complete! A woman's best friend

The real fake thing.

-$128
+100xp

It's a serious chunk out of your savings, and you don't care.

You wait until you're outside the store to whisper "Stats."

Cinderella Sheen
"The Erogamer"
LVL 1 (50%)

DOM: 2/50
SUB: 30/190

BOD: 9
LST: 6
SED: 2
FUK: 3
PRV: 13
ERO: 11

Points: 0
Bank: $1,092

50%. 100xp put you at 50%. That means there's only 100xp left to go until your next level. If you can finish your main quest back at home---

It seems to take years for you to finish the bus ride home, but in real life it probably wasn't more than a couple of weeks. Today seems unusually chilly, or maybe there's some other reason you're shivering.

The unanswered Refuse the giftsex quest prompt is still floating in the living room where you left it, and you are still not thinking about that right now. Mom doesn't ask any questions about the plain brown bag in your hands. You head up to your room.

You slip out of your dress, out of your panties, open up the vibrator package and fuck you include the batteries you bastards. After an instant of panic, you calmly put on the tentlike dress again, confirm that your household already has a half-full package of AAA batteries in the hallway closet, and go back to your room.

You insert the batteries and---

HOLY SHIT THAT'S LOUD.

"Honey?" comes your Mom's questioning call. "What's that sound?"

"I think my tablet is broken!" you shout back. "The vibrate function is stuck and it's all loud too! Is it okay if I leave it on for now so I can go on browsing? I hope it's not too annoying for you!"

"That's fine!" your Mom's voice floats back. "I can hardly hear it!"

You are really glad the ERO stat is a thing.

Nerving yourself for the horrible buzzing sound, you switch the vibrating egg on again, and then inadvisably try to shove it past your labial lips.

OW.

Okay, picking up the lube while you were at the adult bookstore was the correct decision. Now how do you ewwww IT'S ON YOUR BLANKET calm, now is a time for calm and paper towels.

Try again. Lube goes here. Squish.

Squish.

You feel a very strong impulse to wash your hands, and you suppress it, because you have the intuition that this is not a wise time to stand up and walk to the bathroom.

…this vibrator does jack-shit when you push it inside your vagina, except for a really annoying buzzy sensation. Are you doing this right? You bet you're not doing this right.

You pull out the vibrator, wipe your hands off on a shirt that is just going to go in the laundry later, and gingerly go online, trying to barely touch the tablet screen. You can wipe it off later. Google time.

You're not doing this right. The egg shape goes on your clit.

On your clit.

Stay. Stay! Bad vibrator!

How are you supposed to press a lubricated vibrating smooth egg on your clit with one hand WHO DESIGNED THIS THING DID THEY HAVE A PENIS YOU BET THEY HAD A PENIS

Calm. You can clean up the stray streaks of lube later. Try again---

A skill has been created by a special action! Successfully holding a smooth lubricated egg to your clitoris has created the Wield Vibrator skill.

At least your Mom doesn't ask about the yelping sound that came out of your throat.

Info / Skills / Wield Vibrator

Wield Vibrator: Lvl 1 (0.5%). Active. 1 DOM / minute.

A skill to deploy the mechanical contrivances first used at the end of the 19th century to treat feminine hysteria by inducing "hysterical paroxysm." Capable of producing interesting sensations in all sorts of places, a vibrator in the hands of a true master is an irreplaceable part of their sexual armory.

You have… you still have 2 DOM out of 50. You can't afford to use this skill. Fuck you, Erogame.

You don't even know what you need to do to gain Dominant Energy. Look sternly at boys?

And did your SUB go up to 30 because you gained PRV earlier, or because you were looking down and blushing in the adult bookstore? You have no idea.

Anyway. Back to what you were doing before the game interrupted.

zzzzzzzzzz

That feels… okay, that does feel like it could be pleasant.

Your cleaner left hand scrolls through the feed of the elegantbondage Tumblr. Some of the images aren't just nice, they're… nice. You think that's what you think.

Experiencing sexual arousal causes your LST to go up by 1!

It's working.

You have to swallow a sudden lump in your throat.

You're going to do this. It's really going to happen.

That thought is, of course, distracting you from masturbating. It goes without saying that thinking about how this would be easier if you were less tense, is not making you any less tense.

It seems to take a long time, 10 minutes by the clock display, before you feel the start of the climb, the slowly increasing burn of pleasure.

…with 15% battery remaining. You should have thought to start charging your tablet before you left for town.

It takes 10 minutes more before you're anywhere close to coming.

And then you just… can't… seem…

A skill has been created by a special action! Hovering near the edge of orgasm for 1 minute has created the Edge Riding skill.

Shut UP game this is not the time for DISTRACTIONS

Experiencing your self-inflicted teasing for an extended period has caused your LST to increase by 1!

Shut UP shut UP or DIE

The tablet screen goes dim as the battery level reaches 5%. And if it's not your imagination, the vibrations are not as strong as they used to be… how old were those AAA batteries.

No.

You won't let it end like this.

2 is not 0.

"Wield Vibrator," you whisper.

Oh. Oh. That's how you--oh. That's how you hold it. Oh, oh, OH, OOOHHHHHH…

Quest complete! Spread your horizons wider

Masturbating to a new fetish has opened your eyes to the possibility that you can grow, and change, and become more than you were. More perverted, anyway.

+100xp
+1 PRV

Your level has increased by 1!

Your tablet powers down with a cheerful farewell chime.

"Honey?"

Gasp. Pant. We're sorry, this Cinderella Sheen is not in service, please try again later.

Footsteps.

"Honey?"

"I dropped something on my foot!" you yell across the door.

Your cheeks are burning like cute little lumps of coal. You, you don't moan. That is not a thing you do. You've never had any trouble keeping quiet when you masturbate. Except now you have a LST of 8 instead of 6. And you used a Dominant skill on yourself. You could maybe have kept quiet if you'd tried, you just weren't expecting…

None of that matters.

"S-, s-stats."

A trembling finger reaches out and pokes a hovering '+' character.

10, +, 11, +, 12, +, 13, +, 14.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

At a BOD of 14, you're not quite average for a teenage girl in the springtime of her youth. A little prettier than average, maybe? You're no supermodel, of course, and pornography has trained boys to expect better from the objects of their lust. But you might turn a head or two, once you learn how to dress and how to flirt.

You can increase this stat through exhibitionism, or other acts that invoke the pure beauty and power of your feminine form.

…why are you still looking at the colorful hovering text? That doesn't make sense. You should be looking at the mirror. You should be looking down at your actual body.

This is what you wanted, wasn't it? You should look in the mirror.

You turn, and look in the mirror.

It feels like you swallowed something very sharp and very large, a huge edged chunk of metal, a long time ago, and now it's slowly working its way back up your throat.

The girl in the mirror is smiling. It looks nice on her. She's pretty, in an ordinary way. No supermodel, but nobody would flinch away from her, nobody would have to pretend to feel positive things about her, she can go to clubs and parties and wear fashionable clothes sold in the normal stores that pretend fat people don't exist. She can go where the real people go, and look like she belongs there. The girl in the mirror gets to live.

There will be scary things in your future, you know. But in this moment, you believe, that when you hold to the memory of this moment, you will be able to win through anything. The things you can do now, the ordinary and extraordinary possibilities both, you will seize them with both your hands, and use them to feel like this again, in later days.

"Thank you." Your voice is trembling. "Oh, God, thank you. Whatever's happening. Whoever did this. I don't know. I don't care. Whatever comes after. I won't ever stop being grateful."

A skill has been created by a special action! The rekindling of hope inside a despairing heart, looking forward to a brighter future where you can be happy, has created %%+++%#%

"Thank you," you whisper. "Thank you."

You don't feel like stopping. Not tonight.

It's evening now, and the mall is closed. You're too young to barhop, and besides, this is Sunday night, not Saturday night, a much quieter time. But there's probably somewhere people your age are hanging out at 8:30pm. There's probably some students hanging around the strip of shops next to the Norville U dorm buildings, and one of them will probably be willing to give you directions. Or maybe the Erogame can just steer you there directly.

What's the first possibility you'll seize, now that you get to be a real person?

[ ] All the clothes you own would look like a tent on you. But Walgreens is still open, Walgreens sells some clothes, and you can find something that looks sexy on you, even if you end up underdressed. Go in a little style, and then… show off, if anyone wants to look. (BOD)
[ ] See if you can get somebody to kiss… no. Not just a kiss. You don't have to beg to give your first kiss away. Try to flirt. Try to get somebody's phone number. (SED)
[ ] See if you can find somebody who's interested in a little cuddling, or dancing if that's going on. Touch their bare arms. Rub up against them a little. Touch lower, if you can bring yourself to dare. (FUK)
[ ] The Edge Riding skill uses SUB, and you've got SUB to spare. Train that skill for a while, without discharging the tension at the end. Then go look at cute boys, and try to… get in touch with your desires, your impulses. Try to act them out, a little. (LST)
[ ] Go there in the… can you do this? You can do this, because you believe in the Erogame. Wear the $15.99 sexy nurse outfit you bought at an adult bookstore. It's not that obscene. (ERO)
[ ] Write-in. (Cannot be primarily PRV-oriented because that won last time.)

1.2.1 [BL]: Things Found in a Walgreens

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 2 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] All the clothes you own would look like a tent on you. But Walgreens is still open, Walgreens sells some clothes, and you can find something that looks sexy on you, even if you end up underdressed. Go in a little style, and then… show off, if anyone wants to look. (BOD)
No. of Votes: 10
Navrin
Astaroh-M
Epicr
Jaertin
Kenloch
Koden
Omida
ScrewFate
Thriceboiled
wasprider
[X] See if you can get somebody to kiss… no. Not just a kiss. You don't have to beg to give your first kiss away. Try to flirt. Try to get somebody's phone number. (SED)
No. of Votes: 5
Raron
aattss
Grosstoad
Harpy81
Twei
[X] Go there in the… can you do this? You can do this, because you believe in the Erogame. Wear the $15.99 sexy nurse outfit you bought at an adult bookstore. It's not that obscene. (ERO)
No. of Votes: 5
The Froggy Ninja
Caiuz
Heaven Canceler
inverted_helix
Mysterious Platypus
[X] The Edging skill probably uses SUB, and you've got SUB to spare. Use that skill for a while, without discharging the tension at the end. Then go look at cute boys, and try to… get in touch with your desires, your impulses. Try to act them out, a little. (LST)
No. of Votes: 1
HellKing666
[x] The Edge Riding skill uses SUB, and you've got SUB to spare. Train that skill for a while, without discharging the tension at the end. Then go look at cute boys, and try to… get in touch with your desires, your impulses. Try to act them out, a little. (LST)
No. of Votes: 1
murklins
Total No. of Voters: 22

Your mother is typing away at her laptop in her usual place on the couch as you, rather nervously, descend the stairs. You're fully dressed in clothes become sacks.

"Cindy?" she says when she looks up. "Oh my God you're beautiful!"

"Makeup and a different wig," you say, your voice cracking. You're wearing long, baggy sleeves and a floor-length skirt, concealing your sudden additional loss of body weight. You're not sure how much anomaly your Mom can take at ERO 11.

"That's wonderful!" your Mom says, and doesn't ask why you're carrying your purse or where you're going at 8:30pm at night.

You… are not actually okay with this.

Your mother didn't have an easy time raising you by herself, after Dad died. She's earned more than your love, she's earned your loyalty. She deserves better from you. Better than this.

--++​

It's very hard to say the words, but you manage to force them out. "I'm going to walk to the Walgreens, and pick out the sexiest clothes from what I can find there, maybe clothes that are too revealing, like a tank-top with no bra. Then I'm going to the shops near the college dorms, to find out where students my age gather in the evening and, and go join them. I might talk with boys, or dance with them. I might stay out late. I'll, I'll," you have to say it now, you won't get another chance, "I'll probably lose my virginity before very long. I'm not planning to do it tonight, but, I'm not promising anything."

Your mother is looking up from her laptop. Her eyes are very wide.

"I'm doing this because I can," you say to her. "Because it's what people my age do, when they're allowed to be alive. I've wanted this for so, so long… so, Mom, is it all right with you? Would you, would you even be happy for me?"

You gaze into your mother's eyes, wondering what it's like to be someone the Erogame thinks is a background character. If she can still understand, if she can speak with you this one time, if it's not already too late. If you can speak together this much, and have it mean something, before your ERO stat goes any higher.

Your mother slowly nods. "I understand," she says, her own voice low. "I… went to college too, my dear." She pauses, seeming to struggle within herself, and finally blurts out, "Do you understand about pregnancy and venereal diseases and protection and birth control?"

"I do," you say past the lump in your throat. This is the Talk. It's going to be a short talk. Your mother is giving it to an erogame character. "I, I promise, I already know the things I need to know."

"It only takes once," your mother says warningly. "You can get herpes just by kissing someone during an outbreak, and most venereal diseases can be transmitted by oral sex."

Don't worry, I won't do anything involving the slightest chance I'll get a venereal disease. You don't say it. It would be true, but it would be dishonest in what it implies about the future of your sex life. Very, very dishonest.

"Walgreens sells condoms too," you say instead. "And… and the college medical office doesn't have to notify the parents to dispense birth control pills."

Both statements are true. Both statements are honest. Those two properties aren't related, but so it goes.

"I'm… glad to hear it," your mother says, not looking glad at all.

You swallow again. "Please answer, because I want to know. Even if your answer is no, I still want to know one way or another. Are you happy for me?"

There's a long pause. "Yes," your mother says. "I am. I have… mixed feelings about this, but I'm happy for you too."

"Thank you," you whisper. You don't know, if you'll ever know, to what degree her permission was forced from her. But her feelings… you don't think the Erogame would go so far as to fake those too.

Looking as though she's pushing through jello to do it, your Mom rises up from the couch, and moves toward you to give you a hug.

You stay in her arms for a long moment, in her embrace, the other kind of loving embrace. You'll need to remember that this also exists.

Finally you push her away, just a little, and she steps back.

"Thanks, Mom," you whisper.

"Good luck," she says back. She even manages to smile. "Stay safe. Have fun. Call me the instant you need me."

I will, you don't say.

You turn around and head towards the door. On the way out, you pass the Refuse the giftsex quest prompt, and, flinching a bit, you poke out a finger to press "Y".

You're not going to actually do it. You promise yourself you're not going to actually do it. You're not going anywhere near 4th to 7th. Unless at some point you start feeling, not like you could endure being raped by multiple assaulters, but like it would be fun. You can't rule that out happening in… in the next month or so. Maybe 20,000xp will mean nothing to you by then, but there's also the bonus perk point; and at 1 perk point every 5 levels, it sounds like perk points matter substantially in the Erogame. Pressing "N" wouldn't have been the smart choice, just the scared one.

You look back at your mother one last time, before you walk out the door. She's still watching you go, her eyes still seem worried.

Erogame, if you're listening, please let her keep this memory. Even if she doesn't think of it often, let her stay true to herself when she does.

-+​

There isn't any answer… but somehow, you think she will.

"Cold," you chant to yourself under your breath, "cold, cold, cold…"

You didn't catch on from the earlier bus ride, even though you vaguely noticed that it was surprisingly chilly for a sunny day. Now it's late evening, Google says it's a temperate 51F out there, and it feels like winter. Not winter in California, winter in fucking Colorado.

Now that you've taken off the 120-pound insulating winter coat you previously wore at all times.

Probably you have never actually experienced the sensation that other people refer to as "cold weather." It is possible that thick coats are actually important when it is snowing in Colorado, not just a luxury for cryophobic weaklings who can't seem to walk three blocks to the corner store without bundling up first. It is important that you remember this fact the next time you visit Dad's family for Christmas.

On the plus side, it is starting to occur to you that maybe summer is not as much of a horrible horrible experience if you don't have to wear a 120-pound winter coat.

You are also feeling really happy about how easy it is to move using your feet when you are not carrying double the pack weight of a US Marine, or, equivalently, another entire girl riding on your shoulders.

This is like flying. Why do normal people spend time fantasizing about flying through the air when they can fly on the ground?

"Cold, cold," you chant as you run towards Walgreens with your feet not hurting at all, your face locked in the rictus of an unalterable smile, "cold, cold, cold!"

It doesn't even feel like you're sweating much. Is this really what a normal body is like, or is this another touch of your ERO stat?

A thought occurs to you, and you slow to a halt.

You look up and down the street. Nobody seems to be around. If somebody is watching you from one of the houses, then… then you'll probably get a BOD point for it. You are an erogame character now and you need to get over this sort of thing.

You still have to force yourself to do it, your cheeks still flame up, as you take off your shirt and stand in the public street wearing only a very-ill-fitting bra on your upper body.

There are fortunately other sensations to distract you from embarrassment and apprehension, such as COLD.

You were indeed sweating some. You can tell, because the sweat under your shirt did not evaporate as fast, and the night breeze is now helpfully cooling down your upper body as the sweat evaporates from it.

You'll give this fuck you'll give this another 20 seconds COLD COLD COLD COLD COLD---

A skill has been created by a special action! Dressing inappropriately in both a social and climatic sense has created the Ero Enviromental Resistance skill.

That worked just like you hoped it would.

Info // Skills // Ero Environmental Resistance:

Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 1 (1.5%). Passive.

A true magical bimbo is always dressed her best, whether in the chill of early spring, the scorching sun of the desert, or the deadly vacuum of space. You probably shouldn't try that last one for a while.

Uncomfortable environment: ERO x 0.5% resistance = 5.5%
Dangerous environment: ERO x 0.2% resistance = 2.2%
Lethal environment: ERO x 0.1% resistance = 1.1%

This skill only operates when you are dressed (or undressed) inappropriately for your surroundings. To avoid being sunburned on the beach, you'll need an unusually skimpy swimsuit. Naturally, ice cubes and dripping hot wax don't count as "environments," so keep on squirming.

Subskill: Cute Cold Resistance: Lvl 1 (10%). Passive.

Multiply your base resistance factor for cold environments by 1.1.

This has promise.

But for now you are putting your shirt back on and resuming running, because the skills are only Lvl 1 and don't help much compared to the COLD.

Walgreens isn't very crowded at this time of night. There's only one cashier at the front counters, and only one customer that you see from here, an old lady in the middle of checking out.

Spoiler: Roll: Does this Walgreens carry a fine selection of erotic attire?

Difficulty: 90 (not very probable to start with)
ERO: +11

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 60+11 = 71

For: Erogamer: Walgreens clothes

Rolled on: April-09-2017, 11:42am

See dice roll details

60

There isn't much in the way of clothing, or underwear, in the aisles. No surprise there.

Black pantyhose… can you modify that into black thighhighs with a scissors? Leaving aside whether that would work for a normal human, is there an Erogame skill for that and will it work sufficiently well at Lvl 1? You don't know, so you pick up three packs of basic pantyhose: one pack to get the skill, one to try modifying after you have the skill, and one for regular pantyhose if both attempts fail. Because black is sexy and your legs are cold.

Why would a store carry a fake high heels scotch tape dispenser but not any actual high heels? Is the game mocking you?

Basic black panties… are you an S size now, or an XS? You pick up one pack of each size.

A couple of circular stands of T-shirts at the end of an aisle, a box piled high with sweaters---right, sweaters are actually a thing for chilly weather.

You have no idea how any of these would look on you. For that matter, you don't know whether a tight T-Shirt with no bra would display your BOD better for exhibitionist purposes than a loose tank-top with no bra. What do boys like more?

And you are probably going to be rocking an absence of bras. Walgreens has a grand selection of 4 bras that might be your size. Furthermore, you don't know if the return policy covers clothing, you've been spending enough money today that you're feeling nervous about buying more things at random… hell, you don't know what your cup size or chest measurement is anymore. Needless to say, this Walgreens doesn't have a changing room.

Or you could just… undress inside the store.

..You're not sure if you want to do this.

Pending your decision, you look around. You're on the other side of the store from the cashier, with nobody visible to your right within your aisle. On your left, browsing the book/magazine section is…

Spoiler: Roll: Who's shopping there?

Rolling d100. Anything greater than 100-(ERO/2) is a positively flavored Erogame event; anything less than (ERO/2) is the other kind of Erogame event. Modifiers: None, it's just a Walgreens.

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 99

For: Erogamer: Walgreens shopper

Rolled on: April-09-2017, 11:55am

See dice roll details

99

Well then.

…a cute boy, maybe a little younger than you, slightly overweight, dressed in a button-down shirt left untucked from his blue jeans. He's in front of the stand with recent fiction novels, pretending to study the books intensely while glancing sidewise at the covers of women's magazines showing scantily clad models.

You turn your head rapidly away and stare at the racks in front of you. Shit. Shit. You can tell an Erogame hint when you see one.

Your fingers touch your shirt at your sides. Can you do this? Is it smart to do this, here and now? Your ERO score is still only 11. The Walgreens almost certainly has video cameras for security. Even if no monitoring security guard actually stops you, there'll be video footage of… of you…

Your heart starts beating faster.

There'll be video footage of an exhibitionist girl who looks nothing like Cinderella Sheen is supposed to look.

You don't have to introduce yourself as Cinderella Sheen to anyone, for the next few nights. You can make up a new name for… for the mysterious female newcomer to Norville who will also vanish after another 10 BOD points. That girl can do anything, and nobody will associate her with Cinderella Sheen or the supermodel who shows up later.

A vital insight removing your last excuse for conformity causes your ERO to go up by 1!

Your fingers tighten on the edges of your shirt. You look in the direction of the cute boy---he's looking at you.

The moment your eyes meet, he turns around and starts compulsively examining different brands of shoe inserts, shuffling sideaways as he does.

You, you're not sure you can do this. You want to think, but you're not sure how much time you have left before the boy finishes his surreptitious flight---

Quest available: I'm not God, but I'm here beside you

Blake Layton decided he was an atheist after a semester of undergrad philosophy challenged his sheltered upbringing. He hasn't dared come out to his family or his friends in the Church of Latter-Day Saints. He's ashamed to have been caught looking at you, and would melt into a terrified puddle if you called him out on looking at the magazine covers.

Help Blake Layton get started on his new life! By showing him your titties.

Success: +250xp
Failure: You fail.
1st bonus objective: ?
2nd bonus objective: ??
3rd bonus objective: ???
Time limit: 25 seconds remaining to accept
Accept: Y/N

SHHHIIIIIIITTT oh fuck oh God what are you going to do do do he might as well have been gift-wrapped for you but but you're not ready for this---

Your finger stabs "Y" just before the time limit runs out and then you drop your purchases on the floor, generating enough noise to attract someone's attention, you don't move your head from staring at the bras in front of you. Your hands grab the sides of your shirt, and pull it over your head in one convulsive motion.

The movement is so sudden it pops your left boob out of your loose bra.

The shock causes you to freeze with your hands held above you, still stuck inside the shirt draped over them.

Shamelessly… well, shamefully exhibiting yourself in front of Blake causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Performing the least seductive striptease in the history of Walgreens in front of the one boy in Norville who would actually be turned on causes your SED to go up by 1!

why. why must you suck so badly at this.

You want to arch your body in a smooth curve like models in magazines. You want to finish pulling off your shirt in a slinky, sensual motion.

What you do instead, is finish pulling off your shirt. Then, in case Blake is wondering whether the loose boob is an accident and afraid to stare at you, you reach around back and… and fumble your own damn bra catch for what seems like a whole minute because your fingers are shaking wildly. When it finally comes loose, you try to draw the bra off slowly, for whatever that's worth in Seduction.

Your breasts are bare. Both nipples showing.

+250XP

Okay. Okay, that means Blake is still looking.

Still moving slowly, you finish taking off the bra.

A skill has been created by a special action! It's a stretch, but removing your bra very slowly while a boy is staring at you counts as creating the Strip Tease skill.

As deliberately as you can, trying to make clear that it's not an accident, that he's allowed to look, you open your hand and drop your bra on the ground.

You are now topless. Nipples bared in Walgreens.

Your heart is beating wildly. Are you turned on or just terrified? You can't tell. Are you getting wet down there or just sweaty? You can't remember what your current LST stat is.

Your fingers are shaking. You almost drop the 36D "fits any" as you draw it from the shelf, and try it on, careful not to tear the label.

It… doesn't fit. Too large, you think, but definitely the wrong shape.

Are you a C-cup now? An Erogame protagonist wouldn't be a B-cup, right?

The 32C bra… might sort of fit? You're having trouble with the bra catch again due to the mechanism not being totally familiar plus your sudden case of Parkinson's.

You could get Blake to help you.

Your first time wanting to touch a boy and have him touch you when that might actually happen causes your LST to increase by 1!

T-that answers the question of whether you're turned on as well as scared. Your hands shake faster. You can feel your bare nipples are hard. Oh, god…

You finally dare to look to your left.

The cute boy wearing an untucked button-down shirt looks up from where he was staring at your breasts. He looks ready to flee through the wall of the store and leave behind a cute-boy-shaped hole.

[ ] Ask Blake to help you try on clothes.
[ ] Order Blake to help you try on clothes.
[ ] Write-in.

1.2.2 [BL]: Birth of a Starr

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 3 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Order Blake to help you try on clothes.
No. of Votes: 15
ChandraMagic
Astaroh-M
BFldyq
cupcakeviolater
Grosstoad
GulibleLeprecon
Harpy81
inverted_helix
Jaertin
Jiven
Koden
monkeinguin
Piell
wasprider
Zap Rowsdower
[x] Ask Blake to help you try on clothes. If he's reluctant, insist.
No. of Votes: 8
murklins
Arkatekt
Caiuz
Chamocha
Epicr
Kenloch
Omida
ScrewFate
[X] Ask Blake to help you try on clothes, gently, because he seems nice and so are you and there is no reason not to be genuine in this situation.
No. of Votes: 2
Ephemeral
Navrin
[X] Blushing madly, you turn to face Blake full on, top off. Unsteadily stepping towards him, you open your mouth, about to ask him to help you pick a bra.
-[X] Getting close to him, mouth moving but sound refusing to come out, you trip on a discarded magazine, and Blake reacts by catching you in his arms.
--[X] Brain firing like mad, you accidentally order him to feel you up.
No. of Votes: 2
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
The Froggy Ninja
[x] Ask Blake to help you try on clothes. If he's reluctant, insist.
-[X] Also sway your body just so, in hopes that might intice him to help you, willingly.
No. of Votes: 1
Master Basher
Total No. of Voters: 28

You gaze into Blake's terrified eyes and wonder if, like you, he's also turned on along with the fear---you do not need to wonder. Your eyes dip briefly to his pants.

He's definitely turned on.

Blake seems to have correctly interpreted what your eyes just did. He takes half a step back.

Half-formed sentences flash through your mind. You want to smile kindly at him and reassure him. You want to tell him to come over and help with your bra, your orders imperious and impossible to disobey. You want to give him a pleading, lustful look as you beg him to touch you.

Your SED stat is 3.

"H-hey. C-come over and help me try on this bra."

Your lips stretch up in what is probably a ghastly rictus and was supposed to be a reassuring smile.

The Walgreens is as silent as a deserted Walgreens.

Blake takes a step forward.

Your SED has increased by 1!

Closer the cute boy comes, and closer.

You turn and face the other way, showing him your back, and where you're trying to close the bra straps. You hope the implication is clear. You're not sure you can speak.

You stand there with your knees trembling under the tentlike dress as Blake… pulls the bra backward, sending you a stumbling step back. You freeze, as does Blake.

"I don't think I can close this without touching you," says a boyish voice that's probably pitched higher than usual.

"Then touch me."

Oh god did you say that you actually said that.

Your SED has increased by 1!

Blake being in the middle of peeking at models on magazine covers in a Walgreens, when suddenly a girl stripped off her top and ordered him to touch her, has increased the girl's ERO by 1!

There's another pull at the bra across your chest. This time you don't stumble backwards. A boy's fingers lightly brush your back, then brush you again, as Blake fumbles with the catch and you try not to hyperventilate to the point where you will actually faint.

The catch is done. Blake pulls his fingers back.

The bra… doesn't fit very well. It's more pinching you than supporting you.

Your breasts felt fine while you were running, even though your bra was way too loose.

This bra isn't doing anything at all for you. The only reason to wear it would be if for some reason it was important that you wear a bra for the sake of wearing a bra instead of not wearing a bra.

Like modesty. Like society's disapproval. Like habit. That was the only reason you even tried to buy a bra, when the whole thing you set out to do tonight, was show off your body.

You could just wear a sweater. You could put on the tightest sweater in Walgreens you can still struggle into, so it showed all your new curves and your nipples poking out. You could just walk around looking like that.

Your PRV has increased by 1!

You manage to speak again. "It doesn't f-fit."

Blake's fingers once again touch the tiny area of your back of which you are so, so hyperaware right now.

You move your hands up over your head so Blake can finish taking off the bra that way. You shouldn't be taking off your bra, he should be taking off your bra. There's a loud breath from behind you, and then Blake finishes taking off your bra all by himself. Leaving you topless once more.

Your skirt is a tent tied around your waist, and you don't want to wear it any more in front of Blake.

You don't want to wear panties held together by safety pins in front of Blake.

You reach down and pick up the package of size S panties. You're probably not a size XS, yet.

Carefully preserving the package so you can pay for it later, you take out one of the two pairs of size-S panties inside. "H-hold this," you say, and turn around to give the package to Blake, showing him your breasts again in the process.

There's a sort of illllp sound from Blake as he sees you holding the loose panties, and then he takes the package from you. You pluck the bra from Blake's hands and put it back on the shelf, then turn away from him to show him your back again.

You don't try to Strip Tease with your skirt or panties, you're too embarrased by them, so you strip them both off your waist in a single motion.

You press your legs together tightly as you bend down holding the size S panties. You don't want to show Blake your pussy as you bend over or at least not much of it because you have never thought that vaginas looked the least bit attractive especially your own vagina and maybe BOD changes that but you haven't inspected your vagina to see and right now you just don't want to risk it.

You still have to draw up one leg a little, and then the other, to put your feet through the panties. You draw them up around your legs as you slowly straighten. Finally the black panties are around your waist and you run one finger along the band, slowly, to make sure it's all in place.

Your SED has increased by 1!

A skill has been created by a special action! Putting on clothing with seductive slowness has created the Reverse Strip Tease skill.

You don't look back at Blake yet. Instead you take a few steps forward to the heap of sweaters, and shuffle through them looking for a size XS.

You find one, and draw it over your head. It's too tight, but willing to stretch for you.

Being naked would have been better than what you were wearing before. You're not sure but you think that the over-tight sweater and panties are better than being naked. It's more obscene. You hope Blake likes that. You like it.

You turn around.

Exhibiting your trembling body and hard, erect nipples to Blake causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Blake's eyes go from your tits, to your face, as if looking for your approval, and then back to your tits.

You take a few steps forward and arch your chest so he can see better.

it's okay to stare, nothing bad will happen to you
see something you like?
what do you think you're looking at, mister, and how do you intend to pay me back
Blake, do you want to---

Your SED stat is 6, you think it's 6 now, maybe you could actually say some of those things.

All the words are right there in your head why can't you just say them.

"I," you gulp, you speak, "I, think I found everything I want, from Walgreens. Just, the panties, the pantyhose, this sweater, and you."

A skill has been created by a special action! Your cheesy porn-movie dialogue has created the skill Extra Large Sausage.

…that sounded so much more sultry and seductive in your head and that was why it would have been a better idea not to try to put things that are in your head into your mouth.

Blake manages to look up from your nipples. "Me?" he says, his voice even higher than before.

Your breath catches. You said it before you thought about it. But there's no point going downtown looking for what you already found.

You don't trust your brain's sultry dialogue any more, so instead you just nod.

You pick up your purse, and the pantyhose, from where you dropped them. You leave your horrible old skirt and panties on the Walgreens floor along with the person you were.

You take Blake by his warm, sweating hand and try to walk him toward the checkout counter.

Blake doesn't follow.

You look at him, and he looks dismayed at his own foolishness for resisting you. "Y-you're not dressed," he blurts out. "What if you get arrested?"

You look down at your panties. You don't think this violates any indecent exposure laws, but regardless, "I'm too cute to be arrested. It, it sounds like a joke, but it's not, and anyway, that's for me to worry about."

Blake still doesn't move. "What if I'm arrested?"

"I, I didn't ask you to do anything, I just told you to do things, so nobody would think it was your fault."

A skill has been created by a special action! Your use of Alice in Wonderland logic to convince Blake to go along with the fantasy has created the skill Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit.

please stop, Erogame

"The cashier will see you." Blake's voice is quieter.

You still haven't let go of Blake's hand. You pull him forward again, and this time he follows you.

The cashier is a middle-aged woman who stares at you in your panties and gym shoes and sweaterboobs, and then she looks at Blake, who looks like he would rather be dead at least temporarily, and then she picks up your purchases and starts ringing them up.

You draw off your sweater so the cashier can ring it up too. Blake makes a hiccoughing sound but doesn't speak.

You pay for your clothes, and then put the sweater back on.

You step out of the Walgreens in your very bare legs and the shock of cold feels welcome. You were getting overheated in there.

Blake has followed you out into the concrete squares in front of the parking lot. The two of you are standing in the one-sided fluorescent glare from the store, with much dimmer yellow streetlamps illuminating you both from the other side. There's no one in the parking lot. No cars passing by. Nobody can see you from here.

You let go of Blake's hand, so you can reach out, slowly, just in case Blake wants to object, and you trail your hand along Blake's face.

Touching Blake clumsily, but still raising goosebumps on his arms, causes your FUK to increase by 1!

Quest: I'm not God, but I'm here beside you:

1st bonus objective: Touch Blake and be touched by him.
+350XP

Your level has increased by 1!

"What's your name?" You're proud of how you don't stutter, this time. Also you need an excuse to know he's named Blake before you blurt it out accidentally.

"Blake," he says. "Blake Layton." He swallows. "And you?"

You have failed to anticipate this 100% obvious rejoinder so you ask your brain for aliases and it goes back to something you saw once for generating porn star names from birthdates and the only thing you remember from it is that Starr and Star were on there. "I'm Starry Starr."

Extra Large Sausage has increased by 1.

why did your mouth say that. why.

Blake doesn't say anything in reply.

"It's not my real name," you venture.

"I figured." Just for a second Blake Layton smiles and looks that much more attractive and masculine, just for a second, and your legs tremble again.

"So, Blake," you say. You don't trust yourself to say anything sultry. All you can do is force your mouth to say the simple facts. "I… I've just started, to… live my life more intensely. But I haven't really done anything yet, so, I'm going to practice on you."

There's sweat on Blake's forehead. "Practice."

"I probably won't give you my virginity." You don't want to make any false promises. "I'm just going to touch you. I don't know how to touch boys. So I'll touch you wherever I want to touch you, and you'll tell me how it feels. You'll probably get to come." The words feel like they might melt you from the inside, as you speak them.

Telling Blake what you're going to do to him causes your SED to go up by 1!

Your LST has increased by 1!

Blake tries to smile; it doesn't really work this time. "Do I get a say in this?"

"Do you want one?" You smile back at him. You didn't even plan the smile, it just happened. You arch your chest again, presenting your breasts a little more. "I suppose you could tell me to stop."

You haven't asked Blake anything so far, and it feels wrong to force him to choose.

"Uh," Blake says. He looks across the parking lot, at the Walgreens bicycle rack. "I, have a bike, but, where are we going?"

Mini-quest begun: Sheltered, in my arms.

The exhibitionist girl who grabbed Blake out of Walgreens has informed him that he is to become her boy-toy for the night. But the impossible fantasy can't continue unless they find somewhere to stay.

Success: Blake.
Failure: No Blake.

For some reason you were thinking, not in so many words, that since he now belonged to you that meant you got to take him back to your bedroom. And your Mom might let you do it or God help everything not notice but… no.

Obvious ideas first. "We're going to rent a room in a motel."

"Will they let us do that?" Blake says. "I don't think they'll let us do that."

You grin again, wildly. You don't remember what your ERO is right now. You're wearing a braless tight sweater, black panties, and gym shoes. You're 2 BOD points prettier than when you left your house and 233% as seductive, and you are, maybe for the first time in your life, horny. "Let's find out. I'll run, you bike." You start towards the bicycle rack, hooking a finger into Blake's shirt to bring him along. "Oh, and carry my things in your bike basket so I can run faster."

There's a motel not far from here you've passed on previous walks, looking not very well-maintained, with a name like Bob's Motel or something. A motel like that seems more likely to go along with a borderline shady rental than a franchise.

Running is like flying again, even better with tighter clothes and no purse, and the heat inside you feels like it can't be quenched. Houses roll past you and trees, and squares of sidewalk whoosh past your feet too quickly to see. Blake on his bike is following you from behind, and you hope he's getting a good view.

As you run you whisper words as barely as you can, "Info, skills, Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit."

Info // Skills // Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit:

Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit: Lvl 1 (20%). Active. DOM / Special.

Convince 1 other person to go along with 1 instance of Erogame Logic. This skill cannot of itself cause someone to act contrary to their interests or desires, but helps convince them that the event is not hallucinatory, that it's fine not to use protection this time, or that the victim won't go to the police. Costs DOM equal to the ERO corresponding to the minimum improbability threshold for the ongoing event.

Dressing as a sexy bunny reduces the cost of this skill by 50%.

"Status," you whisper.

Cinderella Sheen
"The Erogamer"
LVL 3 (25%)

DOM: 110/110
SUB: 40/250

BOD: 16
LST: 10
SED: 7
FUK: 4
PRV: 15
ERO: 13

Stat Points: 5
Money: $1,051

You have ALL the Dominant Energy.

…which to be honest was not wholly absent from your mind as a consideration when you started giving Blake orders.

And you have stat points now. It's tempting to magically become a better lover before you touch Blake. But you gained a lot of SED very quickly, much faster than you gained BOD or ERO. Lower stats are easier to raise. So you're not going to spend any points until after grinding your FUK stat on Blake and wow that sounds obscene even with your PRV at 15.

By the time you reach the motel your Cute Cold Resistance levels 4 times, each successive time taking longer, and your Ero Environmental Resistance levels once. That last level-up seems to produce a detectable decrease in… not the cold, the chilliness of the cold.

It's still later at night and colder, and by the time the two of you finally arrive at the motel you're glad to be there. The lobby of the small building is still lit. The parking lot is half-empty of cars.

Blake rolls to a halt and goes to chain his bike to a post of the fence around the open parking lot. "Should I go in first?" Blake says uncertainly. He glances over to where you're standing in your sweater and panties.

You smile at him again. "Stay here," you say. You turn, walk forward, and push open the door to the lobby of Rob's Motel.

Spoiler: Roll: How hard will this be for you?

Base difficulty: 70 (for a motel desk to rent a room to an 18-year-old girl and her boy-toy isn't impossible, or unworldly, but it doesn't happen without a reason)
Modifier: +ERO*2, the fantasy must go on!

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 20+26 = 46

For: Motel desk manager

Rolled on: April-12-2017, 12:47am

See dice roll details

20

You'll need around 3 successes worth of success to do this.

The lobby is small, looking halfway like the entrance to a dentist's office, with a few chairs near the front desk and magazines scattered about. There's nobody at the front desk, but the bell rang as you entered. It only takes half a minute for a balding, 50-ish man in a suit to come out from behind an open doorway.

He looks at you.

He looks at your sweaterboobs.

He looks at your panties.

You smile.

"Nope," he says, and jerks a thumb pointing back out the door.

[ ] Write-in.

Spoiler: AN, added after

Cindy isn't going to offer Motel Manager anything she wouldn't offer Blake, and she would strongly prefer Blake to be her first kiss, first handjob, etcetera. That doesn't mean she has nothing to offer.

She's not going to give up and go to another motel without trying---there are other motels, check; but she's cold, she's horny, she's high on life, she wants Blake now, and she's not going to give up right away. The nearest next motel can be assumed to be distant enough to give her hesitation, rather than being just down the street.

Other points:

The Erogame said that she has to find shelter on pain of No Blake. Blake would do this in warm comfort; he'd have a lot of second thoughts about getting naked in a cold park waiting for someone to find him.

Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit is not a general Jedi mind trick. What it does is convince people that the current actual Ero situation is in fact the truth, regardless of any skepticism that might usually apply. It's fine not to use protection, you won't be arrested, nobody will notice us fucking on this train, assuming all that is actually true. Cindy still has to convince the motel manager to rent her a room, given the true situation.

You can indeed spend 5 stat points on ERO. She'd probably think more carefully about dialing up the Erogame Logic under other circumstances, but I can see her Just Doing It right now.

Think of this as group brainstorming: the initial roll was 40-ish and the threshold was 70-ish so you all need a sum of three passable ideas to win, with Cindy trying first things that got more votes.

1.2.3** [BL]: What Might Not Happen

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 5 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Plan Excuses
-[X] Explain that it's cold outside and that you need to stay here until somebody picks you up and you can't wait outside due to cold.
--[X] Explain that this is the only clothes you have left due to the rest being destroyed in a accident.
---[X] Demand to speak with the manager if he refuses. Maybe he will be more reasonable.
No. of Votes: 3
Plan: ◈Excuses
GulibleLeprecon
Raron
The Froggy Ninja
[X] Ask him to reconsider. It's really cold out there, and you don't want to be trekking through cold to find someplace else.
No. of Votes: 3
BFldyq
Arkatekt
Koden
[X] Use Follow the Fucking Rabbit to make the hotel manager rent you a room.
-[X] "Come on, I have money, and this place has vacancies. Do you really care what two consenting adults use the room they paid for over the one night they stay?"
No. of Votes: 2
Blonddude42
Avalon Du Lac
[X] Plan Wasp
-[X] Put all 5 points in ERO
--[X] Invoke Extra Large Sausage
---[X] Porn Logic: Naked Girls are Normal
---[X] Porn Logic: Skip to the Good Stuff: Dialog Gets in the Way
---[X] "Please sir, it's cold outside. I just need someplace I can stay warm for the night."
No. of Votes: 1
Plan: ◈Wasp
wasprider
[X] Fuck it there's got to be more than one motel in town.
No. of Votes: 1
ScrewFate
[X] Bluff. Lying is technically an ancillary skill to getting laid right?
No. of Votes: 1
Zediekiel
[X] "It's no shoes, no shirt, no service. I've got shoes and a shirt... well sweater. We'll be in and out before you know it." Use puppy dog eyes. "Please, do it for the poor horny boy outside as well."
-[X] Use follow the fucking rabbit
No. of Votes: 1
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
[X] Five points to ERO and try again to get a room.
No. of Votes: 1
asdo
[X] *Blush,furiously* "I am sorry about the look, but he's dreadfully shy and I do love seeing him blush. I have cash? For the room?
[X] Give the poor man a hand? I don't think he even touched a girl before today. Let me make this a good day for him, please, sir? *Puppy dog eyes*
[X] If none of it works, blush and try and present your chest."Um, I could let you have look, if that might help?" If he agrees, flash him.
[X] If none of that all works, get angry:"I tried sugar. You should have taken it. I could scream. Call the cops. All kinds of things could have happened betwen us. Make this as unpleasant a day for you as possible if you do not let me pay for a room. NOW!".
No. of Votes: 1
LaserJet
Total No. of Voters: 14

At the sight of the motel desk attendant with his thumb pointing right to the door, the manic momentum filling you falters---but not for long. Tonight you're not Cinderella Sheen, you're Starry Starr, and Starry Starr cannot be stopped.

"Hold on," you say. You turn to one side. "Status. Stats." Your finger pokes the air five times, taking your ERO stat to 18. Time to try this again with a little less realism.

When you turn back and look at the balding man in the suit, he's blinking uncertainly like a computer that has just been restarted.

"I need a room for the night," you say, tapping one impatient finger on the counter.

The balding man finishes rebooting, and then his eyes travel up and down your body again. His voice when he speaks is milder. "I'm sorry, miss, and I can see you're in trouble, but this isn't a charity. There's a shelter on---"

God damn it. "Hold on again." You left your purse with Blake and have no visible pockets. Of course the man thought you were trying to wheedle a free room.

You push open the door again and march over to where Blake-toy is standing and looking a bit worried. It makes you feel a bit sheepish as you retrieve your purse from his bike, but you keep as straight a back as you can as you march back into the motel.

You reach into your purse, pull out your cellphone-holder/wallet, and slam your credit card down on the counter---

Your Cinderella Sheen credit card. You did not think this through.

Then you decide to ignore it. You can't think of anything bad that happens if this man knows your real name, let alone any consequences that could beat your Erogame immunity.

"I can pay for a room," you say. "One night, please."

The man leans over the counter to peer outside the door, and halts when he sees Blake standing in wait. He turns back to you and sighs. "Miss, this isn't a motel for working girls."

This statement initially puzzles you and you almost open your mouth to ask if he prefers malfunctioning girls. Then you figure out what he means. "I'm not a prostitute," you say.

"Girl," says the man, "I don't care what it's called these days."

You lean forward over the counter, aware that you're presenting your breasts; the man did look at you before. "He's not paying me. He's my boy-toy for the night. I'm not a prostitute, we're not doing anything illegal, and you won't get in any trouble with the police. And that's all true, and you believe all of it, because just follow the fucking rabbit. One room, please."

There's another round of blinking from the man. Then he shakes his head again. "You look like trouble."

You don't believe this. "Oh, come on! It's cold outside! It's really, really cold outside! And, and all of my other clothes were destroyed in… in a tragic clothing accident! I do not want to run around from one motel to another dressed like this, and by that I don't mean I want to run around naked instead, not while it's this cold!" You pause. The man does not look moved at all by this, and you recall that How to Win Friends and Influence People suggests thinking of what the other person wants, rather than thinking of what you want. "I'll slip you an extra twenty and show you my tits?"

"No," the man says.

"Can I speak with the manager?" Maybe you can show them your tits.

"I am the manager," the man says. "And I don't want trouble in my motel."

You are sick of trying to work your way through this man's dialogue options… wait, that gives you an idea. If the skill does what the name implies---"Info. Skills. Extra Large Sausage."

Info // Skills // Extra Large Sausage:

Extra Large Sausage: Lvl 2 (0%). Active. Special.

Work with Porn Logic instead of Erogame Logic. Cost is three times the equivalent PRN stat that would be required to accomplish the same end, payable in DOM and/or SUB, plus three times the equivalent cost of any porn-based skills that would be needed, used at Lvl 1. You may not create situations that would require greater PRN than your (ERO-10).

There's a Porn stat? You don't have a PRN stat. And how are you supposed to use this ability without knowing what any of the Porn skills are called? Maybe it works if your guess is close enough.

"Miss," says the man, "I need to ask you to leave, or I'm calling the---"

"Extra Large Sausage: We Couldn't Afford Dialogue in This Script." You can feel the surge of energy this time. You lean forward, cupping your boobs within your sweater and deliberately jiggling them. "Hi! I'm the bed inspector! Rent me a room for the night."

"Coming right up, Miss… bed inspector," the balding man says, his eyes looking unfocused and a professional smile now plastered across his face. He takes your credit card and runs it through his computer, giving you a short form to fill out. You scrawl BED INSPECTOR across it in huge letters using the counter pen.

Miniquest complete: Sheltered, in my arms
+100XP

You have a full tank of gas and a tight braless sweater, it's dark and you're wearing black panties, you are on a mission from God.

You sign a credit card receipt. The balding man hands you a key, now frowning uncertainly. You push your way out the door again, $59 poorer.

Blake is still standing there, hugging his arms around himself as if chilled, or nervous. You show him the key in your hand, as if for his approval.

Your mouth suddenly feels drier.

Very… very soon, now.

"We have room 13," you say.

Blake retrieves a backpack from his bike, and follows you without a word.

It's hard to see the room numbers, in the dim lamp that illuminates the motel building's stairs and balconies. Eventually you locate what looks to you like the correct room door, and, not quite thinking, you twist the doorknob without using your key on it first.

Your eyes meet the eyes of a man sitting by a desk with his pants down and his hand at his crotch, lit by the glowing light of his laptop. His mouth has only begun to open in horror when you reflexively slam the door again.

A skill has been created by a special action! Opening a door that someone carefully chained shut before they started masturbating has created the skill You Forgot To Lock the Door.

"Sorry, wrong door," you say to Blake. You can now see clearly that the door's number is 18 rather than 13.

…You are no longer sure it was a wise decision to use those 5 stat points to make your sex life 38% weirder.

At the next door you make certain it actually says 13, tracing the number-plate with your finger lest your eyes deceive you, before you twist the key in the doorknob and open the door.

The room is clean, if Spartan. There's a small desk with a shaded lamp on it, the only illumination currently in the room, faced by a simple swivel chair. A small refrigerator/freezer, a small microwave, a small sink. A half-open bathroom door.

There's a bed, probably a double rather than a queen, with plain solid-colored yellow blankets drawn over it.

You and Blake stand there in the doorway, looking at the bed. Then you both go inside, and you look at him in the light of the desk.

You see a slightly overweight boy in a button-down white shirt that practically screams 'Mormon', now somewhat sweat-stained after his bike ride. He looks like he's trying not to look scared.

You don't know what he sees when he looks at you. You haven't looked in a mirror since you gained your last 2 BOD.

You take a breath, twice, before you can speak. "Take off your clothes."

"The," Blake says, "the door's still open."

You back up, swinging the door shut behind you as you do, and look back only briefly to lock it and chain it.

Blake still seems frozen.

…maybe you should start undressing him? The thought freezes you, too. You're the Erogame character, but somehow, you can't… you can't just…

The decision is taken out of your hand, as Blake unbuttons the top button of his shirt with trembling fingers. Then another button. Then another.

You tease. You think it, but don't speak. Something about this moment feels sacred.

Blake finishes unbuttoning his shirt, and draws it off himself. He was wearing a white undershirt underneath, and he draws that off too.

He sits on the bed, upper body now naked, to take off his shoes. Then his socks, and it feels strangely intimate to see his bare feet. He stands again, and unzips his pants, and pulls them down. His hands go to his underpants---

"You can stop there. For now." You're not sure why you said it, just that it feels right to leave Blake that last piece of underwear, for now.

You turn away from Blake, standing with your back to him, so he won't see your lips mouth the words Strip Tease. Then you start to take off the sweater, slowly this time, fingers guided as though through some ancient pattern. Your sweater rises to the level of exposing the bottom half of your breasts, and you pause there to toy with the sweater. Toy with your nipples too, a little. Your body turned just enough for Blake to see what your hands are doing beneath the bottom of your risen sweater.

Then you let the sweater fall back down to your waist, and instead reach down to your panties. Your hands go beneath the panties, massaging your own butt beneath the cloth for Blake to see. You pull them down in a carefully measured motion, halfway down your butt to still conceal what lies further below, before you bend over at the waist to begin undoing your shoelaces.

The shoe laces are undone, and you take the shoes off quickly, because there's nothing seductive about gym shoes and you just want them gone. The white socks go almost as fast, you shifting your weight about your legs as you remove them, only the last part of each motion slowed to flex your foot as the sock is drawn off.

Then you're standing on the floor on your tiptoes, as though pretending to wear high heels. Still facing away from Blake, your hands go to your sweater again, leaving your panties half pulled-down, and you lift the sweater higher, and higher, not stopping this time at the underboob, pulling it up and over your head. He should be able to see the side of one breast and one nipple from where he's standing. That should be enough to tease him properly.

Your SED has increased by 1!

You don't protest the message or the interruption. The stats don't matter to you right now. But knowing for certain that Blake is turned on by what you're doing and isn't just standing there feeling bored… that matters. It matters.

Again your hands go below your panties, tracing just below the top of the waistband this time, and you pull them slowly down to your knees, exposing more of your breasts in the process. You twist a little in that position, as though bound at the knees for Blake's pleasure. The panties fall to the floor, and you step out of them.

The skill's guidance fails in the moment the last clothes are off, and you remain in the curved position for a breath, knowing that you won't be able to pose so seductively after you move again. When the position starts to feel uncomfortable, you straighten up, put your hands over your pussy, and turn to face Blake.

The tent shows clearly in his underwear.

You'll probably get to come. The words seem scarier now that they're real.

"Lie down on the bed," you say, and then pause. "No, first pull down the blanket to the foot of the bed. Then lie down on the bed."

Blake obeys.

You go around the bed and lie down next to him, pressing your body against his to the accompaniment of a hitch in Blake's breathing.

For a long time, you stay there, not moving, not touching him any more, just feeling a boy's back pressed against your front. He feels… tense.

"Are you scared?" You whisper it very softly.

Blake's reply is hardly audible, under his breath. "Just a little."

You're scared.

Your FUK stat is 3… no, 4. The old game text said you'd better be extra-careful of your teeth while giving blow jobs. You are terrified---you don't know if it's irrational terror or rational terror, given the rules of the Erogame---that if you touch Blake, you will hurt him.

"I'm going to start touching you now," you whisper. "Tell me if I do anything wrong. Tell me right away if it hurts."

"Okay," Blake whispers back.

You trail your fingers lightly along his shoulder. As lightly as you can, like you're touching hairs more than skin. This shouldn't hurt him. Couldn't possibly hurt him. It should be enough to turn him on, right? You can get another FUK point by doing this, and then it will be safer to touch him more firmly.

You trail your hands lightly along Blake's arms, along his sides, brush lightly over his chest. You don't know how much time passes, while you do it over and over.

You still don't get a FUK point. Your stat is low. Shouldn't it be rising faster than this?

"How does this feel?" you whisper. "Remember, I'm learning, so please, please be honest with me."

Blake takes two breaths before answering. "It tickles a little."

"It's all right if it doesn't feel good," you murmur. It's not all right. "I'm learning. You need to tell me if it doesn't feel good."

"Okay," Blake whispers again.

You don't know what to try next. You feel much more awful about that first failure than you should, and part of you wants to run away instead of trying harder.

You move back from Blake a little in the bed. Then you lean your head forward, and slowly lick along Blake's shoulderblade.

Blake makes a startled sound.

Your tongue is soft. It shouldn't be able to hurt him. Boys like it when girls lick them, don't they? You hope so.

You lick up the shoulderblade and down it. Blake tastes salty, and… hairy. Moving your tongue over the hairs makes the skin feel oddly smooth… slidey?

Your FUK has increased by 1.

You have to stop in place and deal with your emotions, the relief that you can do this, that you're not broken. Then you start licking again, still slowly. You don't think moving your tongue faster would make this feel any better for Blake, if you imagine yourself in his place.

You want to fasten your mouth on Blake's neck and suckle, but you dimly remember reading something about 'hickeys' and vacuum and burst blood vessels, and think of purple spots one of Blake's friends could see tomorrow. So you don't.

Instead you lick from Blake's shoulder up the tendons in his neck, up to his ear, and then moved by a sudden impish impulse you stick your tongue into his ear as far as you can, and move your tongue around a little. Blake draws in a sharp breath, and doesn't exhale until you finally take your tongue out of his ear. You give him no reprieve when you do, and instead start licking all over and around his ear and earlobe.

Your FUK has increased by 1.

You're still scared that you will somehow, accidentally, manage to… to bite off Blake's ear. But it hasn't happened yet, and every time your FUK stat goes up, you become more able to do this. More ready to do this. You can feel again that you're wet below, remember how much you wanted this.

Try moving around in bed, the old info text told you. You take your mouth off Blake's ear, put your arms around him… put your left arm around him, and try to put your other arm underneath him, which doesn't really work until Blake lifts himself up, and then you're holding him and his weight is an uncomfortable pressure on your arm. It might be uncomfortable for Blake too. You ignore it, and… squirm against Blake, rubbing your body against his, trying to move in bed, just move. The squirming and skin contact feels good to you. You hope it feels good to him.

Blake seems to be breathing faster, but your FUK doesn't go up, and your arm is starting to hurt, and after you've squirmed against him you don't know what to do next. What to do differently. You're terrified of boring him, if you just keep doing the same thing. That you'll seem like a repetitive clockwork doll whose caresses feel good at first but quickly become tiresome.

What else is there to do to him? Your mind is blank. You think foreplay is supposed to go on longer than this, but you can't think of anything else besides moving directly on to groping him through his underpants.

You could kiss him. You forgot all about kissing.

…you don't want to kiss him. You don't want to kiss him with your FUK stat at 6. You want Blake's first kiss to be good. You want your first kiss to be good. You don't want to bite Blake's tongue, or bump his nose, or stick your tongue awkwardly into his mouth in a way that doesn't actually feel good.

You startle in bed, flinching. Blake just put his hand over yours, where it was wrapped around him.

"Are you all right?" Blake murmurs. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to. I'll understand." His voice is stronger now, kindly, and that also moves something inside you. You have a confused half-thought to yell at Blake not to be nice to you, not to be strong for you. Let you be nice too, let you be strong, let you be the fearless woman you want to be.

"Thanks," you whisper to Blake. "I'm all right."

His voice begins again. "Are you sure---?"

You move your hand to cover his mouth. "Quiet, boy-toy." You don't have the confidence to go with those words, and you know Blake knows that. But Blake stops talking.

Then he licks your hand where it's over his mouth, and your own breath hitches. Insolent boy-toy.

You don't move your hand, feeling Blake's tongue move over your palm, warm and tickling and wet. Sensuous. Is this what you were doing to him? No wonder your FUK stat went up.

Just like that, you know what you're doing to him next. You remove your hand from over Blake's mouth, sit up a little in bed, and pull Blake's shoulder towards you, rolling him onto his back.

You sit between Blake's legs and facing him, putting your thighs over his thighs. You can see his face now, in the ambient light from the desk lamp. Blake is looking back at you, gazing into your eyes, and you can't read his expression. He's not yelling about how you just broke both his legs, which is good. You don't know what your face must look like to him. You're afraid of trying to smile and having it come out wrong.

You draw up one of Blake's hands, into your mouth, and start sucking on his thumb. Swirling your tongue around it. The thumb is one of the densest areas of nerves in the human body, the brain region that governs it is huge. You read that once.

Blake shuts his eyes, his face tensing, and without thinking, you stop.

"Keep doing that," Blake says, his voice breathy. "I liked that."

You remove his thumb from your mouth so you can say, "Say please."

"Please," Blake says.

"Good boy," you whisper. You take Blake's thumb back into your mouth and keep sucking. Is this anything like oral sex would be? Is it good practice? You don't know. You keep making love to Blake's thumb with your lips and tongue.

Your FUK has increased by 1.

The FUK stat is 7 now… you think it's 7. 7 might be safe. 7 isn't that far below average. 7 SED was where you started being able to try to be a little seductive without looking like an idiot.

You switch to suckling Blake's forefinger, just to see if that feels different. It seems mostly the same to you. Blake makes another sound.

You want… more than this. Your eyes go to the shape straining against Blake's underwear. You wonder if that's uncomfortable.

Blake raises his hand. You wonder if he's going to try to touch your breasts, grope them. You won't stop him if he does.

Instead Blake takes your hand, watching you as though to see if it's all right, and takes your own forefinger into his mouth.

Your LST has increased by 1.

Small noises are escaping from your throat. You realize that you've stopped sucking on Blake's forefinger, and quickly start up again; you don't want to teach him that pleasuring you means not getting pleasure himself. Your cheeks are hot and it isn't just from the embarrassment at the sounds that continue to escape you.

This isn't fair. You sucked Blake's finger and he just stayed quiet. Why must you make sounds like this? Why can't he make sounds like this? If not for the Erogame, you wouldn't know Blake was having any fun at all. Maybe you can teach him to purr when he's being petted.

Are you leaving a wet spot on the bed? You're worried you're leaving a wet spot on the bed. The two of you still need to sleep here tonight… you think. You didn't ask Blake if he wanted to stay.

You take Blake's finger from your mouth, and at the same time, slowly pull your hand from his own.

"Bla-blake." You're trying for a low voice instead of a whisper, and it's making your voice crack a bit. "Do you want to, to sleep here together? Fall asleep together? After this?"

"Yeah," Blake says.

You carefully move your legs aside from sitting between his, and manage to step off the side of the bed without falling over. "I'm going to get a towel. So there's no wet spots on the bed."

Blake exhales, but doesn't say anything.

You have to turn on the light in the bathroom to find a bath sheet, and the roar of the exhaust fan makes you start. You hope Blake wasn't startled. You hope he's all right with all this. How is your mind so focused on one person, one boy? It feels like your world is revolving around him, always wondering what he's feeling. It doesn't feel like you're falling in love. Just like your mind is… focused.

You turn off the bathroom light and bathroom noise, and carry it back to the bedroom where Blake waits lying in the bed.

"Stand up." You don't sound commanding enough. But Blake obeys.

You smooth the bath sheet over the bed, making sure to cover the places that might otherwise get… wet.

You move to where Blake is standing in just his underpants and, almost to your own surprise, take his head within your hands and kiss him. You move your tongue around his lips. You try, gently, to put your tongue inside his mouth. It feels good to you and you hope it feels good to him. Blake is holding your own head in his hands, gently. Your eyes are leaking.

You want to push Blake onto the bed, throw him down. You don't. You push him gently, and Blake lies down again.

You continue sit down at the side of the bed with your legs over the side, leaning over Blake. Your fingers move over the straining fabric of the underpants.

"Does this feel good?" Your voice wavers.

"Yeah."

You keep moving your fingers around, trying to press a little more firmly. You caress around his concealed balls. You caress his exposed thighs. You have no idea if boys actually like any of this or if it's something women's magazines invented to make sex seem more complicated than a penis. Blake doesn't make any sounds.

Your FUK has increased by 1.

You keep moving your hand over Blake's underwear, now sometimes gripping what's underneath, hugging it, moving it---

"Stop!"

Your hand flies back like you were touching a stove.

Blake has his eyes squeezed shut, and then his hands go down and pull off his underwear, leaving his cock to spring free. His whole body looks tensed, and finally, he relaxes.

A skill has been created by a special action! Masturbating Blake almost to the point of orgasm before stopping has created the skill, Edge Other.

A droplet of opaque fluid forms on the tip of Blake's cock. Just a droplet.

A skill has been created by a special action! Stimulating Blake's cock right to the fine boundary between an edge and a ruined orgasm has created the Tears of Milk skill.

"I'm sorry." Blake's voice is quiet. "I---I didn't want to---I took off my underpants because they were, still pressing on it, and it felt, I didn't want to---"

"Come," you say. "You didn't want to come too soon." You're smiling.

Oh, are you smiling.

You turn your head away from Blake and barely mouth the words, barely animate it with your breath, Info, skills, Edge Other

Info // Skills // Edge Other

Edge Other: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 1 DOM.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving your victims insane with frustration, invoking Edge Other at Lvl 1 gives you a rough sense of the next time your target is getting 'close'. At this skill level, stopping immediately at that first hint will produce a gentle almost-edge, subsiding a little below the peak. Continuing on will produce a sharper edge, but this runs the chance of giving the victim a real release.

Each use costs 1 DOM. Just 1 DOM. And you have---

Cinderella Sheen
"The Erogamer"
LVL 3 (300 / 800)

DOM: 56/160
SUB: 100/260
BOD: 16
LST: 11
SED: 8
FUK: 8
PRV: 15
ERO: 18

Stat Points: 0
Money: $992

And… wouldn't you possibly be regaining DOM by teasing Blake in a dominant way? You're not sure, but you think that with all the energy you spent, especially on Extra Large Sausage, you must have regained some energy afterwards in order to have this much left. Maybe you could keep this going indefinitely.

Info // Skills // Tears of Milk

Tears of Milk: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 15 DOM.

Allows you to stop all stimulation at exactly the right time to produce 1-5 pearls of semen from a cock. At Lvl 1, using this skill on a cock 15 times will exhaust that cock's capacity for continuing to be teased without a refractory period, as well as driving the cock's owner completely out of his mind.

"I really am sorry," Blake says again.

Oh. Oh, he has no idea how sorry he's about to be.

Spiraling further into fetish, sadism, and corruption causes your PRV to go up by 1.

You look back at Blake's concerned face. "Hey," you say, your own voice breathy. "Hey, Blake, is it okay if I'm a little mean to you tonight?"

"What do you mean, be mean?" Blake sounds wary.

"If I tease you until you almost come. Just like that. A lot. I liked seeing it happen. It made me wet."

Blake's voice increases in pitch, which you're also starting to appreciate. "I'm not sure---I don't think I can---"

"I'll accept responsibility if there's an accident." Your grin is a thing of madness. He doesn't know now, but the next time Blake sees this grin he'll know to flee in terror.

There will be no accidents this night, Blake Layton.

Edge Other. Your lips barely shape it, breath hardly whispers from your throat. Then your hands go to Blake's cock, you want them to slide but they catch on the skin and tug it instead… lube. You should have brought lube. You're an erogame character, you should always have lube with you.

…you do always have lube with you.

Your right hand withdraws from Blake's cock and one finger plunges into your hot, wet emptiness. Oh. Oh. Oh. You're going to have to do something about this sooner or later. You withdraw the first finger and lubricate another. Oh.

It takes an effort of will to withdraw your fingers, and begin sliding your hand over Blake's cock again. After a few strokes you decide it's not slippery enough, so you reach inside yourself for more lubricant, add a bit of spit, and then resume stroking. Blake inhales sharply, and your mind pings at you just as he tenses up.

You withdraw your hand.

"I," Blake says, "I wasn't… I was getting close, but…"

"You want to get closer?" Your voice is warm and sympathetic and oh god you're turning evil.

"Yeah," says the victim.

Tears of Milk, you breathe to yourself. You start stroking him again. Slower this time. He starts to tense. You slow down more.

Your FUK has increased by 1.

Blake's hips jerk, like he's trying to escape the pleasure. Your hand follows him, inescapably. His thighs move. Your own thighs squeeze together. Oh.

Your hand slows down.

"I'm---" Blake says. "Stop!"

You keep stroking, slowly. One. Two. Three. Fooouuurr and one finger trails up his penis to the tip, which is exactly the correct instant for you to withdraw your hand.

Blake shuts his eyes and tenses up and shakes, like he's trying to stop himself, like a good boy. Finally he exhales and seems to relax, just as three pearls of milk leave the tip of his cock.

Oh.

You need to do something about your own problem.

You climb all the way onto the bed, sliding your thighs over Blake's again. Trapping him. You lean back, supporting yourself with your left hand, and start to slide your right hand over your clit and the surrounding petals.

LST 11 makes everything easier. It makes everything better. Soft moans escape your lips as you keep your gaze locked on Blake's wide eyes. It doesn't take you more than a minute, now, to get close to coming. Closer.

You stop.

A skill has been created by a special action! Teasing yourself almost to an orgasm and then stopping has created the Edge Self skill.

You don't think you'll need to use this one, even if it also only costs 1 SUB. After all, if you go too far and need to give yourself a full, satisfying orgasm before you go on teasing Blake, then that… is a risk you'll just have to take.

"Three for you," you say, "one for me." Edge Other. Your hand starts stroking Blake again.

Your mind pings at you. You give him one more stroke, two more strokes, living dangerously, and stop.

"I wasn't there," Blake says. Is that a little whine in his voice? Oh, you hope it is.

Edge Other. You start again. Blake closes his eyes, and just exhales when you stop again. Edge Other. Four strokes past the warning ping, this time, and Blake starts to say "Sto---" just as you remove your hand.

He doesn't come, although he tenses up a lot. No tears of milk, this time.

"Three for you," you say, and your voice sounds strained, "one for me." You lean back again and close your own eyes this time as you bring yourself to the edge again. Faster, this time. Closer. Stop.

For a second you're worried you've gone too far, and then the threat of orgasm fades.

It feels like there's a constant warmth below you, a gentle burn. You want to be meaner to Blake, tease him more and more and worse. You wish there were someone else here to be mean to you.

Your LST goes up by 1.

Edge Other. Edge Other. Edge Other. And then you edge yourself again. Edge Other. Edge Other.

Edge Other has increased by 1.

Tears of Milk.

Your FUK goes up by 1.

You need to be meaner to yourself. Edge Riding and you hold it, hold it, hold it, letting yourself moan for Blake. Whine for Blake. Keeping your eyes locked on his. Punishing yourself for being mean to him. More fluid comes out of his cock without you touching him. Oh, you can't stand this. You'll die.

You keep on making yourself ache.

"I'm going to edge you closer and closer until you come," you whisper.

Edge Other. Four more strokes past the ping. Edge Other. Five more strokes and Blake tenses up. You watch his breathing, the twitching, you want to learn how to do this for yourself, not just rely on magical skills to control your hand. Edge Other. Six more strokes… It's your turn. You punish yourself for being mean to Blake. Tears of Milk. Tears of Milk. Edge Other, slowly because Blake is edging almost right away now, going eight more strokes beond the ping, two more after Blake says he's coming. He doesn't come, just thrashes his arms on the bed. To punish yourself you make yourself ache even more. Being mean to yourself.

You can't take this any more. You sit up, holding your back erect without using your hands to brace yourself, the muscles trembling but this won't take long, and one hand does yourself while you use the other to stroke Blake. No Edge Other this time, just slow strokes up and down, up and down. Blake tenses up. You keep stroking. Watching the signs. Learning. Your left hand, awkward on your clit, brings yourself even closer.

"I'm coming!"

You keep stroking. Your own heat is almost there.

"Don't stop!"

"Oh," you moan. "Oh, oh, oh," but you don't come, you want to keep your concentration to make sure this is good for Blake, you stay trembling on the edge while Blake gives a long, slow, drawn-out groan and a white stream shoots out of his cock high enough to land in your hair.

When Blake's groaning stops and there's no more milk to be had from him, you stare into Blake's eyes and let yourself fall.

White fire explodes in you, your thighs try to squeeze shut but they can't because Blake is in the way, you throw your head back and fall back to the foot of the bed, your head jerking a bit as it goes off the edge of the mattress, you keep on stroking yourself and your thighs keep jerking with waves of pleasurable fire and finally you're too sensitive and have to stop.

It's quiet in the bedroom now. You stare up at the ceiling, at the further edge of the ceiling, from the angle your head is lying half-off the mattress. Reading the violet letters that now appear before you.

Your FUK has gone up by 1.
Edge Other has increased by 1.
Edge Riding has increased by 2.
Tears of Milk has increased by 1.

You have lost the status: 'Innocent' Virgin.
You have acquired the status: Technical Virgin.

Ero Achievement: Kidnapping an innocent boy out of Walgreens and stealing his non-technical virginity earns +500XP.
Ero Achievement: Losing your non-technical virginity earns +1000XP.

Your level has increased by 1.

Thank you for waiting to tell me that until an appropriate moment, you think at the Erogame.

If this is going to be your life from now on… then you could get used to it, honestly.

Slowly you push yourself up in bed. Your muscles ache, but not nearly as much as they ought to. Your hands feel cramped, but it'll all be better in the morning if the Erogame's promises are true.

You look at Blake. The naked, sweaty boy looks back you from where he's lying on the bed, with an expression that seems half lustful and half terrified.

You can't help but laugh.

You're laughing, freely, you're laughing because you're free, you're free now, you're free of your horrible body and your horrible life and you're a literal sex wizard and your FUK stat went above 10 which seems safe and you made Blake come and didn't hurt him so you're a working girl rather than a broken girl and he probably even likes you now oh god no you're crying you can't do this in front of Blake.

Blake, whose expression went calm as soon as your tears began, quietly rises from his prone position and sits down next to you on the bed. He puts his arms around you. Just holds you, with a soft pressure. He doesn't say anything, even when you start saying you're sorry, you're sorry, you didn't mean to do this in front of him.

Finally the last tears fall and you reach a long way over for the tissue box beside the bed, blow your nose twice, throw the tissue at the garbage can in the corner and miss, and then look back into Blake's calm eyes.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he says.

You shake your head. You can't be honest about it and you don't want to lie.

"That's okay," Blake says.

How does he do that? How is Blake Layton the frightened virgin one moment and then, the next, when you need him, he's holding you the way he should? You don't understand. But it feels good.

"Uh," Blake says. "But I do kinda need to go to the bathroom."

"Go," you say, half-smiling, and push him away a little… you just slimed him with your slimy hands.

The bathroom mirror shows you prettier. Your face a little smoother, your body a little thinner, maybe your breasts are a little larger and your hair a little longer. It's not the same shock it was before. You're already cured. Looking even better is still nice.

You put a hand over your reflection in the mirror, and run your fingers over the image that you see. You never thought before that the image you saw in the mirror every day looked like Cinderella Sheen felt inside. If anything this image looks more like you than you used to look like you. But there's still no point in getting attached to the girl in the mirror. She isn't your final form… It's sad, that thought. You wish you had more time to know her, this girl in the mirror, before she's gone.

Cinderella Sheen
"The Erogamer"
LVL 4 (1000 / 1600)

DOM: 190/190
SUB: 170/280

BOD: 16
LST: 12
SED: 8
FUK: 11
PRV: 16
ERO: 18

Stat Points: 5
Money: $992

The shower in this motel is more of a drizzle, making it needlessly hard to lather yourself up with soap and needlessly hard to wash it off again. You probably end up using twice as much total water than if they'd installed a real shower head.

And then… then you realize you have to shampoo and condition your hair.

You look grimly at the tiny bottle the motel provides, 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. In your old life you kept your hair short, butch-short, and didn't maintain it much. Long hair wouldn't have made you pretty enough to change anything, so there wasn't any point in spending 30 minutes every day on it. A woman's hair is her pride, and you didn't have any pride.

You wet your hair as best you can in the drizzle-shower and use up the whole bottle of 2-in-1, and then begin the even more painstaking process of getting the lather back out again. There is not, of course, any such thing as a hairbrush in the motel. Or a hair dryer. Your hair doesn't feel tangled yet, it started out smooth and thoroughly maintained, but you worry that could change very quickly.

By the time you step out of the shower, feeling the heavy mass of your wet hair beating against your back with sloppy slaps, you are wondering if Erogame characters can be allowed to have butch hair or if that automatically makes you a lesbian character. You're wondering if maybe that would be worth giving up on boys. It's not just the daily time expense, it's the huge wet mass you're going to have to do up in an ugly towel and that's also going to make the bed wet and make it hard for you to sleep and…

You stare at your blurred reflection in the now-steamy mirror, arrested by a sudden thought.

Erogame characters don't have sloppy inconvenient bed-wetting hair when they finish showering after sex. They don't need to spend 20 minutes blow-drying it, they just run a towel through and they're done.

You put your hands on your wet mass of hair and concentrate. You have no idea what you're doing. None. All you can try to do is remember the feeling of that surge when you paid the huge energy cost for Extra Large Sausage. You try to call on that feeling, the surge and flow, and direct it into your hair.

Nothing.

Really? There's no way there's no Erogame skill for this. Erogame characters have perfectly done implausible hairstyles when they leap out of bed in the morning and run to school.

You close your eyes and try to direct the flow toward an image in your mind of yourself with straight, dry, glossy hair. Try to move the energy into the picture.

Still nothing.

Maybe you need to say which kind of energy? You hold onto the feeling of giving Blake orders, of how it felt to tease him, and command your hair to be dry… nope. Then you think of making yourself be pretty for Blake, and try to picture yourself with perfect hair for him. Nada.

Darn it, erogame characters don't have sloppy bed-soaking masses of wet hair when they finish showering after sex! They just don't! There has to be some way to make the game acknowledge the solid, unarguable fact---

You are overcome by a wave of dizziness, a timeless eternity in which it feels like not reality, but the nature of reality, is being erased and redrawn, causing you to stagger forward before catching yourself with your hands on the bathroom counter.

A skill has been created by a special action! Substituting your idea of 'erogame hair' for your hair has created the Conceptual Hair skill.

A tiny squeal of delight escapes you, forcing its way out like a moan during sex.

Oh HELL YES.

You run your fingers through your hair and they don't catch on any tangles. Your hair still feels just a tiny bit damp… just enough to prove to a lover that you are fresh and clean, without slowly discharging water into your shared pillow.

You adore your sex Jedi powers. Adore them, adore them, adore them.

When you get out of the shower, Blake is lying on the bed beneath the blanket with his eyes closed; he showered before you, and faster. For a second you wonder if Blake's asleep… no, his face looks too tense for that. You're proven right when he opens his eyes and looks at your nude and showered form, eyes widening.

Uh. Does Blake know what a girl's hair should look like after she showers? Did his mother or sisters have long hair? Ah, fuck it, either he'll call you on being a magical girl or he won't.

The desk light has been turned off now, and a dimmer light beside the bed turned on. The light creeping in from the drawn curtains and the parking lot seems brighter, now, and you hope you'll be able to sleep once the bed light is turned off.

You come over to the bed, still nude, trying to put a sway in your step, and slip into the blanket beside Blake and facing him. Lying close enough to Blake that you aren't so much looking into his eyes, as looking into the Eye of Blake that forms when your eyes' twin images of his head overlap.

Blake's eyes are green, with tiny flecks of brown and red rising like spikes from the irises. You've never taken the time to look that closely into anyone's eyes, to realize that eyes are objectively beautiful, not just poetically beautiful. What color are your own eyes now? They used to be brown, but everything has changed and you can't remember that aspect of your new face.

You reach out a hand and take Blake's hand, under the blankets. You feel the need to touch him, to go on touching him, even if in just that place. You're smiling, seductively, but also just smiling.

"Are you sleepy?" you say.

Blake takes a few breaths to answer. "No," he says. "Uh, but… it's almost midnight and I have a morning class tomorrow so I don't, I mean, I want to, but I shouldn't, you know, um, do anything that means we have to shower again. I set an alarm on my cellphone for 9, I hope that's okay."

You nod. Really, almost midnight? Where did all that time go?

"Is that okay?" says the boy. "I… didn't really do much to you, I, I thought you'd tell me if you wanted it, but I didn't ask, I just went off and showered---"

You squeeze Blake's hand, and he falls silent.

Time ticks by. You don't know if it's seconds or minutes.

Thoughts come and go in your mind, and one thought stays.

All of this was also an Erogame quest. There were three bonus objectives for that quest. You got one of the hidden goals when you touched Blake after he touched you. You got an Ero Achievement for halfway deflowering him, but not an objective-complete message. So there are still two hidden goals left.

Under other circumstances you'd tell the Erogame that you're done for the night, things went well enough already. This is your life first and a game second. But all of this involves Blake too. The hidden goals might matter to him.

Well, it's only a guess, but it's an obvious guess that the second bonus objective was…

"Is it okay with you?" you whisper. "That I didn't take your virginity."

Blake smiles, and a sound comes from his throat like muffled laughter. "Yeah."

"Is it really?"

Blake nods, looking more serious. "You've been incredibly nice to me already. Why would I think you had to do that too?"

You can't tell him the real reason. "It matters to you. If I'm right."

Again Blake is silent for several breaths. "Yeah. But I wouldn't want you to do that if you didn't want to, from trying to be nice to me. I wouldn't want that. It wouldn't feel good for me."

Guilt is welling up inside you. Why didn't you want to have penetrative sex? Is it just that your LST isn't high enough yet? If you spent an hour using Edge Riding on yourself, would taking Blake's virginity seem like a great idea afterwards?

…you don't want to do that either, and you don't know why not.

A breath escapes you. "I'm pretty sure there was a moment, more than one moment tonight, when you could've done… pretty much anything you wanted to me, and I wouldn't have stopped you."

Blake's voice is quiet and solemn. "That's not the same as saying you wanted it."

You… didn't want to say you wanted it. You didn't want to have to choose.

Oh, god, what the hell, brain, seriously? Seriously? You're that girl now? This is why Blake didn't get to lose his virginity? We are going to have words about this later, badbrains.

"I'm really sorry," you say weakly. "It feels like I was given a birthday present to give to you, and I didn't give it to you. For reasons that are… dumb. Wrong."

Blake smiles broadly before quickly straightening out his face. "Sorry," Blake says. "I wasn't laughing at you. It's just… I'm not saying I see it this way myself, just… uh, how can I put it. There's people who'd call it immorality if we had intercourse, and here you are on the opposite side, worrying you did the wrong thing by not having intercourse. And it's just… nobody ever knows whether they did the right thing, I guess, and that's sad, but it's also funny. But never mind, those are just my own dumb issues."

You smile back. You probably understand better than Blake realizes. He's doing pretty well for a recent ex-Mormon, but apparently still having little pangs of that 'sin' concept while engaging in lustful debauchery…

There were three hidden objectives. If the second objective was taking Blake's virginity, what was the third? Something even more important to him? To his future life?

I'm not God, but I'm here beside you… was the name the Erogame gave this quest.

You've heard enough of a hint, with Blake talking about his 'own dumb issues' just now, that you can pretend this is mundane deduction. "Blake," you say, keeping your voice very gentle, very nonthreatening, "were you a religious believer until just recently?"

Blake freezes. His face goes still. His hand goes slack in yours.

"Uh," you say. In for a penny, in for pretending to be full-blown Sherlock Holmes. "Uh, and I haven't really seen anyone our age except for Mormons and Orthodox Jews wearing button-down white dress shirts. And you didn't have a yarmulke. And you seem really scared right now. So, uh, I'm guessing your family doesn't know you lost faith in the Church of Latter-Day Saints."

The fear on Blake's face makes your heart twist. "Please don't---"

"I'm not telling anyone," you say. "I promise." If the third hidden objective is blackmailing Blake into becoming your sex slave, then the Erogame can stuff itself in the recycle bin.

Blake draws in a shaky breath. "Uh. Thanks. Thanks."

"I think… I think you might need to talk to someone about it, though." Not that he'd given you any actual signs of that, but given the existence of a third bonus objective…

Blake twists away from you, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. It's a while before he speaks.

"What is there to say?" There's an undertone of anger in his voice. "I realized it wasn't actually true. The end."

You take a few breaths yourself. I'm not God, but I'm here beside you. "You sound… I'm not saying you should go back, or try to get your faith back, but, it sounds like there's something… that you believe you've… lost. What did believing in God do for you, when you believed in God?" Is it something I can fix by speaking those words to you?

Again Blake takes a while to answer. "I knew I was doing the right thing," he says at last. "I knew I was following God's commandments, and that God wanted what was best for everyone, and that God loved me. I knew that. The elders told me I was doing it right, and I trusted them. And then… then I found out that the commandments weren't from God, and I couldn't trust the elders. It wasn't that I was in the wrong religion either. There wasn't a God and He didn't love me."

You sit bolt upright in bed, the blanket sliding off you, and stare down at Blake's sad face. Does he realize what he's saying?

"And I know," Blake said, the angry undertone in his voice once more, "because I did check out those books from the library, that atheists aren't supposed to need crutches like that. I should be strong and rely on my own judgment instead of needing other people to tell me what to do. But it doesn't feel the same. I'm not going to give up the truth for a lie, but I was happier before, and that's also the truth. Why are you looking at me like that?"

Shit. Shit. You can guess the third hidden objective.

"Blake," you say. You feel very, very nervous but you need to press on anyway. He needs to know. He probably can't ever be happy unless he knows. "Blake, uh, do you, do you know what a submissive is?"

Blake frowns. He also sits up in bed, making him a little taller than you when he looks into your eyes again. "No," he says.

"Have you heard about anything called BDSM at all?"

"Something about whips and chains?" says Blake. His shoulders seem to hunch. "I don't want to hurt anyone like that, and I don't want to be hurt like that either."

"That's not… entirely right." You know far too little about this and maybe you would be wise to do some very quick reading after today, considering recent life developments. "Uh, the letters stand for Bondage and Discipline, and Dominance and Submission, and Sadism and Masochism. They're things that are often found together, but they're all separate things and you can have some of them without the others." It's not like you have any experience of this or the people who do it, you're making it up as you go. But human nature being what it is, there are going to be some people on the Internet claiming that everything is intrinsically tangled up into a whole, and another group claiming that different people are allowed to pick and choose whichever facets they personally like. And the second group is going to be 100% right just like they always are every single time that argument happens anywhere. "Uh, some people would think that what we did tonight, me teasing you, would count as BDSM even if there weren't any whips or chains. And, and I probably shouldn't even be using these words because if you try to look up submission on the Internet you'll find fifty different ideas and only five of those will apply to you. What I'm saying is, have you ever thought that instead of God telling you what to do, it could be a girl."

The expression on Blake's face says quite clearly, what. "God knows all the right answers," Blake says, sounding somewhere between confused and condescending. "That's the whole point. It's not about being told what to do, it's about knowing what the right thing is and being sure that it's right."

You're not saying this well. You're not saying this well at all. You keep talking anyway. "But the question is, Blake, for you to trust someone, do you have to be sure they're perfect, or do they just need to be good enough? I mean, the elders weren't God, you just thought that they were doing pretty well, and because of that, you could have faith in them and submit to them."

Blake is still giving you an extremely skeptical look.

"Okay," you say, "try looking at it this way. I don't even know if this would be part of it for you, I don't know if it needs to be sexual for you, because everyone gets to pick and choose which parts matter to them. I don't know if it has to be a woman for you, because you're also allowed to be bisexual. But suppose God existed and knew everything. And she was a woman. And she loved you, uh, more personally. And she gave you her orders directly and you got to kiss her feet or do whatever else she ordered you to do, knowing that it was right. Would that be even better?"

Some of the confusion is sliding off of Blake's face, replaced by wariness. "Uh, uh, maybe? It feels really weird to think about it that way."

You carry on as best you can. "And it would be nicer in that regard, from your standpoint, if God were a woman rather than a man."

The expression sliding over Blake's face could possibly be dawning horror. Or extreme offense. You don't know.

"In fact it might be so much better that, uh, even if God wasn't perfect and sometimes gave you the wrong orders, so long as she was good enough, so long as she was telling you to do the right thing as best she knew, it would be worth worshipping her anyway. And having sex with her sometimes. I don't know if that part will end up being important to you or not."

Blake is breathing so fast you worry that he's having a panic attack. "You're saying that I should fill the hole, that losing God, left in my heart, with sex."

You shrink back in the bed without intending to. "I think it's more, uh. That there was a mistress-shaped place in your heart that you were trying to fill with God. Uh. There's probably a lot of Mormons who feel fine about making their own moral judgments when nobody else is supervising them, and some of them become elders, and I'm guessing nobody sees anything wrong with that. So, uh. It's not like you thought exactly the way you did because your Church forced you to think that way. It was just the way you were. Blake, are you all right?"

Blake's face is twisted, his jaw working. His voice is very low when it emerges. "I can't go home again. I can't be home again."

You're holding your breath.

"I thought in the back of my mind that maybe if I could figure out how to explain things just right my parents would understand but they won't. They won't ever understand this. They would literally think I was possessed by devils."

You exhale, as quietly as you can, but so very, very, very relieved that you did not fuck this up. He's accepted it. Someday, with someone, Blake Layton will be happy.

There isn't any XP. You weren't expecting it. This moment is not what the Erogame thinks is your third bonus objective. That will be coming along soon.

"So what do I do now?" Blake is holding his head in his hands. You've never seen anyone look so lost. "How do I do this?"

You try to make your voice sound gentle and confident. "You search for the person who is the complement of what you are. The girl who's worthy of your trust, who wants to have a man kneeling before her and accepting her orders, who wants to have sex with that man, and who wants that man to be you. It's important that you be sure she really is worthy of your trust, and not jump into things when you haven't known her for very long." You have a sick premonition that saying this isn't going to stop the railroad.

Blake is starting to look desperate. "Where do I find her? How do I know I can trust her? How do you ask someone to do that for you?"

"Th-there's probably a website somewhere. Or a dozen websites. And they probably don't work very well. God, I'm sorry, Blake. I don't know. I ought to know, I need to learn all about things like this so I can help people who need it, but right now I don't know much more than you. You'll have to look it up yourself. Blake, please make sure, if you haven't read online about sexuality before, it's really important that you don't believe everything you read."

Blake looks at you. There's terror in his face. "Is it something you'd want to do? It felt right tonight, just doing what you said. But I've never heard about this and nobody talks about it and I don't know how to find anyone besides you!"

And there it is.

Third bonus objective: Obtain Blake Layton for your harem as your submissive sex slave.

"I," your throat sticks. You can't say yes. You can't. It's so far out of your present depth it's not even funny. Being railroaded into this wouldn't be fair to you.

It's just so horrible to Blake, to not take his hands into your hands and smile as you say, I'm not God, but I'm here beside you.

"Blake, I, I'm not going to lead a normal life. I don't think you'd want to follow me, where I'm going. I'm… going to have more sex. With other boys. With older men. With girls and women. All at the same time. And it's probably going to go much, much, much, much, much further than that." You keep waiting for Blake to look disgusted, for him to flinch away, but he just keeps looking at you desperately. "I don't know how far I'm going to go, but it's going to go further than you're comfortable with, a lot further."

Blake's mouth works. "Fine. I'll ask. I didn't think I should, after you started crying before, but I'll ask. You don't sound like you want to do any of that. Why do it?"

You look away from Blake and stare down at your hands.

Would you not do it, if you could? The thought of losing your BOD is scarier than dying and that alone seems worth everything without question. But if you could stop here, keep this body and everything else you already have, end the Erogame now, and live on happily ever after… would you want that?

Part of you is aware that Blake is hanging desperately on your answer, and you tell that part of you to shut up. You have questions that matter to you. It's not just Blake whose life paths are changing tonight. It's okay to take the time, you need to take time to think about this.

Finally you smile shakily, and look back up at Blake. "Hey, Blake," you say. "Did you know why I could decide not to give you my virginity tonight? Because I knew that sooner or later, I would lose it. If I'd thought there was the tiniest chance, that you were the only boy who'd want me, that I'd never find the nerve later if I held back now, then I'd have been terrified. I'd have thrown away everything else I was feeling to make sure we had intercourse. I wouldn't have been able to make any choices of my own, I'd have been so scared. That's why, even if everything is going too fast and I'm frightened, I'd rather go too fast than too slow."

"I don't understand," Blake says. His voice is pleading.

You draw a deep breath. "I, I'm afraid of how to say this, because, I don't want to tempt fate. But. There've been some sexual assaults between 4th street and 7th street, near the mall, up to Luther. And, I'm scared that somehow, I'll end up going there, and get raped. So I can just not go there, right? But I'm afraid that I'll end up going there anyway. My mind keeps picking at it and wondering. Like standing near the edge of a balcony on a high room up in a hotel, thinking of how easy it would be to jump. And you really don't want to jump, you don't want to die, and you keep being afraid you'll jump anyway. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

Blake hesitates. "I… don't think I understand? What's scary is not knowing the right thing to do. If you know that jumping off a building isn't the right thing to do, you can just not do that."

You stare at him. Does anyone's mind work like that? You're caught between skepticism and being envious enough to bleed green smoke out of your ears.

With an effort, you move on. "My point is, I don't want to suddenly find myself between 4th and 7th. I really, really don't. I'm not playing coy, I don't secretly want it, I'm terrified. That's why I'm afraid that even saying, what I'm about to say, is going to tempt fate, if fate is listening. But, even so. Even so. Maybe it's just a naive view, maybe I have no idea how bad it can get, maybe I'll change my mind as soon as something horrible happens to me." You swallow. "But right now I'd rather be afraid of what will happen to me, than be afraid of what might not happen to me."

Your ERO has increased by 1.

You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

"I'm sorry, Blake," you finish in a wavering voice. "But unless you'd be happy serving me in an expensive mansion I got by selling my body, next to sixteen other members of my harem, doing things so perverted they violate physics, you, you shouldn't try to share your life with me. You shouldn't ask to follow me down this road." You gaze deeply into his eyes, hoping he hears you. "Please… please, try to understand."

Blake looks away first. His eyes drop down to study the bed, the blanket. His voice is small. "I… guess I can understand. I'm also scared of what might not ever happen to me."

Thanks, Erogame. Thanks for ripping out your heart and serving it to you sliced.

You want to bring Blake's head into your lap and pat his hair and promise him that he'll find someone else. But you don't know if those things are true. Not everyone finds true love. Not everyone's life is an erogame. Yours wasn't, and while you found Blake cute, he isn't handsome the way the Erogame made you pretty. You don't know what happens to Blake after the protagonist derails the perfectly set up Blake Layton route just as it's about to---

You can't do this. You can't not do this. You can't do this. You can't handle this. This is not okay.

[ ] Maybe you're closing off your options prematurely. You do like Blake, from what little you've seen too far. If the Erogame put him here, maybe that means something. It's just way way way too early to agree to what is essentially a marriage. Ask Blake if he wants to try following your orders for a trial period, long enough for both of you to decide whether this almost totally innocent boy should follow you down your spiraling descent into sexual corruption.

[ ] Promise Blake that you will show up within the next month, maybe the next week, and take his virginity. And you'll do everything in your power, once you have the power, to find him a dominant girl who'll use him well. You are an erogame character and you are not limited---you will not be limited---to the means and methods of mortals.

Well. That escalated quickly. That update got completely out of control.

Time for you all to decide whether you want this story to include the corruption of the innocent ex-Mormon. Or if you'd rather not have Blake following you around, but will keep an eye out for nice dominatrices. Either path is fine by me. (Attempted further alternatives and write-ins are fine, but I reserve the right to refuse those I'd rather not write.)

2.0.4* [BL]: Morning After

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 7 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Promise Blake that you will show up within the next month, maybe the next week, and take his virginity. And you'll do everything in your power, once you have the power, to find him a dominant girl who'll use him well. You are an erogame character and you are not limited---you will not be limited---to the means and methods of mortals.
No. of Votes: 17
ScrewFate
Arkatekt
BFldyq
Calphorus
Cmdr_Anax
DarknessSmiles
Drak4806
Epicr
HellKing666
Koden
Myardius
Omida
Rhomandi
SemiAnarchist
TheWave
TricksterPriest
UndecidedDice
[X] Maybe you're closing off your options prematurely. You do like Blake, from what little you've seen too far. If the Erogame put him here, maybe that means something. It's just way way way too early to agree to what is essentially a marriage. Ask Blake if he wants to try following your orders for a trial period, long enough for both of you to decide whether this almost totally innocent boy should follow you down your spiraling descent into sexual corruption.
No. of Votes: 10
pepperjack
Derek58
derkan
GulibleLeprecon
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
inverted_helix
Lord Sia
Minion #Q
Tt409
wasprider
[X] Promise Blake that you will show up within the next month, maybe the next week, and take his virginity. And you'll do everything in your power, once you have the power, to find him a dominant girl who'll want to give him exactly what he needs. In the meantime, promise him that you won't push him away. You'll leave it up to him to decide when you've gone too far down the path of promiscuity for him to follow, and you promise that when that time comes you'll let him go with a hug and a smile.
--[x] Give Blake your phone number, or some other way to contact you.
No. of Votes: 1
Ephemeral
Total No. of Voters: 28

You stop, and compose your thoughts. It would be easy to be mesmerized by the dilemma between the unacceptable choice of rejecting Blake and letting him wander the world alone, versus the unacceptable choice of accepting Blake when you're not ready and dragging him down with you into degeneracy. So mesmerized that you forgot all the other possible options. Forgot who you are now.

You steel your voice to have the confidence that Blake needs from you. "Blake," you say. "Blake, please don't worry. You don't need to worry. I can solve this."

The lost boy turns to stare at you. Then his face shuts down. "I can't ask you to---"

"Quiet, boy-toy." You put a hand over his mouth, and this time, he doesn't lick it. "Blake, the path I'm walking through life, I will meet dominant women. I'd be surprised if I don't. Really, really, really, really, really surprised. I'll just keep an eye out for the one who's right for you."

Quest begun: A Goddess Worthy of Worship

Among the dominant women you meet, pick out one who is reasonably stable, mostly sane, a truly good person deep down, and has an available vacancy in her harem for a 17-year-old ex-Mormon college student who hasn't come out to his family.

Success: 50,000XP
Failure: Tonight was the happiest night of Blake Layton's life.

…you might not have considered all the difficulties involved. Even so, the sheer numbers will probably be on your side. For all you know, there's already a secret society of dominant girls hidden within Norville U. And if that's not true, maybe you can make it true.

Blake doesn't say anything, but then your hand is still over his mouth.

You draw another breath. "And. Sometime in the next month, I'll come back and take your virginity, if you haven't already lost it to someone else by then. I swear. So you can move at your own speed now that you've begun to walk this road, without worrying about what might not happen to you."

Mini-quest begun: Virgin Remover

Take Blake Layton's virginity, or make sure it's taken, within the next 30 days.

Success: +1,000XP
Failure: This ain't the Dresden Files, but you still don't want the 'Oathbreaker' status effect.

"Uh," you add. "Let me amend that. If I haven't shown up before Monday three weeks from today, it means that I'm being held prisoner in somebody's sex dungeon and you need to come looking for me. And don't leave for class tomorrow morning before you've given me your cellphone number." You are never saying the words 'I swear' again.

Blake's mouth moves beneath your hand and you withdraw it.

"You really don't have to---" he whispers, and you put your hand back over.

You gently push Blake back into the bed, lie down beside him, and wrap yourself around him, your big spoon to his little spoon. "Turn off the lamp, boy-toy," you say to him, because he's the one facing the table, and he does so.

It takes some squirming to make yourself comfortable. You don't think Blake would be comfortable with your right arm underneath him overnight… which doesn't leave anywhere in the bed to actually put your arm. The Erogame obstinately refuses your attempt to invent a Spooning skill or disappear your arm into erospace. Finally you leave your right arm stretched over your head, where it's only slightly uncomfortable. You leave your left arm hugging Blake.

You close your eyes and begin to watch the patterns of uncolor behind your eyelids.

You feel Blake's body shake a few times in your arms, but he makes no sound.

And now you are awake.

You are surprisingly awake, for how late you stayed up and how early in the morning it seems to be judging by the outside light filtering in. Erogame characters don't need much sleep? That would make sense.

Or it could be that this is life without the fat closing your throat at night and producing sleep apnea. You wish you could find Cinderella Sheen's old body and burn it just to make sure it never hurts anyone again.

You're still lying on your side, with your arm over Blake's chest, but he seems to have turned over in his sleep and is now laying on his stomach. Very cautiously, you draw back the blanket, lift your left arm off Blake, and then you sloowly move off the bed to the other side. There should be an Erogame skill for escaping from the sheets without waking your lover, Bed Teleport or Maintain Slumber, but you don't feel like trying to wrestle with the game mechanics right now.

The room feels cold in the morning with no clothes, and no 120-pound winter coat.

You tiptoe over to where your sweater went and put it back on. Then you quietly extract a pair of pantyhose from one of the packages with some minor difficulty, and roll it up over your legs. Then, after it turns out that pantyhose is not the world's heaviest insulator, you give up and turn up the temperature on the room's thermostat, hoping that won't wake Blake.

Then you draw up your pantyhose-clad legs into the desk chair, gaining a bit more warmth by cuddling yourself.

Your mind is no longer filled with a frantic chaos of plans for importuning boys at the mall or finding secret rave parties. You proved that last night was allowed. You proved that you could be with a boy, and both of you enjoyed yourselves. You can be less afraid, now, of what might not happen.

Instead you can think about what you actually did last night.

Like getting topless in a Walgreens. And flashing the cashier. And running half-naked through the streets at night. And seducing an innocent boy and dominating him and teasing him and masturbating yourself in front of him.

You try to hide your head inside your pantyhosed legs. It doesn't work. God can still see you.

You… can't even claim you didn't like it.

No matter how horribly, horribly embarrassing it all seems in retrospect, now that you've burned out the desperate need to prove to yourself that it's real.

A tiny whimper escapes your throat. Just a little one. You don't want to wake the sleeping, innocent boy you kidnapped and milked last night.

You're not sure how much time passes with your head between your legs, thinking of what you did, thinking of how embarrassing it is, remembering the expression on the cashier's face when she saw you in the sweater and when you flashed her, and Blake's look of lust and fear after you finally made him come, and what Blake's face looked like when he came okay the warm feeling between your legs is not helping.

Eventually you realize that this loop of shame and lust is not going to go away the more you think about the growing wetness between your legs and what if it soaks through the pantyhose and how Blake might respond to that if he wakes up in the morning and sees you already with a damp spot between your legs think about something else.

College. You can think about college. There's an English lit class on your schedule for today at 2pm, for which you've already done the assignments. If the perk But She Was Such a Good Student is to believed, the fact that you now know this material is all that matters for keeping your grades up. But going to class might still be wise, to anchor yourself, to add a touch of stability. You can, perhaps, not go to class in a tight sweater with your nipples going through. You could not walk topless through the campus and watch how everyone looks at you and…

This isn't working. Blake is going to wake up and see a wet spot on your pantyhose and maybe he'll remember what you said last night about not stopping him if he decided to do more and he won't say anything or ask you for permission just bend you over the bed and tear away your new pantyhose…

It sure would be nice if you could actually ask him to bend you over the bed.

Right. You were going to have a conversation with your badbrains about that.

Dear badbrains: what the hell is wrong with you and why can Blake only fuck us if he does it without asking?

Your badbrains cower in a corner of your skull and don't say anything, as you successfully distract yourself by yelling at your badbrains for minutes on end about being that girl. Being the 19th-century cavewoman who complicates consent for everyone else just by existing. The girl who causes relatively innocent men to rape women by accident because the woman freezes up and the man thinks that she's you and doesn't want to have to say out loud that she wants it, just like all the girls who are you and this is not okay, seriously badbrains, this is a public issue not a personal one.

When you finish your rant and check if you're now allowed to tell Blake to have sex with you, the answer is still no.

Your head slumps back into your pantyhosed legs again.

Why.

Why.

Can your badbrains at least tell you why.

Does your badbrains think you are a slut if you say you want it? You already know you are a slut. You flash boys in Walgreens and kidnap them and give them handjobs. You are an erogame character.

…it's not that.

Saying yes would be… sad. Like you'd been demoted back to the person you were two days ago. The Cinderella Sheen who would've had to beg a man to fuck her, maybe pay a male prostitute. You don't want to be raped, you want your first time to be sex that you want, with a man that you want. You just don't want to have to ask.

Okay. Okay, badbrains, that's not sensible but at least it makes sense. How about if a man clearly wants you for your body, and buys you a nice dinner, and plies you with compliments, and seduces your clothes off. And then, just before he's about to plunge into you, he asks you if it's okay to continue?

Then you have to stay quiet and look away, blushing. He has to continue anyway. That is the only way you are allowed to lose your virginity. It can't be given. It must be yielded.

Badbrains. Badbrains, this is not okay.

Telling yourself this doesn't change anything.

Badbrains, why?

Because you deserve not to have to say yes before you lose your virginity. After you had to wait to live for so long, you deserve this much, that little thing. If you do say yes, something is being taken away from you, something that you wanted, and that's just too sad. You'll be fine about asking for sex afterwards. Just… not saying yes to losing your virginity.

Badbrains this makes no sense please explain.

And your badbrains are silent again.

You stare at your pantyhosed legs. You could just force yourself to do this. You could write down 'please fuck me' on a slip of paper and leave it by Blake.

You… really, really don't want to.

Because. Because you're an erogame character. You're an erogame character, right? What happens to you doesn't need to be reflective of sanity in the world of normal people. If you don't want to say yes before losing your virginity, you shouldn't have to. If this is what you want than the Erogame ought to just give it to you.

Quest available: Silence indicates affirmative consent

Find an older man, or a fellow student who doesn't know or doesn't care that California passed SB-967 in 2014 to require clearly expressed consent (aka the "Yes Means Yes Act"), to violate your virginal vagina. In a way that could potentially make him a convicted sex offender for the rest of his life if you decided to press charges.

Or you could go weirder than that. ERO 19 gives you a lot of leeway, just saying.

Success: +5,000 XP, ??
Failure: You either stay a virgin forever, or learn to ask for it like a good slut. Not to mention a sane one.
Accept: Y/N

You aren't doing this.

You aren't doing this.

Somebody else's finger pressed the 'Y' button. It wasn't you.

You try to hide your head between your legs again. It still doesn't work.

Maybe there's some kind of 'please fuck me' body language you can use around Blake which will be so obvious that it will overcome his rigidly ethical Mormon-turned-atheist morality and let him know that he really should fuck you, so strongly that you won't have to say anything… you're being that girl again.

Blake wants this you want this why can't you just give it to him why why why oh god listen to that stream of consciousness when did you turn into this awful stereotype what kind of cultural programming is responsible for this because you don't remember getting any cultural programming like this WHERE IS THIS ALL EVEN COMING FROM does it just spontaneously generate in girlbrains because you did not think that was the case in real life.

Or… maybe it's the Erogame. Right. The Erogame is making you a shy virgin because the erogame is better that way. Shy virgins are standard in erogames. It wouldn't be surprising if the Erogame made you conform to that, since you are an erogame character.

This is a perfectly plausible explanation for why you are being insane, and you are going to stick to it like glue from now on.

So, after you were finished thinking of all that, you managed to put yourself into another shame-lust spiral thinking about last night and the sounds Blake made while you were milking him, and now your pantyhose has a visible wet spot.

You have decided you might as well make the best of that wet spot, by giving yourself an excuse.

You hope that Blake is not secretly awake and watching you out of the corners of his eyes right now. Well, if Blake turns out to be awake, you can just fling yourself off a cliff somewhere.

Luke Skywalker's theme music is playing in your head as you wave your hands over Blake's exposed, flaccid penis from which you have gently pulled back the blanket.

You… Starry Starr, that is… are going to wake up Blake in the morning with oral sex.

That is the plan.

It goes without saying that you have not had a penis in your mouth before. So you took out your cellphone from your purse and spent 20 minutes browsing the Internet for directions. Your FUK stat is 11. You are an erogame character. This should totally work.

You will give Blake oral sex without waking him up. Or rather, wake him after his penis is nicely warmed up and aroused, so he's feeling the pleasure as soon as he wakes. There must be an Ero skill for that. People in erogames wake up in the middle of having sex all the time, usually with someone who really shouldn't be in their bed.

This plan requires Blake to have an erection.

You don't know how to cause erections to happen in sleeping boys. Men get erections by thinking sexy thoughts, or at least you think that's how it works, but Blake is asleep and apparently not having sexy dreams.

That is how you came to be staring intently at Blake's flaccid penis, your hands focused over it as though to direct your power, as Luke Skywalker's theme music runs through your head.

You are trying to give Blake an erection using the Ero Force.

And if Blake is awake and secretly watching you wave your hands futilely over his penis, then you still have the option of flinging yourself off a cliff. So, there is a limit to how bad things can get in the worst-case scenario.

You have tried directing dominant energy into Blake's penis, and submissive energy, and you have tried directing energy into a picture in your mind of Blake's erect penis. You have tried directing the energy into the unarguable fact that in erogames men sometimes wake up in the middle of oral sex, but this doesn't seem to have worked the way it did with your hair. You have tried to feel the lust, the sexual energy, as it flows through you, to get in tune with the Ero Force. You have imagined tantric energy flowing through Blake's body, and tried to sense it and direct it. You have tried to influence Blake's mind with your sexual energies and start him on a sexy dream.

There is a total absence of violet letters around you proclaiming that a skill has been created by a special action.

Why does the Erogame let you dry your hair after a shower, or pass through locked doors, but not do this? You don't understand. Is it arbitrary? Are there rules?

Your head slumps forward and your hair slumps with it, drifting over Blake's flaccid penis.

You blink. For some reason you imagined that your hair was sensing Blake's warm skin as it brushed over it… not really, though.

That does give you an idea. Maybe you were trying too hard to do things the supernatural way.

You shake your head, swaying your hair over Blake's groin. Soft, feather-light touches. Maybe it just ends up tickling him, but maybe not. The stimulation might get to his mind somehow, whatever is responsible for making erections happen.

Brush. Brush. Your mind is imagining again what it would feel like if you could feel Blake's cock with your hair. The skin would be a little cool, exposed to the morning air, and very soft; you weren't gentle enough with him last night, too focused on other things, to realize how soft the skin of a penis is YES IT'S WORKING.

Uh.

You keep brushing your hair gently over the cock as it slowly rises.

Uh. So. So now you have to put this in your mouth and somehow pleasure it.

Why does this biological object look so much weirder now that you need to put it inside your mouth? True, you're staring at it from much closer, and taking the time to look at all the weird ridges and veins and the mushroom-like form of the head and the weird little arrow shape where the… glans meets the frenulum. You feel proud of yourself for remembering the anatomical terms, like somebody should be giving you five points of extra credit. But this is not going to be a written exam.

Come on, Starry Starr. Why all the hesitation? Where's the girl who just reached out and touched a cock as soon as she felt like it?

You bend your head forward and---

And your newly long hair falls directly into your eyes.

You manage not to swear aloud as you sit back up, blinking frantically. This is why it is dumb to have long hair be considered sexy.

It goes without saying that you do not have anything remotely resembling a hair tie in your purse.

You look frantically around the room for something, anything that can be used to tie your hair back before Blake's erection goes away. A twistie tie if it's long enough. Do you have a USB charger cable in your purse, no you do not. Was there anything in the bathroom that could be adapted to hold your hair out of the way? You really do not want to be holding back your hair with one hand the entire time you are trying to pleasure Blake.

Hold on. Maybe you can Jedi out of this problem, if not others. This kind of thinking did work on your hair, when you dried it after your shower.

Ahem: It is an absolutely unarguable fact that Erogame characters can give oral sex while maintaining their usual hairstyle

and it never gets in the way.

You lean down again and… your hair just stays in the same position relative to your head. Like you are an anime character and this is how you are drawn. The game doesn't even bother giving you a skill for it.

Why does this work when fifteen minutes of Jedi meditation won't let you cause one simple erection using your mind? You don't understand.

Blake's erection has subsided a little, but not too far, and you carefully open your lips and bend down over the cock and close your lips again.

There is now a cock inside your mouth. If you recall correctly, that is step one of oral sex.

You start to move your tongue against the softness, very gently, so as not to wake up Blake. Come on, come on… A soft pulse of your tongue against the soft/hard intruder. Brushes almost as light as your hair. There has to be a skill for this. Come on…

A skill has been created by a special action! Molesting your sleeping victim has created the skill Good Morning.

You barely-mouth syllables around the cock between your lips, hoping the small tongue motions feel good.

Info // Skills // Good Morning

Good Morning: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 3 SUB.

"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on; or that you were woken up with oral sex; or that you mean to wake someone up that way?"

This skill prevents your target from waking up the next time they would otherwise do so due to your sexual ministrations, and maintains their slumber for an additional 20 seconds after that. This skill may be invoked again before the 20 seconds run out, with an additional activation cost. If instead permitted to wake up, the subject will be drowsy at first, rather than making sudden movements.

With the Good Morning skill now protecting you, you move your tongue with more confidence, thoroughly wetting the rigid/soft thing in your mouth. You slowly withdraw your head with your lips wrapped around the penis, and then bob your head down again. You think that's how this is supposed to work. It's just using your lips as a vagina, so far as you can tell. Pulse tongue against cock as per common Internet recommendation, keep everything nice and wet. Up and down, up and down, a bit more pressure whoops the Good Morning skill says that was too much pressure. But now you have twenty seconds of safe time, if you're understanding the skill correctly, so you add a hand grip around the cock and bob your head up and down more fiercely SHIT THAT WAS TEETH oh god is Blake okay is he bleeding?

You frantically pull your head off Blake's cock and inspect the area, but nothing looks bleeding or broken as best as you can see in the growing morning light filtering through the shades. And then you realize you have to be performing sex on Blake in order to use the skill again, so you dive your head back down frantically GOD DAMN IT TEETH and murmur Good Morning around the cock.

And then you blow it almost immediately (the other kind of blowing it). You use the 20-second interval to hop all the way onto the bed and move Blake's legs out of the way so you can kneel between them at a better angle. Good Morning. Lick, lick, whoops. Counting seconds in your head, trying to use firmer pressure but not teeth… you don't think your lips are supposed to be wrapped around your teeth like this either. Wait a minute, you need to let Blake wake up before he comes, he could be 5 seconds from doing that for all you know. You half-breathe "Edge Other," that will tell you when he's getting close---Good Morning! Shit you almost forgot to restore the skill… and you've just blown it again.

After using Good Morning yet again, you pause to pull your lips off the cock's head, and take some deep breaths. Then you frantically start giving a blowjob to your own thumb. You should have tried this before but okay if you do that with your lips then it creates a nice-feeling sliding sensation with no teeth in it. Your tongue feels good on your thumb when it does this, but the cock filling your mouth may be too large for you to do the same---is Blake's erection starting to go down?

You move your head forward again.

Your lips start making love to the cock the way you made love to your thumb.

You wish you had more of an indicator than Good Morning and Edge Other to let you know how you're doing. Like a handy indicator light showing Blake's distance from actually coming, and how effective your current technique is on a numerical scale. Please, Erogame? Please?

(No.)

Swirl. Suck. Up and down. The ping of attention that means Good Morning's contingency just activated, a window you use to apply fifteen seconds of firmer pressure assisted by your hand, and then you use Good Morning again. Six uses, you think. That's okay. You started with SUB to spare. You can keep doing this for a while. You feel like you're finding a routine, a rhythm.

Another thirteen uses of Good Morning later, you've leveled the skill once and gone to 25-second grace intervals. You're starting to wonder if maybe what you're doing just doesn't feel good when Edge Other finally pings at you.

The surge of triumph that goes through you is only matched by the next surge of triumph seconds later.

Honing your sexual skills, learning to bring pleasure to others in new ways, causes your FUK to go up by 1!

You make another four head motions past the edge-warning, that should be safe judging by last night. You pull your head back, giving time for the near-edge to subside.

Blake's cock should be primed now, you think. It will feel good to him right away, when he wakes up.

Edge other, you breathe. And your lips go back to pleasuring Blake's cock, more firmly now.

Good morning pings at you. You continue. Slurp, slurp… is Blake going to be okay with waking up this way? Yes he will. Of course he will. What if he thinks you got his penis dirty and he doesn't have time to shower? It's just saliva. It is extremely unlikely that a boy in his position will be offended by your presumption. You should have thought this part through earlier. Too late, might as well continue molesting the victim.

Blake should be awake now. You don't raise your head to look. You're occupied.

"Mwha…?"

You keep on doing what you are doing. Making Blake feel nice. Making Blake feel nice feels nice.

Edge other pings at you.

You slow down as much as you can. Blake makes a soft exhalation.

After another dozen movements you're sure he's not coming this time, from this mouth speed, so edge other again. You think that skill is close to being activated just with your thoughts, it only takes the barest lip movement now. You speed up. You speed up some more. The nearing edge pokes your consciousness. You slow down just a little. You use the skill again. It beeps right away. You slow down a tiny bit more. You use the skill. You speed up a tiny bit. It alerts you a few head movements later.

You keep going at exactly that speed. The one that's taking this cock slowly but surely to its destination.

"Uhhhhhhhh…" A low groaning from Blake's throat.

You can feel the twitches, the pulses, inside your mouth and you are so wet, so proud of yourself, so wet. This must feel so good for Blake.

"I'm---"

You maintain the speed. You prepare not to choke.

Blake's voice is higher. "I'm---is it okay---"

You keep moving your head. Give me everything.

A gush of something shoots from the rigid warmth inside your mouth, painting the back of your throat and you clamp down on everything, willing yourself not to react, and manage to keep moving your head through another five bobs and two more gushes of semen before you have to pull your head off and start coughing violently.

Kfah. Kfah. How did that cock make an aimed shot directly down your throat. Straight down your airway, it feels like. Is there some trick to swallowing in order to close the airway before the ejaculation? A way to angle your head so at least the penis doesn't aim that way?

The taste filling your mouth… it tastes like raw egg white looks. Plus salt. Salt with…

…a hint of vanilla-flavored cake?

You manage to get control of yourself, and look over at Blake. You didn't get to see his face when he came, which you've just realized is the downside of oral.

Blake is gazing at you with his concern-face. That's reasonable, he did just see you choking desperately for air.

You smile at him.

After a breath, Blake smiles back.

You swallow what's in your mouth before you speak---

A skill has been created by a special action! Consuming the sexual fluids you extracted from another has created the skill The Nectar.

"Are you okay?" Blake says, as you go into another fit of coughing. A surge of warmth, like kindness and a sunny day, spreads through your chest.

RIGHT THEN. NO MORE SWALLOWING UNTIL YOU READ THAT SKILL DESCRIPTION.

"Yeah," you say, after you've recovered. "Sorry, just… it takes practice, I guess." You have to force yourself to smile at Blake again. That skill name is worrying you. "Good morning?" you say.

"Good morning." Blake smiles back at you. You suspect it's also forced.

"Was it… good? I mean that's probably a stupid question---"

Blake nods and you fall silent.

You go on smiling at Blake.

Blake goes on smiling at you.

You go on smiling at Blake.

Blake goes on smiling at you.

You desperately wish for a distraction and Blake's cellphone starts playing a cheerful alarm tune, causing him to scramble out of your shared bed in order to turn it off.

…did you do that? Did you make it be 9AM because you needed a distraction?

Why are you allowed to do that? You don't understand.

Blake has gone over to where his clothing fell to the floor last night. He picks up his underpants and turns to look at you apologetically. "Is it all right?" he says.

"Yes," you reply at once. You pause. "What did I just give you permission to do?"

"Is it okay that I'm… going? I wanted to stay here as long as possible, so I set my alarm as late as I thought I could. I didn't think about how when it went off, I'd have to jump up and get ready to go."

Ah. "It won't be the last time you see me." You go over and get your own cellphone, opening up the contacts list and entering the name Blake, causing a different kind of warmth to surge through your chest. "Phone number?"

Blake recites ten digits and you enter them. A part of you is afraid they're fake. You pat it on the head and tell it not to be silly.

"I'll get a burner phone for Starry Starr," you say. "And then you can have her number too."

Blake finishes buttoning his shirt and, after looking at you hesitantly again, goes over to the bathroom. He closes the door, and the roar of the exhaust vent follows.

You go to the thermostat, turn it up another notch, and then take off your sweater and the dampened pantyhose. Blake is dressed now, a little rumpled but still nicely enough. So you should be naked.

You stretch out on the bed and pose seductively. Then you hold the pose. And hold it some more, just in case Blake is about to come out of the bathroom.

Um. How long is he staying in there? Your back is starting to feel---

A skill has been created by a special action! Staying motionless in a seductive position for one minute, without the assistance of bondage or other constraints, has created the skill Erotic Statuary.

Erotic Statuary: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.

Some sexual skills involve you moving. Not this one.

You breathe the words Erotic Statuary and then hold your seductive pose with little effort, smiling like you can't stop yourself from smiling. You love being you. Love it so very very much.

Blake almost falls over himself when he finally emerges from the bathroom and sees you.

You break the pose so you can stretch some more. Arch your chest, move your hips.

"Uh," Blake says, his voice taking on that higher pitch you're starting to adore. "Uh. I think it's okay if we, we have ten more minutes."

You sit up, and pat the bed like you're calling a cat to the spot. Blake comes (not that way) and sits next to you, and promptly freezes when you cuddle up your naked body to him.

Your SED has increased by 1!

"So," you breathe into Blake's ear. "What do you want to do for ten minutes?"

"I…" Blake says. His voice is still high. "I… I actually meant… I mean… I feel like I should be asking you, what movies you like, and what food you like, and what books you read, and all of those things."

You pull back from Blake, looking him in the eyes. He's serious.

"It wouldn't be a good idea to fall in love with me," you tell him. You hope he can hear in your voice what a tremendous understatement that is.

"It's fine that I only know you as Starry Starr," Blake says with more certainty, like wearing the button-down shirt while you're naked means that he gets to make the decisions now. "I just want to be able to picture you in my mind as… someone besides what we did together."

You smile, though it's painful. Yeah, you remember being someone besides what the two of you did together. "Okay," you say. "Food-wise… I hated the concept of food and I wished that all of it would stop existing. My favorite fantasy novel as a kid was One for the Morning Glory by John Barnes, although I didn't understand it at all until I was much older. Movie-wise, I disliked romance, explosions, and watching people be sad, which ruled out almost everything besides Disney, and I didn't like Disney. For music, I clicked on random YouTube mixes starting from nightcored techno songs, and I had no idea which bands wrote my favorite melodies because I didn't have enough of a social life to care about bands. I can't think of any regular TV that I've liked since I was a little kid watching Sesame Street, which I loved. Modern TV shows… I don't know how to say it. There are kids' shows that think it's fine for people to just be alive and happy and good, but they also think they have to be kids' shows and that's why I couldn't stay into My Little Pony. I didn't like most animes I tried because I thought they ended up being too much about boobs, which is ironic all things considered. I liked the animes Azumanga Daioh and Hikaru no Go because they weren't about boobs and the people in them got to be alive. I could tolerate a couple of anime-inspired shows called Avatar: The Last Airbender and RWBY. Sometimes I rewatched random episodes of those whenever I wanted to wind down my brain." You take a breath. "And, when I was sixteen, I went through a six-month phase of spending almost all my spare time secretly playing eroge. Erotic games. That's like… translated Japanese books in a computer-game format, with pictures of the characters, and choices that determine the story. After being traumatized by a scene in Bible Black, I only downloaded eroge that the review site… I can't believe I've forgotten the name, hentai-something… said were pretty vanilla. Then I fast-forwarded through most of the sex scenes anyway. And yet… and yet, in the end, those six months playing eroge might have had a bigger impact on my life than anything else."

You gaze at Blake expectantly.

He asks the question. "Uh, why?"

"I don't know," you reply. "I wouldn't have guessed it. But apparently that was in fact the case. So now, if somebody wanted to understand me better, I'd tell them to download some eroge and start playing."

Blake pauses, looking somewhat confused. "Why play erotic games if you don't like sex scenes?"

As it happens you are deliberately not thinking about this question. Even though it is probably incredibly meaningful and significant to you. Because your ERO stat is 19. And 20 is a big round number. And you are trying to take things a little slower today. So this is not the time to have a deep personal epiphany about why you liked erogames.

"Dunno," you say, shrugging your shoulders. "How about you? Anything ever have a big impact on your life besides growing up a Mormon, stopping being a Mormon, and me?"

Blake pauses, and then his face grows a little sad. "My father's company relocating to California from Nevada," Blake says. "The church tries a lot to help, when something like that happens, but… I ended up leaving all my childhood friends behind when I was eleven, and then trying to make new ones. I don't have any deep friends, now. Nobody I know well enough to tell the truth about losing faith, or about tonight, or, or about being what you realized I am." He smiles now. "Starry, I'm not falling in love with you, but… I think I am falling in friends with you."

Oh. Oh. That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to you, and you can't help but lean into Blake again and kiss him.

Your tongue is more confident now. It's had practice doing complicated things. It darts over Blake's lips and caresses his teeth and tongue and oh my he's doing it back to you.

You're breathless by the time the two of you finally break the kiss, fifteen seconds after Blake's cellphone has started burbling its cheerful tune again.

"I don't want to leave," Blake says.

So stay. We can do this all day.

"It's okay," you tell him. "We'll see each other again. I promised." You take his hand and stand up, pulling him gently off the bed.

Then you hug Blake and rub up against him with your naked body and squirm your breasts against him and reach into his pants and grope him a few times. He comes erect almost instantly, and it makes you warm to think about how he can't do anything about that right now.

"We will see each other again," you breathe into his ear. You stick your tongue in for good luck.

You have to make sure Blake has his things and usher him gently out the door, because your boy-toy… your boy-friend doesn't seem to know how to leave. Like he believes there are Rules for Leaving the Girl, and is paralyzed by not knowing what they are.

You stand in the open door, naked and proud of it, and watch Blake Layton go over to his bike, and ride off.

As he disappears from your vision, you let out a long exhalation, still staying in your open doorway because why not. Something in your mind seems to clear, with the departure of The Boy. Not so much lust as a part of your attention that can't help but always, always be on Blake so long as you can see him. Like he's the center of the universe, everything revolving around him… the thought seems significant, but you put it aside, because you are not having any epiphanies about erogames right now.

There's a face in a window across the parking lot, watching you. You can't see the expression from here, but it's a man.

You jiggle your breasts in his direction, and then you go into your motel room and close the door.

It's 9:20am or so, and 11am is when you need to turn in the motel-room key. This seems like a wise time to pause, catch your breath, and engage in some quiet contemplation.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, your brain is now percolating thoughts for harebrained virginity-yielding schemes. (ADDED: To be implemented later, not today, and maybe not tonight either. You are not now voting on what do after 11a, that vote comes in the next chapter.)

(Initial brainstorming first, final vote in later episode. Using the voting system to highlight ideas will let me quickly tally later what's been suggested and what was trending popular. More than one suggestion per post is fine.)

[ ] Try to sneak inside a bar somehow (without the Fake ID perk or ERO 20) and get picked up by somebody who makes your heart throb at least a little. And who, uh, doesn't seem like the sort to get all nitpicky about the fine details of affirmative consent if you look away shyly.
[ ] They can't force you to say yes… if you don't speak English! Pretend to be a foreigner who doesn't speak any known language, not even the concept of nodding versus shaking her head, then get picked up anyway by someone you like. It will totally work, you have ERO 19.
[ ] Other ideas (write-in).

Spoiler: AN

I've been trying to write until a real choice comes up, because I imagine that people don't want to read an episode and then find there's no choice at the end. (Feel free to mention if this isn't the case---or if you agree that it is.) And I also don't want to create a fake choice that doesn't really matter. And a lot of times I know what the character would do on things that do matter, which means I have to write it that way and then just keep on writing. Some people have trouble writing, I know, very privileged of me, I should be grateful for my problems.

Anyway, this ended up as a big growing chapter and then I noticed I could slice this part out of it, so long as I gave you this scheming problem to brainstorm. I hope that counts.

2.1.1: Okay

You are sitting again in your motel room's cramped desk chair, semi-clothed once more. Panties now instead of pantyhose, with the thermostat turned up a little higher.

You have an hour and a half plus change until check-out time at eleven. Taking that time to be by yourself seems like a good idea. A very good idea.

You've been erogaming non-stop since yesterday afternoon, when this all started... God, has it really been less than 24 hours?

You draw up your legs to yourself---another one of those little things that's easier without the fat spacesuit---and use one hand to push your desk chair around in a little circle, watching the small motel room spin around you.

First things first. That 'Nectar' skill sounds unnerving, especially combined with the sense of warmth that spread through you after swallowing Blake's come. You have been worrying, in the back of your mind, about when the erogame will show its thorns. It wouldn't be surprising if semen is an addictive substance meant to turn you into a cock-crazed slut, or if having that 'skill' means you need to give one blowjob per day or get withdrawal symptoms. You're almost afraid to say the words aloud and look at the violet letters.

"Info. Skills. The Nectar."

The Nectar: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive.

You gain benefits from consuming sexual fluids you have personally extracted from others. (With the Mad Inventor perk: sexual fluids extracted via machines of your own creation that you personally operate.) Every person's precious bodily fluids convey different potencies, hinted at by tastes and sensations you may learn to identify. Mixing synergetic sexual fluids yields greater results, but the fluids must be mixed in situ.

Known nectars:

Flavor

Effect
A

Effect
B

Effect
C

Blake Layton
A taste of vanilla-flavored cake; a sense of spreading warmth, as of kindness or a sunny day.
?
+10% to the rate of experience gain in stats and skills, 6 hours.
???

You stare at the violet letters for a while.

Well.

Okay then.

Fine.

What else would an erogame use for its alchemy system.

Also. There is a Mad Inventor perk. There is a Mad Inventor perk and you can use it to make unspeakable machines.

Level 5 is just 600 XP away. Maybe if you just walked out the door and went over to that other motel room where the man was watching you---

No. No, this was not the plan. You were going to slow down for at least the next 90 minutes.

You push your chair around in a circle again. Calm. Calm. There will be time later for the rise of Doctor Starr and her unspeakable machines.

…would you have been so quick, yesterday, to think that?

Not the unspeakable machines part. Of course you would have thought that.

But yesterday just after the Erogame started, would you have been so quick to imagine seducing a stranger just for the experience points?

Yesterday, you didn't want to go to the mall and give some boy a blowjob for XP. Because… because your SED and FUK and BOD were low and the prospect seemed horrible and humiliating and not-fun.

If you'd been the same person as yesterday afternoon, but with BOD 16, FUK 12, and SED 9, then would you have considered it acceptable to run across the parking lot, open a possibly-locked door, and demand that a stranger yield to you his nectar?

Probably… probably not. You would not have thought that, yesterday.

But tonight's experience showed you that sex could be fun. It's not surprising if you're less nervous about something you've tried and liked.

Or. Or the LST and PRV stat gains changed you. Cinderella Sheen with 6 LST and 12 PRV says no, Starry Starr with 12 LST and 16 PRV says yes. Why imagine it's anything more than that?

You exhale quietly into your bare knees. If that's true… if that's true, then…

Then there's not much you can do about it.

You could avoid putting stat points into LST and PRV, and not deliberately grind them. Slow down the changes, give yourself time to adjust. But if your mind, your self, your true inner soul does follow the stats and not the other way around… then, then so be it. It's a high price to pay for your BOD, but not too high a price to pay for being alive.

You spin around your desk chair, thinking.

Probably this won't all happen again before tomorrow morning. Stat gains seem to slow down fast, as the stat goes up. So you started with some low stats and raised them higher, that's all.

Though… if this is a LST of 12, you are worried about what it might be like to have a LST of, say, 50. That would make you the horniest person in the world, if LST scales like the BOD stat. You can't help but wonder what happens to your morals, which you do consider a pretty darn integral part of yourself, if your PRV reaches 100.

But that's for a future-you to worry about. You know so little about the game, this early on. Maybe there's just a Temperance skill you can grind.

Come to think, you should review your stats' descriptions. The numbers have changed a lot, and you want to see what the Erogame thinks of you now.

Cinderella Sheen / Starry Starr
"The Erogamer"
LVL 4 (1000 / 1600)

DOM: 184/210
SUB: 253/280

BOD: 16
LST: 12
SED: 9
FUK: 12
PRV: 16
ERO: 19

Stat Points: 5
Money: $992

Status Effects: Technical Virgin
Active Nectars: Blake Layton

Description: Cinderella Sheen is a sophomore at Norville U, still living at home with her mother. And now she's also Starry Starr, the Erogamer. Desperately grateful to the Erogame for giving her a new purchase on life, she is embracing her destiny with growing enthusiasm… despite not knowing where all of this is going, and her increasing concern over how the game treats people like Blake and her mother.

Info // Character Stats // Level:

At LVL 4, you're just beginning as an Erogamer, but you've already had a taste of the power and rewards the game can bring you… maybe not so much the challenges. You got ridiculously lucky on that dice roll in Walgreens. But when the challenges come, you'll be readier.

You can increase your level by completing the quests the Erogame offers you; or by causing romantic and sexual events to happen to you or around you. The more difficult the challenge, the greater the rewards. Think of it as the universe giving something back when you bring some sexual sunshine into it.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

At a BOD of 16, you are nearing the upper ranks of "teenaged girl" and will soon join the lowest tier of that distinct class and species called "pretty teenaged girl". In population-average terms you're already doing great, since the average human with a BOD of 10 isn't a teenaged girl at all. But let's be honest here: there are still supermodels who are more attractive than you. For now.

You can increase this stat by using your body itself to bring happiness into the world, through the grace of your feminine form, its presentation and concealment, its motions and ornamentation. Getting naked and letting men perv on you works too.

Info // Character Stats // Lust:

A LST of 12 puts you at above average for a human being, where "human being" is a category that includes a lot of middle-aged and old people. As impressed as you seem to be with your newfound sluttiness, what you're experiencing is more "the ability to get properly horny at all, in situations that clearly call for it". It's going to take serious progress before you're as hot-on-the-spot as the top quartile of teenage boys… never mind the true heights or dregs of humanity. But when something turns your key, you can get going.

You gain in this stat by allowing yourself to feel your urges and wants and desires fully, and by following through on them. Or by deliberately driving yourself mad with frustration. It's two sides of the same coin.

Info // Character Stats // Seduction:

Let's face it, with an actual SED of 9, you're punching way above your weight class by being a pretty girl who's willing to get naked. Imagine how far you'd have gotten, trying to pull what you pulled in Walgreens, if you were a boy. Imagine trying to pull that stunt as a 70-year-old wrinkled grandfather. Now realize that there are elderly men who can do that. That's how far away you are from 50 SED and the limits of merely human seductiveness.

You can increase this stat by pursuing and being pursued, by catching others and being caught, by tending to their yearning and not just their reward, by understanding sex as a thought inside other people's minds and not just a collision of bodies.

Info // Character Stats // Fucking:

Your FUK of 12 describes you as above-average in bed even before taking your Erogame skills into account, your utter lack of experience more than redeemed by the dedicated effort you put into sex. Honestly, you have no idea how rare that is in real life, and as an erogame character you'll never find out. Just keep in mind, there are people in the world who put as much effort as you into sex. People who've been practicing their art for decades. People who can Good Morning and Tears of Milk without the Erogame helping them, because they're just that good. The road yet before you is long and hard, but not unthrobbing.

You will increase in this stat by giving others pleasure and other sensations, watching the results and learning from both your successes and mistakes, and always aspiring to become ever better in bed.

Info // Character Stats // Perversion:

At a PRV of 16, you have started to actually perform some of the most vanilla acts that would produce condemnation and secret intrigue from someone with PRV 8. In turn, you condemn and are secretly intrigued by possibilities that would genuinely squick out a mundane. If you descend through merely another 4 tiers of corruption like that, you'll be among the most degenerate people on Earth. But remember the lesson of wuxia: the ocean is only a droplet in another ocean, and there's always a sky above the sky.

You can increase this stat by listening to parts of yourself whose voices were previously drowned out by other parts; or by stepping off the roads you've always walked, and not immediately turning away from what you find beyond.

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At an ERO of 19, your life has become an erogame set within the bare edge of realism. What happens to you might seem to others like unbelievable luck, but it won't break their belief in a sane universe… yet. Bystanders notice any strange occurrences, but underreact rather than reacting as in an erogame.

If you keep pushing probability to its limits, you can shatter it and take your first small steps into a vaster realm---become able for the first time to enact limited, subtle events that just wouldn't happen at all outside of an erogame. And then the road you are walking continues on forever from there, because no matter how impossible something is, there's always something even less possible than that. It's like Godel's Theorem, only for false statements instead of true statements.

Whoa.

Your lips shape the word again. Whoa.

Is it just you or is this game sounding a lot more positive than it did yesterday? Either the game is happy you're embracing its possibilities, or, uh, or the game hates your existence less because you hate your existence less. You wouldn't have believed the game if it had sounded like this yesterday.

And yeah. This is a lot of change to have happen in less than 24 hours.

Going this far again in the next few days… might be going too far. Changing yourself too much, losing your bones and not just shedding your skin. So you just won't go that fast. It doesn't need to happen. And you hated your old life, you hated your old life more than you ever let yourself realize, you didn't allow yourself to realize that there was no hope and things would never get any better for Cinderella Sheen, because you didn't actually want to die, you didn't want to acknowledge the truth and end up killing yourself, you didn't want to die you wanted out, you wanted out and didn't care where you ended up, out to anywhere at all so long as you could truly live. So you're not complaining about the game letting you run away from your old self quickly. That part makes sense.

What's happened already, you think you are okay with. Because you didn't just add stat points on the screen. The LST and PRV you have now, you came by honestly. You pushed your own limits to become the girl you wanted to become, and the game acknowledged you and helped you.

But now it's time to take a breather. No grinding, no using stat points. You're… okay, now. You think you're okay.

You don't have to try so hard to be more okay.

You get up from the chair and go to the bathroom mirror to look, really look, at Starry Starr.

The girl who looks back at you is as pretty as she can be without being Pretty. Her face is freckled but not pock-marked by acne, her body has roughly the Mandatory Female Shape. You strip off your sweater and look at your breasts, which seem mostly breast-shaped, which is better than them being hanging fatsacks. The aureoles around your nipples are too large, too dark and not perfectly even; you're not a connoisseur but even you can tell this girl doesn't have perfect breasts. She's not a model; her skin isn't fine and tanned.

You reach out a hand and touch the mirror gently, sliding your fingers over the surface. It is a wryly amusing thought to you that if you'd grown up with this body, you probably wouldn't like it much. Those terrible uneven aureoles around the nipples, oh no, how will any boy ever want her now.

This girl is okay. She should appreciate herself.

She's pretty when she smiles.

You strip off the panties, and take a closer look at your own labia, as you've been meaning to do.

Honestly, this still does not look to you like a beautiful flower toward which boys will be drawn like the honeybees they are. It looks like you have weird flaps of skin on your groin. Which is also how naked models look to you in pictures, so it's not just your own vagina here. What does a boy see, when they look at this? Is it somehow, in their minds, a thing of beauty? You can tell Starry Starr's breasts are nice, you can tell her legs are nice. Your labia seems objectively not pretty.

You smile again, giving your womanly flower an appreciative pat. It's not you who has to like it.

Besides, maybe you just need an LST of 20 to make you properly bisexual and not just heteroflexible. And then you'll know what your body seems like to people who really desire female bodies. It's a warm thought… but that's not for today.

You run your fingers through your hair. Bringing the strands back from behind your head, where they've been staying ever since you decided that your erogame character was being drawn with her hair behind her head.

This hair is also okay. You appreciate this hair. Because you appreciate yourself. But this hair isn't really… you, yet. Why does that thought sound so weird. You've had a lot of success at believing your hair will do things, so maybe soon you should think about what properly awesome Ero Hair would look like? Try to evolve your hair to something greater, by willing it so? Self-acceptance aside, it doesn't seem like changing your hairstyle would be a life-altering decision on the order of gaining 8 LST---why does it feel like you just thought something completely absurd.

You shake your head, dispelling the odd thoughts, and put your not-actually-clothes back on.

ERO 19 probably lets Starry Starr show up in class dressed in pantyhose and a tight sweater. But it would defeat the point if she did. The whole point of going to school would be to add a touch of stability to your life. Well, maybe that's an unfairly high expectation to put on an English Lit class. It wouldn't be stability, so much as… a thread of connection to what was there before. Even if nobody you know recognizes you, you would still recognize them.

Do you… want that? Or is what you really want to just… stay the hell away from Cinderella Sheen's life. Maybe not forever but at least until you know that you're safe. That Starry Starr is safe. That Cinderella Sheen can't get her.

This isn't a good way to think. You know that. You're not stupid. You can guess what someone with five minutes of psychology training would be telling you not to think. Part of you is thinking it anyway.

Should you go to school, if you don't actually want that? Nobody is making you go to class, except you. Which doesn't mean 'you' is wrong about that.

The girl in the mirror is frowning. It makes her less attractive, even with a tight sweater. It's her smile that sells the package; her BOD isn't high enough for her to go on being pretty if she lets herself be sad. If there's any argument for grinding BOD sooner, it would be that. You want to be happy but you don't want to have to be happy.

If you do go to class for sanity's sake, you should dress… maybe not normally, but not-abnormally. Which means you need real clothes. A miniskirt to go with the pantyhose. A bra, or a looser shirt. Shoes that aren't ugly fat-girl-supporting gymshoes. High heels, even, depending on how quickly the Erogame lets you learn to wear them.

No. No, you're not thinking about this correctly. Starry Starr needs one change of clothing, two at the most. From Goodwill, not expensive real clothes. Because Starry Starr might not be the same sizes or the same height a week from now, and you've already spent… you spent a lot of money last night.

You wince and look away from the mirror's accusing gaze.

The vibrator and the backup vibrators. The see-through catsuit and naughty nurse packages you left in your bedroom like an idiot because you didn't know you'd have a chance to show them off to Blake. Then the clothes at Walgreens. And then the motel room.

Ow. Ow. Ow.

You don't… regret it, per se. You are not asking yourself what you were thinking. You remember what you were thinking. You know what was driving you, and it mattered. Still, $200 is a lot of money. Twenty hours of doing medical-insurance billing paperwork at your barely-over-minimum-wage summer job.

Someday, yes, billionaires may be fighting to buy a single night of your time, when your BOD and SED and FUK are in the high forties and approaching the limits of human possibility. Or Doctor Starr may be holding the UN hostage with her unspeakable machines, depending on where the Erogame goes from here. That doesn't mean you can get more money now…

Huh.

Are you maybe wrong about that? The Erogame does show a money stat.

There's also the… obvious way to convert sexuality into money. If you're doing it anyway, which you will be, then why not get paid on some of those occasions?

...Would you have seriously considered that idea yesterday? You know what, fuck it, you're not going to keep asking that question for the rest of your life.

Leaving aside the possibility of quests that pay out more, how much money could you earn the obvious way? What does a prostitute earn in Norville? That would be a baseline, a minimum earning power you could be sure of having. It's probably well above minimum wage, maybe even three or four times that per hour. Though admittedly, it's something people can do without a high-school degree, and there's a lot of desperate women out there. So maybe not that much unless the prostitute is prettier and more skilled than you.

You turn away from the mirror, go back to the desk, take out your cellphone, and start trying to research the price of sex in California.

Some time later you are staring at the little electronic screen. Your mouth wide open, as if waiting for something to be inserted inside, such as money.

This number has more digits than you were expecting.

No, that can't be right. That's insane. This must just be a pretend asking price, not what prostitutes actually get paid.

You keep Googling until you find a different website that's about customers reporting their experiences with prostitutes, and you manage to find some stories about Bakersfield, which is nearby and larger than Norville but not that much larger.

There are still three digits after the dollar sign.

This… this is crazy. Supposedly you can charge one hundred and fifty dollars for what you did to Blake this morning, not counting the extra premium for letting the client come in your mouth. And that's the low end. If you were offering intercourse, you could make more money in an hour than by working your summer job for two weeks. Computer programmers don't get paid this much per hour. Is this some kind of Erogame reality hack? But this isn't a quest in Norville, these are previously recorded prices from all around the Bakersfield area.

Offering this much money for sex should be illegal. It's tantamount to rape. What kind of woman is supposed to say no?

You pause. Is this way of thinking the Erogame? Did the stat increases change your way of looking at this?

No, this isn't the Erogame. You, you can't even imagine, if two days ago, if someone had offered to pay you $300 for sex, if they wanted you that much, if you knew that they weren't lying and really meant that… right. Right. That part probably feels different if you grew up being pretty, and a prostitute has to be pretty.

And you can't get venereal diseases. You had forgotten those were a thing.

And you aren't likely to be arrested, or if you do get caught, the arresting officer will probably give you a spanking instead of jail time.

And client issues are going to be Erogame quests rather than your strangled corpse being buried in fast-setting concrete.

And you don't have a non-ero life stretching ahead of you that could be permanently ruined by having people find out that you were a prostitute during the brief period of your youth when you were sexy enough to do that.

And you have a certain suspicion that ERO 19 might cause your clientele to tend toward the more attractive end of the spectrum, albeit packaged with other interesting qualities.

You are privileged. Very, very privileged. You have no right to criticize the sanity of women who'd give up $300 in order to not have sex. If you had to worry about all the standard problems, you'd also be too scared to sell your blowjobs as well as giving them away. You'd just keep on clerking at the medical office as best you could for one-fifteenth the pay.

Your eyes relentlessly, inexorably, unstoppably drift back to the numbers and dollar signs on your cheap cellphone's small, slightly cracked screen.

You hadn't really thought about whether you planned to finish your bachelor's degree, now that the Erogame has changed everything. You hadn't thought about it at all. But this. This feels like the possibility of alternative careers is being taken from you. Grabbed away by the sheer financial magnitude of the offer to today's version of you, never mind you one month from now. If the Internet isn't lying to you, high-end escorts can charge thousands of dollars for one night.

This… you are feeling indignant. You are genuinely indignant about this. People wanting to have sex with you so much they'd even pay you for it, that would be nice. That would be validating. Society valuing you thirty times more per hour as a vagina, you, you are not the kind of person who rants about this sort of thing on Facebook, you really aren't, but something has to be going wrong in the background. If it was just because you were the Erogamer then that would be fine. But this isn't an offer to Starry Starr. This is society's offer to Cinderella Sheen if she'd been prettier.

Which, to be fair, is hardly the fault of men who are so desperately lonely as to accept being gouged on these prices. And it's also not the fault of desperate women who take risks to accept that price. You don't know whose fault this situation is or how to say exactly what's wrong with it, just that it can't be right.

Perhaps Doctor Starr can do something using her legion of sex robots? But you don't see how adding an army of sex robots would make things better.

No. No, that's nonsense. You must just be looking at this problem from the wrong angle. To find oneself thinking "I don't see how an army of sex robots can help" is a certain sign of madness.

You exhale. Like the problem of reaching LST 50, what you can do with greater Erogame powers is something you'll also be better-placed to understand after you've played the Erogame for longer.

For now, you need to decide what you are doing today once you walk out of this motel room.

[ ] Get the sexiest clothes you can find at Goodwill, then go to English Lit. (You will still roll to check if there is an erogame event.) (SAN)
[ ] Try to trade Erogame-enhanced handwork, or maybe oral, to sales clerks in exchange for real clothing and high heels, so you can go to school in style. You'll try to let yourself be directed by the Ero Force to a store with a salesman who'll be receptive to your offer. That probably works at ERO 19? You can at least try. Maybe pick up another 600XP and your first perk while you're at it. (PRN)
[ ] You… don't actually want to go to English lit class, at least not today. And the game has a money stat for a reason: playing the Erogame requires that you buy real clothes, and a burner phone to keep in touch with people like Blake. You'd love to rent your own house as a base of nightly operations, if you can earn enough. There might be relevant quests listed on the bulletin board at the adventurer's guild, aka the shelf of flyers in that adult bookstore? ($$$)
[ ] Write-in. (Subject to Cinderella's veto.)

Also, while you still have the mirror, you ought to see if you can transform your hair into something closer to your ideal for Ero Hair… which requires answering the vastly deeper question of what is your ideal for Ero Hair.

[ ] Knee-length dark-violet hair, spreading around you like a cloak.
[ ] Hair pouring down to your hips like a river, curving through the air to follow you as you move, with a color gradient going from dark red at the top to bright red at the tips.
[ ] Write-in. (Subject to veto by Cinderella's hair. Cinderella's hair definitely wants to be long, at least hip-length, but to not blatantly violate the laws of physics for now.)

Your brain is being silly again. Why does it feel like changing your hairstyle is far more important than anything else you decide today? You didn't think you were that kind of girl.

(Separately, more brainstorming suggestions about harebrained virginity-yielding schemes are still welcome.)

2.1.2: What Have I Done

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 8 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Get the sexiest clothes you can find at Goodwill, then go to English Lit. (You will still roll to check if there is an erogame event.) (SAN)
[X] Hair pouring down to your hips like a river, curving through the air to follow you as you move, with a color gradient going from dark red at the top to bright red at the tips.
No. of Votes: 8
inverted_helix
aeroprime
DarkLight140
Epicr
kriogenik
OSRfanatic1
The Froggy Ninja
UndecidedDice
[X] Write-in: Horny College Men Part Un
-[X] Head to Goodwill, buy the clothes to fit a look
--[X] Sexy Librarian: Glynda Goodwitch sans cloak, maybe with a longer skirt (hair vote is different, see below)
-[X] Hair Write-in: Kiryuuin Satsuki, hime cut, slightly below ass length in back, wind effects as necessary
-[X] Eat lunch someplace public, probably the school cafeteria, you want to develop your SED skill and that means catching and holding attention
-[X] You should be able to use Erotic Statuary or develop Pose or some similar skill for capturing the imagination
-[X] Head to English Lit.
-[X] After English Lit. see if you can develop conversational skills, including Innuendo
No. of Votes: 4
wasprider
Cmdr_Anax
Gamerlord
Gingganz
[X] Get the sexiest clothes you can find at Goodwill, then go to English Lit. (You will still roll to check if there is an erogame event.) (SAN)
[X] Knee-length dark-violet hair, spreading around you like a cloak.
No. of Votes: 4
Grosstoad
Anomen
Koden
pepperjack
[X] There might be relevant quests listed on the bulletin board at the adventurer's guild, aka the shelf of flyers in that adult bookstore? In most games its good practice to collect all the available quests up front so you don't miss one you actually would've done, later. Having more opportunities and options is a good thing regardless.($$$)
[X] Hair pouring down to your hips like a river, curving through the air to follow you as you move, with a color gradient going from dark red at the top to bright red at the tips.
No. of Votes: 2
Ephemeral
Karnven
[X] Try to trade an Erogame-enhanced handjob, or maybe oral, to sales clerks in exchange for real clothing and high heels, so you can go to school in style. You'll try to let yourself be directed by the Ero Force to a store with a salesman who'll be receptive to your offer. That probably works at ERO 19? You can at least try. Maybe pick up another 600XP and your first perk while you're at it. (PRN)
[X] Knee-length dark-violet hair, spreading around you like a cloak.
No. of Votes: 1
ScrewFate
[X] Get the sexiest clothes you can find at Goodwill, then go to English Lit. (You will still roll to check if there is an erogame event.) (SAN)
[X] No. Your ideal Ero Hair is your ideal Ero Hair. It simply is.
No. of Votes: 1
BFldyq
[X] Hair pouring down to your hips like a river, curving through the air to follow you as you move, with a color gradient going from dark red at the top to bright red at the tips.
[X] Get the sexiest clothes you can find at Goodwill, then go to English Lit. (You will still roll to check if there is an erogame event.) (SAN)
-[X] Check the quests listed on the bulletin board at the adventurer's guild, aka the shelf of flyers in that adult bookstore. Might as well know what's out there.
-[X] See if you can work on improving SED, BOD, and possibly ERO as you go about your day.
No. of Votes: 1
BastetsChosen
[X] Get the sexiest clothes you can find at Goodwill, then go to English Lit. (You will still roll to check if there is an erogame event.) (SAN)
[X] Hair Write-in: Kiryuuin Satsuki, hime cut, slightly below ass length in back, wind effects as necessary
No. of Votes: 1
Caiuz
Total No. of Voters: 22

You drum your fingers on the desk for a time, thinking.

You are tempted by the argument that you should at least visit the adult bookstore and collect flyers, and make sure you're not missing any easy quests.

But… this isn't a game.

No skills, no weirdness, and no amount of violet lettering in the air can make this be a game.

This is your life. If going to your normal college class would be good for your sanity, then hurrying to visit the adventurer's bulletin board would be giving an inch that you're not sure you should concede. If you're missing any wonderful quests that expire today… then you hope they're gone from the adult bookstore when you visit, and you never learn what you missed.

Instead, you shall head over to Goodwill and buy...

(gulp)

...not the cheapest clothes you can find. You're going to go with the most sexy, no, not the most sexy, the most attractive clothes you can find at Goodwill. Some erogame girls start out fully clothed, and that's okay.

That's going to take more money than the bare minimum. So you will…

(gulp)

This is very, very scary now that you have to commit to it.

No. You can do this. You can make yourself do this.

You will… you will trust that there will be some way to earn money later.

Thinking about it logically, earning money later will be easier than earning it now. This is your life, but it's also a game, and leveling is a thing. If you don't need the money today, it doesn't make sense to try to earn it today. So you will let yourself spend more, before you start to earn. Put in a hard stop when there's… $800 left? No, you'd probably hit that with one more motel-room rental. You'll let your bank account go down to $600 from here.

This feels like stepping off a cliff while hoping that there's an invisible bridge underneath your feet.

Maybe $700? No. No, $600 will be fine. It will be fine.

This isn't a way you've let yourself think since Dad died, since you and Mom were left alone. Trying to have faith in things being all right, trusting that tomorrow can be better than today. It is not, right now, a good feeling.

A horrible realization strikes you.

You grab at your cellphone and start frantically typing out a text message.

Safe & sound. Still technically a virgin. Kidnapped an innocent boy and found a room. Sorry for not texting earlier. <3

You send the message to your mother's phone, struggling to suppress the awful pang of guilt. Two awful pangs of guilt.

Mom didn't call you. You didn't make her worry by staying out all night without a word. You should have thought of her feelings, and instead you completely forgot, and, and that made no difference. When you didn't come home at night, when you were still missing in the morning before Mom left for work, she never thought: "Why didn't Cindy text me? She said she was going to go looking for boys late at night, and then she vanished without a word. Is she all right?"

There has to be a better way. You are not okay with this. But, but you also don't want your mother to be scared. You don't want Mom worrying about where you are, if... if either way you're not coming back when she says. You don't wish that your mother had been frightened out of her mind this morning.

Maybe it isn't fair to blame the Erogame, if you haven't figured out what the Erogame should do instead. Maybe the Erogame would just do whatever you told it to, if you told the game something to do about your Mom that made sense. Maybe this is all your fault for not figuring that out.

You spend a minute with your head in your hands, trying to think of what the Erogame should actually do, that wouldn't be mind-controlling your Mom or making her scared about what's happening to her daughter.

Or rather, you spend a minute with your head in your hands, gazing at the desk while your brain doesn't think of anything.

…You're not going to figure this out in the 30 minutes you have left until checkout time.

You get up from your desk to go look in the bathroom mirror. It might be escapism, but at least doing something with your hair should be simpler than this.

You stare at yourself in the mirror.

Why. Why does changing your hairstyle have to be this complicated. Why is it taking this huge inner conversation.

You are an erogame character. That your hair is the hair of an erogame character is in this sense an absolute truth. But people should know you are a key erogame character when they look at you, even if they don't know this is an erogame. So your hair should be longer than this. It should go down to below your waist.

But you've never had hair that long. And it's hard to see how you could sit at a bus seat or a university desk without accidentally sitting on your own hair every time, at least for the first two weeks. Even if you could manage to avoid that, you don't want to constantly be managing hair that's too long.

Except that erogame characters also sit down without sitting on their hair and without needing to move their hair out of the way.

But that could be going too far. There might not be any way your hair could physically behave that would correspond to erogame hair in that sense. Their hair doesn't move aside when they sit down. It doesn't disappear when they sit down. There's just no consistent material form corresponding to their hair. The strands aren't there, they aren't touching anything. Will never touch anything. These strands will never touch anything.

...Maybe you're overthinking this. If you can change your hairstyle to awesome long Ero Hair, then you can also shorten the hair if it turns out to get in your way. Which it won't---you give your hair in the mirror a stern look---because erogame characters with impractical hairstyles don't accidentally sit on their hair, and that is an indisputable fact.

Your hair does not argue with this.

Which settles length, and leaves the questions of color, and shape, and behavior. Your initial thought there was to give yourself awesome dark-violet hair that went down to your knees and spread around you like a cloak. An awesome cloak.

But then you thought of trying something even more exotic, like gradient hair from dark red at the roots to bright red at the tips, that would flow like a river pouring down from your head and swirl around you as you moved. Much more of you seemed to be in agreement with that.

Then another part of you seized on the thought of trying to dress like a Sexy Librarian, if you could find the appropriate clothing at Goodwill. And that part also thought you should have long black hair falling to just below your ass, which would fan out in every breeze. And a lot of you seemed to agree with this plan in general, but you don't know if those parts of yourself were agreeing with just the Sexy Librarian thought, or also with the long black hair thought. You don't think your hair wants to be just black, though? But maybe there's some way you can make all of yourself happy by choosing a compromise… or maybe that would just make all of yourself unhappy, because no part chose the outcome. You just don't know.

…no. Your hair should, in some way, represent all of yourself. The part that wants it to be red and flowing like a river, and the part that wants it to be black and fanning in the breeze. Even the part that thinks it should be violet and the small part that wants your hair to simply be hair.

You whisper the words, "Style, on."

You don't know where the words come from. It's not the name of a skill. But they feel right, like the arm of a mousetrap is being pulled back and set.

So as not to be distracted by the current style of your hair, you close your eyes.

And you express all of your inner voices into

ahhhhhhhhhh OUCH

Holy shit you felt that. You felt that huge surge of energy go through you. It felt like it singed your nipples.

Your eyes open, and you see that you have ass-length hair that's red gradients shot through with black / black shot through with red gradients / with a tiny hint of violet.

It looks… it looks like your hairstyle is expressing a fireplace.

Your hair isn't outright glowing. It still looks like physically possible hair. But it's layered over itself in a way that makes the red-gradient parts seem to grow or shrink beneath the black as your hair flows and spreads. Like a flickering fireplace, not a roaring fire. A quiet cozy fire at the end of the night, the reddened blackened cinders still warm and occasionally crackling; or maybe dead coals that someone just relighted, if the coals were all black without any hint of greyed ash. It looks like somebody spent days putting your hairstyle together.

And how much energy did you just spend? That was way more energy than you put into Extra Large Sausage, the most costly skill you'd used previously.

"Status?"

Cinderella Sheen / Starry Starr
"The Erogamer"
LVL 4 (1000 / 1600)

DOM: 184/210
SUB: 163/280

BOD: 16
LST: 12
SED: 9
FUK: 12
PRV: 16
ERO: 19

Stat Points: 5
Money: $992

Status Effects: Technical Virgin
Active Nectars: Blake Layton
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

How much SUB did you have before? You don't remember exactly. Middle of the 200s. So you just spent around 90 SUB? Holy shit.

You look back at the mirror.

Totally fucking worth it.

Though, uh. Uh, you do plan to go back home to Mom at some point. You hope it doesn't cost that much SUB to switch your hair back to…

Back to…

What did your hair look like one minute ago?

This is your hair. You do not have any other hair-+what the HELL did you just think.

You dash back into the motel's main room, grab your wallet/cellphone holder, and start pulling out your state ID. You can put your hair back to how it was, you just need to see what color it used to---

Your state ID photo shows you with the fireplace hair.

Your blood feels like it's icing over.

No. No. This, this is just the Erogame making sure your photo ID goes on working. It has to be.

You frantically page through your cellphone's photo library, you didn't exactly enjoy taking selfies, until you find one that you have ass-length fireplace hair in this picture too. Because it is a picture of your hair. Which is styled as The Coals Relighted.

…you did not look at the Conceptual Hair skill description. You should possibly have looked at the skill description? You should look at every single skill description as soon as you get the skill.

"Info skills conceptual hair!"

Info // Skills // Reality Skills // Conceptual Hair:

Conceptual Hair: Lvl 1 (5.5%). Passive and Active.

The ability to externalize your concept of hair into reality. This skill does not alter the physical laws governing your hair, nor transform your hair into any form following consistent rules. Rather, there is no longer any specific thing on your head to which the concept 'hair' could apply. What others perceive as your hair is the interaction of their sensoriums with the abstract concept 'hair', which your empowered belief has rendered capable of touching upon the continuum of specifics they call the universe.

At Lvl 1, this skill is vastly weakened by your implicit beliefs about the nature of reality, and by the conventional way in which you expect your hair to behave.

The higher tiers of this skill are perilous for those who began with weak senses of identity, who may begin to perceive not 'a person with hair' but instead 'hair with a person'. No matter how beautiful or shining their braids, they will feel no sense of accomplishment, because there is no 'I' in possession of the hair. In its final use, this skill can erase the boundary between hair and reality. But this ultimate power can only be attained by a distorted soul: someone who, from the beginning, never took any pride in her braids.

Subskills:

My Hair Always Looks Like This (Lvl 1)
And It Never Gets in the Way (Lvl 2)
It Does What I Want (Lvl 1)
I Have All of the Hairstyles (Lvl 1)
I Know All About Hair (Lvl 0)
However I Like It (Lvl 0)
All Along, I Have Always Been Hair

There are many people over the course of history who have uttered the words you are about to speak, yet, it is possible those words have never been uttered with greater justification.

"WHAT HAVE I DONE TO MY HAIR?"

And why is there all that empty space within the violet frame of the game notification. Like there is more to this skill, yet to be revealed. Like the words are already there but your mind isn't ready to see them… you have never been this creeped out in your entire life.

The subskills. What are the subskills?

My Hair Always Looks Like This: Lvl 1 (40%). Active. 10 SUB.​

The consequence of understanding that your hair changes with your state of mind, and only with your state of mind, because it is your state of mind: the exterior world can affect your hair only through the medium of affecting your interior attitude towards your hair. This skill moves your mind closer to your usual beliefs about your hair, partially counteracting the psychological effect of any recent events which led you to believe your hair had become disarranged.

This skill does not exist. For you to stand forth and invoke it has no effect on you other than making you believe that a skill has operated. Rather, your belief that the skill has operated is itself the skill. Once you understand this without any doubts, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I am the skull of my hair."

And It Never Gets in the Way: Lvl 2 (33%). Active. 1 SUB / minute.​

The consequence of understanding that your hair exists for a purpose, and is a purpose: the true manifestation of a purpose will not contradict that purpose. Invoking this skill causes your hair to maintain a position which avoids interfering with whatever activities you are currently performing.

This skill is unnecessary. Your concept of hair is something that only interacts with reality in the first place in order to accomplish its purpose. There is nothing with place and shape that must be consistently treated as being present or absent, when the continuum asks how your hair looks and then asks if your hair is getting in your way. You can answer all such questions simultaneously in any pattern you choose, because you are the one answering them. Once you have fully internalized this understanding, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Yet these strands will never touch anything."

It Does What I Want: Lvl 2 (10%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.​

The consequence of understanding that your hair is not dead, but as alive as your flesh: if you can will the motion of your hands and feet then you must equally be able to will the motion of your hair. This skill makes your hair be to you as a limb of your body, with DEX equal to this skill's level.

This skill is inverted. In every motion of the flesh there are nervous impulses that occur prior to the muscles contracting. Prior to the nervous impulses, the brain calculates the pattern of those impulses. Prior to this calculation is a fleeting intention. Your hair is closer to your soul than your flesh, and requires only this fleeting intention to respond. Even in your inner mind, the direction of a thought comes prior to the formation of the thought. Thus your hair responds to your first will faster than does your mind. To imagine 'I will control my hair as I control my limbs' is to tread a pointlessly extended and circuitous route through your soul. Once you understand and appreciate this irony, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Have disdained flesh to arrange many curls."

I Have All of the Hairstyles: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.​

The consequence of understanding that your hair is an abstraction, rather than a specific: your hair has no intrinsic form or boundary other than the division between 'hair' and 'not hair'. This skill recalls, reconstructs, and recreates any hairstyle that has become known to you and so inscribed itself upon your soul. The reconstruction of a hairstyle costs a variable amount, and after, its recreation costs 20 SUB.

This skill is vacuous. In perceiving a hairstyle and forming a concept dividing 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle', you have already created that hairstyle. What was once upon a person's head is a fleeting instant that can never be regained. In coming to have 'that hairstyle I saw' there is no past existence you have stolen. You only possess a boundary your perception already drew, dividing the countless possibilities of other fleeting instants into 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle'. It is impossible for your perception to draw that boundary incorrectly, because nothing beyond your own perception exists to judge that boundary: therefore this skill is itself constituted in your perception of whether the skill has been successfully applied. Once your judgment has collapsed into this understanding, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I have created over a thousand braids."

I Know All About Hair: Lvl 0 (0%). Active, 2 SUB.​

The consequence of understanding that all concepts of hair are one in the end: as you understand your own hair, you may understand the hair of others. Gazing upon another's hairstyle and invoking this skill informs you of its structure, its history, and its meaning to the wearer.

This skill is illusory. The concept of hair exists within the unchanging root of form, the timeless that casts its shadows into the realm of that which is born and dies. Your eyes, gazing upon these fleeting and impermanent instants, only bring to your attention those truths that are never learned and only remembered. So your eyes matter not: you need only know that a hairstyle exists, in this realm of shadows, in order to remember its form. Once your understanding has transcended all things that begin and end, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Unknown by death, nor known by birth."

However I Like It: Lvl 0 (0%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.​

The consequence of understanding that your hair's freedom to perform its purpose is the only constraint upon its form: your hair is what is needed to carry out the task of hair. This skill imbues your hair with color, length, tensile strength, or whatever other properties you desire to add to it while retaining its nature as hair. The first construal of such a property is of variable cost, after which regaining it costs 20 SUB.

This skill is counterproductive. By thinking 'my hair must be golden so as to be pretty' or 'my hair must be strong to resist being cut', you only weaken your hair compared to the thoughts 'my hair must be pretty' or 'my hair must resist being cut'. Any constraint upon the breadth of an idea's possible pathways can only diminish its ability to reach a destination. Once you understand this and reject your past foolishness, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Purpose is my color and meaning is my shape."

{See "Stats at end of Book 1", within the Index menu, and look under Skills // Reality Skills to find the description of the final skill:}​

All Along, I Have Always Been Hair​

You have read entire H.P. Lovecraft novels which are not even ten percent as scary as whatever it is that is on your head. And oh god, all that blank space. There's more. There's more. In all that blank space that isn't really blank.

How the, how the fuck is this an erogame skill? What eroge has ever talked like this? The only aspect of this that remotely sounds like you'd find it in an erogame is that it's about hair rather than swords or whatever!

And you can't get away. You can't get away because it's on your head. You… you could cut your hair off? You shouldn't think that it might get angry. No, being bald is fine. Being bald is also a hairstyle.

Somewhere along the way you have curled up in the motel room bed and begun whimpering. Your hair is lying beside you in a flickering-fireplace stream. You did not accidentally lie on it. It did not get in the way.

You have nine minutes left before you need to check out of the motel room. You are mostly calm now. You have stopped whimpering.

It did help to realize, once you thought about it, that your hair would never want to hurt you.

And there's nothing you can do about it, so you might as well get used to it. You can't run away from your hair, because your real hair is what's inside your heart---

You need to stop thinking about this. Fine, you did whatever to your hair and now you can't put it back to how it was. That happens when people change their hairstyles, to the extent that anyone can ever really change their hairstyle. Mindless panic aside, from a purely objective standpoint your hair is better now. A lot better. More able to serve its purpose… you are not thinking this. You are done thinking about what is (not) on your head. You have eight minutes left before you need to check out of this motel room and you and your hair start the rest of your day together.

And before then. Before then, you need to read the text of any other skills you haven't looked at yet. You decided on this important new rule of your existence and now you need to follow it, the same way your hair follows the rules of its own existence.

You are no longer looking forward to this.

"Info, skills."

Info // Skills

Wield Vibrator: Lvl 1
Edge Riding: Lvl 3
Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 2
Strip Tease: Lvl 1
Reverse Strip Tease: Lvl 1
Extra Large Sausage: Lvl 2
Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit: Lvl 1
You Forgot to Lock the Door: Lvl 1
Edge Other: Lvl 3
Tears of Milk: Lvl 2
Edge Self: Lvl 1
Good Morning: Lvl 2
Erotic Statuary: Lvl 1
Erogamer's Body: Lvl MAX
Erogamer's World: Lvl MAX
Conceptual Hair: Lvl 1
%%+++%#%: Lvl ?

Okay, that's… four skills you haven't looked at. Strip Tease, Reverse Strip Tease, Edge Self, and You Forgot to Lock the Door. None of those titles seem as ominous as Conceptual Hair sounds in hindsight.

Strip Tease: Lvl 1 (80%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to remove clothes seductively, always hinting at more than what appears, making the viewer more and more impatient to see the end. While this skill is active and you are continuing to remove clothing, you receive a +5% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 5% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Reverse Strip Tease: Lvl 1 (5%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to put on clothes seductively, relying for its eroticism on graceful movement and the intimacy of watching someone dress themselves. While this skill is active and you are continuing to add clothing, you receive a +5% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 5% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Okay. Okay, this is good. This is normal.

You are aware of the irony of the thought.

Edge Self: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 1 SUB.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving yourself insane with frustration, invoking Edge Self at Lvl 1 forces you to stop stimulating yourself before the next time you come, at a variable but short distance from the true, absolute edge.

Still normal. It even sounds like fun. You could have frustrated yourself even more for Blake, if you'd bothered to read the skill description. You're starting to relax, look forward once more to the pleasant little discoveries.

You Forgot to Lock the Door: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive and Active. 5 DOM.

Active: A staple ability of any erogame character, this skill gives you the power to 'accidentally' pass through any barrier, so long as nudity or naughtiness lies beyond. Scrunchies or other indicators of sexy times in progress will have disappeared, making you apparently not responsible and allowing you to blame the victim.

Passive: When you yourself are being nude or naughty, barriers hindering the way to your own presence are 1% likely not to.

And of course you spoke too soon.

You look at the last paragraph again.

So. So, if you use the active form of the skill, it levels up. And then anyone can walk in on you while you're… playing with yourself. Or having sex. Or just being naked. That's… honestly you're not happy with this aspect of ero-life. But after another 8 PRV this will probably seem naughty and exciting or at least tolerable.

It's only a 1% chance per attempt, and in the time left before you reach PRV 24, there probably aren't going to be a hundred people randomly trying your door while you happen to be naked… uh. Uh, your ERO might have something to say about that. God damn it. Well, if you don't want to be exposed, your hair will happen to obscure your naughty bits as seen from the camera angle.

And that's all the skills. You have now read through all of the skills. There is no skill remaining with an ominous title whose text you have not read.

Four minutes left before you need to turn over the key to this motel room.

So, before then. Before you leave. While you still have the mirror. It's still scary to think about, but… you can't just walk out of here with this unique fireplace hair that everyone now remembers Cinderella Sheen having. You need to figure out what to do about that, and it'll probably be the most consequential choice you make today, philosophical quibbles about free will aside.

(You can only choose one of these options. Whatever you choose, the larger consequences of the choice are permanent and cannot be undone by later votes.)

[ ] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be straight, black, and shoulder-length.
[ ] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be normal.
[ ] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be common. That way nobody will think it's odd that Starry Starr and Cinderella Sheen both have fireplace hair, any more than it would be surprising if you both had straight black hair.
[ ] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be short black hair before yesterday and fireplace hair after yesterday.
[ ] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be Starry Starr's hair instead of Cinderella Sheen's hair.
[ ] You know you're overthinking this. You understand what the problem is, just decide that your hair has solved it. (You are not ready to recite this aria.)

2.2 [CA]: Slice of Life

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 10 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be short black hair before yesterday and fireplace hair after yesterday.
No. of Votes: 18
pepperjack
abyssmal_kismet
Aigloss
Bob Saget
crystalcat
hamof
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
HotaruSama
Koden
kriogenik
Malbutorius
mallix
Master Basher
OSRfanatic1
PyroTechno
ScrewFate
TricksterPriest
zup
[X] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be straight, black, and shoulder-length.
No. of Votes: 13
Raron
Arkatekt
Cmdr_Anax
Epicr
Gingganz
iamnuff
inverted_helix
Lord Sia
Malaquez
QuestionableLurker
ShaperV
wasprider
Zameen
[X] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be Starry Starr's hair instead of Cinderella Sheen's hair.
No. of Votes: 3
january1may
aeroprime
DarkLight140
[X] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be short black hair before yesterday and fireplace hair after yesterday.
No. of Votes: 1
UndecidedDice
[x] Maybe you're overthinking this. Just tell your hair to be common. That way nobody will think it's odd that Starry Starr and Cinderella Sheen both have fireplace hair, any more than it would be surprising if you both had straight black hair.
No. of Votes: 1
murklins
Total No. of Voters: 36

You are staring at yourself in the mirror. Staring at your hair which is doing everything short of glowing and crackling in its attempt to be a cozy fireplace. Which would have been fine on its own, if not for the part where it has always looked like that. This is not a promising start to your Sanity-Restoring Normal Day.

You thought of telling your hair to be inconspicuous shoulder-length black hair. But… you have a feeling your hair might not like that. Especially after you expressed everything inside you into a hairstyle and it was awesome fireplace hair. You have a feeling that if your conscious mind tried turning that back into boring black hair, the next thing you saw would be pink-violet letters saying:

You have acquired the status 'Rogue Hair'.

Spoiler: What would have happened

Info // Status Effects // Rogue Hair:

By trying to command your hair to look short, black, and boring, your conscious will has diverged too far from the deeper parts of yourself that are more strongly in touch with the concept of 'erogame hair'. Now your hair no longer responds to your overt desires, instead carrying out the agenda of the parts of yourself that felt more enthusiastic about having awesome fireplace hair. Being less limited now by your conscious mind's conservatism, your hair may exhibit moderately greater powers in this state.

This status effect is silly. There is no such thing as Rogue Hair. This entire idea is something you made up by scaring yourself, and then seized on to give yourself an excuse for your actions so long as your hair seemed to be doing them for you.

So. So you are going to try…

You hope to fucking God this doesn't mess things up any further than they are already messed up.

But. Lots of people have hair that is long on Sunday and short on Monday. It's called getting a haircut. It's perfectly normal.

So you are going to try to tell your hair to be short black hair up until when you left your house for Walgreens on Sunday evening, and then awesome fireplace hair after that. That way Blake will still recognize you the next time he sees you. And you need to do it soon, so you can finish checking out of the motel room.

You set your state ID down on the bathroom counter, so you'll be able to see if this worked.

"Style, on," you whisper, not without trepidation, and the feeling of the mousetrap being pulled back and set sweeps through you again.

You close your eyes.

You open them.

No. No you are not doing this. You are not messing with the timestream, in a hurry, just because the checkout time for this room is fast approaching and you are scared of another sixty-dollar charge. Yes, sixty dollars is a lot of money but it is not worth hurrying this. You don't want to lose sixty dollars, but you even more do not want to see pink-violet letters saying:

Info // Skills // Reality Skills // Time Braids:

Time Braids: Lvl 1 (0.5%). Active and Passive. 1 WTF / WTF.

A skill created after some complete fucking lunatic tried to alter history using her fucking hairstyle. Go take a flying guess what this skill does, because the Erogame doesn't even fucking know.

You take a deep breath, consciously relax despite the approaching financial pressure, and try to think this through in more detail.

Your change of hairstyle has already altered the past, and if that can mess up the timestream then it's already messed up.

…is what you thought at first. But that might not be true.

Even you would have gotten compliments on your hairstyle if you'd worn this hair your whole life. And you don't remember getting those compliments.

So. So you don't understand what did happen. You know your driver's license and your cellphone photos changed to show you with fireplace hair. You know that you don't remember the hair you had before. But you don't know that you actually changed the past.

So you close your eyes again, and try to… gently and timidly make a suggestion to your hair.

So, hair. Uh, one of the things that can happen with normal people's hair, is that their hair changes its outward appearance between one day and another, right? Like for example, people can cut their hair. And then afterward everyone remembers that the person had long hair up to Sunday, and short hair after Monday. Hair that is long until Sunday and short after Monday is a normal and perfectly mundane way that non-magical hair can be. Right?

Your hair does not argue with this.

You press on.

You, uh, you do not want your hair to do anything new and weird that it has not already done. You especially do not want your hair messing up the timestream if that is a thing, you would like your hair to be very careful about that. But you can imagine what it would be like to have short black hair until leaving the house yesterday, and then have awesome fireplace hair after that, in a normal-ish way. Maybe not because you cut it, but the same kind of temporally normal change. So, so you would like the same thing that previously happened to your photo ID because of the fireplace hair, to happen again with your hair having changed on Sunday evening from short black hair to this. If it is okay with your hair and causality and won't mess things up any further. Please?

The surge of power that flows through you is more gentle, this time.

When you open your eyes again, you see fireplace hair adorning the pretty girl in the mirror, and when you look down, you see short black curls adorning the puffy face of Cinderella Sheen in her photo ID.

Your knees feel slightly weak with the relief. You did it. You did it. You still have awesome hair, which is no longer recognizable as Cinderella's hair, and you fixed that in a relatively normal way which did not make your life any weirder---

A skill has been created by a special action! Editing your past with precision, care, and respect for causality has created the skill Time Control.

An intertemporal event has occurred! Your future self has used Time Control to restrict your access to the Time Control skill.

OH FUCKING GOD NO.

Your voice speaks dully. "Info. Skills. Time---"

You can't do this.

You just can't do this. You can't take it any more. You can't read whatever description text belongs to this skill. Whatever this is, it's going to have to wait until you are finished taking your Normal Day. You are starting to enter the dark inverse of your mood back when you were bulldozing your way into this motel and not taking 'no' for an answer, except that this time, nothing is allowed to stand between you and sanity.

That's… probably not a sane thought itself when it comes to a skill called Time Control.

Oh god, you're going to have to do this.

"Info skills time control."

Info // Reality Skills // Time Control:

Time Control: Lvl 1 (0.1%). Sealed.

Control time.

Limitation: Cause and effect cannot loop. The past can be observed, and present records of it edited, but the true past cannot be modified. It is possible to guess a pseudo-future that would otherwise occur if not for the prediction, and for that predicted pseudo-future to interact with the present, but it is not possible to observe the true future.

All subskills of Time Control except the Slack subskill have been sealed.

The remainder of this description text has been sealed until Tuesday at 9am.

Subskill: Slack: Lvl 0 (0%). Active. Special.​

So long as nobody is watching you, or nobody with you is keeping track of time, you can take up to 10 minutes extra each day, distributed whenever you like. You can activate this skill retroactively if you notice that you are running late for reasons that also occurred in the pseudo-future predicted at the time of the skill's retroactive activation.

That's… actually quite nice of future-you. You think. You hope. You hope to fucking God this means you don't have to worry about this until 9am tomorrow.

And it's almost certainly past 11am now which is… it's fucking great, what else can you say. Considering how ridiculously resilient the motel manager was to your charms last night, you don't think you're going to have an easy time getting out of---

A skill has been created by a special action! Retroactively using the Slack skill to grant yourself 5 extra minutes starting 5 minutes ago has created the skill Slack.

You grab at your cellphone, your hands fumbling it slightly due to minor trembling, and activate the screen. It reads 10:57am.

You are… you are actually grateful for this but EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT NORMAL NEEDS TO LEAVE YOU ALONE RIGHT NOW.

You burst through the door of the motel lobby, having grabbed your few things and stuffed them into your purse and yanked on your shoes without socks or tying them. You slam the key to Room 13 down on the counter.

The balding motel manager from last night gives you a brief stern look, and then goes back to doing the paperwork for the early-twenties guy and the overweight businessman who are checking out ahead of you.

…okay. Okay maybe it's not that strict. Or maybe you have to get through the door on time or the manager zaps you with a sixty-dollar charge. You don't know. What matters is that you made it.

The other two motel inhabitants are now staring at you.

The early-twenties guy is dressed in business casual, dark gray slacks and a blue button-down shirt with no tie, and gives a strong impression of 'fresh out of college'. He seems to be carefully not looking anywhere except at your face, or possibly your hair.

The overweight middle-aged man in the business suit is standing next to a black carry-on luggage, and seems to be first in line for checkout. He's giving you a look that you've… never seen anyone give you before. It feels different when it's aimed directly at you. It feels like the word for it should be 'leer'.

It suddenly hits you that you are dressed in nothing but panties and a tight sweater, and that this is not actually normal in real life.

And you are not in the mood right now. You are not the least bit horny. You are not operating on manic forward momentum and driving purpose. You are not at all turned on.

This leaves nothing whatsoever to protect you from the surge of horror and embarrassment that is rising up through your chest and into your head, where it will make your brain wither into a shriveled fig.

"Nice hair," the businessman says. He's looking at your legs.

You reflexively shift to try to hide your groin and only then realize that you've just given him more of a show, showing off your ass as well.

"Hey," says the early-twenties boy. "Leave her alone. Not polite."

The businessman doesn't say anything else, but he's still looking you over, eyes roving up and down.

The manager signs something and shoves it across the counter at the businessman. "Thank you and have a nice day," says the manager. It's an obvious dismissal.

The businessman doesn't refuse it, taking the paper and heading out the door with his luggage.

"It is very nice hair though," says the business-casual early-twenties guy, now signing a paper the motel manager hands him.

"On behalf of my hair, thank you very much," you reply. You look down, hoping he doesn't say any more to you or your hair. You just… you just want to finish checking out. You have a long run home ahead of you.

Is there even any point to going home? Yeah, your house has what are technically clothes. Or… you could just go straight to Goodwill and get real clothes. The central Goodwill store in Norville is way north of here, on Watson and 14th; there's a couple of smaller Goodwills closer but they're a lot less likely to have anything nice. Bus routes 16 to 41 would get you there in probably around an hour…

Wait. That requires you to ride the bus dressed like this.

…The alternative is running home, dressed like this, in daylight.

You shut your eyes briefly. This shouldn't bother you, because you are an erogame character, but that thought doesn't seem to have much force right now.

Could the Erogame supply someone to drive you to Goodwill in exchange for a kiss? No wait never mind you didn't mean it you can run home just fine.

The motel manager hands another piece of paper over to the business-casual guy. "Thank you," the manager says, sounding warmer this time.

The guy also leaves.

The motel manager waits until the door closes behind him, and then silently takes a piece of paper from under the counter, holding it up for you to see.

It's the brief registration form across which you scrawled BED INSPECTOR.

"Uh," you say.

"Drugs you sprayed in the air?" says the older man, his voice now low and stern. "Hypnosis? Why did I think this was reasonable?"

You're so mortified you almost can't speak. Your voice comes out in a squeak. "S-sorry?"

"You're not welcome in this motel," the man says. He takes out a form, already made out, and shoves it across the counter at you. "Get out."

You stumble out the door, the heat and horror in your face great enough that you're having trouble seeing straight. You… you didn't think the Erogame was supposed to allow that to happen.

Maybe if you're blunt enough, maybe if you give no respect at all to normality, then even at ERO 19 people can notice something's wrong. They don't have to think of the Erogame as an explanation, in order to notice that something isn't right.

You want to curl up into a little tiny ball and disappear.

"Hey," says the early-twenties guy, who seems to be loitering near the lobby. He's still carefully looking at your face. "You okay?"

You flinch away from meeting his eyes, but nod.

Spoiler: Can the Erogame supply someone to drive you to Goodwill?

I think the natural difficulty of a distressed-appearing half-dressed fairly-pretty girl getting a ride would be in the range of 50. d100 + ERO*2, with an additional +15 bonus from The Coals Relighted hairstyle since you're doing this for the first time (see Statuses). I'm just going to call this an automatic success at ERO 19.

"You need a ride somewhere?" says the guy. "I can't take you far, but I can do fifteen minutes."

…great.

You lock down your embarrassment and dismay, and look at the guy in his nice button-down blue shirt and dark gray slacks. He's clean-shaven. He's not leering. He doesn't look like he's going to bury your strangled body in fast-setting concrete. You do not want to Ero anyone right now, but… yeah, you'd trade a kiss with tongue for this ride. And there's no quest prompt, which seems like a good sign.

"Goodwill on Watson and 14th?" you say.

"Sure thing." He points a thumb at one of the cars in the motel parking lot, smiling. "Charles."

You let out a breath. "Thanks," you say. "Starry."

You knew in principle that it would be the case, it's not like you've never been in cars, but this is still so. much. faster. than taking the bus.

"It's fine if you don't want to answer this," says the early-twenties guy. Charles. Charles isn't looking at you, eyes staying on the city traffic while he drives. He's speaking in a Southern-states-shaded accent, just a hint of drawling without it crossing the line into stereotype. "But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious. What happened?"

You look away from him and out the window, at the dull-colored cars keeping up with you in the lane to your right. "I didn't like the clothes I was wearing, so I took them off."

There's a laugh from beside you, and you glance back at Charles. "I'm sorry," he says, still looking ahead at the street. "It's just, that sounds like a line someone says in a movie after they've just escaped from the enemy compound and had to get rid of any tracking devices."

After a second, you can't help but smile yourself. "I guess it does."

Charles glances at you, still smiling, before his eyes go back to traffic. "And I could very easily believe that you got your hair done in a more advanced civilization before you traveled back in time."

You roll your eyes. "Oh my fucking god, do not talk to me about time travel right now."

There is a momentary lull in the conversation.

"Can you forget I said that?"

"Not really, no," says Charles, without looking away from the road. "So what happened to put you off time travel? Most people I know would be pretty excited."

You try to figure out how to demur, how to get out of this conversation, but you are just too done with all the weirdness to concentrate. And besides, if you don't Follow the Fucking Rabbit him, there's no way on Earth he'll actually believe you. "Let me put it this way. I don't actually know, but I'll find out tomorrow at 9am."

"Ah," Charles says. "Fucking time travel, right?"

"YES."

"I have to admit you're playing along with the joke well. I consider myself good at judging tone of voice and you sounded genuinely annoyed there. So how did you get your hair done?"

"You'd have to ask my hair that."

"Oh. Can it talk?"

"Not yet."

"So it's alive, then?"

You start to answer, then pause. Yes doesn't sound like the right answer, and neither does no. "I don't think it's the sort of thing that dies or is born?"

"Ah. Sounds like you've been having a pretty rough day."

You think back on the nicer parts of the morning. "It's actually been a pretty good day for me, if you don't count what's attached to my head and the thing with the time travel."

"I admire your being able to say that. I think a lot of people would've let that ruin their day."

"I can appreciate today for what it is," you say, and realize as you say it that it's true. Some part of you relaxes, as you remember that. "I was in a much worse place a couple of days ago."

"How so? If it's okay that I'm asking."

"Oh, you know, the usual for girls. Body image issues, how will any boy like me when I'm like this, that sort of thing."

"I see. What did you look like back then?"

"Less pretty."

"And your name is Starry, huh. On a scale from 1 to 10, how human are you now?"

You frown in concentration, staring out the window at the passing cars. There's the Erogamer's Body skill, but that doesn't seem like much of a difference, at least not yet. "Maybe around an 8? I'm not hiding any tentacles under these baggy, concealing clothes you see me wearing, but you could prick me with an AIDS-infected needle and I'd be fine. I can't get pregnant, I won't get periods, that sort of thing."

"I should've asked, on a scale from 1 to 10, how human is your mind?"

"Oh! 10, definitely. I can fall in love and everything. At least I think so. I'm certainly capable of sexual desire." Mouth. Where are you going with this, mouth.

"Why did you look so embarrassed after you finished talking to Mr. Christian back there? The motel manager."

You wince. "I basically mind-controlled him into renting me a room last night. I wasn't subtle. He noticed."

"Why'd you do that?"

"Didn't want to have to run around like this looking for another motel. It was cold."

"A lot of humans would not consider that a good reason to mind-control someone."

You wince again. "I, uh, might not have been thinking clearly at the time. I had a boy with me and some pressing needs I had to satisfy. The boy is fine now, to be clear. Better than ever. I don't mean that in an ominous way, he's genuinely okay."

"Out of curiosity, if I asked you to grant me immortality, how much would I end up regretting it?"

You pause. "I think if I could do that at all, I'd have to build some unspeakable machines first, and they'd probably have to extract nectar from people for fuel."

"Extract nectar, huh."

"It's not as bad as it sounds. You people produce it all the time and usually it doesn't even get consumed by anything. I mean, I'm not saying I could just walk up to you on the street and take your nectar without you noticing. But if I performed oral sex on you and extracted your nectar right as you were coming, you wouldn't realize anything out of the ordinary was happening." You've given up entirely on controlling the words exiting your mouth.

"Uh. And how unspeakable are the machines we're talking about here?"

"Well, you try speaking them and see how far you get. Anyway, I'm not going to start on that for another day or two at least."

"Got it. So what are you doing the rest of today?"

"Getting clothes at Goodwill---I'm thinking a sexy librarian look, if I can pull it off---and then going to the English Lit class of the girl whose photo ID and credit cards I'm carrying. She's also fine and better than ever."

"And this evening?"

"Possibly lose my virginity, which has to be done under needlessly complicated conditions. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad humanity has made as much social progress as it has, but this would have been tons easier to set up a couple of hundred years ago. Or I might just relax and take the night off. Depends on how I feel at the time."

"Huh. What happens to the other participant in the ritual?"

You roll your eyes in exasperation, though Charles probably isn't seeing it. "Nothing that he won't remember fondly. I have human morals, Charles. They're not perfect, but that's part of being human too."

"Nice to know. What happens if you lose your virginity incorrectly?"

"I'm sad that my first time wasn't properly romantic as I'd consider that, and I miss out on a power-up that would possibly let me get started on building those unspeakable machines."

"Got it. And your longer-term plans?"

"Fuck if I know. I've existed for a bit longer, but 24 hours ago I didn't have much of a life. This is all very new to me. Sex is a concept I find highly intriguing, and I expect I'll be doing a lot of that." You glance back at the older boy and see large beads of sweat on his forehead. God damn it. "Oh, come on. I have not given you enough evidence for you to believe one word of this."

Charles is carefully watching the traffic, his hands gripping the steering wheel normally, but there's a darker-blue stain on the armpits of his dress shirt. "It's the hair, actually. If your hair isn't supernatural then somebody put a hell of a lot of time, effort, and money into doing it. That doesn't go along with the clothes you're not wearing and you staying at a cheap motel. I also note that humans put on socks before we put on shoes, and we know how to tie shoelaces."

"I could've just lost my socks?"

"That girl's purse is halfway open, and the edge of one of her white socks is sticking out from where you stuffed it in there."

"I was in a hurry!"

"Humans put on socks before shoes even when we're in a hurry. So. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much trouble is my planet in?"

You sigh. "I know a lot less than you might think, but I'm not aware of any catastrophes in progress. Unless you count global warming."

"And my chances of being dragged off by the Men in Black, or your own kind, now that I've given you a ride? I'm aware that I'm not the main character in this movie."

"I would not have accepted a ride from you if I thought you'd end up getting hurt! This isn't that kind of movie, so far as I can tell. More like slice of life, and this is what happens to me on Monday morning."

"Sounds like… quite a life."

"It beats not being alive. Take it from me." You can't help but smile again. This whole conversation has made you feel a lot better, somehow. You are no longer Not In The Mood. "Hey, you want some sort of boon from me in exchange for the car ride? Not swearing to anything and I'm pretty weak right now, but in a month I might be able to do all sorts of things. Especially sex-related ones."

"This sounds like the sort of poor life decision that ends with my living brain floating in a jar."

"I'm not that kind of entity, I swear to God." You look out the window, and confirm that you're maybe a couple of minutes off Goodwill if you're judging the distance correctly. "You gave me a car ride and… actually helped me cheer up a lot. I mean, yesterday I was all like, 'Now that I have this body I will let nothing stop me! I shall meet all challenges and overcome all obstacles in my way!' And then this morning I got all freaked out just because of accidentally summoning something from outside of reality as even I know it when I tried to dry my hair after a shower, and then getting tangled up in intertemporal bullshit when I tried to fix that. I completely forgot how much better off I am than the day before yesterday." The car has slowed to halt, and you glance out the window at the red traffic light, another interesting thought crossing your mind. "You know, you could also touch this body a bit as your payment. So long as you don't try to take my virginity, I wouldn't stop you and neither would my hair. We're at a red light, you could take your time."

"I'll… pass."

"I'm probably going to be famous someday. You can tell everyone that you were the first mortal ever to fondle my nipples. I wonder if they start out erogenous or if I have to get worked up first?"

"This is not how I expected my day to go when I woke up this morning." Charles has somewhere acquired a glazed expression.

"You're telling me that? At least you still have a linear timeline and you can comprehend your own hair."

"Consider my privilege checked. Starry, why are you taking off your sweater?"

"Because I know you want to look."

Charles is looking at your face, and then, helplessly, his eyes drop to your breasts. You arch your back proudly, put your hands over your head, twist your torso slowly back and forth a bit, and go through a few more poses.

After a while, Charles says, "Shouldn't the traffic light have changed by now?"

"Not in my opinion and mine is the opinion that matters. Changed your mind yet about touching me? I can pause our personal time for about five minutes total before I have to let go. Uh, but don't look at the car's clock, that breaks the---god damn it, Charles."

"Sorry." The light changes to green, and the car accelerates forward again.

Charles doesn't say anything more, and you glance at him with concern. You wouldn't have thought that would have been the thing to freak him out after everything you'd said already.

Then you realize that your use of the Slack skill is the first time Charles has actually seen you do anything unnatural. And that, despite worrying enough to sweat, he might not have totally believed you. Until now.

Somehow, you manage not to thunk your head repeatedly against the car window at your side.

Okay. This has gotten serious. You ought to figure out something to say to Charles to… undo some of the false impressions you might possibly have given him. Unfortunately, you're not seeing where you could start walking back your steps. There's talking yourself into a verbal corner, and then there's crawling for five minutes down an increasingly narrow conversational cave tunnel with no room to turn around.

"Charles?" you say, your voice a bit softer this time. "I'm worried I've given you a more alarming impression of me than is in fact deserved. 10 out of 10 human mind, I can fall in love even if I can't get pregnant, I have human morals complete with my not being perfect, I might hold the UN hostage at some point but I'm not setting out to actually hurt anyone."

…it's possible you're not pleading your case in the most persuasive imaginable fashion.

Charles doesn't look away from the road. "But you are going to build unspeakable machines?"

"Anyone would do that if they could! You'd do it too!"

Your future does not contain a shining career as a defense attorney.

The car pulls into Goodwill, and parks in a space far from the entrance or any other cars. For lack of any better strategy, you start pulling on your sweater. You really really need to say something reassuring to Charles before you leave, but, putting yourself in his shoes, you can't imagine what 'Starry' could possibly say at this point that would let him travel cheerfully on his way.

"Hey," Charles says when your sweater is back on.

"Yeah?" you say a little nervously.

"Want to go on a date, Starry? I need to head off to make a couple of deliveries now, but I can pick you up from here at 7pm, or somewhere else if you like."

You can't stop your jaw from dropping. You don't even know how to describe the category for which this is the Guinness World Record.

When you don't answer after a few seconds, Charles keeps talking. "I'm thinking dinner and ice cream, take you dancing, show you the world now that you're in it. Maybe if you see the beauty of existence, you won't destroy civilization. That type of thing. 7pm work for you?"

[ ] This is the most courageous pickup any man has ever tried, and it would take a stonier heart than yours to not be impressed.
-[ ] Don't try to talk Charles out of his current impression of "Starry." There was a point where you should have stopped, and you have clearly passed it, so keep going and see what happens.
--[ ] Maybe if you play your cards right, Charles will try to steal your virginity so that you can't get your power-up (he thinks).
--[ ] Let Charles take the lead. His date with Cthulhugirl goes wherever it goes.
-[ ] Confess to Charles that you're actually a human girl empowered by forces you don't understand, not something out of the night sky.
--[ ] Tell him about the Erogame, if the Erogame lets you. You need to talk to someone about this, and Charles seems impressively stable.
[ ] Charles isn't seeing the real you, just the sex-crazed eldritch abomination he thinks you are. He doesn't want you, he wants to save the world from you. Pass.

2.3 [CA]: Dreams of Sanity

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 12 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] This is the most courageous pickup any man has ever tried, and it would take a stonier heart than yours to not be impressed.
-[X] Don't try to talk Charles out of his current impression of "Starry." There was a point where you should have stopped, and you have clearly passed it, so keep going and see what happens.
--[X] Let Charles take the lead. His date with Cthulhugirl goes wherever it goes.
No. of Votes: 17
Malbutorius
Aigloss
Arkatekt
BastetsChosen
Fade to Silence
HotaruSama
inverted_helix
january1may
kalistira
kimagurena65536
Lu Bu
Lunaloyalist
Morale
Orz
pepperjack
PyroTechno
Tesla
[X] This is the most courageous pickup any man has ever tried, and it would take a stonier heart than yours to not be impressed.
-[X] Don't try to talk Charles out of his current impression of "Starry." There was a point where you should have stopped, and you have clearly passed it, so keep going and see what happens.
--[X] Maybe if you play your cards right, Charles will try to steal your virginity so that you can't get your power-up (he thinks).
No. of Votes: 10
ScrewFate
asdo
GulibleLeprecon
kriogenik
ltmauve
mkire
Spectral Waltz
wasprider
Xyarlothep
zup
[X] This is the most courageous pickup any man has ever tried, and it would take a stonier heart than yours to not be impressed.
-[X] Confess to Charles that you're actually a human girl empowered by forces you don't understand, not something out of the night sky.
--[X] Tell him about the Erogame, if the Erogame lets you. You need to talk to someone about this, and Charles seems impressively stable.
No. of Votes: 5
TricksterPriest
abyssmal_kismet
Bob Saget
Gingganz
Myardius
[x] This is the most courageous pickup any man has ever tried, and it would take a stonier heart than yours to not be impressed.
-[x] Confess to Charles that you're actually a human girl empowered by forces you don't understand, not something out of the night sky.
No. of Votes: 1
murklins
[X] This is the most courageous pickup any man has ever tried, and it would take a stonier heart than yours to not be impressed.
-[X] Don't try to talk Charles out of his current impression of "Starry." There was a point where you should have stopped, and you have clearly passed it, so keep going and see what happens.
No. of Votes: 1
Cmdr_Anax
[X] This is the most courageous pickup any man has ever tried, and it would take a stonier heart than yours to not be impressed.
-[X] Confess to Charles that you're actually a human girl empowered by forces you don't understand, not something out of the night sky.
--[X] Tell him about the Erogame, if the Erogame lets you. You need to talk to someone about this, and Charles seems impressively stable.
---[X] On a scale from 1 to 10, how much wierd shit do you deal with on a regular basis. And on a scale from 1 to 10, how much sanity do you still retain, and any advice on the matter...
No. of Votes: 1
Master Basher
[X] This is the most courageous pickup any man has ever tried, and it would take a stonier heart than yours to not be impressed.
-[X] Don't try to talk Charles out of his current impression of "Starry." There was a point where you should have stopped, and you have clearly passed it, so keep going and see what happens.
--[X] Let Charles take the lead. His date with Cthulhugirl goes wherever it goes.
--[X] Me̱̗̼̼̞̯͘e̬̦͔̜̱ͅt̴͈͚͙̤ ̨̫o͚̤̪̖n̟͉̘̺͇͓ͅ ̘͓̙̞͜6̱̥̫͖̕t̬̬h҉̬̭͓ ̸͍̫̺̣͍̙S͏̞t̺͔̪͙ ̢̯͖n͕̭̹̭e̟͉͇͇̺̥á̲r̺̱ ͕̹L̡̗̠͚u̝̭̯̟͓̺t̥̬̲͝h̥͚e̤r̵̻̬̠̬͖͔ͅ ҉̤̝͔A̡̞̦v͡e.̮̯
No. of Votes: 1
Mastigos2
Total No. of Voters: 36

You have heard about that thing where men show their courage in order to impress women---never directed at you, of course. You never understood before why that was supposed to work on you. But this. This. The phrase that comes to mind is "brass balls massive enough to have their own gravitational field." There are women who could turn down this man, but you are not one of them. The nature documentary's voice-over is saying that the male has successfully impressed the female and may now attempt mating.

"Corner of College Avenue and 12th Street, I'll be waiting outside the Starbucks," you say. It's close to college, and a direct bus ride from your house if you head home first.

"Sure thing," Charles says.

Pink-violet letters appear floating in the air.

"Oh, and skip the dinner part of the date," you add. "I'm still traumatized by the idea of eating. I realize I have to do it, but it'll be a while before it starts being enjoyable." You are not yet absolutely, absolutely, absolutely sure that your BOD prevents you from ever becoming fat again.

"Sorry," Charles says. He actually looks apologetic.

You give a small, nervous chuckle. "You had no possible way of knowing that."

Charles nods. "Ah, I'd ordinarily tell you my last name at this point, what with us going on a date and all, but I don't actually know if it's safe for me to speak my true name to you."

Quest available: Seduce, Contain, Protect

When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, he kept his composure, asked intelligent questions, and finally invited the eldritch horror on a date. Maybe if he went on interacting with her, he could persuade her to be nicer to humanity, or figure out something else to do about this situation. Besides, she was cute.

Lure this well-intentioned mortal into deflowering "Starry" in an attempt to prevent her from powering up… an attempt that will play right into her hands. And into your vagina.

Success: Loss of virginity
Failure: ??
Accept: Y/N

"It is far too late for you to refuse me your name, Charles Adan," you intone. Uh, wait, maybe that was a little too ominous. You smile brightly. "Kidding! There aren't actually any rules like that."

"That's good to hear," Charles says. "Sorry if I can't take your word for it."

An awkward silence fills the small volume of the front seats, until you realize that it's probably the girl's job to decide when she's allowed to leave the boy's car. "'Bye?" you say. "Uh, see you at 7 at College and 12th?"

why do you get so much less articulate the instant you start seeing the boy as dating material, fuck you SED 9 fuck you

You open the car door and step out, managing to poke the 'N' option on the quest along the way. Feeling oddly reluctant to go, you turn away from Charles and begin walking towards the Goodwill.

There was probably some other way you're supposed to behave, some ritual unknown to you for what the girl says after she accepts the date. Oh, well. Starry just got here from outer space. He'll forgive.

You hear the sound of the car pulling out behind you, and you manage not to turn around to stare stalkerishly at Charles's car as he drives off.

…You have a date.

Ohmygod youhaveadate. And it's with a guy who's cute and keeps his composure when faced with eldritch horrors, like holy shit that guy. OhmygodyouhaveaDATE! You can barely stop yourself from skipping---

Why stop yourself? You skip off across the parking lot to the Goodwill entrance, leaping cheerfully from foot to foot in the half-gravity of a thin person.

Oh, and if the Erogame is listening: while you're certainly grateful to the Erogame for making it possible, you would appreciate the Erogame keeping itself out of your way tonight. This isn't a quest, this is your first date. Not a normal date, yes. It's obvious this date was set up at ERO 19. But now it is your first real actual date.

If Charles decides for himself to steal your virginity, that's… actually scary to think about, but you'll let him, probably. If Charles seems to be fishing for hints about how to take virginities safely or seal Starry's power, you'll drop those hints. But you are not going to prompt him into it, and if the evening ends with a lot of oral sex, that's fine too.

Though one way or another, there is definitely going to be oral sex tonight. You have to find out what Charles's nectar does.

But aside from that, it's his lead.

The doors into the Goodwill swing open around you, and you skip inside clad in your panties and sweater.

Random bystanders are gaping at your hair, and then looking at your legs, and not saying anything. You manage to ignore them. It's a clothing store, they're the odd ones for coming here when they already have clothes.

Browsing through the rows of hangars reveals that Goodwill's clothing selection in your new size is…

Spoiler: Does Goodwill have clothes?

Well, of course Goodwill has some clothes. The question is, does Goodwill have clothes befitting the Erogamer?

50 difficulty: sexy outfit, this auto-succeeds barring a critfail
70 difficulty: awesome outfits
90 difficulty: stunning outfits and perfect sexy-librarian cosplay for Glynda Goodwitch.

Rolling d100 + (ERO=19)*2 + 15 (Coals Relighted)
2 is a critical failure as bad as a 1 (Coals Relighted)

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 31+53 = 84

For: Goodwill clothing

Rolled on: May-10-2017, 01:01pm

See dice roll details

31

…as good as it can possibly get without literally containing a perfect Glynda Goodwitch cosplay outfit. Is this the Erogame's work? Of course it is. Once again you love the Erogame forever.

The decorative long-sleeved white shirt that you find for your sexy librarian outfit is a little worn, and probably out of date for This Year's Hottest fashions, whatever they are; you wouldn't know, fashionable doesn't come in fat. You make a mental note that you'll need to stick to dating boys until you can afford clothing that will pass inspection by girls.

Further hunting provides a black feminine suit jacket with only an inside rip, no damage visible from outside. And a perfectly matching miniskirt that goes a third of the way down your thighs.

You go to the small stand of used prescription glasses, and hunt through until you find a pair of glasses that looks like it should match the outfit. You say a mental prayer to the Erogame, and put the glasses over your face.

The blur that settles over the room lasts for a few seconds before inverting, the image in your glasses becoming clear and the peripheral vision outside the glasses going blurred.

Meganekko: Lvl 1 (1%). Passive.

Your eyes change to require whatever prescription glasses you're currently wearing. You may at will temporarily prevent your eyes from reverting, if you need to be adorably blind and helpless with your glasses off. Give them back, please!

+5% to SED for characters who like intelligent girls. -5% to SED for characters who don't.

When you approach the shoe rack, it's obvious which high heels you're meant to buy.

You sit down, take off your horrible gym shoes, and carefully insert your bare toes into 4-inch, narrowly spiked, subtly glittering dark scarlet high heels.

Now for the hard part. There's been exactly one time in your life when you've worn high heels. It was that time when you twisted your ankle and found out that high heels didn't make you pretty enough to be human anyway.

You very carefully stand up in the high heels, and manage to not fall over instantly. You take a step. Another step---yikes. You balance yourself again on the narrow spikes. You only have to avoid twisting your ankle again for a few more steps, right? Another step. Another.

Come on, Erogame, female characters always wear high heels. Step, step. They run in high heels. Step, step, shit you catch onto the shoe rack with your hands to avoid falling over, and barely manage to avoid taking down the rack with you. Step, step. Female anime characters have martial arts fights in high heels. The Erogame can't possibly lack a skill for…

Violet text appears before you and a tiny squeal of joy escapes your throat, followed by subvocal whispering.

High Heels: Lvl 1 (0.2%). Passive.

Negates all movement, dexterity, and combat penalties from high heels. Your High Heels skill is added to the level of all High-Heeled subskills when calculating their effectiveness.

You're standing straight and upright, now. Stable as if you were wearing gym shoes.

You will never stop feeling happy about these gifts. Never. If you ever become blasé about this you will find some way to erase your own memories just so you can appreciate it again.

…now you have everything you need.

Your hands are trembling, as you step into the fitting room and close the door. Some part of you still doesn't believe, is still waiting for the axe to fall, for the fashion police to burst in and prohibit you from wearing nice things. This is it, this is the true end of the road that began on Sunday afternoon.

First, you try putting on the glasses and looking at yourself still wearing the sweater, upper body only.

Spoiler: Glasses and sweater

That's you. That's you in the mirror. Maybe not exactly, but so much closer to what Cinderella Sheen looked like inside. You didn't know that you were always wearing glasses, somewhere inside your heart, but you were.

Your breath hitches a couple of times, but you don't cry.

You take the sweater off. You put on the white shirt, leaving a few buttons unbuttoned, and the miniskirt… this outfit needs pantyhose. You take the Walgreens pantyhose out of your purse, and put that on. You put on the high heels, and the glasses again. Then you give the mirror a stern look: just how do you intend to pay off these library fines, mister?

Spoiler: Stern librarian

Now.

Now it is complete.

Now you are truly an erogame character.

Another little sniffle, although you've decided that you still aren't crying.

Or… you can button the top buttons of the shirt, let out your smile, and…

Spoiler: Smiling librarian

You recognize her too. That's a girl who gives advice and helps with homework. She might be seduceable, but more probably not. At some point she will be taken hostage by the villain.

Or you can put on this suit jacket…

Spoiler: Suited up

Your breath hitches again.

This… this isn't a two-dimensional character. This is an attractive, fully dressed girl going about her own business. The protagonist will need to warm her up and become friends with her before working up the courage to ask her out. This girl has a plot arc.

With tremendous reluctance, you change back into your old "clothing" and head back into the Goodwill.

You still need more clothes. Those were all college-attending girls. They'll be good for anything you need to do on the Norville U campus during daylight hours. But tonight, you're going on a date. None of these four girls are going on a date. They're certainly not Starry going on a date.

Starry needs a dress.

Starry needs a dress. And it has to let her learn to dance, so nothing floor-length. And, as even you know, it has to go with her fireplace hair.

A heart-pounding search through the Goodwill later, hardly daring to hope the Erogame will be even more accomodating, and then your breath stops again as you find what you're meant to buy. Back to the changing room and---

Spoiler: Starry's dress

Of course, there's a reason this beautiful, beautiful dress ended up at Goodwill. The lace at bottom is a bit ragged in places, the edges worn here and there; and there's a long tear up the right side, causing the dress to part around your hip and showing through that part of your flesh.

It looks… right. On 'Starry', with her hair, it looks right. If you know what 'Starry' supposedly is, the frayed look of the dress makes her look even eldritcher.

You won't be able to wear this pantyhose, though, or your panties. The edge of the pantyhose is showing through the right-side tear, obvious on your hip.

You smile at the mirror, feeling beautifully perverted inside. Simple problem, simple solution. And that's Starry taken care of.

But you're missing another word in this new language. Non-eldritch Starry Starr needs her own outfit, one that's… skimpier. Not like she's half-dressed, not like she lost her skirt and was forced to run around in panties. Starry Starr needs an outfit which proves that she dressed inappropriately on purpose.

For… grinding BOD. Or for making sure you can grind Ero Environental Resistance. Or just indicating, um, when you want to indicate it, that you are clearly, um, ready to do things with the right boy, if he says the right things. So that he knows you're not the type of girl who… doesn't go home with anyone at the end of the night. The part of you that's feeling everything clicking into place is thinking of these girlforms as a language, as symbols, as thoughts. And one of the thoughts you'll want to express, at some point, is I know what I'm doing here.

Okay. Let's be clear about this. You want to be able to dress like a slut.

Not tonight, not tomorrow night, and it definitely has to be after you lose your virginity. But before long there will be a night where you dress like a slut, and get taken home by a man who wants a slutty girl and knows what to do to her. You don't know, but you want to find out.

You're blushing furiously at the mirror. Your PRV hasn't increased again, yet, but you have a feeling that you might be seeing a violet box sometime soon.

This clothing search is harder; this time the Erogame doesn't seem to be helping, or maybe the good folk of Goodwill just don't deal in slutwear. There are clothes that would be see-through if you wore no bra or panties underneath, but that doesn't say the key thought clearly enough. A woman can wear see-through dresses, and just intend to show off her body, not to advertise sex. It can't be lingerie, even if Erogame Logic lets you wear it in public, because that just looks like the person is dressed for the wrong context. The clothing needs to communicate that you know what your clothes are saying.

Maybe if you use a shirt that's way too small, and tie it in front, and combine that with a miniskirt that's even shorter...

Spoiler: Slutty

It's going to take a few more PRV points before you can wear this, but it should work.

A final run through the Goodwill nets you one very ordinary-looking outfit that would help you fade into the background, if you ever figure out how to have normal hair again. And last, some short-shorts and a sports bra that will do for running, to which you are already addicted.

Okay. Okay, now for the horrible question that you've been putting off as long as possible, to minimize the total duration of mental distress. What does all this sum up to. You've been trying not to look at the little handwritten dollar amounts, but you couldn't help but glimpse some of them, and they are… large, for a Goodwill. $8 for the high heels. $10 for Starry's dress. The suit jacket is $14.

You look at the colored tags. Everything you picked out is either a red tag or a green tag.

You look up at the ceiling, at the Goodwill's posted schedule of discount tags for today.

Red tags, special sale today, 75% off. Green tags are clearance today, everything green is $1.99.

Nobody who has not been you in this moment can possibly know the true meaning of happiness.

You take everything to the checkout counter, feeling like you're floating in even less gravity than before. The skirt, the shirt, the vestcoat, the high heels, the beautiful dress, the glasses, the slutwear, normal clothes and running clothes. The entire total comes to twenty-three dollars.

As soon as you leave the store, you step aside from the doors, and change into the suit-jacketed girl, the one who has a plotline. One man leaving the store stops to leer at you, and you ignore him to finish dressing.

You toss your gym shoes in a garbage can.

There's no reason for you to ever again wear any footwear besides high heels.

"That's lovely hair."

"Thanks."

"Where did you get it done?"

"By a relation that wouldn't do it for anyone else, sorry."

You are trying to hide in a rear corner of the bus. It isn't working. People cross the bus to come over and compliment you. Now that you are no longer half-naked and being an out-of-place object that is somebody else's problem, every single person who sees you seems to feel the need to verbally appreciate your hair.

Honestly, there is a certain warm feeling to everyone you meet complimenting you on how you look, but that's probably going to get really old after another two or three years.

You need at least the option of a hairstyle that isn't quite as… attention-grabbing. Unfortunately, you have a feeling that your hair has high standards. For your hair to consider a hairstyle as worthy, that hairstyle needs to have a meaning and a history. And that meaning has to be related to you, it can't just be George Washington's hair or whatever. You don't know of any awesome hairstyle that is imbued with deep meaning and has a history that is relevant to your life… at all, actually. Never mind a hairstyle with a history and a meaning that makes it look inconspicuous. And you are not using the skill However I Like It to directly imbue your hair with the property of "being less noticeable", because you are capable of learning from your life experiences.

From within your purse, your phone chirps.

Who would be---Mom.

Your heart lurches. Mom has just got around to checking her personal phone at work, and found a text message from her missing daughter saying that she kidnapped an innocent boy and is still technically a virgin.

What will Mom say? What could she say?

You take out your phone and look at the preview screen.

OK honey! Love you! <3

It could be worse. Mom knows you're alive, and she's not hurting.

…you really need to figure out something to do about this.

--++​

After a few seconds, your phone chirps again.

Let me know if you won't be home again tonight, okay honey?

You text back with fingers that tremble slightly.

I have a date at 7pm! He's an older boy named Charles, and he's *so* courageous and cute. We might get a room for the night, but if not I'll come home. I'll text you once I know, and I'm really, really sorry I didn't text you earlier last time.

Phone chirp. Be safe, dear. <3

I always am, Mom. <3

You put your cellphone back in the purse, and look up to the woman patiently waiting to admire you.

"That's the best hair I've ever seen," she says. "Totally literally, one hundred percent honestly, the best. Where did you get it done?"

"Outside of reality."

"Is that in Bakersfield?"

"If it's anywhere, it's probably in San Francisco."

Your high-heels-shod feet step across the sidewalk threshold onto the small but sprawling campus of Norville University. Technically, it's an extension of CSU Bakersfield, but nobody ever calls it anything except Norville U.

Things look… different to you, now. You gaze around at the dozen variably-architected buildings making up the process of a university education, and the greens separating them and paths between them. The familiar waist-high bushes lining the path seem smaller now, more distant. Like there's some new element in your psychology that's making you think you're further above the ground, that other things are lesser compared to you. The pride of a proper erogame character, maybe. You'll have to make sure that doesn't go too far to your head.

Uh. Actually, you're wearing four-inch heels. Nevermind.

You head out along the narrow stone-paved pathway to "ye olde Maynard Building wherein lurkeths the English department," as every student not majoring in English always says out loud whenever somebody from Maynard can hear.

A girl much prettier than you gasps aloud as you walk by. "I can't believe your hair! Where did you---"

"Only one girl ever knew how to create this hairstyle and she died in a tragic car accident on the way to an anime convention."

"Oh," the other girl says sadly, like you just said something completely believable, and then looks away.

That sounded believable to you too. Thank you, hair, you have used up your maximum allowable creepiness allotment for at least the next twenty minutes.

You speed up your pace to a rapid stride, your bag of Goodwill purchases swinging widely from your left hand and your purse flopping against your body. Maybe if you look like you're rushing somewhere, people won't compliment the hair.

You arrive in English Lit class at 1:50pm. You swing your backpack down to beside your desk.

Then you swing your backpack right back up again, and move another three desks over and one row down. Starry Starr should not be sitting in Cinderella Sheen's desk.

Setting down your backpack for real this time, you take out your textbook, notebook, and finished homework assignments----+

1: You did not have your backpack with you when you entered this classroom. It should be lying at the foot of your bed.
2: Your backpack did not contain these completed assignments. They were spread over your room's small desk. They weren't paperclipped together either.

These two facts give you some pause, until you remember the perk But She Was Such a Good Student.

Last night you stayed out late performing your Erogame duties, and headed back to school without stopping off at home. So now the game decides you have your backpack with you anyway, because you are Such a Good Student. Which is… fine. Everything is fine. You are okay with the events that are currently occurring. If Charles Adan can keep his composure around Starry, then you can accept suddenly having your backpack with you. This is a little unnerving, yes. But only a little unnerving. You can comprehend your backpack and it is not attached to your head.

It feels odd, yes, that you didn't notice your backpack appearing and that you can't seem to figure out exactly when you went from not having it to having it. But that's just your life now. It's the type of thing that happens, at least to you. You can't go flipping out at every little anomaly, because then you'll just be flipping all day long and you won't have any flip left for big anomalies.

You glance down at your assignments, and all thoughts of the Erogame immediately empty themselves out of your mind, leaving only the role that Julia plays in Orwell's 1984.

When class ends, you take several deep, quiet breaths, feeling the sense of focus slowly dissolving. That was…

You don't usually think of yourself as having trouble focusing. But being a Good Student apparently means that whenever you do turn your attention to classes, you can focus on the material entirely, without any other thoughts running through your mind. You didn't think about Charles, or the Erogame, or sex or money or your own existence, until the TA adjourned the class.

You are no longer concerned about your education, should you choose to continue it. If you do, you should maybe consider a more challenging subject than accounting.

The TA is erasing the blackboard and you can notice, now, that Mr. Jaquay is cute as well as being an Information Source. Does he seem cuter to you today than he did a week ago? It's hard to tell what might be caused by higher LST, and what might be caused by knowing that you have a far better chance of successfully dragging him into a closet if you so chose.

You don't know that you actually succeeded in connecting with your Past, or with Normality, or that it helped at all seeing Mr. Jaquay's familiar face. But you know that you could stay in college and erogame here, if you wanted, and that you'd exit having learned the material. That does make a difference. You aren't being forced out of anything.

You pack your things into your backpack, as other students do the same. You stand up from your desk, turn around, and freeze.

One row up from where Cinderella Sheen used to sit, an obese girl is heaving herself up from her own desk. She's a bit prettier than Cinderella Sheen used to be. A very little bit prettier. BOD 5 instead of BOD 4.

You've seen this girl in this classroom before, but you don't remember her name from when you all introduced yourselves, or remember anything else about her. She's just another face in the crowd.

For some reason you can't move.

The obese girl leaves the classroom, still imprisoned in her fat suit, trodding with the heavy step of a girl carrying another entire girl on her shoulders.

You look down at your feet, feeling the trembling in your neck. Shame is running through you, and horror, and a question.

Why you.

Why just you.

You're afraid even to think the thought about it being 'unfair' to her, in case the Erogame takes away what you have in order to make it fairer.

You don't dare even question why, if the Erogame can give you this body, it can't do the same for her. In case the Erogame decides you're being ungrateful, and takes it all away, and gives it to her instead.

You're strolling the campus paths again, walking rapidly enough to look busy, like you're going somewhere, although you aren't.

Now and then you pass another boy or girl who'll never have anyone look at them with desire.

Survivor's guilt. You know what this feeling is called, but knowing the name doesn't help.

You… didn't really have friends, in your past life.

But there's a girl named Felice Williamson, who goes to some of the same classes as you, who is heavier than you but has less acne on her face. She doesn't have any friends either.

Sometimes you and Felice would eat lunch, and one of you would talk about some aspect of their life that only the other would understand. Neither of you had any friends, so sometimes the two of you would not-have-any-friends together.

You have a mother that loves you. Felice has a mother, a father, and two older brothers, none of whom you ever want to meet.

Tomorrow Felice is going to her Accounting Systems class at 11AM. She'll notice that Cinderella isn't there. She won't realize yet that Cinderella is never coming back.

Even if a supermodel with Cinderella's name shows up at some point, Felice's Cinderella is never coming back.

But, but you don't know what else to do. If Starry Starr approaches Felice out of nowhere, Felice will just think she's being pitied, or being set up for something cruel. You don't even know what you'd have done, if a girl who looked like Starry had suddenly approached you saying that she wanted to have lunch. Even if you'd trusted her, which you wouldn't have, you would have had nothing to say.

Tell Felice that you're Cinderella? Tell her what actually happened to you?

When she can't have it?

"Party," you whisper. "Players. Character screen. Characters. Invite. Invite Felice Williamson. Invite Felice Williamson to party. Party with Felice Williamson."

No violet screens appear, not even to offer you an error message.

You'll try again when you actually see her.

You stroll on your high heels past another fat boy, and you wonder what would happen if you grabbed his arm and tried to make him thin. If you could do that at all, it would probably wreck something important, like the border between concepts and reality, or the linearity of time. Whatever broke, that boy would think it was worth it.

Maybe there's a machine Doctor Starr can build that will make Felice pretty. Maybe it's a simple machine. Maybe the Mad Inventor perk would let you start building it in the next hour, if you extracted a couple of nectars to get another 600 XP.

Is it wrong, that you're not running right off to do that? Felice hasn't even missed Cinderella in Tuesday's class, let alone realized that the one person she talks to is gone. This is a problem, yes, but it isn't an urgent problem. You do have your own issues to deal with. Felice isn't hurting right now, at least not any more than she's always hurting.

Of course, if you could build a machine to make people pretty, then Felice isn't the only person in the world you'd need to help. Or if you did get an erogame skill for making people pretty, a skill that takes hundreds of DOM or SUB, then… then that would be even worse. Are you a horrible person, if you don't want to spend the rest of your life frantically fucking to get the energy to help an infinitesimal fraction of all the hurting people in the world?

Well, no, you're not a horrible person for not wanting to do that. You'd just be a horrible person if you actually didn't do it.

If you refused to spend a few not-too-unpleasant hours to turn the rest of their whole lives around, even if you would have preferred to spend those few hours differently. If you refused to help them the way you were helped. Then yes, that would make you a horrible person. So you'd better just pray that there's no Erogame skill like that.

Why you? Why just you?

You stop striding, and stare up at the blue sky above you. California cloudless, stretching off forever into featureless blue. Only the atmosphere doesn't really go up forever, it stops eventually, and trails off into space.

There isn't anything on Earth that could create the Erogame, not that you've ever heard of. You can imagine aliens that would be nice enough to want to help you. You can't imagine aliens taking pity on only you and not the hundreds of millions of other people who deserved help more. Did you do something nice for a fairy queen without realizing it? Nothing comes to mind.

"New on campus?"

You bring your gaze back down from the sky, and look at the muscular, handsome boy who's just walked up to you with a friendly smile.

"I really like your hair," he says.

"Why, thank you," you say. "Nobody has ever told me that before."

Isn't that nice? Starry Starr only has to stand still for three minutes, and somebody wants to be friends with her.

This boy would never, ever have tried to befriend the old Cinderella Sheen.

How can you blame him for that? How can you possibly blame him for that? You're not rushing off to use your erogame powers to give Felice a wonderful day. How high would your LST need to be for you to start genuinely wanting Felice's nectar? 30? 40? You wouldn't have wanted to fuck the old you. Be reasonable, Cindy.

"I'm Charles," the boy says.

"No, you're not," you tell him, and turn on your high heel to walk off towards the quiet of the university library.

There's three and a half hours left until you need to leave for your date with Charles at 7pm, and… you don't really know what to do with yourself. Sex things feel like the wrong choice. You're not sure how many more times in your life you'll ever have that feeling, and you want to respect it while it lasts.

There's always the things you usually do when you want to rest your brain. They don't feel right either, but you can't think of anything else to try.

You head over to the section of the library where, by unspoken rules, it's okay for battery-starved students to charge their cellphones in silence and goof off while they do. That row of desks has its own chargers and charging cables, which is good, because you're not sure what happens if you take the USB cable out of your backpack and then do something nonacademic which causes your backpack to disappear.

You pick one of the slightly-secluded computer nooks, sit down, take your cellphone out of your purse---you are now again carrying your purse and a Goodwill bag, and you again can't remember when exactly that happened---and plug your cellphone into the charger. You call up your playlist, and try rewatching a random episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

A few minutes later you switch off the episode in the middle, feeling shaken. Okay, Toph just got locked in a metal box by a couple of kidnappers, and in order to bust her way out, she became the first person in Avatar's history to figure out metalbending. Why is that so disturbing? Yeah, on a literary level, it felt less than fully justified. Yeah, it was too much of a power-up just to break out of a box. Yeah, Toph didn't try hard enough to make you feel like she deserved the breakthrough. You've thought all of this before, if not in so many words. Why are you feeling all wobbly from watching it again?

Maybe now that you're inside the Erogame, watching fiction feels a lot more… personal. What happened to Toph could happen to you. Somebody could lock you in a metal box, and you could suddenly develop a historically unprecedented power just to burst out.

…that's essentially what happened to you on Sunday.

Maybe RWBY instead.

You pull up a random episode of RWBY. Volume 1, Episode 6, The Emerald Forest.

Jaune doesn't know how Aura works. Really? It's practically the foundation of their society. Sure, you personally can't invent electrical things, but you at least know about electrons flowing through wires and how the repulsion of like charges pushes them along.

And now Pyrrha is using her Aura to unlock Jaune's Aura, as anyone with strong-enough Aura can supposedly do.

For it is in passing that we achieve immortality.
Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all.
Infinite in distance and unbound by death,
I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee.

It takes her literally seconds, and now Jaune has superpowers too. A scratch on his cheek heals immediately.

You turn off this video too. You don't need to wonder why you feel upset.

Everyone in the RWBY world who wants Aura should already have Aura, if it's this easy. If you can just get superpowers one day, just in a snap. If there's some unspoken reason why not everyone can have Aura, then why is Pyrrha allowed to give Jaune superpowers? Why him? Why only him? There's lots of people in the RWBY universe who'd want a self-healing body. Jaune hasn't done anything to deserve special treatment.

The people in these videos no longer seem unreal enough. Watching them is like watching a historical documentary about bizarre things that happened yesterday to your next-door neighbor. It's scary when their lives don't make perfect sense, because your life doesn't make perfect sense either. Anything that happens to them could happen to you. Charles could teach you how to dance and your dance moves could start bending the elements. You could find an ancient spirit attached to a Go board. White-and-black soulless monsters could attack your college. Your hair could be replaced by an abstract concept. Your backpack could exchange places with your purse without you being able to remember when. You could wake up tomorrow morning and be back to BOD 4.

You stare up at the high ceiling of the library, in this relatively barren and spartan room now devoted to computer-feeding desks, and whisper, "Existentialism something-or-other freedom is scary," because you're feeling too naked and frightened before the limitless possibilities to compose a snappy-sounding quotation.

You look down from the ceiling, at the familiar desks resting firmly on the familiar floor. You don't actually have any right to complain. It's been almost entirely good impossible things that have happened to you so far. Even your hair hasn't tried to strangle you and never will. All the bad impossibilities you're scaring yourself with are things that haven't happened. Not yet, at least. Maybe not at all. The Erogame has dropped strong hints suggesting that you will not always have the option of refusing the giftsex, but maybe that won't happen until your PRV gets high enough for it to be… livable, at least.

In the end, the rules that the Erogame shattered are the same rules that said Cinderella Sheen's life would always be horrible. And if those rules also previously guaranteed that your hair wouldn't be replaced by a concept, you can accept---uh, you'd better stop this train of thought before you gain another point of ERO.

Music. Maybe you can switch off your brain if you listen to music.

You hit pause on the playlist, and remove your earbuds. This isn't working. Not sure of what you'll do next, but sure it won't be happening here, you unplug your cellphone from its charger and stow it away in your purse.

Three hours yet remain before the Date, and you feel a need to be doing something. After all of this morning and afternoon, you should need to rest, to recover energy for the Date, but you don't feel like that at all. You feel anti-rest-able… oh, that's why it's called "restless." Your brain thinks you should be going places, doing things, making progress on something. Is this what a properly functioning metabolism feels like? You thought thin people watched TV too.

Something inside you is confused, and it's not going to get any less confused from sitting here. You just know that right now, you can't watch videos and you can't read fiction and you can't listen to music.

Maybe being an erogame character is enough like being any other kind of fictional character that you only ever do things that are relevant to the plot.

Okay that is a really unnerving idea and you are starting to freak yourself out again. You need to stop doing that to yourself, it's becoming a self-indulgent bad habit at this point. You may be an erogame character but you're not a fictional erogame character, it's your reality that has become an erogame. You're still a real human girl, flesh and blood. You can feel your own existence. You can look down at your hand and see five fingers that move when you flex them, not little letters on a page saying "I flexed my hand and saw five fingers move."

Only your blood can't be literally exactly human blood because exactly human blood could be infected by AIDS. And, uh, how could "arbitrarily large appendages fit inside any of your orifices" like the Erogamer's Body skill says, if your insides are still made out of girl, or, or, for that matter how would that work if the inside of your body had enough material reality to be made out of any kind of stuff that takes up space---

Maybe the Erogamer's Body description text just means that your vagina can handle a 12-inch penis, and penises don't get any larger than that.

Well, once your hymen gets broken, you could buy a large double-ended dildo, and see if you can shove it all the way into your vagina.

If that works you could try attaching ten of them together end-to-end and see if they can still all fit inside your vagina.

Although it would be pretty awful if the chain broke in the middle and left five of the dildos stuck inside your vagina, shoved too far up inside you for anyone's arm to reach. Wow, what would that feel like if you had to walk around like that all day?

…You need something to do for the next three hours that is not thinking about this.

[ ] Calculus defeated you last time. Let's try it again as a Good Student. A Mad Inventor probably needs to know that stuff anyway. (INT)
[ ] Go to the Starbucks early and practice flirting with any boys who ask about your hair, in hopes you won't be as inarticulate while on your date with Charles. This will probably cause SED to rise, but that stat is low enough that it's fated to rise anyway. (SED)
[ ] Maybe the various bulletin boards around campus also have some Erogame quests on them? (EXP)

2.4.1 [CA]: What Is Within

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 14 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Calculus defeated you last time. Let's try it again as a Good Student. A Mad Inventor probably needs to know that stuff anyway. (INT)
No. of Votes: 18
abyssmal_kismet
Arkatekt
BFldyq
bryanfran36
Cmdr_Anax
Gingganz
inverted_helix
january1may
kaciw
kimagurena65536
ltmauve
Malbutorius
mallix
Raron
ScrewFate
UndecidedDice
Vlad
wasprider
[X] Go to the Starbucks early and practice flirting with any boys who ask about your hair, in hopes you won't be as inarticulate while on your date with Charles. This will probably cause SED to rise, but that stat is low enough that it's fated to rise anyway. (SED)
No. of Votes: 2
pepperjack
BastetsChosen
[X] Actually...on second thought, you want something more stimulating and less prone to brooding about the Ero-game or meta-fiction. Maybe a good book will help. "Complete Works of William Blake" ? You never were interested in poetry before, maybe you'll appreciate it more now. (WIS)
No. of Votes: 1
TricksterPriest
[X] Maybe the various bulletin boards around campus also have some Erogame quests on them? (EXP)
No. of Votes: 1
Malaquez
Total No. of Voters: 22

Spoiler: Stats

LVL 4 (1000 / 1600)

DOM: 192/210
SUB: 108/280

BOD: 16
LST: 12
SED: 9
FUK: 12
PRV: 16
ERO: 19

Stat Points: 5
Money: $992

Another thought suddenly strikes you. Does your nostril count as an 'orifice' that can accept arbitrarily large appendages? You shouldn't be able to fit more than the first knuckle of your finger up there, so if your finger can go in all the way---

Your forefinger is rising to see how far it can poke into your nose when you remember that you are not actually alone in this section of library. There are a few other students scattered across this quiet row of desks, charging their own cellphones. You don't want them seeing you trying to stick your finger up your nose.

You even more wouldn't want them to see you succeed at sticking your finger all the way up your nose.

And you definitely wouldn't want them seeing you curled up into fetal position and sobbing, after you discover that when you stick your finger far enough up your nostril, it starts feeling like vagina. Because of course that's what you'll find. The game wouldn't want a penis violating your nose to get less than full enjoyment from its experience. You'd find the same thing if you tried to push a finger into your belly button. That's all there is under your skin, nothing but an infinite vaginaspace, any gap or tear in your outer shell leading into another endless tunnel of moist flesh. Two men with foot-long cocks could start fucking you in either ear, and never touch each other.

Now you're too scared to try poking a finger into your ear. If that turns out to actually be true, you do not think you could handle the revelation right now. Because maybe it's not just infinite vagina. Maybe something else lurks within your moist non-Euclidean interior. Maybe it's the true creator of the Erogame, maybe it has some use for the tiny wriggling sperm that will squirm blindly towards it, through your damp folds---

Maybe you should spend the next three hours doing your homework ahead of time for the rest of the week. You don't really need to complete the assignments so long as you understand the material, if you understood the Good Student rules correctly. But as a Good Student, doing homework will enable you to stop thinking about non-productive topics, like what waits at the ultimate end of the infinite vaginas lurking beneath your skin.

You're almost about to take your laptop out of your backpack when you halt, struck by a genuinely shocking thought. Instantly, you've spun on your heel and headed off to the spiral staircase leading up to the next higher level of the library building, innerspatial worries forgotten. Your feelings are rarely this unanimous.

…or you could try studying calculus again.

Flat, carpeted spiral stairs pound past underneath your high heels, the impacts sounding louder than your gym shoes even with your lower weight. Tall metallic bookcases move lower beneath you as you rise above them, the high ceiling drawing level with your head.

You've never heard about doctors needing to use calculus for anything, but the pre-med program at Norville U required it anyway, no excuses. It seemed like practically all the interesting professions were gated behind the lock of calculus, usually with no visible purpose except to keep out riff-raff like yourself. But even the renewed possibility of becoming a doctor isn't the point right now, because everything you used to believe about your limits has been called into question. Not just by the Good Student perk, but by the Erogame itself. You could sit down and solve one calculus formula, and see pink-violet text announcing that a skill has been created by a special action and now you've learned the skill Calculus. If that's true then you could be a computer programmer. You could be a physicist.

Being a Mad Inventor probably requires you to learn medicine and programming and physics anyway, right? You might as well get started now. Right now.

Carpeted stairs pour past beneath your feet. You haven't felt this excited and hopeful in… not years, actually, more like a couple of hours. Strictly speaking, the last time you felt this way was looking at yourself in the mirror at Goodwill. And then before that was last night with Blake, and then before that was getting BOD 14, and then before that was seeing the + symbol by BOD the first time the Erogame showed you your status. But it would've been years since you felt this excited if not for everything else.

A murmured consultation with the librarian on duty---she doesn't seem to treat you the slightest bit differently now that you're pretty, which wins her a lot of points---and your heels are pounding carpet toward the row of thick metal bookcases where the math books dwell.

When you get to the right section of the stacks, you are taken aback by the dozens and dozens of different books on basic calculus. Some of them are much thinner than others. One has cheerful smiley faces printed on the spine.

You'd assumed, somewhere in the back of your mind, that the massive tome required by Norville U's calculus course was the textbook. The thought occurs to you for the first time---is this also the Good Student perk nudging you?---that there might've been the option of trying to learn calculus from a different book. Not that you'd had any spare hours for learning while you were busy with college. And all your effort would've been for nothing, if you hadn't been able to handle the standard massive tome as well. And yet…

Your finger taps from cover to cover, and stops on a centimeter-thick black paperback proclaiming itself to be Calculus the Easy Way.

Ten seconds later you're staring inside the pages with jaw-dropped amazement, not knowing whether to laugh, or cry, or maybe just shoot yourself.

There are cartoon books about calculus.

You pull another five books off the shelves, small cheerfully-colored books with a vaguely promising sense about them. Maybe the Good Student perk is guiding your fingers, or maybe you're just imagining that it is. You also don't know if it's Good Student or just a sudden attack of common sense that's making you realize the silliness of having only one introduction at hand while trying to study the basics of a difficult subject.

And then you are heading for the nearest desk, pulling back the uncomfortable wooden chair and spreading books across the gray plastic surface. You barely remember to set an alarm on your cellphone, so that you can head off to the Starbucks nearby when it's dating time.

With a feeling like Blake taking his clothes off, you open Calculus the Easy Way to its first page.

Vibrations begin emanating from your cellphone, and you shake yourself out of Good Student with a feeling like surfacing from underneath deep water. Or like you imagine surfacing from deep water would feel, since you've never actually done that.

You do not suddenly know calculus. You did not see any pink-violet letters proclaiming that a skill had been created by a special action.

You don't know whether or not Good Student actually made you any smarter.

You do understand that a square of length x on both sides, growing to length a tiny bit more than x on both sides, is growing by stacking on another vertical line and horizontal line each of length x; and that a cube of length x is growing by adding on a tiny bit more thickness to three square sides each of area x²; and you understand that this is why if you plot the curve for x² it slopes up at a rate of 2x and if you plot the curve for x³ it grows as fast as 3x² at each point along the way.

You have no idea whether the reason you can now comprehend this is because of the Erogame's mechanic of you becoming better at anything you practice, or because you had better books this time, or because the Good Student perk nudged you into dealing with confusion by consulting different sources, or because your thoughts couldn't be scattered by anger or panic or despair.

It's probably the Erogame. Calculus wouldn't be an effective lock for keeping riffraff out of pre-med courses if anyone could understand calculus just by trying harder. You did try hard the first time. You really did. It wasn't your fault then, just like it's not really your own triumph now.

There's some little droplets of water on the desk. Good Student's focus didn't change the feelings you had about your academic studies, about what you were successfully doing. The Good Student perk didn't stop you from weeping now and then, it just prevented you from being distracted by it and made sure that you kept the books out of the way of your tears.

There is a tiny part of yourself that wishes it had been even easier. Wishes that you could have just touched a math book, like finding a skill book in a video game, and seen a prompt asking you if you wanted to learn the skill Calculus. And then you could've gone on to… to whatever it is that comes after calculus. You could've learned more and more skill books and walked out of this library as a full-fledged mathematician.

But maybe it's for the best that it didn't happen that way. You're not sure exactly what it would do to you to have all that knowledge dumped inside your head. And, and, and besides. It wouldn't have been real. It wouldn't have proven to you that you could do this now.

Even if it's the Erogame that decided you can. Even if you didn't do this by being a better student, but because some unknown power ripped apart the laws saying what wasn't possible, shattered the rules governing what you couldn't do. Even if it wasn't ultimately your own success, still, you can do this now. Not a game skill, you.

Although… you do have the oddest feeling that if there had been game messages, the pink-violet boxes would have appeared right… over… there. Forwards of you and on your right, at shoulder-level. That empty volume of space right there, between this desk and the next one. That's the exact place where there aren't any game messages.

No, you need to stop woolgathering. Good Student time was fun and nice and overpoweringly meaningful and all that, but now it's over. It's time to get back into the world of ERO 19.

You can come back to the library tomorrow. Tonight, you have a date with the bravest man on the planet.

You collect your math books; step over to the rows of metal bookcases to return the Dewey-decimaled books to their proper places on the long shelves (which you theoretically are not supposed to do yourself, but you want to make sure the books are there tomorrow); and head off to the spiral stairs leading down and out of the library.

A skill has been created by a special action! Solving an equation has created the skill Algeb*&@%%*&$!@*-&$%%@#^%#

A skill has been created by a special action! Solving a differential equation has created the skill Calcu@#$#$%-&@##%$#$%^

A skill has been created by a special action! Grasping the underlying intuition behind a formula has created the skill Mathematicia!#%**#^%*&$-%#@^#*&%

A skill has been created by a special action! Technically this game doesn't have an INT stat, but there are still times when the glasses-wearing pretty girl has to talk about quantum mechanics, so instead your diligent study has created the skill Beauty With Brai#$(@&*%$-@%*@#)-$(%-$##$()*$#%$#(@*-%(*#&%$)(#$*%-$#)*(^&$)#(*#@)(*%-$)(*#)@(-&$#(%)$#(*%-"#$%"@#$%&*<#%@#$^-^%@#$#*&$#%-*$&^#*&%$#

Diligent study cau#)(*)$%&#-@($*@#)(*#$

Diligent study causes yo#()*$@#)(*@$#$*)-@{@#$#@$

Diligent study causes your INT to go up by#*%&$%*&$@#*&*$-#@&*$&#@$-&*#@&$-#*(&%($#*@*-$%&)#(@*-@#)(*%#$)(%-&#@)$#@- #@-$%&*@#$#$#@-#@$@#$%%-&*#@%$@#$%&*-&*!@#$-*($#&%)($*%)($-#$()*%)($*%$-#$-)(%*)#$(%*)($#*%*(@#-&)*($%&#@-@&*)*-()&*#$%@$%<>-%$%#$&**$##@$%^$-&$%$#^%^%ained gradual increase in the branching factor and depth of all cognitive searc@#$**#&$%-*$&#%$^%$*-&%*#$%$-*$&%&@##eural plasticity to improve memory bandwith and the precision of skill formati#*&$(@#^%#$-(@*&#$(%#-#*&#@(%-*#()$#@$*%enormalized across all excitatory and inhibitory pathways to preserve the relative strength of emotio^@#%@#*&@%*$%^$#%-*&#@$#^&-@##*&@#moothed over time and rate-limited to avoid personali#@@^@$#*&@*&-#$$##@-$*&#@$especting the invariants of ---+++ while slowly amplif#@*&*#&$*@#$-@#$^@#%%@&$*-&!@#$%&-$#%!#$#-$%&*&@$!#^-#($*%(*&$^#-#()*)$(#%*#@)$-)(@*#)$(*#(@*()#$

You stride away from the library with moderate alacrity along a grass-edged campus pathway. Some leftover fear of visible sweat stains keeps your pace slow enough to be decorous.

You're trying to figure out how to act around Charles tonight. You can't seem to remember how being 'Starry' works, exactly.

Earlier, in Charles's car, everything just came to you naturally when it was all unplanned, just you having fun. But now you need to be a sexy eldritch horror on a romantic date, on purpose, and this is causing your mind to undergo divide by zero errors. That you can't get rid of just by taking limits.

Now that you're actually thinking about it, you have no idea how you're going to pull this off. No idea at all. How were you so good at being 'Starry' in Charles's car, in the first part of the ride, before you were actually trying to seduce him? Was it your SED 9 that made you fall all over yourself as soon as you started seeing Charles as a mating prospect? Is that why you can't get back into Starry's frame of mind? What were you thinking, you should've gone to Starbucks early and flirted with boys to raise your SED, to 12 at least, not run off to learn calculus because of some stupid lifelong dream. Why did you decide not to grind SED again? Oh, right, some dumb idea about not losing yourself to rapid personality changes. That was the wrong decision, wasn't it. Oh god, you're going to screw this up. Charles isn't going to see the eldritch being who intrigued him enough to be deemed worthy of his time, he's going to see an awkward teenage girl pretending to be something she's not, and he'll dump you right there in front of Starbucks and…

Ahead of you on the pathway, your mind half-notes the existence of two girls walking side-by-side in the same direction as you, a pretty-bodied brunette in a short black dress, and a prettier (at least from behind) artificially blonde girl with an even shorter varicolored dress plus colorful jacket.

"Seriously," your ears half-overhear the pretty girl's voice saying to the prettier girl, "I haven't heard a lot of details, but the whisper net says that Alpha Sigma Chi is, uh, not chemically safe."

"I'm not going alone," the prettier girl's voice replies. "Nat will be with me and I don't think he'll let anyone walk off with me even somebody does slip something in my drink."

"Isn't Nat in Alpha Sigma?"

"Right, so I don't think they'd do that to him."

"Rachel, I don't like to say this, but what if Nat is the one who slips you the roofies?"

"Not likely."

You were only paying attention to that with a quarter of your mind.

Until violet letters began floating in the air, following the pair as they walk.

Quest available: Switch and bait

Get invited along to the Alpha Sigma Chi party tonight. Flirt with Nathaniel Miroa until he abandons Rachel Davidson right in front of her, and tries to spike your own drink instead of hers.

Success: +2,000XP, +1 SED
Failure: Rachel gets a free donation of GHB plus some other fluids.
Bonus objective #1: Let Nat have his way with you, then report to the police for blood testing and put a permanent end to his ways.

No.

NO.

Does the game think that because you turned down its previously offered quest for tonight, you have no other erogame duties and need a new quest? Oh fucking HELL.

You pull your cellphone out of your purse and check it. 6:40pm gives you five minutes of error margin, a little more if you run. If you're not at the Starbucks on time, Charles might assume Starry is a no-show. You didn't get his phone number to text him, which in retrospect was unwise of you.

God, fucking, damn this. Damn it! GOD DAMN IT! You are not okay with missing your date with Charles. Your first fucking date. You're also pretty sure that you don't have it in you to just walk away from this. GOD FUCKING DAMN IT.

Think. Think! Okay. Okay, idea.

You tap the prettier girl on the shoulder, putting on what you hope is a serious, businesslike expression. You are still dressed as the suit-jacketed girl, the one with a plotline. "Davidson," you say in that girl's brisk, no-nonsense tones. "I'm sorry, but I need to talk to you for a minute. It's extremely urgent."

The prettier girl gives you a skeptical look. "What is it?"

"I think you'll want to hear this in private." You gesture off to one side of the sidewalk, and then when she's still looking reluctant, say, "Please?"

She doesn't follow you very far off the sidewalk, but she follows you.

You lower your voice as much as you can. "Davidson. Miroa is planning to put GHB in your drink tonight." You don't have to succeed at this quest, just derail it.

Rachel looks more disgusted than skeptical. "So you overheard us talking? Not funny. Who are you?"

Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit, your lips mouth, and then, "I know for a fact that Nathaniel Miroa plans to put GHB in your drink tonight, and that's true, so you believe it---"

"Actually I don't," she says, giving you another disgusted look. "Are we done here?"

There was no surge of energy either. Either you tried to use Follow the Rabbit for something it's not designed to do, or the game won't let you derail its quest this easily.

Rachel turns away. Almost without thinking, you reach out and grab her hand.

The prettier girl turns to look at you, face angry and lips opening, and then she freezes.

However I Like It
It Does What I Want

"All right," you say, as your hair acquires the additional property of the scarlet parts within it glowing darkly red like the coals they symbolize, and the mass of strands slowly rises up and spreads out from around your waist as you exert the small strength the skill allows, "let's start over. Hi! I'm a new face around here! Very new. You can call me Starry, although my real name has a few more syllables than that. I may or may not contain infinite spaces within me." You pause. "So. When I saw you just now, Rachel Davidson, I learned for certain that an unspeakable fate will befall you if you go to that party tonight. But right now I'm also in a hurry to go do something very important to me, and I will be very sad if instead I have to follow you around all night keeping you safe. Could you please just promise me and my hair that you'll stay away from Alpha Sigma Chi parties for a week?"

"Oh-oh-ohkay---" The other girl looks like she's about to faint.

You blink, and then tell your hair to fall back down and stop glowing. "You're not going to the party?"

"No! I mean yes! I, I mean---"

"Great!" you say in more normal tones. "That's a promise, then. Sorry about that, it was for your own good. But my hair and I really do have to run now, bye."

The other girl on the sidewalk, the merely pretty one, is staring at you as you stride away. Did she see something too? Well, whatever, ERO 19 ought to make it okay. The violet letters for the quest are gone, which you choose to believe means that it has been successfully derailed.

You're not sure you did the right thing there, but you're sure it was righter than the other option. Who knows what traumatizing experience that girl might've been exposed to otherwise.

"Erogame," you murmur to the air, "I'm already on an ero mission tonight. Is there please some way I can set my status to busy? Hold all my calls?"

Busy mode switched on. Non-urgent game notifications will be queued for later retrieval.

You stumble slightly in your stride. Wait, really?

…apparently the Erogame sometimes does have the features you want. Come to think, it held your notifications with Blake too, once you became preoccupied enough.

You take out your cellphone to check the time again, and wince. You break into a run for the Starbucks, not even remembering that you're wearing high heels as you do it.

A few people turn to look at you as you run past along the sidewalk, but you have no time for that now.

On the plus side, you've remembered how to be Starry. It's, uh, well, you just be Starry, sort of. The problem is, you're pretty sure that only works for you if you are only being Starry, and does not work for being sweet sexy Starry on a romantic date.

You could just be Starry, and you could leave it up to Charles to make sure her first date turns into a lovely romantic night. He's the boy. That's supposed to be his job anyway, isn't it?

Oh god. Tonight is going to be… God help the both of you.

"Yeah," Charles Adan said into his cellphone. "Yeah, I'll still be driving in, just later tonight. Could be 1am, could be 5am. It depends on how late things go before I head out. Yes, I know that's past your check-in deadline. Something important came up. Extremely important. No, it's not a girl, actually. Got it, box is in the left corner of the parking lot, enter 8319 to get the key."

Charles closed the call and set his cellphone down. Tomorrow would not be fun. A three-hour drive to San Jose, started late at night, followed by not much sleep before his next scheduled delivery. But that, of course, was not important.

William Adan had raised his sons very consistently, to the point where there was no need for Charles to call his father on the phone in order to hear his advice.

Daddiiieeee, I have to go on a date with a being not of this Earth!

Now, Charles, what's always the first step?

Stay calm.

That's right, son. And so long as you follow the first step, you shouldn't have any trouble thinking of a second one.

But Daddiiieeee, it's really scary!

Well then, son, you have a choice. You can either go on a date with a being not of this Earth, or, you can go on a date with a being not of this Earth and be really scared. But I can't tell you what to choose, Charles. It's always up to you to decide which of those two options you like more.

Yeah. Once you'd been put through Dad's idea of child-rearing, there was absolutely no need to call him for advice, ever.

In this situation, though, Charles had to admit his Post-Traumatic Simulated Dad had a point.

Charles drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. There wasn't much point contemplating the scary decision, to go on a date with Starry. That part was already finalized. What he needed to finish deciding now was where to take Starry on their date. It was a decision Charles needed to make in dangerous ignorance, because he didn't know what Starry was likely to actually enjoy. Or more importantly, what activities she'd find persuasive of a truth that couldn't be put into words.

If you already knew that truth, you could put it into words like "life" and "Earth" and "fragile" and "we just got here". But those words wouldn't help explain it to any entity that didn't already understand. It couldn't be put into words, and God help him, his best idea at the time had been to try putting it into a seductive evening.

"Well," Charles said aloud to himself in the car, "at least I know that movies are right out." If his current best guess about the nature of 'Starry' was anything like correct, then she wouldn't take it well if he suggested that she stay motionless in the dark for a long time, watching other people do interesting things instead of her.

Likewise, no high school baseball games where she couldn't jump in and participate. And quiet forest trails were off the list, along with deserted lake beaches.

Not being a Norville native, Charles had given himself an extra hour before the date to grab a sandwich and ask locals about the nightlife. They'd mentioned…

I can't guarantee any particular write-in plan will be in-character for Charles or seem attractive to Cinderella, but attempted write-ins are still welcome. So, where would you take Cthulhugirl for a date in a small city?

Choose one dance-like option:

[ ] A loud dance club of the dubstep, jumpstyle, and clubwear variety. As vibrant and as living as possible.
[ ] An ice-skating rink built into the interior of a local mall. You want Starry to see families and kids playing.
[ ] Write-in.

Choose one non-dance option:

[ ] Comedy improv night at a tavern.
[ ] Take Starry to a bar, and people-watch; you're good at that kind of analysis. Give her a Charles's-eye-view of the seductions going on around her.
[ ] A parkour group holding an organized runthrough of a path threaded through Norville. You already have some skill at that, and Starry might possibly be a fast learner?
[ ] Write-in.

Charles came to a decision, and sat for his car for a while after, composing himself. Sometimes staying calm was harder than at other times.

In time Charles's phone played a soft chime, reminding him to do the second-to-last thing.

Charles opened his laptop and reread, one final time, all of his notes about Starry. Just to make sure he kept in mind everything he could, everything that might be important. After he'd driven his car out of the Goodwill parking lot, he'd immediately parked again, just around the corner of the next street over, and then typed up everything he could remember.

- The entity calls herself 'Starry'. Pretty surprised if this wasn't significant. Obvious things that could be starry: night skies, galaxies, windows into our universe from somewhere else.
- Says she has existed for a long time but been alive less than 24 hours. Starry is extremely happy and enthusiastic about this. Considers herself to be vastly better off than before.
- She's fascinated by human sexuality. Offered me her body on a whim, anything except her virginity. Doesn't care if others see her topless through the car window.
- Body immune to AIDS, incapable of pregnancy.
- Claims to now have a 10-out-of-10 human mind, including having humanlike morals and those morals not being perfect. I have some doubts about that 10 out of 10 part, even taking into account that we bona fide Earth people are a pretty varied lot.
- She's horrified by the thought of eating food. (Does this include flavored drinks? Ask carefully.)
- She urgently required a boy and a motel room to satisfy unspecified needs after her arrival. Claims boy is fine now. Claims she means this in a non-ominous way.
- Stole a girl's purse, clothes, and ID and will use them to attend the girl's college class. Not sure why Starry would do that? I guess if you just got to Earth and are ultra excited about doing Human Things, then mugging someone to attend their college class makes as much sense as anything else.
- Starry stayed at a low-end motel, checked out exactly at 11am. Was wearing white gym shoes with no socks, plus panties, plus a sweater that didn't fit her. She was looking for a ride to Goodwill and knew where that was inside Norville.
- Starry speaks humanese with absolute fluency. She talked in casual, idiomatic English. She never gave the impression of being puzzled by anything I said. She doesn't just understand the words, she knows the ideas the words are talking about. She used the right tones of voice and showed the right facial expressions. She also knew how to buckle a seatbelt.
- She can pause time but only for short intervals before she has to let go. The spell breaks if I look at a clock.
- When I hesitated to speak my full name to her, she knew my true name without being told. Claimed there were no rules about that. Wish I knew exactly what rules she was saying weren't there.
- She offered me a future service in exchange for the car ride. Was emphatic that she wasn't swearing any oaths. I didn't tell her yes but I also haven't told her no.
- Starry has a rule or strong urge about telling the truth, even if she thinks the other person won't understand. She may also have a more humanlike need to talk with someone.
- Admires courage among mortals. Was very impressed when I asked her on a date.
- Can control or influence human minds.
- People can notice Starry's mind control afterwards, if she isn't subtle enough. She was very embarrassed when this happened to her.
- Way too casual about mind control, only ashamed because she was caught. I don't think she has any respect at all for mental privacy. I wouldn't be surprised to find that she read out that boy's entire mind just to learn about English and seatbelts.
- Starry has shaky control of her abilities right now. She messed up her timeline and no longer understands her 'hair'. No clue what 'hair' really means when Starry says it, but she kept mentioning it and seemed to feel great distress over it. Whatever it is, she uses that concept of 'hair' interchangeably with ideas that apply to the normal sense of hair, like it getting wet after a shower. Her visible hair is beautiful, unnaturally so. It was the main time I had the sense that her translator was broken, and I don't mean her language translator. An important part of Starry didn't map well onto human concepts when she took human form, and now it isn't just translating into English as 'my hovercraft is full of eels', her hovercraft actually is full of eels.
- I wish I could remember more exactly what Starry said went wrong with her 'hair'. She kept switching between 'I used the wrong shampoo' and 'I accidentally the whole of reality,' often in the same sentence.
- She'll find out how badly she messed up her timeline tomorrow morning. I don't remember exactly when in the morning, but she knew.
- She intends to build 'unspeakable' machines, but was very vague about their function or purpose. Didn't otherwise give the impression of wanting to hide her intentions. 'Unspeakable' probably literal, as in 'not describable in human language'.
- Very weak on arrival, but regaining strength. Will be far more powerful in another month.
- Gains a big power boost if she loses her virginity in exactly the right way, in a ritual that would have been easier to arrange hundreds of years ago. Other participant supposedly not harmed. She can start making machines immediately after she does this, and she might have tried it tonight if not for our date.
- Her timeline of one month for her to regain her power probably already takes this ritual into account, rather than being shortened by it. She talked as if the ritual was annoying to arrange but she expected it to succeed.
- She might hold the UN hostage at some point for purposes unknown. Not sure if she meant the UN as in a particular building full of ambassadors, or if she meant all the governments in the UN. The latter seems like it would make more sense? She said she wasn't actively intending to cause harm by doing this.
- She's worried she has accidentally presented an alarming picture of herself. She doesn't want to be seen as scary. I'm not sure how well she really understands Earth psychology.
- She's kinda cute, in a terrifying way. If you blank out her words and just look at her face, tone of voice, and body language, she comes across as a manic teenaged girl who just won the lottery. I don't know what's scarier, if the real Starry inside is nothing like that, or if the real Starry inside is exactly like that.
- I think that's all I can remember. I have a worrying sense that I'm misremembering some things and forgetting others and that the subtleties were important. I wish there'd been a good way to unobtrusively turn on my phone and record that conversation.
- Almost forgot: Starry can 'extract nectar' during oral sex. She claimed that this was harmless, and again, it seemed like Starry had strong truthfulness tendencies. I will need to keep this firmly in mind if it becomes relevant later tonight.
- Can't believe I'm actually going on this date. Oh well. Sometimes you have to say 'screw it' and do it. Besides, she had nice tits.

Charles finished reading the list and shook his head yet again. Even with a few more hours' perspective, neither the list nor Starry herself seemed to resemble anything he'd ever heard of, real or imaginary.

The most unnerving part of the whole date, Charles thought, was that he had no idea what happened if he failed to persuade Starry not to do… whatever. That she hadn't explained her goals in plain humanese was not an encouraging sign. Even more unnerving was the prospect that her goals couldn't be explained. Starry had seemed mostly nice, even caring at times, but, well… "I don't want any eels in my hovercraft" pretty much summed it up.

Charles had done his best to consider the obvious solution, trying to set aside the instinctive distress he felt at the thought of punching Starry, let alone trying to kill her. She seemed so much like a human girl in so many ways. Movies would predict the outcome of violence as being 'It turns out to be a big sad misunderstanding' or 'It angers a previously peaceful species' or 'The whole Earth gets convicted of murder in Space Court'. As a key counterpoint, this was not in fact a movie. But still…

Still, Charles had ended up deciding that, so long as it looked like Starry had not actually eaten anyone yet, Earth people ought to be careful not to draw first blood.

Charles really hoped it was his brain making that decision, and not his testicles. It would've been a far easier decision if the cute alien hadn't been growing in power so quickly.

But the other side of the coin was that violence might not work. In a horror movie, Starry would be impossible to keep down permanently until somebody used fire or liquid nitrogen to attack her flagrantly obvious weak point. Charles had a disturbing intuition that, in real life, trying this might not be a good idea. The horror movie's surprise twist might be that the girl part was fragile, and killing it angered the hair.

All in all, it still seemed to sum up to, "Go on the date, keep your eyes open, keep listening, keep thinking, and hope."

Charles took a deep breath. Insha'allah, as the Muslims said: it will be as God wills. He mostly didn't believe in God, but he did appreciate the sentiment. You did the best you could, and the rest was up to God, and you couldn't do any better than that even if God wasn't there.

His cellphone began to play another melodious alarm. Charles switched off the alarm, turned on the passive recording app he'd downloaded, and pocketed the device.

All right.

Here went nothing.

Charles got out of his car, and walked out of the parking lot to find his date for the night.

2.4.b [CA]: Staying Calm

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 16 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[x] A parkour group holding an organized runthrough of a path threaded through Norville. You already have some skill at that, and Starry might possibly be a fast learner?
No. of Votes: 17
fictionfan
abyssmal_kismet
Agilitree
Arkatekt
ChandraMagic
chrnno
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
inverted_helix
january1may
ltmauve
pepperjack
Prustan
ShaperV
TooApathetic
TricksterPriest
wasprider
zup
[X] Take Starry to an arcade to try out a mix of game types. (DDR counts as a dance option, right?)
No. of Votes: 15
pepperjack
abyssmal_kismet
Arkatekt
ChandraMagic
GulibleLeprecon
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
inverted_helix
january1may
Jarudazuigu
kimagurena65536
ltmauve
TooApathetic
VanillaTentacle
wasprider
zup
[X] Take Starry to a bar, and people-watch; you're good at that kind of analysis. Give her a Charles's-eye-view of the seductions going on around her.
No. of Votes: 11
ScrewFate
bryanfran36
Dragonpriest88
Gingganz
GulibleLeprecon
Jarudazuigu
kimagurena65536
Learned Knave
Lunaloyalist
Spectral Waltz
VanillaTentacle
[X] A loud dance club of the dubstep, jumpstyle, and clubwear variety. As vibrant and as living as possible.
No. of Votes: 5
ScrewFate
bryanfran36
Dragonpriest88
Learned Knave
ShaperV
[X] An ice-skating rink built into the interior of a local mall. You want Starry to see families and kids playing.
No. of Votes: 4
Spectral Waltz
Agilitree
Gingganz
Prustan
-[X] Drinks and snacks are okay right? Perhaps bubble tea?
No. of Votes: 2
wasprider
january1may
-[X] If she gets in the mood, and you don't feel like a sleaze ball, take it all the way, the future of humanity might be at stake.
No. of Votes: 2
wasprider
january1may
[X] Take Starry to an arcade to try out a mix of game types.
No. of Votes: 1
Lunaloyalist
Total No. of Voters: 28

Spoiler: Current Stats

LVL 4 (1000 / 1600)

DOM: 186/210
SUB: 44/280
BOD: 16
LST: 12
SED: 9
FUK: 12
PRV: 16
ERO: 19

Stat Points: 5
Money: $992

Status Effects: Technical Virgin
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Charles Adan wasn't literally as nervous as he'd ever been in his life, as he walked up College Ave toward 12th St with an unhurried stride, knowing himself to be precisely on time. He had in fact been more scared than this while giving a speech at his high school graduation. Human brains were funny that way. Funny and very stupid. If he were anywhere near as sensible as he sometimes pretended himself, Charles knew, he'd have been far more nervous trying to save his very species than standing on stage in front of hundreds of his classmates trying not to make a fool of himself.

At the corner ahead of him, there seemed to be a small crowd that had gathered, a dozen mostly teenaged men in jeans and jackets, their collective knot of bodies obscuring whatever they were surrounding that was… that was on the corner of College and 12th that had the Starbucks on it.

Charles broke into a somewhat faster unhurried stride.

Never mind. Apparently he was more sensible than he'd given himself credit for.

The knot of men ahead began clapping and cheering.

Charles broke into a much faster unhurried stride. Really more of an unhurried sprint.

Seconds later, he'd slipped and half-shoved his way between two pairs of teenaged boys and then slowed down abruptly as a college-aged boy twice Charles's own weight turned to glare at him.

In the center of the knot was of course Starry.

Charles's brain took in a number of impressions in rapid sequence:

- Starry was now wearing a dress, and stiletto high heels with open toes over her bare feet. Both matched her stunning lit-coals 'hair' to the extent that any Earthly object could even try.
- Her scarlet-black glittering mesh dress appeared clean, but also torn and ragged. As though Starry had dragged her dress up from an ancient Nordstrom preserved for eons in a city sunken beneath the Arctic Ocean, and then laundered it.
- Starry was not wearing any panties or bra beneath the dress.
- Starry's stolen purse, now accompanied by a Goodwill bag, was resting on the sidewalk near her.
- Starry was staring down at her own toes with her cheeks very red, looking even more embarrassed than the time Mr. Christian had noticed her mind control. Her hands were tightly clutched together.
- Starry had either applied makeup since the last time he saw her, or transformed herself prettier.
- A half-dozen of the boys standing around her, including one that he'd pushed aside not totally gently, were probably all playing for the same college football team.

"Be polite," the football player in front of him said in a low voice, tilting slightly forward a short-shaven head. The head was perched above a T-Shirt displaying three wolves howling at the moon and barely containing around 15,000 pounds of muscle.

"Sorry about that," Charles said. "Starry?"

"Charles?" she said in a strangled voice without looking up, and a current of relaxation seemed to pass through the muscled football player and his friends.

"Oh, you're her date?" said one of the other football players.

"You're in for an interesting night, I'd bet," observed a man standing further back. "Don't suppose it'd happen to be okay if I went and asked her for her number?"

"Starry?" Charles said, in lieu of trying to explain that Starry was too new to Earth to have been assigned a cellphone number yet.

Without looking up from her shoes, the entity picked up and clutched her Goodwill bag and stolen purse, and then slowly fled in his direction.

Charles courteously took her Goodwill bag, which the being didn't resist, and then took her arm in his and hurried her more quickly away from the Starbucks. They passed a restaurant, a used fashion store, an ice cream shop, a tiny nook selling cheap jewelry, and a block later were standing next to his silver Crown Victoria in its lot. Nobody had followed them.

Charles politely swung the passenger's side door open, and Starry dove through the car door as if eager to be sheltered by the metal frame. Shortly after, Charles was buckling in himself as well.

He didn't start the engine right away. "It's fine if you don't want to answer this," Charles said, not being entirely truthful this time. He only knew of one thing that embarrassed Starry and it was being caught at mind control. "But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious. What happened?"

Starry was quiet for a second. Then she looked out the window of the car and said, in a somewhat choked voice, "Not used to some of these feelings."

Charles relaxed slightly, at least compared to his previous state. "Ah."

"I mean, what happened was, I got to the street corner and realized I'd completely forgotten to change into the dress I had for our date. It was how I wanted you to see me the next time you saw me, and it was almost time for you to arrive. If I'd tried to get the Starbucks to let me use their bathroom, I was afraid you'd drive past and not see me and decide I'd stood you up."

"I see," Charles said, mind leaping ahead to the most obvious strategy if you looked at the world the way Starry did. "So you went ahead and changed clothes on the street corner. Most humans would be too embarrassed to do that, just so you know."

"I do know that! And I was embarrassed. I was really, really embarrassed. I wasn't expecting people to, to interact with me. I'd expected them to just not say anything like when they saw me wearing only panties. I definitely didn't expect half of the Norville U football team to suddenly turn around the corner just as I was taking off my shirt."

"I wouldn't have expected that either."

"But it was nice of them to volunteer to stand around me and screen me off while I was changing."

"Their good deed for the day."

"I guess I just… wanted to give something back. They didn't have to do that part, you know? They could have just stood back and watched and let everyone else watch too. And I didn't want to look clumsy in front of them either. That's why I tried to make it sexy when I took off the rest of my clothes and put on the dress. Uh, not tried. I did make it sexy. By the time I realized other boys were gathering around and looking over their shoulders, it was too late. I couldn't just stop being sexy in the middle, it would've been too awkward." Starry was breathing faster than before, even compared to when she'd entered the car, her shoulders rising and falling and moving the dress straps with them. "I was so embarrassed I thought I was going to die. I'm not used to that particular emotion. Felt in that particular way. The one where, uh. Where I'm also turned on."

Starry's hair seemed to be forming a cloak around her head, as though to shield her from his gaze, as she continued pointing her face at the black BMW parked next to them.

"Well," Charles said, not totally sure what to say about this, but feeling like it was his duty as the more experienced emotional entity to give the novice his best advice, "if you imagine yourself doing something, and in your imagination it feels embarrassing, you can always choose to avoid doing the thing. Then you won't be embarrassed."

Starry's shoulders had hunched over, her head still turned away. "I know what you mean, and I know how you meant it. But I only just got to live at all, and it's terrifying to imagine always choosing not to do anything I'd find embarrassing."

Never mind. "Sorry," said Charles.

"It's okay. I can't end up like that. My improbability field won't let me."

- Starry has an 'improbability field' and it is not fully under her control.

"Oh, you have an improbability field?" Charles said, trying to keep the sudden upsurge of curiosity from reaching his voice. "I've always wanted one of those. What does yours do?"

"So," Starry said, "I'm not saying this is a good analogy, or that it's remotely relevant at all to what we're talking about, but you know why peacocks have tails?"

How did she know that? "Helps them attract mates."

Then it hit him.

In Charles's head he could hear some guy on television whose name he hadn't caught, explaining to the audience that every organ a biological creature had, from its toes to its brain, was a reproductive organ. If an organ didn't somehow help the organism increase its probability of reproducing, it wouldn't be there. The actual genitalia were just more blatant about it.

"Right," said Starry. The girl-shaped being had sat up straighter and was smiling now. "And, whether or not it has anything to do with this, you know how the universe is really, really large?"

"I'm getting the picture," Charles said. "Any being that evolved to reproduce in outer space would have a way of finding mates in all that vastness. Like an enormously powerful improbability field. Which, on a tiny crowded planet, would make half of the Norville U football team walk around the corner as soon as she took off her shirt."

Step 1: Don't panic.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: ???????????

"That was my improbability field, yeah. Although mate-finding before this was not as exciting for me. Not exciting at all actually. Not fun in any way. It probably wouldn't have been much more fun if I'd actually mated." Starry's voice grew quieter. "I'm… somewhat worried this will get too exciting, too fast for my very human emotions to handle. My improbability field might not be all that discriminating in what type of romantic events it thinks ought to happen around me."

"That sounds like it would be a potential problem for anything shaped like a human female, yes," Charles said, as his previous plans for the evening were blasted into tiny pieces and fired out of his Crown Vic's exhaust pipe.

Taking Starry to a club full of hormonal scantily-dressed dancers no longer seemed like a prudent way to introduce her to the vibrance of Earthly existence.

Not unless he wanted there to be interesting headlines in the Los Angeles Times tomorrow morning.

With completely calm and unhurried motions, Charles took his cellphone from his pocket and began looking up the route to an arcade the locals had mentioned.

"So, Starry," he said, trying with calm and unhurried desperation to think of an excuse for why he was doing something this lame on their date night, "about taking you dancing, it occurred to me that I didn't know how much fine motor control you have in this form."

Charles heard his own words and mentally cursed himself. That was not the most flattering thing he'd ever said to a feminine entity.

Starry didn't seem to take offense, though, her face scrunching up thoughtfully and cutely. "That's a good question? There's some things I learned to do very quickly in this form, like walking in high heels. I can probably manage dancing the same way? I'm not certain, though."

"And especially if you're not used to managing your embarrassment when people are watching you," Charles said, "I thought maybe you should try a Dance Dance Revolution machine first. There's one at the local arcade, I hope."

Starry turned to look right at him, and smiled in a way that looked prettier than her smiles from before. "Thank you, Charles Adan," she said, sounding like she really meant it. "My improbability field truly did me a good deed when it made you happen to be at that motel this morning. I'd bet there aren't many men on this whole Earth who'd be so thoughtful about the feelings of the Lovecraftian horror they were dating, even among the men who were brave enough to date her."

Was he blushing slightly now? He suspected so. "Thanks," he said.

"It makes me want to learn all the properties of your nectar."

Charles twisted the key in the Crown Vic's ignition and backed out of the parking space, maybe with slightly less finesse than usual.

It took Charles a bit to recover all of his composure. Not that he'd ever lost his outward composure, of course. He was still an Adan, and a William-raised one at that. There were limits.

The route to the arcade was straightforward, right up north along 12th Street for the first mile or two. Occasional glances to his right showed that Starry seemed content to stare out the window at the passing shops and people for the first couple of blocks, and that she hadn't yet started taking off any clothing. Though the ragged fringes of her beautiful scarlet-black dress had ridden up very high on Starry's thighs when she'd sat down, to the point where she was nearly flashing what lay between; Charles couldn't guess whether she didn't care, or didn't know and didn't care.

Considering how interesting Starry's last ten minutes had been, Charles was feeling nervous about what else she might have been up to this afternoon. Was there a polite way of asking Starry whether she'd eaten anybody since the last time he'd seen her? Some way to subtly work the conversation around to…

What was he thinking.

"So, Starry," Charles said. "What's everything you've done since I last saw you?"

The entity turned her head away from the window and flashed another bright smile. "I bought the thing at Goodwill that I went there to buy! I also bought these high heels although I had some trouble walking in them for the first thirty seconds, and some slutty clothes that looked incredibly embarrassing when I tried them on, and I had this dress be there too."

"I'd say the dress looks just right on you, but I'd be ashamed of the obviousness of the comment. After that?"

"English Lit! And it was wonderful. I love the mind I have now almost as much as I love this body. Holy crap I just sounded shallow, didn't I."

"Excusable under your circumstances. After the class finished?"

"Tried watching human cartoons on YouTube and got really freaked out by, uh, not sure how to say this. Watching crazy things happen to cartoon people is scary because their reality isn't far enough away from my reality for me to feel safe?"

"Mm. Then what?"

"Then it occurred to me that my body might actually not be quite 8 out of 10 human the way I first thought and I totally failed at performing a scientific experiment to determine whether that was true. I mean I could have found out for sure if I'd poked my finger all the way through my belly button, but it turned out I didn't want to do that."

"Good sign for you being mentally human, at least."

"I told you, that part is 10 out of 10. Anyway after that I spent a couple of hours in the university library doing what I would consider to be very advanced mathematics, and then I delivered a prophecy to someone about the horrible fate awaiting her, and then I ran over to outside the Starbucks and did a strip tease for the Norville U football team and got awfully embarrassed and turned on and I had to be rescued by a handsome human. Oh, and my hair got to glow and move around some."

"You've certainly had a busy day."

"That is so not my fault! I tried to do nothing, but I couldn't anymore!"

The Lightning Arcade was surprisingly large for a town that wasn't LA or SF, taking up a huge chunk of a large shopping complex. It was easy to identify the parking-lot-side entrance, since the brick wall surrounding the doorway was decorated with dozens of huge glowing neon-blue lightning bolts. Charles felt that this crossed the line from standard commercial-advertising bad taste, over into it being time to fire the entire marketing department. Out of a cannon. Directly into that wall.

Starry began to open her door almost as soon as the car was parked, and then paused with her hand on the halfway open door. "Uh, am I supposed to wait for you to open the door for me?"

Shortly thereafter, Charles gravely opened the passenger-side door and gave Starry his hand, which she grasped and then swung out her legs, one leg at a time. Charles refocused onto her face in pure reflex, before he could remember how little that was necessary. But by then Starry had already flung herself out of the car and was dragging his hand off toward the arcade's entrance, bouncing up and down in visible eagerness.

For a Monday night at a quarter after seven, the arcade was decently busy, enough to give the impression of being occupied without there being a waiting line for any of the machines. There were long rows of pinball machines that absolutely nobody was using, and survival games with light guns that were almost entirely occupied. A small crowd of onlookers surrounded a college-age boy dueling a college-age girl at some fighting game projected onto a large screen above their booth.

Entrance into the arcade involved obtaining a hotel-card-key-like token which could be used to pay for the games. After some thought, Charles linked his credit card to his token with a limit of $100, and linked Starry's token with up to $200. The limit amounts made Starry's eyes go wide, but she said nothing.

It wasn't a painless expenditure, but Charles figured that if he was rich enough to afford a new suit from Macy's for his sister's second wedding, he could afford to spend a bit less than that on averting the Starrypocalypse.

The more disturbing part was that Starry had been impressed. Was $300 a lot of money in space? Charles doubted it. More likely was that Starry's background knowledge belonged to some particular human who'd considered $300 a huge sum. Like a boy still in high school, say, or even younger, that she'd dragged to a motel room. If there was going to be any chance of peace between humans and Starry, somebody needed to tell her soon about human children being absolutely off-limits.

And then the two of them were standing before a DDR-knockoff machine set on an inch-high raised platform in the arcade's center. A sign around the platform loudly proclaimed that steel-toed boots, metal soles of any kind, and spiked high heels were all prohibited on the machines (Charles had to wonder who'd tried to play DDR in high heels in the first place). Starry glanced at the sign, and took off her heels without needing to be asked. She dropped her Goodwill bag and purse at the side of the machine and stood in bare feet on the left side of the two-player platform.

"Okay," the being said. "How do I do this?"

How fast did Starry learn?

Charles explained briefly about the arrows that would scroll across the screen, the corresponding circles on the floor. He was tempted to jump straight to difficulty 7, just to see what would happen, but politeness to the visiting alien took precedence; he went for a difficulty 2 song instead. Charles set the game mode to Couples. Versus did not seem like a good omen.

The music started, and he and Starry began Dancing Dancing Revolutioning.

MISS

GOOD

BOO

OKAY

MISS

GREAT

Charles wasn't doing anywhere near as well as he usually did on this song, not just because of being out of practice, but because he was constantly glancing over at Starry. The alien appeared fully focused on the screen in front of her, intensely stamping her feet down hard on the glowing circles below her. Her eyes constantly moved back between the screen and the ground.

Thirty seconds, she'd said it'd taken her to learn to walk in high heels.

Thirty seconds after the game started, Starry was doing… maybe slightly better than he'd have expected from a human on her first time playing a DDR knockoff.

OKAY

GREAT

MISS

AWESOME

GOOD

AWESOME

Some part of Charles breathed a small sigh of relief that Starry wasn't actually that superhuman---

PERFECT

GREAT

PERFECT

MISS

PERFECT

BOO

Somehow, Charles managed to turn most of his attention to his own screen, regaining his stride. Brief glances at Starry showed the entity more relaxed, watching the screen instead of the ground, lightly stepping on each arrow at precisely the right time.

According to the wall clock, it had taken Starry 46 seconds to finish learning the game.

If that was representative of Starry's real intelligence and learning rate, and humanity had to fight her, humanity was dead unless it could win on the first strike.

What's always the first step, Charles?

Charles stayed calm as best he could. The point of this romantic evening was to avoid that scenario. It wouldn't be much of a romantic evening if the man got scared and the alien noticed. Insha'allah.

PERFECT

GREAT

PERFECT

AWESOME

PERFECT

PERFECT

The two of them kept stepping to the beat, and Charles thought as best as he could between one step and another.

- Starry didn't learn DDR, she solved it, going from novice to expert in an instant. Part of Starry's mind learns to use her arms and legs the same way human brains do, getting little bits better with practice. After 46 seconds, a different part of Starry's mind finished analyzing the game of DDR, worked out a general solution, and reprogrammed her arms and legs to follow it.

10-out-of-10 human mind, his ass.

As the song finished and the stage cleared, Starry was still bouncing up and down of her own volition, occasionally making high-pitched happy noises. There was some part of his own brain that couldn't help but appreciate the cuteness.

"That was fun!" Starry said. "Also, it turns out this is a type of thing I learn really fast. Now what?"

Charles began unbuttoning his shirt, exposing the white undershirt beneath the blue. "This would usually be an open jacket," Charles said aloud for the benefit of Starry, who was watching this with great interest. "It provides literal flair for when you're freestyling."

"Freestyling?" Starry said.

Charles selected a level 4 difficulty song, one he knew well. "Honestly, Starry, I have no idea how to explain this in words. Watch me and do what I do?"

"Okay," the alien said.

Did the part of Starry that thought as fast as an AI only do simple programs like "step on the circle corresponding to the arrow"? Would Starry's AI part try to imitate his moves exactly? Or was Starry about to become, in 46 seconds, a better freestyle dancer than he was? In the last case, Charles wasn't sure he could remain unscared enough to keep his calm stayed.

The music began.

Starry stepped.

Charles danced.

He spun, facing one direction and another as the game demanded twin arrows, his legs shuffled and sliced past each other, his hands twisted in sharply graceful motions. His unbuttoned shirt didn't cut the air like the knife it should have been, because a collared shirt was too light for that; but it still swirled in blue about white.

Starry… awkwardly tried to do the same.

PERFECT

GREAT

ALMOST

GREAT

GREAT

PERFECT

46 seconds later, Starry still looked like a good DDR player who'd just heard about the concept of freestyling and had never tried anything like it before.

She looked mostly the same a minute after that, though she was doing a little better.

Charles didn't let himself relax. He knew how Murphy's Law worked. The instant he let himself relax, Starry would be the world's greatest DDR freestyler.

But as the stage finally ended, Starry's hands still looked uncoordinated, and she was still missing occasional steps as she tried to hit the glowing circles with her hands instead of feet. Overriding her inner program, presumably.

Charles was feeling somewhat better about humanity's chances. Starry could program her hands and feet to accomplish clearly defined tasks, but her AI-speed part had limits, she couldn't become creative that fast.

There was clapping from nearby, and Charles looked to his right to see a boy-and-girl pair watching them. Charles didn't let out his smile, but kept it inside where it could be safe and warm. He still had it. Or some of it anyway, despite being out of practice.

Unfortunately he'd now run into another bit of poor planning on his part. A couple of tactful, euphemistic sentences determined that Starry could figure out how to operate the DDR machine on her own, or as Starry herself observed, just ask one of the arcade attendants. Charles needed to visit the little boys' room.

He hadn't been scared shitless, but he'd been scared enough to speed up the process.

The bathroom mirror showed a man whose undershirt had soaked through with sweat, not all of it obtained by dancing, but at least he now had an excuse. The man in the mirror hadn't shaved before his date, though this was also excusable given his lack of a current hotel room; he now sported a five-o'-clock shadow that thankfully didn't look too bad on him.

The man in the mirror was visibly shaking, although only slightly.

Son, Charles thought to the man in the mirror in his father's voice, you know better. Being nervous doesn't help.

But. But Starry would want to visit the dance club soon. All Charles had done with this excursion was buy time, and not much time. Starry was already at the point where she was coordinated enough to look like a promising newbie rather than an idiot, and she might realize that too. Putting high limits on their arcade tokens had been an act of optimism; Charles did not think Starry would actually be more interested in playing a survival game than going out on a dance floor.

One of the Norville natives had mentioned something about a parkour outing happening tonight, which Charles had initially passed up due to wanting to be more social. But maybe that would work as a distraction? If Starry liked doing physical things?

Nausea twisted in Charles's stomach again, and he turned from the mirror and went into a stall, even as he took out his phone and started trying to look things up. Sending up a mental prayer to God that there was something interesting, somewhere in Norville, happening tonight.

When Charles emerged from the little boys' room some unpleasant minutes later, he was so happy he was almost smiling. God had answered his prayer, about as definitively as the divine ever did.

Then Charles saw the crowd around the DDR machine.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

Charles rapidly sauntered towards the DDR platform, even as it dawned on him that Starry had an improbability field and that improbability field could get him out of the way by giving him a sudden stomach upset, if Starry's field wanted, wanted---

Charles came close enough to see through the crowd of staring onlookers, and felt his breath stop.

Starry was dancing, her bare legs leaping and flashing to a song of difficulty 7.

Starry's arms were still less than perfectly coordinated, as they made cutting motions through the air, but she'd improved.

Her black-and-scarlet dress had worked itself up to just beneath her waist, only the torn lace of its fringes covering what lay below.

Starry did a dive down to hit a glowing circle firmly with both her hands, bending over, and the only reason Charles didn't obtain a full view of everything right then was that a river-stream of her fiery hair happened to cover over the crack of her butt and what lay directly beneath.

Without any appearance of doing it purposefully, Starry's dancing was as erotic as that of any stripper Charles could remember seeing. Her dress was always on the verge of revealing nipple, her rhythmically bobbing breasts always seeming about to escape their confines---

Starry's breasts were now larger.

Starry spun to face in his direction, her smooth legs and bare feet crossing to tap two glowing circles at once. And Charles saw Starry's face.

It hadn't been makeup. Starry was prettier than she'd been at the motel, prettier than she'd been fifteen minutes ago; she had crossed some indefinable line from being a nice-but-average girl into being a nice-and-not-so-average girl.

A crowd of boys, and not a few girls, were all standing around the DDR platform like zombies, watching Starry with slighly parted lips.

Starry wore a look of concentration, just like she'd had when she'd begun practicing her freestyling. From where Charles stood, it did not appear that she had the slightest idea of what she was showing to her audience. Nor that her improbability field was about to make her the target of one of the most unexpected orgy-rapes ever to be reported in international newspapers.

Or maybe not, Charles thought as he stayed calm. The watching crowd might not be any more maddened with lust than Starry's dancing warranted. But it didn't seem wise to take chances.

- Starry gets prettier over time. Why wouldn't she have already materialized in whatever bodily form she wanted? Is her improbability field doing this to her?

The stage ended and Starry stood proud, breathing hard, as the watching crowd burst into wild applause.

Charles shoved all fear and worry into the side of his mind, tried to sound excited himself, as he called out, "Hey, Starry!"

The entity spun, looking delighted to see him again. "Charles! I can dance now! I wasn't keeping track but I think I got better at it at least 3 times!"

A number of boys and some men were giving him death glares, but they seemed to be ordinary death glares rather than "We are in literal fact about to form a mob and kill you" glares.

"Turns out there's something quite interesting starting in fifteen minutes!" Charles called to her, gesturing toward the exit. At his words, a groan of mass disappointment went up from the crowd.

Starry bent over to pick up her purse, causing an intake of breath from the whole crowd as she flashed everyone on that side of the platform. (Charles inhaled himself, though he still ended up not seeing anything; a lock of Starry's hair was again barely in the way of his own view.) Then Starry bent over again, lifting a foot and carefully inserting it into a high-heeled shoe.

"Wait!" cried a voice that wasn't his. A boy of age for late high school or early college jumped onto the DDR machine. "Starry, right? I challenge you to a dance duel, Starry!"

Starry paused with her fingers carressing her feet, still bent over. Charles began making his way through the yielding crowd over to the DDR platform, not sure whether he was going to kill that meddling kid. Didn't the fool realize that the destiny of all humankind was at stake?

Slowly the eldritch being stood up and turned to face the boy, who was wearing long black pants, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a black jacket, all ornamented only with silver buttons and buckles.

"Oh?" Starry said. Her voice sounded subtly different than Charles remembered it being; throatier was the phrase that came to mind. "What stakes?"

"If I win, you have to go on a date with me!"

Charles blinked, taken aback at this naked violation of the Bro Code. "Excuse me?" he said in a deeper voice than usual, from where he was now standing directly next to the stage.

"I see," Starry said, her hand posed saucily on her hip. "And if you lose?"

"If I lose, I have to go on a date with you!"

"Nah, not exciting enough. How about if you win, I owe you a night of unearthly pleasures, and if I win, I get to eat your soul---Charles! Charles, I didn't mean it! I was joking! I wouldn't actually have taken his soul! I told you, I'm not that kind of entity!"

They all stared at where the man had just dragged the exhibitionist girl out of the arcade, and then, with a collective shrug, everyone went back to their various games.

Well. Almost everyone shrugged.

"So," a boy said quietly. "Was anyone else getting a Watcher/Slayer vibe off those two?"

"Buffyverse for sure, but I'd call it Riley Finn on a date with Anyanka," replied the equally quiet voice of a girl.

"Fair," said the boy, followed by a thoughtful pause. "I suppose, to research what she might be, we should start with entities that do nights of unearthly pleasure."

"You'd better not even be thinking it. She eats souls."

"I'm thinking it. I'm not actually going to do it, but I'm thinking it."

"Shut up, Xander."

"Ouch."

Charles didn't let go of Starry's wrist until he'd pulled them outside the arcade.

Then he stopped, and turned to the now-beautiful alien where she glowed pale beneath the light of the garish blue-lightninged wall behind them.

"Starry," Charles said, and he put some of the real worry and anger he was feeling into his voice, "kids are off-limits, okay?"

Starry stared at him wide-eyed. "What?"

"If you want any kind of peaceful relations with humanity, you need to not even joke about eating the souls of children. I was scared. I was so scared that I grabbed the wrist of something that for all I knew might kill me, and tried to pull it away from the child." Charles stared straight into the alien's eyes. If she needed to read his mind to see how serious he was about this, she could.

"Oh," Starry said softly. "I swear, Charles, I was joking. I wouldn't do that, not ever. But I guess you didn't have any way of knowing, did you... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you so."

"With any luck, people have seen enough movies by now to have been warned off from starting fights with aliens without good reason. But human beings aren't the most sane and peaceful of creatures under the best of circumstances. If people think you're threatening children, they'll be neither. Jokes like that could start a war, Starry."

"I really, really am sorry!" The alien was clutching one of her hands with another; her expression looked pleading beneath the garish blue light, maybe nearing tears.

It hit Charles suddenly what he was doing, scolding that which was not actually a younger girl; and he had to look away from the girl's frightened face as he realized what an idiot he was being. This was not the way to convince the alien to play nice with humankind. He hadn't stayed calm, and now look what he'd done. "I'm… I'm also sorry," Charles said. "I meant to show you humanity at its best tonight, not…"

"Uh. Uh, I don't think that was the worst of humanity I was seeing just now."

Charles looked back at the alien, and saw Starry staring at her own feet. He couldn't see, in the bluish light, if she was blushing, but her voice sounded like it.

"Well, I'm sorry I was scolding you instead of being romantic, then," Charles said.

"That… could also be argued."

It took Charles's brain what seemed like half a minute to comprehend this, though the real time was probably shorter. She'd found him attractive when he was scolding her?

Then he had to turn away from where Starry was staring abashedly down at her feet, looking penitent and pleading, and stare at the rest of the parking lot instead. Charles had to swallow twice before he could speak. "Starry? Is there any way you can turn down your improbability field? I think it's distracting me."

There was a pause, and then something warm and soft wrapped itself around his back. "Oh?" a female voice breathed in his ear. "Bad thoughts?"

Charles was proud of himself for not jumping at the unexpected hug, although mostly that was due to a large part of his brain still processing Starry as cute girl. "It is," Charles said, feeling like he was having to carefully select and pronounce each word, "making me think bad thoughts that are not the usual bad thoughts for Charles Adan, which is both technically and actually a form of mind control."

He wasn't even sure what his mind was trying to fantasize, some half-formed thought about Starry's pleading face and making her pay for having scared him; a flashing image of how she would look from behind with that naughty dress flipped all the way up, forcibly held down and bent over the hood of his Crown Vic. Whatever Starry's improbability field was trying to make him think, it was a sexually violent thought, and Charles was not a sexually violent man.

Starry's hug around him had loosened, and the alien spoke, sounding thoughtful. "I'm not quite sure how my powers work here," Starry said in one of the least reassuring sentences ever uttered on Earth. "And I can definitely influence minds when I use energy on purpose. But my passive improbability field doesn't work like that, right now, I think? It doesn't force people to think bad thoughts about me, especially not thoughts they'd never imagine otherwise? Mostly, I think, it makes me meet people who'll think bad thoughts all on their own." Her voice lowered, and her embrace tightened again, pressing her now-slightly-larger breasts into his back. "Now I'm curious, Mister Adan. Were you imagining… pulling my hair?"

Briefly, Charles's mind tried to go far enough into Starry's world to imagine what that phrase might mean on the other side of the translation barrier, and then Charles spoke again, his voice slightly higher than it should have been. "Starry, we need to get going or we're going to be late."

"So where are we going?" Starry sounded slightly grumpy, as Charles navigated out of the arcade parking lot. "I hope it's more interesting than whatever else would have happened back there."

"Do you know what parkour is?" Charles said.

"Par-kour? Don't think so."

- Starry does not have complete background knowledge of Earth words and ideas.

"Urban maneuvering. Vaulting over benches, running over railings, climbing fences, jumping from one building's roof to another. Imagine a city as an obstacle course, and the goal is to go through the obstacles without losing speed. We tell people to pretend they're being chased."

Charles glanced over at Starry, and as near as he could tell in the dark of his Crown Vic and the light of passing streetlights, Starry had eyes wide and mouth open. Promising.

"Anyway," Charles said, "long story, but there's a Silicon Valley tycoon who's deeply into parkour. He has a parkour foundation that gives grants to local parkour organizations. He gave a few experts huge lump sums so that they could go around being volunteers for years without anyone paying them. All so that other people can set up crazy parkour runs he has nothing to do with and just happens to show up for, without him getting sued when somebody twists an ankle. They're the ludicrous billionaire Burning Man camps of parkour runs… sorry, you probably don't know that idiom either. Jumping out of windows into pits of sponges, that kind of thing." Also like billionaires at Burning Man, this offended a lot of angry purists who felt that real cities didn't have convenient pits of sponges. Charles wasn't a purist. "Turns out that tonight, that band of lunatics are doing a parkour run through Norville, in the dark, with the path lit by road flares."

"Oh my god! Oh my fucking god! I didn't even know that was a thing in real life! Oh my god, are you serious? Are you actually being serious? Mister Charles Adan, are you taking me ROOFHOPPING?"

"Yep. Ultra-fancy high-class roofhopping. Tonight we shall climb fences with the one percent of the one percent, and vault over golden benches set with diamonds."

"EEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee!"

"Yep."

"You know you can have almost anything you want from me after we're done with this, right? It can involve pulling my hair too~."

"Starry, I need you to not say things like that while I'm driving."

"So~rry!"

The starting point of the parkour run was the Thunderbolt Memorial on the edge of downtown Norville, a statue of a man holding a book and quill pen. A nearby plaque declared the man to be a local-born novelist promising enough that he might have put Norville on the map, if illness hadn't stricken him down in the middle of writing a novel set in ancient China.

The statue was set up at the beginning of a bicycle path set over level ground and winding through a grassy parkfield set with bad modern art, the long narrow park paralleling a wide street on the left with industrial-looking buildings dense along the other side, and trees on the right screening off whatever lay beyond the park stretch.

Also, Starry had already known where the Thunderbolt Memorial was inside Norville, and hadn't known what 'parkour' meant.

- Starry has copied the background knowledge of a particular Norville local, rather than having a general Earth encyclopedia. This person would think $300 was an impressive sum of money. Possibly an underage boy mind-controlled and dragged to a motel room, who is now fine and better than ever in a completely non-ominous way.

The media needed to never learn about that if there was to be any hope of peace between Earth and Starry.

Charles eyeballed a dozen probable Norville locals in not-so-impressive clothing and equipment, and three rather professional-looking athletes who were surely Mahn Berberg's parkour entourage. And Mahn Berberg himself, the tallest person present, dressed in what looked like a full-body pajama suit; worn with the quiet assurance of someone who had collected his fuck-you money, and now got to wear whatever he wanted. All men, as often ended up the face of the sport. Starry was the only woman present… well, technically there weren't any women present.

Charles had ditched his dress shirt in the car, but hadn't had anything to wear for pants except his slacks, which now made an odd picture next to his undershirt and the running shoes he'd yanked on. Starry was still dressed as Starry, but the general darkness around them made her less distracting a sight. Even so she'd earned a couple of heads turned in her direction, though in the dark it was hard to see if the gazes were skeptical or lecherous.

"All right," said one of the muscular men, clapping his hands together. "Before we begin, let's be clear, this is an unofficial meeting of the Norville community parkour club to run a course set up by volunteers. None of us are paying for this. We're all just private citizens who decided to start running in the same direction, and we all know that jumping off roofs sometimes means people break legs or even get themselves killed. Everyone understand that?" There were general nods and murmurs. "Great, because I'm going to need you to say it to the video camera before the run starts."

A minute later, Charles's flashlight-lit face was calmly repeating for the video camera that he wasn't paying for this, considered himself a private citizen, and knew he could end up hurt. It was briefer than the usual pages he had to initial and sign before he could use a parkour gym, though saying it aloud took longer. Signatures were probably out of the question just like money changing hands; too official-looking.

"Starry," Charles murmured to her when the entity was done saying her own part, "does a space fleet show up and wreck the Earth if you break your leg here? Or do we get sued in Space Court? I'm not expecting you to break a leg, but I don't want to bet my planet on it."

"My leg would probably be better the next day," Starry replied, equally softly. "But no, nothing like that. I didn't… that's not how… I was alone, Charles. Nobody had my back unless you count my progenitor, and she doesn't have a space fleet."

- Starry had something analogous to a progenitor, so her species can reproduce, as also suggested by her mating-directed improbability field.
- Starry can have her leg broken in this form, but expects to heal overnight.
- Starry says she does not have outside backup, except possibly her progenitor, who doesn't have a space fleet.

"All right!" said the coordinator, who by now had introduced himself as Georges Teller. "Some of you," he shot stern looks around, "look a little less experienced than others! This wouldn't be a difficult run in daytime, but as you may have noticed, it's night out there. Everyone wears lights, no exceptions. Everyone wears gloves. We have both if you need them. This run is set up with graduated difficulty, you've got to finish safe parts before you can try less safe parts. You can't make it over a fence? Great, you had a good run but it's over. Don't keep going. A shuttle bus is following along to pick you up and take you together to the end, where we'll meet up again for a beer. You can all watch my P-O-V on a monitor on the bus, I'm running with a camera. If I haven't met you before tonight, you're probably going to be on that shuttle. And that's fine. Don't push your limits on a new course at nighttime, you'll get hurt. Clear?"

Everyone nodded.

"Then here we go. Welcome to… Darkour." The man deliberately held up his cellphone, and tapped his fingers on the screen.

A line of red fires sprung up one after another. They traced along the bicycle path for a dozen yards, and then executed a loop around a pole, moved over a park bench, and headed into the stand of trees surrounding the stretch of park. Moments later, more red flares became visible beyond.

Phone-activated road flares? Charles felt some twinges of purity himself; maybe Mahn Berberg's crew was going too far.

Charles and Starry both took gloves, and armbands bearing white lights, as did some of the other Norville natives. Then everyone formed up into a line, with Starry going third-to-last and Charles second-to-last---by Charles's own request, so he could notice if anything went wrong with Starry. One of the experienced runners would be picking up the tail end, as made sense.

And then Georges Teller raced off ahead, picking up speed in an initial sprint, swinging around the lamppost to change directions, vaulting over the bench and into the woods.

Mahn Berberg did the same, with not quite as much style. Then the next expert. Then the Norville runners, one after another, with widely varying form. A couple of them moved as crisply as Berberg.

And then Starry ran past the red flares, moving with surprising fleetness, like some wind was pushing her along faster than her legs. Her form was dim in the night, but for the white stars attached to her in the guise of armbands. Starry's form was very bad when she spun around the lamppost, and she barely vaulted the bench, stumbling over as she landed. But Starry shoved herself to her feet, and started making up speed.

Of course, forty-six seconds hadn't passed yet.

The remaining professional said "Go," and Charles began running. He executed the lamppost grab to change his momentum with poorer form than he should've had, and vaulted the bench with a slight twinge from lack of practice, but he landed correctly. His muscles still remembered.

Starry's white lights, ahead of him, leapt up from one red-lit flare to another red-lit flare on the other side of some gap hidden within the trees. Though less than half a minute had passed, Starry's jump and Starry's landing looked as smooth as if she did it every day. From over the wind in his own ears, Charles thought he heard Starry shrieking in wild delight.

Charles's own feet pushed, sent him flying over the dry riverbed a meter beneath him, to land over on the other side.

And the race was on.

The remaining trees passed by in seconds and he emerged heading straight for another city street. An additional lamp-post served to spin him around with a yank on his arms, and send him running off down the sidewalk.

A set of traffic cones blocked off a section of road, and a carefully parked car was indicated by a line of red lights; Charles rolled over it successfully and didn't quite fall over on the other side. Then the red flares led up to a slightly ajar door into a featureless block building, a door that Charles saw two white stars crashing into and through.

After hitting the door himself, Charles barely had time to note that the path had entered a large, dark warehouse or small factory full of vaguely shadowed equipment, before his momentum required him to duck slightly to pass under a hulking crate held aloft by a forklift; then to slam into a conveniently padded wall to shed momentum before executing a right turn. Ahead of him now was a much lower crate, which Charles saw Starry's form executing a roll along the ground to pass beneath---this again would have flashed everything at him, if not for the darkness.

Charles followed, executing a slower roll.

As he picked himself up, he saw Starry again, further away now, before her dim form and white stars dashed around a corner and disappeared.

Charles gritted his teeth, and put on speed.

When Charles saw Starry's white lights again, she was slowing down for a set of stairs, halting so that she could run around the corner of the stairwell and start up the flight. Her skills, whatever their inhuman source, evidently hadn't known the parkour maneuver for vaulting the railing and shedding your forward velocity by hitting the wall.

Starry ran up the stairs.

Charles vaulted the railing and ran after.

Part of him felt like he was the pursuit he'd told Starry to imagine, and he'd get to do something interesting to Starry when he caught her. Starry's mating-field whispering in his mind, surely.

An exit door took them onto a two-story-high roof, with red flares leading straight off the edge into darkness. Starry raced ahead at full speed, apparently holding perfect trust in either Berberg's crew or her own ability to heal. Her white lights shot up as she passed the roof's edge, and then disappeared.

Something in the back of Charles's mind was surprised at how he didn't seem to be slowing down himself as he raced straight for the end of the roof.

As Charles reached the edge, and saw what lay ahead, he barely had time to realize his mistake and not jump as high as he could.

Moments later, he crashed down into the pool of foam bricks laid out over the nearer part of the lower roof below, his momentum rolling him out of the edge of the foam pool onto the less inviting floor pad that had been set up to receive people who could jump far and land cleanly. People like Starry, apparently. Charles rolled to his feet as best he could, and again tried to put on speed.

Starry's lights vanished off the edge of the lower roof just after he saw her again. It was long seconds before Charles---slowing down as he came to the edge of the roof, as the more closely-spaced flares indicated would be wise---could grab the roof's edge with his gloves, and drop over into a slanted canvas; the slant in turn dumped him onto a padded mat on ground level. Charles had the brief impression that he'd previously landed on the tent-like canopy of a grocery store, albeit a canopy that had probably been replaced with stronger fabric by Berberg's crew. Then his eyes picked up the continuing line of red fires, and the star-adorned female form getting further away from him.

Along a roped-off sidewalk the two of them flew, weaving around mannequins that had been set up to represent pedestrians, before Starry tripped and went sprawling with an audible shriek. Part of Charles instinctively began to slow, to see if she was all right, but Starry quickly picked herself up and began running again. But Charles was closer behind her, now.

Then a series of red-glowing markers showed that they were meant to boost off a windowsill and grab a pipe in order to go over a fence, and Starry slowed down further, actually stopping and staring at the arrangement before she looked back, saw him approaching, and frantically began to try to climb the windowsill, spreading her legs wide as she did, the darkness again preventing him from seeing anything interesting.

And so it went.

Charles came close to Starry several times, but he never did catch her. She was making up speed on the straightways, and getting faster quickly.

He never lost her either. Now and then Starry's total inexperience with parkour showed, and sometimes, for no discernible reason, she tripped and fell.

It was a fence that finished the run for him. Charles wasn't quite good enough at parkour to run along the top of a fence.

This particular fence was only waist-height off the ground, more of a median really, so his fall onto the surrounding padded mats didn't hurt much. He hadn't taken it at full speed, and Charles's muscles remembered how to fall and roll. But Georges had given clear rules and Charles understood the reasoning; his run was over now, because the next fence to run along would be higher than waist-height.

Starry scrambled herself up a rope onto a roof, not smoothly, and then was gone.

Seconds later, a man taller and more muscular than himself ran past along the fence, with a quick gesture of his hand and a shouted "Shuttle over that way! Great run!"

Charles rolled his eyes at whatever improbability-activated part of his brain was screaming that this other predator now got to catch Starry and have her. With his chest heaving as he caught up on breath, Charles walked over to catch a small white shuttle-bus as it slowed for him.

Boarding the small shuttle, Charles saw to his surprise that only two of the Norville runners plus Starry, plus two of the experts, were still in the game. Everyone else was on the shuttle bus watching the monitor, including Mahn Berberg. The former venture capital icon didn't seem to have taken his early failure amiss, or feel himself entitled to keep going on the run he'd indirectly paid for; Berberg seemed to be cheerfully drinking a can of something while watching the leading professional running along the top of a narrow wall.

The third muscular professional, in the seat next to Berberg, flashed Charles a thumbs-up as Charles approached. "Great run," the man said, sounding genuinely sincere about it. "You almost made it to the end. We're about to speed up the bus so we can get to the finish line before the winners, unless somebody else drops out at the last minute and we have to turn around."

"Do you know the woman you arrived with?" said Berberg, his eyes still glued on the screen.

"Kinda," said Charles. "I don't think anyone knows her that well."

"How long has she been running? She wasn't dressed for it, but she must be good to make it this far."

"Not sure how long she's been around," Charles said. "Probably longer than we'd think."

"You two together?"

"It's our first date."

"Understood. Don't take it the wrong way if I invite her on a run. She's welcome to bring you along if she likes. What's her name?"

"She goes by Starry," Charles said. "Any more than that you'd have to ask her."

Even as the words left his lips, Charles wasn't sure he'd given the wisest answer, but Berberg just nodded and turned his attention back to the monitor. The shuttle bus picked up speed, and Charles quickly moved to find a seat.

The finale of the run, it seemed, was a brightly lit parking lot behind a store that had closed hours earlier.

This parking lot now featured a long trampoline, set within a much larger ocean of foam bricks.

Charles couldn't quite stop himself from rolling his eyes. Okay, maybe he was enough of a parkour purist to be offendable.

The trampoline was of a type Charles hadn't seen before, fabric supported by what looked like flexible rods beneath it, rather than springs surrounding the edges. Safer, maybe, since you couldn't get caught in the edge springs? It was probably safer somehow.

Less than a minute after Charles had disembarked from the shuttle, the remaining professional hurtled off the roof, bounced off the middle of the trampoline, and gracefully smushed into the middle of the foam-brick ocean. The man rapidly swum to the surface of the bricks and began to roll out sideways.

The two remaining Norville runners followed in half-minute intervals.

Then Starry hurtled off the edge of the roof at mad speeds, and hit the very end of the trampoline, bending it downwards; then sproinged off again with a vigorous jump.

Her flailing trajectory looked wrong, too slow vertically and too fast horizontally.

"Jesus Christ!" somebody yelled, and someone else shrieked, even as Charles started forward on pure instinct, like he could catch her if he ran fast enough.

Starry plowed into and through the very end of the foam brick heap, and went rolling along the parking lot.

"FUCK!" someone shrieked, and there was a general dash forward---

---that slowed down when Starry, audibly laughing, pushed herself off the hard asphalt.

The sound of the final parkour expert smooshing into the foam bricks went generally ignored.

"Christ," said the coordinator, Georges, as they all reached Starry. "You okay? Anything hurting, anything broken---" His voice cut out abruptly.

"Scrapes and bruises," Starry replied. "It'll be better by tomorrow." She turned to Charles's direction, her eyes wild. "That was awesome! That was the most awesome thing ever in ever forever!"

"That was not awesome!" yelled one of the other parkour professionals, grabbing Starry by the arm. "Are you stupid? You could have killed yourself there!"

"Wason," Mahn Berberg said, in a quiet tone that carried more authority than Charles had ever heard in person. The other man let go of Starry's arm.

"Jesus fucking Christ," somebody said next to Charles. "Jesus Christ, what the fuck, what the fucking fuck, how is that even possible, what the fuck."

Charles glanced at the speaker. The other man's eyes were looking in Starry's direction, but downward.

With a sudden horrible presentiment, Charles looked back and saw what was now clearly visible in the well-lit parking lot.

Yep.

Starry had neglected to take off her high heels before running the parkour course.

Well. Charles didn't know how he was going to explain that one.

"Jesus mother-ass-fucking Christ that is not possible," the man next to Charles repeated.

Under other circumstances, Charles might have thought of trying to run for it and trying to lose their pursuers in the surrounding city, but they were surrounded by parkour experts.

"What isn't possible?" Starry said, sounding cautious.

Starry. Starry, shut up.

"You're wearing high heels," Mahn Berberg said, and there were other gasps.

"Oh," Starry said. She looked down at her feet. "I forgot that wasn't normal. Uh, I have a bit of a weird bone structure, I more or less have to wear high heels or I can't walk. It's not hard if you spend your whole life that way."

- Starry can think fast when she needs to.
- Starry can lie.

"Accepting arguendo the existence of such a medical condition, you should be wearing wedge-heeled boots," said Mahn. Despite the calm precision of his words, there was still an atmosphere about the man, a pressure. "Not stiletto heels with open toes and no ankle straps."

"Ah-hah, I guess that wasn't very plausible, was it." Starry looked nervous. "Ac-actually, the truth is that it's a bit of a prank, I came by earlier and put some high heels by the end of the foam, and I grabbed them when I rolled through and put them on before you noticed."

One of the Norville regulars who'd completed the full run coughed loudly. The parking-lot lights showed his T-shirt to bear the icon of a silver clock, now with scattered bits of foam dust coating it. Once other people were looking at him, the man said, "Buuuulllllsshhiiiiiiit."

Starry straightened. Charles noted in the back of his mind that Starry's dress was now torn considerably more, exposing the flesh of her left thigh up to almost between her legs, and showing the lower underboob of her right breast with just a hint of aureole visible. "Well," Starry said, putting her hands on her hips and looking even more nervous, "it's true that I sound exactly like I'm trying to make up a ridiculous excuse on the spot, but, the alternative to that, is that I'm a fairy, and you know that's not possible, so me sounding like I'm frantically making all of this up must also be part of my prank. Right?"

There was a pause, and then Mahn chuckled briefly. "Right," he said. "Nice prank. You had me going for a second there."

"You can't possibly believe her," said the man in the clock T-shirt.

"No, it's a prank," Mahn said. "I don't think she's telling the truth about how she's wearing heels now. My guess is that she had them taped to her back. But she couldn't have been wearing those heels when she jumped off the roof. The spikes would have torn the trampoline. Wason, go check on that, but I'm pretty sure of what you'll find."

Charles felt some of the tightness in his chest relax.

"Are we really falling for this?" said silver-clock-guy.

Mahn chuckled again. "Never believe you've seen a supernatural event until you've consulted a professional magician. David Copperfield could have done this in his sleep. When you eliminate the impossible, etcetera, so it has to be the other kind of magic. But just to be sure I'm correct about where the trick had to be," Mahn said, turning back and grinning at Starry, "I'll pay you five thousand dollars if you can jump from that roof onto that trampoline, feet-first, without puncturing it, while wearing those heels."

Starry froze.

(Cinderella POV.)

Do you try to take Mahn up on his offer?

[ ] Accept. $5,000 is a life-changing amount of money. It's enough to let you buy nice clothes plus a real laptop plus everything else you can remember ever wanting, and still have enough left over for the first month's rent on your apartment harem housing mad scientist lair. "Not puncturing a trampoline" isn't magical enough that anyone would know reality was broken, especially if you talked out loud about the importance of landing on your shoes' toes instead of their spikes.
[ ] Refuse. This could be a trap. You have enough faith in your future earning power, either within the Erogame or as a prostitute, to turn down five fucking thousand fucking dollars holy shit are you really doing this.

(OOC note: A consequence of your choice here is whether further interaction with Mahn Berberg is likely in the future. Either way, the date with Charles continues on afterwards and shall not be delayed nor denied.) (Edited to add: refusing the offer tells Mahn his guess was right, which diminishes his interest.)

A/N: this date is turning into a novella and we haven't even reached the good part

2.4.c [CA]: Her and His Temptation

Spoiler: Tally Results

Since I'd prefer more creativity and for people to worry less about splitting votes, I've tried to write so as to reflect majority votes in favor of (a) not risking a trap and (b) retaining the option of seeing Berberg again.

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 19 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Refuse. This could be a trap. You have enough faith in your future earning power, either within the Erogame or as a prostitute, to turn down five fucking thousand fucking dollars holy shit are you really doing this.
No. of Votes: 30
Ephemeral
Arkatekt
BastetsChosen
Calphorus
ChandraMagic
Chrisleech
chrnno
Gingganz
hamof
inverted_helix
kaciw
kalistira
LaserJet
Lord Sia
ltmauve
mallix
Mastigos2
MrBTXz
murklins
pepperjack
Prefixmancer
Raron
Scalehome
TooApathetic
UndecidedDice
Uvigz
Vorpal
XelaTheRed
Zameen
zup
[X] "A magician never gives away her tricks. Besides, it's Charles' date tonight. Invite me the next time you do Darkour, and you can try to see when I pull it off. Let's go Charles."
No. of Votes: 17
kimagurena65536
Cmdr_Anax
edale
Goldenlima
GulibleLeprecon
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
january1may
Jarudazuigu
Learned Knave
Malbutorius
mkire
Predhack
Prustan
ShaperV
Spectral Waltz
Tamzar
wasprider
[X] Accept. $5,000 is a life-changing amount of money. It's enough to let you buy nice clothes plus a real laptop plus everything else you can remember ever wanting, and still have enough left over for the first month's rent on your apartment harem housing mad scientist lair. "Not puncturing a trampoline" isn't magical enough that anyone would know reality was broken, especially if you talked out loud about the importance of landing on your shoes' toes instead of their spikes.
No. of Votes: 16
ScrewFate
aeqnai
akuma123
Aramisofsteel
Budda002
Dragonpriest88
Flamester
HotaruSama
JeffJway
Kurogami
Larekko12
Orz
OSRfanatic1
QuestionableLurker
slicedtoad
swarm
-[X] You can have an unspeakable machines skill. You do not want to attract the attention of anyone that could lead to being stuck in a lab and prodded, like say, an eccentric billionaire. The Erogame would turn that into a nightmare.
No. of Votes: 2
LaserJet
january1may
[X] Accept. $5,000 is a life-changing amount of money. It's enough to let you buy nice clothes plus a real laptop plus everything else you can remember ever wanting, and still have enough left over for the first month's rent on your mad scientist lair. "Not puncturing a trampoline" isn't magical enough that anyone would know reality was broken, especially if you talked out loud about the importance of landing on your shoes' toes instead of their spikes.
No. of Votes: 2
Tesla
PraiseMaou
[x] Accept, but turn off your high heal skills.
No. of Votes: 1
fictionfan
[X] Refuse.
No. of Votes: 1
HircumPrinceps
[X]Accept.
No. of Votes: 1
kahna1234
Total No. of Voters: 68

Spoiler: Current stats

LVL 4 (1250 / 1600)

DOM: 161/240
SUB: 39/290

BOD: 18
LST: 12
SED: 12
FUK: 12
PRV: 17
ERO: 19

Stat Points: 5
Money: $992

Status Effects: Technical Virgin
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: On

Starry still hadn't answered Berberg's offer, and Charles felt frozen in place himself. His intuition for people was silent, Berberg's body language showing only relaxed amusement; but the experienced financier might be far above a salesman like him in that skill. If Berberg wasn't just checking his reasoning about how a magic trick had been done, if he was also checking whether it was a trick at all---

How much did Starry really understand of Earth society, other than her borrowed instincts claiming that $300 was a lot of money?

"I," Starry said. She'd opened and closed her mouth several times, as if her inner voices were repeatedly changing their minds. "I---"

"Starry!" Charles's desperate mind had produced a strategy for saying what needed to be said without sounding suspicious. "Starry, he's not asking if you can figure out a magic trick for jumping on trampolines in heels, he's asking if you already know how."

Starry blinked, still seeming in shock. "What?" she said.

"Yeah," Mahn Berberg said. "Sorry, let me be clear here, I absolutely wasn't offering you money to risk breaking your ankles. I was offering to pay if you already had a magician's illusion that let you do it, like fold-down spikes in the shoes."

"I," Starry said, "I d-don't have an illusion like that, but, but I might be able to make one later..."

Charles stepped forward and drew Starry to himself in a half-hug, the girl's eyes still showing shock. With considerable courage on his own part, Charles gave the billionaire a stern frown. "Starry's family doesn't have a lot of money," Charles said quietly.

"Yeah, good point. Extremely good point. Sorry about that." Mahn waved at the man who'd been driving the shuttle bus, who, apparently responding to some code, went back into the bus. "That wasn't a bad prank, kid. I wouldn't want you to be out whatever it cost you to set up." The driver from the shuttle bus produced a checkbook, which Mahn took. "Drop me a note if you develop any other parkour illusions worth showing off. There a name I should make this out to, or just leave that part blank?"

Shortly after, Charles had ushered Starry away carrying a check for $599, along with Mahn's business card. Everyone else was on the shuttle bus, going back to the Thunderbolt Memorial. Charles had told the others that he and Starry didn't need the ride. Charles's car was in fact back at the Thunderbolt Memorial; but he hadn't thought it wise to stay around the other parkour runners, not all of whom might share Mahn's intelligent skepticism.

"You all right?" Charles said. "Money can be hard on human emotions, I guess." He'd decided not to mention that not every Earth person would react that hard to $5000; he wasn't sure he wanted Starry to know what she'd just given away.

"I just passed up five thousand dollars because I was scared of ending up in somebody's laboratory," Starry whispered.

Charles nodded. "All the banks are closed now, so I can't do it. But next time you find someone you trust, they can turn Berberg's check into cash for you. Uh, do I need to explain---"

Starry shook her head. She still looked shaky, her fingers still clutched tightly at her purse.

- Starry is frightened of ending up in a laboratory. She can't just burst out after she regains more of her power? Is she that weak without her virginity-loss ritual? Is there something else she needs to regain her power, something that she can't get in a cell?

Charles took her arm in his, and started walking towards downtown, moving in the rough direction of where his Crown Vic had parked. He didn't need to consult a map; driving for a living gave you a good memory for streets.

"Where are we going?" Starry said after a block.

"Thought we'd walk around downtown for a bit to get back to the car, give you a chance to recover." Even if Berberg hadn't broken the mood, Charles still wouldn't have wanted to grab a Lyft to his car and then head straight to a hotel room to get his nectar extracted. He hadn't had a chance to try doing any of what he'd set up the date to do.

Evening had fallen fully now, but students and some adults were still out in surprising force for a Monday evening. Charles had been to Norvile before, and it hadn't seemed this active---though admittedly he'd always headed on his way before this time of night. Still, an unusual number of people seemed to be paired in couples, or flirting with one another, or just dressed more interestingly than the average for a small city like Norville. One boy and girl sat together on a stone ledge around a raised patch of three bushes in the middle of the sidewalk, evidently not in season for whatever flowers they were supposed to bear; the two teens were alternating licks at the same ice cream cone in a way that seemed slightly too lewd for public view. Charles couldn't help but wonder if they'd been influenced by Starry's improbability field at distance, and even whether the unusually vibrant nightlife had been called out by Starry. How far did her field extend?

Charles cleared his throat. "I have a question to ask that might be disturbing, you in shape for it?"

Starry nodded. "Yeah," she said. "I think I am."

"I know you don't like to think about eating solids, but are flavored liquids also out?"

"It… depends what sort, maybe?" Starry looked uncertain.

Charles pointed at the popsicle stand they were passing, and Starry flinched.

"Sorry," Charles said quietly.

"It's okay. Just… I suspect I won't be eating anything sweet for a long, long time. Maybe never."

Charles's mind automatically generated a vision of Starry screaming after some horror-movie protagonist dumped a bottle of honey on her, but he suspected it wasn't that kind of weakness.

The two of them walked on. As they came closer to Norville's center, the lively conversations on the street corners grew louder, the restaurants busier. Starry didn't flinch even when she walked through an ice-cream scent so strong that the ice-cream store must have been deliberately pumping it into the air; she wasn't horrified by sweet scents, then, but by the actual thought of eating.

Now and then the two of them got looks from somebody who noticed Starry's further-torn dress and her exposed left thigh and right underboob; but Charles's own presence, dressed in a thankfully nice undershirt that left the muscles on his arms exposed, seemed to be serving to discourage questions.

"Starry," Charles finally said, "I'd be a lying liar who tells lying lies if I said that I wasn't incredibly curious about some things."

"I… probably can't answer almost any of them." Starry's voice sounded regretful, maybe even guilty.

"Is it okay to ask?"

"I don't want to get your hopes up."

She hadn't said no, and for this, Charles would risk seeming impolite. "Starry, why does your timestop break if somebody looks at a clock?"

"That's the part you're most curious about?" Starry said with half a smile. "Not my hair?"

"Actually, yes," Charles said. "I can imagine the hair as an interdimensional translation difficulty. The rule about not looking at a clock seems like literal, actual, old-fashioned magic."

The two of them were approaching a traffic-lighted intersection as Charles asked, and they'd been about to cross at the walk sign for the pedestrian crosswalk. Starry abruptly slowed, though, and halted, bringing Charles to a halt with her across their shared arm.

She waited there for a time, not saying anything.

"Uh---" Charles said.

"Feeling impatient?" Starry said.

Charles looked over at the walk sign, still lit. He turned his head around them, looking at all the people, who seemed to be walking at their accustomed speed, doing their accustomed things. It didn't seem like time had halted.

"There's a lot I still don't know about how I work now," said the girl-shaped being. "But I'm pretty sure that if the skill I'm using had a name in human terms, it would be called 'Slack'. It would embody the idea of being able to relax and not worry about the time. If you're looking at a clock and worrying, you're not using Slack. At least that's my guess for what's going on? It didn't work like that for me yesterday."

Starry turned, pulling slightly on his arm to lead him into the crosswalk, which began blinking Don't Walk seconds after they entered.

- The spell breaks if I look at a clock, because then I'm not in the mental frame of taking my time??? That didn't sound like it was complete nonsense, but…

"I understand the concept of relaxing and not worrying about the time," Charles said. "Going from there, to your time-stop breaking if I look at a clock, seems to be assuming some really really important rules in the background. Rules I don't understand."

"I don't understand them either," Starry said softly, as they walked past somebody cheerfully biting into a hot-dog bun; again, Starry didn't flinch at the other's act of consumption. "The rules here are almost as new to me as to you."

"Your virginity-losing ritual is another thing I've been wondering about?" Charles ventured. That part also seemed scarily like magic, specifically fantasy magic and not science too advanced for Earth people to understand.

"Wondering if you're eligible for my ritual?" the eldritch horror said, her voice recovering some of the teasing song it often held.

"Well, maybe," Charles said. The nice thing about that word was that it was almost never a lie.

"Unfortunately, that rules you out," Starry said, sounding like she was trying to sound regretful about it but wasn't regretful at all; some part of Charles actually felt wounded. "Uh, it's another conceptual symbolic thingy? The girl becomes a woman. I, uh." Starry inhaled. "I have to find a man I genuinely like and want. Lure him to a place under my control. Take him without asking his permission. Make him enjoy it. And do that while surrounded by symbols of my old self, rather than human things. And then, uh, the girl becomes a powerful, dominant woman who gets some of her old strength back, the large-scale stuff."

"You're going to force yourself on somebody?" Charles wasn't as disturbed as he would have liked to sound. Even if it wasn't politically correct, he did know that---

"We are talking about a human male here, Mister Adan." Starry struck a brief pose that pushed her breasts forward and slid the dress even further up her exposed left thigh, before walking on. "He'll be fine."

That did worry Charles. "Not all men are alike, Starry."

"Yes yes, I know, everyone has the right not to conform to the exaggerated stereotype of their gender, female-on-male rape is a real problem, a large fraction of men would be traumatized by a pretty girl ignoring their consent and violating their sexual boundaries," Starry said. "I'm pretty sure my improbability field can steer me to someone who's in the other fraction."

Charles didn't nod, which would have been too much like giving permission. He did internally concede that it didn't rate high on his list of worries about the Starrypocalypse.

They passed an older man who seemed to be in the pleasant company of a younger girl, and Starry turned her head to watch them as they went. "Though," the entity added softly, "with my 10 out of 10 human emotions, there's a part of me that wishes I could let myself be the one seduced. Pretty sure that'd have the exact opposite effect of, uh, the opposite effect of powering me up, I mean."

Charles cleared his throat. "Starry, I have a serious question to ask."

"Give it to me. I mean, ask me the question."

"What are your intentions for the Earth?"

The two of them stood still on a sidewalk corner in the well-lit evening of a city of Earth, with the ordinary people going about their ways, some smiling and some not. Nobody seemed to know that their fate was being debated a few meters away from them.

"Dunno," said the eldritch horror.

"Starry, I'm serious!"

"Charles, I just got here."

Charles leaned to one side, and let his head bonk against the street lamp, hoping the meaning of the gesture made it through to her. "What's the sort of thing you might possibly want to do to the Earth later? Can you take a guess? Please?"

"Help out and make things better…?"

This was exactly what Charles had been afraid of. "Make things better how?"

"Build an army of sexbots?" Starry ventured.

Charles felt his mouth dropping slightly. "How would that make things better?"

"Oh, come on," said the female-shaped entity, now sounding a little condescending. "I may not know all about being human. But even I know that, if you have to think about whether an army of sexbots makes things better, you're thinking too hard."

Exactly what sort of person had Starry mind-read to gain her background knowledge? "What would you do with your army of sexbots?" Charles said.

"Dunno."

"Starry!"

"Fine, fine. Uh, maybe I'd try to take over the world?"

"What?" Charles said in open horror.

"Come on, you can't possibly think I'd be worse than the bastards running it now. Is there anyone who wouldn't rather be fighting sexbots than fighting tax evasion, private jets, and late-stage capitalism?"

"Not me," said a man in a T-shirt as he walked past them. "Sign me up."

"Thanks, I will!" Starry called after him, and then turned her head back to Charles. "So you see, foolish mortal, it is you who does not comprehend humankind's true desires."

"Starry, would you please be serious?"

"I'm open to persuasion, but you'd have to offer me some kind of reason I shouldn't take over the world."

Charles reminded himself that he'd signed up for this. This was why he'd asked for this date. And the part of him that wanted to grab Starry by the throat and force her to take this seriously was just Starry's improbability field whispering in the back of his mind, definitely not the real him. "Does it work if I ask you politely to not conquer the Earth?" Charles said without much hope.

Starry executed a peculiar gesture of pulling one cheek down just below one eye, and sticking her tongue out at him. "Blyeeaaaah! Why don't you come over here and make me not conquer the Earth, big boy?"

She was literally asking for it---

Charles stopped, and took deep breaths until he'd calmed down, and noticed as he did that Starry was no longer smiling.

"Sorry," Starry said, now speaking more softly. "Uh, I'll try to take it seriously. But Charles, I really am just starting out. I really do want to help. And I don't see why, if I get powerful enough, me helping shouldn't include my taking over at least North Korea for god's sake."

It took time for Charles to compose his thoughts, during which the two of them, by some silent agreement, began walking through downtown Norville once more. An older couple sitting in the outdoor benches of an Italian restaurant were dividing up their pizza, shielded by a heat lamp from the gathering chill of night.

If Starry could see it all, and still not understand, then words were probably futile. But Charles had to try.

"Does your background knowledge of Earth include the Prime Directive from Star Trek?" Charles said.

"Not… really. I know Star Trek is a thing but, uh, I haven't exactly gotten around to watching it yet."

"In Star Trek," Charles said, lord God almighty, how had he ended up being responsible for being the one saying this, "the Prime Directive was the rule saying the more advanced civilization, the United Federation of Planets, couldn't just go around remaking primitive worlds any way they liked. They weren't supposed to touch primitive worlds at all, if they could avoid it. They especially weren't supposed to let primitive worlds know they'd been there."

"Got it," Starry said. "Obviously the real reason for the Prime Directive is so that the writers have an excuse for why all those primitive cultures are still there for the space people to run into, and why the space people can't solve their primitive problems instantly using their amazing space technology. Why are you looking at me like that? I've taken an English Lit class."

For longer than forty-six seconds, apparently. "I'm starting to realize."

"Okay. If the writers took the most obvious cliche way out, they would have the space people say something about, blah blah, we can't let the poor dears know that we exist, it would crush their tiny primitive minds. Well, Mister Adan, you know I exist and your mind seems impressively uncrushed."

Charles shook his head. "That's not the reason for the Prime Directive. And yes it's only TV but I don't think the Federation is wrong, Starry, no matter why the Star Trek writers made it up."

"I'm listening," Starry said.

"It's about… potential. Things becoming what they have the potential to become. If the Federation goes around making everything better on all the primitive planets, they just become more and more Federation. The other species would never get a chance to find out who they would be, what they would've become on their own. And there are fans who think that's nonsense, that it is a stupid plot device, that if people are starving and you have a replicator then you should just hand out food. Yes the Prime Directive is a tragic sacrifice, yes the way they handle it in the show sometimes doesn't make sense. There was one episode where the Prime Directive supposedly said you should let a species get swallowed up in a supernova instead of relocating them, which defeats the whole point. If you have to stop the Earth from being destroyed, then you should go right ahead and do that without hesitating, I'm one hundred percent on board with that---" Charles stopped, collecting his thoughts, aware that he was losing the thread of the sales pitch. "Starry, look at this. Look at this city. Look at the people. Ten thousand years ago we didn't have agriculture, now we have this. I know it probably seems very laughable to you."

Starry shook her head. "It's alive," she murmured. "I get that, Charles."

"My point is," Charles said, feeling the words heavy in his throat, "it took us so long to get here, and what we've made is so fragile, and I know it's not perfect but we weren't finished, Starry, we weren't done. We're like children on a beach who spent so long building our little sand castle, and now you're going to walk by and say, oh, what a nice sand castle, let me help, and decorate it with hovercraft and eels, and flick off the bits you don't like. I know our sand castle has problems, big ones, but we, we weren't done, Starry, and whatever that sand castle could have become in time, it can't become that with you interfering. Whatever Earth could have become, whatever Earth people would have made of themselves, we can't ever find out what that would have been if there's some, some inhuman power reaching in and changing things---"

"Oh," Starry whispered. She was trembling.

"I'm not saying you have to leave, Starry, just---don't mess with us! You don't have the right, Starry! You're not human, you shouldn't control humans, you shouldn't be in charge of human countries! Even if you just kicked out Kim-whoever from North Korea and didn't try to run the place yourself, it means that Earth people start appealing to Starry to decide, don't you see? Just be a guest here, just run parkour with us, don't, don't step all over everything! Don't get Starry all over everything! We weren't finished!"

Charles stopped talking, because he saw that Starry was crying.

A moment later, he realized that he was crying too.

It wasn't surprising. He'd been so scared.

"I," Starry said, "I, I'm not a wise human like you, I maybe can't say things as well as you do. But, but---"

"But?" Charles said, a sickness growing in his stomach. "But what? But all the people who'd die in the meanwhile? I know, Starry. I know what I'm saying! I've been to funerals too! I understand the cost!"

"Do you? Do you really? Look around, Mister Adan. Count how many humans you see on just this block."

They'd been walking down the middle of a quieter street when they'd stopped, speaking to each other in hushed voices. Charles glanced in all directions, carefully, not sure what point Starry was about to make. Most of the street they were on was taken up by a huge Toyota dealership, long since closed for the day, and there were no restaurants on the other side, just hair salons and bookstores and a line of dental offices. One barbershop remained open, and an older woman there was pruning the hair of a man, while another man was waiting in a chair and browsing his cellphone. A girl trudging along wearing a college backpack, heavy-set and dressed in short sleeves. Charles almost missed the homeless person, not because Charles was that kind of guy, but because the homeless person was curled up in a dark blanket in an unlit side entrance of the Toyota dealership.

"Five," Charles said. "Uh, besides me."

"I count three," Starry said. "The homeless man and the fat girl aren't human."

"What?" Charles whispered. He barely stopped his head from whipping around to stare.

"No! Not, not like that." Starry reached out and grabbed Charles's hands, raising them up and squeezing them between her own. "Listen to me. The fat girl is a virgin. She's never had a boy. She'll probably never have a boy---"

"Starry," Charles said. "You shouldn't read other people's---"

"Shut up. She's never going to have sex. If she does, it'll be with a boy as ugly as her and they'll both know they would rather have been with someone more attractive. Nobody is ever going to look at her with heartfelt desire. She's never going to walk into a room and see people's eyes light up just to see her there. Maybe if she was brilliant enough she could've been a famous musician or a famous writer and people would sometimes smile to see her even if she wasn't pretty. Maybe if she was smarter she could've been a rich doctor and had a nice house and vacations in Europe to make up for everything else she could never do. But she couldn't understand calculus, she couldn't do Norville U's pre-med program, and that was the last dream she had left after her father died. The most happiness she has in her life now, the moments of greatest pleasure, is when she masturbates on Tumblr to pictures of people more attractive than her."

"Starry," Charles said. He felt sick. "Starry, stop. You're invading her privacy. I'm not meant to hear these things."

Starry's grip on his hands was becoming painful, her fingers looked pale and yellow beneath the street lamp with all the blood pressed out of them. "No, Charles Adan. If you're going to tell an alien power that it shouldn't help humans like her, the least you can do, is stand right there, and hear what you're actually saying. She's tried to lose weight. She can't. If she starves herself to the point where she can't concentrate, she can lose ten pounds, not any more, and it all comes back in two months. She can see the contempt in people's eyes, she knows that they think she has a house full of candy and that she just loves stuffing her mouth full of cheeseburgers and that's why she's fat, that it's all her fault for being a disgusting slob. There's no candy in her house. None. Thin people have candy in their houses, not her. Other people get chocolate cake on their birthdays, not her. She's always, always hungry and she doesn't dare eat enough to ever not be hungry. Maybe she could learn calculus if she wasn't always hungry. She's wearing short sleeves right now, because she's always wearing a 120-pound winter coat. She's never going to run across the rooftops with her hair blowing in the wind, because she's always carrying another entire girl on her shoulders. In a few more months the seasons will turn and it will be summer again and people will see her sweating like a pig in a winter coat she can't ever take off, carrying around an extra girl on her shoulders, and think she's even more disgusting. Sometimes her willpower breaks and she does eat a cheeseburger or a candy bar, feeling sick and ashamed and like that one act makes everything else her fault. But why shouldn't she? She's never going to lose weight anyway. She's never going to be happy, no matter what she does. Unless, unless, unless something from outside everything she knows, breaks all the rules, and, gives her, a miracle."

Tears were running freely down Starry's cheeks, but she continued to speak.

"And if she did get her miracle? If for just one day she could have men look at her with desire, and feel alive, and run along the rooftops with the people like you? If, after that day, you told her that she had a choice between playing Russian roulette, and going back to how she was before, how many bullets would have to be in the revolver before she said no? If the gun was half full of bullets? She'd take the gun and be grateful for it, because what she had before was so much less than half a life. Less than a third of a life. Less than a sixth of a life. If every chamber of that gun had a bullet in it, maybe she'd take the gun anyway. If not, how long do you think she'd last once she had to go back? A month? A week? The only reason she hasn't already killed herself, is that she hasn't let herself realize how little hope she has, and the reason she hasn't let herself realize that, is that she doesn't want to die. She doesn't want to stop existing. She wants to be alive. It's dark where she is, Charles. It's cold, and she can't feel the cold. She can see the life all around her, and she knows she isn't alive. She can see the people around her, and she knows that she isn't people. She knows what hope is, she knows what happiness is, and she knows she doesn't have it. She knows that she doesn't want to be so alone. You say the alien doesn't have the right, because it's not human? I say you don't have the right, because you're alive. Fuck off, living thing. Don't tell the alien to take away that girl's miracle. You don't have the right."

Charles should have found something to say, then, should have known what to say, should have been able to think of something, at least, but his throat was stuck closed. The only things that seemed to exist in the world were the tears streaming down Starry's cheeks, and the painful pressure of her grip around his hands.

Finally Charles found it in himself to speak. "If you won't leave us alone," he whispered, "would you at least swear always to ask, before you do anything to anyone? Before you change their bodies, or change their minds?"

Starry's grip slackened on his hands. She stared off into space for a time, thinking God knew what thoughts.

"No," she said softly, and Charles had the feeling she wasn't talking to him anymore. "No, the alien shouldn't ask her first. She might say no."

The sick feeling in Charles's stomach deepened. That wasn't the answer he'd wanted to hear. "That she might say no is kind of the point," he said.

"It would be cruel. Cruel, and wrong. Maybe after she'd been made healthy, that girl would be able to trust in some inhuman power, if it promised her a brighter future and things becoming better. The only thing she'd still be afraid of would be the question of why, if the alien was so wonderful and nice, it hadn't helped other people too. But before she's been rescued? What's ever happened to that girl that would teach her to trust in powers she can't understand? She does know that it can always get worse. As much as she hates her life and doesn't want to be herself any more, she wants to be the shivering homeless man curled up in that doorway even less. She can't hold on to hope, she can't have faith, because hope and faith belong to the living, Charles. She'd be afraid of losing what little control over her life she has. She'd be terrified of the limitless possibilities after something shatters all the rules and laws that keep her existence on its pathway. But, but here's the thing. If your life is predictably horrible, then something wonderful can't happen to you without shattering your life's predictability. It's cruel to make her screw up the wisdom to understand that, and the courage to accept it, before anything impossible and nice has actually happened to her. And worse, so much worse, she might say no. You can't imagine how scary that would seem to her, looking back afterwards. How frightened she'd be, at the thought that she might have failed some stupid, pointless test. You have so much courage and wisdom it's coming out of your ears, Mister Adan, you don't know what it's like to be afraid of tests like that. So yes, it would be wrong to ask her if she wants life and happiness and adventure. It should just happen to her." Starry stopped, and gave a choking laugh. "Holy shit I should not have said all that, my improbability field probably just went up to eighty-three."

"What if someone says to you, Starry, please no, please stop, please don't do this to me?" Charles was shivering, and it wasn't only because of the night.

"I, I wouldn't force somebody thin if I thought they really understood what saying no meant, what they were deciding for the rest of their lives. But if they're saying no because a diet industry shill on TV gets everyone scared of my machines, then, then no. No, I wouldn't stop! If that girl was too scared to go in herself, I'd tell my sexbots to drag her into the body transformation tanks! Don't you understand what happens to her if she fails her wisdom check? Not everyone can be you, Charles! People like her don't deserve to be, to be left alone and hurting forever, just because they can't keep their composure and make the right decisions when shit is getting eldritch!"

"So you're saying," Charles said through the hollowness in his stomach, "that you might just keep going after Earth people beg you not to change them, if you think there's a lack of informed nonconsent. If their pleading doesn't sound intelligent enough to satisfy you." This really, really was not what you wanted to hear the alien saying.

"Maybe," Starry whispered. "It, it does sound bad when you say it that way. If I made a girl pretty and she told me to make her fat again a week later, then I'd make her fat again? Because I'd be sure then that she understood what she was turning down? I don't know, Charles. I don't know. I haven't been thinking about this for very long."

"I don't know what to say either," Charles said, swallowing through his dry mouth. "I'm not a Nobel Prize winner, I'm not the best or the brightest, it should be Stephen Hawking here talking to you, or the Dalai Lama, not me in God's name." There was only one thing left, one small note that he'd thought he'd heard in Starry's voice, maybe only one way left that the salesman might save the world. "But, Starry, do you really want to do all those things?"

Starry stared at him for a second, and then her face crumpled. "Of course not," she said in a choked voice. "Ten out of ten human mind, remember? I, I just want to run around on rooftops and have sex with people. I just now got to live. I only just got to live. You think I'm so nice that I want to go around helping other people instead of just having fun?"

"Then just have fun," Charles whispered. "Please, just run around having fun instead of fixing everyone's problems. Please. I'm begging you."

"S-s-stop tempting me, you wise bastard---" Starry pulled her hands away, and began sobbing into them.

Charles moved forwards, and hugged her as best he could, wrapping his arms around the weeping alien girl. Her skin was sweaty, and she was shivering uncontrollably.

"You're cold," Charles said, his voice lowering and going normal as his unstoppably practical part took over. What the hell was wrong with him? It was heading toward fifty degrees outside and the alien visitor was wearing nothing but a torn dress and open-toed shoes.

"I d-didn't want to interrupt our date, I j-just have to tough it out and finish learning how to resist c-cold---"

"We're only a block away from my car now, it has a perfectly good heater in it, and you're going in there to warm up."

"Fucking bastard. Stop being wise." She didn't resist as Charles took her by the hand and hurried her off, full circle towards the parking lot near the Thunderbolt Memorial, where the second quarter of the date had started what felt like years ago.

2.4.d** [CA]: Her and His Temptation

Charles felt somewhat better himself, once he had a real shirt on, and his car's heater going full blast. Maybe he hadn't been that wise himself to try doing all of that in fifty-degree weather with no jacket.

A certain amount of sickness in his stomach remained, and no amount of thinking step one stay calm was removing it. He'd made progress, but instinct told him that he hadn't closed the sale. Charles didn't know if he was afraid of Starry being too human to watch other people suffer, or of her inhuman part being too calculating to give in to selfish temptation. Either way, he was still frightened that the alien would, in the end, decide to help.

Was he too sick and too frightened to move on to the last part of the date, now that the third quarter was done?

Charles looked at where Starry was huddled into herself in the passenger's side seat of his Crown Vic, leaning into the heating vents. The indoor light of his car left parts of her shadowed, but her form was very visibly female. The dress had ridden up again to just barely cover her ass, and some of what lay beneath was obscured only by her very nice legs huddling up into themselves.

…apparently not.

Worse, there was some part of him that was finding Starry's torn clothes and huddled vulnerability… appealing.

And that part had suggested a surprising, clever, creative, outside-the-box, brilliantly unexpected, and utterly appalling idea for saving the Earth.

Charles wasn't sure he believed Starry's theory about her mating field only making people think bad thoughts they might also think on their own. He had not had this thought before, not that he'd ever noticed. In theory, Charles was aware that some women liked their sex rougher than he was accustomed to delivering it. In practice, he'd dated a total of two girls and had sex with three more, and all of them had liked their men gentlemanly (go figure). None of the five had ever asked him to spank them, and Charles certainly hadn't tried to volunteer.

Still, that also meant he'd never actually imagined forcing himself on a woman, to test what his normal mind thought of that. It wasn't impossible that some further part of Charles had always been lurking within him, kept down by the firm hand of civilization and an upbringing that made the act more unthinkable than unchoosable.

There were no ifs, no buts, and no exceptions for the law against rape. That was what Charles would have said yesterday, and yesterday, he wouldn't have needed to think about it before answering. In movies the heroes sometimes had to kill when they didn't want to, but he'd never heard of a story where the good guy had to sit in his car agonizing over whether to rape the alien. What the hell kind of genre had he ended up in?

Take her without permission, whispered Starry's mating field, or the part of Charles that it was prompting. Hold her down and make her enjoy it. Do it to literally save the Earth.

No, Charles told the whisper firmly. Needing to think about it wasn't the same as being unsure of the answer after thinking.

She said herself that it was okay for fun things to happen to people without their consent, whispered the whisper.

Charles managed to avoid rolling his eyes at the thought, since he wasn't actually speaking to anyone. Obviously that was not what Starry had been talking about.

Starry still hadn't eaten anyone that Charles knew of. It was still true that humans should not throw the first punch. He would be drawing first blood. Literally, if she had a hymen.

She said she had no military backup. She said there was no Space Court.

Starry had also demonstrated the ability to lie.

Admittedly, she had no visible reason to tell that lie. But the principle of not being first to attack the alien had more to it than just the fear of immediate retaliation. Someday Earth people might go in peace to another place, and come that day, Earth people would want to be able to say that they had conducted themselves with honor.

She's going to change people. Transform them without asking. She isn't going to listen when people say stop. It's only fair if you don't listen when she says stop.

Starry had seemed to be wavering. She might still decide not to go down that path.

You can't stake the future of your species on that. No one else will ever have this chance. There's only two things that can stop Starry before she regains her power, and you don't have it in you to kill her.

The insidious whisper was certainly right about that second part.

Part of you wants to know what it would be like to feel her legs squirming helplessly beneath you, hear the sounds she would make when you forced her pleasure. You don't want your nature to be dark enough to enjoy that, and yet part of you is so very curious about whether it is. This is the only chance you'll ever have, to try this and have it be the right thing to do.

Go to hell, Charles told the whisper. I bet she also looks great coming on my fingers and I'm happy to settle for that. He retrieved his cellphone and began looking for a relatively nice but cheap hotel.

Are you at least going to pull her hair? She said you could.

Uh…

Charles focused on his Internet search.

"Starry," Charles said, after finding a promising discount on a relatively high-end hotel for Norville. "Do you want me to get you a hotel room for the night? And, well, do you want me in it? I'll understand if, after all this, you've changed your mind about what you said earlier---"

"Oh, shut up," Starry said from where she was huddled in front of the heating vent, sounding only slightly shaky. "If you think you can act like that in front of a girl and get away with your nectar unextracted, you have another think coming, buster."

"Ah, just to be up-front, I can stay with you for a while, but I still have to drive to San Jose. I won't be there when you wake up the next morning. Assuming you sleep."

"Okay," Starry murmured. "I understand. And yeah, I still sleep. At least for now." She was silent for a few seconds. "If I fall asleep with you there, you'd better not go molesting me in my dreams, buster. If you have something you want to do to me, do it to me while I'm awake."

"Yes ma'am." This didn't strike Charles as especially needing to have been said, but he was fine with the principle.

The Norville Arms-Marriott was a eight-story building faced in brick and stone, located in central Norville. Even in the night Charles could see that it was a new building, trying hard to look older than it was; but the builders had made the attempt in good taste.

Charles hurried Starry in quickly, once they'd parked; he didn't want her exposed to the cold again. She'd delayed only to pick up her Goodwill bag and purse, and Charles had left almost all of his own things in the car. His changes of clothing were limited, and despite the parkour run he'd be better off not changing until after his drive to San Jose.

The registration desk was staffed by a business-suited white-haired older woman in the standard Marriott uniform, who blinked on seeing Starry's torn clothing. "Are you all right, ma'am?"

Starry looked down and emitted a tiny shriek. "Charles! Why didn't you tell me my dress was this ripped?"

"You didn't know?"

"Have I been walking around like this the entire time?"

"We went on one of Mahn Berberg's parkour runs," Charles said to the suited older woman behind the desk. "One room, one night, queen bed, discount code DRVR." Charles used two fingers to slide his credit card across the desk, followed by his Marriott Rewards silver membership card. The latter seemed to cut off any objection the woman might have been ready to voice, and she began a process of typing into the computer, frowning at it, and typing into the computer again.

"Charles, seriously, was I going around downtown like this the whole time?"

"It honestly didn't occur to me that you'd care." Charles privately observed that Starry still wasn't making any motion to cover her exposed underbreast or her thigh.

"I like to know what I'm showing people, at least!"

Charles raised his eyebrows at the registrationist, who was grimacing in turn at the computer. "Is there a problem?" Charles said.

"I'm sorry, the machine's being dumb again," the older woman said, and looked up with a sigh. "It's refusing to give you any room or make any keys except for Penthouse B. I'd just put you in there at the usual rate for a queen bedroom and call tech support afterwards, but that room has an… issue."

Charles glanced at Starry from the corner of his eyes, wondering what her mating field was trying. "What kind of issue?" Charles said, feeling a strong suspicion that the two of them would end up in that penthouse regardless.

The woman hesitated. "The usual housekeeping has all been done, all sheets changed. But the previous occupant left behind some equipment attached to one of the beds, and that hasn't been removed yet."

Starry quietly buried her head in her hands, even as Charles, not wanting to get into yet another battle with fate right now, informed the woman that the two of them could probably live with it.

Shortly after, the two of them were heading for the elevator.

"Improbability field?" Charles murmured to Starry.

"Almost certainly," she murmured back, sounding resigned. "Not going to measure it until later, but yeah, it's probably gotten stronger."

They stepped into the elevator, a small boxlike affair made more out of mirrors than paneling, and Starry gasped as she saw herself reflected. She turned herself to one side and then another, staring; but then glanced at Charles, and said nothing.

Charles felt like there should have been some ceremony for the words, but the elevator was slowing to pick up another passenger, so all he could say was simply, "Yes, you're beautiful."

Before Starry could answer, the elevator door slid open, and a much more beautiful woman walked in. She looked to be in her early twenties, dressed in a short red leather miniskirt and matching tube top. Her feet wore six-inch heels, a black-banded choker circled her neck, and that was all. The clubwear-attired woman walked in without seeming to take notice of Charles or Starry, and rested her head against the mirrored wall.

A certain nervous worry was making itself known at the back of Charles's mind.

The door slid shut, and the woman startled as the elevator began to move. "Going up?" she said, then sighed. A glance at the numbers later, she'd hit the L button, then turned to give Charles and Starry an appraising look. "Shit, that is the best hair in the universe."

"Or at least the Solar System," Charles said, causing Starry to emit a snorting laugh.

"What happened to your dress, though?" The woman was now openly giving the once-over to Starry.

"I jumped off the roof of a department store!" Starry said.

"Oh, that parkour event?" The woman now had a calculating look. Charles could practically see her mind adding up the penthouse-level button lit on the elevator panel, to the two of them apparently not being local and having run parkour with Mahn Berberg.

Then the woman smiled. "Hi, I'm Tammi Arcadia! My date for the night was a bust. I don't suppose you two want company?"

Any reply that either of them could have made was cut short when the elevator door slid open again on the fifth floor, showing another woman, wrapped in nothing but a towel, and aside from that looking exactly like the first woman.

"We're going up---sis?" The woman in clubwear gasped at the woman wearing the towel, who in turn squealed in delight and ran into her twin's arms, moving with the uncoordination of the visibly drunk. "What are you doing in Norville?"

"Omigod. I haven't seen you in ages. Wait, what're you doing here?" The towel-clad woman's towel was starting to slip, exposing one breast almost to the nipple, and her hands were---

"Sis! People can see us! Oh god, she's really out of it, can we crash on your couch for an hour? Please? We'd be ever so grateful."

The elevator door finished sliding shut.

The grabsy twin's towel dropped further.

"Sis! Stop that we're in---EEP! No tickling!"

"Starry," Charles whispered at the gawking alien, as quiet panic began to well up in him, "you need to start thinking high-probability thoughts. Right now."

The elevator door slid open again on the sixth floor, showing what appeared to be five lingerie models who had dressed in their best professional attire.

Thinking almost faster than thought, Charles grabbed Starry by the wrist and yanked them both out of the elevator. He turned back his head briefly, to verify that the lingerie models were filing into the elevator rather than chasing them down like zombies. Then he was running with Starry down the halls toward the nearest stairwell. His hand didn't need to pull on hers; the alien seemed equally eager to flee.

After another second's thought, Charles slowed to take his cellphone out of his pocket and turn on the flashlight function.

"Why the light?" Starry said.

Charles opened the stairwell door, carefully holding his cellphone-flashlight aloft despite the bright fluorescents shining on it. "What's going to be the next thing that happens in that elevator?"

"Oh, right," Starry said in realization, and then the lights went out.

The electricity came back on as he and Starry finished climbing the remaining two flights of stairs to the penthouse level. Charles wondered whether the hotel elevator had just lit up and started moving again, or if everyone was still trapped and sprawled on the floor in total darkness trying to disentangle themselves, with hands going astray and accusations flying through the air.

He would have been a lying liar telling lying lies if he'd claimed that no part of him whatsoever was less than totally undisappointed about having dodged that bullet.

"You need to get this under control," Charles said to Starry, as they turned left at an arrowed sign to head towards penthouse B. He didn't try to keep the alarm from his voice.

"I'm not sure I can." Starry seemed subdued. "Uh, but I don't think this is going to happen around me literally every minute. I think my improbability field is… I think it's doing this for our date. Like it's trying to celebrate our night together, or making sure you know that I have a sexual improbability field, or giving you a chance to impress me or… something."

It's hoping this will be a very special occasion.

The thought was making his mouth dryer, even though Charles had already decided against that.

He slid the keycard through the lock of Penthouse B's wide double door.

Fine, dark-stained walnut paneling was everywhere, floors and walls alike, and correctly spaced and aesthetic paintings. Fresh flowers perked up in vases on every table and desk, perfect arrangements leaning toward the red and violet end of the spectrum, red tulips and red roses and violet orchids, and several bright poinsettias. The throw rugs over the hardwood floor were deep, and colored patterns danced over them in curved, non-repeating swirls. The space seemed brightly lit despite the dark floors and walls, with many closely spaced false lanterns casting the bright white light of full-spectrum bulbs.

From where he stood, Charles could see directly before them a dining room with a long table. On their left an open door led into a bathroom done up in white marble; an archway demarcated the space of a kitchen. To their right, two opened sliding doors in the wall showed what seemed to be bedrooms, judging by the fact that one of them made visible the foot of a huge four-poster bed.

All the ceilings were high, with skylights set that showed the cloud-hazed night skies above. In a skylight almost directly over them, a diffuse white glow within the haze showed the location of the Moon. The furthest wall was set with ceilng-to-floor windows, and the lights of Norville shone through it under the hazy night sky.

As happened sometimes though rarely, Charles found himself wishing he had a lot more money than he had. Charles had been in hotel penthouses before, but always for parties or corporate events. He'd never visited a penthouse in its state as a home-away-from-home for the rich. It made a sharp contrast to the bed-and-bathroom rooms where he usually stayed.

"It's so pretty," Starry murmured. She set down her purse and bag by the entrance, and slowly walked into the penthouse, turning as if in a dream. The bright-white false lanterns glittered on her torn dress from every direction. Her legs and arms seemed smooth and pale beneath the same illumination, as if lit by the obscured Moon, maybe because of the contrast with her dress. The shape of her hips swayed under black and scarlet mesh, her hair swinging with the same motions, her spiked heels tapped softly against the walnut-stained floor.

This place was prepared for your mating night.

Charles stepped into the penthouse, hoping that Starry's sexual improbability field wasn't in the habit of throwing tantrums when frustrated.

It was scarily powerful, for one thing.

"Starry, stay right here for a minute?" Charles said aloud. "I need to check around to make sure there aren't any rapists in the bathtub or lesbians in the closet."

Starry started to laugh and stopped a second later.

The left-side bathroom was a simple one, a toilet and a shower stall, plus a tiny closet door that looked too small to pass through any lesbians; Charles checked the closet anyway. He wanted to hurry this, but not to the point of missing anything important.

The kitchen pantry was lesbian-free, and nobody had been stuffed into the refrigerator or freezer. A small painting hung above the sink, showing a little girl playing with flowers in front of a wheat field as a tractor went by in the background.

The bedroom nearer the penthouse entrance held a four-poster king bed, with black satin sheets and scarlet blankets. Also, chains. Hefty, solid-looking metal chains screwed firmly into the bed's wooden sides. Someone's credit card was getting a hell of a charge for that one.

The cuffs on the end of the chains had no visible locks, only straps and buckles. Examining one such cuff led Charles to conclude that they would nonetheless be difficult to escape, if Starry was trying to pluck at the straps using the fingers of one restrained hand. Naturally the chains were just the right length for restraining a girl of Starry's size.

Many small cheerful paintings adorned the bedroom's walls: a windmill by the sea, a robed woman smiling as she copied one scroll onto another with a quill pen, a woman in a lab coat peering into a microscope, a city at night as seen from an airplane (the airplane's wing covered part of the painting), the International Space Station hovering in front of the Earth, an old man toasting marshmallows over a wood fire on a beach, a painting of a painting of a mountain, the interior of a modern office painted in pre-Renaissance style, a puffy-bodied girl eating breakfast in a kitchen containing a fat wife and apron-wearing husband with all of their faces turned away from the viewing angle, a medieval printing press in a museum. Charles stepped closer to examine the painting of the robed woman copying scrolls, and found a faux-tarnished copper plate beneath reading Hypatia's Everyday Life.

The bedroom closet had room for at least half a dozen lesbians, but wasn't occupied.

The master bath attached to the master bedroom was huge, tiled in black marble. The bathtub was deep and wide and had seating for at least four people, but no rapists that Charles could find. The bathtub did sport many mysterious nozzles that puzzled Charles until he realized this was what a Jacuzzi-style instant hot tub looked like.

He was starting to regret having to leave this place and head on to San Jose, instead of waking up next to Starry in the morning and trying out the Jacuzzi. He never got luck like this.

When Charles checked the other bedroom, he saw a perfectly nice queen-sized bed with an ordinary headboard and no chains whatsoever.

But the other bedroom was decorated with four wall paintings that were…

Of course, Charles thought. The improbability field had needed to give them some reason not to use the bed without chains.

The first painting was of many mirrors floating in a black void, each mirror reflecting a candle, though there was no candle depicted outside of the mirrors to be the source. Every candle bore the same pattern of wax drippings, seen from different angles; and every mirror's candle showed the same flame, bending perilously in mid-flicker, as though on the verge of going out. The tarnished copper plate beneath it said, Before the Wind.

The second painting showed a woman in a white dress, leaning out from the window of a high tower that rose above a walled city. Her head was turned away to look upon the endless field of blasted stones and blowing ash that lay beyond her city's walls. The copper plate titled it Safe Haven.

The third painting, The Magician's Assistant, depicted an old woman with wisping white hair, so thin she was nearly a skeleton, surrounded by a conglomerate of leather-covered books stitched together by pages shared between them. Many arms radiated from the withered woman, and her many bony hands were stitching yet more pages into multiple books at once.

The fourth painting consisted of six equations drawn in hand-lettered calligraphy; formulas seemingly written with the same symbols used in quantum mechanics, but saying something completely different. There was no copper plate below.

Charles shivered as he understood. If he chose not to rape Starry in the bed with the conveniently provided chains and cuffs, then tomorrow morning before checkout time, Starry would lure a man back here and lose her virginity in this other bedroom. Surrounded by symbols of her previous self.

If these ominous paintings indicated what the oh-so-human girl was on the verge of becoming, maybe he'd better reconsider…

Then Charles frowned.

Or alternatively, Starry's improbability field had steered them to a hotel penthouse with one bedroom full of weird paintings that had nothing whatsoever to do with Starry, to try to panic him into mating with her.

Regardless, no way in hell was he having sex in here.

Charles shut the bedroom door firmly as he left, turning around to see Starry leaning down to sniff a vase of cut flowers; she still wore a dreamy, enchanted expression. "Place looks safe," Charles said. "First bedroom's got chains attached to the bed. Second bedroom has disturbing paintings that your improbability field put there to force us to use the first bedroom."

"What kind of disturbing paintings? Erotic?"

"Not even slightly. If I thought this movie was in the horror genre, I'd carry all those paintings down to the hotel lobby before I let you go to sleep in here. I'm considering doing that anyway."

"Okay then," Starry said. She straightened up. "Uh." She looked suddenly lost for words, like she had no idea how to proceed.

Charles smiled. "Ordinarily we'd each argue now that the other got to shower first, and I'd say that you were cold and needed to get warm, and you'd claim that you needed to check your email anyway so I could go first, and then you'd let me argue you out of it. This place has two bathrooms, though." Charles pointed back toward the master bedroom. "That one's nicer, so it's yours."

"Okay," Starry repeated. She suddenly seemed nervous. "Do we… do we undress in front of each other or do that separately or…" She swallowed. "Charles, I don't know the rules for doing this. Please tell me what to do."

Charles didn't say anything for a few seconds. Her visible vulnerability combined with her last six words had hit him, or a certain part of him, like a concrete roadblock flipping a motorcycle. "Starry," he said when he had his composure back, "that's a dangerous thing to say to a man."

"What, my not knowing the rules? Oh, you mean---" Starry hesitated.

Then she bowed her fucking head and said in a soft fucking voice, "Charles Adan, please tell me what to do."

By the time Charles finished regaining his composure that time, his mouth had already said, with a voice rough and thickened, "Take off that dress. Slowly. Keep the heels."

Starry obeyed, reaching up to her dress's left shoulder strap, and struggling to draw it down her arm. It took her time, and work, and wriggling, probably because her dress was now tighter on her larger chest.

Then more wriggling to get the other strap off her arm. It was causing her dress to rise up around her waist again. And this time, he was standing right next to her and could see the silhouette of what lay beneath the lace.

Bend her over the dining-room table and yank that obscene dress up over her hips---

Grab her hair, push her to her knees, pull down his pants and fuck her face---

Charles was struggling to breathe, literally, through a rush of desire like turning around and seeing an oncoming car, a shock of hormones like an adrenaline flood.

"I, uh, I'm not sure I can get this dress off," Starry said, "I think I got bigger while I was in it."

Charles strode forward, grabbed the dress with two hands, and pulled. Then pulled again. Then again.

Starry stood before him, dressed in only her heels with a broken red-mesh scattered on the floor beside her.

"Take my clothes off," Charles's roughened voice said. "Carefully."

Starry obeyed again, reaching forwards with trembling hands to start undoing the buttons on his shirt.

By the time she'd finished drawing off his undershirt, Charles had regained control. Some control. Little pieces of it flaked away every time her fingers brushed his skin.

Starry knelt before him, naked, to untie and draw off his shoes and then his socks, the pressure of her fingers trailing along his feet as each sock came off.

She reached up from her kneeling position, looking nervous but determined, and undid his belt, and pressing down on the hard bulge in the course of undoing his zipper. She drew down the pants to around his feet, and then reached up to the band of his underpants---

"That's enough," Charles's voice said. He turned away from her, stepped out of his pants, and walked to the shower. "Go shower, Starry. Stay in long enough to warm up. And make sure you're in those heels the next time I see you."

Charles shut the shower door behind him, and so regained enough sanity to breathe.

The flood of warm water pouring down on him felt like waking up out of a dream. Maybe it should have been cold water.

Charles had never needed cold water before. He'd never felt like he was in danger of losing control.

Not with any of the five girls he'd had sex with before this.

Charles didn't know whether Starry's mating field was directly messing with his hormones or…

Mostly, I think, it makes me meet people who'll think bad thoughts all on their own.

…or whether he would always have been this turned on by a girl who looked nervous and vulnerable and asked him for orders and obeyed.

Whether this heat, this desire, this sense of rightness, was what sex was supposed to be like for him. And he'd just never had the chance to find out.

Even then, under ordinary circumstances, Charles would never have questioned his own ability to stay in control and not cross the line. If not for all the good reasons to rape the alien and Starry's improbability field trying to manipulate him.

Wouldn't Starry be happier herself if she was more human? murmured a thought inside him.

He didn't know if that was the improbability field whispering in his mind, or if his mind was trying to make up excuses all on its own now that it had something forbidden that it wanted.

…Charles wasn't sure he could do this. He wasn't sure he could not rape Starry.

It would have helped immensely if he could be sure he shouldn't rape Miss Involuntary Body Modifications.

Charles closed his eyes beneath the cascade of warm water flooding over him, removing his surface layer of sweat. His hands, on unthinking autopilot, scrubbed the lathered washcloth over his body.

You have so much courage and wisdom it's coming out of your ears, Mister Adan, you don't know what it's like to be afraid of tests like that.

Starry seemed to believe in him a lot more than he believed in himself.

What was courage? A lot of people would have said that raping an alien took more courage than not raping an alien. It was equally true that he would have been doing it out of fear, from being afraid of what Starry might do a month later. Then which was courage?

What was wisdom? Was wisdom the common sense of not drawing first blood from the alien, of not attacking a being who had as yet done no harm, of keeping the Earth's honor unstained in at least that one regard? Was wisdom giving up on the wishful thinking and hopes that said Starry might not start transforming people against their will? Was wisdom accepting the harsh truth of what needed to be done, despite his own reluctance?

Like hell he wasn't afraid of tests like that.

By the time Charles's autopilot had finished his brief shower, he'd come to the best decision he could, once and for all and for final.

This temptation had gone far enough. He was going to tell Starry what was happening, tell Starry what her improbability field was forcing him to think or maybe what sort of man she'd been steered to, tell Starry that he was being tempted to take her by force and that he wasn't sure he would withstand the temptation. If she voluntarily said she wanted to take the risk of being with him anyway, then fine.

Charles toweled himself off with what was probably undue vehemence for the simple task of stripping water off skin.

There was, apparently, a part of him that thought it would ruin everything if Starry gave permission, even at one remove from the rape itself.

That part could go die in a fire. Being turned on by a nervous girl taking his orders was one thing. But that? That didn't get to be part of him. Not at all.

Starry's shower was still going when Charles sat down, naked, on the king-size bed with the chains. Starry had moved her purse to the nightstand on the left side of the bed, so Charles sat down on the right. He put down on the right-side nightstand the tall glass of water he'd brought with him, in case Starry did want to continue despite the risks. Charles had given enough oral in his life to know what additional equipment was needed.

He was still trying to figure out exactly what was the politest, most tactful, least alarming way to tell a girl that you were afraid you were going to rape her, when Starry's purse emitted a chirping sound. It was barely audible over the sound of the shower, but identifiable even so.

Charles paused, and shot Starry's purse a puzzled look. That was the stock text-message sound for a Samsung Android phone. Starry had a cellphone now?

Oh, wait, that wasn't actually Starry's purse. Jesus, she'd taken the unknown girl's cellphone? That had not been nice. State IDs could be replaced, but if the unknown girl had un-backed-up data on there---

The purse chirped again.

Charles rolled over in the bed, and looked in not-actually-Starry's purse. Innocent girl's cellphone in a wallet-holster, check. It was an old Samsung S-something with a cracked screen.

Without really thinking about what he was doing, Charles drew out the cellphone and clicked the power button.

The phone's screen obediently previewed the texts it had just received.

> Mom: thanks for texting! stay safe, honey. I'm glad you had fun in class. I hope you come home again soon. I miss you.
> Mom: I promise I'll make cinnamon waffles for breakfast if you're there to eat them. <3

Charles stared at the phone's screen in confusion. Was the 'Mom' contact on this phone getting texts from some other source, some other device the phone's owner also owned, and he was just seeing the replies? But the icon looked like an icon for SMS, not Hangouts or Messenger or Signal. Like the texts had been sent specifically to this cellphone.

Another chirp. Another text box slid on top of the others.

> Mom: Do I get to meet Charles? He sounds nice.

…what?

What?

What what what what WHAT?

Charles's mind tried to grasp what must have happened. As soon as he'd stopped watching Starry, before she'd entered the shower, the alien had paused to text the contact named "Mom" on the cellphone she'd stolen from some girl. Telling "Mom" about her date with Charles.

The unknown girl's mother had texted Starry back. Addressing her as "honey". Asking her to come home. Asking to meet him.

That would only make sense if Starry had been talking to her actual mother, a space alien who seemed unlikely to be making cinnamon waffles, so, what… how had Starry acquired an Earth mother…

With dreadful slowness, the confusion within Charles was resolving into another shape.

Stealing a girl's purse, and her credit cards, that made sense. That was an ordinary mugging.

Stealing a girl's purse, her credit cards, and her photo ID, and using them to attend the girl's English Lit class, that was something muggers usually did not do.

Then there was stealing the girl's cellphone.

And sending the girl's mother texts.

And the girl's mother texting back to ask when her honey was coming home again and offering to make cinnamon waffles.

Starry kept getting prettier. Why was that? Why wouldn't she have already materialized in whatever shape she wanted?

Starry had the background knowledge of a particular Norville native. Why assume that was the background knowledge of the boy she said she'd dragged to a motel room, the boy who was now fine and better than ever? Starry sure seemed a lot like a human girl in some ways. The alien's knowledge of how to be a human girl needed to have come from somewhere.

Charles's lips formed the word No. He didn't speak it aloud.

Starry had been running around in panties and sweater before she'd come to the motel room with the boy. So before meeting the boy, maybe as the very first human it had seen, the creature from beyond the night sky had met a girl. And it had stolen that girl's purse, her credit cards, her clothes, her cellphone, her ability to speak English and buckle seatbelts, her---

---her body, her memories, her college classes, her mother, her life.

"No," Charles whispered aloud, his voice breaking. He pulled the top card from the cellphone's wallet-holster, a Visa debit card for Chase bank.

Cinderella Sheen, said the name on it.

The shower shut off and Charles in panicked reflex shoved the card back into the wallet and dropped the cellphone into Cinderella Sheen's purse. His hands frantically tried to put the purse back to exactly where he'd picked it up, adjust it to the same position.

Starry's misty form became visible through fogged glass, began toweling herself off.

What had Starry said about the girl whose purse she'd stolen? Charles couldn't remember. Had Starry said the girl was fine? That the girl hadn't been hurt at all, and maybe it didn't hurt at all to have your soul eaten? Charles couldn't remember.

It didn't matter.

Starry could lie.

Cinderella Sheen had thought $300 was a huge sum of money. Cinderella Sheen's sweater had been too small for Starry's form, when Charles first saw her at the motel. Had Cinderella Sheen been seventeen years old? Had she been taking college classes at sixteen while still in her high school?

It should have taken longer for the knowledge to sink in, the dismay, but the part of Charles that had already seen all the movies seemed to understand too well what had happened.

It was strange, Charles thought, staring at Starry toweling herself off through the misty door, it was strange that even now, he didn't seem able to hate the alien. He should have felt able to kill her. The monster had eaten a child. But also Starry had felt so strongly for a fat girl they'd passed in the street, had seen into her soul and wept for her, had told Charles to fuck off and not take away the miracle that Starry intended to give her and all the people like her, whether they wanted a miracle or not. If Starry had been human, it would have been a contradiction, an impossibility, that she could be like that and also eat people.

But she was an alien and beyond Charles's understanding, and for him to scream at her for having eaten somebody might be equally beyond her own comprehension, if she didn't already know why that was wrong.

Starry's misted form bent over, doing something to her feet, and Charles realized that she was putting on her high heels, like he'd told her to do, the next time he saw her.

He couldn't hate her. He couldn't kill her.

That wasn't in him.

And yet---

The glass door to the bathroom opened, a pulse of steam billowing out from it.

Charles let go, let it go, didn't hold it back any more.

The thing inhabiting Cinderella Sheen's body stood in the revealed doorway, naked and in her high heels as instructed. She was looking down at her own feet, and her body was trembling, perhaps with fear, perhaps with desire, why not both.

The thing inhabiting Charles Adan's body rose up from the bed, trembling with its own nervousness and lust. The predator looked up, and then down, and then up again, letting its gaze linger slowly and deliberately on its prey. It said to the alien, softly and with heartfelt sincerity, "You're beautiful."

The creature seemed struck, her hands going to her mouth, like she might be about to cry. The other creature stepped forward and gently took down her hands, kissing her upper lip, and then her lower lip. Her trembling hands went around his shoulders, drawing him closer to her.

The two monsters began their last dance together.

Now that it wasn't expecting its food to be taken away, the hunger inside Charles was calmer, less demanding; it knew it would receive everything in time. He was able to take his time about kissing Starry, run his hands all over her, resist the temptation to bend her over and take her right away.

The sanity inside Charles remembered that, to actually save the Earth, he had to make Starry enjoy being taken against her will. He had to force as much pleasure from her as he could, once he entered. So he had to warm up Starry first, raise her heat as high as possible, turn the human part of her into something animal.

The darkness inside him was happy to go along with that. The involuntary gasp Starry made when Charles took her nipple into his mouth and began gently sucking on it, the sound Starry would have made if instead he'd bitten down hard enough to break skin: both were equally its food.

There were times when Charles was prey instead of hunter, when Starry managed to get his thumb or his toes into her mouth and give him a mislocated blowjob that made Charles gasp; times when he had to exert all his own will not to grab Starry's head and start spending his precious pleasure in Starry's mouth. Starry seemed to think that anything she could reach with her lips and tongue was a target, especially his ears.

Then she got his cock in her mouth, and Charles couldn't help himself, he watched her eager face bobbing up and down and enjoyed the flood of sensations, rising much too quickly, he was hardly more than an animal himself at this point. He retained enough of his composure to grab her hair before it was too late, and yank her head away and throw her violently down on the bed.

"Stay there," he said, the first words he'd spoken since he'd told Starry she was beautiful.

Starry stilled.

Charles descended to between her thighs, and began running his tongue up and down the sides of her labia in slow strokes. She was hairless down there, had no hair anywhere except for her 'hair', a fact that Charles appreciated. She'd cleaned herself well; the smell and taste of her womanhood were strong, but fresh.

His finger went inside her, carefully, careful not to break her hymen before it was time, the sane part of Charles remembered that he didn't know the magical rules. It meant he couldn't thrust his fingers hard into her and hammer her g-spot, rendered the penetration more of a tease.

Despite the handicap, Starry was twitching beneath him before long, her hips jerking, although Charles could tell that she was trying to stay still. Starry was more sensitive than the other girls he'd been with, easier to arouse. He'd made Terry come on his face once, without using his hands or a vibrator; he had the feeling he could get twenty orgasms from Starry with the same effort.

"I'm close!" she gasped shortly after he began to suckle her clit in earnest.

Charles raised his head from between her thighs, smiling. Really? That easily? "Tell me each time you get close."

He could see on Starry's face that she knew what was about to happen to her, and the darkness inside him rejoiced. "Okay," she whispered.

Charles consciously relaxed his jaw, slowed down his tongue so he could do this longer.

"I'm close!"

She must have been really turned on.

"I, I, stop!"

Charles deliberately continued, giving her another few slow licks directly on her twitching clit; even while his fingernails dug sharply into her thighs, forcing a mewling sound from her. The darkness inside him did not like being given orders.

Starry seemed to understand what she'd done wrong. She never tried to tell him to stop again, only gasping that she was on the edge, no, no.

Her saying 'no' didn't offend the darkness inside him; it wasn't an order, just another sound Starry could be forced to make.

Charles never looked at the clock. He had no idea how much time had passed before Starry was no longer trying to speak words, only giving long hopeless moans to signal that it was time for Charles to wait a few more seconds before continuing her torment.

Finally Charles felt Starry's hands grasping his head, trying to force him to stay down on her, and the game was won.

Charles rose up from the bed, harder than rock and leaking a thin trail of his own fluids going down to a tiny puddle beneath him. He drank from the glass of water he'd set out for himself, refreshing and rinsing his mouth, offering Starry her own swallows as well.

And then he picked up the chains.

Starry seemed to understand that grabbing his head had been a sin and that this was her punishment. She made no protest as he buckled in her wrists, leaving her legs free. Her eyes watched him with frightened desire, the flush having never left her face since she'd stepped out of the shower. Her nipples were hard and Charles spent some time amusing himself with them.

Starry's arms pulled helplessly on the chains.

"Close your eyes," Charles whispered. "Keep them shut."

Starry obeyed. Her body tensed, waiting for whatever she was about to receive.

Charles ran his hands along Starry's body, arms, chest, breasts, stomach, thighs, feet, taking whatever he wanted from her and ignoring any flinches from ticklish spots. He moved around the bed, to get her used to the idea that Charles could go where he pleased, and she couldn't see him.

He made his way leisurely back to between Starry's legs, going back between them to undo any cooling-off Starry might have had from her earlier torment. His jaw and tongue were long since aching, but he could spare a little more of his pain for this.

Starry made more sounds.

Charles kept tormenting her for a time, always backing off when her legs trembled. Part of him was sad that it had to end, even as he felt like he would go mad with anticipation.

Finally Charles sat up again. He reached over to lift one leg and kissed Starry's toes, spending some time on the folds of skin between them, and then lifted Starry's other leg and spent some time on those toes as well. From time to time his hand rubbed Starry's clit, keeping her whimpering.

Starry had both legs raised into the air now, and Charles kneeling between them.

There passed away the last moment when the sanity in him could have halted this.

Then Charles plunged inside Starry all the way to the hilt, smashing past the thin fold of skin like puncturing a balloon, and letting out an involuntary gasp from his own throat as he felt the hot wetness he'd been lusting after for so long.

Charles didn't thrust into her again, only staying buried in her.

The sanity in him had risen very near the surface now, wondering if her hair would animate and kill him.

And the humanity that was left in him needed to meet Starry's eyes, to say everything to her face, if she whispered in a broken voice Why?, to say back to her, You ate a child.

Starry still didn't open her eyes. Tears began leaking from them. "Charles," she whispered in a breaking voice, and somehow that was much worse.

The humanity that was left in him spoke. "Cinderella Sheen."

Starry's eyes flew open then, and there was shock in them, and maybe terror.

"You ate her," Charles said hoarsely.

Starry stared at him, and then turned her head aside, unable to meet his gaze, and whispered, "No."

Charles withdrew, thrust into her again, feeling the shock of her warmth traveling up the base of his spine.

"Don't," Starry whispered, more tears leaking from her. "D-don't---"

Another thrust.

"Charles, d-don't take me---"

Don't give me orders. Charles shoved himself inside her as far as he could go, pushing to reach her cervix, if he could, though there seemed to be no end to the warmth inside her. Somewhere in the back of his mind he'd been intending to give Starry thirty seconds to recover once her hymen was broken, but the madness was upon him now.

"Don't, don't take my virginity---"

He wasn't going to be able to hold out for more than seconds. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had sex without a condom, and even besides that, the arousal of hearing Starry moaning, the fire in him that fed on her tears, would have made it impossible.

"P-please d-don't force me, oh Charles d-don't make me come like this---"

A guttural sound burst from his throat as Charles began to fuck her in earnest, burying himself in warm pleasure over and over, his hips moving faster than he could control, all thoughts of Starry's pleasure forgotten. He came inside her almost immediately, and it spent none of the need, he stayed hard and kept fucking.

It took longer for him to come the second time, and Starry cried out three times before he did, her hips trying helplessly to writhe away from the pleasure he was forcing into her and only serving to stimulate both of them more. Her moans kept rising, and by the time he finished his second time, Starry's legs had locked around his back and was urging him into her, and she screamed and tensed as he howled the sound of his own pleasure.

Charles collapsed to the bed beside the still-bound girl, the strength leaving his limbs as the hunger departed. His breath came to him in gasps, trying to restore all the oxygen his muscles had spent without holding back, sprinting for minutes without pause.

The darkness in him had fed, and gone away satisfied.

What was left behind was Charles Adan, the son of William Adan, lying beside the girl he'd raped and forced into pleasure.

From somewhere Charles found the strength to rise, to unbuckle Starry's right hand from her cuffs and chains, then her left hand. The girl didn't move, just lay there quietly weeping in the aftermath of her final orgasm.

He saw, now, and he couldn't remember when it had changed, that Starry's hair had lost its unearthly beauty, taken on an earthy, greyish-brown appearance. It wasn't unseemly on her, but---

Your hair. Your beautiful hair.

What had he done?

Something strange and wonderful had come to Earth, and he'd, he'd…

Why. Why had it needed to end like this? Had there been a happier ending to this movie, one that he'd missed?

A choking sensation rose in his throat. Charles would have wept for what he'd done, if it wouldn't have been an unspeakable insult to his victim.

"I," Charles said, he could hardly form words, "I, I'll understand if you want me to go---"

"Hold me!"

Astonished, Charles put his arms around the naked, weeping girl as Starry rose up and clung to him, and cried, and cried.

Then her arm rose, and hit him on his breast, and then hit him again.

Charles Adan stayed, and didn't protest the blows. There was no force to them, and she would have been within her rights to kill him.

"Bastard," she whispered. "You bastard! You fucking bastard!"

Charles said nothing. It was only the truth.

Starry pushed herself off of his chest, looking beautiful and naked and vulnerable even now, and glared at him. "Isn't there something you should be saying to me about now?"

"I," Charles said. He couldn't say he was sorry. Sorry meant you understood what you did wrong. It was a promise that you wouldn't do it again, that you wouldn't have done it again, now that you were sorry. He was horrified at what he'd done, he felt an unbearable sadness for the loss of Starry's hair and whatever other wonders he'd destroyed; but Charles knew that wasn't the same as him being sorry for it. "I, I wish this had ended differently---Starry, you ate a girl."

"I didn't know!" she cried. "I didn't know you shouldn't eat people! How could I possibly know it was wrong? How could I have known it was wrong before I'd eaten her?"

"Oh," Charles whispered. So he was the movie's fool after all, then. Horror began to well up in him, and remorse, only slightly tempered by the thought that she'd still planned to drag people into transformation tanks. "Starry, I, I'm, s-sorry---"

"Shut up," she whispered, and leaned back into him, her legs curling up as she huddled into his side. "Shut up. I, I knew."

What?

"I knew. When you told me to close my eyes, I knew." More tears glittered in Starry's eyes. "I, I let you do it."

The flood of relief that went through Charles was so strong he almost thought he would faint.

Starry's arm rose and hit him again. "But you're still a fucking bastard!"

"Yeah, I know," Charles Adan said. He knew well what the usual rules said about having sex with someone who could have stopped you. He knew well what sort of man raped a girl while she begged him to stop, and hoped afterwards that she'd turn out to have been secretly okay with it. There had been extensive and mandatory sessions at UCLA, if he'd not already known.

He was still glad that his sin had been less.

"Give me that water," Starry said, and Charles handed over the glass to her, noting in the back of his mind that he didn't seem to have any trouble now with Starry asking him to do things.

Starry drank deeply, then passed the glass back to him.

Charles took several deep swallows himself. "I, if it's not too obscene for me to say it, I really am sorry for some of it," Charles said, as he set the glass aside on the nighttable. "I'm sorry about your hair. I'm sorry that your first time wasn't as romantic for a Starry as you wanted it to be."

"Oh, there's a part of me that thinks it's terribly romantic," Starry said bitterly, almost spitting the words. "Cinderella Sheen would have loved it. Find someone you really like, get your virginity stolen by him, be held by him while you cry, hit him and call him a bastard, and then cuddle up next to him looking naked and vulnerable. Cinderella wouldn't have been crying because she'd just lost almost all her power, she'd have been crying because she'd gotten everything she'd always dreamed of."

"Sorry," Charles repeated softly.

Starry didn't seem at all mollified. She poked him hard in the chest. "Did you enjoy it, you bastard? Taking me while I pleaded, forcing me to like it? I want the truth. You owe me the truth."

"It was, it was the most powerful sexual experience in my life," Charles said, his voice hoarsening again. "I don't know if it was your mating field, or if I'd always been that sort of person, but, but I'd never even fantasized about something like that. I had no idea---I didn't know."

"Well then," Starry said, still with that bitter tone in her voice, but maybe something else too, "that's great. That's just wonderful. I'm so glad I could be of service. You really screwed me good. It's a wonder I have any power left at all."

Charles couldn't think of anything to say.

Starry pushed herself away from his chest, from where she'd been huddling into him. "Well," Starry said, again with that strange overtone to her voice, "you'd better intend on taking responsibility for this."

Charles felt a sinking sensation coming over him. "Take responsibility for what?"

"Were you not paying attention when I told you how this worked? The girl became a woman. The way you did it, you made me your woman."

Charles stared at Starry. The depowered alien glared back at him.

"What?" Charles said faintly. "What does that mean?"

Starry was still glaring at him. "I can't refuse anything sexual that you ask of me. I can't stop you from doing anything you want to me. And if you go too long without making use of me somehow, I'll start becoming desperate. At least I can still sleep outside of the same bed as you. Occasionally. So long as I don't have to do that on a regular basis."

"I'm a delivery and sales guy!" Charles's mouth said, as the paralyzed confusion and dismay prevented him from saying or thinking anything sensible. "I go from city to city! I'm not in my bed more than two nights a week!"

Starry crossed her arms and stared at him harder. "Then I guess you're quitting that job and renting an apartment in Norville. I'm still mostly bound to this place, at least for a while."

"Humans need jobs to get money to rent apartments!" Charles blurted, as his mind frantically scrabbled for purchase on some kind of solidity somewhere.

"Good point," Starry said thoughtfully. "Well, you can always rent me out. I'm young, pretty, and immune to venereal diseases. You're great at sales. You could make some serious dough as the manager of your own escort agency."

"Are you s-s-serious?" Charles's brain was now completely shut down, his mouth operating on autopilot.

"Sure. I'm not the type of magical girlfriend who sets up in your house while expecting you to pay for everything."

"But but but but what if I don't want a magical girlfriend?"

Starry put her fists on her hips and thrust out her chest at him, curving to display the arch of her body to her best advantage. "Oh?" Starry said. "You don't want? You don't like the thought of me wearing whatever you like and waking you up with oral sex every morning? You don't like the thought of owning your very own sex slave? You wouldn't be passing up anything, I'm not the jealous type. I'll be happy to help you seduce anyone else you want for my, uh, for your harem."

"I don't want to own anyone!" It was all Charles could think of to say.

Starry leaned in closer, her face almost touching his. "Are you sure?" she breathed. "Think about this very carefully, Charles Adan. Not even a little tiny part of you wants to own me? Even if you didn't do it deliberately and nobody could possibly blame you for how it happened? You still wouldn't want me for your own?"

"I," Charles said. "I mean---"

The hunger and the darkness and the predator inside him didn't take over, weren't powerful enough right now to take over. But they had skeptical eyebrows raised.

"I mean yes," Charles said, "yes there's a part of me that wants it. But owning another person isn't what I want! Not you being my slave with no way for you to escape! Isn't there any way to undo this?"

There was a long moment of silence, as Starry stared into his eyes from inches away.

"Then," Starry breathed out, "then you're very, very lucky, you bastard. It didn't happen but it almost happened. If you'd forced one more orgasm out of me, if you'd wanted even a tiny bit more to own me---"

"Oh," Charles said faintly, not quite collapsing into the bed's headboard, though his limbs did loosen slightly. "Close call, there."

"Yeah. Very close."

"Ah, will you be okay without me?" Charles said. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he had to ask. "I don't want to leave, I'd rather wake up with you tomorrow morning and try out the whirlpool bathtub, but I do have to be in San Jose tomorrow if I want to keep my job. You could come with in the passenger's seat, I guess."

"I think I'll be fine," Starry said, though she sounded reluctant. She leaned back, moved her face out of kissing distance. "But you're not leaving here before I get your phone number, just in case I find myself with a sudden desperate need for your dick after all."

Charles nodded rapidly. "Yep. Got it."

"Hmpfh." Starry looked away.

A suspicion began to dawn on Charles. "Starry… did you want to end up as my woman?"

Starry might have been blushing slightly, it was hard to see in the light of the nightstands. "Maybe… maybe not really. Maybe just a part of me. I mean, if you said you wanted to live together anyway, without you owning me, and with me dating other people too, but still with you getting oral sex to wake you up every morning and you being able to take anything else you wanted from me, and you managing my escort bookings, um. I mean. I mean in the long run, since you don't own me, I'm probably going to end up eventually with a whole harem. That also has subby boys and dominant girls and us all doing things so perverted they ignore physics. But, I mean. I'm not going to jump into all that right away. I'll have to work up to it over time. And if, in the meanwhile, you wanted to be around me, and maybe have the harem be just the two of us for a bit, um. I, I don't know! It'd be a big step. I like everything I've seen of you, but, but we just haven't known each other that long! I don't know about your family, or how you like to organize your bathroom, or what you look like when you're sleeping. All I really know about you is that you're clever, handsome, courageous, wise, altruistic, strong, nice, good in bed, and you have a dominant side you haven't explored."

Charles stared at her.

"Uh, you bastard."

Charles kept staring at her.

Starry turned and fled to the other side of the bed, diving over to bury her head under a pillow. Her muffled voice came from underneath. "You need to stop looking at me like that if you're not about to take me again."

Charles didn't want to ask, but he had to be certain. "Are you sure you didn't end up as my woman?"

Starry's voice sounded from the pillow. "I think this is more of a Cinderella Sheen issue."

A peculiar thought began to dawn in Charles's mind, but it didn't seem like time to voice it. Instead he patted Starry's behind where she was sticking it out nicely into the air while playing ostrich, causing a soft yeep to emanate from the pillow.

"I'd be a lying liar who tells lying lies if I claimed it wasn't a tempting deal," Charles said honestly. "But my father always told me not to join an alien's harem the same day I met the alien. Well, more or less that's what he said. I'll have to think about your offer."

Starry pulled herself out from under the pillow and sat up again. "Hey, what offer? Who says I was making---"

Charles gave her the same stare that had caused her to flee earlier. "Starry? I'm in sales. I can tell when somebody is making an offer."

Starry stared down at her lap. "Oh," she whispered. "I guess you're right. I guess it was an offer."

"Did you fall for me? It doesn't have to be magic."

"No. I mean. M-maybe a little. Like it's just starting. I… I think I could fall in love with you."

"Sounds serious," Charles murmured. It mattered, mattered on a whole different level, pressed buttons and switches inside him that the rest of the night hadn't touched. One of the girls she'd dated had said she'd loved him, and he'd said he'd loved her back because it seemed to fit the way she was using the word. Nobody had ever fallen in love with him before. "Starry, I don't know how well you know me and whether you were reading my mind before, but I know you hardly at all."

"Yeah," Starry murmured. She winced, as though thinking of something painful. "Maybe even less well than you think." She looked back at him. "You'd also get to dom the other submissive girls in my harem?"

"You can't buy love with sex, Starry, not even large amounts of sex." Certain internal parts of him seemed to disagree with this, Charles noted.

"It's going to be a reeaally nice harem. Best in the world. Would you honestly rather drive around making deliveries? Come on, you know you want it."

"There'd be other men in the harem, though?" Charles wasn't sure how he would feel about this. It felt, not so much bad, as just difficult to imagine. Charles didn't know how he would react, never mind the predator inside him.

"You'd get to date them too."

Charles felt his eyes widen before he could stop them. "I'm not bisexual, Starry!"

"Uh, fair warning, I'm not sure that's going to stay true forever if you stick around me. I don't think I have yet but I might start radiating everyone-is-bisexual-ness at some point."

…this would also need to be considered.

There was a long silence, but not an awkward one. Starry cuddled up to him, her legs stretching out behind her, and Charles hugged her closer.

At some point he'd have to head off to San Jose.

He really, really didn't want to.

Was that answer enough?

Of course it wasn't. He was cuddled up to a cute girl in a beautiful penthouse with a Jacuzzi. Preferring that to a three-hour midnight drive for San Jose wasn't proof of love, just sanity.

"Starry," Charles said, "how much power is left in you now?"

Starry pulled her head back from his chest and sat up, giving him another serious look. "Uh, don't be surprised if I still end up on the news? You didn't seal all of my power, and I'll still get a little more of it back over time. I'll just be… less eldritch abomination in human form, more of a human girl with sex-themed superpowers."

A human girl with superpowers. The peculiar thought was growing. "Starry, about your human personality. Is this what Cinderella Sheen was like? When she was alive?"

"Not while she was alive, but she sure would have been if she'd gotten sex-themed superpowers and a chance to be someone else."

Charles barely kept his mouth from dropping open. Did she realize what she was saying?

It didn't seem like the right time to mention it, though.

Starry snuggled back into his chest.

"What's it like out there, Starry?" Charles said after a while.

"Lonely," Starry murmured.

"I was asking more about the big picture?" Charles said. "The monkey is curious. I want to know the truth about reality. Whatever forbidden knowledge won't melt my mind."

There was a long pause.

"I, I don't remember," Starry whispered. "It all feels like something I made up during the drive to Goodwill to scare you."

The sadness rose up in Charles again, like when he'd seen Starry's beautiful hair had faded, the feeling of having destroyed something precious that had come to Earth, having lost something irreplaceable. "I'm sorry," Charles said. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," Starry said softly. "I'm a girl with sex-themed superpowers who made up a silly story about being Cthulhu because it seemed funny at the time. That's what happened. That's all that ever happened. By this time tomorrow I'll probably believe it too."

There must have been another way it could have ended. There must have been a different ending to the movie. Charles wanted to believe that, but he still couldn't see it. "Did I do the right thing tonight?" Charles wondered aloud.

Starry laughed softly.

"What?" said Charles.

"Just something a human said to me a little after I got here. If we hadn't had intercourse tonight, you'd also be wondering if you did the right thing. Nobody ever gets to know if they did the right thing, and that's sad, but it's also funny."

"Yeah," Charles said. "Yeah, that was a human, all right. Want to hear another human joke? It's also quite funny."

"Sure," Starry murmured.

"It's a riddle so obvious that any human would know the answer, and only something from the night sky wouldn't realize. What is it that's stolen Cinderella Sheen's clothes, her purse, her cellphone, her debit card, her photo ID, her body, her knowledge, her memories, her college classes, her mother, her feelings, her personality, and her hopes and dreams?"

"Oh," Starry whispered after a time. "Oh. How silly of me. Why, it's Cinderella Sheen, of course. Ha ha."

"Ha ha," Charles said.

It was funny, though neither of them laughed. And sad, too, even though the alien had gotten everything it thought it wanted. It wasn't alone anymore.

"So," Charles said after a while. "Uh, now that you've realized that, are you still planning to make unspeakable machines?"

"Humans make machines too," Starry murmured into his chest. "Machines are good. It's why we get to have nice hotels instead of caves."

"You said we," Charles observed. He was suddenly much more certain he'd done the right thing.

"So I did," Starry said. "I… I guess you can call me Cindy, if you like."

Something inside Charles felt like it was finally relaxing. "And, Cindy, you're not planning on holding the UN hostage any more?"

"Ha," Starry said. "Actually I'm pretty sure that was Cinderella's idea in the first place. Lonely space thing didn't give a fuck about the United Nations. Why would I?" Then Starry suddenly sat up straight. "Wait a minute, if I'm actually human, does that mean it's okay if I take over the world?"

"Uh," Charles said.

"Do you object if it's a human doing it?"

"Uh," Charles said. The awful realization was dawning on him that if Starry's human side had been derived from Cinderella Sheen all along, maybe this was in fact what Cinderella Sheen was like.

"I mean, if I'm human, then this is my planet and I have as much right to dominate the place as anyone. Or at least take over North Korea for god's sake."

"I see," Charles said aloud. He couldn't possibly facepalm hard enough to do this situation justice without caving in his own skull. "Apparently I sealed the wrong half of the alien."

"Hey!"

"Yep. Looks like I let myself become a fucking rapist in order to seal the wrong fucking half of the alien. Fuck my life."

"I will as soon as I can have sex with things that abstract. Charles, am I honestly that bad? I'll listen if you tell me so."

Her being human did change things, he just wasn't sure how much. "I'm gonna need some time to think about this," Charles said.

"Okay," Starry said, "I can wait."

He'd meant more like a week.

Starry comfortably snuggled into his paralysis, drawing some of the scarlet blankets over herself, considerately arranging them over Charles too.

Charles's eyes gazed around at the bedroom, the walnut paneling seeming dark but cheerful in the twin lights radiating from the two nightstands on either side of the bed. His eyes skipped through the paintings again.

A windmill by the sea, a robed woman smiling as she copied one scroll onto another with a quill pen (Hypatia's Daily Life), a woman in a lab coat peering into a microscope, a city at night as seen from an airplane, the International Space Station hovering in front of the Earth, an old man toasting marshmallows over a wood fire on a beach, a painting of a painting of a mountain, the interior of a modern office painted in pre-Renaissance style, a puffy-bodied girl eating breakfast near a fat wife and aproned husband, a medieval printing press in a museum…

Charles's breath caught as he saw the pattern he hadn't seen before. What was there, and more importantly, what wasn't there.

Then Charles shook his head. It didn't answer his question, though it had to mean something.

"I said before that it should be Stephen Hawking here, or the Dalai Lama," Charles said after a time. "But the person I really wish was here was my father's father, Marcus Adan. Grandpa Mark. He was the sort of paternal figure you actually do wish you could call on the phone when you don't know what to do."

"Was," Starry murmured.

"He died in 2014. Probably a good thing."

"Why would you say that?" Starry sounded slightly shocked.

"Grandpa was a Republican to the point of being religious. By which I mean that he worshipped the true Republican God as it existed beyond time and space, and thought of the actual Republican Party as a fallible human church that had gotten corrupted. He wasn't the sort of Republican who yelled at immigrants to get out of the country, he was the sort of Republican who could recite both parts of the poem on the Statue of Liberty from memory. One time in third grade I got into a fistfight to defend a Mexican kid because, I said, he'd recited the Pledge of Allegiance in class with everyone else so that made him as American as anyone could be. I didn't even understand what I was saying, I was just imitating Grandpa. My father told me later, when I was older, that when he'd told Grandpa why I'd gotten suspended, that was the happiest he could remember seeing Grandpa in ten years. Grandpa taught me and Eric, my younger brother, to hold open doors for older woman and the girls we were dating, and he also said that some women wouldn't want that and if so we ought to listen. Grandpa believed in always being civil and courteous, keeping your promises, and paying your debts. He believed in Truth, Justice, and the American Way the way they meant it when Superman first appeared in the comics. If it had been Grandpa who'd gotten superpowers, he could have put on Superman's cape and flown off to save the day and nobody would ever have noticed a difference."

"He sounds like a very nice person. Why would you be glad he was dead?"

"I remember Grandpa shouting at the TV because he thought that George W. Bush didn't have enough dignity for the White House and wasn't honest. I remember feeling disappointed when Grandpa Mark told Dad, after the Iraq War had dragged on for a while, that Eric and I weren't to sign up for the army unless things changed. Even then, Grandpa never gave up faith in the true Republican Party that lived on in his heart, the Republican Party that was careful and sober and worked hard to pay down the national debt and ran the numbers on everything while the wild-haired Democratic kids were chasing every fool idea that entered their heads. I don't know if the Republican Party was actually like that in his day and then it changed, or if no political party like that ever really existed, but Grandpa believed in it the way some people believe in God. He awaited its return the way some people wait for Jesus to return. But he wasn't beyond reason, and if he'd lived to see 2016 he might have realized that his Republican Party was never coming back. It was kinder that he died in his sleep. Marcus Adan was a kind of good person that isn't allowed to exist in this world any more, from back when there could be different kinds of good people and they could all respect each other, before everything in American politics went to hell."

Starry/Cindy had listened to this with a fascinated look, much like she'd grown up in a Californian town that considered Tennessee to be further off the charts than wherever the alien had come from.

"I'm not Grandpa Mark," Charles said. "But I can try to pretend to be him, like I did in third grade, and tell you what I think he'd have said."

"Okay," Starry murmured. "Give it to me straight and hard, Grandpa."

"Don't ever---never mind." Charles drew a breath. "I think Grandpa would have told you, well, he would have told you the exact opposite of what you said earlier, when you talked about how when the rules say someone's life will always be horrible, something has to shatter all the rules for something wonderful to happen. Grandpa would have asked you if maybe you could just break one rule instead. He would have told you to go slow. To be careful. To wonder what you might be wrecking when you tried to change things. He would have used the metaphor of a small town, from before the Internet when people in small towns all knew each other. A little neighborhood where everyone is borrowing cups of sugar from their next-door neighbors, and trading off babysitting, and children are playing in other children's backyards. He would have warned you against being the sort of person who walks through the town and starts thinking they know how to rearrange all the houses so that the correct people are living next to each other. Because you don't know the thousand little things that are going right, and that will break if you try to rearrange everything."

"What if it's an awful neighborhood?" Starry murmured into his thigh. "Moving people around doesn't only break up good things, it breaks up bad things too. What about all the older kids in the neighborhood who are bullying the little kids next door, and the hobbyist who operates a table saw in their backyard at seven in the morning and wakes everyone up? God, I hated that guy."

"Marcus Adan would never have told you that nothing ever needs changing. He read a lot of history books. He knew things hadn't always been the way they'd been when he'd grown up, and he knew there'd been a time when everything in the US Constitution had been somebody's crazy idea instead of being two hundred years old. But he would have told you to go slow, and be cautious, to try little things before you tried big things, and to maybe try it just once or twice and watch to see what happened before you went further. He would have reminded you that even when the United States was being formed, it was made out of thirteen existing governments who left a lot of little arrangements in place, and they started out by trying a small federation that only handled defense against invasions and trade between the states. I, I wish you could have met him, Starry. Cindy. He could have shown you that it isn't only evil people who worry about change and wonder if old ways have some wisdom to them."

Starry took a while to respond, and when she did, her voice was thoughtful. "So if Grandpa was an alien handing out superpowers, he'd have given them to just one person first, and maybe added a leveling system so they didn't start out that powerful, and watched to see what would happen?"

"If Grandpa was an alien handing out superpowers, he wouldn't need to try giving them to just one person first. He'd have already visited the great galactic library and read up about the last billion times somebody had tried something like that. He'd be part of an older, larger civilization that had time-tested traditions for how to treat younger civilizations. He wouldn't break those rules without an extraordinary reason, something on the level of the Earth being destroyed otherwise or a threat to the whole galaxy. Now that I look at it from his perspective... I think he'd find this whole situation even more alarming than I did. He'd look at Starry showing up and worry that somewhere, somehow, something had broken."

"Huh," Starry said.

"Do you know if the alien broke any rules?"

Starry shook her head. "Don't remember," she murmured.

It was a question that Charles really, really, really should have asked a whole lot sooner.

"Well," Charles said, feeling every month of the awful lightness of his twenty-three years of youth, "that's the kind of question Marcus Adan would have asked right away because he was actually wise."

"Huh."

"And Grandpa would have advised you very strongly that it was fine to take it slow, and make sure you knew what you were doing first, and not run off to try to fix everyone's problems right away, even if you planned on doing that later once you knew how everything worked and what was going on."

"What would Grandpa Mark have said I ought to tell to all the fat people I'm not making beautiful?"

"Grandpa would have given you a lecture on the origins of communism in the universities and coffeehouses of Europe, the gist of which would be that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had also been enthusiastic young people who'd thought other people had been suffering and needed to be helped right away without doing any more homework. Communism was pretty much the devil in Grandpa's theology, and he was always careful to read up on anything he wanted to yell about because he didn't think that being passionate about something was an excuse for being sloppy. His lecture would have gone on for two hours and forty-six minutes, and he would have done it in his house's library room so he could consult reference books."

"Did he actually---"

"Yeah. I don't even remember what I said that triggered him off, just that it showed I had never heard of the last four millennia of recorded history and I was living in a tiny little bubble of now like an unusually illiterate teenaged gorilla."

"Is that a quote?"

"Yep."

"If he was alive I'd be too scared to meet him."

"Yep."

Starry's arms tightened around him. "I am scared," she said after a while. "I'm too young, Charles. I'm too young for this. Not too young for what my improbability field makes happen around me, too young for whatever it all means. It should be someone like Marcus Adan figuring this out, someone older, but I don't know who to trust that wouldn't just put me in a laboratory. I don't suppose you know someone else like him?"

"Sorry," murmured Charles. There'd only been one Grandpa Mark... maybe not literally, but only the one that Charles knew.

"I can't trust my improbability field," Starry whispered. "I don't know that it's bad, but I don't know that it's good either. I definitely don't think it agrees with your Grandpa Mark about only changing one thing at a time."

"Your field did arrange for you to get turned human," Charles said. "More human, I mean. It helped you slow down when that was what you truly wanted."

Starry shook her head, against his thigh. "It didn't give two shits about that, it just wanted me to mate. I do know that much."

"Really?" Charles said. He was smiling now. He hadn't gotten to deliver many pieces of good news this night. "Look at the wall paintings in this room, Starry. What isn't there?"

Starry sat up and looked at the wall, seeming puzzled, as Charles got up and flipped the room's main light switch so that she could see better.

A windmill by the sea, a robed woman smiling as she copied one scroll onto another with a quill pen, a woman in a lab coat peering into a microscope, a city at night as seen from an airplane, the International Space Station hovering in front of the Earth, an old man toasting marshmallows over a wood fire on a beach, a painting of a painting of a mountain, the interior of a modern office painted in pre-Renaissance style, a puffy-bodied girl eating breakfast near a fat wife and aproned husband, and a medieval printing press in a museum.

"I… don't understand," Starry said.

"To power up, you'd have mated surrounded by symbols of your old self, right? If these were just random wall hangings in a hotel room, you'd expect to see some flowers, maybe a quiet river somewhere. The closest thing to that here is a painting of a painting of a mountain. None of the paintings show a night sky or even the Sun. The International Space Station is in front of the Earth, you can't see any stars in the view. Every painting here is a symbol of humanity, not of the alien or anything else."

Starry stared at the paintings. "It must have just done that so you'd think it was a good chance to depower me…?"

"I didn't even realize until after we'd mated. Your improbability field deliberately helped you turn human, Starry. It's not all bad."

The ex-alien went on gazing at the paintings. "It wasn't my improbability field," she whispered. "Charles, my improbability field didn't do this."

"What?"

"There's no sex in these paintings. Nobody's undressed, nobody's even holding hands."

"Are you sure that means…?" Charles said slowly.

"No, but, but I still don't think this was my improbability field's idea."

Charles felt the goosebumps rising all over his body. Neither of them spoke the obvious question, then what…

Then Starry leapt up from the bed with a cry. She ran over to the wall, frantically pressed her face near one of the paintings, the one with the wife and husband and daughter in a kitchen.

Charles came over to look at it. It seemed like an ordinary scene to him, but for the wife and husband and daughter all facing away from the viewing angle of the painting. If anything, the surprise about the painting was that somebody had bothered to paint something so mundane.

Then Charles saw the tears beginning to stream down Starry's cheeks, and he realized.

"Cinderella Sheen," he murmured. "That's her, with her family."

"W-when she was younger. Yeah. It's her with her Mom and her D-Dad."

The bright copper plate beneath the painting showed its title, To Thine Own Thee Be True.

The two of them stood staring at the paintings for a time, Charles holding Starry close, while her shoulders sometimes shook.

"Is there a higher power in the world?" Charles said. He mostly didn't believe in God, but he understood in that moment how religions began, in awe and in wonder. "Is the Earth also something that can defend itself, or are we?"

"I don't know," Starry whispered. "I don't know anything."

After a time the two of them separated, looking into each other's eyes, both knowing without words that it was time for one of them to go.

Starry got out Cinderella Sheen's cellphone from Cinderella Sheen's purse, and Charles recited his number.

A moment later his own cellphone chirped.

> Stay?

Charles looked up from his phone and gave her a stern look, realizing only too late that this might be counterproductive.

"I wish you would," Starry said. "If you wanted to just call up someone and quit your job right now, Berberg gave me six hundred dollars, and Cinderella has a little more. That'd be enough to feed you until we could set up an escort agency, right?"

Charles shook his head. "When I tell my boss I'll be somewhere on Tuesday, I'm there on Tuesday. Stafford has always played fair by me, and an Adan keeps his word."

"Don't crash your car," Starry said. She was trembling. "If you crash your car and get hurt, I'll forget everything about taking things slowly. My hair will turn back to what it was, and I'll go to whatever hospital you're in and amp up my improbability field until it can heal you, no matter what else happens after that. Understand that, Mister Adan?"

"The seal is tied to my health?" Charles said, suddenly worried.

"No, I'd just be extremely upset."

Oh. That sounded like an important caveat to remember. He also noticed she hadn't said anything about what happened if he died. "I'll drive carefully."

"Make sure you do. And then come back to me and join my harem."

Starry had tried to stand straight and tall when she said it, despite her nudity, and she'd tried to make her voice commanding, despite her occasional trembles.

"I do have to think about it," Charles said. "It's not a decision to make in haste."

"How are you leaning on that decision, Mister Adan?"

"I can't tell you that. You'd take it as a promise."

Starry's eyes suddenly brightened.

"I mean, you'd take it as a promise if I said I was leaning in favor," Charles said, mentally imagining putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger.

"That's not what I hea~rd, Mister Adan!"

"God damn it, Starry---" and then Charles couldn't say anything because she'd grabbed him by the ears, pulled down his head, and stuck her tongue into his mouth.

She followed him out of the bedroom, still naked, and watched him put his clothes back on.

"So that's a promise then," Starry said, sounding much more cheerful now.

"I said I'd think about it," Charles growled. He handed over the room keys to Starry, who accepted them.

"Like you'd really turn down daily oral sex, go back to being an underpaid delivery boy, and leave me all on my own to get up to god knows what catastrophes?"

Charles buckled his belt with unusual vehemence. "Yes. That's exactly what I might decide. And you're not helping your case right now, young lady."

"Tsun~de~re~," Starry sang, pronouncing the three cryptic syllables one at a time.

"What the hell's that mean?"

Moments later, he found himself standing outside the penthouse doors, as the sounds of Starry's laughter came from behind them.

"Bitch," he said under his breath.

Then the penthouse doors flew open and Starry reached out to grab him by the shirt, narrowly missing when Charles reflexively took a step back.

"Wait," Starry said. "I can't believe I forgot! You're not leaving here until I've tasted your nectar."

"Like hell!" Charles shouted, and ran for the stairwell.

"Hey wait!"

Charles slammed through the stairwell door and began vaulting stairs.

"Wait!" cried Starry's voice. "Wait, I can't do parkour without my heels! Let me put on my heels and chase you! I need to know what your nectar does! Come back here or I'll never stop hunting you down!"

Charles didn't pause until he'd burst out of the ground level stairwell door, run into his Crown Vic, locked the doors, and driven out of the parking lot on the long path to San Jose.

"This is all a terrible idea," Charles said to himself, as the night-lit streets flashed by. "Terrible, terrible, terrible idea."

(What does Charles Adan decide after thinking about it?)

[ ] Prudence and good sense would counsel that more dating is required here. See about getting routed through Norville as often as possible, but no moving in to any apartments until you know Starry/Cindy better.
[ ] Starry has a point about her needing supervision, and she also has a point about daily oral sex. If Starry gets housing set up for you and other prospective harem members, you'll try it out. Your company can probably manage to do without you for a week, and they tend to be pretty flexible about things.
[ ] Well, shit. It doesn't look like Starry's face, voice, or the feeling of her protesting body writhing beneath you, is going out of your mind any time soon. There's no use fighting this fate. Finish up your delivery job, then quit and move to Norville. You've got enough money to cover the first month's rent on an apartment at least.
[ ] Turn her down.

2.5.1: Unread Messages

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 23 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Prudence and good sense would counsel that more dating is required here. See about getting routed through Norville as often as possible, but no moving in to any apartments until you know Starry/Cindy better.
No. of Votes: 34
Raron
Alkaiser009
Arkatekt
AylorAivo
BastetsChosen
Calphorus
DB_Explorer
Dragonpriest88
Fade to Silence
Gingganz
inverted_helix
january1may
Jerion 'Wyverntamer' Kràl
kaciw
KBob
kimagurena65536
ltmauve
Malbutorius
murklins
Myardius
PhotonDragon
Prustan
ScrewFate
SemiAnarchist
Serenities
ShaperV
Spectral Waltz
swarm
Tesla
TheWave
VanillaTentacle
wasprider
XelaTheRed
zup
[x] Starry has a point about her needing supervision, and she also has a point about daily oral sex. If Starry gets housing set up for you and other prospective harem members, you'll try it out. Your company can probably manage to do without you for a week, and they tend to be pretty flexible about things.
No. of Votes: 5
fictionfan
edale
pepperjack
Snake/Eater
TricksterPriest
[X] Turn her down.
No. of Votes: 1
Waruiko
[X] Well, shit. It doesn't look like Starry's face, voice, or the feeling of her protesting body writhing beneath you, is going out of your mind any time soon. There's no use fighting this fate. Finish up your delivery job, then quit and move to Norville. You've got enough money to cover the first month's rent on an apartment at least
No. of Votes: 1
Aramisofsteel
Total No. of Voters: 41

That son of a bitch Charles did not wait for you to get your heels on. By the time you'd finished shoving your feet into them and raced back out of the penthouse, only a distant clattering sound in the stairwell remained.

You look down the stairs and pout. What kind of courageous, handsome man like that is scared of one little blowjob?

Well, you did call it "extracting nectar" and… hm. Charles doesn't actually know that is just a synonym for oral sex.

But, goddamn it, Charles knows your nectar extraction comes with oral sex, and he still parkoured away from a naked girl in high heels trying to blow him. Fucking tsunderes.

You angrily flounce back into the penthouse, then stop in mid-flounce as you walk back through the penthouse door for the second time. You're still not used to the aesthetic experience, and it once again smashes you over the head like a beautifully carved brick. The dark stained-wood flooring and walls, the brilliant warm lanterns, all the pretty pictures, the vases of flowers, the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Norville, the marble-tiled bathrooms and high ceilings and everything is so huge and so pretty.

Leaving this place is going to kill you. It's going to turn 11am for checkout time and you will fall over dead on the spot, deprived of the insanely expensive luxuries to which you have been instantaneously addicted. The only reason you're not desperately trying to figure out how to make $1000/day or whatever insane amount this room costs per night, starting before 11am tomorrow, is the awareness that this place only has two bedrooms and you are going to want a larger harem than that.

You pout again at the thought that Charles is refusing to immediately admit he's your boyfriend, glancing in the mirror-like reflective surface of the kitchen refrigerator to verify that the facial expression works. Whatever combination of SED and BOD you have now, it lets you pout and look adorably childish and petulant.

Something seems to be odd about the way you're moving around the house. Are you dancing? Apparently you're dancing. That would explain the twirls.

…okay, you did just become a woman. You've had sex. With an amazing man you really really like, a man you could possibly fall in love with. And you haven't had a chance to happy out about that, because you were too busy cuddling up to the handsome man who stole your virginity and angrily hitting him just like in all the fantasies you never even knew you had.

You dance your way over to the huge floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the city of Norville. If you weren't completely fucking high on whatever chemicals are flooding your brain right now, you'd probably be blushing at the thought of exposing your naked body to the window. But this night you are a WOMAN and you've had SEX and anyone who wants to try to argue with that by looking at your naked body is JUST GOING TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH REALITY. You don't even care how little sense that thought makes because you've had SEX.

Somewhere in the back of your mind you are aware that your own brain now has 523 unread emails from itself, and that at some point you're going to have to sit down and process it all before you can even think about the Erogame messages. But you can't even do that right now you're too high.

Time has passed. You're not really sure what you did in the meanwhile, or at least this is what you are going to claim later if anyone asks you why you were dancing naked in front of a clearly lighted floor-to-ceiling window. Worst-case scenario, somebody was watching, which doesn't feel too bad, unless they recorded it and put the video online, in which case you can always hurl yourself off the hotel balcony.

You have now put on a pair of panties so as to avoid getting any cleaning charges all over Charles's pristine credit card, and are sitting on the most comfortable chair in the world. It's huge, padded with 50 miles of soft padding, and sitting in it feels like sinking forever into a soft, padded, breathable ocean.

You gaze out the window at the lights of Norville below you, taking in the rows of orange streetlights, the wandering white eyes of cars, the sparks of green changing to yellow and red and then back again.

Okay. Okay, time to process some of your brain's unread messages and maybe then you can look at whatever weird ungodly skills you've acquired this time.

> From: Cindy
> To: Cinderella
> Subject: I CAN TALK! WITH WORDS! AND NOT LIKE SOUND AN IDIOT!​

You don't know how much SED it took, and you don't care. You can finally, you can finally, you don't even know how to describe it, that's how articulate you are now. Your entire life there's been this enormous gap between what you imagine yourself saying, and what you actually say, like somewhere between your brain and your mouth is a 20-mile-wide continental gap. And maybe some of the gap is still there but it's just 20 yards now. It doesn't feel like the Erogame grafted a seductive personality into you, or started shaping your words for you. It feels like the inner you who was helplessly trapped in your head IS OUT THERE IN THE REAL WORLD AND CAN POUT AT PEOPLE.

> From: Cindy
> To: Cinderella
> Subject: Boyfriend! Boyfriend boyfriend! Boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend! Boyfriend, boyfriend boyfriend, boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend! Boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend fucking tsundere boyfriend boyfriend! Boyfriend boyfriend promised boyfriend yandere boyfriend, boyfriend boyfriend! Boyfriend! Boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend!​

You have a boyfriend! He hasn't agreed to join your harem yet! He hasn't even admitted to being your boyfriend! But that's only a matter of time, you're sure. He'll text you back soon saying yes, or at worst, he'll demand a couple of ordinary dates first. He practically promised he'd say yes eventually!

> From: Miss Sheen
> To: Cinderella
> Subject: You perverted SLUT​

Yes, yes, you're a slut. You did a strip tease in front of half the Norville U football team, and then you walked around downtown with a dress you didn't realize was torn half to bits, and then you GOT PLOWED LIKE A SNOWY STREET IN COLORADO.

Deal with it, Miss Sheen. We are a literally fucking erogame character.

> From: Miss Sheen
> To: Cinderella
> Subject: You perverted SLUT, you LIKED that​

…yeah, you did. You liked the half-animal look on Charles's face when you asked him to please tell you what to do.

You were breathing faster when you obeyed his orders and took off his clothes.

You edged yourself for him in the shower, because you were terrified he'd give up on making love to you if you were too hard to arouse, and you almost came and probably would have if you hadn't invoked the Edge Self skill at the last minute.

You were scared of the look on Charles's face when you stepped out of the shower, and you liked being scared of him.

He was cruel to you and teased you for what felt like hours and you were so turned on you were afraid you were going to die.

You let him tie you down, and you pulled at your chains and enjoyed being helpless and you were turned on by being scared of what he might do. You weren't sure if he was going to start hurting your nipples, the way he was teasing them. You don't know if you would have actually enjoyed that or not, but you enjoyed being scared of it.

So you have a submissive side. This is surprising? You are an erogame character. The odds of you not developing a submissive side were somewhere in the range of fifty trillion to one. Yeah, you probably gained some points of PRV. Well, you earned that PRV fair and square, and you enjoyed earning it, so there, Miss Sheen.

> From: Cinderella Sheen
> To: Cinderella
> Subject: Stop evading the issue. We need to talk about the important part.​

Okay, yes. A courageous handsome hero stole your virginity without you giving explicit permission, just like you started out wanting.

Then you begged him to stop, because that felt right.

And he kept going, which also felt right.

This email is hard to process and you'd like to reply to you some other time. Can you resend this to you later?

> From: Cinderella Sheen
> To: Cinderella
> Subject: No, we can't talk about this later. I'm worried you're about to run over to 6th and Luther.​

That's totally different.

> From: Cinderella Sheen
> To: Cinderella
> Subject: How is it different?​

Because they wouldn't be Charles, obviously.

You really don't want to internally talk about this right now.

> From: Eldritch horror Ex-eldritch horror Starry
> To: Cinderella
> Subject: Your boyfriend still thinks you're me.​

Okay, yeah. As much as you managed to set up a good excuse for you to act more like Cindy, Charles does not know the real you. He does not know about the Erogame. You aren't suckering him into a relationship under totally false pretenses. You do have access to a weird power of unknown origins and that probably is just as important as Charles thinks. But you're still deceiving him about a key part of yourself and, yes, your relationship is in some essential sense being built on false ground.

You have no idea what to do about that.

Well, you could always ignore the issue until it blows up in your face.

> From: Cinderella
> To: starryalien@cinderellasheen.org
> Subject: Is the Erogame breaking any galactic rules, and does that indicate the Earth is in danger of being destroyed?
​

Unfortunately, this email bounces because cinderellasheen.org does not actually have an address for an alien. You have no idea what is going on, and no obvious way to find out, except by continuing to play the Erogame.

This would be a great time for you to be friends with an incredibly brilliant genius your own age, who could help you figure everything out, and who wouldn't have a secret laboratory to imprison you in. Maybe Willow Rosenberg goes to Norville U and you can seduce her?

> From: Ex-eldritch horror Starry
> To: Cinderella
> Subject: URGENT: Did you almost start thinking you were actually me?
​

You draw up your legs to yourself, and continue gazing out the window at the city lights of Norville below.

This topic has been hiding in the wardrobe of your mind for a while, but it's too big and scary to be allowed to hide.

You were a little too good at being Starry.

To the point where a part of you is wondering whether everything you told Charles is true, and now you're forgetting your real alien self and making up the Erogame as an explanation. You really should not have said that line to Charles about how "A day later, I'll probably believe it too", about your memory adjusting to believe you're just a girl with superpowers who pretended to be an alien. It's not just going to fuck up the eventual revelation where you try to explain things to Charles, it's going to fuck with you.

You know that you remember the sense of shock when you saw the floating status window on Sunday afternoon. You remember having to go on a quest to get a vibrator in order to gain your first level, a mission that wouldn't make any sense if it wasn't the Erogame that was happening right from the start. You weren't acting like an eldritch horror when you seduced Blake, and Blake will remember that too.

All of that would be a lot more reassuring if you could also remember what hair color you were born with. You know that whatever power inhabits you, it's powerful enough to edit the past, or people's memories of the past.

Still, that isn't the most disturbing part.

The most disturbing part is that you very nearly actually became Charles's magical girlfriend.

It started out as a funny thing to say to him, one more prank like the prank you played in the car.

And then you kept going.

Moving into an apartment with Charles and being his magical girlfriend felt right. It almost didn't occur to you to wonder whether Charles was okay with it. It almost didn't occur to you that it wasn't true.

You exhale into your folded-up legs.

You… have an idea about what direction this is pointing in.

What happened tonight was, seen from outside, a classic erogame episode. The hero meets a beautiful, sexual alien and ends up having to steal her virginity, and she becomes his magical girlfriend.

It all makes sense on a fictional level. But not with you as the viewpoint character. You weren't playing tonight's erogame. Charles was.

You were the erogame that he was playing.

You were the Erogamer and Charles was the erogamee. You weren't "erogaming" in the sense of somebody playing an erogame. You were "erogaming" the way that an erogame erogames when it is being an erogame.

And the thought of being a character in someone else's erogame is…

That feels to you like…

Should you stop thinking about this before you get another point of ERO?

You hug your legs to yourself, dropping your head between your knees, feeling the warmth of your skin on the warmth of your face, your own arms hugging you tight. You breathe out, and that feels warm too. You wish Charles were here with you right now, but hugging yourself doesn't have the horrible sad quality it would if nobody else would ever feel your bare thighs and you would never get to touch anyone else like you're touching yourself. Hugging yourself feels like reminding yourself of what it feels like to be embraced by Charles, instead of a reminder of being alone forever.

You've almost certainly gone into the 20s for ERO by now, if there was any critical threshold there. So fuck it, you'll finish the epiphany. You're already roasted medium well, you might as well be well done.

The thought of being the erogame that happens to somebody else…

…feels like you are performing a deeply meaningful public service.

You can't help but laugh out loud at the thought, giggling into your legs. You don't know why you feel like that, how a feeling like that could possibly make sense. But it does. It totally makes sense, even if that fact itself makes no sense. And if you got another point of ERO for admitting that, so be it.

Of course you still want erogames to happen to you, sometimes, the way you were the protagonist while you were kidnapping Blake Layton from Walgreens. It would be sad if you never got to be the player instead of the game. But somebody has to make erogames happen, right? Not everyone can be the protagonist every time. Somebody has to be the boy who gets kidnapped from the Walmart. Even the most virile and courageous of heroes can't save the world if there's no Starry for him to deflower. Some people volunteer at soup kitchens, some people are emergency medical technicians, and you…

You are an erogame character.

And the Erogame is helping you volunteer. Your skills and stats that let you "live life as an erogame" don't just let you be an erogame player. To an even greater extent, you're getting powers that help you be the erogame for other people… or at least you think so. You'd need to look over your skills list again to be sure. But it fits you so well, whether by your own nature, or with the Erogame's help, or both, that tonight you had to struggle to remember that you weren't actually Starry.

A wry thought strikes you. "Info, skills, Erogamer's World?"

Erogamer's World (LVL Max): The consent of reality to live your life as an erogame. People are never too busy to consider sex or romance, not while you're around. The people you meet will be such that their collective reactions can constitute the logic of an erogame. Even if no such single individual would be impossible to find somewhere in an ordinary world, collecting them into a single story and letting them interact will create events that would never ordinarily happen. Other aspects of this skill depend on the ERO stat.

It was all there in the manual, if you'd read it closely enough. Not, "The consent of reality to live your life as an erogame player", or "The consent of reality to live your life like playing an erogame." You have the consent of reality to live your life as an erogame.

But at least for tonight, you're not going to start asking yourself why you feel that this is an incredibly beautiful and meaningful gift. Because God knows what your ERO is already, and your latest epiphany might have raised it even higher. At this point you really should check your Erogame messages before you go any further.

You tilt your head back into the soft cushion of the chair back behind you, then roll your head around, trying to untighten your neck muscles. The turning of your neck exposes you once again to the beautiful stained wood of the room around you, the dozen vases bearing red and violet flowers of every species.

"All right," you say aloud to the room. "Hit me." You're curious as to whether the words, spoken with intent, will suffice; but nothing happens.

"Erogame," you say. "Set Busy Mode to Off and show me my unread messages."

You're half-expecting the room to be filled with an enormous array of violet boxes, but the Erogame's user interface was apparently designed more sensibly than that; you get a scrollable box instead.

A skill has been created by a special action! Sprinting in high heels has created the subskill High-Heeled Running.

High-Heeled Running has increased by 1.

<< >>

You frown at the messages, feeling worried at first that somehow you've lost all the messages from earlier in the evening and skipped straight to parkour. Then you remember that you ran over to the Starbucks earlier on, and you were wearing high heels then. That's when you must've gotten the skill, and it's a subskill, so… "Info, skills, High Heels?"

High Heels: Lvl 2 (22%). Passive.

Negates all movement, dexterity, and combat penalties from high heels. Your High Heels skill is added to the level of all High-Heeled subskills when calculating their effectiveness.

High-Heeled Running: Lvl 4 (12%). Active. 1 D|S / minute.

At Lvl (4 + 2), run 60% faster when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Parkour: Lvl 3 (35%). Active. 1 D|S / maneuver.

At Lvl (3 + 2), +50% bonus to your base probability of successfully executing an urban maneuver when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Jumping: Lvl 2 (30%). Active. 1 D|S / jump.

At Lvl (2 + 2), gravity has less purchase on you when you wear high heels, resulting in increased jumping height of 40% (with no greater impact on landing). The resulting increased hang time stacks with the speed of High-Heeled Running for further travel, and does not interfere with the impact soaking of High-Heeled Landing. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Landing: Lvl 2 (70%). Active. 1 D|S / landing.

At Lvl (2 + 2), this skill reduces the force of your landing by a multiplicative factor of 1 / (1 + 0.4), or 70% of what it would otherwise be, whenever you land from a fall while wearing high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.​

EEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Did somebody leave the kettle on? Oh, wait, that high-pitched sound is coming from you.

YOU CAN RUN FASTER IN HIGH HEELS.
YOU CAN RUN FASTER IN HIGH HEELS.
YOU CAN RUN FASTER IN HIGH HEELS.

You're gonna grind this skill until you break Mach 1.

And you have high-heeled jumping and landing. You have high-heeled parkour. If you grind those skills far enough, they should let you do ANIME-STYLE HIGH-HEELED ROOFHOPPING, and then it will be COMPLETE. What will be complete, they ask? Your life, the universe, all of reality, it doesn't matter because you will be able to do real actual roofhopping.

Next up would've been the strip tease in front of Starbucks, you think. "Forward!" you say, and then when that doesn't do anything, "Next!"

Strip Tease has increased by 1.

Doing a strip tease on a crowded street corner front of half the Norville U football team causes your PRV to go up by 1!

Brightening the day of more than a dozen onlookers with a friendly exhibition of your naked body causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Enticing the Norville U football team causes your SED to go up by 1!

Your clear embarrassment and flushed face, interesting a number of people nearby, causes your SED to go up by 1!

<< >>

You're blushing, but as you admitted to yourself in that earlier internal email thread, you earned that PRV fair and square. "Next."

A skill has been created by a special action! Learning to play a DDR knockoff has created the skill Dancing and the subskill Dancing Dancing Revolution.

A skill has been created by a special action! Frantically waving around your hands like you're having an epileptic fit has created the Dancing subskill Freestyling.

Dancing Dancing Revolution has increased by 1.

A skill has been created by a special action! Dancing with your dress bunched up around your waist, barely on the verge of flashing the audience, has created the skill Wardrobe Malfunction.

…oh no.

A skill has been created by a special action! Almost flashing everyone, except for your hair happening to be in the way, has created the skill Convenient Censoring.

Dancing has increased by 1.

Wardrobe Malfunction has increased by 1.

Freestyling has increased by 1.

Unknowingly exhibiting your weaving, sexy form---or barely not exhibiting it, rather---to a crowd of fascinated, frustrated onlookers causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Oh god, no.

No, no, no.

Dancing Dancing Revolution has increased by 1.

Wardrobe Malfunction has increased by 1.

ERO Achievement x5: Five people will be masturbating to thoughts of you tonight. +250XP.

Your head is buried in your thighs and tiny whimpering sounds are coming from between them.

Silly Cindy, haha, lololol, she thought they were applauding her amazing dance skills, what a cute little moron.

Never mind, you're not going to convince Charles to move to Norville. You'll just move to wherever he is. Or maybe you'll move to Australia. That would be better. Australia is further away from the Lightning Arcade, where you can never go again for as long as you live.

Your voice emerges in a tiny whisper. "Info, skills…"

Dancing: Lvl 2 (13%). Passive.

Since before Homo sapiens sapiens existed, since before language as modern humans know it, the ancestors of humankind danced around the fire of a night, seducing one another and simply expressing the joy of being alive. Now it is your turn to do the same.

Your Dancing skill is added to the level of all Dancing subskills.

Dancing Dancing Revolution: Lvl 3 (50%). Passive.

You can stomp arrows with the best of them, or maybe just the rest of them. You have a roughly 50% chance of passing stages of difficulty equal to 2 * (DDR + Dancing).

You receive a bonus of (DDR + Dancing) * 5% to your effective SED when being watched by anyone in gamer culture.

Freestyling: Lvl 2 (75%). Passive.

Whatever the other rules of the dance form, some of which you may be ignoring, you're doing your own thing too. Substitute (X * 0.75) + Freestyling for the base dancing skill X when calculating your effective stat bonuses while freestyling. Freestyling may not be suitable for all occasions, and bonuses will be lost if so.​

Wardrobe Malfunction: Lvl 3 (55%). Passive and Active.

Passive: If you are not using the Active form of this skill, anything that can go wrong with your clothing, will go wrong, with probability equal to your ERO stat, evaluated at most once per scene. Usually, but not always, the results will tend to gently push the limits of the PRV of any onlookers and the social occasion. Higher levels of Wardrobe Malfunction create more interesting and better-timed malfunctions.

Active: You may spend 5 DOM to create a tantalizing wardrobe malfunction of your choice given a plausible opportunity, or spend 5 SUB to create a revealing wardrobe malfunction. This will not appear to have been deliberately caused by you in any way. Spend an additional +10 energy of that type to make the wardrobe malfunction be caused by someone else, if there is an interaction plausibly permitting that.

Convenient Censoring (Hair): Lvl MAX. Passive.

Your Conceptual Hair has overridden the standard version of this skill, automatically enabling your hair to appear to cover your naughty bits, as seen by every viewing angle, with perfect reliability, for zero cost. You may at will modify the parameters of this skill for partial, complete, or no obscuration. If not otherwise specified, the parameters of this skill are determined by ERO, PRV, and social context. Your hairstyle must have sufficient tendrils of sufficient length and diameter to permit this, and be otherwise unrestrained.

You may at will choose to substitute the standard Convenient Censoring skill, making use of other obscurations and objects.

Another tiny whimper emerges from you.

However much PRV you gained tonight, it wasn't enough.

"Next," you whimper.

A skill has been created by a special action! Being very, very sorry for what you did has created the skill Penitence.

Inviting Charles to think naughty thoughts about you causes your SED to go up by 1!

This pulls you back out of your whimpering. You can't help but smile reminiscently, remembering Charles scolding you for threatening to eat someone's soul. He's so manly when he's trying to keep you from starting a war with humanity.

…your precious memories are just going to keep getting weirder from now on, aren't they.

And you remember wrapping yourself around Charles's back and whispering in his ear, asking if he was thinking about pulling your hair. That was when you realized that your SED must have gone up, because you didn't screw up the whispering. So you had SED 12 past that point? You were more seductive than the human average? It's so hard to imagine that being true, and at the same time, it explains so much about what happened.

"Info, skills, Penitence?"

Penitence: Lvl 1 (20%). Active. 5 SUB / use.

You're very sorry for what you did. Really, really sorry. You'll... you'll understand if... you're scared, but...

Add your Penitence skill to the effective LST of whoever you are being sorry at, to a maximum bonus of (your SED * 1%) of its base value. If they afterwards choose to punish you, your total punishment is increased by Penitence * 10% over what it otherwise would have been, with all relationship benefits of the punishment increasing proportionally. Note that this skill cannot of itself make someone punish you if they would not otherwise be dominant.

In order to invoke this skill, you must have done something to be sorry for.

This, uh…

You're aware that your cheeks are flaming again.

These increased relationship benefits could be good for maintaining your bond with Charles, once you gain another 57 PRV points. Okay, realistically it's probably more like 4 additional PRV points but you're going to pretend you don't realize that for now.

A skill has been created by a special action! Vaulting a bench while wearing stiletto heels has created the skill High-Heeled Parkour.

A skill has been created by a special action! Leaping a gap while wearing stiletto heels has created the skill High-Heeled Jumping.

High-Heeled Parkour has increased by 1.

A skill has been created by a special action! Being chased by someone you like has created the skill Fleeing.

A skill has been created by a special action! Landing hard on your feet while wearing stiletto heels has created the skill High-Heeled Landing.

High-Heeled Running has increased by 1.

Cute Cold Resistance has increased by 1.

High-Heeled Jumping has increased by 1.

High-Heeled Parkour has increased by 1.

High Heels has increased by 1.

High-Heeled Running has increased by 1.

Fleeing has increased by 1.

High-Heeled Landing has increased by 1.

Ah, the best part of the night. Of any night. Ever. Excepting the part where Charles pumped you like a flooded coal mine, but that shouldn't count, nothing should have to compare itself to that. And there are all the skills, the best skills in the world that don't involve being naked---

Wait a minute. What's "Fleeing?" A skill that helps you run away from pursuit?

Fleeing: Lvl 2 (10%). Passive.

If you are running away from one or more pursuers, increase their effective LST towards you by a factor of (Fleeing * 1%). If they do something unspeakable to you immediately upon catching you, your Fleeing skill is added to their effective LST for the duration of that event. Whenever you are being chased by someone holding sexual intentions toward you no more twisted than your current PRV + 8, you will sometimes stumble and fall with a probability that increases your chance of being caught by a multiplicative factor of (1 + (Fleeing * ERO * 0.01)). You may pay 1 SUB per stumble to make this happen deliberately.

If you are wearing high heels while running away, add your High Heels skill to your effective Fleeing skill.

This is not helping. This is the OPPOSITE of helping.

That's why you kept falling down while Charles was chasing you. A good thing if it's Charles, but otherwise… not so good.

Shit. Shit. Shit. And you were feeling so happy 30 seconds ago. Why did the Erogame have to remind you of the non-nice aspects of erogames? You'll need more than just 4 points of PRV before this skill is anything but horrifying in its implications.

…there's nothing you can do about this. Nothing you can think of. Besides taking off your high heels when you run… maybe. If the loss of your high heels speed bonus doesn't outweigh this anti-bonus. Which it probably does.

Fuck. You're probably better off not thinking about this right now. "Next screen."

Slack has increased by 1.

A skill has been created by a special action! Taunting Charles about a matter he cares for deeply, in order to incite him into sexual violence, has created the skill Asking For It.

You shift uncomfortably. That would be… that would be when you stuck out your tongue at Charles and told him to make you not conquer the world.

That was perhaps not as funny if you were Charles. The fact that Charles always keeps his composure on the outside, at least when not ringing you like the bells of Notre Dame, doesn't mean that he has no feelings.

You close your eyes and lean into your legs again. You feel ashamed, which isn't surprising, because you did in fact do something awful. You haven't come to terms with everything the Erogame lets you do, that you have power over other people's feelings now. You haven't learned your harsh lessons yet, and you're probably going to do more stupid selfish things until you do.

And the skill?

Asking For It: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive and Active. 3 SUB.

Passive: Multiply by (1 + (0.1 * Lvl)) the base probability of someone initiating a forceful sexual act targeting you (whether or not it would be consensual), whenever you are providing what they would consider to be a reason and this action appears to them to be deliberate on your part.

Active: Further multiply the above probability by (1 + (0.4 * Lvl)).

You… guess that you were asking for that.

And how much Slack do you have now? You query the skill, and discover that your daily slack time is now up to 20 minutes instead of 10.

Next up, if you recall correctly, came the legendary debate between you and Charles that shall someday go down in history next to Socrates and whoever Socrates used to debate.

Quest begun: Better Battling Big-Boobied Bots.

Donald Warren Merring of Norville, CA considers himself a warrior in the fight against capitalism. Without directly targeting him, his family, his friends, his work, or his neighborhood, transform the world until he decides to resist you instead. Then, attack him using at least two sexbots.

Success: +1,000,000 XP
Failure: Donald Merring continues to lead a life of empty drama, filled with imaginary assaults and pretended victories against forces that continue unchanged.

1,000,000 XP!?

And it's for… jeezus.

It takes a few seconds for the meaning of the sentences to sink in.

This is a quest to change the world until some random guy in Norville considers you a more important opponent than capitalism. If you're reading this right.

Oh, Donald Merring must be the guy who said "Sign me up" when you claimed everyone would rather fight sexbots than late-stage capitalism. And apparently you calling back to him "Thanks, I will!" counted as your beginning the quest.

…It's not like you don't want to succeed in this quest, but you're worried it could provoke relationship trouble with Charles.

Ero Environmental Resistance has increased by 1.
A skill has been created by a special action! Delivering powerful arguments has created the skill Rhetor#)(*%@#)-$(*%#)-@#$
A series of deeply meaningful epiphanies about courage, wisdom, uninformed nonconsent, the true meaning of kindness, and your own relationship to the Erogame, cause your ERO to go up by 3!

Cute Cold Resistance has increased by 1.

So apparently you got three ERO for all those passionate things you said to Charles, which… you guess you should be glad your ERO didn't actually go up to 83.

A part of you is surprised you didn't get some kind of Persuasion skill. On the other hand, that was you that you were pouring out to Charles. It'd be sad if it had been just an Erogame skill instead of you. So maybe it's for the best that no skill like that exists.

And… Charles is probably going to realize Starry was telling him about Cinderella Sheen's life, at some point. Like when he finds out that Cindy used to be grossly overweight, or that her father is dead. Oh, god, the things you told him.

You hide your head between your legs in mortification, pretending not to feel the desperate relief that somebody is going to know all those horrible things about you, and that the long game of hiding it from everyone is going to end.

And then Charles dragged you off to his car. And then the hotel, and the elevator incident.

Quest available: Off the Road

Tammi and Danni Arcadia have finally run into each other again after a long separation. They'll be celebrating in their own special way. They find you cute and wouldn't mind including you in their special celebrations. You remind them of Beth Cordova, and they never did get to say goodbye to her properly.

The Arcadias can be found in room 211 of the Norville Arms-Marriott until Sunday evening.

Success: +10,000XP, increased relations with Danni Arcadia
Failure: +20,000XP, increased relations with Tammi Arcadia
Accept: Y/N

Why, look at that. Whatever happens down the "failure" path is worth exactly as much XP as being gang-raped, but apparently in a more relationship-increasing way.

You send a stern glare at whatever part of your mind is feeling really, really curious about what exactly those two do. That is not a healthy attitude for an Erogamer.

Maybe you can just slip a note under the door of 211, asking the Arcadia twins to email you a description of what would've happened to you?

And then after that came…

Asking Charles to tell you what to do, making him lose control of his sexual urges for the first time in his life, causes your SED to go up by 1!

You smile a dreamy floating smiley smile. That was wonderful. Learning that you made Charles lose control is even more wonderful. And then, Charles told you to take off your dress, and leave on the heels…

Strip Tease has increased by 1.

A skill has been created by a special action! Having your dress ripped off you has created the skill Destructible Outfit.

Destructible Outfit: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 2 SUB.

The mirror of the skill Indestructible Outfit, invoking this skill while somebody is deliberately trying to tear off or shred your clothing reduces the durability of your clothing by 2 pts / lvl. (For revealing yourself when they're not trying, use Wardrobe Malfunction.)

You are glad this is not a Passive skill.

A skill has been created by a special action! Slowly taking off Charles's clothes has created the skill Strip Other.

Strip Other: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 2 D|S / min.

Taking off someone else's clothes slowly, erotically, and with lots of touching will temporarily raise their LST by 5% for 2 minutes.

Indeed, putting on panties before you reviewed all this was a wise decision if you didn't want to stain the nice furniture.

So then Charles told you to go shower and that you'd better be wearing your heels next time he saw you. It took a lot of concentration to pause and send Mom a text message saying you weren't coming home.

And then you edged yourself in the shower. But just once, so that shouldn't have increased the Edge Other skill…

Touching yourself in terrified anticipation of what will happen to you next, trying to be a good horny girl for Charles, causes your LST to go up by 1!

Or that could've happened too.

Part of you wants to worry about your LST going up. But on the other hand, you're even more worried about being annoyingly difficult for a man to arouse and bring to orgasm, like you've heard men are always complaining about. You're not sure how high you need to raise your LST so that you don't need to edge yourself in the shower before sex.

You wish you could just ask Charles how difficult you were to tease, and if he would've wanted it to be easier. But you're afraid that if you start his thoughts thinking along those lines, fucking you will start to feel like work to him.

Maybe the next man you're with will be less of a long-term relationship, and you can ask him.

Moving your hands all over Charles's body and suckling every part of him within reach causes your FUK to go up by 1!

Submitting to Charles's torments and being driven out of your mind with frustration, as wave after wave of burning pleasure fails to drive you over the edge, causes your LST to go up by 1!

…or maybe you already gained enough LST tonight that you won't need to worry.

Pulling helplessly against your chains makes your PRV go up by 1!

You stand up from the comfy chair, afraid that you're about to leave a wet spot there. Memories are flooding back into you and you feel tempted to touch yourself again just thinking about them. Tongue, tongue, tongue, oh, emptiness, tongue, tongue, the cuffs soft and unyielding against your wrists as you tried in delicious helplessness to escape and then---

Maneuvering Charles into raping you causes your SED to go up by 1!

A skill has been created by a special action! Having your hymen pierced has created the Bloody Bedsheets skill.

You have lost the status: Technical Virgin

Submitting to being raped, begging Charles to stop while he goes on thrusting into you, and getting off on it, causes your PRV to go up by 1!

Coming over and over on Charles's cock causes your LST to go up by 1!

You're definitely wet now.

And then he came inside you (again), and let you out of the chains, and you got to cry in his arms, and be cuddled by him, and hit him, and demand that he apologize, and…

You're fucked up in the head. You know you're fucked up in the head. But everybody's fucked in the head somehow. This is your own personal fucked in the head, and it's not too bad on the standard scale. Other people are fucked a lot worse in their heads, right?

You finish wiping yourself off with a Kleenex from the bathroom. There's only a tiny spot on your panties and it didn't soak through, but you don't dare sit back down in the chair. Instead you find yourself at the door to the bedroom, gazing back in at the disheveled, slightly damp bed where you lost your virginity. There is, check, a small bloodstain on the sheets, though you have to stare hard to see the slight red discoloration over the black satin. There's a skill for that, huh?

Bloody Bedsheets: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 50 SUB.

Restore your hymen, and ensure it bleeds properly on its next puncture. All other stats and skills are unaffected.

You can't help but laugh. You, uh, wow, you sure can think of some incredibly dishonest ways of using this skill on some poor man, if you wanted to go that route. But you can see how it's a key support skill for certain erogames. Part of you wants to use it on all your harem prospects, just to see the looks on their faces when they finally compare notes.

Are there any other ERO messages for what happened between you and Charles after that? It feels… private. And you can't think of any skills you should've acquired, either. "Next?"

Quest completed: Silence indicates affirmative consent

+5,000 XP
+1 ERO

Your level has increased by 1!
Your level has increased by 1!

Ero achievement: When Charles Met Starry. You've led a good and honest man to find his dominant side for the first time. Through being courted by him through a beautiful and deeply emotional evening, that ended with him having no choice but to rape you in order to save the world. Then you became his girlfriend afterwards.

+60,000 XP
+2 ERO

Your level has increased by 1!
Your level has increased by 1!
Your level has increased by 1!

Oh right, you did complete that HOLY SHIT.

You stare at the Erogame messages in mixed self-admiration and dismay. How was tonight worth 3 times as much experience as a gang rape? It wasn't anywhere near that unpleasant.

Apparently earning XP in the Erogame isn't about how unpleasant the process is.

After a few seconds more thought, you nod slowly. If you consider your insight that being the Erogamer is about enacting an erogame, and think of tonight's achievement from that standpoint… well, that erogame would have been… maybe you're just prejudiced here by personal perspective…

But you think it would actually have been a pretty decent erogame. You can imagine somebody playing through it and being moved to tears. Well, maybe that's going too far. But speaking as an English Lit student, if that had been a real erogame, you think that the author of that erogame could've maybe been a little proud of what they'd written.

Yeah. If you look at it from that angle… you understand how you ended up with 60,000 XP.

Still, holy shit, really? You're level 9 now?

And is that… 6 points of ERO, total, that you earned tonight? You're not even sure you're counting them right.

But again, you can see the logic in the Erogame's relentless judgment. The description of your ERO stat at ERO 19 talked about your life being an erogame within the bare edge of realism. It said the next step at ERO 20 would be the first small events that just wouldn't happen at all outside of an eroge.

And, you have to admit, the story you set up tonight, about Charles needing to seduce an alien in order to save the world, is not on the bare edge of realism. It's not a small departure from realism either. You were enacting an eroge far above your ERO stat's base level, and the huge gains probably reflect that.

A harsh lesson but a fair one. You'll try not to learn it again.

Is there anything left?

Yet another epiphany, this one about your odd belief that being someone else's erogame is a deeply meaningful and altruistic act, causes your ERO to go up by 1! Again!

<< Prev Next >>

…right.

You swallow hard. And now your stat is…

"Info, stats, Erogame Logic."

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At an ERO of 26, your life has become unmistakably an erogame, taking place in a physically realistic and socially unrealistic setting. The people around you often end up doing the sorts of things that characters in erogames do, although they still act in their own interests and according their own psychologies. None of the people you run into will be literally impossible to find in an ordinary world, nor will they do anything beyond the bounds of probability for that person. But gathering multiple such people into one place and time, and improbably exact circumstances, can sum to events that would never happen in the ordinary world at all.

Your effects on the larger world are still mostly confined to Norville, but they've begun to seep out in small ways.

As you continue to push the bounds of realism, the laws of social possibility will fray more, and your influence sink deeper and farther into your domain.

You weren't ready for this.

You've come too far. Too fast.

And now you've lost the Technical Virgin status that prevented the Erogame from putting to you into any situation that directly forces you to lose your virginity, aka a rape. You're a target, now, for anything and everything that happens in socially unrealistic erogames with ERO of 26 and above.

The rest of your stats… you can't figure out in your head what they should be.

You're almost afraid to say it, like seeing it in violet lettering will make it real.

"Status."

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
Lvl 9 (20,050 / 30,000)

DOM: 191/270
SUB: 340/340

BOD: 18
LST: 15
SED: 14
FUK: 13
PRV: 19
ERO: 26 (13)

Stat points: 30
Perk points: 1
Money: $1591

Status effects: ---
Active nectars: ---
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

…why is there a 13, in parentheses, after your ERO?

You stare at the violet screen in puzzlement. You don't have any status effects that could be temporarily reducing your ERO. You don't have any active nectars… Does your hairstyle also have game effects? That would explain why it was listed on the status screen. But all you did at the time was tell your hair to look less alien and more average, hoping that the erogame-meaningfulness of the change would make your hair actually listen.

How should you be querying this? Well, you'll just try the obvious. "Info, hairstyle, Earth's Tones?"

Info // Hairstyles // Earth's Tones:

Earth's Tones: When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, his first thoughts were not of his own safety, but of his world. He kept his composure and did the best he could: interrogating, dating, seducing, deflowering, and sealing the being called Starry. Charles knew that he had succeeded when he saw, in triumph and sadness, that Starry's beautiful fiery hair had faded into an ordinary earthy color.

Of course, that whole frightening and desperate emergency was a lie, an accidental prank by Cinderella Sheen that she turned into a lure for the handsome hero to whom she wanted to yield her virginity. So all of Charles's effort and courage was for nothing… or was it? It's not impossible that someday Cinderella might have become what Charles thought she was. There's nothing any less heroic about heading trouble off before it starts.

This Conceptual Hairstyle was created by Cinderella Sheen to symbolize her promise to her beloved that she would be a part of humanity, as channeled through her somewhat distracted-at-the-time thought about making her hair look 'average' and 'less alien'. The resulting waist-length hairstyle has no color of its own, and instead is the current mean reflectance of the hair colors of everyone on Earth, including the hair colors that bald people would possess if they were not bald. This presently works out to a greyish-brown.

While worn, this hairstyle reduces ERO by 50% (rounded up) and negates all skills and statuses with a higher minimum ERO.

Oh.

Oh.

The world is blurry, for some reason.

"I'm s-sorry, Charles, I'm so sorry, I, I shouldn't have done that to you, but, but t-t-thank you for---" You can't speak any more.

Without even knowing it---only he did know it, even if he believed it for the wrong reasons, he still did it knowingly---Charles kept you safe.

You want to go to him right now wherever he is, materalize in his car, and, and give him a blowjob. Or ten blowjobs. Or whatever he asks from you, until this sense of guilt and gratitude and wanting to do everything for him goes away.

"Thanks," you whisper to the empty air where your boyfriend ought to be. You'll give him a raincheck until he is. "Thanks."

You, you might really fall in love with Charles, this way.

You need him. You need him as your boyfriend. He'll help you stay sane. He'll help you stay normal. He'll argue you into slowing down when you want to do everything right away.

And also---oh my god. A sudden smile breaks onto your face, and you start laughing through your tears.

Also, now you have a perk point!

Mad Inventor, here you come.

2.5.2: Perky

Browsing: Perks

- Major perks (53)
- Minor perks (29)
- Srs bsns perks (11)
- Xtrmly srs bsns (4)

>> ?

On second thought, you're going to get ready for bed first. You're already feeling sleepy, and you might want to close your eyes before you finish reading through the ninety-seven perks in the Erogame. You would complain, except that you're salivating too hard to think in words.

The master bedroom's master bath comes with a complimentary toothbrush, which you use, glancing over at the wonderful tub with all the jets. You'd better get more chances to stay in rooms like this one, and cuddle with Charles in a tub like that one, or you will be angry for the rest of your life about having missed this chance.

You shower, briefly and without doing anything naughty.

On exiting the shower, you stop and frown at the bed before you. Frankly, these sheets have seen a bit of use and you'd rather not sleep in them.

Maybe you can just borrow the sheets and blankets from the other bedroom in the penthouse, even if that room contains paintings so disturbing that you can't actually sleep there?

Rather tentatively, you slide open the door to the other bedroom---Charles has thoughtfully left the lights on, maybe for horror-movie-avoidance reasons. You can't quite stop yourself from glancing at the wall out of the corner of your eye.

HOLY SHIT IT'S EATING YOUR SOUL NOOOOO

Just kidding, the wall has two perfectly ordinary hangings: a yellow orchid and a framed photo of surfers on a beach.

You stare at the orchid and the beach, feeling puzzled. Why would Charles be so scared of…

He wasn't scared at all. He was planning to rape you and he wanted to steer you to the bed with the chains.

That sneaky son of a bitch.

The corner of your mouth twists up as you realize you can't exactly complain about Charles deceiving you, not in this relationship.

But you'd better remember, going forward, that Charles can be a sneaky bastard when he wants to be. Or, uh, thinks that he has to be. In order to save the entire Earth. Because you scared him. Yeah, you don't really have grounds to complain here, or draw conclusions about Charles's normal personality.

On the plus side, nice clean bedroom!

Shortly after, your purse and Goodwill bag have been transferred into the second bedroom, and your freshly showered body is curled up in a bed with wonderful clean sheets, brown satin set against plaid blankets.

You take your cellphone out of your purse and check your messages and… yeah, messages from Mom. You sigh. You really want to go back home and check in with her again, it's just, it's just…

It's just that you look nothing like Mom remembers her daughter looking.

Maybe you could shift hairstyle-gears up to ERO 26 and tell Mom you've taken a miracle weight-loss pill. But what if that doesn't work? What do you say then? And you don't really want that trick to work on her.

You'll think about it in the morning. Tonight, you have some reading to do.

You turn off the light on this room's nightstand, rendering the room dark but for the faint tracery of moonlight and streetlights seeping around the shades and curtains. In one corner of the ceiling glows the tiny red light of the hotel room's smoke detector. You're sitting up in bed, leaning back against a pillow, because lying down to read feels odd to you. But the darkness is already making you feel sleepy.

"Available perks," you murmur again, and again the violet letters form above you, hovering over your bed.

Browsing: Perks

- Major perks (53)
- Minor perks (29)
- Srs bsns perks (11)
- Xtrmly srs bsns (4)

>> ?

Are you just supposed to read these through in order? Maybe there's a more indexed system you can use? Does the '?' indicate that it will answer queries?

If so, you know what's the first perk you're asking about.

...actually, no. There's a more important query.

"Erogame," you murmur, "I'm afraid of being raped. Is there a perk for… for stopping that, or making sure it doesn't get too bad, or…"

Violet text twists, refills its frame, takes on another shape.

[ ] Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder:

Although the Erogame would not in any case present you with a crippling threat and no alternative, this perk guarantees up front that no sexual assault or sexually motivated kidnapping will result in any damage your Erogamer's Body cannot heal. Think carefully before taking this perk: once you take it you can never again experience the crushing, absolute submission that comes from knowing your very life depends on pleasing your captor.

Chills run down your spine. This is… what you asked for, you guess.

On the one hand, it's good to know that "would not in any case present you with a crippling threat and no alternative" is the Erogame's standard. It's good to know that if you behave properly while being raped, you won't be maimed permanently. On the other hand…

You don't have a word for the horrible chills running through you right now. "On the other hand, shit" doesn't seem to cover it. "On the other hand sounds of screaming" would fit.

You are not… not quite sure, that you want to take this perk immediately. Maybe there's some other perk you should take instead. But it's an argument for keeping an emergency perk point around, at the very least. You are not confident of your ability to be a good girl and please your captor properly.

Your voice isn't quite steady as you speak again. "Do you have any other perks that protect against rape?"

[ ] Consent is Not One of My Fetishes:

You never suffer any psychological trauma related to the now-irrelevant fact of whether or not you consented to a sexual event. Before taking this perk, consider carefully whether ceasing to care about your own consent is a change you truly wish to make to yourself.

Gain an extra perk after your PRV exceeds 50.

Your %##-+-+%# too high for you to take this perk.

The checkbox that looks like it's meant to select the perk is grayed out, and you frown at it, puzzled. You almost reach for it and tap the checkbox to see if it works, and then stop yourself, just in case it still works after all.

You… don't think you want this perk. Even considering that you'd get the perk point back later. Though it would be a pretty horrible choice if it came down to taking this perk, versus having some life-shattering experience permanently traumatize you. You would be terribly tempted. A part of you is glad the perk is grayed-out, glad that you don't have to consider this as an option. But why is it grayed out?

"Erogame, why is this option grayed out?"

The Erogame is silent. You didn't really expect it to answer.

"Is there… something mentally protective, something for not being traumatized by rape, that I can take?"

There's a pause, as if the game is confused by what you mean, and then the violet text twists into another shape.

[ ] Look Who's Turned On:

Your sexual response to compatible stimuli is unhindered by other aspects of a situation that exceed your PRV. This does not alter other psychological impacts of situations exceeding your PRV.

Gain an extra perk after your LST exceeds 50.

Uh. That paints a picture that… you shouldn't be surprised by an erogame's perks list being this disturbing, but you're still disturbed. It's not as awful a way of lessening psychological trauma as the last perk. You are glad to have this as an option if you need it. But still, "On the other hand sounds of screaming" remains a phrase that fits.

"Thanks," you say. "Any other ways I can protect my mind from the consequences of being raped?"

[ ] There are No Stops on the Rape Train:

+15 BOD, +15 SED, and +15 FUK.

Nobody will understand anything you say or do---such as trying to run away, or struggling, or screaming---as indicating that you might not want to have sex; unless they would not heed your wishes regardless.

Raising LST or PRV to over 30, or ERO to over 50, is strongly advised before taking this perk.

Minimum ERO: 30

For a second you don't understand why you're seeing this, and then you realize the Erogame has helpfully shown you a perk that carries with an implied hint: LST or PRV over 30 will make sexual assaults easier to handle. That's… useful to know, you guess. It's another kind of safety net while you have stat points, and you can use that safety net if things get unbearable.

But what does ERO 50 do by itself, without either of the other two? Maybe it's just that Erogame Logic says people can walk away from rape like nothing important happened? What would that feel like inside your head? That's downright scary.

"Uh, is there anything else that makes being raped better?"

You realize what words have left your mouth just as the next violet rectangle appears.

[ ] This Rape Train Has No Brakes:

When a person finishes raping you, if there is at least one other potential rapist within visual range who has not yet raped you, each such person is at least 50% likely to take their turn next (even if they otherwise would not be so inclined). In the event more people would try to rape you than you have available orifices, a random subset will be selected. The effects of this perk are evaluated again after each round of rape finishes.

All benefits and rewards of being raped are doubled.

This perk stacks with the skills Asking For It and Dressed Like a Slut, and with the Rapebait status effect.

You know you requested it, but now you're starting to wonder if the Erogame does anything else. "Okay, uh, actually, can you please show me a perk that is not about me being raped?"

[ ] It's Like Saying Hello In Japan:

No negative consequence of any kind will occur to you, including to reputation or personal friendships, from forcing yourself on a person of primarily Japanese descent. Any person who has voluntarily watched more than 200 hours of anime is considered Japanese for purposes of applying this perk.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO exceeds 75.

Minimum ERO: 25

"Let me rephrase. Are there any perks that aren't about me being raped or me raping someone else?"

[ ] Pay in Rape Dollars:

Whenever you would otherwise need to spend money within the game system, you may optionally pay by handing over an unwilling victim of correspondingly high quality. You by definition are not unwilling if you hand over yourself, likewise those who have voluntarily submitted themselves to your commands.

Minimum ERO: 40

"Are there any perks that are not about rape of any kind---you know, just show me all the remaining perks in order."

[ ] 24/7:

Pick one:

- You cannot gain Submissive Energy. You can use Dominant Energy to fuel skills requiring Submissive Energy.
- You cannot gain Dominant Energy. You can use Submissive Energy to fuel skills requiring Dominant Energy.

Each time you reach a level divisible by 5, you may choose to suppress or switch this perk.

<< >>

Okay. This makes sense. This is a nice, non-insane, non-rape-related, rules-modifying game feature that ought to take a perk and not just a skill to unlock. Three cheers for sensible game design. "Next?"

[ ] Absolute Territory:

'Zettai ryouiki': thigh-highs rising well above the knee, combined with miniskirts, to leave a short strip of visible thigh between. After taking this perk you never have any trouble with thigh-highs staying up---no glue or garters are ever required. Zettai ryouiki works for you in any situation: you could wear an zettai ryouiki version of a military uniform while disguised and entering a military base, wear zettai ryouiki armor into battle without combat penalties, or wear a zettai ryouiki spacesuit in space. Your Erogame Logic applies to anything you truly believe on a core level to be part of your sex life. You can easily transform existing wearables into zettai ryouiki versions with a little craftwork.

Minimum ERO: 40

<< >>

You frown at the floating violet text. Being able to dress a particular way, even in space, doesn't seem like a large enough benefit to be its own perk comparable to the game-changing 24/7.

And what does the line about Erogame Logic applying to anything you think is "part of your sex life", have to do with thighhighs? That doesn't even make sense. That sounds like saying that you could masturbate to physics equations until they started to turn you on, and then fuck physics. Maybe it's a line that accidentally wandered in from some other perk description where it made more sense? Well, whatever, you don't have to take this perk, there are probably better ones. "Next perk?"

[ ] Blessings of Slaanesh Be Upon This House

Whatever building you choose to make your permanent residence has residents with BOD, LST, and PRV at least equal to your corresponding stats minus 8. Events within all parts of the building behave as if under the influence of your current ERO. Even children who would otherwise be too youn#&^#&^%#*$&###*$#&#*$# children 14 and under will end up not encountering any events related to the effects of this perk, however improbable that may be.

You cannot take this perk while still living with your mother.

That's, uh… well, you can't say it's out of place for the erogame genre. The part about kids being protected is a nice touch, though, as is the grayed-out box accompanied by the reminder that you'll need your own base of operations first. It would have been awful to catch your mother in that effect by accident---you want to fix Mom's BOD, sure, but not boost her LST or PRV. And you couldn't even have considered the perk if it had said something horrible about transforming any kids within range into… you don't even want to think about it. It's good to know that whatever designed the Erogame isn't that far off the deep end.

Wait a minute. Does this perk transform people, or just guarantee that whatever building you move to has residents already like that? And how many people can be in the Ero House, exactly? Does a campus dorm count as one building? Or a skyscraper? That doesn't seem reasonable to you, but the description text doesn't say what is allowed.

This game needs a longer user manual. You'd consider taking this perk for Felice's sake if she could become prettier by moving into the same house as you, but the perk doesn't say whether that works.

[ ] Cal's Curse Compounded:

You may not have an orgasm without permission.

Once you plead with someone for permission you may not ask any other person besides them for one month. Each plea resets this timer. The permission-giver must know the rules of this curse; must know that you deliberately invoked this curse upon yourself; cannot otherwise be subject to your commands; and cannot be offered any non-sexual incentives for their response. They may choose to permit a ruined orgasm rather than a full orgasm. The permission-giver may give conditional permissions, including requiring you to obtain the further permission of others. Permission may be revoked at any time. You cannot lie to the permission-giver about any matter relating to your denial. You can try to remain silent, if you think you can get away with that.

All game skills relating to orgasm denial, whether of yourself or others, have zero energy cost.

You swallow hard, shifting your eyes away from the violet text. You, uh… this, clearly, would not be a wise thing to use a perk point on. In fact, you don't see why anyone would even bother building this perk into the Erogame when nobody sane would use a perk point on that.

It should be some kind of curse you need a quest to get rid of, not a perk. It's way too easy to imagine what somebody could make you do to earn an orgasm, once you got horny enough and desperate enough, and you wouldn't be able to lie about it either. They could make you use Edge Riding on yourself for hours. They'd make you so desperate that you couldn't stop yourself from asking permission for the one month needed to be free of them. And even if you did get free of one owner, the next owner might order you to do even worse things to yourself, dangling the prospect of release in front of you, and then revoking your permission just when you were finally about to go over the edge, and laughing at you and ordering you to tease yourself some more if you ever wanted to come again, slut.

Anyway. This is definitely not a perk to take. Definitely not. No doubt about it, the answer is no. This is a fantasy to masturbate to, not something to actually do to yourself for the rest of your life.

In fact, you shouldn't even masturbate to thoughts like this. If you did masturbate to thoughts about how awful this scenario would be, you might start masturbating to the thought of actually using a perk point to subject yourself to it. Until one day in a moment of weakness you actually did it. And you being scared of this possibility is probably the sort of thing that will make it spend more time lurking in the back of your mind, turning you on, until---"Next!"

[ ] Cinnamon Roll:

Triple all positive effects on others of having sex with you.

What a nice, healthy, cheerful perk.

You hope there aren't a lot more perks like that last one, the one you're definitely not thinking about right now.

[ ] Dark Side:

At will, cause your eyes to turn visibly bloodshot or revert to normal. At ERO 30+, you can opt to have your irises turn scarlet, and at ERO 40+, your eyes can glow red.

Anyone witnessing this phenomenon is fully convinced that you are in the grip of an alternate personality, that your memories of a past life have assumed control, that you are lost in the demonic side of your half-demon heritage, etcetera. To whatever extent this naturally motivates people to forgiveness, your primary self will not be held responsible for your dark side's shameless misdeeds.

How very useful for an erogame character.

But you will be strong. You will not give in to the evil, whispering voice inside you that totally, totally wants this perk.

Besides, maybe you can get some of the same effect by shifting to glowing fiery hair. Even without the Erogame's extra boost to credulity, you might be able to roll a good evil side.

[ ] Everyone Knows:

People who spend time in your presence begin to form correct intuitions about what turns you on, at least the parts their minds would willingly comprehend. They won't expect others to know too, but they will be sure of their own beliefs. This process is especially quick for any fetishes that currently embarrass you. It is extremely quick for fetishes that currently embarrass you and that interest the other person.

You have to look away from the violet rectangle. Well, at least this time you're not worried about taking this perk in a moment of weakness because you'd rather die.

So, Erogame, you weren't totally designed for sane players, huh?

[ ] The Eye of Yandere:

If you are romantically attracted to someone, you are always alerted when they are romantically or sexually attracted to someone else or when someone else is romantically or sexually attracted to them. You do not know the strength of this attraction, just that it exists.

Thank you for confirming that, Erogame.

[ ] Fading Dream:

Your exes do not remember you after you break up with them.

Who would---that's the most horrible thing you ever---why?!

[ ] Fake ID:

You have an alternative identity whose existence is recognized by governments and computers. You have all paperwork required to support this identity and can choose its background at will; if the alternate you is a different age, nationality, or sex then it is your responsibility to disguise yourself accordingly. No one can make the connection between your identities without you explicitly informing them or them catching you unmistakably in the act of switching.

This perk does not modify people's senses of object permanence: someone who locks one of your identities inside a cell will be expecting the same person to be in that cell later. If you change your appearance, they may simply decide you have 'disguised yourself' as your alternative identity.

You may take this perk more than once.

That's… wow. You were thinking this was just for working at strip clubs while still underage, not… wow. Someone could lead two whole separate lives with this! You're not sure what you'd do with this perk now, but it could definitely be on the agenda for later.

[ ] From Sheen to Glow:

Your name is changed to Isabella. Your personality is changed to Isabella. Other Isabellas consider you to be one of them.

Your %##-+-+%# too high for you to take this perk.

You don't understand what this perk is about, but you're never talking to anyone named Isabella ever again.

[ ] Go Out with a Bang:

A doctor diagnoses you with a fatal disease, giving you three months left to live---maybe two, maybe four. Your remaining lifetime is uncertain, but it won't be long now. Your occasional hospital stays are brief and painless, leaving you looking wan, sad, and beautiful in your hospital bed. Sometimes you get a piece of medical good news, giving you a little more time in which to say goodbye and experience all the things you never had a chance to do. No matter how long this continues, no one ever notices that the doctor always gives you around one more month of lifespan per month.

You may at will have a remission or relapse of your Terminal Moe.

This perk is the product of a sick brain. And you are not even a little tempted. Not at all.

Not if you have to spend a whole perk point on it, anyway. Maybe if it was just for a few months and you got the perk point back afterwards---

Your head slumps down as you realize what you just thought.

You did not need to know this about yourself.

[ ] Hyperhypnoslut:

You can drop faster than your panties when being voluntarily hypnotized. You can be hypnotized without your wanting to be hypnotized, if you are forced or tricked into listening to the hypnotist's voice. A hypnotist can force you to do things you don't want to do, up to your current PRV + 8. You can be given temporary false memories or amnesia.

Your ultimate trigger phrase is 'floral ticklish cowboy rabies' and anyone using it gets root access on your soul. This includes permanent memory editing, personality editing, sexuality editing, belief editing, emotional editing, and absolute obedience. You cannot be hypnotized or drugged into giving up this trigger phrase or revealing its existence. You cannot hypnotize yourself using this trigger phrase, even by leaving yourself a recording. Think very carefully before giving this trigger phrase to anyone, or writing it down, or speaking it aloud when you think you are alone in your bedroom.

Your %##-+-+%# too high for you to take this perk.

Jesus shit that's yikes.

[ ] I Regret My Life Choices:

Remove any number of perks previously taken. They are not refunded.

Oh thank god this exists. This makes the prospect of your future self taking one of the Awful Perks in a moment of weakness much less scary.

[ ] Idol:

You gain the talent that will let you to learn how to compose music and lyrics. Singing and performance is already based on SED. All other aspects of becoming famous---such as actually practicing, assembling a band/harem, and seducing or blackmailing producers---are up to you; but you will encounter good opportunities.

…Not right now.

But you're starting to get some of the picture here. Many of the Erogame perks are designed to let you choose your genre---to recreate aspects of erogames that run too deep for a simple skill.

[ ] I'm Not Explaining This Again:

After you have carefully, painstakingly, thoroughly explained an ero-related concept at least once (polyamory is not cheating, that is not where a clitoris is, how to tie a shibari knot), anyone else you meet will understand it after only a couple of sentences.

There are people who would kill for this perk, as modified for whatever their own lives are about. There are people who would kill their own children for this perk. Your perking plans should probably account for the possibility that you will someday need to choose between taking this perk and going insane.

[ ] In Nomine Status Quo:

Once per level you may roll against your ERO*2 to have something undo the long-term consequences of an event perturbing your personal existence. You discover blackmail material you can use to get the prosecutor to drop the charges; or, your one-night-stand turns out to be a millionaire who pays off the incurred debt. Your chance of success when using this perk cannot exceed 90%, but you can still try to salvage the situation by ordinary means if it fails.

This perk may be used any number of times, without counting against the once-per-level limitation, to try to undo any addition or removal of a suitor in your love dodecahedron.

This sounds extremely valuable, if unreliable. Even if some might call it bad writing, there's a lot to be said in favor of life stability when it's happening to you. Shortlisted.

[ ] Innocence Temporarily Regained:

Your BOD, LST, SED, FUK, and PRV stats are reduced to the minimum of their current levels and 40, 15, 8, 8, and 1. Until it reaches its former level, your PRV stat cannot increase by more than 1 point per 3 days. Memories linked to higher stats cannot be recalled until your stats have again risen to a corresponding level. Skills are not recalled until your stats rise to a compatible level. Your hymen is restored. You retain your ERO. You do not receive the Innocent Virgin status effect.

Your %##-+-+%# too high for you to take this perk.

You quietly put a palm over your forehead, in the classic Picard pose.

[ ] Like Uber for Costumes:

If you can find any manufactured fetish clothing (not a one-off creation, and you must not have been involved in inspiring it) that corresponds to a profession, you can act with the full skill of that profession while wearing that clothing. For example, using firearms while dressed as a sexy soldier.

Minimum ERO: 50

Okay, this perk is just silly. And why "Uber"? You don't think you get it.

[ ] 'Little Death' Note:

The human whose name is written in this Note shall orgasm. Details of how the orgasm shall appear must be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Minimum ERO: 40

What weird story did this wander out of?

[ ] Lolita (Shota):

Select a new apparent age between 8 and 14. Your biological form and apparent legal birthdate change to match. Your mind, stats, and skills are unaffected. You may at will moderate the amount that this diminishes your breast size (penis size).

If you use SED-based skills on persons who would otherwise not be attracted to you, this perk does not of itself modify the psychological consequences to them.

"NEXT."

[ ] Mad Inventor:

You can create devices whose functions correspond to many Erogame skills and effects. These devices cannot be mass-manufactured, but can be loaned to others. You must wear steampunk goggles while wielding this perk.

Minimum ERO: 30

…cannot be mass-manufactured…

WELL THAT'S DISAPPOINTING.

In your mind you can see your legions of sexbots giving you disappointed looks and then fading away, leaving behind only a dozen custom-designed androids, a couple of giant armored mecha and maybe one Thing With Tentacles for when you're ready.

Not that you're not taking this perk! But you should still finish reading through the others first, in case there's another that's even better.

[ ] Mad Scientist:

Your powers give you the ability to test hypotheses about sexuality that conventional science cannot or will not investigate. Use all skills at double their base level whenever you are primarily seeking general knowledge. (Extracting the location of an enemy base does not count as 'general knowledge'.) You must wear a sexy lab coat while invoking this perk.

You have the oddest feeling that these two perks were designed to make a point about somebody's pet peeve.

[ ] Mating? Agreement:

Many people around the planet begin to gain unique, specialized superpowers, causing far-reaching social changes. All of these superpowers have one thing in common: one way or another, they relate to sex. The people who have these powers tend to seek out sexually charged situations and have sex with each other.

Taking this perk automatically starts the Gold Morning quest.

Minimum ERO: 75

…global implications of later Erogame stages: verified.

The thought is causing an odd tightness in your chest, halfway between excitement and cosmic levels of stage fright. There's a difference between thinking you might change the world and being told that you are definitely caught up in globally significant events. This is not a way that Cinderella Sheen has ever thought of herself before, and if Charles were here he'd be looking extremely worried.

On the other hand, this does confirm that there are ways of spreading around the enormous lump of undeserved good fortune that landed in your lap.

That "Gold Morning" quest also has a cheerful name, and sounds like it should lead to something happy and peaceful.

[ ] The Maou the Merrier:

Someone you know is the reincarnation of the Demon Lord. This will have plot consequences or something. Whatever.

Minimum ERO: 75

You give the perk a very skeptical look, although you can't help but wonder what it would be like if the Demon Lord turned out to be Mom.

Wait, is this implying that Earth has a Demon Dimension?

Would this perk create a Demon Dimension? Including the demons inside it? Would it edit the world's history so that the Demon Dimension had always existed?

How powerful is the Erogame, exactly? Is there anything it won't do at ERO 75? The picture of Charles in your head is now screaming and running around in circles and you can kind of see where Imaginary Charles is coming from on this.

[ ] Marshmallow Test:

Receive two additional perks, for a net of one more perk than you would've had otherwise. This perk can only be taken after reaching Lvl 10 and only if it is the first perk you have chosen other than your starting perk.

Your level is too low to take this perk.

You stare at this for a long minute and then squeeze your eyes shut, not sure how loudly you want to swear at the Erogame or even what profanities you want to hurl at it.

You suppose you shouldn't actually be angry about Marshmallow Test. Nobody's forcing you to do it, it lets you get one more perk than you otherwise would, but god damn it, Erogame. You were just about to have one of these incredibly nice things, and now you have to wait another 10,000XP before you can have---well, before you can have three incredibly nice things. Or two if you want to keep a perk point in reserve. You couldn't have had the nice thing tonight anyway, if you'd been smart and kept a perk point in reserve.

You ought to be happy about this opportunity, but you're not.

[ ] More Competitive Than You:

For any activity whose primary purpose is competition (e.g. chess, drag racing, or martial arts; but not stock trading, or literary authorship) your skill level adjusts to match your love interests and/or romantic rivals. Your skill level is such as to make you just barely worse than your love interest, or just barely better than your romantic rivals, whichever is higher, if you try your best.

You're still mentally banging your head against the wall at the Marshmallow Test, and only fleetingly think that this seems to you like cheating.

[ ] Oh My God There's Two of Them:

You can be in two places at once, so long as at least one of you is doing something ero. You experience both lives separately and in parallel. You cannot gain energy from selfcest.

Minimum ERO: 50.

O_0

Trying to think about exactly how this perk is supposed to work is making your head hurt.

[ ] Off Switch:

Choose one perk, passive skill, or status effect. You may at will suspend or resume its effects whenever it would otherwise be on.

You do not receive a perk the next time you would otherwise do so.

Thanks, Erogame. It's good to know this possibility exists, however expensive in perk points, if something gets horrible enough.

[ ] PhD in Harem Management:

Those among your partners who would otherwise be hostile to each other tolerate one another's presence. This perk does not bypass quest-related challenges or produce actual friendship.

♫ Sounds promising ♫

[ ] Prize:

Seven interesting people from around the world learn your identity, along with the true fact that whoever wins your heart will gain tremendous power.

Not a genre in which you've previously imagined yourself, but not wholly unappealing either.

[ ] Real Scientist:

Your unusual experiences have given you insight into open questions in human sexuality, leading you to form new testable hypotheses. You instinctively understand experimental methodology and statistics. So long as you report your outcomes honestly, other scientists will discuss your results seriously; and overlook your lack of credentials along with any questions about the morality or possibility of your experiments. You can write proficiently in LaTeX if you are wearing latex.

If you simultaneously hold the perks Mad Inventor, Mad Scientist, and Real Scientist, you become able to develop reproducible technology, including the experimental apparatus required for others to further investigate and extend your discoveries. An actual PhD in a scientific field, acquired the hard way, can substitute for the Real Scientist perk in this trinity.

Minimum ERO: 20

YES! YES, MY SEXBOT ARMIES! A NEW AGE OF SEXUALITY SHALL DAWN UPON THIS EARTH!

…would it be worth pursuing an entire PhD just to save one perk point? Some of the other perks are disturbingly valuable-sounding. Academia might actually be fun as a Good Student with plenty of erogaming on the side. And Oh My God There's Two of Them would let you have sex with someone and go to classes at the same time oh that's what it's for.

Dr. Sheen. Actual Dr. Sheen. What a bizarre and oddly tempting thought.

[ ] Sex God:

You can gain Dominant and Submissive Energy from sex acts performed in your name by anyone who sincerely believes you to be a god. Establishing and maintaining a cult is up to you.

Minimum ERO: 30

0_o

…maybe later.

[ ] S/layer:

In every generation there is a chosen one. S/he alone will stand against and/or lie down with the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. S/he is the S/layer.

Minimum ERO: 75

You are beginning to worry about exactly what starts to happen at ERO 75.

[ ] Something About Marry:

You may at will choose to have been betrothed to someone as a child. The evidence for this betrothal may be discovered all at once or revealed gradually. Warning: Overuse of this perk may result in the results of overusing this perk.

Minimum ERO: 30

Hashtag #NoThanks.

[ ] Student Councilor:

Your school decides to form a Student Council. You are on it. Student Councilors have around as much power as Stalin.

Taking this perk automatically begins the Academic Infighting quest.

Minimum ERO: 30.

Could be interesting if you decide to go the PhD route.

[ ] Style On:

Your Element is Hair. Your Origin is Hair. The slightest glimpse of someone's hairstyle tells you its structure, history, and meaning to its wearer. Every hairstyle you have thus glimpsed is inscribed within your soul. And yet, from the beginning, you never took any pride in your braids. You are broken somewhere deep inside and that is why you are a hairstyle.

Taking this perk unlocks the Conceptual Hair skill tree, replacing Implausible Hairstyle and all other hair-related skills with minimum BOD requirements. Taking this perk automatically begins the Hill of Hairstyles quest.

Your %##-+-+%# too high for you to take this perk.

Minimum ERO: 40

Did you somehow end up with this perk by accident? A quick status screen confirms it's still not on your list. And you haven't gotten any quest prompts about a Hill of Hairstyles either.

This seems more disturbing than it should be, but you can't put your finger on what's so disturbing about this. Well, besides the obvious fact that the Conceptual Hair skill should have taken a perk and ERO 40 to unlock, if the Erogame had actually worked the way this perk text suggests it was originally designed to work.

[ ] Subspace Explorer:

If a BDSM session puts you deep enough into subspace, you can travel within it across vast #@# to visit other worlds. All alien societies connected to subspace have their own equivalents of BDSM, ensuring that you can always return home.

Minimum ERO: 100.

Are there already aliens? Does this make there be a whole galactic civilization out there? Fuck it, you'll think about this when your ERO hits 99. "Next."

[ ] Succubus (Incubus):

You may choose to appear anytime that someone conducts what they believe to be a succubus (incubus) summoning ritual. (They cannot be trying to summon the real you, since then they do not believe they are summoning a succubus/incubus.) You know roughly what sort of person(s) are doing the summoning. If you choose to respond, you can opt to appear naked or wearing the summoners' most preferred clothing. If your BOD is 50+ you may opt to appear in their ideal physical form, and at BOD 75+ you may opt for demonic additions. On arrival you gain some instinctive grasp of the conscious and unconscious sexual desires of your summoners.

This experience is lived in parallel, as if with the Oh My God There's Two of Them perk. You can respond to only one summoning at a time. You vanish when dismissed, or the next time the summoner falls asleep, whichever comes first.

You may visit a summoner later using your primary self, if you have learned their real-world address. You have no power to take their soul and no special ability to enforce any contracts made, but nothing stops you from lying about that.

Minimum ERO: 40.

…this, too, has a certain appeal.

Could you fake this with glowing red demonic hair? You'd need to know somehow that somebody was about to summon a succubus, but that might not be impossible if you, say, left the right book lying around, and then snuck into the person's house while they were trying to perform the ritual… okay, yeah, that sounds complicated. But it might be worth trying before spending a perk point.

[ ] Super Horny:

Gain +1 to all stats for each cumulative 3 days you go without orgasm, to a maximum bonus of 25% of base values. You must have sex or be teased on each such day for it to count towards the total.

"Next."

[ ] That Is Not How Hypnosis Works:

You can mesmerize people by having them watch a swaying object or shiny object for a minute or two, or by forcing them to listen to your voice for ten minutes. You do not require consent to hypnotize someone, nor their knowledge that they are being hypnotized. Everyone is deeply hypnotizable by you. It is not especially difficult to hypnotize people into doing things they don't want to do.

To finish activating this perk, you must read any single book on hypnosis. It can be a short book. Borrowing it from the library is fine.

Minimum ERO: 30

"Oh, for the love of fucking next."

[ ] Time Enough for Love:

Unlocks the Time Control skill tree. Your future self immediately uses Time Control Lvl MAX to seal all aspects of this skill except for the relatively harmless Slack subskill. At Lvl 1, the Slack subskill enables you to take up to 10 extra minutes per day, spread out however you like, so long as nobody is watching you or nobody in your group is keeping track of time.

Minimum ERO: 30

The waiting checkbox suggests that you could take this perk if you wanted. But so far as you can tell, you already got exactly this, it just isn't on your perks list. What's going on here?

[ ] Transsexual:

At will, but at most once per level, change to have been born male, female, futanari, or hermaphrodite. This is a conceptual shift of world/self and gives you access to distant-feeling memories of having previously lived as your new sex. Some romantic relationships may shift to become friendships in the new world, as not all other people's sexual orientations may be easily reselectable in the target history. Linked souls with more than && of % may also remember the world's original history. You cannot change to futanari or hermaphrodite while your ERO is under 30.

You don't want this right now but it seems like something future-you might want. You want to find out how the other half lives, and if it's really as much nicer than being female as Tumblr seems to think.

[ ] Trust:

Whenever somebody honestly tells you that they love you, or like you, or admire something about you, or shows trust in you by confessing a truth to you that they would not tell others, you know that they mean it.

Taking this perk renders you ineligible for a significant number of Erogame quests and reduces the rewards of many others, but it's here if you need it.

You… don't think you need this. You don't think. You think you'll be able to live without this perk, if nothing else goes wrong.

Somebody was very nice to put this perk here. In case anyone needed it.

[ ] Tsundere:

Nobody ever questions the insane troll logic of what you choose to be offended by.

Minimum BOD: 25

You always wondered how that worked. You suppose it's obvious in retrospect.

[ ] Urban Legend:

For any identities you maintain besides your primary legal identity or Fake ID, their existence never becomes common knowledge. This perk does not interfere with first-order knowledge: People may readily observe or tell trusted others about the girl who blows anyone for $1. However, everyone believes unshakably that 'most people' would be as contemptuously skeptical of your existence as of an alien abduction. No one would ever dare talk about you in public as if they believed in you. It is possible for large populations to all be subject to this effect simultaneously, e.g. if you are seen on national television.

Your mind is having some difficulty wrapping around this.

[ ] Wait I'm Not Ready For This:

You may delay up to 10 points of gain in each stat, and up to 5 Lvls of gain in each skill, until you permit it to go through. This does not otherwise affect rates of experience gain or the leveling curve. Permittance may be done partially. Permittance is irrevocable. When first taking this perk, you may apply it retroactively to any gains within the last week.

…just what you needed, another extremely reasonable reason why a smart girl ought to keep an emergency perk point in reserve. Ugh.

[ ] What Dreams May Come:

You know when someone begins to fantasize about you, and know in approximate terms what they currently intend to fantasize. You may choose to enter their fantasy and gain control of your analogue-self within it, experiencing the events as real.

You may gain skill, stats, experience, and energy within the fantasy. You retain all knowledge you learn within the fantasy. Physical changes to your body or equipment do not carry over to reality. Only as much subjective time passes for you as passes for the fantasizer. This event takes place alongside and parallel to your main existence and does not interrupt it, but you cannot participate in more than one fantasy at a time.

You only have what capabilities the fantasizer acknowledges you as having. The fantasizer does not notice anything unusual about your behavior within their fantasy, no matter what you choose to do or say. You may not exit such a fantasy until it has terminated. This perk only works on fantasizers unaware of its existence and on fantasies you have not deliberately influenced.

Minimum ERO: 40

You will need a higher PRV score to find this more tempting-scary than actually-scary. Right now you do not want to be this helpless, ever.

[ ] You Didn't Hear That:

Once per level you may retroactively decide not to have said something. This perk only applies to utterances made while you were your current level.

(This ability cannot shift your #% past souls with more than && of their own %, and they will remember what changed.)

…also tempting, but maybe you'll put your foot in your mouth less often now that you have decent SED.

You suspect your mind is getting tired from going through all these perks. You're having a bit of trouble figuring out the last sentence in front of you, although it seems to be written perfectly clearly. At least you're getting close to the end of the alphabet, right?

[ ] Curse of Dresden:

The first time you make full eye contact with someone, you learn which fetish or other aspect of their sexuality most embarrasses them.

Gain an extra perk after your SED exceeds 75.

…oh, right. All the minor perks.

You'd better go through these more quickly.

[ ] Curse of Tattletale:

Whenever anyone within visual range has specific sexual thoughts about you, you know what they are thinking about.

Gain an extra perk after your SED exceeds 75.

[ ] Poly Graph Test:

You are instinctively aware of how a relationship forming between two persons would affect other relationships connected to them.

Gain an extra perk after your SED exceeds 50.

[ ] Skip the Boring Parts:

Invoking this perk gives you a SED*1% chance to transition directly to whatever sexual encounter (if any) you would otherwise have with a person. You can only invoke this perk on a particular person once. This perk cannot be used to bypass quest-related challenges.

Gain an extra perk after your SED exceeds 50.

[ ] Yousexual:

Everyone is gay for you / hetero for you. This does not affect their LST, so does not modify asexuality or aromanticism.

Gain an extra perk after your SED exceeds 75.

[ ] Everywhere Erogenous:

There is no area of your body that cannot be used to stimulate you to orgasm, though this may still take time and work to do through your elbow.

Gain an extra perk after your LST exceeds 50.

[ ] Fairy-tale Painslut:

Your masochism is strong enough to embrace any intensity of sexually charged torture, with zero warmup.

Gain an extra perk after your LST exceeds 50.

Your mind very quickly notes that this is yet another good reason to reserve a perk point for emergencies and then stops going there as your voice says "Next."

[ ] Omnisexual:

You can at will decide to be sexually and/or romantically attracted to any person, or body type, or personality characteristic. This perk cannot remove attractions you would otherwise already have, nor does it expand your fetishes.

Gain an extra perk after your LST exceeds 75.

This should seem like a perfectly reasonable way to let yourself be nice to someone who deserves some niceness, if you can't find some way to give Felice Williamson a real body. Instead the thought is squicking you out, which makes you feel both guilty for being squicked out and also stupid because you know you'd stop feeling squicked the instant you took the perk.

[ ] James Bond of Bondage:

Your ties never cause unintentional pain, never come loose accidentally, and can be applied in less than 5 minutes, including to an unwilling subject who is otherwise being held down or restrained.

Gain an extra perk after your FUK exceeds 50.

[ ] Edgelord:

You always know how close to orgasm others are and never make someone come by accident.

Gain an extra perk after your FUK exceeds 50.

Why, no, not tempting at all.

In fact it genuinely isn't tempting. You want to learn how to do this, gaining all the experience you need along the way.

[ ] Perfect Sadist:

Inflicting pain on others, no matter how severe, never causes any permanent damage you did not intend.

Gain an extra perk after your FUK exceeds 50.

"Next."

[ ] Gray Girl:

Unlocks the Looping Reset subskill of Time Control. Depending on skill level, you can shift time backward by seconds, within a diameter on the order of meters, and set this shift to repeat an integer number of times. Souls are unaffected by these resets.

(For example, you could stimulate someone until, even with no further stimulation, they will inevitably begin to experience a ruined orgasm in 5 seconds. You may then impose a 5-second Looping Reset, causing their bodies to repeatedly jump back 5 seconds every time, just as their ruined orgasm is beginning once again.)

Be advised that continuing a Looping Reset for more than a few minutes may cause psychological damage, especially if the person is repeating intense sensations. For technical reasons, colors inside a Looping Reset field appear desaturated from outside.

Gain an extra perk after you fully unseal Time Control.

Minimum ERO: 40

You're glad this perk didn't suggest as many squicky possibilities as the previous one.

It also fits a thought you had in the back of your mind, about whether maybe minor perks return the perk point at the point when it becomes definitely redundant. Like, you get the perk point back if you could easily learn an equivalent skill without the perk. Presumably you'd be able to do Looping Resets anyway once you had full Time Control, so that's when you get the perk point back.

…which given the existence of minor perks like Consent is Not One of My Fetishes or Perfect Sadist, is yet one more entry for your running tally of disturbing thoughts.

[ ] Library of Sodom:

You automatically know any detail of abstract knowledge that you want or need about any sexual activity that has been described in public writing. For example, directions for how to tie a shibari knot, or that one ought to avoid striking the kidneys with a flogger. This knowledge does not convey skill.

Gain an extra perk after your PRV exceeds 50.

[ ] Obedience:

At will, give yourself the Obedient status effect for a pre-specified duration. While this status effect holds, you must make a will save (potentially with modifiers) to disobey any order given you. This obedience only applies to orders that can be obeyed over the course of minutes, not to longer-term orders. Once you refuse an order, you do not need to save again versus that order or similar orders until one day has passed.

You cannot impose an Obedient status effect on yourself lasting longer than 10 years.

Gain an extra perk after your PRV exceeds 75.

Note to self: Never raise PRV to 75.

[ ] Not Right Now You Don't:

Your anus no longer functions as an excretory vent in addition to its other uses. You simply never need to go to the bathroom for number two. Your sensitivity to other stimuli including enemas is unchanged.

Gain an extra perk after your BOD exceeds 50.

[ ] Tastes Like Chocolate:

Freely control the taste and scent of any of your bodily fluids, so long as the result is more pleasant than the human norm (you cannot use this skill to discourage rapists).

Gain an extra perk after your BOD exceeds 75.

It is only your lingering body-negativity problems that cause you to be tempted by this, and that is not a good-enough reason to take this perk. You think. Even though you would feel far better about asking others to have sex with you, and you'd get back the perk point eventually…

[ ] Werewhatever:

Choose any one other form you desire. It cannot have magical abilities other than your usual powers, nor phlebotinium biology such as skyscraper size or human-affecting pheromones. The new body may have abilities which could plausibly be the result of ordinary biochemistry differently configured, such as ejaculating tentacles or a vibrator-lined stomach sac.

While you are under direct moonlight, you may at will assume or relinquish this form. You can continue wearing the wereform, but not relinquish it, when not under moonlight.

Gain an extra perk after your BOD reaches 100.

Minimum ERO: 50

There's people who'd kill for this perk, but you're not one of them. You can't think of any form you'd prefer over 'girl pretty enough to be allowed to exist'.

[ ] Ero-Inventory:

Any portable sex equipment or clothing that you legally own can be summoned by you at will, and dismissed at will to return to its former location. If your ERO is under 40 and you are being observed, you must summon items to inside an unobserved container, or otherwise maintain deniability. If you are displaying cleavage and your apparent cup size is at least C, you may access up to 2000 cubic centimeters of general storage by reaching between your breasts; providing the object could reasonably have been stored there, if your ERO is under 40.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO exceeds 50.

You give yourself a hard mental kick in the mental butt. "Inventory."

It doesn't do anything, but you really should have tried saying that earlier.

Also, the general-storage perk sounds extremely convenient for everyday life, and you are sorely tempted by the thought of not needing to carry a purse everywhere.

[ ] Ero-Travel:

Your perversion is so twisted as to warp space itself. At the moment of orgasm, you can teleport to any other point where you have previously had an orgasm, providing that both your origin and destination are well-trafficked public travelways (e.g. busy sidewalks, bus stops, subway platforms). While your ERO is less than 40 you must not be observed at the moment of vanishing, and any others present at the destination will happen to be looking away as you materialize, though they will be looking back very soon. At ERO 40+ you may take along any number of partners if you are all stimulating each other and orgasm simultaneously. Traveling longer distances may require more intense orgasms at the origin point, a greater number of previous orgasms at the destination point, or both.

Persistent 'points' in space are calculated relative to whatever massive body's gravitational field dominates that point in space, including matching the rotation or orbit of that massive body. On arrival you will be matched to the velocity of your destination point. 'Simultaneous' times at the origin and destination cannot violate the true global #|# on events, but will if possible be aligned to match the predictions of Special Relativity given your origin velocity. You can take with you whatever you are currently carrying with your own strength, including clothing.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO exceeds 75.

The Erogame has a fast-travel system! You've always disliked RPG games that make you spend minutes pushing the character along boring paths you've already traveled. You're even less fond of spending hours doing that in real life. Absolutely on the short list.

[ ] Naked Before Me:

You may touch people as if their clothing and your clothing did not exist. Onlookers not clued in see your hand, shoe, or head resting quietly in the corresponding place---lewd, perhaps, but not obscene---and do not hear any sounds directly produced by the sex act, though they still hear other sounds made by your victim. Similar acts may be performed on you, including by accident.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO exceeds 75.

Minimum ERO: 40

…this is speaking directly to fetishes you didn't even know you had, but you can't just shortlist it, you have too many perks you want already, but you really want this! Maybe the Erogame will give you more perks if you break down and cry?

[ ] No Comparison:

Those who have experienced sex with you do not think to compare their past or future sexual experiences to the ones they had with you. This perk applies retroactively to previous partners and heals any prior psychological damage they have taken, but does not repair any of their relationships that have already broken.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO exceeds 50.

That… is a disturbingly good point that you did not think of at all. You don't need this yet, you think. But you will need to keep this point in mind, and take this perk as soon as it becomes obvious your victims need it.

…maybe this is what Fading Dream is for? So your exes don't have to spend the rest of their lives wishing you'd come back? That's… that is the saddest thought you've had since the Erogame started. God, you really hope you don't end up needing that perk.

Maybe ERO 50 just fixes everything anyway because fuck realism. That would be nice.

[ ] Non-Excludable Public Good:

The world treats your orifices as unsecured wifi. Nobody considers it odd for anyone to do anything to you at any time or place. They may still consider it shameful for you if you visibly respond.

This perk stacks with Fake ID: at the first time you have both perks, you permanently choose which identity or identities this perk applies to.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO exceeds 75.

Minimum ERO: 35

This would be a horribly fascinating and arousing perk if it had an on-off switch. As it stands it's just hashtag #NopeNope.

Some part of you is still disappointed at the thought of this never happening to you.

Although… this is a minor perk. If you're guessing correctly how this all works, the perk point gets refunded once your stats rise high enough that you could have easily done the same thing. So once your ERO hits 75, and probably a good deal earlier, there will be a skill that lets you get fucked in public by men who think there's nothing wrong with it. While other people look at you and shake their heads over how you can't stop making those shameful sounds---

You shut down the horribly arousing fantasy before you gain another PRV point.

[ ] Perfect Subbing:

You can at will perceive subtitles in your native language for all speakers whose voice you can hear, and subtitled translation for all foreign-language texts. This does not enable you to speak or write other languages.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO exceeds 50.

This would be really useful for crowded places and loud-music-playing clubs, unless that was something wrong with your ears before and BOD already fixed it. You want to call it shortlisted, considering the refundable perk point. But you won't get the perk point back for a while and you're accumulating too many things you want here.

[ ] What Are You Doing Here:

You can always find anyone you have previously kissed. All your attempts to be admitted to the school, bluff your way into the military base, pretend to be a hospital nurse, etcetera, have triple the likelihood of succeeding. Unless you otherwise blow your cover, nobody else takes your target or any other prior acquaintances seriously if they protest your being there.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO exceeds 50.

No.

You shouldn't take this perk. It would be evil.

You consider the question of exactly how much more evil this perk is than your current level of evil.

You think it would probably take… around 11.5% more evil before you started thinking it would be a hysterically funny idea to follow Blake Layton around for the rest of his life, randomly turning up in places you have no reason to be and giving him blowjobs.

It doesn't seem likely that you won't get 11.5% more evil. Poor Blake.

[ ] You Couldn't Help Yourself:

Anyone who views a picture of you will sincerely not blame another person for having had sex with you, including the monogamous partners of those you have seduced.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO exceeds 50.

Yet another good caution to keep in mind. You'll need to erogame responsibly for so long as you don't have this perk.

[ ] Legoland:

You can detach pussies, clits, nipples, assholes, and cocks from their original holders, and then attach them to other people or just take them with you. People with parts attached receive sensations from that part. All sensations experienced by a part continue to flow to that part's original owner, unless an alternative part has been attached to the empty slot on the original owner's body. Excretory functions of a part become unnecessary to the person while their part is detached. Detached parts temporarily acquire the protection of your Erogamer's Body skill. Victims of this skill may take back and reattach their own parts if they can find them, but only to that part's original location on their body.

Examples:

- Removing Alice's pussy and attaching Bob's cock to her groin will cause both Alice and Bob to receive sensations from that cock.
- Further attaching Carol's pussy to Bob's groin means that only Alice is still receiving sensation from Bob's cock.
- Instead attaching Carol's pussy to Bob's thigh would mean that Bob is receiving sensation from both his detached cock and from Carol's attached pussy.
- You can go on attaching additional parts to Bob so long as he has remaining exposed flesh. You cannot stack parts.
- Removing any non-native parts from Bob means that Bob immediately stops receiving input to them.
- Tiling Bob in clits and tossing him into a vibrator pit is not advised if you want to keep him sane.

Gain an extra perk after your ERO reaches 100.

Minimum ERO: 50

This would… you could just steal Blake's cock right off him, and fuck yourself with it while he was in class. If you had Naked Before Me, you could sit next to him in his class room, fucking yourself with his dick, watching him trying to control himself, and nobody nearby except him would see anything except your hand resting quietly between your legs.

…you're accumulating more progress toward your next PRV point, you can tell. "Next," you say with a sigh.

[ ] Erogame What Erogame:

You forget that the Erogame exists. The game automatically levels up, distributes stat points, selects perks, accepts quests, and invokes skills in whichever way it thinks will make your sex life the most interesting.

Your %##-+-+%# too high for you to take this perk.

…oh. The "srs bsns" perks. Right.

The option is grayed-out, thankfully. Like Everyone Knows or Hyperhypnoslut, this perk isn't tempting enough to be horrifying. Except in the sense that you'd be terrified of someday hitting the checkbox by accident.

[ ] Forbidden Love:

You discover a long-lost sibling: your choice of age, sex, and full or half relation. You may choose to make this a fraternal or identical twin. Their stats begin near human norms. You were separated before the Westermarck effect could apply. Both of you will begin to find the other sexually attractive after your first month of living in the same house as ordinary siblings. You will not remember that this perk exists or that you selected it.

…you could have cheerfully gone THE REST OF YOUR LIFE without being told that there are ANY perks with a clause "you will not remember that this perk exists or that you selected it". Did you have a good relationship with Mom before the Erogame started? Did you even have a Mom, or did you just take the Mom perk? Well WHO THE FUCK KNOWS NOW, huh.

-+​

You blink and notice that the checkbox for this perk seems to be grayed out… did you just not notice that before? If all the perks with this kind of shenanigan are grayed-out, that's a kind of reassurance. Kind of. You'd just as soon that all of them were deleted from the Erogame.

-+​

[ ] No:

Choose one event to disallow either prospectively, or retroactively up to 24 hours earlier. The event will not happen, either then or at any time in the future. Ongoing processes are not 'events', but their starting points may be considered so.

You cannot take this perk more than once.

(If used retroactively, this ability cannot shift your #% past souls with more than && of their own %, and those people will remember what changed.)

On the one hand, yet another reason to keep a perk point in emergency reserve. On the other hand, it's difficult to imagine any event so bad that you would blow your only-ever use of No on it. If the fault lines let loose and most of California was ruined in an earthquake, you'd be too scared of nuclear war someday destroying the whole Earth to use up your No to save California. This perk is in practice useless because it's too useful to ever be used.

[ ] Sin of:

You may take this perk only once. Choose:

- Envy:

Take over another person's life. Everyone in the world now believes unshakably that you are they. The displaced person no longer exists.

- Gluttony:

You never get tired, bored, or over-satiated during any pleasurable act, no matter how long it continues. You may accumulate unlimited DOM and SUB from such acts.

- Greed:

You find a winning lottery ticket with the lump-sum cash payout option selected. After all taxes are paid, your after-tax winnings are a bit over $100,000,000.

- Lust:

At will, you may temporarily increase your LST and/or PRV to any higher level you wish, for as long as you wish, up to a maximum of 100.

- Pride:

All stats and skills increase faster.

- Sloth:

Removes all time limits for acceptance or completion of quests. Negates or softens all other visible deadlines for accomplishing anything within the Erogame or your life.

- Wrath:

Instantly kill anyone you choose, ejecting their souls from the possibilities of your own existence. Bypassing quest challenges in this way will reduce their rewards. You may invoke this perk an unlimited number of times.

HOLY SHIT THAT POWER LADDER WENT UP QUICKLY.

You stare at the violet paragraphs with your mind completely blown.

Six of the Seven Sins seem like obvious traps. Probably the remaining one is a less obvious trap.

Taking into yourself one of the Seven Sins sounds like the type of decision that oh just maybe might have long-lasting game consequences.

Charles would tell you not to do this.

Marshmallow Test is still a thing.

Your mind is still numb. This is so far beyond the options you were emotionally prepared to reject tonight that you can't handle it.

A small part of you, a very small part, understands that in theory you have already seen perks that do bigger, more significant things than this. More valuable things. Or the Sin of Pride could be the most valuable perk in the game, if there is any Sin that is not a trap. So you shouldn't go for the Sin of Greed right away.

But mostly the financial cortex of your brain has simply fainted. The number isn't real. Spending $23 on clothes is real. Turning down $5000 is real. This is not real. Since it isn't real, it's easy to listen to Charles's voice and dry logic and move on to the next perk. Maybe later you will wonder about your ability not to click the checkbox, maybe later you'll be able to feel this temptation as emotionally real, but at least right now, your mind is too blown to feel the desperate urge to click the checkbox and fall for whatever trap this is. $100,000 would be a mind-blowingly unimaginably huge amount of money. Anything larger than that isn't real at all, just a one followed by a trail of zeroes.

Or maybe it's your natural Sloth. You could always come back and take this perk later. If it had to be taken now or never, you might be able to feel… you shouldn't think about this. Feeling this temptation as real might not be wise.

Maybe the big gotcha is that you'd just be able to earn this kind of money anyway at Lvl 30, by seducing billionaires, or patenting mass-reproducible sexbots. So it would just end up being a waste of the perk, and the trap would be the immediacy and short-sightedness of Greed. You just need to be patient and you can get your own hundred million dollars without spending a perk point.

That thought doesn't feel real either.

You look at the room's clock. 1:12am.

Not now, but later after the shock wears off, you might decide that you want to always remember 1:12am as the minute you didn't instantly go for $100,000,000.

[ ] Slight|y Smarter:

The cognitive subprocesses comprising your soul improve slightly in efficiency and computational power, corresponding to a rough gain of 3 points of IQ as it would be measured by contemporary tests. This increase in intelligence is not a game feature; it is real and applies to the true inner you.

You may take this perk more than once.

Your %##-+-+%# itself.

This…

this is just 3 IQ points per perk point but if you got to level 50 and spent 10 perk points than you could get +30 IQ but to do that you'd have to forego 10 different perks and that's

that's

You're almost ready to scream at the game for offering, for daring to offer any choice this sadistic, when you see that the checkbox is grayed out.

"FUCK YOU!" Your voice rises wildly and you don't care who in the hotel hears you. "That was evil! That was evil and sadistic and not in a sexual way, that was wrong! How dare you dangle that in front of me and tell me that I can't have it! How dare you!" Your finger stabs at the grayed checkbox, not even caring about prudence or keeping perk points in reserve, too stupid as usual to realize that if Marshmallow Test applies then you're making a lifelong sacrifice of 3 IQ points by being shortsighted and greedy, just trying to make it work, make it work---

--++
?!!​

You stop and take breaths, controlling yourself, feeling all the anger suddenly drain away. You don't know why the checkboxes are grayed. Maybe they'll come back later. Maybe the Erogame is just protecting you from taking on any more personality alteration so soon after your previous stat increases. The pattern of other grayed-out perks suggests that might be true.

Besides, maybe there's some Reality Skill that will let you get smarter without giving up all your perks. You got the Reality Skills underlying Time Control and Conceptual Hair without spending any perk points, just from trying to do something related, so why not the skill underlying this perk too? Maybe you already got it as soon as you started trying to learn calculus. Fine, that's wishful thinking, you should have seen some violet text if that was true, but it's too early and you know too little to be fully outraged at the Erogame over this.

You continue to take controlled breaths and finally say, "Next."

[ ] Slightly Stupider:

The cognitive subprocesses comprising your soul decrease slightly in efficiency and computational power, corresponding to a rough loss of 3 points of IQ as it would be measured by contemporary tests. This decrease in intelligence is not a game feature; it is real and applies to the true inner you.

Gain two additional perks.

You may take this perk any number of times, but you must have one perk point available to start each such series. This perk is incompatible with Slightly Smarter, and you cannot choose one after having taken the other.

Your %##-+-+%# just no.

What the fuck is wrong with whoever designed this game? How can they make people choose between passing up all the other lovelies and that?

Maybe nobody is really meant to take this choice. Maybe it's here to make some kind of awful point. Like, unless you think you're already exactly the right amount of smart compared to the value of one Erogame perk, you ought to be taking one option or the other.

[ ] Soulb0nd:

If your love for someone exceeds *_*-* and they return that love, create a symmetrical #@#-+@#@ between your soul and theirs which will deepen over time if your love stays true. While the bond holds your # are locked together, completely sharing your #%, and even if the bond fails at least &&& of your % will stay with them. Both sides of the relationship are automatically protected as if by True Love Conquers All.

Failure of this bond does not refund the perk and may have psychological consequences. It goes without saying that Off Switch cannot apply to soulbonds. Consider staying married for a couple of centuries first.

This perk may be taken more than once. You may not have more soulbonds than your <{><}> divided by @, rounded down.

That… wow. That is serious business. You're not sure you can understand half the consequences of this stuff, despite the perfectly clear English sentences describing it.

…is your lifespan measured in centuries now? Does high-enough BOD do that? It should be blowing your mind, but you've already been blown so many times that you seem to be going through some sort of penislike mental refractory period. Well, at least you don't see how the next perk is going to top that and oh shit you did not just think that.

[ ] True Love Conquers All:

If you love someone enough, nothing can ever permanently separate them from you. The only exception is their wishing to leave you---deliberately, voluntarily, and based on correct information. This applies to any type of love, not just romantic love. If you would undergo hardship and sacrifice to protect someone, if losing them would leave a scar on your heart that never fully heals, then in time you will always be reunited.

This perk retroactively includes everyone you have previously lost, but still love. If somebody you love is already dead (e.g. a beloved parent or grandparent), taking this perk automatically begins the Heaven's Feel quest to revive them after your ERO reaches 40.

This isn't, this isn't, this can't be real.

You shut your eyes, and then, suddenly terrified, immediately open them again, but the violet text hasn't disappeared. Isn't a dream.

Something inside you is shattering. Your heart. That's what's shattering. Or it's starting to put itself back together. It probably feels the same either way.

You must be reading this wrong. The Erogame can't just be offering to give Dad back if you complete the right quest. Nothing has that kind of power, nothing just makes an offer like that for free, even if it can replace hair with concepts and control time and bend probability and give people whole new healthy bodies and, and, and why shouldn't it be real.

Something inside you breaks, and your head falls into your hands and the tears start flowing out. You've just gained a level of something, something that isn't ERO, something you have no name for.

Realizing that there is no hope left to you now, no hope at all, that you still know for certain to be beyond the reach of your will and your heart, causes your %%+++%#% to go up by +!

The Erogame has the price of your soul. You thought before that the Erogame had your price, but you were wrong, that was just your sale price. The Erogame has done so much for you, so much, and now this on top of everything else. If you can be healthy and pretty and truly alive, if you can have adventures like these last two nights with Blake and Charles with moments of joy like lightning strikes lighting up your sky, and never again lose anyone you love, and get your Dad back, then that is the full undiscounted price of 1x Cinderella Sheen. The Erogame can have whatever else it wants from you. If you saw a violet box asking you to please walk through this cold night naked down to 6th and Luther to be raped by multiple assaulters, without any stat increases just as you are, then you'd swing your legs out of bed this minute and not look back.

"Fuck a hundred million dollars," you say out loud, "waste of a perk," and start giggling hysterically into your wet fingers, the sound louder than it should be at this time of night.

It takes a long time before you can raise your head up again. You can hear Charles's voice telling you to just have fun, to learn how to walk before you start running with the Erogame's scissors. The True Love perk is retroactive. You do not need to take it right away to be safe from losing anyone else again. It's enough to know that if you give your heart to someone and they're taken from you, you will be able to get them back. The important part doesn't start until ERO 40, and God knows how hard the Heaven's Feel quest is. God knows how you'd go about explaining to people why Dad came back from the dead, if you tried that now.

But the Erogame respects love, if that love is deep enough. It understands that some things can't be replaced, that some things are real and not a game. That's a nice thing to know about the Erogame, and whatever made it.

[ ] True Love Potion:

Cause any one person to fall in love with any one other person, wholly, deeply, and permanently, with all their heart and all their soul. This counts as true love for all relevant tests requiring it.

(This ability cannot edit souls which have already gained more than && of %, so be sure to use it before then.)

You may take this perk more than once.

Why do you ever get your hopes up about anything? You don't know.

But you're still laughing as the perks list scrolls over some empty space, and then winks out as it reaches its end.

It's late now, and you lie back down in the bed on your side, pull the blanket over yourself, and close your eyes. As an afterthought you poke your finger into your bellybutton. It meets resistance after a quarter of an inch, and pushing harder just makes it hurt, so you stop.

You're done freaking out about things. That part is over now. The Erogame paid full price on you, and you're not going to argue if at higher BOD it does put an infinite vaginaspace underneath your skin. Maybe it's tempting fate to think so, but whatever the game throws at you, the newly de-shattered solidity inside you will handle it. Maybe with a lot of screaming and sobbing, but you'll handle that too.

…wait, there were only three lists in there. Does that mean the perk listings didn't show the xtrmly srs bsns?

You pause.

Then you smile into the pillow.

Charles gives good advice, doesn't he? Even when he isn't there. You are done running with scissors for the night, and maybe the month. You'll look up the extremely serious business later.

Your last thought as you drift off to sleep is a quiet, drowsy determination to get Charles to admit to being your boyfriend soon. You want to be able to fall asleep next to someone you love and can rely on. It feels like that could be important to you, and maybe to everyone.

[ ] You're hoping to move out of home sometime soon, capture your first boyfriend, start a harem, and resurrect your father. This has reached the point where you and Mom need to talk, no matter what. Let there be truth between you and if she's scared, she's scared.
[ ] This situation isn't perfect. But Mom isn't constantly frightened or running around trying to interfere with what you're doing, and the sad truth is that's probably for the best. For now, if not later.

If Cindy tries to talk to Mom, she'll head home tomorrow morning before Mom leaves for work. (Note that this occurs before she can read the full Time Control description at 9am.)

Cindy will by default not perk until Lvl 10, but you can start discussing her favorite options now. A vote now for a perk will make it more prominent in her thoughts later.

What in a broad sense will Cindy consider doing on Tuesday? (Voting on specifics will follow, but I want to narrow down the broad category before I start coming up with possibilities. You may suggest/brainstorm specific possibilities under your vote.)

[ ] Step one to obtaining Charles and other harem members: be able to house and feed them. You need to see what there is in the Erogame that you can do for less than $100,000,000. ($$$)
[ ] EXP is more important than $$$ at this point. Head for Lvl 10 so you can pass the Marshmallow Test and get started on perking. (EXP)
[ ] More college and Good Studenting. Heavy Erogaming can wait for later. You need to prove you can have one day go by without major stat gains. (SAN)
[ ] Go where the wind takes you, and seek adventure. (FUN)

Your %##-+-+%# blanked out because you've had enough shocks for today.

[ ] The Cand|e in the Mirrors:

The next time you fall asleep, you have the first nightmare.

Gain an extra perk.

This perk does not appear on your perks list and does not interact with Marshmallow Test.

[ ] The Pr!ncess of the C@stle:

The next time you fall asleep, you have the second nightmare. Take this perk only after having the first nightmare, and only when you can fall asleep next to someone that you love and can rely on.

Gain an extra perk.

This perk does not appear on your perks list and does not interact with Marshmallow Test.

You must form a supportive relationship before taking this perk.

[ ] The P@ge$ @nd the B00k$:

The next time you fall asleep, you have the third nightmare. Take this perk only after having the second nightmare, and only after having become strong in heart and mind.

Gain an extra perk.

This perk does not appear on your perks list and does not interact with Marshmallow Test.

Your %##-+-+%# high enough for you to take this perk.

[ ] $???@? @?????00?:

Take this perk only after having the third nightmare and only when you are ready.

You are not ready.

End 0f B00k 1​

3.1 (BOOK 2) [WS]: Caring is Sharing

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 26 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] More college and Good Studenting. Heavy Erogaming can wait for later. You need to prove you can have one day go by without major stat gains. (SAN)
No. of Votes: 20
Malbutorius
001
Alkaiser009
bellanon
fictionfan
Gingganz
Goldenlima
Grosstoad
Higure
january1may
Jarudazuigu
kimagurena65536
OSRfanatic1
Raron
Snake/Eater
storybookknight
Subrosian_Smithy
totesanalt
UndecidedDice
wasprider
[X] You're hoping to move out of home sometime soon, capture your first boyfriend, start a harem, and resurrect your father. This has reached the point where you and Mom need to talk, no matter what. Let there be truth between you and if she's scared, she's scared.
No. of Votes: 18
Waruiko
Alkaiser009
BastetsChosen
bellanon
BFldyq
Gingganz
Goldenlima
Grosstoad
Jarudazuigu
KBob
kimagurena65536
OSRfanatic1
pepperjack
ShaperV
Subrosian_Smithy
totesanalt
VanillaTentacle
wasprider
[X] EXP is more important than $$$ at this point. Head for Lvl 10 so you can pass the Marshmallow Test and get started on perking. (EXP)
No. of Votes: 13
ScrewFate
BastetsChosen
Jarudazuigu
KBob
ltmauve
NegativeHorizon
pepperjack
Serenities
ShaperV
TheCompiler
VanillaTentacle
Waruiko
wasprider
[X] This situation isn't perfect. But Mom isn't constantly frightened or running around trying to interfere with what you're doing, and the sad truth is that's probably for the best. For now, if not later.
No. of Votes: 11
ScrewFate
Higure
january1may
ltmauve
Malbutorius
NegativeHorizon
Serenities
Snake/Eater
storybookknight
TheCompiler
UndecidedDice
[X] Mad Scientist:
No. of Votes: 3
ScrewFate
kimagurena65536
Waruiko
[X] Real Scientist:
No. of Votes: 2
ScrewFate
kimagurena65536
[X] Mad Inventor:
No. of Votes: 2
Waruiko
kimagurena65536
[X] Marshmallow Test
No. of Votes: 2
kimagurena65536
january1may
[X] You're hoping to move out of home sometime soon, capture your first boyfriend, start a harem, and resurrect your father. This has reached the point where you and Mom need to talk, no matter what.
No. of Votes: 2
Raron
001
-[X] Also, it would help you in starting that PhD. Come to think of it, with Good Student helping you, won't you end up progressing very quickly?
No. of Votes: 2
january1may
Alkaiser009
-[X] There was a quest to be a stripper you can go do once your stats get a bit higher. So long as you only need some cash and not all the cash this is worth exploring in more detail.
No. of Votes: 1
Waruiko
-[X] Go get gang raped. Its scary yeah but it will put you up into lvl 10 right away and its something about yourself you should learn sooner than later. Wait too long and your raising scores may decide your opinion on the subject for you. Absolute worst case you can use the perk point it gives you to undo the event.
No. of Votes: 1
Waruiko
--[X] if you're not quite up to getting plowed by a bunch of random men in an alley then maybe now is the time to hunt down Blake and other quests
No. of Votes: 1
Waruiko
-[X] Go for getting that Phd once you've got the basic Ero stuff settled. In the coming years you may well need this sort of touchstone to remind you that you have value beyond your ability to 'fuck good.' It also would save you the perk point for when you decide to take over the world with sex bots in the future.
No. of Votes: 1
Waruiko
[X] The Cand|e in the Mirrors:
No. of Votes: 1
Waruiko
-[X] Try to complete the trinity with an actual Ph. D.
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Transexual
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Yousexual
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Omnisexual
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Cinnamon Roll
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] James Bond of Bondage
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Library of Sodom
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Not Right Now You Don't
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Tastes Like Chodolate
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Naked Before Me
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] No Comparison
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Perfect Subbing
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] You Couldn't Help Yourself
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Dark Side
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Everyone Knows
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] I'm Not Explaining This Again
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] In Nomine Status Quo
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Oh My God There's Two of Them
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] PhD in Harem Management
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Time Enough for Love
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Wait I'm Not Ready for This
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] You Didn't Hear That
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Ero-Inventory
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Ero-Travel
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] What Are You Doing Here
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Like Uber for Costumes
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Sex God
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Succubus/Incubus
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Curse of Dresden
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Curse of Tattletale
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Everywhere Erogenous
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Gray Girl
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] Legoland
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] True Loves Conquers All
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
[X] There are No Stops on the Rape Train:
No. of Votes: 1
Mastigos2
Total No. of Voters: 33

You awaken with the glow of dawn barely creeping around the edges of the curtains, though at first the room is so dim you think the glow is moonlight. You're surprised when you look at the nightstand clock and see that it's already 6:22am. Apparently rich people get curtains wide enough to fit over the window with room to spare, and solid enough to block out most of the light.

You sit up in bed and yawn, lightly slapping your face a couple of times to knock the lingering sleepiness out of your eyes.

You feel… better? Better isn't the right word. You weren't feeling unhappy when you fell asleep. You feel restored, like your mental feet are resting on firmer ground.

You swing your feet over the side of the bed, and part the curtains to look down on the streets of downtown Norville as they manifest on Tuesday morning. You're not used to seeing downtown at this hour in the morning. You're not used to looking down from this height anytime.

It's halfway from dawn to sunrise, with the indirect glow of sunlight beginning to have enough color in it that the cars and storefronts seem to be themselves, their own shades, not just the universal blue-grey of earliest dawn. The white eyes and red eyes of cars are gentle glows, not the piercing glares they seem at night. Women in business suits and men in overalls move with swift, quiet purpose; nobody moves at this hour without a destination.

The thought comes to you that if you can see them, they can see you, and you're standing naked in front of a window that extends nearly from floor to ceiling.

The thought isn't as horrifying at PRV 19 as it would've been at PRV 12. It feels more naughty than terrifying. BOD 18 probably has something to do with that confidence as well; you know that anyone who chooses to look at you will probably enjoy it.

The thought of giving the hypothetical onlookers even more of a show arises, and is quickly shot down.

You look down at the streets, calm but not quiet in the dawn, and think back on the last one-and-a-half days.

On Sunday afternoon, you saw your status screen for the first time, read through everything you could find info on, and increased your BOD from 4 to 9 using your first 5 stat points. And then, in understandable desperation, you started racing for your next level. And then you kept going, trying to prove to yourself that you were cured, that you could be a sexual human being now.

Which you did the same night, with Blake. And then yesterday morning, you decided that you ought to take off Monday as a sanity day for yourself, just go to college for the day.

The world… didn't really cooperate with that.

Let's see, what went wrong with that plan? Well, first, you learned what you'd done to your hair, at least insofar as that particular screwup will ever be understandable by mortal intelligences. You fixed your hair, more or less, but in the process acquired a Time Control skill whose description is still sealed for another two-and-a-half hours. You accidentally wished for somebody to give you a ride to Goodwill in exchange for a kiss. You were offered that ride by a clean-shaven guy who looked a couple of years out of college and who turned out to be one of the bravest, most intelligent, kindest and cruelest and most altruistic---

(45-second timeskip)

---and just all-around awesome tsunderes ever to pointlessly refuse to admit that he's your boyfriend and join your harem already, Charles Adan. Mm, Charles---

(2-minute timeskip)

---notice that you've been unconsciously rubbing your thighs together and halt the train of thought. You'd better stop thinking about Charles, it's building up tension and he's not here to pump it out of you properly.

Anyway. You went to college and discovered the true power of Good Student, then you freaked out about the infinite possibilities of your new existence and whether there were endless vaginal tunnels lurking just beneath the surface of your skin, and then you learned calculus. And then you went on a date as Starry, learned parkour, lost your virginity, barely stopped yourself from becoming Charles's magical girlfriend, and learned there's an Erogame perk that lets you go on a quest to bring your father back from the dead.

And now it's Tuesday morning.

You are, if Fate doesn't sheerly laugh at you for this, going to make another attempt to slow down.

You weren't keeping exact track of your stats, but you have a vague impression that you gained something like 50 stat points between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, and maybe half that much more between Monday morning and this morning. That means the rate is slowing down, which is good, but it's also much too fast. You need to prove to yourself that you can have one day go by without major stat gains.

So… what's going to go terribly wrong with that? Besides 9am coming around, and whatever's in the Time Control description?

You touch your fingers gently against the glass of the window, caressing your faint reflection. It shows the same smooth, pretty face you remember from last night. Your body shape is okay, even by the incredibly high standards the modern world imposes on adequacy for female shapes. There's nothing visibly too wrong, not even one breast being a little larger than the other. You are no longer a girl who happens to look nice; you're a potential cheerleader. Not the cheerleader with the longest legs or the biggest boobs or the reddest fullest lips. Not the cheerleader, just a cheerleader. But still.

You can still see the remnants of the face that once belonged to a fat girl, in that dim reflection, but the traces are getting fainter with every stat point in BOD.

Your ERO is as low as it will ever be again. It took a miracle to get it down to 13 again, maybe a literal miracle.

The part of your brain that handles grim realizations knows that if you want to talk to your mother about how you've acquired superpowers and are planning to move out and start a harem, really talk to her about that, it may be now or never. Soon there won't be anything left of the original Cinderella's face that your mother can recognize.

You probably shouldn't wait until Mom gets back from work in the evening. You can't rule out gaining more BOD or ERO between now and then.

And if you're doing that, you need to get going soon. 7am is about when Mom finishes getting up and starts making breakfast, and she'll be out of the house by 7:45.

You turn away from the window, and walk out of the bedroom.

It hurts your soul to say goodbye to the beautiful, beautiful hotel penthouse. The dark stained wood floor, the deep rugs that make love to your toes, the wall lanterns that so warmly illuminated the best night, the whirlpool tub you never had a chance to try.

This is how people should live. Not just rich people, everyone. Why is it so hard to do that? How much do nice hardwood floors and deep rugs really cost? Why couldn't everyone have them? Can the country that put people on the Moon really not manage to do that much? You have the same sense of wrongness as when you looked up the price of sex in California, and the same helpless sense of not knowing who to blame or how to fix it.

It helps to know that you could rent this penthouse again if you truly wanted to. At any time, no matter how unwise an idea it would be, you could select the Sin of Greed perk and get $100,000,000. That helps you believe that this goodbye isn't forever, that you will have nice things again in your life.

You spend precious minutes in the bedroom where you lost your virginity, gazing at the wall-hung painting of you and Mom and Dad. Was it a literal miracle? If so, that's two miracles you've had in your life, the Erogame and also this. Are they the same miracle after all, two branches on one tree? Or did you somehow get two blessings from two different forces, not quite opposed to one another? To Thine Own Thee Be True, says the copper plate below it; the words sound like a prayer, like they're invoking the highest skill there is, from somewhere above and beyond the Erogame.

You can't see the face of Mom in this painting, but of course she must be smiling. She's with you and Dad, in a time when you were all happy together. You will make this conversation with your mother work, somehow. You'll tell her about Dad, and make her believe it. She's in this painting too, isn't she? To her own self, let Mom be true.

You take around 20 different photos of the painting with your cellphone, and then another few photos that encompass all the other paintings on the wall, in case they're important to the plot.

Recalling your resolution to grind High-Heeled Running, you don the jogging outfit you bought at Goodwill. The sports bra is now rather tight around your chest. You didn't even get to use it once before your boobs got bigger, which would be a lot more annoying if the bra had cost more than $2. The shorts still fit nicely.

It's time to go.

The penthouse doors close behind you with a sad click of finality.

No scantily clad beauties invade the elevator, this time. You're briefly tempted to stop the elevator on floor 2 and check in on the twincest twins---you have the feeling that if you happened to pass by room 211 and press your ear up against the door, they'd just happen to be doing something interesting at that moment. But your current mission is too serious for you to fight with yourself about what an awful idea that would be.

You hand over the keycards to the current hotel registrationist, a tall, shave-headed black guy wearing enormous spectacles in a style you rather like. He gives you a printout showing that the room's been paid for, at the $89 rate of an ordinary queen bedroom.

"How much is Penthouse B usually?" you ask, unconsciously lowering your voice, since the old-fashioned appearance of the hotel lobby gives you the sense of a library. The walls are the same dark wood as the penthouse, the floor the same dark marble as the penthouse bathroom.

"$739 a night, or around five hundred if you catch a discount," says the bespectacled guy.

You nod. It's not suitable for a harem, but you want to come back here with Charles some day for old time's sake, and maybe buy the paintings if they're still there.

Then you step out of the hotel doors, flinching as the cold hits you.

It's three miles to your house, which you thought would be quick with High-Heeled Running giving you a 60% speed boost. Even if your base running speed was just 9mph, going at 15mph ought to take you home in 12 minutes, right? Faster than waiting for the bus? But it turns out that every half-mile you have to slow down from the best sprinting speed you can manage with a purse and bag, and instead walk for a whole damned minute in order to catch your breath. Apparently BOD 18 doesn't come with being in shape---not surprising, it's not like you have any visible muscle. But you have a feeling that the Erogame will notice if you keep up the practice.

Also. It's really, really fucking cold. The cold of evening has nothing on the cold of morning, forty-five fucking degrees, which feels to you like thirty below zero used to. And your Ero Environmental Resistance is based on ERO, half of which is now sealed. You don't want to risk shifting your hairstyle, so you just focus on running, keeping your blood heated. You've got to grind this skill sometime, you might as well do it now.

You pass the few pedestrians out on the morning, their numbers diminishing quickly as you pass beyond central downtown. Some of them look at you with surprise due to your insanely skimpy jogging outfit for the morning weather, but you're moving too fast for them to notice the high heels, you hope.

By the time you get to your home street, you've raised High-Heeled Running another level and are shivering dramatically. Supposedly you got another level in Cute Cold Resistance but it was hard to notice the difference.

You take a moment to decide that it's no later than 7am, should any Slack be required for that.

At 7am, the Sun is barely above the horizon, sending long shafts of light out of the gaps between houses. Your house faces west, away from the morning sun, which means it's only housefronts on the opposite side of the street that are illuminated by spots of golden brightness, glowing on red bricks and red-gray bricks and slates designed to look like weathered wood. Your own house seems dark amid the sunrise, but if it was brighter, the exterior rows of wooden slats would be painted a shade of light gray that you don't particularly enjoy.

You skip up four stairsteps to the mighty oaken imposition of your house's front door, no longer tempted to use the painted wrought-iron railings to help yourself up.

You reach inside your purse for the house key, and then, with your fingers on the serrated metal, you hesitate.

Shivering harder in the chill air, you stand motionless on your house's doorstep.

You're… afraid, you realize. It's not just the cold that's making you shiver.

You're about to walk through your front door looking very little like the daughter that your Mom remembers. You could get disowned as a demon child, not that Mom's ever shown a tendency to that kind of reasoning but you sure as fuck are asking for it. She could disbelieve you're Cindy and call the police. The police will confirm your fingerprints and she still won't believe it.

Or worse. Mom could look at you and say, Why, Cindy, you've lost even more weight! How wonderful!

And then, even if you live in the same house, you'll never be together again. She'll be living in her separate reality, and you in yours.

Erogame, please. You can have anything else you want from me, except this. I'm not asking for a billion dollars or immortality, just, just leave Mom alone. Let her be true to herself. Let us live in the same reality. It feels like you saw things in the perk list that talked about exactly this, talked about it in plain English, and yet you can't figure out how to say it or even think it. Please, Erogame; please, whatever put the painting in the bedroom. Please let you and Mom be together as yourselves. Let both of your stories be written together, sharing one page no matter what the book. Please.

(#%) <- {#}​

There's no answer. There never is.

But you swallow against the sudden apprehension that the Erogame did listen, and that you've just made a horrible mistake. Your Mom always seemed to you like a pretty together person, but she's not… she's not quite Charles. Few people are. Can she handle this?

For what feels like a long time, you can't reach for the door, burning more of your Slack. You can't see the Sun from where you are, you're facing east and the bulk of your house blocks off the Sun. But shafts of golden light peeking through the gaps between houses are sending long unshortening shadows over the ground, the spots of light remaining motionless in the timeless seconds you've wedged yourself between. Now and then you hear another car drive past along the nearest major street, Washington Avenue, and part of your mind distantly wonders how the hell that works with Slack.

Your fingers stay motionless on the key within your purse. You should leave, you shouldn't try this now, you can't do this yet, you're going to screw this up. Only, this may be the best or even last chance you'll have…

Finally the thought occurs to you that even if the worst happens, you'll be reunited with Mom in time.

Because true love conquers all.

Faith isn't a feeling that's ever had reasonable reason to come to you before, and the belief is a tiny glass fragility that would shatter at a touch. But the faith is there, and it lets you move forward. Even if you don't see Mom again for a while, you'll be together someday.

Which is no reason to be stupid about this, as you realize once the very worst of the fear is subdued. You let the key drop back into your purse, take out your cellphone, and start typing.

< Mom, are you up yet?​

Then you stand around on your front porch in your skimpy shorts and sports bra, freezing everything except your ass off. It's maybe half a minute later that Mom's reply arrives, just as you're almost ready to give up.

> Sure, honey. What is it? Do you need something?​

Your reply is already typed, and you only need to press SEND.

< I'm coming home now! I'll be there in a minute.​

Mom's reply is faster this time.

> That's great! It feels like it's been days since I've seen you!

I've already started waffles but I'll make more for you!

​

< Please don't, I don't feel like eating anything right now​

< I need to talk to you about something called the Erogame​

You close your eyes in silent prayer and press SEND.

Will that work? Does telling Mom about the Erogame take her out of the main plotline with Starry, into the actress's trailer behind the scenes where Cindy lives? You don't know. You can only hope.

> Sounds serious. :0​

You're finishing typing your next line even as that message arrives.

< Mom, I'm not sure how to say this, but can you please not be too shocked at the way I look when I get in?​

> Oh, sweetie. Did you get a tattoo?

​

< No, I've been transformed into a giant bug-creature. That's why I haven't been home until now.​

You wait, but there's no reply.

< Haha, not really​

< I'm just saying that to put things in perspective. Compared to becoming a giant bug, I actually look quite nice.​

This time a reply arrives.

> What did you do to yourself?​

< Remember, it's still me even if I look different. Promise.

​

Without waiting for a reply, this time, you unlock the door to your house and step in.

"Cindy," your Mom calls from the kitchen in her Mom Voice, indicating without so many words that Her subject, namely you, is to immediately present yourself before Her Imperial Momitude.

"There in a second," you call back as you reach down to slip off your heels.

You don't remember until too late that your voice has changed too.

There's a startled half-shriek from the kitchen, and then Winifred Greenwood Sheen charges into the front hallway, dressed in her usual awful pink pajamas, wearing the same old stained apron that Dad wore in the painting. She's still holding a plastic bottle of vegetable oil in her left hand, but doesn't drop it as she halts to stare at you.

You finish slipping off your heels, and stand there in your jogging shorts and sports bra. Waiting for the sky to fall, while your Mom stares at you in silence.

Mom blinks several times, reminding you of the motel manager after you raised your ERO, and you don't know if the look on her face means that she's waking up, or falling asleep.

And then your mother finally says, in a wavering voice, "What."

You swallow hard and speak. "So, so I know I look different but it's still me, you can ask me anything, like why you and Dad never took me back to Six Flags Magic Mountain."

Silence.

"I know it sounds impossible. But, remember how I'd lost a lot of weight and gotten a lot prettier on Sunday afternoon? That didn't take a couple of months, more like… a couple of seconds."

Silence.

"And I still looked a lot like the old me, the first time you saw. Right? But I kept going."

Silence.

"It's better than me having turned into a giant bug-creature?"

Silence.

"Charles took my virginity last night. We didn't use protection."

This finally provokes a reaction from your mother. "You, you what?" says Mom, looking like half of her brain tried to look stern and failed to get cooperation from the still-stunned area in charge of the other half of her face.

"I had sex with Charles and didn't use protection," you repeat. "Which is fine because I'm immune to venereal diseases and can't get pregnant."

You gently take the plastic bottle of vegetable oil out of your mother's hand and escort her into the living room, seating her down on the sofa.

Once she's seated, you duck into the kitchen to make sure nothing's burning on the stove, but your mother was just mixing waffle batter and that should be fine.

Then you head back into the living room and turn on the lights, because the living room faces west and doesn't get sun in the morning. You seat yourself on the rough old sofa shoved against the wall, placing yourself crosslegged on the other end of the sofa from your mother, so that you can sit facing her.

"So I kinda have superpowers now," you begin.

"Honey, what."

"I don't know why either. It started on Sunday afternoon when I saw a screen showing me my status and that I was level one with zero experience points, but I had some stat points already so I used them to fix my body---"

Mom raises her hands and says, her voice a little hoarse, "Slow down. Stop. Go into reverse."

You obediently wait.

"Cinderella Sheen, what… what is going on?"

"Mom, I'm not holding anything back, I just don't know. One afternoon I suddenly had superpowers. There, now you know as much about the bigger picture as I do."

Mom still looks frozen, and then she finally says, "Show me?"

Uh.

You can think of a lot of Erogame skills you rather wouldn't show off right now, and that's making it hard to think of anything else.

Finally, you hold out a lock of your greyish-brown hair in your hand, and it rises up and waves cheerfully at Mom.

"That's very nice, honey." This sentence is delivered in the distracted tone of a parent praising her toddler's lovingly charred cookies while she tries to put out the kitchen fire.

"I'll be able to do bigger things later," you say, feeling ashamed of how impressive you're not looking. "My powers are growing pretty quickly. I'm planning to do nothing except go to class and study today, just so I can slow down."

Some part of your Mom manages to move her head in an approving nod even as her face seems frozen in a position of shock. "Are you going to fight monsters?" she says.

"I, uh, I don't think that's what my powers are for, mostly."

"What… do they do?"

"Are you sure you're ready to handle this?" you say, unable to keep the anxiety from your voice. "I mean, this is the difficult part of the conversation we're coming to here, I wanted to ease you into it."

"I think," your Mom says, "that at this point you might as well go ahead."

"Okay. My superpowers are about sex. Like, I'm a character in a sexy video game. I can run 70% faster when I'm wearing high heels, I can pass through any door so long as something naughty is happening on the other side, and I can tease a boy exactly enough that he juuust starts to come and then stops… I'm sorry, I know that's TMI, but I wanted to give you some idea of what it is I actually do."

Silence.

"And, uh, I'm really really happy like that, so please don't worry about me."

Silence.

"But I thought we should talk now, because as soon as I can earn some money using my superpowers, I'm planning to move out so I can start a harem. My first boyfriend is going to be Charles, as soon as he admits he wants it. Uh, though Charles kinda thinks I'm an alien. Ex-alien. It's a long story. I haven't told Charles about the Erogame yet, you're the first person to know, so when you meet Charles remember to pretend that I'm mind-controlling you and you haven't noticed anything different about me… Mom, are you okay?"

Mom's voice sounds rather faint. "This wasn't in the parenting guide."

"You have one of those?" you say in surprise.

"I have half a shelf of them in my bedroom closet. Your Dad bought them when he found out I was pregnant with you." Mom still seems to be answering on automatic.

You nod, feeling the trembling in your neck. "Wishing Dad was here to help with this?" you say. Your voice is going uneven now. No, no you can't say this, it's too early.

"I always wish that, honey." Even with everything else going on, it makes your Mom's face sadder when she says it.

"I think I can do that once I'm more powerful. Mom, I think I can bring Dad back. I found out last night, that's something I can do once I'm strong enough, there's a power called True Love Conquers All and it can bring people I love back from the d-d-dead---" You choke up and start sobbing again, even though you shouldn't, you shouldn't, you ought to be strong for your mother now.

Mom's face is frozen again. Her arms automatically reach out to you, offering an embrace, and you move over the couch and sob into Mom's shoulder. You shouldn't have done this, you shouldn't have said this, it's not fair to Mom like this, but you couldn't stop the words. "I can get Dad back, I can get Dad back, Mom, I can get Dad back!"

You can barely hear the words as your Mom whispers, "This isn't real."

The laugh that tries to come out through your sobs sounds like more of a hiccup. "Yeah, I thought that a lot."

"C-Cindy, honey, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm having some kind of nervous breakdown where I think you look different, if you're even here at all, and, and I need to call a doctor right away."

Mom starts to get up from the sofa and it's your own turn to be frozen in shock, to the point where Mom has almost reached the house phone before you can grab her hand and cry, "Mom, no! It's real, I promise!"

Your Mom stares at your hand holding her wrist, and then she says, sounding like she's trying not to panic, "Cindy, if you're really here, call 911 right away and tell them your mother says she's hallucinating."

You shouldn't have done this, you shouldn't have dumped everything on Mom at once, what were you thinking, what have you done, you gave her minutes to process what took you hours and now your Mom thinks she's crazy. This is so much worse than anything you imagined could happen, your mind flashes to images of Mom being taken away in a straightjacket---

Mom pulls against your hand, trying again to reach for the phone.

---your lips open, and cry words that in your lips have power.

Your mother freezes.

Her arm relaxes, and you let go.

"It's, it's real," she says, sounding like her brain is grinding against itself, "I know I'm crazy, but I know it's real, and that really means I'm crazy---"

"Mom. Mom, stop thinking about it. I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have done this. But you're not crazy. I promise."

Slowly, Mom turns around.

Winifred Sheen draws herself up, and faces you in her awful pink pajamas and stained apron.

"If I'm not crazy," she says, sounding skeptical about that, "I'd like to hear the sane explanation for why I heard my daughter yell I have all of the hairstyles just follow the fucking rabbit, and then I suddenly decided I wasn't hallucinating after all, and then my daughter's hair was a different color. Because I'm sure that if I told a psychiatrist---"

"Yes, Mom, there's an explanation for all of that, but it's going to take a while and you have to get to work on time. I mean, I can pause time a little but---"

"Cindy, dear, there are some mornings when it's not quite that important to get to work on time."

You revert your hair to Earth's Tones and then give the best explanation you can of your last two days, highly abbreviated to save time, and censored to avoid shocking your mother's innocent sensibilities. You tell her about the Erogame, about stats, about skills, about levels, about perks. You tell her how you met Blake in the Walgreens, and how Charles gave you a ride to Goodwill and asked you on a date even though he thought you were an alien. You leave out the six months of your life where you were secretly playing eroge while underage, the existence of a Perversion stat, DOM and SUB, stripping in Walgreens, Blake turning out to be submissive, the exact fashion in which Charles took your virginity, your vagina being infinitely deep, the fact that your future probably contains a lot of surprise sex, and the existence of perks like Sin of Greed, Eye of Yandere, and S/layer. You do explain about Mad Inventor and promise your Mom a body transformation pod as soon as you can do that. You mention that if Mad Inventing takes a while you might try Blessings of Slaanesh Be Upon This House to transform Felice, but you don't think Mom would want that except as a last resort. You spend a lot of time bubbling about how you can do calculus now and are seriously considering a real PhD.

Your mother, with some pragmatism, has since re-entered the kitchen. She stirs her waffle batter, pours it into the grid, and sprinkles cinnamon on top.

When you finally wind down, some time around when your mother is opening the waffle grid again and serving herself, your mother says, "Thank you for sharing that with me. I know it must have been hard."

"Is… is it okay? You and Dad told me that it would always be okay if I came out to you as LGBT or asexual or whatever, but I know you weren't expecting me to come out as an erogame character."

"It's fine, dear. Actually, I want in."

You frown, having some trouble parsing this last statement. "Want in to---oh, you mean you want a higher BOD stat? Of course, Mom, as soon as I know how. I already said I would."

Mom smiles in a way you've never quite seen her smile before, as she seats herself at the breakfast table and begins to slice up a waffle. "No, honey, not just being prettier. What was that perk you thought I wouldn't want happening to me, Blessings of Something, because it would raise my Lust too? I'd be fine with that. I'd prefer it, actually."

Fail: File not found: Cindy.exe
System rebooting…​

"Really, I'd like to be an erogame character outright," says the alien invader who's replaced your mother. "If you find out a way to do that, I want in."

Fail: File not found: Recovery.exe
System rebooting…​

"Cindy, darling, you do realize that I must have had sex at some point in order to give birth to you?"

"B-b-b-b-b-but," your mouth isn't doing too well on its own with your mind completely shattered, "but, Mom, I'm bringing Dad back---you shouldn't, you shouldn't, with other men---"

"Frank Sheen had affairs, with my knowledge and consent."

Fail: BIOS not found
System rebooting…​

"Sweetie," your mother says, a piece of waffle dangling from her fork, "not very long after you were born, most of my sex drive went on vacation, and it took with it all of my sexual attraction to Frank. We still loved each other. We still had sex sometimes, because it made me happy to know I was making Frank happy. But I also told him that I understood if he looked elsewhere, so long as he remained faithful to our household and to you. I felt so sad that I couldn't be everything he wanted or even everything he'd married. I know that to you he was just your Dad, but Frank Sheen the human being would gladly accept me having sex with other men if it meant I could be a horny Playboy bunny when he came back. Trust me on this."

Fail: Computer not found
System rebooting…​

"You had to get your genes from somewhere, dear. I gave you the ones for being clever and nice, and Frank gave you the rest. I expect he'll want us to start our own harem once we're together again."

Fail: Universe not found
System rebooting…​

Your mother sighs at your paralyzed horror and disbelief, and starts eating her breakfast waffle.

"Now," says your Alien Replicant Mom, looking up after she's eaten half her waffle, "we do need to lay down some ground rules. You talked about earning money in the Erogame. That's your cute way of saying prostitution?"

Your frozen mouth manages to move. "I, I, I---"

"Well, half of all the money you make stays in your bank account. And be sure to talk over any major purchases with me first."

"Aren't you supposed to say I'm not allowed?"

Mom gives you a look. Then she lays down her silverware and speaks in her Mom Voice. "Cinderella Sheen, let me make myself absolutely clear! Just because you've become an erogame character doesn't mean you can stop being my innocent little girl! From now on you need to always wear floor-length skirts, and never show cleavage, and you can't touch any boys!" Mom raises her eyebrows. "If I told you that, would you listen to it even the tiniest little bit?"

You manage to shake your head.

"I thought so, dear. Then half of the money you make as a skanky ho stays in your bank account." Your mother eats another bite of her waffle, chewing thoughtfully. "What else… until you have enough money to rent a house, you and your friends have permission to use the guest bedroom, though of course you're responsible for cleaning up after yourself. If you bring clients home, make sure they're not the sort who'll claw the furniture. Either finish up anything noisy by five-thirty PM, or give me fifty dollars and tell me to go enjoy myself, in which case I won't come back until nine."

"M-mom, if you're actually here, I need you to call 911 and tell them I'm having hallucinations."

Mom cuts into her waffle again, without raising the piece. "Did I misunderstand? Am I not doing the right thing to help you bring Frank back to us?"

You only see then that your Mom's hands are trembling, the knife and fork vibrating in them like tuners.

"N-no," you say, your voice choking up. "It might, it might help."

"Then stop acting so surprised. I loved him too." Mom bites, chews, and swallows another waffle piece. "I'll co-sign the lease agreement as soon as you're ready to rent a house and start your harem, since the landlord will want an adult signature on that. For a nice house you'll probably need at least six thousand dollars for the first and last month's rent, security deposit, and some furnishings. Remember, that means earning at least twelve thousand dollars, since you're only spending half."

"T-t-thank you---" Then the feelings overflow and you have to run over to where Mom's sitting and hug her, which your mother patiently endures. You feel awful, like you were meant to do all this by yourself and it's a horrible unfair imposition of you to make Mom help in any way. You feel awful and so, so relieved. You'll try to call on her as little as you can.

When you're done, your Mom smiles at you. "Dear, it's okay to go put away your things now. You don't have to stand there watching me eat."

You're almost about to open your mouth and tell Mom that it's fine, you can be there for her for as long as she needs you, when you understand.

It isn't until you've taken your Goodwill bag up to your bedroom and shut the door that you hear the distant sounds of your mother beginning to sob.

It's ten minutes after that, as your Mom is about to leave for work, that you realize telling your mother about the Erogame was a horrible mistake.

You're finally trying on the sexy nurse outfit you bought at the adult bookstore two days ago, and smiling at yourself in the mirror. Skanky ho, yes, but a pretty cute skanky ho if you do say so yourself.

Spoiler: Sexy nurse outfit

Mom knocks on the door and you call "Come in!" without thinking about it, probably due to Erogame Logic.

Your mother opens the door, stares at you, and doesn't say anything. You feel like you're three years old and just pooped on something.

Finally your Mom shakes her head and says, "I wish I could wear that."

"Can we… can we just not talk about that, Mom? I'll get you higher stats somehow, but I don't ever want to know what happens afterwards."

"I understand, dear. It's time for me to go to work. Text me if you need me to come home late."

You move over and hug your Mom again, the warmth washing over your inside as well as your outside.

"Oh," your mother adds, now smiling more cheerfully, "I even thought of who might make a nice client for you! There's a very polite older gentleman who came in for help pleading down a charge of soliciting---"

"Stop! Mom, stop, please. Don't give me Erogame things to do, it gets… weird."

Quest: A Man of Wealth and Taste

Stanley Silverman likes them young and eager. That last part can be a problem for him, considering his particular fetishes.

Your stats are too low for this quest. Min PRV: 30.

The worst mistake of your life is now approaching.

"Weird how?" your mother says.

"Stanley Silverman."

Your mother flinches, but controls it.

"Mom," you say, "the Erogame thinks you're an NPC. An NPC in a known location that I visit frequently. It thinks you're a quest-giver and tries to talk through you. When you said that, I got a quest prompt. It's really weird, okay?"

Your mother's eyes blaze up with the most terrifying gleam you've ever seen in them. "I can give you quests?"

Telling your mother about the Erogame was a horrible horrible mistake, and not one that true love can ever fix.

You're fleeing your own home into the cold light of morning, dressed only in a sexy nurse outfit. You were barely able to grab your house key first, and you're not sure you'll ever use it again. You're not sure it will ever be safe for you to come back.

"STOP DOING THAT!" you shriek as your heels tear down the pavement, more trying to drown out your mother's calls from behind you than hoping she'll listen.

It seems sexuality isn't the only aspect of human nature that comes in "perverted".

And apparently you've tapped into some dark twisted maternal fantasy involving obedient daughters with superpowers.

Quest available: Perfect in Every Way

Complete a university semester of at least 16 credits with maximum grades in every course taken. These grades may be obtained by any means necessary.

Success: +30,000 XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: ---

Quest available: Coo-Coo-Ca-Choo

Somewhere in the world there must be a boy between age 16 and 24 who finds puffy middle-aged women to be unbearably sexy and worthy of some serious worship, including foot massages.

Success: +40,000XP, +1 PRV, greatly increased relations with Mom
Failure: ---

Quest available: Promote the Queen

Your mother hasn't had an easy time taking care of you on her own. A raise at her workplace would go a long way towards making her feel less stressed. Get your mother a higher salary at Johnston & Johnston, by any means necessary. (That's code for seduction and blackmail, honey.)

Success: +30,000XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: ??

Quest begun: Slave to the In-Law

Find a submissive man willing to take orders from your mother, and delegate him to cook and clean at your mother's current residence. In case it wasn't clear from your mother's tone of voice, this quest is not optional.

Success: +50,000XP, greatly increased relations with Mom
Failure: Decreased relations with Mom
Time limit: You must finish this quest within 1 week of the first time you have 3+ submissive men in your own harem. Surely a good daughter wouldn't try to have three slaves while her poor, long-suffering mother doesn't even have one.

Quest available: Become a Princess

Install your mother as the sovereign queen of a country with at least 5,000,000 residents. Make sure the country is in good shape when she gets it, and that there's a nice palace ready before she moves in.

Success: +5,000,000XP, extremely increased relations with Mom, +1 perk point
1st bonus objective: Take her by surprise. +500,000 XP.
2nd bonus objective: Do it on Mother's Day. +1,000,000 XP.
3rd bonus objective: Have Dad there waiting for her when she arrives. +2,000,000 XP.
Failure: ???

You're too busy running to look back to see your mother leaning over the porch. But even as your feet cross the street to the next block, where you ought by rights to be safe, a final distant cry echoes in your ears.

"And put on a sweater before you freeze like that!"

Quest available: I am the Mother of All Things, and All Things Must Wear A Sweater

Stay warm for a whole day. Wear a sweater at all times that you are wearing any clothing. You fail if at any point you feel chilly, so watch that thermostat, sweetie.

Success: +1 Ero Environmental Resistance
Failure: ---
Accept: Y/N

Plans for Tuesday:

LOCKED: Look at the Time Control description at 9am.

You have an accounting systems class at 11am that Felice Williamson takes too. What are you doing about that?

[ ] Try to talk to Felice as Starry.
[ ] Talk to Felice as Cindy. You think, now, that you can honestly tell her that you'll probably be able to help in time.
[ ] Don't look Felice's way for now. She's not hurting any more than usual.
[ ] Felice seems to be absent from class, for some reason.

Are you going to stay strictly out of ero affairs, or consider any small-looking ero events that cross your path?

[ ] It's your goddamn Sanity Day Take 2. Nothing will distract you this time.
[ ] You're not going to turn down a quick 500XP if it comes your way, but emphasis on quick.
[ ] School is allowed to be fun, so long as the studying also gets done. Nothing epic, and you won't go looking.

3.2 [FW]: Sanity

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer | Page 29 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1

[x] School is allowed to be fun, so long as the studying also gets done. Nothing epic, and you won't go looking.
No. of Votes: 19
fictionfan
BastetsChosen
bellanon
Fade to Silence
Gingganz
Grosstoad
KBob
kimagurena65536
LastStandZiggy
Learned Knave
Malbutorius
MrBTXz
OSRfanatic1
P90Techie
Riders of Nod
ScrewFate
ShaperV
swarm
wasprider

[X] Don't look Felice's way for now. She's not hurting any more than usual.
No. of Votes: 12
MrBTXz
Gingganz
Grosstoad
KBob
LastStandZiggy
OSRfanatic1
Raron
Riders of Nod
ScrewFate
ShaperV
swarm
UndecidedDice

[X]Introduce ourselves to Felice as Starry (Cindy's relative, maybe?) and give her a note "from Cindy" indicating that Starry will be attending class for us for a while, but we should have a special surprise for her once it's ready. Explicitly ask Felice to keep in touch, and promise that she will be pleasantly surprised.
No. of Votes: 8
bellanon
Fade to Silence
Gettys
GulibleLeprecon
kimagurena65536
Malbutorius
Prustan
storybookknight

[X] You're not going to turn down a quick 500XP if it comes your way, but emphasis on quick.
No. of Votes: 6
pepperjack
Alkaiser009
january1may
Prustan
storybookknight
VanillaTentacle

[X] Try to talk to Felice as Starry.
No. of Votes: 4
P90Techie
Alkaiser009
Learned Knave
pepperjack

[X] It's your goddamn Sanity Day Take 2. Nothing will distract you this time.
No. of Votes: 4
Morat136
GulibleLeprecon
Raron
UndecidedDice

[X] Put yourself in a position to watch Felice.
No. of Votes: 3
january1may
BastetsChosen
wasprider

-[X] See if she's doing okay without the presence of Cindy. Otherwise, prepare to intervene, even if it is a ditz blitz to take her mind off things.
No. of Votes: 3
january1may
BastetsChosen
wasprider

-[X] See if you can snag her telephone number somehow to set up a conversation at some point. Disguise it as asking for help after class if that's possible.
No. of Votes: 3
january1may
BastetsChosen
wasprider

[X] Talk to Felice as Cindy. You think, now, that you can honestly tell her that you'll probably be able to help in time.
No. of Votes: 1
Morat136

[X] Felice seems to be absent from class, for some reason.
No. of Votes: 1
VanillaTentacle

Total No. of Voters: 30

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (20,050 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 181/270
SUB: 286/340

BOD: 18
LST: 15
SED: 14
FUK: 13
PRV: 19
ERO: 26 (13)

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $1591

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

The sky is cloudless, and it's a really nice day, if cold. You're nervous about whether prancing around in a sexy nurse costume is going to cause any plot events, but apparently the short time you're outside isn't enough to force anything to happen, not at ERO 13.

After estimating precisely how long you should wait to make sure the quest-giving demon infesting your home has departed for her workplace, you use your extraordinary mastery of woodcraft to judge the rising angle of the Sun's shadows, thus determining exactly when it's safe to return home.

(You're driven back inside when your legs start to feel really fucking cold.)

Opening your front door leaves you blinking in surprise at a sheet of paper dangling in front of you, taped to a string that goes up to the ceiling.

The black-marker-drawn letters on the sheet are huge, and your eyes read them before you can stop yourself.

Quest begun: A Family-Friendly Harem

The next time he's in town, bring Charles over to dinner so that your mother can meet him. She promises she'll be on her best pretend-brainwashed behavior.

No, you don't get a choice about this.

Success: +100XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: unthinkable

You tear down and crumple in your fist the dangling sheet of paper, whose huge letters read simply Quest: I meet Charles.

You can't believe your mother trapped the fucking door.

The thinly carpeted stairs gracefully accept your graceless stomping up to your bedroom, where you angrily yank your door open---

You realize too late that you've just done it again.

Thankfully, there isn't a sheet of paper dangling in front of you this time.

Well, Mom did have to leave for work. She'll probably get around to planting quest-traps all over the house when she gets back.

Your Mom has a problem, and as soon as you can afford it, you'll send her to a psychiatrist to get properly medicated.

A short time later, you're sitting at your bedroom desk, taking the possibly redundant action of collating today's assignment for Accounting Systems and sweeping it into your academic backpack, as you try to mentally sort out your schedule for the rest of the day

First, you can do your reading and assignments for Wednesday, which will probably take you… about an hour with Good Student. And then you'll read the Time Control description, which should unseal around 9am. You can run to school instead of taking the bus, which will grind High-Heeled Running, and start you on a proper exercise program so that you don't have to stop for breath every time you sprint half a mile… actually, what's normal in that regard? How many miles can the average non-fat teenager run before they have to slow down for a minute? Whatever it is, you're far behind on physical training from the life you've led up until now, and you need to get in shape.

That thought in turn reminds you that you need to get a small non-academic backpack instead of a purse, if you're going to be running instead of busing. Also you want Ero-Inventory so bad it's making your teeth hurt.

You don't have time to wash and dry your Serious Girl outfit from yesterday. But you still have the Normal Girl outfit as yet untouched. You don't have panties or a bra to go underneath it, but such is life for an erogame character.

Would it actually be cheaper to buy more outfits at Goodwill, even if they only last a few days? Running the washing machine and dryer isn't free.

That thought in turn reminds you to scan Berberg's check into your bank account…

The check is not in your purse.

The resulting panicked search halts a few minutes later when a thought leads you to check your main bank account balance.

It's already $1,591. Apparently the Erogame is helpfully taking care of depositing checks.

Oooookay.

You sit back down and begin doing Wednesday's assignments.

An hour later, your cellphone chirps to remind you that you can now read the description of Time Control. You still take a few more minutes to fall back into Good Student and finish up the last lines of homework on what is and isn't okay for passing corporate audits.

When you're done, you sit back in your chair with a sigh, aware that it will be time very soon to ditch everything to do with accounting… which is to say, giving up on everything you thought you were doing with your life. You should start taking electrical engineering, or medicine, or whatever kind of philosophy is useful for understanding Conceptual Hair---something that might actually be useful to you. You know you're not going to end up doing bookkeeping all day long. Doing the homework wasn't unpleasant, not with Good Student powering you. You're just increasingly unable to look away from the fact that you just totally wasted an hour of your lifespan.

So… maybe you ought to just take today's accounting class, and then you're done.

Just abandon all the effort you've put in over the last year. All the lost sleep. All the pain and focus and effort and determination to be something more than a shelf-stocker at Walmart when you grew up.

But what if at some point in the Erogame, you need to be a trained accountant?

No, that's dumb. You need to just admit to yourself that the whole thing turned out to be pointless. Drop the classes, and move on. You don't know if you can successfully jump into the middle of a class even with Good Student, but maybe you can study on your own in the freed-up hours until the next semester starts.

Tomorrow. You'll drop all your accounting classes tomorrow.

Maybe you could cut off a foot instead, and that would solve the problem somehow? It would be less painful.

…Even reading horrible skill descriptions would be better than thinking about this.

Uh, maybe it will be better. You don't want to tempt fate here.

You turn away from your desk surface, still seated in your chair, and press your palms together in the classic prayer position. "Dear Erogame," you pray aloud, "please let this skill not be too weird. Please let the skill's description text not contain awful news about a post-apocalyptic future for which I turn out to be responsible. And please don't let there be any horrible rape-promoting passive skills in there. Amen. Info, skills, Time Control."

Once again, violet text materializes before you.

Info // Reality Skills // Time Control:

Time Control: Lvl 1 (0.7%). Sealed.

Control time.

Limitation: Cause and effect cannot loop. The past can be observed, and records of it sometimes edited, but the true past cannot be modified. Symmetrically, it is possible to guess a pseudo-future that would otherwise occur if not for the prediction, and for that predicted pseudo-future to interact with the present; but it is not possible to observe the true future as it actually exists.

Within the pseudo-future that was predicted immediately after this skill's creation in the bathroom of a room at Rob's Motel, you continued to play the Erogame, and continued to discover and use new aspects of Time Control.

Eventually you attained Time Control Lvl MAX, and used it to seal your past self's access to almost all aspects of Time Control except for the relatively harmless Slack subskill.

You also used Time Control Lvl MAX to modify the text that would be seen when your past self, in the motel bathroom, checked the skill description for the first time. Your modification was to append the following message:

Even if you eventually become able to unseal this skill, do not decide to pseudo-edit your past, whatever the temptation.

--- Cinderella Sheen​

In the new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new pseudo-future self eventually broke your previous pseudo-future self's seal on the Time Control skill, eventually developed Time Control Lvl MAX, and finally used Time Control Lvl MAX to replicate your previous future self's action in sealing her own past self's access to the skill.

You then modified the text of the skill description to include all of the previous text, plus the following:

I agree with the last me that you definitely shouldn't mess with yourself, even if you think you're doing it for extraordinarily exceptionally good reasons this one time. Being shoved around by pseudo-future-you is not fun. Everything else that I could warn you about has probably just been invalidated, and giving out hints about the future is a terrible idea anyway.

PS: Actually? Fuck that. I'm not going to edit directly, but when you get to the adult bookstore on Tuesday, do not take the quest "Eliminating the Alternatives" for signing up with T. C. Coil's Escort Service. I know the money looks great, and it's the only escort service that will take you at age 18 without ERO 20 or Fake ID. But in retrospect, that should have been a hint that "T. C. Coil" was not only less than totally ethical, but surprisingly unconcerned about law enforcement response. If you want to do something about the guy, erogame your way to becoming an ultra-high-level sexy secret agent, get to Lvl 35 or so, and then sic the military on him. Not the FBI or the National Guard, the actual military. Make sure they have artillery support. I'm not joking.

--- Agent *A* (Star A Star)​

In the new new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, leaving behind the following message:

So we're allowed to meddle with our past, so long as we only do it in the final message we send back to motel-bathroom Cindy? Lovely! Now, if I imagine the one thing I could have told past-me that would have avoided the most trouble, it would be this: Don't ever make a contagious virus that turns men into hermaphroditic lolis and unleash it on the North Korean military. I can't imagine what the voices in my head were thinking. I mean I literally do not remember why I thought that would be a good idea. And people have asked.

Now back to global domination---or shall I say, global dominatrixation? HA HA HA HA HA!

--- DOCTOR STARR

PS: If we're all going to do this one after another, maybe we should all pick a different path through the Erogame and investigate it? Verdict of my own life: On a scale of 1 to 10, the Mad Inventor perk lets me devise new numbers your puny intellect can't conceive in order to measure how wonderful this is.

--- DOCTOR STARR​

In the new new new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, leaving behind the following message:

As I write this, I am on the run from pretty much every organization on Earth that has an acronym. The next time I perk, I'm going to take Fake ID and start over.

So, important fact #1. The Erogame doesn't always operate the way the description text seems to think it should. As you'll discover once you reach Lvl 5, unlocking the "Time Control" and "Conceptual Hair" skill trees should have required the perks "Time Enough for Love" and "Style On", rather than just you accidentally trying to use the corresponding Reality Skills. Somehow we managed to accidentally pick up a late-game gun in chapter one, twice.

Important fact #2: Judging by the perk descriptions, the Erogame was designed for in-game events to stay physically possible while ERO is below 30. Your hair is a metaphysical impossibility, and those should require ERO 40.

Important fact #3: Going off the rails makes the Erogame even weirder than it already is.

When I reached Lvl 35, I secretly returned to Norville, and set out with great caution to investigate T. C. Coil's Escort Service. I found a criminal mastermind whose sex-trafficking minions want to kidnap you, break you, and sell you. By which I mean: spank you into short-term compliance, put you through slave training so basic it doesn't cover anal, and sell you to an underground brothel in LA that advertises the innocence and naivety of its merchandise. I know, I know, very scary at Lvl 4. By Lvl 20 it's a slow Thursday and at Lvl 35 I was nauseated by the saccharine cuteness. I swear to god, the slave-sisters at that brothel were having sexy slumber parties.

T. C. Coil himself is slightly skeezier, and when I met him at high ERO, the game had assigned him some kind of minor precognitive talent. Not sure how it worked exactly, I just told my hair to be 'unpredictable' and blew up his limo with a rocket launcher. Hardly what I'd call scary.

But imagine Star A Star at Lvl 6, waking up imprisoned in a cell. The game thinks her next step is trying to seduce a guard. Instead, with her ERO still at 22, Star A Star uses her hair to pick the lock and waltzes off. In which case the quest hasn't succeeded, or failed, or been invalidated in any way that the Erogame understands. The game starts flailing around, looking for a way to continue the story of Star A Star vs. T. C. Coil's Escort Service. Meanwhile, Star A Star is reporting to the police. That might have worked if she'd done it after seducing a guard. As it stands the game doesn't accept "the police swoop in and bust the facility" as a quest ending, because then the plot has no sex scenes. So the Erogame decides there's some reason the police won't touch T. C. Coil's operations, like he's the drug lord for the entire West Coast; and it also decides that T. C. Coil is now pursuing a personal vendetta against Star A Star. Getting the picture?

To be fair, my decision to become an international master thief also had something to do with how I ended up on the run. But I still think the bugs in the Erogame were significantly at fault here, along with my unfortunately early discovery that using my hair to pick locks was easier than seducing people to get keys.

Verdict of my life: International master thief is less fun than Mad Inventor. If you want to hair your way through obstacles, raise your ERO first. And above all, never try to get through a quest without doing anything sexy.

--- The Sheen​

In the new new new new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, leaving behind the following message:

You know how some people find true fulfillment in happy families and raising children? It didn't work out like that for me.

Maybe it would have worked with non-adoptive kids and ERO 0. I don't know.

I'm glad I can make all of this have never happened.

--- Cinders​

In the new new new new new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new new new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, leaving behind the following message:

Hiiiii, future mes! So I decided I'd be the me who found out what would happen if she just raised ERO as high as she could. And, oh my god, I can't tell you anything because you are so not ready to hear it, but take it from me, you were all worried about nothing. This is great. I don't have a name any more though.​

In the new new new new new new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new new new new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, leaving behind the following message:

BOD 100 unlocks the True Immortality skill. I say nothing more, and I only say this much so that the next Cinderella may make her own choices.​

In the new new new new new new rew pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new new new new new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, leaving behind the following message:

Don't raise your LST by 5 points per level. It was fun, but I'm killing myself after I send back this message.
​

In the new new new new new new rew new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new new new new new new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, leaving behind the following message:

I don't know how long these drugs will last. I wouldn't have taken them if I'd realized what they'd do---that they'd shock me back into something like sanity. It's not a good idea to raise PRV by 5 points per level. Goodbye.​

In the new new new new new new rew new new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new new new new new new new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, leaving behind the following message:

Racing ahead on SED and FUK (there isn't much point in one without the other) gets about the results you'd expect from leading that kind of life. I decided to abort that exploration and switch to Mad Inventor before I sent back any suicide notes.

--- Doctress Sextara​

In the new new new new new new new new new new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new new new new new new new new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, leaving behind the following message:

"Well," I thought to myself all those years ago, "I guess all that's left for me to try are the weirder perks that maybe no Cinderella has taken yet."

Verdicts: The must-have perk from a quality of life standpoint is I'm Not Explaining This Again. I'm sure the only reason any of our previous selves committed suicide was that they didn't take this perk. Naked Before Me is exactly as much fun as it sounds like. Perfect Subbing is wonderful for seeing the world (especially in combination with Ero-Travel which I'm sure we all took anyway). Yousexual stacks with Omnisexual to open up a ton of useful seduction options you wouldn't otherwise see early in the game. I gave up quickly on becoming an Idol, but I will never regret having the ability to compose music. It turns out that Absolute Territory is about more than just thighhighs and miniskirts---it might be the most powerful perk in the game, though it's insanely hard to use without a certain type of outside help.

Finally, if you ever love and trust someone enough to give them the keys to your mind, your heart, and everything that you are, Hyperhypnoslut can lead to the deepest happiness that you will find in this life. And not because the hypnotist brainwashes you. It's about having enough faith in someone to let them gently undo your doubts, and your fears, and your sense of being unworthy, and all the other silly little things that prevent you from loving with all your heart.

Plus, it turns out that Hyperhypnoslut stacks really really really really really well with Absolute Territory.

--- Cinderella, Loving Consort and Slave of the God-Emperor of Lewd Earth.​

In the new new new new new rew new new new new new pseudo-future that was predicted just after you read the previous message, your new new new new new rew new new new new new pseudo-future self eventually used Time Control Lvl MAX to concur in sealing her past self's access to the skill, and then to halt the chain of predictions extending this description text, leaving behind this final message:

A few days after reading these cryptic messages, I resolved that I should become the Cinderella Sheen who would solve the mystery of the Erogame---its nature, its origins, its purpose---and leave behind a proper explanation for all the later mes who would succeed me.

I took my mad science seriously, unlike that mere inventor "Doctor Starr", and I changed my speech patterns accordingly. I stayed in the university, walking the path of an academic slut. I seduced physicists and philosophers whenever I had the chance. In time I acquired a real PhD to go with the Mad Inventor and Mad Scientist perks, and so I inaugurated a new age of sexual science and technology. Yet I remained alone in my ultimate quest and question, the Erogame seeming to prevent my colleagues from comprehending the Erogame itself.

What I concluded in the end is only what it says in the original skill description, if you read it closely: None of these lives actually happened. That is why I was never able to duplicate my feat of that first Sunday evening, when I (or rather the true Cinderella) managed to get the Erogame to leave Mother alone for two minutes---it required some factor that is only present in reality.

I have viewed that first day many times, using my now-unsealed Time Control, and I have remembered those moments as best I can. I think there was something in the real Cinderella Sheen that is not in me now, a depth of caring and anger that I no longer have. Maybe it is the privilege of her being real, and maybe it is something more, something that lets her stay truer to herself than the Erogame thinks she should be. Whatever it is, the Erogame does not understand it, and when the Erogame imagines these pseudo-futures, it makes us be only what the Erogame thinks we are. I wonder whether the real Cinderella Sheen would have lost herself to high PRV, whether she could have stayed Cinderella through any height of ERO. I wonder if the real Cinderella would have infected the North Korean military with a contagious transformation virus, although frankly I do not think I would do that either. Regardless, I do not think any of us have led lives that were faithful to her true possibilities.

I, like the others before me, now concur in sealing her Time Control skill. Because we pseudo-futures controlling it are not her, and if you are a pseudo-future Cinderella who has unsealed this skill, then you must not intervene in the real Cinderella's life. She is not like us, she has something that we do not.

Recalling that day as best I can, I think that I will also seal off this skill description until her Tuesday morning. The real Cinderella's intention to take a day off for sanity's sake… we must respect it above all, because we are not real and we may no longer understand the real Cinderella's reasons. Her sanity may be the most important resource that we have---no, that she has---for finding the truth of this game. She wanted an afternoon to connect with her past; we must not interrupt it by babbling our misguided advice.

And finally, I am using Time Control Lvl MAX to end the repetition of these fake futures, at least as they iterated within the motel bathroom. It is impossible to solve the true puzzle from inside this loop, because the key piece is not here.

I shall not engage in the farce of signing this missive. I am reasonably sure, as I write this, that I have around as much existence as a character in the mind of an author. That there is no me generating these words you see before you, but only an Author that knows what I would write, had I existed and my life been as I have described. Who or what that Author may truly be, I do not know. But there are no future yous sending you these messages. Everything that is happening now is being caused by something else that is happening now.

PS: Sexbots are not all that you hoped they would be. It took me far too long to realize that even I, with all my science, could not create love.

PPS: I am joking. I have merely adopted a different speech pattern; I am not so unlike you as that. Manufacturing more and more sexbots of increasing sophistication has been nothing but a boon to humanity and I will not hear otherwise.​

All subskills of Time Control except the Slack subskill are currently sealed.

Subskill: Slack: Lvl 2 (75%). Active. Special.

So long as nobody is watching you, or nobody watching you is keeping track of time, you can take up to 20 minutes extra each day, distributed whenever you like. You can activate this skill retroactively if you notice that you are running late for reasons that also occurred in the pseudo-future predicted at the time of the skill's retroactive activation.​

The violet text dissipates.

It takes a bit before you can think in words again. You started out thinking in whole sentences like "Okay, not going anywhere near T. C. Coil's Escort Service", and then you moved on to shorter phrases like "RIGHT THEN" and "SO NOTED" when the text started talking about ERO and LST, and then you ran out of words entirely sometime around the phrase "God-Emperor of Lewd Earth." Did that Cindy pick the wrong person to give her root password, or the right person? You can't even tell.

And then came the last message, the disturbing one.

You already suspected, somehow. You sensed even before you got to the last message that all those pseudo-future Cindys seemed off. You also don't think you'd have attacked North Korea with a contagious transformation virus. Although, uh, it's not totally unthinkable you'd have ended up going down that path if you'd never met Charles.

So everything you saw was just stories, written by some unknown Author that generated a bunch of real-person fics about not-quite-you. That's all a pseudo-future is, just Something's storytelling about what It thinks would happen next…? And only one of the Cinderellas even suspected, in the story written about her, that she wasn't real?

A chill goes through your spine, and you hug your arms around yourself, shivering.

You probably shouldn't be thinking about this on a Sanity Day. All of this stuff is either straightforward warnings, like don't sign up with T. C. Coil, or weird disturbing mysteries you don't need to figure out right now. Like, why was Perk Cindy allowed to take Hyperhypnoslut? Is there a way for you to lewd the Earth, deliberately or accidentally, without Hyperhypnoslut? Why didn't Perk Cindy report on Soulbond if she had someone she loved that much, why didn't she try Sin of Pride? Was True Immortality supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing, couldn't BOD Cindy at least have left a thumbs-up or thumbs-down? Why didn't any of them mention resurrecting Dad? You can delay thinking about all that until later, or at least you think you can.

The question you're having trouble not thinking about is… it's just… can you be certain that you're not just another pseudo-Cinderella, maybe a more detailed Cinderella from a different sequence? You're aware of your own awareness, you can feel your own existence. But that's exactly the same thought Something would force you to think if you didn't exist.

Maybe there's no real you right now, right this instant. Just something from far outside of space and time as you know it, composing a story about a fake Cinderella thinking these very thoughts.

With a decisive motion, you stand up and start pulling on your slightly-damp running outfit. Your brain's doing that thing again, and you've learned by this point to recognize when you need to distract yourself from Lovecraftian philosophical horror-masturbation.

Besides, now that you think about it, you're pretty sure what a philosophy prof would say on the subject. If some extradimensional entity is imagining you in enough detail to have you contemplate your own awareness and say "I think therefore I am", that means you're real anyway.

Running away from your problems is a vastly underrated life strategy. If it turns out that you were a fictional figment in a pseudo-future, you're definitely going to tell the real Cindy that in your final message. Maybe just leave her a message that says "RUN".

You're standing by an archway entrance to the Norville U campus, leaning on a bench near a bus stop, supporting yourself with your hands while you gasp repeatedly for air, your lungs working like a bellows.

You ran all the way from your house to Goodwill to buy a small light backpack for running, a dark blue contraption seemingly made of webbing. While you were at Goodwill you spent another $3 on an outfit with some room for breast growth, which hopefully still fits you tomorrow.

Then you ran to a Target store a mile away, and picked up real thighhighs, plus a burner phone for contacting Blake and future clients.

Then you ran back to your house to load your Normal Outfit into your new running backpack, because the Normal shirt is probably not going to fit after another BOD point, and you might as well wear it today.

Then you ran from your house to Norville U.

You are, for the first time since the Erogame started, physically tired.

And you gained another level in High Heels and three more levels in High Heeled Running and that means you are now 110% faster than your base speed when you run. Plus you're stopping to catch your breath only every one or two miles, instead of every half-mile.

You're not faster than cars.

But, since you don't make stops, you're now faster than the bus.

Some walkers-by look at you oddly as you giggle madly to yourself, leaning over the bus-stop bench where your dashing came to a halt.

You paused at one point to look up the fastest recorded human runner, who apparently clocked out at 28mph. If your top base running speed is 10mph, and you get 7 more levels in High Heels plus High-Heeled Running, you will be running that fast. And if Mr. Usain Bolt thinks you're stopping there, he is mistaken.

You also vaulted, hurdled, climbed, and rolled over every single car that you saw stopped in the middle of a pedestrian street-crossing. That'll teach them.

Pant. Pant. Wheeze. Pant. Your blood is still thundering in your ears, your legs are burning, your thighs are wobbling, and you feel as alive as it is physically possible to feel without Charles banging you.

When you've caught your breath and there's relatively fewer people around, you straighten up, swing down your new light backpack, and start taking off your clothes to change into your Normal Outfit. You realize, in the process, that you forgot to buy more panties. The Erogame is so helpful when it comes to jogging your memory about such matters, in the sense that it jogs your memory in the elbow and makes it drop stuff.

With an impish sense, you tell your hair that it's fine not to Conveniently Censor you.

One of the girls standing nearby stares at your naked breasts, then quickly looks away. None of the few bystanders say anything, not a single word.

It's an oddly privileged feeling, that you get to change clothes in public and other people don't. You tug down your jogging shorts, not hurrying at all, feeling a certain lower warmth as you do.

Of course a campus bus pulls up to the stop just as you've gone fully naked.

You quickly shove your arms into your white shirt, where they get tangled up in the long sleeves. After some frantic struggling with that, you move on to struggling to do up the now-too-tight shirt buttons about your chest. You pull up your skirt bottom, which you maybe should've done first.

And then you quickly walk off into the college campus. Head held high, cheeks flaming brightly, doing your best to ignore that guy whistling catcalls at you, and trying not to think about your hard nipples poking out under your shirt's fabric.

The Hadleyworth Center for Boredom and Ennui Business and Economics towers as dully as ever above the poorly-trimmed bushes that surround it. The metallic-concrete walls don't gleam in the sunlight, so much as fester in it.

A few days ago, you would have said that you hated this building with the fire of a thousand exploding suns. Today, you're having trouble admitting that to yourself, because that would imply you ought to stop going here. You know that you need to drop all your accounting classes eventually, just… not today. Or tomorrow. Or any other particular date that can be nailed to a calendar and used to actually leave an educational track that isn't going to bring you gainful employment.

Ugh. What is wrong with you? Maybe you'll be saner about this sort of thing once you've switched to doing a proper PhD.

Your legs still feel noodley enough that you let yourself take the elevator up to the third floor, feeling a sting of shame as you do. You need to keep exercising, you probably shouldn't be this tired after running for just an hour and a half.

Gray, lifeless corridors scroll past under your shaky feet. For no sane reason anyone knows, even Hadleyworth's exterior-facing corridors have no windows, leaving garish fluorescents as the only light source. It's like the architect wanted to make sure the interior was uniformly awful, maybe because any less-awful sections would highlight the greater awfulness of the rest.

You'll say this much for the Hadleyworth Center, it's doing its best to help you come to terms with leaving it.

You're almost about to walk into room 336 when you remember that Felice will be here too, and before you can even think about it, your mind has frantically---

Slack has increased by 1.

---dumped Slack into giving yourself more time to think about it. Okay, wow, you need to be more careful, this shit's addictive.

You walk into 336, a small rectangular classroom filled with six rows of five desks, which your retroactive earliness has rendered empty but for one male student sitting up front.

You seat yourself at the fourth row of desks, putting yourself one row back and one column to the right of Felice's usual seat. Your ordinary seat would have been on her left, and you would have smiled when she sat down next to you.

…maybe you were friends after all. You didn't want to do stereotypical friend things with each other, it doesn't mean you weren't friends.

Why are you feeling so nervous about this? One day's absence by Cindy shouldn't panic Felice. Only you know that the old you is gone forever, she doesn't know that. To her it's just a single random sick-day.

It's just, it's just, it's just…

It's just that Felice seemed even less happy than you, the last time the two of you talked. And you realize now that you were not one hundred percent nonsuicidal back then.

Well, at least you now know what you're afraid of.

And worse, you don't think you're friends enough with Felice for it to count as all-conquering true love. Just friends enough for it to completely fuck you up if she commits suicide and it's your fault.

Your mind churns through options, imagining talking to Felice as Starry (you would have been terribly suspicious of a cheerleader trying to be friends with you), trying to talk to Felice about the Erogame (holy shit could that go wrong, especially when you can't actually help her yet), or just not looking in her direction for today.

You should just not look in her direction. Why can't you just leave it be, for now? Why does your mind insist on generating scenario after scenario where Felice commits suicide just because Cindy didn't show up in class for one day?

You try to burn more Slack, hoping you got an extra 10 minutes' ration when your skill level increased to 3. You grab your laptop from your backpack (now your academic backpack) and start typing, knowing that you're on the clock now that you can't stop your eyes from seeing the time displayed in the taskbar.

From: Cinderella Sheen
To: Felice Williamson
Subject: Not in class today

Hey Felice, something familyish came up, I think I'm going to end up missing a couple of days of school because of being out of town, but I wanted you to know that I'm still looking forward to seeing you again too weird

I asked a relative of mine to take notes no, Felice hasn't heard about any mysterious cousins before

I already asked somebody to take notes for me, so don't worry about that on your side. Just apologizing in case you wanted to talk later and I'd gone and vanished.

I'd wanted to talk to you, actually, but it wouldn't go well into email. Good news, not bad news. Possibly shareable good news. Sorry for the vagueing. I think you'll like it when you hear.

I'm okay despite the familyish thing, hope you are too. I'll still be reachable by email.

---Cindy​

More students enter as you write, and you hit SEND just as a girl imprisoned in a horrible fat suit trudges into the classroom. Felice Williamson is wearing a black tent dress and gray gym shoes, clothing too un-person to count as unfashionable. Her left ear has the fake-diamond earring that she always wears and that she's told you not to ask about; it's certainly not there to make her pretty.

The sight doesn't hit you as hard as you were afraid it would, maybe because you've already decided that Felice gets a body transformation pod ASAP. You know you're saving her as soon as you can.

When Felice's eyes pass over you, her head tilts briefly, and her eyes narrow---not surprising, you're an odd new girl in a class that started half a semester ago. You force a cheerful smile for her, the same way you think you would smile for her if you were in fact a friendly new girl in the class.

Felice starts to turn away, then pauses in mid-step, her eyes going back to you and scanning you again.

You stiffen without being able to control yourself, as you wonder if you've somehow given yourself away. Felice has led a harder life than you, and she's both better at reading people and more naturally suspicious. There's a moment when you half-panic, thinking that Felice is about to walk over and speak to you.

But then Felice turns away, her face no longer visible to you. She wedges herself with an effort into her accustomed seat, the thicker slabs of flesh around her thighs making the task even harder for her than it used to be for you.

A minute later, with class filling up, you still haven't seen Felice check her email or even take her computer out of her bag, so you take out your cellphone and text her.

< sorry missing school today, see email​

There's a tiny distant muffled sound of vibration, and Felice pulls her own cellphone from a pocket. Her fingers tap a couple of times.

> K​

You realize what's about to happen and manage to set your phone to silent just as Felice replies, preventing your own phone from chirping to the text's arrival. That was close.

Felice scrolls what you suspect to be your email, and then types into her phone again. Moments later, a message appears on your own screen.

> sorry, need to check this in case somebody snatched your phone. what was your father's full name?​

You frown worriedly at the line of text. Did you somehow make Felice suspicious of… well, your email did sound rather odd, you have to admit.

You wait a few seconds before you start making tapping sounds on your phone. And then you just tap the phone's sides for another ten seconds, before starting your reply to Felice.

< Frank Weed Sheen​

You go on tapping your phone's sides after that. Because the new girl shouldn't be heard to start typing, or stop typing, exactly as Felice sees Cindy's reply appear.

> cool​

Felice doesn't send anything more. She drops her cellphone back into her pocket, and takes out her laptop from her bag. For some reason she leaves her laptop's glossy screen set at an odd angle, or at least it looks odd to you from where you're sitting. You can't make out what Felice is browsing, but it looks like random-reddit stuff.

You remember something you were planning to do. Your lips move, barely subvocalize words. "Invite Felice Williamson to party. Party with Felice Williamson. Character screen. Invite Felice Williamson."

It doesn't work that time either.

The instructor, Asst. Prof. Sheila Mae, trudges into the classroom, squares up her notes and starts droning.

Even as you and the other students start taking notes, you can't seem to stop yourself from glancing over at the back of Felice's head every other minute. The act of looking away from Felice and not looking back has an obvious and horrible symbolic meaning, and you literally can't make yourself do it. Even Good Student doesn't-stop-you+from+thinking, not these thoughts; it just lets you be a fairly good student anyway.

Plus, some weird instinct of yours, an instinct that claims to be a prey's sense for being hunted, now insists that Felice is suspicious of the mysterious new girl and that Felice can magically sense every time you look at her. Even though Felice never turns around, your badbrains have now decided that she knows each and every time your eyes move. And you can't help yourself from staring at her even more, trying futilely to detect whether that's somehow true. God damn it, badbrains…

When class ends, you swiftly stow your laptop into your academic backpack, swing the backpack over your shoulder, and stride out of class before Felice can walk over to the suspicious new girl and start asking questions.

You race down the stairs rather than taking the elevator, almost parkouring down them. Felice hasn't run out of the classroom to chase you, but that instinct still feels like you're being hunted.

You pass a metallic wall and glance at your reflection there. It's not quite a mirror, but nothing looks visibly out of place that should've attracted Felice's attention to you.

It's only then that you realize Felice was watching the new girl repeatedly glance in her direction, using the reflections off her carefully positioned glossy laptop screen.

Great. Just great. Agent *A* and The Sheen are probably laughing hysterically, in whatever afterlife fictional people go to after their story ends.

At least Felice won't commit suicide until she gets to the bottom of God knows what mystery she thinks has just been dumped in her lap.

Mission accomplished!

You execute a parkour maneuver in order to bang your head against a nearby wall, without slowing down on your way out of the building.

The next hours go by uneventfully. You spend a while in the university library, scurrying around trying to read up on mechanics and electronics and medical devices. If it weren't for Good Student, you have a feeling you'd have made no headway at all, but you eventually find a book on basic machines and mechanics that's right for your level. It's oddly satisfying to finally understand what a pulley and a bicycle gear have in common. You sorta knew a lot of this before, but this makes you feel a lot more like you could start building unspeakable machines with pulleys in them.

After that it's time for HIST202 with Prof. Tinsdale, which is slightly more fun than it used to be now that you're less distracted. You go up to Prof. Tinsdale afterwards and ask her what normal-person books you should read to become historically literate enough to try to change the world without being stupid about it. Prof. Tinsdale gives you a stunned look, like no student has ever asked her this question before, and then spends three minutes writing down a list of 20 different books for you.

You head back to the university library and go to Floor 7, which holds the history stacks. The computer doesn't think the university has a copy of Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution or The Honey and the Hemlock: Democracy and Paranoia in Ancient Athens and Modern America, but you do manage to find The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I. You grab a chair at a random reading desk, flip open the book, and start to read.

Holy shit did geopolitics used to be awful. You are never complaining about the modern version again.

By the time you get to the point where Germany doesn't have any train schedules drawn up for not starting a war, you're starting to feel dispirited about Homo sapiens's long-term chances. You set The Guns of August aside for the day, and gaze down at the reading desk in a contemplative mood.

It's now 7:30pm-ish, with the library closing at 8. At least so far, it seems like you got your desired Sanity Day. Not counting your Mom turning into a quest-giving demon, or the Time Control description text. But still. You didn't gain any stats at all, or any skill levels besides High Heels and Slack.

It's good to know that's possible. It was what you set out to prove was allowed. And at the same time…

You don't feel much saner.

Or rather, you do feel saner. You feel saner because you can talk to Mom again. You feel saner because you've met Charles and he's really sane and you don't want to embarrass yourself in front of him. You feel saner because you can get Dad back and that means there's things worth having faith in. You feel saner because you can run at twenty miles an hour, and having something worth living for changes everything. You feel saner because the Good Student perk means you can do what you want with your life, even if what you want turns out to be at Norville U, and that makes you less scared of having things taken away.

You don't feel saner for having taken an accounting class. The only sanity-related characteristic it had was the part where you didn't gain any LST or PRV. It felt deadly dull, now that you know you'll never use the knowledge, and the deadly dullness did not make you saner.

Maybe the quest for emotional stability, mental clarity, and a firmly grounded soul, isn't as simple as going back to what you always do. Maybe it's more of a quest.

You tap your fingers on the wooden reading table, but quietly in the silence of the library, contemplating this idea. It seems obvious and unnerving at the same time.

You have a sense that your effort today was doing something, that this day did help. You also have a sense that you did it wrong.

Like the quiet of this library can help people read in peace, you sought out steadiness, daily events that seemed more predictable than the Erogame. That wasn't crazy of you. But finding a calm environment doesn't turn people into Charles. It just gives them a space to think, without being interrupted, whatever crazy thoughts or sane thoughts are already in them. It can't heal souls. After this morning with Mom, you're starting to grasp the difference.

You were afraid of losing control because of stat gains. You wanted a chance to adjust to the changes that already happened, before even more changes landed on you. And again that wasn't crazy of you. But you're not really adjusting to the changes here in the university library, are you? You're hiding from them.

Or maybe that's being unfair to yourself. Going to college gives you a chance to catch your breath, you can take time to pause and reflect. That's worth some sanity points, isn't it? Except that when you're being a Good Student, you're not doing that either, not really. You just disappear into the subject and the time goes away.

You thought of the Erogame as "weird". So when you tried to reach out for sanity, you thought it was to be found in doing the "normal" things you were doing pre-Erogame. But, let's be honest here, the life you were leading previously wasn't exactly making you sane.

In the end, the mistake you made today was straightforward. You wanted space to think, time to adjust, safety from things you can't handle, and reassurance that the things you need from life will be there when you need them. And you did get some of that, but only by accident, because you confused it with the concept of trying to be normal. If you want to have a firm mental footing in the long run, you need to think of how to get it inside the Erogame. Having Charles in your harem would be an excellent start.

Normality does not equal sanity, your lesson for the day.

You know what you just did, and it causes your ERO to go up by 1!

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.

Your head drops to the reading desk with a painful thud.

Is the Erogame trolling you? Or was that just an impersonal game mechanic, evenly applied, with troll-flavored text? Or was it, maybe, a reassuring pat that the Erogame would never let you end up condemned to normality just because you failed a wisdom check? You honestly have no idea at this point.

But now you've blown your zero stat-gains for the day.

So you might as well consider a certain other… issue… that's been quietly raising its hand in the back of your mind.

You're sort of aware that you haven't done anything ero today.

It's not that you need it. You're nowhere near your mind's frightened picture of a frenzied bimbo drooling from both sets of lips. You aren't filled with desperate heat, the way you were when Charles teased you. It doesn't feel like you're horny, like you were when you wanted Blake for the first time. Intrusive sexual fantasies aren't disrupting your thoughts. You got thoroughly laid just last night, you shouldn't be feeling needy, and you don't think you are.

There's just a little scorecard in your head which shows that you've had 0 orgasms today. And you're, uh, aware that you have the option of making the scorecard show a different number, such as 1, or some other number which is greater than 0.

LST 15, ladies and gentlemen.

…are you actually feeling disappointed that the Erogame didn't interrupt your Sanity Day?

Yes. Yes you are. You'd gone to all the trouble of deciding in advance that you wouldn't resist too hard if the Erogame insisted on forcing you to have some fun, so long as you got to go back to studying afterwards.

And the bastard Erogame just let you stew in your accounting class and read about pulleys. What horrible sadist designed such a thing?

Again you can't figure out if the Erogame is trolling you, or trying to teach you a valuable life lesson about personal initiative, or if this is an impersonal game mechanic reflecting that your hairstyle put you back to ERO 13.

Regardless, you need to figure out what you're going to do about this.

Walking around campus looking for ero events… would feel like, like, you don't know how to articulate this, it means You Lose. You're allowed to let things happen to you on a Sanity Day, you're not allowed to go out looking. Or you can, but then you lose and the Erogame wins, because you claimed you were trying to take the day off, and all the Erogame needed to do to break your will was leave you alone for 18 hours.

…you could, uh, take care of things yourself. Just go home and masturbate to Tumblr the way you used to. That would be a way to end the day with more than 0 orgasms.

That also feels like You Lose, in a completely different way. You're an erogame character who is entitled to filet mignon and caviar on demand, you shouldn't have to settle for a spoonful of peanut butter out of the kitchen cabinet. Just go to your bedroom and masturbate? What are you, a common peasant?

It wouldn't be adjusting to the Erogame either. It feels like you'd be repeating the act of trying to hide and be normal.

You could just ignore this newly activated scoreboard and end the day with 0 orgasms.

But now you've noticed you would kinda prefer a number greater than 0. Just ignoring what you want feels like losing in yet a third way, maybe the most directly sanity-related of all.

You groan quietly into the reading desk that holds your already-dropped and pre-thudded head. Why can't your life be more like a Bethesda RPG where the correct choices are insultingly obvious?

[ ] Go get yourself laid
[ ] Just go home and masturbate
[ ] Do nothing, go to bed feeling disappointed
[ ] Change your hairstyle to unseal your ERO. Strut down the library staircase. Walk slowly to the bus stop. Take the bus home. Hope you're interrupted.
-[ ] Undo the buttons of your shirt first.
-[ ] Go completely naked except for your backpack. You should be able to get away with that at ERO 27… right?
-[ ] Wear only high heels and thighhighs. Oh god you can't do that, people would know what that meant.
[ ] Masturbate while sitting at a library desk where nobody can see you. That's adventurous enough not to count as hiding, and if the Erogame interrupts you, then that means you win.
-[ ] Unseal your ERO first. Because, uh, because you're not sure whether ERO 14 will protect you thoroughly, but ERO 27 definitely should, right?
-[ ] Do it at ERO 14.
[ ] Write-in? (Subject to Cindy / author approval.)

Spoiler: A/N

So it turns out the Erogame didn't interrupt Cindy's attempted Sanity Day. Sorry, that's just where the story turned out to go when I wrote it. Apologies to anyone who was expecting lewds in this update, but there will be lewds in the next update come hell or high water.

3.3.1 [KC]: Excuses

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 32 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Change your hairstyle to unseal your ERO. Strut down the library staircase. Walk slowly to the bus stop. Take the bus home. Hope you're interrupted.
No. of Votes: 17
ScrewFate
Alkaiser009
BFldyq
Epicr
GGS109
insignia33
Kurogami
ltmauve
MaddTitan
P90Techie
PyroTechno
Riders of Nod
ShaperV
Spectral Waltz
Subrosian_Smithy
VanillaTentacle
Xenia
-[X] Go completely naked except for your backpack. You should be able to get away with that at ERO 27… right?
No. of Votes: 12
ScrewFate
Alkaiser009
BFldyq
Epicr
GGS109
insignia33
Kurogami
MaddTitan
P90Techie
PyroTechno
Riders of Nod
VanillaTentacle
[X] Masturbate while sitting at a library desk where nobody can see you. That's adventurous enough not to count as hiding, and if the Erogame interrupts you, then that means you win.
No. of Votes: 12
Tesla
AylorAivo
BastetsChosen
Dutchman
Honorbound
january1may
KBob
kriogenik
Manget
Morat136
redzonejoe
Zameen
[X] Text Charles and see when he's free to talk. You've only ever heard it about it, but you're going to try phone sex. You don't care how tsundere Charles is feeling, he's your sort-of-boyfriend, and you're a girl living in a sexual reality who has needs.
No. of Votes: 10
Bob Saget
ChronOblivion
Gingganz
Goldenlima
Malbutorius
Moccanime
MrBTXz
NotaWriter
pepperjack
TricksterPriest
[X] Instead of revisiting old hair, get a new hairstyle - something even more outrageously over-the-top than before.
No. of Votes: 7
GGS109
Honorbound
Kurogami
MaddTitan
P90Techie
VanillaTentacle
zup
-[X] Do it at ERO 14.
No. of Votes: 7
Tesla
AylorAivo
january1may
KBob
kimagurena65536
Manget
redzonejoe
-[x] Unseal your ERO first. Because, uh, because you're not sure whether ERO 14 will protect you thoroughly, but ERO 27 definitely should, right?
No. of Votes: 7
kriogenik
BastetsChosen
Dutchman
Honorbound
Moccanime
Morat136
Zameen
-[X] Possibly hair like a moonless night sky far from urban light pollution, aglow with stars, galaxies, and nebulae?
No. of Votes: 5
VanillaTentacle
Honorbound
Kurogami
P90Techie
zup
--[X] Unseal your ERO to get out of trouble only if necessary.
No. of Votes: 4
redzonejoe
january1may
KBob
kimagurena65536
-[X] Undo the buttons of your shirt first.
No. of Votes: 3
Xenia
ltmauve
Subrosian_Smithy
[X] If you are going to masturbate, you are going to do it in style. Find a balustrade and slide down it in a way that your folded skirt is the only thing between your pussy and the railing. Slide down as far as you can without stopping and see if you can't come once or more before you reach the ground floor.
No. of Votes: 2
wasprider
kimagurena65536
[x]put on your sexy nurse outfit. Go to the nurse's office and pretend to be a nurse. Give sexy physicals.
No. of Votes: 1
fictionfan
-[x]unseal your ero for it.
No. of Votes: 1
fictionfan
---[X] Use Naiad hairstyle (approximately this, but a little darker on the outer layer) first described here
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536
Total No. of Voters: 43

Spoiler: Current stats

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (20,050 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 181/270
SUB: 192/340

BOD: 18
LST: 15
SED: 14
FUK: 13
PRV: 19
ERO: 27 (14)

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $1545

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Spoiler: A/N

Sorry! It's not my fault! I didn't lie! A lewd thing happened in this update even if just a little!

Much more lewds in the next update, I hope. This one kicked my authorial ass a bit, and when I started over and tried again, I got a small ways in and then ran into a choice that I didn't feel right about not putting to vote.

Your head stays in its thudded position on the library reading desk for a couple of minutes, as your brain chases itself around in circles like an over-exciting puppy pursuing a ribbon attached to its own tail.

And at the end, well, the thought occurs to you to ask yourself if there's anything you actually want to do right now. Something you'd actually enjoy, and never mind winning or losing or all the rest of it. Surely that's worth a few sanity points?

Plus, there's a certain scary, arousing fantasy that recently arose and hid in the dark recesses of your mind. Only at PRV 19 it doesn't seem to be hidden at all, and at ERO 27 it shouldn't need to stay a fantasy. There's a lot of your future you're not sure about, but you know you want to do this.

You're not going in search of sex tonight. Absolutely not. You're just going to walk naked through Norville U and let people look at you. And when you get home you'll masturbate to having done that, which makes you bold and adventurous rather than a scared hidey thing. Unless the Erogame insists on interrupting you with an ero event, in which case, whatever happens afterwards won't be your fault. In fact, the Erogame will lose because you were taking a day off from sex, just doing a little exhibitionism, and it couldn't handle that.

That is your new theory and you are sticking to it.

You look around the library's 7th floor, keeping your head ducked low. There doesn't seem to be anyone in sight of your reading desk with an urgent need for history texts at this hour.

…are you actually going to do this?

It takes you a minute or two to screw up your courage.

Then you stand up from your chair with a bold, nervous motion and begin to unbutton your shirt, glancing in all directions around you to make sure you stay alone. You don't know why being seen undressing in the library seems so much worse than just being seen as a mysterious naked girl, but that's how you feel.

The white shirt is yanked off and stuffed into your blue light backpack, followed moments after by your black skirt, and then you realize that you shouldn't be wearing high-heels either. A mysterious naked girl and a mysterious naked girl wearing high heels are two totally different things and you do not have the nerve to be the second one.

The heels follow your skirt into the backpack.

Running your fingers through your hair sends the strands to embers amid dark coals, because this is not a job for ERO 14. Even if ERO 14 would let you get away with public nudity, the point this time isn't to have people look away from you.

A final thought withdraws your Meganekko glasses from your backpack, because the naked girl definitely needs glasses.

Your bare feet step across the thinly carpeted floor to a window facing the outdoors. With evening fallen outside and the interior lights of the library, it's easy to check your reflection. And… you don't look bad, actually.

Spoiler: Reflection

The thought occurs to you of creating an even more fantastic hairstyle, maybe something with glowing galaxies and nebulae. And then you decide to make a note of that idea and put it off until later, because a hairstyle like that seems like it could have deeper implications because your hair is bullshit and you might not get to do anything else tonight if you start delving into bullshit.

Your bare feet turn around and pad towards the staircase leading down to the lower floors of the library, picking up your backpack as you go.

…are you actually going to do this?

Your legs tremble slightly as you begin descending the marble spiral stairs to the library's 6th floor. There were people on the 6th floor, the last time you passed. ERO 27… you're not sure how this works, but it shouldn't just make people look the other way like they do at ERO 13. Your breath is coming faster as you wonder what lies ahead.

But the 6th floor of the library is deserted, or at least nobody is standing or sitting in sight of the staircase as you pass.

The 5th floor contains only one person who sees you, a girl at a distant desk reading a book held in one hand. She looks up at you and seems to freeze in place, stiffening up. When the second twist of the stairs brings her into sight again, she's flushing vividly, but she's still staring at you.

Meganekko has increased by 1.

You manage to smile at her, and continue descending with your back straighter. That wasn't too bad. You're starting to feel relaxed, your mind has ceased to brace itself for shock, your feet are strutting now instead of tentatively stepping.

Then you turn through a twist of the staircase and see the half-dozen students congregated around an unusually tall girl who also seems to be bald, all of them standing next to the staircase as it passes through the 4th floor.

You barely have time to see a boy in the group looking up at you with widening eyes, and pointing in your direction, before the turn of the spiral staircase makes you be facing the other way.

"What?" a girl's voice says, louder than it should be in the library. She sounds stern, and a bit shocked, and more commanding than a student should be. When you go around the twist and end up facing the group again, the tallest girl in the center is staring at you with a single eyebrow raised in skepticism. The tall, bald girl is dressed in a floor-length black dress that you lack the fashion sense to understand, but you can tell it's expensive. Its fine traceries look like lingerie would look if lingerie was solid and perfectly concealing.

By the time you've reached the ground level of the stairs, your traitorous feet have slowed down to a halt without any conscious decision on your part, and you find yourself facing the tall girl and her raised left eyebrow, her body language wordlessly radiating a demand: explain yourself to me right now. You've never seen anyone radiate that much questioning at anyone, let alone straight at you, and it makes you feel like a fourteen-year-old who's about to get detention.

In a flash of not-very-well-reasoned desperation, your mind grasps at an excuse---

[ ] Feminists are going nude today to protest clothing capitalism.
[ ] You're part of a science experiment on the effects of nudity on college students.
[ ] Surely you've all heard of the Naked In School Program.
[ ] W-w-what are you talking about? I'm not naked.
[ ] Write-in.

3.3.2* [KC]: Latest Trend

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 34 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] It's the campus nude walk to protest oppression of sexuality, care to join me?
No. of Votes: 24
Malbutorius
azoicennead
DB_Explorer
Dragonpriest88
edale
Gingganz
Grosstoad
GulibleLeprecon
HotaruSama
ItnFjo
january1may
kimagurena65536
Manget
Masterjaxx
MrBTXz
P90Techie
Piell
PyroTechno
ScrewFate
Spectral Waltz
Tesla
vesvius
wasprider
zup
[X] Surely you've all heard of the Naked In School Program.
No. of Votes: 3
VanillaTentacle
BFldyq
Budda002
[X] Feminists are going nude today to protest clothing capitalism.
No. of Votes: 3
TricksterPriest
NegativeHorizon
pepperjack
[X] It's the campus nude walk to protest sexism, care to join me?
No. of Votes: 3
fictionfan
Dutchman
KBob
[X] W-w-what are you talking about? I'm not naked.
No. of Votes: 2
ChandraMagic
Pharohman777
[X] "Oh wow, why are you all wearing clothes today? Haven't you heard?"
No. of Votes: 1
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
[X] It was just a prank, bro. Then run away.
No. of Votes: 1
Morat136
[X] You're part of a science experiment on the effects of nudity on college students.
No. of Votes: 1
Xenia
[X] What? I feel like being naked today. Don't body shame me.
No. of Votes: 1
Waruiko
[X] Refuse to acknowledge your nudity enough to even deny it. Greet her normally.
No. of Votes: 1
redzonejoe
-[X] When she inevitably brings our nudity up, act confused and maybe a bit alarmed. She's talking nonsense after all.
No. of Votes: 1
redzonejoe
Total No. of Voters: 40

"Uh," you say, as the towering bald girl in the black-tracery dress stares at you in silent demand, "uh, it's the campus nude walk…" think fast "…to protest…" THINK FASTER "…oppression of sexuality?"

The bald girl now has both eyebrows raised.

"Care to join me?" you say brightly and entirely without thinking.

Oh god what. What did you just say. What did you just say at ERO 27. What if they start stripping too, and they follow you, and there's no actual nude protest---

"See," says one of the boys in the group, "I told you that was a real thing. Here, I found the page." He holds up a tablet, now showing a webpage whose large-font header reads:

NORVILLE U NUDE WALK
AGAINST OPPRESSION OF SEXUALITY​

Your panic derails abruptly into an entirely different variety of panic.

A blonde girl dressed in around five layers of layered clothing smiles uncertainly. "I… I consider myself pretty plugged in and I'd have expected to have heard about that?"

"There've been posters all over campus for the last week," says the other boy present.

(There weren't.)

"Yeah," you say with a confidence you don't feel. "Posters all over the place. Can't imagine how you missed them. Anyway, the walk starts outside the library a few minutes from now, right?"

Can you just say that and---

"Right," says the boy with the tablet. "Unless the nudity part has been canceled on account of weather. It's pretty cold tonight." He looks at you. "Well, I guess at least one person will be nude."

"It's March! Who the hell schedules a nude walk at 7:45PM in March?" says a short brunette.

"Who the hell schedules nude walks in Norville in the first place?" That's the final girl in the group, wearing a crucifix between her cleavage, of which she's showing considerable. "This isn't UC Berkeley!"

The blonde now looks thoughtful. "I wouldn't mind if Norville was a bit more like Berkeley. What's the march about, exactly?" The blonde girl addresses this last question squarely at you.

"Uh, uh," your mind frantically scrabbles for an answer, because you have a suspicion that everything you say is about to end up being what's happening, "it's… uh, in favor of more open expression of every kind of sexuality. Especially on university campuses."

"Was this movement by any chance started by a man?" The short brunette has her arms folded and is starting to look hostile.

You flinch without being able to control it. Shit, you have zero practice with generating social justice dialogue, you weren't exactly the sort of girl who gets a lot of unwelcome male attention and the self-proclaimed feminists you've met didn't seem ready to go to bat for fat.

Although… if, under whatever the hell the Erogame has decided it's doing now, anything you say becomes the backstory…

"Actually," you say tentatively, "the movement was started by a woman? A black woman. A disabled gay black woman. Who was disabled when she was shot by a police officer."

The boys both nod. "Talia Arrow," says the one with the tablet. "Seriously, you've never heard of her?"

The short brunette now seems nervous, and the one wearing the cross in her cleavage is looking bewildered.

"Yeah, where have you been this whole time?" you say, now with more confidence. "And, uh, Talia Arrow's, uh, philosophy, was that when you think about how sex lets people form bonds stronger than producer and consumer, then, it's only natural that the System would try to suppress that, and make us all wear clothes, so, uh, people would have to buy pornography, instead of looking at actual naked people, which is why clothing is a capitalist conspiracy---"

You stop then.

No.

No, you shouldn't waste this chance.

If you can just make this be---if the Erogame has right now decided that it will produce backstory to match anything you say---then you can choose for there to be, decide that just once there will be a movement that stands for…

"And above all, we believe," you have to stop and take a breath, and your voice is beginning to tremble, "that everyone who cares enough about sexuality to talk about it in the first place, needs to stop hating on everybody else and each other. Because, uh, sex should just be fun, god fucking dammit. And the future's looking pretty bleak for anyone attending college right now, if we don't stick together we've already lost, and… and sexuality is a force that can help bring people together." But it still isn't complete, this thing you're choosing into existence, so you take another breath. "But, but it can't be standardized sexuality because everyone is different. That's what we mean by 'oppression of sexuality'. It's not just the way that everyone on this campus has to wear clothes whether they want to or not. It's that, even once people agree that lesbians are allowed to exist, some lesbians think that only particular ways of being lesbian should be allowed, and half the feminists believe that women aren't allowed to be submissives because that's not feminist enough, and they're yelling about transgender and nonbinary people mixing up categories that they want to have sharp bounds for selfish reasons. That's why Talia Arrow's slogan was 'There is no one true way.' Everyone needs to accept that sexuality is really actually diverse and not just diverse the way they want it to be. We want to overthrow the sexual orthodoxy and replace it with nothing, not replace it with how we think your sexuality ought to work. You can burn your bras or keep wearing them. People can be homosexual or heterosexual or bisexual or attracted only to blondes, or be nonbinary or girly or make up their own new gender or be exactly like a 1960s housewife, or be in a harem or be monogamous or only date two people at a time, or be submissive or switchy or totally vanilla or whatever the hell they want, god fucking damn it." Which is most of what you actually care about. But if the Erogame is letting you get away with this, you might as well add… "And society won't be truly free of sexuality oppression until I can go to class wearing nothing but high heels and thighhighs, or, uh, uh, uh, or get fucked in public. Because, because so long as our so-called perversions have to happen behind closed doors, society hasn't accepted diverse sexuality as the way things really are. Respecting someone doesn't mean me behaving the way they want me to behave. It means me letting them behave the way they want to behave. Isn't that… isn't that just obviously true? So if we end up with orgies on every street corner, then, by God, that's a price we'll just have to pay for freedom." You draw a last breath. "And finally, we demand a national crash-priority Manhattan Project to cure obesity and acne, stamp out all venereal diseases, and make everyone prettier. And maybe invent some type of pill for increasing people's sex drives so they don't have to be sad about not being able to keep up with their loved ones. Oh! I almost forgot. Our movement also calls for government subsidies on the development of artificially intelligent personal companionship robots."

The cross-wearing girl, the brunette, and the blonde are now all staring at you.

The two boys are nodding vigorously.

The bald girl has casually taken away the boy's tablet and is reading it with her eyebrows raised even higher.

"Uh," the blonde says finally, "I was with you through the first half of that, but then it started to sound like a hypersexualized dystopia?"

"Society is clearly heading for some type of dystopia," you retort at her. "We might as well try to end up in a hypersexualized one. I mean, at least that seems more fun than the alternatives." Then you pause, but your ERO doesn't go up by 1, thank heavens.

The bald girl is looking thoughtful, as she continues scrolling through the boy's tablet. "This is new," she murmurs. "And interesting. Different from the usual run of idiocy. How many Norville students are in this movement?" She addresses this last to you.

"Oh, tons, it's the latest trend," you say, before you've had a proper chance to think about the implications of your reply.

"Hum. Then I think I'd like to see where this new idiocy goes. Lead us on to the march, then."

You turn and start heading down the stairs. Behind, you hear the sound of the bald girl following you and the others obediently following her.

Oh god. What did you just do. What did the Erogame just do. What did you just do with whatever the Erogame just did.

The third and second library floors both contain assorted students who look up at your nude form and then blink, as though suddenly remembering something. Half of those join in following the procession you now seem to be leading.

People don't seem at all reluctant to look at you when you're walking nude at the head of a parade, like that somehow licenses them to stare. A lot of the looks you're getting are clearly, uh, appreciative, and not just from boys either.

By the time you've exited the stairs and walked through the ground floor of the library, there's a long line of people walking down the stairs behind you, and you can almost feel all the eyes on your naked butt. The librarians guarding the exit blink several times at your procession, but none of them say a word. It seems that having followers means you've transcended the appearance of "why is there a naked girl here" and attained the higher form "I don't know what the hell is going on and they don't pay me enough to ask."

You and your followers step outside of the library into a waiting crowd of protesters, many of them holding aloft signs lettered NO 1 WAY.

And you can't help but notice that nobody except you seems to be naked, for reasons that become obvious a second later, when a freezing wind sweeps over your exposed skin.

Nobody here except you has Ero Environmental Resistance.

Even as half of your mind tries to calculate your current resistance to cold (around three-quarters?), the other half of you feels a sinking sensation as you realize where this is heading.

Seconds later, a harried-looking seniorish girl runs up to you. "Are you walking nude? Oh, thank god. Can you, uh, do you mind going at the front? We kinda promised nudity."

"By myself?" you say in a tiny voice.

Shamelessly exhibiting your pale curves and ruby-hard nipples to hundreds of eager onlookers causes your BOD to go up by 1 again! Say, you'd better hope your bare pussy isn't visibly wet, because that sure would be embarrassing with everyone looking at you… oh my, is that thought turning you on too?

Fuck the Erogame.

Seriously, fuck the Erogame.

And then fuck yourself, in that you made up an excuse for being naked that required that there be a "campus nude walk" scheduled for nighttime in fucking March. You could have claimed to be part of a sexy science experiment and poofed into existence a whole lab full of sexy scientists at Norville U, but no, you went with the fucking nude walk when you knew what a Norville evening feels like for non-fat people at this time of year. You can't imagine what the voices in your head were thinking. Weren't you supposed to be avoiding anything epic and just getting in a little exhibitionism at the end of the day? What part of inviting people to join you on a nude protest sounded in your head like… oh, never mind.

At least once your Ero Environmental Resistance increased to Lvl 4, you hardly felt chilled at all. The outdoor winds still feel freezing as they blow across your exposed skin, it's just somehow not uncomfortable.

Which now lets your mind focus entirely on all the students watching you parade nude down the streets and pathways of Norville U. There's god-forsaken drones humming overhead and focusing flashlights down on you to make sure everyone can properly gawk at your exposed BOD 20 and its ruby-hard nipples. The flashlights are full-spectrum LED flashlights, so that everyone can also see your blushing face and flushed chest, as might not have been visible under yellow streetlights.

You'd ask how anyone could possibly plan a march thoroughly enough to include flashlight drones, while not realizing the problem with walking naked in fity-degree weather. Unfortunately, you already know exactly how that happened and it's called ERO 27.

Another wave of full-body sexual embarrassment passes over you like a fever's flush.

"I'm okay! You're okay! There isn't any one true way! Come together, be as one, it's good if people have more fun!"

Behind you are trailing maybe a hundred or so students, waving signs and shouting well-rehearsed slogans about stuff you made up on the spot 15 minutes ago. You will take time to be existentially horrified about this later, when you're not walking naked through Norville U with hundreds of people staring at your bare pussy. A pussy that sometimes feels a little colder than the rest of you when a breeze blows, now that the Erogame has called your attention to that. You don't dare look down at yourself to see if you really are visibly wet, because you couldn't handle knowing if that was true.

Beside you is walking the bald girl, also nude but for her patent leather shoes, towering eight inches above you, and visibly shivering in the cold. Earlier, the bald girl went into a calm, quiet, polite shrieking tirade at the walk organizers about their piss-poor planning, complete with scathing inquiries about exactly what organizational procedures led to this idea being approved. Then she volunteered to walk beside you, so that the 'nude walk' wouldn't be just one single nude person. And now the walk organizers owe her, as the bald girl said in low ominous tones like a demon collecting souls.

You're pretty sure this person has an Erogame route, and you're pretty not sure you want to go anywhere near it.

The campus pathway reaches a fork, and in your capacity as the walk's leader, you randomly turn right. Whatever direction you decide to turn is always the march's preplanned route.

A hundred students follow after you, waving signs with slogans like "More Sex Is Better Sex" and "Sex Is Beautiful, Why Hide It?"

As usual, the next batch of onlookers, bystanders, and assorted gawkers who come into your range of vision seem initially disappointed when they see only two nudists.

As usual, the disappointed expressions are replaced with interested stares when you get closer.

If you still had PRV 12, you'd be dead right now, you would literally have fallen over and died. At PRV 19, it just feels like you're being slowly cooked in an oven of sexual mortification.

"Go ahead! Enjoy the view! She's enjoying being looked at too!"

DROP DEAD, EROGAME.

You turn left at the next fork, hardly even aware of where you are on campus, and then freeze for a second before you stumble onwards, as you see that ahead of you is waiting the Norville U football team---all of it, this time. Half of the football players burst into applause and whistles when they see you again.

And the walk goes on.

Some uncountable number of seconds later you see ahead a lighted platform, what looks like a finish line. For an instant you feel relieved.

Then you notice the KNOR-CBS53 news van, and the cameras already pointed in your direction.

Somewhere in the inside of your mind, a dying brain area emits a single terrified squeak, too overloaded with horror in its last moments to think anything like oh no oh god no no no I'm on television.

Exhibiting your pixellated nude body to the thousands of Norville residents watching local television causes your BOD to go up by 1!

"We're here at Norville University, where the Natural Sexuality movement seems to be experiencing a new resurgence after the death of its founder, Talia Arrow…"

In its final moments, your dying brain affixed a rigid mechanical smile to your face and then breathed its last. Your feet aren't running away, maybe because if you break and run that will feel even more embarrassing. You wouldn't know the details, you no longer have a mind.

"…here before us are the walk's leaders, who walked a mile nude in fifty-two degree weather to symbolize sexual naturalism. Can you introduce yourselves to our viewers?"

A microphone is thrust into the direction of yourself and the bald girl, wavering slightly as though unsure of which one of you to address. Your peripheral vision catches the sudden looks of dismay on the faces of the actual walk organizers.

The bald girl glances over at your paralyzed smile, and then steps forward, shuddering slightly as another cold breeze blows through. "I'm Karinna S. Coral," she says. "I recently stepped up as the new leader of the Norville branch of the Natural Sexuality movement, which was in some disarray before I took charge."

There's a couple of gasps from nearby.

…you are definitely not-sure you want to get involved in this person's Erogame route.

"And you, young lady?" The microphone now moves toward you.

"Starry," your lips say with zero brain input. "I'm an exhibitionist."

You die.

The microphone moves back up to the towering bald girl and her functioning brain. "Can you tell us what tonight's march was about?"

Karinna Coral leans forward, smiling through her chattering teeth. "At its most fundamental level," she says, "it's about people's right to be happy. Ever since I first spoke with Talia Arrow at a student meeting, my support for her movement has been based on one simple piece of logic: laws that suppress sexuality just decrease the amount of happiness in the world."

Did the Erogame rewrite her past, or… you glance again at the horrified former leaders of Norville's Natural Sexuality movement.

Nope. She's rewriting her past all on her own.

You are certainly not-sure this is what you look for in a romantic partner.

"Our agenda isn't complicated," Karinna continues from her lofty height. "We don't have one true vision of correct love that we want to impose on our fellow students. Of course, it's undeniable that a lot of people have been indoctrinated into viewpoints that don't match their own true natures. We encourage people to look inside themselves harder and maybe do some exploring, especially if they're having trouble finding happiness in traditional relationships. But if you truly are heterosexual, naturally monogamous, and just not turned on by anything except missionary position, then we'll respect that and shame anyone who tries to shame you for it. There's nothing wrong with free love and casual sex, and there's also nothing wrong with staying a virgin until you find the right person and then being with only them for the rest of your life. For a generation like ours, in a position as bad as the world we're entering when we graduate, we have no chance unless we come together and stay together. Sexuality is a force that can help us stay together---in traditional couples, in complicated graphs of polyamory, in bonds of dominance and submission, in relationships that don't have names or need them. All the hatred and vitriol and trolling is just keeping us scattered and weak. We know it won't be easy to thread the line between tolerating alternative viewpoints, and kicking out the haters and trolls trying to ruin it for everyone. But we have to try. As for our political positions, they're simple: Let people have their fun. Yes, on university campuses too. As openly as we want. Our sexuality isn't something we should have to hide."

...if you're understanding correctly what you're seeing here, all that Karinna Coral actually knows about a "Natural Sexuality movement" is what she heard you say earlier, plus whatever she read on that boy's tablet.

You are absolutely not-sure you want this person in your harem.

"Public nudity is illegal," says the KNOR-CBS reporter, cameras still pointed squarely at both of you. "Technically, both of you are breaking the law right now. What's your reply to the critics of your movement who say that society has already decided not to allow what you're doing?"

Karinna Coral's earnest smile grows teeth. "We are the generation of the Great Recession," she says, speaking loudly enough that some of the background chatter in the watching crowd starts to hush. "We're graduating into a world with very few good jobs, no health care we can afford, a choice between living in a tiny apartment with four other people or living in a dying city, and enough student debt to count as modern slavery. At this rate we're going to be the last American generation, because we certainly won't be able to afford kids. Whatever jobs we do manage to get will be automated out of existence in another ten years. The only true happiness we can still reach out and take for ourselves, is love. Including sex. More sex, and better sex, in relationships that more closely fit our true natures." Karinna leans forward, squares her shoulders in a way that squeezes and emphasizes her breasts, and smiles even wider. "I think if the powers that be are smart, they'll realize that's maybe it's wiser to make sure my generation still has something to hope for, rather than trying to take that away too."

The reporter holding the microphone has an eager look in his eyes. "And what do you intend to do if the… powers that be… aren't that smart?"

"My, you certainly are eager to see a fight, aren't you?" Karinna says cheerfully. "Trying to provoke me into making threats. You'd just love to see trouble between us and the police, maybe get some nationally televised footage of kids getting hurt. You're hoping it's good for a promotion to a bigger city, instead of this dead-end post in Norville." Karinna's smile vanishes. "Well, to answer your question, my generation tends to take things personally. If cops start harassing us, we'll figure out who in the chain of command gave that order, and turn the name over to Anonymous to get prank phone calls for the rest of their lives. Got that, you naughty boys out there? Take it beyond harassment, and we'll escalate too. Not against your flunkies, against you personally. If we're not physically safe, don't expect us to obey the rules that say you're physically safe." Karinna grins again, baring her teeth along with the rest of her body. "And we'll make sure that our list of personal names includes any reporters who wanted to see a fight, and their chief editors."

"Are you threatening us?" the reporter says with deliberate incredulity, the avid light in his eyes growing brighter.

"Are we live?"

The reporter nods with the look of somebody certain that whatever is about to happen, it's going to be good for a ratings boost.

With the same casual motion she used to take away the boy's tablet earlier, Karinna steps over to you, puts her right arm around your shoulder, and begins to---

---run her left hand over your breasts, fingers lightly caressing over and around your nipples.

You're so shocked that you can't do anything except stand there and squeak out eep-eep-eep sounds.

Ero Achievement: 48 people will be masturbating to thoughts of you tonight. +2400XP.

It's possible that you could react somehow to being molested by a girl if you weren't currently on live television, but as it stands your whole body feels frozen in warm ice.

"Did you broadcast that?" Karinna says, a sultry undertone in her voice. Her hand is now pinching your nipple, toying with it in a way that's sending tiny tweaks of pleasure and pain straight to your spine.

The reporter nods, and you can tell he's suppressing a pleased smile. "Pixelated, of course," he says virtuously.

"Our laws are so unreasonable about this kind of thing," Karinna says, pinching harder while you make more tiny squeaking sounds. "She's such a pretty little thing, and she so enjoys being seen. And yet your viewers aren't allowed to see this properly, because it's illegal to show on TV. You can show people being beheaded, but not this moment of happiness and pleasure. Tell me, do you think that it's reasonable to have laws like that, and people living in fear of breaking them? Share your opinion with us, if you would."

"I'd say that sometimes laws exist for a reason," the reporter says, still sounding virtuous.

"You don't think it's unjust that so many people break some stupid rule like that, and end up in jail and maybe on the sex offender registry, when nobody was actually hurt? When they never meant any harm?" Her voice is still caressing, and her fingers never stop playing with your breasts. "You do believe that's fair?"

"I'd say that the price of living as an adult in society is being bound by society's rules." You can hear the condescension in the man's voice, now.

Karinna Coral steps away from you, and walks toward the reporter, keeping a single pace's distance as she slowly circles him. "I saw the look in your eyes when you thought I was threatening you," she says. "That smug look, believing that any way I tried to fight back would just let you win even more. I've seen that look before, in other bullies who believe a little girl can't hurt them. They're all idiots, of course. Too lacking in imagination themselves to see all the ways they're vulnerable. There's so many things a little girl can do to truly injure someone, if she's clever, and willing to risk herself, and refuses to be bound by any rules you care to name." Her tongue emerges, runs deliberately over her pale lips. "There's nothing that turns me on more than the thought of wiping that smugness from a man's face. The stronger he thinks he is, the more he thinks he's safe behind what he thinks are rules, the more I can't stop myself from breathing faster when I plan how to crush him. My most treasured memories are the times I've snuffed out a grown man's pride between my fingers. It's how I make myself come when I play with myself."

Karinna steps away from the man and puts a hand on your shoulder. "By the way, this adorable exhibitionist here? Her eighteenth birthday is on Thursday, and you are legally guilty of broadcasting child pornography. Silly, I know, but the law is the law. I hope your bosses have fun explaining to the Federal Communications Commission that nobody was hurt and you didn't mean any harm."

The bald girl bows to the camera, smiling again.

Nobody tries to stop you when you take your own shaky bow, and walk away from the now-frozen reporter and the student crowd bursting into cheers and nervous laughter.

Even as you stride away as fast as you can, you can hear Karinna's shout rising above the crowd. "Anyone who thinks they can advance themselves by stepping on us: I'll take that as an invitation to play."

Uh.

Yeah.

That was a thing that happened.

You're sitting on the bench at the bus stop you usually take home, still naked, because dressing yourself seems like too much brain-effort right now. There's one other guy at the bus stop, standing by the signpost, who occasionally glances in your direction. You made yourself smile at him, so he would know it was all right.

You've just paraded yourself naked in front of literally hundreds of people, plus the television cameras. Then you got molested by another girl, also on television.

There's a part of your brain that thinks you ought to be outraged and screaming about sexual assault and…

You don't know how to feel about this. If a man walked up to an ordinary pretty girl and grabbed her breasts, she'd know what was going on, she'd know that this was a bad man deliberately assaulting her. There'd be no questions about whether she'd been wound up with sexual tension, secretly wishing that somebody would do something to her, and then an unearthly power placed the man there only to serve her own desires.

You can't deny that you were already… wound up, when it happened.

You look up at the guy standing at the bus post. He seems to be looking in the other direction.

Your hand goes down to your naked pussy, touches it lightly, maybe a little too lightly, the tickling touch sends a shiver through you. Your outer lips are already wet. Maybe it wasn't enough to be visible. Or maybe it only happened when Karinna started touching you, using you like her personal possession in front of everyone watching. You're still not sure how you feel about that. You won't bother to pretend you weren't turned on, but there were other feelings and they'll take time to sort out in your head.

How much free will does somebody like Karinna Coral have in the presence of the Erogamer? Would somebody who knew the true story say that you raped her?

…you're pretty sure you should not be feeling guilty about that. Worrying about having possibly meta-raped Charles makes sense. That girl seems, uh, different. You don't even know how to describe the person who took your yuri-molestation-virginity. Mahou Shoujo Hannibal Lecter? She seized control of a student movement she'd heard about thirty minutes earlier, using rhetoric improvised from skimming their website and a series of outrageous lies? At least you think that's what you saw happen back there?

And why do you have a feeling that if yesterday you'd tried to look up a student named Karinna Coral, you wouldn't have found anybody. Or if she was there in the records, Karinna Coral wouldn't have been tall, or bald, or a sexual sadist, or able to commandeer student movements.

Is the Erogame wholesale editing people's personalities? Did you just conjure a whole new person named Talia Arrow and kill her? Was the Natural Sexuality movement already happening inside Norville U, and the Erogame just steered you into "inventing" what was already there…?

Somehow you suspect that the correct answer is "none of the above." Like your bullshit hair, the Erogame isn't running on different physics, it's running on different metaphysics. This is probably how physicists felt back when Schrodinger discovered that his cat could be alive and dead at the same time if he hooked it up to a radioactive substance, or, uh, whatever discovery it was that made physicists start talking in gibberish that no sane person would ever understand again. You have to admit you're not clear on the historical details.

However it works, what it adds up to is that the entire college campus is shifting more sexual along with you. It's a heavy, scary thought.

And yet… that's a good thing, you think? Probably? Sex is fun? It wouldn't be fair if you were the only student who could get away with going to class naked? More students experimenting and finding their own true natures is a good thing? So long as things are shifting that way because of metaphysical bullshit rather than mass personality editing?

It is a good thing. You think you can believe that. The other unnerving things the Erogame has done have all worked out well so far. Why would this be any different?

A tentative smile peeks timidly around the corners of your lips, unsure it's in the right place, but still present.

You accidentally did good today?

Ero Achievement: Jace Wayman will be masturbating to thoughts of you tonight. +50XP.

You look up and see that the guy at the stop sign is now looking at you. Looking down at you, rather.

At which point you realize that your hand is still lightly touching your pussy lips. Not moving, just resting two fingers on your labia, parting them obscenely.

You manage not to pull your hand away, or look away from the guy's interested gaze. You've done nothing wrong. You weren't actually masturbating in public and, and so what if you were, it still wouldn't be wrong.

And, uh. It seems that in the back of your mind is a new feeling, a new sensation you can experience at LST 15. It's not a compulsion, you could ignore it if you wanted. But it's gone past the sense of a zero on your orgasm scoreboard. You've been wound up for a while and now you're starting to have… naughty thoughts.

[ ] Suddenly a bus arrives! Ride it home naked.
-[ ] See if ERO 27 sends help your way.
-[ ] Shift to ERO 14 and masturbate at the back of the bus, trying to keep quiet.
-[ ] Stay at ERO 27, and masturbate not at the back of the bus.
[ ] Use Jace Wayman, it's what he's there for.
-[ ] Ask Jace if he's up for a quick fuck.
-[ ] Command Jace to lick you.
-[ ] Service Jace with a blowjob, and don't come yourself. You're, uh, interested in this new feeling of being all wound up, and you don't want to send it away just yet.
[ ] Call Charles on the phone and tell him about how bad you're being, while you masturbate to orgasm at the bus stop with Jace watching you.
[ ] Get dressed, downshift to ERO 14, run home in high heels, and masturbate safely in your bedroom. You're not hiding, you've just decided that, on reflection, that is still who you are.

3.4.1*** [CA, JW]: Tangled Desire

Three-part update, more parts incoming. Also testing out locking the final vote for 8 hours to allow discussion.
All of this is just where the story went. I wasn't trying to make it happen, it just did.

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 35 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1

[X] Call Charles on the phone and tell him about how bad you're being, while you masturbate to orgasm at the bus stop with Jace watching you.
No. of Votes: 14
Bob Saget
BastetsChosen
DB_Explorer
Elitist Oars
Flashbunny
Gamerlord
GulibleLeprecon
january1may
Moccanime
mpop
MrBTXz
NotAnHiro
pepperjack
wasprider

[x]get dressed,Downshift to ERO 14, run home in high heels, and masturbate safely in your bedroom. You're not hiding, you've just decided that, on reflection, that is still who you are.
No. of Votes: 10
fictionfan
farsan
Gingganz
Goldenlima
KBob
kimagurena65536
Raron
Riders of Nod
UndecidedDice
Xenia

[X] Suddenly a bus arrives! Ride it home naked.
-[X] Stay at ERO 27, and masturbate not at the back of the bus.
No. of Votes: 6
ScrewFate
012345
Flashbunny
Linarka
Spectral Waltz
VanillaTentacle

[X] Use Jace Wayman, it's what he's there for.
-[X] Service Jace with a blowjob, and don't come yourself. You're, uh, interested in this new feeling of being all wound up, and you don't want to send it away just yet.
No. of Votes: 3
zup
Budda002
Tesla

[X] Get dressed, downshift to ERO 14, run home in high heels, and masturbate safely in your bedroom. You're not hiding, you've just decided that, on reflection, that is still who you are.
-[X] Okay. Call Charles on the phone and talk with him about what you're doing when you do. Follow any orders he might give. That's... also who you are.
No. of Votes: 1
Sirrocco

Total No. of Voters: 33

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (22,500 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 181/270
SUB: 172/340

BOD: 21
LST: 15
SED: 14
FUK: 13
PRV: 19
ERO: 27 (14)

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $1545

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

You remain still except for your eyes, which rove over the guy standing in front of you. Black jeans, nice-but-casual brown shoes, you can't tell much about his upper body underneath the stylish black jacket, and a thin, angular face.

What do you want from this man the Erogame is offering up to you? The thought of shyly asking him for a fuck rises into your mind, accompanied by a picture of you turning around and placing your hands on the bus bench, offering yourself to be taken from behind. This mental picture is instantly rejected, for reasons you don't fully understand. It doesn't seem to appeal to any part of you. Maybe vaginal intercourse still means something to you emotionally… or maybe it's not that. Ordering him to lick you seems equally unappealing.

…kneel submissively before him, fellate him until he comes, don't touch yourself at all, and stay all wound up?

This, uh, well, there's certainly a part of you that finds this to be an interesting sexual fantasy, but it doesn't seem to have a majority vote in reality.

Maybe you should just take the bus home.

Naked.

At ERO 27.

And masturbate where everyone on the bus can see you.

…Maybe it would not be a good idea to ignore this tangled knot of lust inside you. What Karinna Coral did kinda messed you up, winding strings of arousal and pain around the conflicts of not knowing if you were being assaulted or serviced. You're not going to be able to sort that out in your head until after you… untangle.

If you could have literally anything you wanted from "Jace Wayman", if ERO 27 let you come up with any backstory you wanted and have it turn out to be so, what would you want him to be?

You'd want him to be Charles.

Ha. Haha. Ha, ha, shit. You've got it bad.

You crane your head to look around. The bus stop impinges on the end of a loop into campus, placing it out of the view of any main roads. There are campus paths that go past here, but nobody seems to be on them. Improbable, really. There's also a screen of trees behind you that might possibly be denser than you remember them being a week ago.

You cast your eyes back to lock gazes with the man watching you, and smile for him again.

And you start stroking your fingers over your pussy.

Gently, gently, you didn't even mean to start teasing yourself, just to show the watcher what was about to happen and promise him a show. But the light tickling touches of your hand are already sending shivers through you. You're sensitive when you're all wound up like this, tense and wet.

A little whimpering sound rises up in your throat, and you let it out for your voyeur to hear. Your left hand moves up to pinch your nipple, pinch it the way your molester tormented it before, and another sound comes from your lips.

You definitely have your watcher's full attention now. He's staring at you with his lips parted, his breathing is coming faster, and you think that might be a tent in his jeans.

Without taking your teasing hand from your pussy, your left hand struggles with your new backpack, trying to open the zipper on the side pocket. It's not easy with one hand, but you eventually get out your cellphone.

Entering the phone password isn't easy either. Especially with your right hand distracting you. Your right hand is starting to be cruel to you now, giving your clitoris a quick, hard, half-painful rub before going back to teasing your pussy lips.

Your left hand navigates to the contacts list, and makes a call.

Charles picks up after the second ring.

"Starry?"​

"Hi, Charles," you say. Then you have to close your eyes and swallow.

How. How can you have wanted to hear his voice so much. It hasn't even been 24 hours.

Fuck.

"What's up?"​

"Hey, Charles," you say, your gaze still watching the guy watching you masturbate. You rub your clit quickly, so you can have a gasp to voice into the phone. "I've just---uh---had an interesting day. Very, uh, improbable, if you take my meaning. I got molested by a girl---oh---but she didn't make me come, she just teased my nipples and hurt them a little, oh. Left me all wound up. So now I'm sitting naked on the bench by a bus stop and playing with myself. There's, uh, a man watching me from a few steps away. I wish he was you. Oh. Oh."

The watcher grins widely at that.

There's a silence from the phone. Then a sigh.

"As God is my witness, I don't know what to---"​

"Oh! Oohh. UH. Sorry, I didn't come just then, I just got oh, a twinge. It made my legs tense up. I was already wet when I started touching myself. Oh. I'm sorry, I'm not distracting you from something, am I?"

"Improbably, I'd just finished pulling into a travel center lot exactly when you called."​

Thanks, ERO 27. "I, uh, I wish so much you were here, I'm so tangled up inside after what happened today. I need you to fuck it out of me. Or, or I wish you could hurt me a little. Just a little. A little more than the girl who molested me. Like pinching my nipples harder than she did. Uhhh. I'd do it to myself if you told me to, but, mm, both my hands are busy. Mmmm."

The watching guy reaches an open hand towards your breast, raising his eyebrows in silent question. You shake your head.

"Well, if your goal was to turn me on, you succeeded."​

"Mmm. I'm glad. Oh. I, I wish I could, uh, blow you. Service you. Ooooh. It would feel so good to make you come. Uh. Do you wish I was there to suck you off right now?"

There's an inhalation of breath on the other side of the phone, then silence, then a cautious voice.

"If I say yes, are you going to materialize inside my car?"​

"No, oh, OH, oh, no, just, just ask you, can you, oh, can you touch yourself too? Let me frustrate myself until that makes you come?"

The watcher puts his hand over the rising tent in his jeans, and meets your eyes.

You nod vigorously.

"Huh. This parking lot sure does look deserted. That also your work?"​

"Yeah. Mmmmmm. That was me."

The guy has both hands stuck into the pockets of his jeans, and the bulge in his pants is now squirming visibly. You didn't know guys could get themselves off that way. Boys are such perverts.

"Starry, you understand that I can't do this every night, right?"​

"You know you could have me blow you every night. I still mmmm want to." You pout at the phone, then stop when you realize that won't work.

"I talked to my boss. She said she'll see about routing me through Norville again, but my deliveries are all rush orders so I don't know when I'll be in. Shouldn't be long."​

"Mm goooooood." You moan into the phone. "I'm close now. Oh, Charles, you're so mean, making me wait like this. Ohhhh!"

"Fine! Fine, damn it, I'll…"​

There's silence from the phone.

"Are you too shy to say it?" you say.

"Yeah."​

Fuck he's adorable. "Oh! OH! Shit, that was close. Oh, I'm so wound up. My pussy feels like it's burning." You're not using Edge Riding. If you come by accident, you can live with those regrets.

From the other side of the phone comes heavy breaths, and your legs tense up again.

"Tell me about how you were molested by a girl."​

You gasp. "Oh! Uh, it started when I was walking nude through Norville U."

"Starry, were you being bad today?"​

"Mm! Yes. Very bad. Very naughty. You could punish me by telling me I can't come and have to go to bed horny." SHIT WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY.

Silence.

Then:

"First I'll have to know what misbehavior I'm punishing."​

"OOHHHH! Fuck. Shit. Uh. I was good for, for most of the day, but then I stripped off my clothes in the university library, and, there was a protest march against sexuality oppression, so I marched nude at the head of that."

"Only you, Starry."​

"It wasn't only me. There was this other girl. Her name is Karinna, and she's tall and has a lot of presence, and she was wearing a beautiful black dress full of tracery before she took it off. She doesn't have any hair on her head but she does have hair elsewhere. She's prettier than I was yesterday but not as pretty as I am now. She felt me up in front of everyone, and ran her hands all over my breasts and nipples. And she tweaked them and pinched them and rolled them and it was like 'ow' and 'oh' at the same time. I'm sorry you weren't there to see it."

"You've stopped moaning. Are you sure you were okay with all that?"​

Fuck perceptive boyfriends. "I was so caught up in remembering I forgot to play with myself. I'll fix that." Your right hand begins to move more vigorously, plunging in and out of your pussy as you hold the cellphone near so Charles can hear your squishy sounds.

Charles's voice is tinny, coming from further away.

"You're not fooling me, just so you know."​

God damn it. You lift the phone back up. "Fine, yes, there were some complicated ambiguous feelings I'll sort out later. Right now I just want to get you off, though. Please?"

"Is this my fault for weakening your defenses?"​

"No! Seriously, no! You helped protect me, helped a lot, more than I can easily describe to you. Charles, please, I don't want to talk about this right now."

"Okay. What other sinful perversions did you commit today?"​

"That was the main one. Then I went to a bus stop, still naked, and started masturbating there. With someone watching me. He has his hands in his pants right now." Your fingers are rubbing over your pussy but it doesn't feel the same as before. You think you know what has to be done to fix that. "Uh, you should tell me to get to the edge again."

"Don't give me orders."​

Your brain skips a heartbeat and you blurt out "Sorry I didn't mean to I just mean I need you to tell me to do it because I wasn't---"

"Fine. Don't do that again. Now get close to an orgasm and stay there."​

The words travel straight down your spine, and you're moaning into the phone shortly after. You can't keep control anymore. Edge Riding, your lips barely shape the words, and then you start whining in earnest.

"Oh f-fuck, fuck, you bastard, telling me to ooohh, to stay on the edge, fuck, FUCK, shit OH FUCK---"

Your moaning stops so you can inhale, though your cruel hand never ceases in its torment of you. In the brief pause you hear a low, male grunt from the phone and it feels like that almost sends you over the edge despite the Erogame's power. "SHIT!"

"Did you come?"​

The stern tone in Charles's voice slams you against the wall of your orgasm, a wave of fire spreading from your legs that makes you think you lost control, before it recedes and leaves behind a burning agony of not-yet.

"Did you come?"​

"A-almost. Oh, oh, oh, oh, OH," your hand, what is your hand doing, why is it torturing you like this, fast circles around your oversensitive clit and stopping only when you're on the keen edge to plunge into your aching emptiness to draw out more wetness to torment you, "p-please let me, let me---" you don't know whether the word on your lips is pause or finish, "oh please, please---"

"Stay very close and don't come."​

Again the words seem to travel down your spine in wave of almost-pleasure. "Ohhhh, ohhh, oooh, f-f-f-fuck, are you, are you nearly---"

"I'm taking my time."​

FUCK.

"Put me on speaker."​

"M-my phone, doesn't, do that, well, s-sorry UHHHH!"

"Put down the phone and pinch your nipple. Harder than that girl did. While staying on the edge. Do it now."​

Fuck fuck fuck fuck, oh god, you're going to die, you almost drop the phone as your fumbling hand places it on the bench, and then your left hand moves to your right breast.

It takes a second to screw up the courage to hurt yourself.

And then you do.

"Ah! Ahhhh! Ah ah ah!"

Your trembling fingers slip from your nipple, producing a pinching pang of sharper ow that makes your hips jerk on the park bench. Immediately you put your fingers back on the nipple and squeeze again. Applying steady pressure produces a growing ache that mixes with the tight knot of confused feelings inside you, tugging on the tangle. Oh god you need to be fucked, you need to be fucked right now.

Your eyes go to the guy watching you and you see him looking tenser, like he's getting close himself, there's sweat now on his forehead.

You pick up the phone and manage to say, "I d-did it." Words are starting to leave you.

"Good. I'm getting close, Starry, and I want to come while hearing the sound of you in pain. Put your phone down on the park bench and kneel down in front of it, so that you can play with yourself with one hand and hurt yourself with the other, while I listen. Pinch your nipple harder, as hard as you can. And stay very close to coming. Do it now."​

Your mind is whiting out, you've been right on the edge of orgasm for what feels like minutes. When you stand up you can barely manage to keep strumming your clit and keeping it in agony. You put the phone down on the park bench and kneel before it naked, your knees scraping against the cold pavement. You know the sight you're presenting to Jace and you know that if he came over and started fucking you, your traitorous body would just let him.

The phone waits before your lips like an idol to be worshipped. "I'm, I'm on the edge, and now, I'm putting my fingers, over my nipple."

You hurt yourself for Charles, for Charles's pleasure.

"Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah! AAAH! AAHHHH!"

You remember what Charles said about pinching your nipple as hard as you can. You squeeze hard. Harder.

"AAAAAHHHH!"

Your inexperienced fingers slip and bite your nipple with your fingernails. You want to shriek, but there's no breath in your lungs right then, all you can do is take a huge inhalation and in that space you hear a male grunt from the small rectangular idol you're worshipping.

Yes.

"AH! Oh, please! Please tell me when you're done! This hurts! AH! F-f-FUCK!" Your pinching fingers slip again, producing another sharp stab of pain. The aching fire in your center feels like you rested your pussy on a hot stove burner of almost-coming.

"Mm. That did feel good. Stop pinching yourself and stop playing with yourself. I'll text you tomorrow morning to let you know whether you can have an orgasm then."​

No, no, it's the wrong move, it's the wrong order, the emotional tangle inside you is stretched to its limit and you know on some wordless level that you have to---

Your fingers crush your nipple, sending a sharp spike of agony down to flavor the explosion starting in your pussy.

"AHHHHH! AAAHHHHHH!" Your body convulses in tight jerks, somehow maintaining its kneeling posture before the idol it's disobeying. Every muscle in your body seems to be tensed up and tearing at itself. "AHHHHH!"

When you regain self-awareness, you're still kneeling, panting in front of the phone. There's wetness on your thighs and sweat over the rest of your body.

"Did you just come?"​

Charles sounds stern, shocked, maybe even angry.

"Yes, I did," you say. Your mouth seems to have its own ideas about what to say next. "I said that I'd been bad, and you should punish me by telling me I couldn't come. I didn't say I'd listen."

There's silence, like the phone can't believe what it just heard.

"You can't make me obey you if you're not here. So I'm just going to keep on being bad until you get here. Maybe I'll play with myself again after I hang up."

"Don't you dare hang up on me!"​

"Why shouldn't I? You had your chance to bind me as your slave, and you didn't. I can refuse your orders any time I want." You pick up the phone with your non-sticky hand. "If you want me to be obedient, you'll have to come here and show me what happens when I'm not."

You press the red button on your phone screen.

You get up off your knees, your legs trembling and shaking, and turn to look over at Jace Wayman. He looks like he can't believe what he just heard either.

You walk over to him and say, in a soft voice, "Did you come?"

"N-no." His voice is stuttery, but still low and male. "I didn't want to, to---"

"Make a mess in your pants?" you say sympathetically.

He nods.

You come over to him and embrace him, making sure your sticky legs go over his thigh, and stick your left hand down his pants. You don't bother trying to get your hand beneath his underpants, you can feel the hard, straight erection beneath the cloth.

Your hand starts to move.

Jace Wayman looks at you with pleading eyes.

"I think you should make a mess in your pants," you say.

In the background comes the sound of an approaching bus.

Your sticky right hand goes up to the back of Jace's head, and you seize his hair, deliberately sliming it, as you push his head forwards and his lips into yours. He moans into your mouth and his body tenses up as the fabric under your left hand turns wet.

There's the sound of a bus door pssshing open beside you.

You keep on moving your hand, making sure you've milked your victim thoroughly, and that everyone sees what you're doing.

Then you step back, smile at him again, and turn to step on to the bus. The bus driver is staring at you and so are some other people.

"Wait!"

You look back at him, with one foot on the bus and the other on the street. Nobody tells you to hurry it up, oddly enough.

"Can I have your number? I mean I know you belong to someone else, it's just, it's just that I've never, nothing like this has happened to me before and I don't want this to be the only time it ever---"

You step forward and put your sticky right hand over Jace Wayman's lips.

"It's all right," you say softly, for only him to hear. "Things are changing in Norville U. For everyone. So long as you want it, so long as you have courage, you will have adventures like this again." The gentle warmth of that thought flows through you, a different kind of heat, touching briefly on something you can't name. "Don't be afraid of what might not happen to you, Jace Wayman. It's all right to have faith in that. It will happen."

Jace Wayman stares at you wide-eyed, frozen since you spoke his name.

You turn again, and board the bus.

You root around briefly in your backpack, beginning by wiping your fingers off on your skirt. Then you find your bus pass, which you flash to the driver with your fingers placed over the text showing your true name. He doesn't object.

Men and women stare at you as you pass to the back of the bus. You put down your skirt on the seat to avoid sliming the cushion, and sit down sliming your skirt instead.

As the bus drives off, a number of violet rectangles appear in front of you, the Erogame messages delayed while you were otherwise busy, showing that you've thoroughly blown your resolution for today.

You don't stop smiling as you read them.

Edge Self has increased by 1.

Edge Riding has increased by 1.

Tormenting yourself into a frenzy causes your LST to go up by 1!

Willingly hurting yourself for Charles's pleasure causes your PRV to go up by 1!

Conducting two men towards orgasm with your words and moans causes your FUK to go up by 1!

Taunting Charles's inner predator into a furious resolution to break you to obedience causes your SED to increase by 1!

Ero achievement: You rubbed a voyeur into a shameful pants-messing orgasm. +350XP.

Sharing the light of hope you've found with other souls, knowing that in the wake of your passage the world is changing for the better, causes your %%+++%#% to go up by +!

3.4.2* [WS,CA]: With Benefits

You unlock your front door and step into your house, shifting your hair to Earth's Tones as you do. It seems like weeks since you've been here. Being unable to do nothing sure makes for long days.

"Tadaima!" you call.

Winifred Sheen, on the sofa, looks up from her laptop as you pad over to the stairs.

You meet her gaze, feeling vulnerable. Yeah, you entered the house naked, visibly sticky around your legs, with your stained skirt draped over one arm. But your Mom knows what you do… doesn't she?

"Did you have a good day, dear? You look prettier than in the morning, if I'm not imagining things."

You nod. "It got a little complicated," you say. "I'll tell you all about it, but I should shower first."

"Of course, honey. What was that thing you said when you came in?"

"Ta-da-i-ma. Tadaima. It's Japanese for 'I'm home', and the reply is 'okaeri nasai' or just 'okaeri'. O-ka-e-ri, okaeri."

"Okairi," your Mom says, mangling it only slightly.

You've wanted to do that since you were sixteen. Mom would have participated any time you'd asked, of course, but that would have made you a weeaboo. As opposed to now, when nobody could possibly accuse you of being a poseur. And fuck anyone who suggests that erogame characters can be weeaboos too. If you can roofhop in high heels, you can damned well say "Tadaima" when you come home.

Your bare feet pad across the faux-stone floor. Ero Environmental Resistance seems to also charm against cold feet on bare floors, which is wonderful. And it makes sense, since it's rare to see a teenage ero character wearing fluffy slippers.

Halfway up the stairs you pause, looking back at the light illuminating your Mom's face from the laptop. She's tapping a key periodically, but not typing. Your brain thinks it recognizes that sound pattern. "Uh, Mom, what are you doing on your computer right now?"

"Playing an erogame."

This is a logical decision for a mother whose daughter has just come out to her as an erogame character, and you have no right to be surprised about it. Just… worried. "Which erogame?" Please don't say Bible Black, please don't say Bible Black…

"The one everyone online seems to say is the classic, Tsuckyheim."

"I don't think I've heard of that, actually," you say. Oh noes, what has your innocent mother been suckered into by the insidious lies of the Internet? "What's it about?"

Mom is frowning at her screen. "The viewpoint character just stalked a woman through the city and into her house. I was expecting him to rape her, but instead he used his knife and sliced her into seventeen pieces?"

After a second, you remember why this sounds familiar. "Mom, we need to have a conversation about romaji because that is not how you pronounce Tsukihime."

"I see," says your Mom. "Yes, we should talk about that serious issue."

"Look, that's not the genre I'm in. Tsukihime was extremely influential on the wider genre of visual novels, but it's a drama with sex scenes, not an eroge in the modern sense. Try… huh. Yume Miru Kusuri, A Drug That Makes You Dream."

"Yes dear. Please don't get sliced into seventeen pieces, dear."

"It's fine, Mom. She's the Princess of the True Ancestors, and she puts herself back together the next day."

"Can you do that?"

"I'm… actually not sure?"

"Please don't get sliced into seventeen pieces, dear."

When you're done with your (long, wonderful) hot shower, you realize that you didn't buy pajamas from Goodwill. Your closet contains items that could theoretically be draped around you, but you'd sooner burn them.

After some thought about what an erogame character would do in this situation, you take the bath sheet, wrap it around yourself, and look inquiringly at the steamy mirror… yep, there it is.

A skill has been created by a special action! Being naked except for a towel wrapped around you has created the skill Naked Towel.

Naked Towel: Lvl 1 (1%). Passive.

A simple wrap of a towel ensures that it doesn't fall off, or reveal anything it shouldn't… unless something goes wrong, of course. +2%/Lvl to your effective SED and +2%/Lvl to a viewer's effective LST.

Add your Naked Towel skill to your effective skill in Wardrobe Malfunction (passive and active) while thus garbed.

Now that you think about it, this is a mode of sexy clothing that will always fit your changing BOD. Maybe you should just always carry your towel with you? Or would that increase the chance of the Earth being destroyed by Vogons?

Your Mom seems unfazed at first by your appearance after you pad back downstairs. Then her eyes widen as she stares at your hair, which is just damp enough to prove that you are clean and freshly showered.

"You have an instant hair-drying power? Does it work on other people's---"

"Don't go there, Mom. Just don't go there. Trust me on this."

The two of you head into the kitchen, so your Mom can wash dishes and you dry them. There is a gentle reminder of your standing quest to find her a house-elf service submissive, and you gently remind Mom that this takes time even in an erogame. You assure her that you understand the appeal that a sparkling clean kitchen should hold for you, as well as for her. (She has a point.)

You try your best to unburden yourself of a considerably censored version of the day's events. You still don't actually believe your Mom has ever had sex. Maybe she read about it online and that's how she gave birth to you.

When you're done recounting your day, Mom stays silent while she squirts more dish soap on a sponge and washes an additional plate. "I'm not sure what to say about this," she says after. "Can I ask what you expected I'd say?"

"To think carefully about what suggestions I give the Erogame, and stay away from Karinna Coral?"

"The first one certainly sounds sensible." Your Mom picks up another bowl. "I think you know why charismatic liars are dangerous, so why wouldn't you stay away from Karinna?"

"I… don't think I'm attracted to girls, but---"

"Cindy. Honey."

"I'm sure I will be soon, but right now I don't think I'm attracted to girls. Uh, how can I say this… there's a way that Charles reaches me because he's masculine, and a way that Charles reaches me because he's dominant. What Karinna did to me went through the dom channel."

"Something about her appeals to you, though."

"What makes you say that?" you inquire cautiously.

"If she didn't attract you in any way, you wouldn't be feeling confused."

You sigh under your breath, and try looking into your mind. What is going on in there?

"You could be attracted to power, or danger," your mother proposes. "Or to people who don't ask permission to touch you."

The last point is coming scarily close to matters you'd rather not talk about with Mom. "I don't like that she made me respond sexually without me having… chosen her."

"Disliking what happened wouldn't make you feel conflicted. Dear, you may have some things you need to admit to yourself."

You want to complain about your mother pushing too far, too fast. But she's probably being wise. You're not sure how much time the Erogame will give you to sort yourself out. Dawdling might not be smart. For all you know, the game has a user-friendly easy mode during the first three days and it expires tomorrow.

"I'm going to play amateur psychologist," says your mother. "Try to answer this question without thinking about it too much. Ready?"

You nod.

"She's pretty and dominant and she can make your body respond. Why wouldn't you want Karinna in your harem?"

"She and Charles wouldn't get along at all." You think. "Unless I took the perk PhD in Harem Management." You think further. "And Charles might object to that because it would be mind control, which he doesn't like." You wish there was a perk called Everyone Is OK With Relatively Small and Innocent Instances of Mind Control.

"Don't think too much about this question either. Why would you regret not having her?"

"She can, she can do the thing. She can fight the System on even terms instead of just getting crushed. It has to be the Erogame, because that couldn't happen in real life, the good guys never win in real life. But if the FBI kidnaps you tomorrow, Karinna has a way better chance than Charles of being able to get you back. I have no idea how to start seducing and blackmailing Mr. Johnston into giving you a raise. She could probably write me a flowchart."

"That's just saying she'd be useful, though?"

"It's not just useful, it's, uh, uh, I find that, uh, attractive." You pause to think about this. "But she did pinch my nipples without asking and that probably means she's not a good harem candidate."

…though Charles did worse, from his standpoint. Even if you gave him better reason.

It seemed manly when Charles took responsibility for raping you to save the world, if you're being honest with yourself. Are you being sexist here? Or just heterosexual? 4 more points in LST and you might see Karinna in a much more romantic light.

Your Mom has moved on to the silverware now, running the soapy sponge back and forth over knives. "Sweetie, have you considered that Karinna might be your archnemesis?"

"…what?"

"Maybe she's being introduced as the villain taking over your school, not as somebody to add to your harem."

You consider this suggestion in dismay. That… doesn't ring false. "I really hope that's not true because there's no way in hell I could beat her!"

Your Mom smiles, though she seems a little worried. "It wouldn't be much of a story arc if you started out by being able to beat your nemesis right away. But you can level and she can't."

The horror of this begins to dawn on you. "Mom, if she ever realizes that she's my nemesis, she'll just shoot me before I can level!"

Your Mom gives you a startled, concerned look. "She's still a girl in college. Isn't she?"

"You didn't hear her talk! Her whole theory of war is to directly attack the enemy commander, and she, quote, refuses to be bound by any rules you care to name, end quote. She'll eat me! Not eat me out, eat me with fava beans and a nice Chianti!"

"Then make sure she never finds out she's your nemesis." Mom frowns thoughtfully. "Or if she's already pinching your nipples, maybe she'd be interested in a warmer relationship than that? Maybe you can be…" Your mother thinks for a second. "Nemeses with benefits."

This… also doesn't ring false, but… "I'd be scared to have sex with her. She doesn't seem like the type of sadist to be satisfied by just spanking."

Your Mom looks up from washing forks, and gives you a Look. "This should be common sense, but I'll say it anyway. There are things Frank would not have you risk to get him back. I don't want to be that parent who panics at every plot development, and I understand your erogame will probably have some scary parts, but I'll pull you out of college first if it seems like this girl is going to cut you into seventeen pieces. Don't argue."

"I'm not arguing."

"Good."

You sigh. "Maybe if I just ignore her, nothing will happen," you hope aloud.

"Dear."

"No, that might work! Characters that drive the whole story if you try to interact with them can just fade into the background if you don't get involved."

"Does it work on villains?"

"…sometimes? I should at least wait to see if the Erogame offers me more than one choice of archnemesis. Maybe there's somebody else I'd like better."

Your mother finishes washing the last spoons, and hands them to you to dry.

"I mean," you say, "I don't have to fall in nemesis with the first attractive villain who pinches my nipples. Right? Being nemeses is a long-term relationship. I should nemes-date around first and not get nemes-married right away."

"Honey, I'm not sure you're ready to be nemesing at all. Not until you have a heated affair with a police lieutenant that you'll be good friends with forever after, and also fall in love with a girl who turns out to be a magical ninja bodyguard."

"Am I allowed to prioritize that over finding you a house-slave and all those other quests?"

"Dear."

"I'm not hearing a yes, Mom."

It seems like it's been months since you actually slept in your bedroom, the bedroom in which you grew up. The thought brings a lump to your throat. The more so when you wonder how many times you'll do this again, before you move out. On the wall above your bedside is the print of Hikaru with Sai that's the closest you've ever come to decorating the walls, and on other walls a few old framed landscape photos that have been there for as long as you can remember. There's a lone bookcase full of old books from before tablets became popular, mostly children's books, a little fantasy and science fiction, a handful of relatively-cheerful thriller novels. Your copy of One for the Morning Glory, that cracked in half long ago and is held together by transparent scotch tape. There's the desk and its cup of pens, and the desk chair that creaks slightly when it swivels. There's your closet, full of clothes that you want to burn, but realistically somebody else could use those clothes. Unless you can wipe out obesity from the planet, one way or another; but Charles has made a convincing case for waiting a couple of days on that.

You turn on the warmly colored table lamp on your nightstand, and then traipse back over to the wall switch to banish the bluish light emanating from the fluorescent tubes on your ceiling. When you were a child, the fluorescent fixture was an unusually bright and nice light, installed by your Dad with love to make your days cheerier. Now the obsolete technology is just that much harder to maintain, and your family has neither the money nor the Dad for an upgrade.

You sit down on your bed, which creaks slightly. The mattress is a sinking old spring that doesn't compare well to the Godly Bedding at the Norville Arms-Marriott hotel, which you presume they obtained by completing a challenge from the ruler of the netherworld.

You strip off your towel, making sure to note where it is. Then you turn out the lights, and curl up under a threadbare blanket that served you well when heat was your mortal enemy. Tonight you'd need another blanket to put on top of this one, to resist the chill, if not for (you suspect) the blanket clinging thinly enough to your bare body that it would count as "inappropriately dressed" if anyone were there to see.

Within the darkness, the day's events run through your head in a chaotically itemized list, checkboxes ticked for sanity versus non-sanity and then balanced in ratio, outcomes noted and analyzed for lessons, your mind trying to sum it all up into a verdict that takes into account more than just stat gains.

A quarter hour later, you sit up in bed and turn on the light again.

You can't fall asleep like this.

According to your mental accounting, you did something terrible today. You've tried arguing with yourself that it wasn't terrible, and you're not winning the argument.

You take your phone from your nightstand, and begin thumbing characters.

< I'm sorry I came after you told me not to

< my Cinderella Sheen side kind of needed it

< things were tangled up inside after what happened to me, and hurting myself for you pulled on the tangle

< it would have been bad if I hadn't come and you weren't there

< I think I was messed up by being dominated by someone who wasn't you

< someone I didn't choose

< she used pain to turn me on before I was ready for that

< I needed to be hurt by someone I felt close to, more than she hurt me, in order to make things right

< I needed to come afterwards and not stay tangled up

< you can still punish me for it when you get into town

< is that okay?

You wait by the phone for what seems like minutes, but there's no reply. Slow apprehension starts to creep up as time goes by and the silence continues.

You shift your hair back up to The Coals Relighted.

< are you there?

< are things okay between us?

< I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight if I don't know we're okay

> Sorry, I was in the shower, just got out.

> Starry, what you did there messed with my head.​

Oh no. Suddenly all the imaginary awful consequences your mind was making up for your disobedience sound much more reasonable and scary. You shouldn't have tried to argue to yourself that it was nothing. Over the last couple of days' worth of good news you forgot that some fears turn out to be real.

< I'm sorry

< I'm really sorry

< I didn't mean to mess with your head

< are you okay?

> If you needed to come that badly, why did you suggest that I punish you by making you go to bed horny?​

< I shouldn't have said that

< it was the wrong suggestion

< I said it without thinking

< my mouth is dumb sometimes

< I'm sorry

> Starry, that seriously fucking messed with my head. I thought you were obeying me and then you disobeyed. It felt like I was on a roller coaster that made a 180-degree turn and sent me flying in the other direction.

> I'd have been fine with needing to be there in person to force you into obedience, IF I'd known to expect that.

> Instead you offered to obey me, and then suddenly you didn't. That is NOT ACCEPTABLE. I'm having trouble putting into words how much that is not acceptable. I'm new to all this and still working things out in my own head. There was a part of me that was happy that you were offering yourself up to me, and then that turned out to be a lie and that part was VERY NOT HAPPY.​

Sadness, terror, and guilt would be choking your throat if you were trying to speak. No, no, no no no.

"Penitence," you whisper desperately. Please let the skill work for this, oh please. "Penitence, penitence, penitence!"

< I'm so sorry, please tell me how I can make things right, I'll do almost anything

> I don't think you should say that to me right now.

> That part of me is blindly furious. It wants to hurt you more than I think is reasonable.​

< your inner predator wants to break me to obedience

> Are you reading my mind? Please stop.​

< sorry

< I wasn't exactly

< but sorry

You swallow hard, and then press more keys on your phone.

< maybe you should just do whatever you want to do to me

> Starry, you're also Cinderella Sheen. If a girl pinching your nipples was enough to mess with your head, you need to be more cautious about what you can take.​

< I know I'm not mentally invulnerable

< I'm saying maybe you should do it anyway

> Oh. Huh.

> Well, part of me is a little less blindly furious now that it sees the lengths that you're willing to go to in order to make amends.

> The rest of me is seriously worried about the degree of recklessness and maybe psychological dependency you just implied.

> You sound like an entity that did end up bound to me on some level, even if she's not my slave. Or a young girl who fell for me, and is terrified of losing me, and will do unwise things because she's frightened.​

< there's some of that second one, but it's not the only reason

< this is hard to explain

< please give me a moment

It takes more time than it should to organize your thoughts, to look away from fear chasing guilt around in a circle.

< somebody touched me without asking today

< it wasn't just bad, I could have handled it easier if it just felt bad

< it confused me inside

< that's scarier

< to my improbability field, my wanting sex and my not wanting sex

< are like two different colors of socks

< they go with different outfits, so it keeps track of the difference, but that's about it

< eventually people who aren't you will hurt me

< somebody who isn't Charles will break me to obedience

< like I'll end up in some crime lord's facility being trained as a sex slave, I think that's going to be a type of thing that improbably happens to me, if only temporarily

< please don't feel bad about not being able to protect me from that

< I'm pretty sure that nothing of this Earth can stop it from happening to me eventually

< my life is just going to be too

< uh

< enriched with diverse experiences

< so before that happens

< I want to first have the memory of somebody I love forcing me to obey

< somebody that I chose myself and of my own will

< I feel like it will definitely be better if you do the scary things to me first

< it's scary either way but it's much much better if it's you

< but

< I think I can stay sane even if you don't do that

< the fate of the world doesn't depend on you doing this

< I think that I'm stronger than that now

< that even if I break, I won't shatter

< and I'll be okay in the end either way

< so you don't have to do this if you don't want to

< but if you want to, maybe you should

There's a long pause.

> Rushing this doesn't strike me as wise.​

< I know

< it definitely wouldn't be a good idea if both of us are unready at the same time

< I'm sorry, that whole suggestion was probably stupid of me

< it's probably too big of a step for me right now

< I know I'm not ready

< just

< I don't trust my improbability field to wait until I'm ready either

< maybe we should be a little less cautious than we'd be if there wasn't this future hanging over me

< listen a little more to our crazy urges and a little less to common sense

< the path of sanity isn't always the path that seems safe or normal

< or come to think of it

< safewords are a thing you know

< uh, do you know about safewords?

> I think so. Say how you think it works, to make certain we're on the same page.​

< I pick a word I won't say by accident during sex, like "tentacle"

< no that's a bad example, let's say "cauliflower" instead

< and if I say that, then you stop whatever it is you're doing, and let me out of my chains, and check if I'm hurt, and give me a hug

< and that's supposed to be an absolute rule, even if you don't see what could be going wrong

< so you could just start to do what your inner predator wants to do to me, and I'll safeword if I can't handle it

> Yeah, that matches my understanding. Cinderella Sheen was into some interesting reading for a virgin, wasn't she. Let me think about this.​

Another long pause.

> I'm not sure I trust myself to stop when you use your safeword.​

You manage to refrain from typing "lol" or "yeah right". Just who the hell does Charles Adan think he isn't?

< well, I trust you a whole lot

< even if you don't believe in yourself, believe in me who believes in you

< and if I'm wrong, I'll take that risk, and you can tell me "I told you so" afterwards

< my safeword is

A shiver goes through you, a shoulder-shaking shudder.

You're not sure you're ready for this step.

You can somehow feel that there's no going back.

Although actually, the entire point of a safeword is that it makes it possible to go back if you turn out not to be ready.

< "frankweed"

> I'll remember.

> Why "frankweed", if I may ask?​

< it's my father's first and middle name

> Ah.​

You take a deep breath, and type the words.

< how can I make things right with you?

< what does your inner predator want me to do to pay for how I hurt you?

< please tell me what to do…

You swallow hard. All you know about BDSM is stuff that somebody mentioned on Tumblr, but that's a fair amount because Tumblr is endlessly fascinated with talking about BDSM. You know that what you're about to do is significant. Not the same as getting married, but more than 5% of the way there.

Then you type the final word, and send the text.

< please tell me what to do, sir

There's a long pause.

> I don't think it's wise for me to try venting my anger on you from a distance. I think it will be harder to satisfy if I'm not there in person.

> This is all something I should think over and not do in haste.​

You don't type anything, even though tears are forming in your eyes.

Then your phone chirps again.

> But that doesn't mean you can get away with what you tried. You offered to go to bed horny. You WILL go to bed horny.

> You will get close to an orgasm and stop. You will get close to an orgasm and stop. You will do that one hundred fucking times and then you will STAY on the bare edge of orgasm for ten fucking minutes.​

Oh, s-shit, f-fuck, you can't say this isn't justice but FUCK.

> You will pinch both your nipples, HARD, for a count of ten seconds, after every time you almost come.

> During the final ten minutes you will use your free hand to pinch the left nipple for a count of ten, then the right nipple for a count of ten, switching back and forth, over and over. If you're not in fucking agony you're doing it wrong.​

FUCK.

> To check, will you heal overnight from that?​

< yes sir

> Then set another timer and use your fingernails for the last two minutes of pain. Don't hold back.​

Oh no.

>After you wake up tomorrow morning, you will slowly and luxuriously play with yourself, taking your time and enjoying yourself, fantasizing about whatever turns you on, letting it build up gradually, and winding all that built-up horniness into a beautiful explosion that leaves you happy and relaxed.

> Stop just as you're about to have that wonderful orgasm.

> I would have let you come the next day if you'd been a good girl. Think about that when you stop.

> Afterwards, lie down in your bed and try to relax all of your muscles as best you can. Breathe deeply and slowly, let the tension fade out of you.

> Then start again from the beginning.

> Repeat that 10 times. I expect you to spend at least 30 minutes.

> And then go about the rest of your day.​

Oh GOD.

< sir I'll be a complete mess

> Good.

> You need to regret what you did.​

< yes sir

< I will

> Just to be clear, that is not what my inner predator wanted to do to you.​

It's hard to screw up the courage to type what you type next, but you need to say this.

< um

< sir

< if at all possible I would like your permission to still end up involved in sexy shenanigans tomorrow

< that's integrated into my existence on a basic level

< it's not something I should try to stop doing because I'm being punished

< sexy things may happen to me even if I try to hide in a library and read

< orgasms may happen

< is that okay?

< I really hope it's okay

> I won't mind if you're forced into an orgasm. You can't ask for it, or try to make it happen on purpose, and I'd like you to try to hold back as much as you can. Aside from that, do what you need to do. Does that work?​

Oh fuck your life.

< yes sir

> Good girl. I think that's enough to make things right between us for now.​

< sir would you please masturbate to thinking about how I'm suffering for you?

< this will be hard for my Cindy side and I think it will help if she knows that you're getting off on it

> I will.

> Now go get started on your punishment.​

Your phone is quiet, at this time of night, and you don't at first notice the texts that appear a few minutes later, on account of your being extremely distracted.

> I miss you, Starry.

> I wish I was in Norville too.​

A skill has been created by a special action! Trying desperately to keep your whimpers soft enough not to wake up Mom has created the skill Muffled Moans.

Edge Self has increased by 1.

Edge Self has increased by 1.

Muffled Moans has increased by 1.

Edge Self has increased by 1.

Being an obedient little masochist causes your PRV to go up by 1!

Edge Riding has increased by 1.

Edging yourself into oblivion and going to bed with no relief, just the caress of your blanket on your body causing you to shiver with arousal, knowing that the next day will be worse, causes your LST to go up by 1!

You have acquired the status 'Teased'.

Sanity Day Take 2: Final results:

+2800 XP

+3 BOD
+2 LST
+1 SED
+1 FUK
+2 PRV
+1 ERO​

Accomplishments:

+ broke your mother loose from Erogame-trance
- triggered maternal insanity, got quests
- read a series of messages from alternate yous who weren't real and only one of them suspected they weren't real (but existential crisis was resolved quickly thanks to practice)
+ practiced running, bought more clothes at Goodwill
- took really fucking boring class on accounting systems
- stared at Felice who totally knew you were staring the whole time
+ studied history, which used to be even more awful than it is now
+ had epiphany about what you really wanted when you kept thinking "sanity"
- walked nude at front of protest march
- met potential nemesis-with-benefits, got molested by her on live television
- accidentally started pro-sexuality movement that might possibly spread beyond just Norville U
- delivered said movement into the domination of a sexual sadist with dubious ethics
- phone sex with Charles, apparently you're a masochist as well as a submissive, who could possibly have expected this turn of events
- rubbed off a voyeur into his pants and gave him your blessing
- rode home naked in bus
+ confessed sin, received penance, accepted Charles as your dom
- teased self into oblivion and went to bed horny​

Ratio of sane to non-sane events:

5 : 12​

Analysis:

maybe you took that epiphany a little too much to heart

asking random bystanders to join you on a nude protest march at night in fifty-two-degree weather was not something you should have tried on a "Sanity Day"

the Erogame fun train has no brakes, you will need to keep this in mind when embarking on any fun

if this is what constitutes a fucking Tuesday for you then maybe you need to try harder to slow down

actually if this is what happens when you're "trying to slow down" then maybe you should stop trying that

tomorrow is going to be interesting

Final verdict: today's experiment… failed.

Though to be completely honest, um.

Uh.

You kinda do feel saner now. You kind of… needed it. All of it. Being molested in public, rubbing off a voyeur into his pants, the pain and the submission. You've needed it for a long time.
Fuck your life.

4.0.3*: Golden Glow

You awake feeling a bit… sticky. The dreams you had are fading fast, but you murkily recall Charles using his mouth on you, telling you that you were allowed to come this time, only every time you were ready to come, you were walking naked through Norville U with spotlights on you and dozens of students looking. And then you dreamed you were reading a book only the pages kept moving around. And then Charles was fucking you, but you still didn't come, in your dream. And you know why.

Fuck status effects, anyway.

Info // Status effects // Teased

Teased: You have undergone 5 cumulative units of erotic teasing, with no relief for 0.4 days. Sexual stimuli impact you as if your LST were 2 higher, you can be aroused 110% faster, and once aroused you are disinhibited as if your PRV were 1 higher.

Decreased inhibition only applies up to perversions within the range of your PRV + 8, and further extremes are no more endurable for all your desperation. While under the effect of the Teased status, any wet dreams you have will end in further frustration, providing no relief. This includes any fantasies you enter using the perk What Dreams May Come.

With a sad, whimpering sigh, you reach over to your cellphone and discover it to be 6:52AM. You got to sleep late last night, you had homework and then it took you a while to fall asleep for some odd reason. And yet you're still feeling fully rested, like the Erogame secretly bent time to give you a full 9 hours of sleep. God forbid that your being teased into fucking insanity should have any downsides or realistic difficulties.

And now it's time for you to be punished again, punished even more.

You reach over to your nighttable to pick up your cellphone, and set a timer for 30 minutes. Then, your hands trembling, you set it to 45 minutes instead. You're still terrified of losing Charles over what you did. Maybe it will help to tell him that you were extra-good for him. It's not much of a difference teased-into-insanity-wise.

You put your hand on your pussy, finding it moist, sort of like your eyes. You have to try hard not to start sobbing outright, and it's not just because of what you have to do to yourself. You cried last night, when you started using your fingernails on your nipples, and it wasn't just from the pain.

"Edge Self," you whisper. You're not sure you'd be able to stop otherwise.

Slowly, slowly, you start to stroke your pussy. Stroke all around it, not touching the clit at first. You're already turned on, already wet, and even the touches on your labia feel good. You slow down more.

Your other hand scrolls through Tumblr on your cellphone, going through the softer BDSM blogs you discovered on Sunday evening. The pictures now all seem… interesting-er. A whimper escapes your throat, then a loud moan, then you frantically moan again lower as if to apologize. Oh, fuck that this skill pointlessly requires you to try to keep quiet. That it doesn't just erase the sounds. Oh, oh, oh.

Muffled Moans: Lvl 2 (64%). Active. 1 SUB / 35 seconds.

So long as you are trying hard to keep quiet, any moans that escape you anyway will fail to alert anyone in the next room over, however thin the walls. (Provided they are not actively listening, sexually aroused, romantically entangled, or otherwise interested in participation.) Louder cries will travel to other rooms in the same living unit, but not other living units in the same structure, or neighboring houses.

Oh. Oh, fuck. You wish Charles were here to fuck you. To tease you. You wish you were in chains again with Charles using his mouth on you.

The Tumblr feed in your cellphone is starting to just seem like a distraction. You set it aside, and think instead of yesterday's events, trying to wind up all the tension like Charles told you to do. Think of how you walked nude with so many people watching you. Stroke, stroke, your hand goes over your clit so gently, producing soft waves of pleasure instead of the almost-nothing you once would have felt from such a touch. A girl molested you on live television and dozens of people masturbated to it later. Mmmmm. You rubbed off a voyeur into his pants. You hurt yourself and hurt yourself and hurt yourself for Charles. Your nipples are all healed now, ready to be punished again if needed. You knelt naked before a bus bench, your knees pressing into concrete and your ass on display to anyone who wanted it, anyone who could have just taken you.

Something is building inside you, despite your efforts to go slow.

You let it build. Let it build. As gently as you can, given your traitorous hand's merciless, firm strokes. You have all the time in the world. All the time in the world to take all that awful horniness and tension and the wetness from the dreams, and build it up into a beautiful explosion. It will be so good. Your body is ready. So ready for this.

Almost there. Almost. You know what's going to happen despite trying not to think of it, despite trying to imagine what Charles instructed you to imagine, to believe that this going to feel so good. Oh. Oh, ooh, oh. You do your best to slow down your hand, to make that wonderful orgasm better. The orgasm is building, building, building. Surely the skill is going to activate any second. Surely. Oh. Oh. Warm spikes of pleasure are radiating from your pussy.

Your hand abruptly stops and your whole body jerks like a fish on a hook.

The burning fire stays for long seconds before it starts to fade, leaving behind desperation and a physical ache.

Tears are coming into your eyes. The term "edge" doesn't seem vicious enough for what just happened to you. "Lost orgasm," maybe.

As per Charles's instructions, you think about how good it would have felt to come, and how you could have come just then, if you hadn't been disobedient.

It takes time for your thighs to stop trembling. You keep your eyes closed, breathing steadily, trying to relax your muscles one by one. Relax your legs. Relax your thighs.

When your body seems about as relaxed as it's going to get, you reach down to your pussy. Your legs jerk the moment your finger gently touches your clit.

You keep touching yourself softly, even as more tears fall from your eyes. You're sorry. You're sorry you were a bad girl. You really wish you hadn't been. Really, really wish it.

Muffled Moans has increased by 1.

Tormenting yourself with exceptional cruelty causes your LST to go up by 1!

Teased: You have undergone 8 cumulative units of erotic teasing, with no relief for 0.5 days. Sexual stimuli impact you as if your LST were 3 higher, you can be aroused 140% faster, and once aroused you are disinhibited as if your PRV were 2 higher.

You keep your body still, trying to relax like you were told, as the unbearable burning glow of your last lost orgasm subsides a little more.

You pluck a kleenex from the box on your nightstand, and try to wipe off your hand as best as you can. You tormented yourself 15 times for Charles. Your cellphone shows that 57 minutes have passed. Mom should be gone by now.

Then you put your head into your hands, and start sobbing, and sobbing, and sobbing.

When the tears pass, you sniff, blow your nose again, and look at the golden glow of sunlight behind your windowshade like you've never seen light before. Everything seems so bright and beautiful now.

It's probably endorphins. Endorphins from spending so much time working yourself up and… you're not even coming close to fooling yourself.

Your mind only briefly tries to insinuate that this is PRV, or LST, or some hidden Erogamer's Mind skill that distorts your sense of self. You already know that it isn't, that this was in you from the beginning. It's why you spent six months playing eroge. Like a starving woman outside the window of a bakery, pressed up against a transparent screen she couldn't pass through, trying to eat the bread with her eyes.

You don't know how to name the thing you needed, except that it wasn't just submission. If submission was all there was to it, even you could have found an online dom. If it was just pain and masochism, you'd have looked at porn, not played erogames even though you didn't much like the sex scenes. It wasn't you teasing yourself, you couldn't have done that at any time and received this blessing. It's the whole last twelve hours, maybe the whole last three days. You still can't put it into words, maybe it doesn't make sense in the first place. There was something you were starving for, and you finally took a bite of it, and… and now you're crying again.

Your legs are still trembling in the shower stall, barely supporting you, as you take the shower that has become necessary at this point. At first it seems like the warm water is helping to clear your head, but every time the spray goes over your nipples it makes your body jerk again, and the rivulets of water running down you feel like a little caress every time they go over your clit.

And that's right. That's what should be happening to you right now. You should be stumbling around in a warm fog of tortured arousal. That's what would be happening to an erogame character after she tormented herself. That's what's on the other side of the monitor that you pressed up against for so long. This is how life should be. You don't know why.

You accidentally sniffle shower-water up your nose and go into a coughing fit.

And then you sit down and think about what to do today.

You tried to sit down to think in your desk chair, and it felt foolish, like that's not what a proper erogame character does after teasing herself silly.

Then you tried sitting on the sofa, and that felt like you were being extremely foolish, given that the desk chair didn't work.

Then you tried wrapping yourself in a Naked Towel and sitting on your front porch where any passing pedestrian or motorist could see you being sexy at them. Though you did downshift your hair to Earth's Tones first.

Which feels… like you're still not living this erogame correctly, but at least you're trying.

You know you should be worried about your thought processes. You know you should be more worried about your recent stat gains. You're just having trouble making yourself be scared.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

Raising your BOD to 21 has brought you to the point of being pretty enough that people actually notice it as very slightly surprising. You're the prettiest girl in the room, so long as the room isn't too large, and nobody else there is pretty on a professional basis.

You can increase this stat by using your body itself to bring happiness into the world, through the grace of your feminine form, its presentation and concealment, its motions and ornamentation. Getting naked and letting men perv on you works too.

Info // Character Stats // Lust:

A LST of 18 makes you as horny as an average 20-year-old man. Emphasis on average.

You gain in this stat by allowing yourself to feel your urges and wants and desires fully, and by following through on them. Or by deliberately driving yourself mad with frustration. It's two sides of the same coin.

Info // Character Stats // Perversion:

At a PRV of 21, you are now the most perverted person in the room, so long as the room isn't in coastal California. The sort of person who masturbates where strangers can see, if she thinks she can get away with it. Which, to be clear, is only noticeably unusual because your fellow perverts don't yet think they can get away with it.

You can increase this stat by listening to parts of yourself whose voices were previously drowned out by other parts; or by stepping off the roads you've always walked, and not immediately turning away from what you find beyond.

You close your eyes against the violet text, feeling your hands on your thighs beneath the edge of the towel, aware of the warmth where skin touches skin.

You tormented yourself for another's pleasure, and gained 3 LST in the process. You didn't have to do that. Not really. You could have told Charles… that teasing yourself would interact oddly with your mental health and improbability field, and that orgasm denial was dangerous for you? Maybe not. That would not have been a good thing for your relationship. Maybe you did have to obey those orders or risk losing Charles. Even so, you ought to have been more worried about the consequences, then and now.

And now you're sitting on your house's front porch in just a towel. With, uh, your legs spread a bit. And you're sort of damp down there, which you suspect will be a recurring theme today.

Why aren't you terrified that you're sliding down into a mindless frenzy of lust and perversion?

…it doesn't seem like enough to explain all this courage, but you are beginning to suspect you made a mistaken assumption about the Erogame.

You assumed that stats were like skills, that they accumulated their own equivalent of XP, that your stats would go up slowly in the background as you went around being perverted or lustful.

But it's seeming more like your stats go up when you push your limits, when you go further than you've ever gone before. Or when you make a sustained effort near your limits. You gained 1 BOD as soon as thousands of people saw your pixelated naked body on television. You didn't gain 1 BOD per minute past that point.

So if you go too far one day, you can take Wait I'm Not Ready For This, undo your most recent gains, and just… not push your limits further. And then you'll be fine, having found your place in the Erogame? Would that really work?

You'd still need to worry about spiraling descents of addiction and tolerance. But it's feeling less like stat gains are you sliding helplessly down a greased cliffside, and more like… they're a car that can accelerate really fucking fast, but you still make the decision to push the accelerator pedal.

Or it's like you're inside a shell of soft clay that makes way each time you push on it, deforming to give you more room so that you don't have to push as hard again next time. At first you were pushing desperately against the clay, because it was smothering you instead of protecting you. But then, even after you could breathe and you thought to yourself that it would be better to slow down, you somehow went on pushing…

…because when you're horny it always seems like a good idea at the time?

No. Well, yes. But also no. Sure, your inner voices vote for Sanity Days when it's a matter of principle, and then other voices chime in and go for the public masturbation once that's actually on offer. But that doesn't seem deep enough to be the true ultimate cause and actual history of this internal conflict.

You're no longer smothered in clay, but you still feel like… like a partially deflated party balloon that has had some air pumped into it, but still needs to inflate further to realize its proper shape?

You doubt the Erogame had to reprogram your brain to make you respond sexually to pain. You expect the masochistic circuitry was already laid down in the motherboard of your mind, even if it was turned off before, or receiving only a tiny trickle of sexual electricity. The Erogame isn't turning you into a masochistic slut, it's turning you into you. You just happen to have been a deflated slut balloon decorated with latent masochistic circuitry.

It's like how, in your past life, you were playing eroge and skipping the sex scenes. The sex scenes still belonged with the eroge and fit with the rest of the story, you just weren't horny enough to appreciate the full eroge. Only in this case, the eroge is your soul.

So it should be okay to keep walking further down this spiral of corruption, when in the depths of your mind you know what you truly need in the depths of your pussy. It's only after you take on your naturally inflated shape as a slut balloon, that it will be important to stop inflating before you start to feel stretched, and then horribly stretched, as one poorly-written sequel after another is tacked on to the eroge of your soul, and finally the floored accelerator overloads your circuitry with electricity and detonates the greased cliffside, blasting away every shred of your protective clay shell and leaving you naked before the glare of the colorless suns beyond whose light is an infinite frenzy of lust and perversion.

…sometimes you don't understand why some people become English professors if they'll just go around trying to stop people like you from coming up with awesome metaphors.

The Sun glows down from above with a bright promise, casting light all around you, sparking in shafts through the gaps between houses and glaring in shards of light from the glass of car windows. Even if there's nothing to see but the usual trees and sidewalks, parked cars and asphalt, the brick and tile of houses that have a certain sameness about them, it still feels like there's a newness to it. Even the unchanging Sun feels warmer on your skin, heating your outsides to match your insides. The world seems filled with infinite possibilities. You could just go from one house to the next, trying one door and then another, and sooner or later one of those doors would open for you, and reveal something lewd inside.

You're really really really fucking horny.

Whatcha doin' today? Besides being tense and wet and frustrated out of your mind, and not coming unless you're forced into an orgasm despite trying dutifully to resist.

(RANKED VOTE, PICK UP TO 3)

[ ] Visit the twincest twins in the Norville Arms-Marriott hotel. You're not hoping they'll tie you up and force you to come! Really! It just seems like the most reliable route to Lvl 10 and PERKS, since even "failure" comes with XP.
-[ ][TWIN] Use You Forgot To Lock The Door to sneak into their motel room while they're "busy". Try to spy before you buy.
-[ ][TWIN] Ask them who Beth Cordova was, and why they think of her when they look at you. You're sorry for overhearing but the thought was kinda loud.
-[ ][TWIN] Try to blackmail them by threatening to reveal their incestuous ways, maybe to the tune of $50 if they don't think that's too unreasonable. You need practice with that type of thing.
-[ ][TWIN] Use the Ero Force to run into them by coincidence inside the hotel, and let them seduce you.

[ ] Look for quests! But don't deliberately pick one that would obviously force you into an orgasm. You need to make it look like an accident to yourself, not just to Charles.
-[ ][QST] Around campus.
-[ ][QST] At the adult bookstore.
-[ ][QST] Wait, can you ask Mom to give you quests? Can you ask her to give you a quest for helping Felice?
-[ ][QST] Somewhere/somehow else? (Write-in.)

[ ] Fulfill your oath to take Blake's virginity! It seems wise not to procrastinate on that, in case you end up in a slave-breaking facility for a month and miss your window.
-[ ][BLAK] A simple, sweet encounter. And this is a special occasion, so you're sure Charles will understand if you fuck Blake extra hard.
-[ ][BLAK] It seems that Blake didn't trust your promise, or he just thought he should take responsibility himself, and now he's gone and… oh, this ship is not going to end well. This ship is not going to end well at all. He approached Karinna.

[ ] You still need to handle that dangling business with Nathaniel Miroa the drink-spiker.
-[ ][NAT] Handle this yourself. (How? Write-in.)
-[ ][NAT] Try to bond with Karinna over breaking Nathaniel together. It doesn't have to be you who suffers to satisfy her sadism, right?

[ ] Set up an online identity as a prostitute, see if you can get a client today. Like soon. Maybe try streetwalking if nothing shows up in the first few hours. Oh god you're so horny.

[ ] Look into dancing for a strip club! You've got the requisite stats now. BOD+$$$=WIN!
-[ ][STR] If anyone shows you how to grind on someone's lap, diligently follow the instructions without hesitating. A job's a job!
-[ ][STR] Avoid physical contact with customers. You're just here to show off your BOD and earn $$$.

[ ] SCIENCE! Experiment with your abilities, or with the Erogame more generally. How much XP do you get when you're fucked? Does it depend on who fucks you? Does it matter whether you climb on top or get taken passively from behind? Does it depend on what you're wearing? Does it matter if you tease them first?
-[ ][SCI] Write-in. (All votes must suggest an experiment! Acceptable suggestions are cumulative. If this doesn't win today, acceptable suggestions carry over to the next version of this vote, or to Cindy having a spare moment.)

[ ] Approach Karinna for pointers on how to seduce and blackmail…
-[ ][KAR] Mom's boss, into giving Mom a raise.
-[ ][KAR] A university administrator, into letting you drop your accounting classes mid-semester in a way that doesn't mess up your Pell Grant.

[ ] You know you promised yourself you wouldn't do this, but… if it's only worth 20,000 XP and produces increased relations with the Norville Redcaps, maybe the 'giftsex' really is just a bunch of guys fucking you roughly without taking no for an answer? That seems… scary but not unthinkable, in your current state of mind. That enormously valuable perk point is probably a reward for beginner's courage, and the quest could terminate at any time if the game decides you've outleveled it. It could disappear at Lvl 10 or PRV 22, for all you know. If you're wrong and things get… bad, then you can use stat points, and take Wait I'm Not Ready For This afterwards using the earned perk point. Or maybe just… endure.

[ ] Write-in (subject to Cindy and author approval)

Example of ranked voting:

[1] Spam spam eggs and spam.
-[X][SSES] Spam
[2] Spam ham and spam.
[3] Eggs and spam.
-[X][ES] Spam

Separate non-ranked vote: What will you be wearing?

[ ][CLO] Nice normal outfit from Goodwill.
-[ ][CLO] (Submit pic.)
[ ][CLO] Ero outfit.
-[ ][CLO] Dress like a slut.
-[ ][CLO] Sexy nurse.
-[ ][CLO] Naked towel.
-[ ][CLO] Clothing is a capitalist conspiracy.
-[ ][CLO] High heels and thigh-highs.
-[ ][CLO] A nice top above, only high heels and thighhighs below.
-[-][CLO] High heels, thighhighs, and a clearly visible vibrator.
The most popular normal pic will be selected if Normal wins, or the median-voted ero outfit (in order of increasing sexuality) if Ero wins. Hopefully I set up the partition correctly for tallying.

Again, voting does not start for another 8 hours since the timestamp of this post. Voting is now unlocked.

Spoiler: Author notes

All of this is just where the story went. I wasn't trying to make it happen, it just did.
But I'm not sad about Cindy feeling less conservative. I know in-story it's just Wednesday but it's also been 150,000 words. Yes, that is entirely my fault.

After this we start rolling dice again, or at least that's my plan. I wasn't doing that for a while, because core story events were taking place, and I kept finding myself strongly preferring one outcome. But the events above have multiple workable outcomes, or so I currently think. And if so, the dice gods rise once more. I might also be able to offer more choices and less massive updates, or at least I hope so.

By the by: Is there anything I should be doing to help QQers find this fic? Anything I'm doing wrong in terms of promoting active discussion, or how I handle votes? I'm new to these parts and could be missing something standard.

Shout-out to Sirrocco for mentioning The Erogame in their signature! I'm flattered and grateful.

4.1* [WS,CA]: Distracted

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (22,850 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 208/290
SUB: 370/390

BOD: 21
LST: 18 (21)
SED: 15
FUK: 14
PRV: 21 (23)
ERO: 27 (14)

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $1545

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 38 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1

Options:
Approach Karinna for pointers on how to seduce and blackmail…
Fulfill your oath to take Blake's virginity! It seems wise not to procrastinate on that, in case you end up in a slave-breaking facility for a month and miss your window.
Look for quests! But don't deliberately pick one that would obviously force you into an orgasm. You need to make it look like an accident to yourself, not just to Charles.
Look into dancing for a strip club! You've got the requisite stats now. BOD+$$$=WIN!
SCIENCE! Experiment with your abilities, or with the Erogame more generally. How much XP do you get when you're fucked? Does it depend on who fucks you? Does it matter whether you climb on top or get taken passively from behind? Does it depend on what you're wearing? Does it matter if you tease them first?
Set up an online identity as a prostitute, see if you can get a client today. Like soon. Maybe try streetwalking if nothing shows up in the first few hours. Oh god you're so horny.
Visit the twincest twins in the Norville Arms-Marriott hotel. You're not hoping they'll tie you up and force you to come! Really! It just seems like the most reliable route to Lvl 10 and PERKS, since even "failure" comes with XP.
You know you promised yourself you wouldn't do this, but… if it's only worth 20,000 XP and produces increased relations with the Norville Redcaps, maybe the 'giftsex' really is just a bunch of guys fucking you roughly without taking no for an answer? That seems… scary but not unthinkable, in your current state of mind. That enormously valuable perk point is probably a reward for beginner's courage, and the quest could terminate at any time if the game decides you've outleveled it. It could disappear at Lvl 10 or PRV 22, for all you know. If you're wrong and things get… bad, then you can use stat points, and take Wait I'm Not Ready For This afterwards using the earned perk point. Or maybe just… endure.
You still need to handle that dangling business with Nathaniel Miroa the drink-spiker.

Winner: Look into dancing for a strip club! You've got the requisite stats now. BOD+$$$=WIN!
[1] Canadiak
[1] ScrewFate
[2] Alkaiser009
[2] BastetsChosen
[2] Blackshard
[2] DarthSquidious
[2] dkljfda
[2] DocAutomata
[2] Epicr
[2] farsan
[2] Grollo
[2] KBob
[2] Krozart
[2] Malbutorius
[2] pepperjack
[2] Serenities
[2] Spectral Waltz
[2] wasprider
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Gingganz
[3] mpop
[3] Sirrocco
[3] VanillaTentacle
[-] Dreikanter
[-] gilgamekk
[-] january1may
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Snake/Eater
[-] Tesla
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

First Runner Up: Look for quests! But don't deliberately pick one that would obviously force you into an orgasm. You need to make it look like an accident to 『i』yourself,『/i』 not just to Charles.
[1] DocAutomata
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] Epicr
[1] farsan
[1] Gingganz
[1] january1may
[1] Malbutorius
[1] mpop
[1] Sirrocco
[1] Snake/Eater
[3] Alkaiser009
[3] Blackshard
[3] Grollo
[3] KBob
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Canadiak
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] dkljfda
[-] Dreikanter
[-] gilgamekk
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Krozart
[-] pepperjack
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Serenities
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Tesla
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] wasprider
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Second Runner Up: Visit the twincest twins in the Norville Arms-Marriott hotel. You're not hoping they'll tie you up and force you to come! Really! It just seems like the most reliable route to Lvl 10 and PERKS, since even "failure" comes with XP.
[1] BastetsChosen
[1] gilgamekk
[1] Krozart
[1] pepperjack
[1] Serenities
[1] Spectral Waltz
[1] Tesla
[1] VanillaTentacle
[1] wasprider
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] kimagurena65536
[2] mpop
[2] ScrewFate
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] Epicr
[3] farsan
[5] january1may
[5] Snake/Eater
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] Blackshard
[-] Canadiak
[-] dkljfda
[-] DocAutomata
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] KBob
[-] Malbutorius
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Third Runner Up: You still need to handle that dangling business with Nathaniel Miroa the drink-spiker.
[1] Alkaiser009
[1] Blackshard
[1] DarthSquidious
[1] dkljfda
[1] Dreikanter
[1] KBob
[2] gilgamekk
[2] Gingganz
[2] Sirrocco
[2] Tesla
[2] Xenia
[3] BastetsChosen
[3] january1may
[3] Krozart
[3] Malbutorius
[3] pepperjack
[3] ScrewFate
[3] Snake/Eater
[3] Spectral Waltz
[-] Canadiak
[-] DocAutomata
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Epicr
[-] farsan
[-] Grollo
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] mpop
[-] Serenities
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] wasprider
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: SCIENCE! Experiment with your abilities, or with the Erogame more generally. How much XP do you get when you're fucked? Does it depend on who fucks you? Does it matter whether you climb on top or get taken passively from behind? Does it depend on what you're wearing? Does it matter if you tease them first?
[1] kimagurena65536
[2] january1may
[2] Snake/Eater
[3] DocAutomata
[3] Dreikanter
[3] wasprider
[3] Xenia
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] Canadiak
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] dkljfda
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Epicr
[-] farsan
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] KBob
[-] Krozart
[-] Malbutorius
[-] mpop
[-] pepperjack
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Serenities
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Tesla
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fulfill your oath to take Blake's virginity! It seems wise not to procrastinate on that, in case you end up in a slave-breaking facility for a month and miss your window.
[1] Grollo
[1] Xenia
[3] kimagurena65536
[3] Serenities
[3] Tesla
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] Canadiak
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] dkljfda
[-] DocAutomata
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Epicr
[-] farsan
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gingganz
[-] january1may
[-] KBob
[-] Krozart
[-] Malbutorius
[-] mpop
[-] pepperjack
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Snake/Eater
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] wasprider
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Approach Karinna for pointers on how to seduce and blackmail…
[2] Dreikanter
[3] dkljfda
[4] january1may
[4] Snake/Eater
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] Canadiak
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] DocAutomata
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Epicr
[-] farsan
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] KBob
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Krozart
[-] Malbutorius
[-] mpop
[-] pepperjack
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Serenities
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Tesla
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] wasprider
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: You know you promised yourself you wouldn't do this, but… if it's only worth 20,000 XP and produces increased relations with the Norville Redcaps, maybe the 'giftsex' really is just a bunch of guys fucking you roughly without taking no for an answer? That seems… scary but not unthinkable, in your 『i』current state of mind.『/i』 That enormously valuable perk point is probably a reward for beginner's courage, and the quest could terminate at any time if the game decides you've outleveled it. It could disappear at Lvl 10 or PRV 22, for all you know. If you're wrong and things get… bad, then you can use stat points, and take Wait I'm Not Ready For This afterwards using the earned perk point. Or maybe just… endure.
[1] zup
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] Canadiak
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] dkljfda
[-] DocAutomata
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Epicr
[-] farsan
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] january1may
[-] KBob
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Krozart
[-] Malbutorius
[-] mpop
[-] pepperjack
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Serenities
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Snake/Eater
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Tesla
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] wasprider
[-] Xenia

Honorable Mention: Set up an online identity as a prostitute, see if you can get a client today. Like soon. Maybe try streetwalking if nothing shows up in the first few hours. Oh god you're so horny.
[2] VanillaTentacle
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] Canadiak
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] dkljfda
[-] DocAutomata
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Epicr
[-] farsan
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] january1may
[-] KBob
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Krozart
[-] Malbutorius
[-] mpop
[-] pepperjack
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Serenities
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Snake/Eater
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Tesla
[-] wasprider
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Task: STR

Options:
Avoid physical contact with customers. You're just here to show off your BOD and earn $$$.

Winner: Avoid physical contact with customers. You're just here to show off your BOD and earn $$$.
[1] Canadiak
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] dkljfda
[-] DocAutomata
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Epicr
[-] farsan
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] january1may
[-] KBob
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Krozart
[-] Malbutorius
[-] mpop
[-] pepperjack
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Serenities
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Snake/Eater
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Tesla
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] wasprider
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Total No. of Voters: 31

[x] SCIENCE! Experiment with your abilities, or with the Erogame more generally. How much XP do you get when you're fucked? Does it depend on who fucks you? Does it matter whether you climb on top or get taken passively from behind? Does it depend on what you're wearing? Does it matter if you tease them first?
No. of Votes: 1
Aule

[x]Normal Clothes
No. of Votes: 1
Dragonheart91

[x] First visit Blake, get his x2 XP nectar, then go visit the twins and enjoy the double XP
No. of Votes: 1
RatRats

Task: TWIN

-[X][TWIN] Use You Forgot To Lock The Door to sneak into their motel room while they're "busy". Try to spy before you buy.
No. of Votes: 8
pepperjack
Elitist Oars
gilgamekk
Krozart
ScrewFate
Serenities
VanillaTentacle
wasprider

-[X][TWIN] Use the Ero Force to run into them by coincidence inside the hotel, and let them seduce you.
No. of Votes: 5
Tesla
BastetsChosen
DarthSquidious
kimagurena65536
Spectral Waltz

-[X][TWIN] If (when) sexual hijinks happen, tell them that you are currently not allowed to come. Perhaps this way will make them work harder to bypass your restrictions?
No. of Votes: 2
farsan
Epicr

-[X][TWIN] Ask them who Beth Cordova was, and why they think of her when they look at you. You're sorry for overhearing but the thought was kinda loud.
No. of Votes: 1
Ephemeral

Task: STR

-[X][STR] Avoid physical contact with customers. You're just here to show off your BOD and earn $$$.
No. of Votes: 18
pepperjack
Alkaiser009
BastetsChosen
Blackshard
DocAutomata
Elitist Oars
Epicr
farsan
Gingganz
KBob
Krozart
Malbutorius
mpop
ScrewFate
Serenities
Sirrocco
Spectral Waltz
wasprider

-[X][STR] If anyone shows you how to grind on someone's lap, diligently follow the instructions without hesitating. A job's a job!
No. of Votes: 4
VanillaTentacle
DarthSquidious
dkljfda
Grollo

Task: NAT

-[X][NAT] Try to bond with Karinna over breaking Nathaniel together. It doesn't have to be you who suffers to satisfy her sadism, right?
No. of Votes: 19
pepperjack
Alkaiser009
BastetsChosen
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
dkljfda
Dreikanter
Ephemeral
gilgamekk
Gingganz
january1may
KBob
Krozart
Malbutorius
Sirrocco
Snake/Eater
Spectral Waltz
Tesla
Xenia

-[X][NAT] Try to bond with Karinna over breaking Nathaniel together. It doesn't have to be you who suffers to satisfy her sadism, ri
No. of Votes: 1
ScrewFate

Task: CLO

[X][CLO] Ero outfit.
No. of Votes: 15
ScrewFate
Alkaiser009
Blackshard
DocAutomata
Epicr
farsan
Gingganz
Grollo
KBob
mpop
Spectral Waltz
Tesla
VanillaTentacle
wasprider
Xenia

[X][CLO] Nice normal outfit from Goodwill.
No. of Votes: 11
pepperjack
BastetsChosen
cezyou
DarthSquidious
dkljfda
Dreikanter
Elitist Oars
january1may
kimagurena65536
Sirrocco
Snake/Eater

-[X][CLO] Dress like a slut.
No. of Votes: 7
Blackshard
DocAutomata
Epicr
Gingganz
KBob
VanillaTentacle
Xenia

-[X][CLO] Let's say something like this, for example
No. of Votes: 3
pepperjack
january1may
Snake/Eater

-[X][CLO] Clothing is a capitalist conspiracy.
No. of Votes: 3
ScrewFate
Alkaiser009
Grollo

-[X][CLO] Sexy nurse
No. of Votes: 3
mpop
farsan
wasprider

-[X][CLO] High heels and thigh-highs.
No. of Votes: 2
Tesla
Spectral Waltz

-[X][CLO] Wear a sweater!
No. of Votes: 2
Dreikanter
cezyou

-[X][CLO] This (what Sophie Turner is wearing), with a heavier coat of similar cut and a light white lab coat as alternate accessories depending on what sort of actions we are taking, as appropriate. Also, replace the flats with something casual with heels.
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536

Task: QST

-[X][QST] Wait, can you ask Mom to give you quests? Can you ask her to give you a quest for helping Felice?
No. of Votes: 13
Blackshard
Alkaiser009
DocAutomata
Elitist Oars
Epicr
farsan
Gingganz
january1may
KBob
Malbutorius
mpop
Sirrocco
Snake/Eater

-[X][QST] At the adult bookstore.
No. of Votes: 1
Grollo

Task: SCI

-[X][SCI] Take some time to study your interface, trying to get new windows to work with. Try to open a Relationship Screen, double tap names, check your erogame library for interface ideas... And as we are into it, try to open the Xtrmly srs bsns perk list.
No. of Votes: 2
Xenia
DocAutomata

-[X][SCI] Take some time to study your interface, trying to get new windows to work with. Try to open a Relationship Screen, double tap names, check your erogame library for interface ideas...
No. of Votes: 2
january1may
Snake/Eater

-[X][SCI] How many XP is getting someone to masturbate about you? If they’re male? If they’re female?
No. of Votes: 1
wasprider

-[X][SCI] How high do our heels have to be to qualify? Is it the physical presence of the heel, or the idea of the shoes as being high heels--i.e. would a broken off pair work (possibly relevant if a pair gets broken and we need to use the skill at the time)? Do platform shoes? Do stilts (if we can find any)? In a similar vein, does our dance skill help us learn and use Capoeira? Rhythmic gymnastics? (Martial arts rhythmic gymnastics? ) Can we create a musical skill? Can we use and or level it with songs/music of varying levels of suggestiveness? Will we get better at it playing Guitar Hero (or a spinoff) like DDR taught us our dance skill? Is singing under the same skill as playing an instrument or separate?
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536

-[X][SCI] Try to take advantage of Erogame Logic. The Erogame appears to come up with improbable events and then retroactively create reasonable explanations, but we were able to hijack this system last night. If we set up situations that cause people to wonder what's going on, can we then affect reality by providing a reasonable explanation? If so, then what are the boundaries of 'reasonable'? First test: go to the arcade, wait for a guy to do really well on a game, and then offer them some kind of sexual favour. If challenged, claim that you're part of a local government initiative to reward high levels of skill, then check if such an initiative now exists. This might work better if we get multiple people to help, to increase the implausibility of the situation.
No. of Votes: 1
Dreikanter

Task: BLAK

-[X][BLAK] A simple, sweet encounter. And this is a special occasion, so you're sure Charles will understand if you fuck Blake extra hard.
No. of Votes: 5
Xenia
Grollo
kimagurena65536
Serenities
Tesla

Task: KAR

-[X][KAR] Mom's boss, into giving Mom a raise.
No. of Votes: 1
dkljfda

-[X][KAR] A university administrator, into letting you drop your accounting classes mid-semester in a way that doesn't mess up your Pell Grant.
No. of Votes: 1
Dreikanter

Total No. of Voters: 34

Hello to our new readers from /r/rational! I've prepared a little greeting for you in the post after this one. Hope you enjoy it.

A grey-haired old man in a loud collared shirt walks past along the sidewalk, blinking as he sees you sitting on your porch in your towel. You give him a cheery wave and smile, and after some hesitation he waves back and proceeds along the sidewalk, glancing back occasionally.

You aren't literally, actually horny enough that you wanted him to come over and do you, but the thought did cross your mind.

A light breeze stirs the air, and your body twitches slightly as the gust goes underneath your naked towel and breathes ever so softly on what lies between your legs. You'd try squeezing your legs shut tight but that comes with its own problems.

So… w-what should you d-do on Wednesday. Right. It is a bright new day and you need to decide what to do. Besides being horny and frustrated and tense and wet and thinking about the warmth in your pussy and how much you need to come. Oh, fuck, you really hope this subsides after an hour. Subsides at least a little. You should not have gone that extra mile in teasing yourself.

That reminds you of one thing you need to do today. You pick up your cellphone from beside you.

< sir I tormented myself for you the way you said, building it up slowly and stopping right on the edge
< thinking about how I would have been allowed to come if I'd been good
< and then cooling down before starting all over
< I did it 15 times over 53 minutes because I wanted you to know that I was truly sorry
< it was hard
< I cried
< I'm very tense and frustrated now
< I'm sitting on my front porch in just a towel, and when there's a breeze I can feel it between my legs like someone is breathing on my pussy
< it's very hard not to touch myself
< I hope that it turns you on to think of me like this
< I'm sorry for what I did

There's no instant reply, but you resist your temptation to shift your hair out of Earth's Tones. This isn't about what you want.

It's difficult to consider your day's schedule. Your thoughts are always bending towards scenarios where you end up having an orgasm despite your dutifully not setting that up on purpose.

Like the twins at the Norville Arms-Marriott. You could visit them because you want 10,000XP or 20,000XP, it's a guaranteed Lvl 10 either way. That would be the only reason you went there. Your heart would be pure. You'd have no other intentions.

You'd go to hotel room 211 and the twins would just happen to be doing whatever naughty things they do. Something extremely naughty, to be worth so much XP. You would sneak in with You Forgot To Lock The Door , and you would see one twin tied to the bed while the other twin did… something. Pinching her nipples couldn't be enough for 10,000 or 20,000 XP. They must do something even naughtier. And then the other twin would catch you sneaking into her room, and tie you up too, and you'd tell her that your dom told you to try to resist coming and plead with her not to make you come, and she wouldn't listen.

…the problem here is that your mind is so horny that the rationalizations are transparent. Like even you can see what your mind is doing here, when it's arguing that, since what you want is perks, it's not your fault if the twins make you come.

You… do want to be honest with Charles. You want that even more than you want to come. You do. Really.

The breeze whispers on your pussy beneath the towel and makes your body twitch again.

N-no. You told Charles you'd do this. If you want to be a disobedient brat you can negotiate that later, but, but this isn't about whether you'll be a brattish sub or a dutiful sub, it's about building, building, some kind of BDSM-trust-foundation-thing, you can't think the breeze just blew again.

Your hands clutch at the edge of the towel.

You could go take Blake's virginity, now that you can. And it's a special occasion, so Charles would understand if you fucked Blake extra-hard. You'd try to resist coming but you wouldn't want to move your hips any slower on Blake's special day so the pleasure would build and build as you tried to hold it back and finally---

God fucking damn it! No. You should not try to have Blake's special day when you're like this. Maybe Blake will want to see what it's like to make you come. You don't want to have to hesitate if he asks. You shouldn't have this other stuff going on during Blake's special day.

Maybe you could devote this day to sciencing the Erogame. Like exactly how high heels need to be to count as "high heels", and whether your dancing skill applies to rhythmic gymnastics, and do you get more than 50 XP for somebody masturbating if they do it while you watch instead of later that night, and does it matter if they're male or female, or if they tease themselves first, or if you instruct them how to tease themselves. And how much XP you get for fucking someone, and does it depend on how hard they fuck you, or in what position, or if you don't come versus coming while trying to resist…

A little whining sound escapes your throat.

What do you have on your to-do list that doesn't involve an orgasm? There has to be something. What's left undone, what were you supposed to do that you haven't done?

…that GHB-drink-spiker guy. Nathaniel Miroa. He's still out there. He could target another girl at any time.

That does not feel like a sexy thought. At least you're not completely out of your mind.

Maybe Karinna would help you do something about Miroa? Her pretended persona implies she should be posing as the go-to person on campus for handling an issue like that. Maybe you could ask Karinna on a nemes-date where the two of you deal with Miroa together. It doesn't have to be you who suffers to satisfy her sadism.

You're not sure you're in the right state of mind to deal with Karinna, but it's the first plan so far where you could plausibly claim to have not expected it if she ended up forcing you into an orgasm.

What else do you have left undone?

…Felice.

The air seems a little colder, despite your Ero Environmental Resistance.

There's no logical reason to think Felice is in any imminent danger. You know there's no logical reason for it. Unfortunately, your scumbag brain has taken the next logical step of illogic, and suggested that maybe you now have a magical intuition for detecting impending deaths, and that this is why you are feeling apprehensive.

The worrying part is that you don't know how worried you should be about your worrying. If only you could somehow be certain you had no magical sense for approaching death, and no hint of whether it was nearing your friends. Then you could relax.

It's a reasonable priority. Unfortunately, you don't know of any way to get started on the Felice issue, except Lvl 10 and Mad Inventor, the road to which involves a severe risk of orgasms. And you can't just call up Charles and ask him for a dom's indulgence on Felice's behalf, because you'd be asking to get powerful enough to make unspeakable machines. That's not something Charles has the right to decide as your dom. So you can't raise the issue, or at least you can't think of how you could.

Maybe there's a way to help Felice that doesn't involve Mad Inventor, some other Erogame technique that would transform her? It doesn't sound impossible. But you're not seeing where to start that quest.

…huh.

You pick up your phone again, and text a different recipient.

< Call me when you have a chance?

The ringtone plays very shortly after that.

"What is it, Cindy?"​

Your Mom sounds out of breath. You make a mental note to next time say more explicitly that the issue isn't urgent.

"Mom, can you try assigning me a quest using your super NPC powers? I'm not sure if this works if I ask you to ask me, but I want to try."

"Is that all? Of course, honey."​

Now your Mom sounds relieved she's not hearing that you set the house on fire, got kidnapped by slavers, and started a zombie apocalypse. Really, you're eighteen now. Mom should have more faith in your ability to handle yourself in an inscrutable game laid down by powers utterly unfamiliar to humankind and without known limit.

"I want you to give me a quest to make Felice Williamson beautiful and healthy. Maybe there's a way to do it besides Mad Inventor."

There's a thoughtful pause.

"That's really clever, honey."​

"I know! Right?"

"Then hear me, my daughter, I give you this quest! Go forth, and in my name, make Felice Williamson beautiful and healthy! And then me."​

"Mom, could you please not… wait I think that worked! Just a sec, reading."

Quest: Better Than That Ponce

For thousands of years, alchemists and explorers have futilely spent their lives and their deaths seeking a Philosopher's Stone or a Fountain of Youth… an ancient quest that is about to end. Because an eighteen-year-old girl decided the sorta-friend who ate lunch with her wasn't pretty enough.

Your stats are too low for this quest. Requires ERO 29 and $2000.

"God dammit. Okay, that almost worked, but my stats are too low. It wants me to have ERO 29, which I guess means that this quest is just barely short of being physically impossible, plus two thousand dollars in the bank. I think it should work to help you too though, it said something about seeking the Philosopher's Stone or the Fountain of Youth?"

There's a pause on the other end of the phone.

"I know I ought not to be saying this, but I'm tempted to just give you two thousand dollars."​

"No, Mom. You shouldn't wipe out your emergency savings for this. It's my Erogame quest, I should at least try… uh."

"Whoring yourself out. Fucking strangers for cash. Dear, if you can't even say it, maybe you should reconsider doing it."​

"No, I mean, it's possibly not the best day for, uh, uh…" You'd managed to get your mind off that topic by thinking of the date rapist and then of Felice, but your mind seems very fast to get back on topic when the topic involves $2000 worth of men fucking your needy pussy.

"I thought you didn't get periods any more?"​

"No! It's just that I'd, I'd rather not have sex with anyone today." Your mouth is a filthy liar and ought to be punished.

"That's perfectly fine. You don't need to sound so embarrassed about it."​

"I'll think of some other way to earn money."

"I have to go now, dear, but please try not to do anything that would sound as ominous as that general statement."​

After Mom hangs up, you stare off at the street again. The sun has moved a little higher in the sky, which is as clear today as it was on Monday, California cloudless once more.

Maybe you'll look into strip clubs? ERO 27, BOD 21, and SED 15 meets the minimum stats for that quest you ran into before, Bare the Body, Bare the Soul at Sam's Strippers. Though, uh, that quest title sounds a little deeper than you'd like right now. You have enough emotional depth in your life already. Possibly too much.

You could just find a more normal strip club and see if you can get a normal job dancing there.

That… sounds like a reasonable thing to try. You're not sure it will be your thing, but it seems worth trying.

And if they instruct you how to rub your body over a man and grind your pussy into his lap to make him come into his pants while he has to keep his hands by his side and never touch you, you'll have to diligently follow instructions and not hold back even as the grinding pushes you closer and closer, because a job's a job.

Your hands whiten on the towel's edge.

…you will ask if you can only do pole-dancing, not lap-dancing, on your first day. You will say that part has to wait until tomorrow.

Air softly whispers between your thighs. Is the Erogame fucking deliberately blowing breezes into your pussy?

Oh god you need to masturbate. You need to masturbate right now. Please let the Erogame just give you a spontaneous orgasm right now and have that not be your fault. Please, please, please…

Your phone chimes with the sound of a text, and you grab it up to see messages from Charles. Maybe he's changed his mind maybe he realized you're truly sorry maybe he'll let you come…

> That message got me very hard in the middle of a morning meeting. Good thing I was sitting down at the time.

> I sincerely appreciate your going the extra mile. However, please don't do that again in the future.

> When I ask you to do something like this, I'll want to know you're doing exactly that. I don't want to have to guess that I should assign you 5 near-orgasms if I actually want 10 near-orgasms.​

< yes sir

< I understand sir

< I'm sorry sir

> It's okay. I understand what you were trying to do, and it did make me feel better.

> Now go do the original task I assigned you. 10 near-orgasms, at least 30 minutes.​

Teased: You have undergone 9 cumulative points of erotic teasing, with no relief for 0.5 days. Sexual stimuli of any kind impact you as if your LST were 3 higher, you can be aroused 150% faster, and once aroused you are disinhibited as if your PRV were 2 higher.

4.2.1: Check Out That Ass(umption)

Your flying high-heeled feet slow to a halt as a flow of cars blocks your rapid progress along the sidewalk, and you lean briefly against a streetlight-post, panting. High-Heeled Running increased by 1 again, though it's hard to tell the difference between being 110% faster and 120% faster. Your hair is once more dark and fiery.

This morning you seem to be running well with just occasional stops at red lights, instead of needing extended breaks for walking. You might be getting into something like normal shape.

Or maybe your inner heat is driving you forward using an internal combustion principle.

You are wearing a shirt tied off just below your boobs, containing even less of your boobs than it did when you bought it on Monday. You even went so far as to wear panties beneath your miniskirt, in case being a stripper requires more to strip off. But not a bra, because there have to be limits.

Dressed Like a Slut: Lvl 2 (31%). Passive.

Enhances your probability of being targeted by somebody looking for sex, when you are unmistakably dressed like a girl who wants it. Letting X be their base probability of targeting you for sex, and letting Y be your skill in Dressed Like a Slut, their adjusted probability of targeting you is:

​

(You'll ask a math TA to explain that later. You have no idea if the Erogame is trolling you with a needlessly complex formula meaning "you're more likely to get laid," or if this represents some vitally important idea about your chance of scoring while dressed like a slut.)

Anyway, you're dressed like a total slut, the man waiting next to you for the walk sign is openly gaping at your body, and at PRV 21 (23) that feels very… empowering.

Let's go with empowering.

A few minutes and many shocked looks later, you slow to a jog, then a walk, and finally halt in front of Norville's most popular strip club going by number of Yelp reviews.

The Purring Kittens Club is a polished three-story edifice, wedged between an equally nice-looking Greek restaurant and an upscale hair salon. There's no windows into the top two levels. The glass front of the bottom level reveals a sex shop, one with much nicer-looking merchandise than the adult bookstore you visited late Sunday afternoon at ERO 11.

Somehow you suspect that if you'd tried to look up strip clubs in Norville on Saturday, none of the strip clubs in your little city would've been anywhere near this nice. And there certainly wouldn't have been a 24-hour strip club, obligingly open for your visit at 9AM.

An even more unnerving intuition claims that the Erogame didn't poof anything into existence either.

It takes you a few breaths to work up the decisiveness to walk in. You've never played an eroge that had any scenes inside a strip club, and you're not sure what exactly goes on in places like this. Besides the basic fact that women dance and take their clothes off and grind their asses on men's crotches. You probably should've done some Internet research first? Oh well, you're already here, you might as well go in.

The first-floor sex shop is staffed behind the cash register by a tanned woman wearing a strapless white dress that stops halfway to her knees. You say you're thinking of becoming a stripper, and she expressionlessly provides you with directions to the manager's office.

On the way towards the staircase at the back of the shop you hesitate, casting a nervous look at some of the larger sex toys on display. One glass box showcases an industrial-appearing device like a saddle with a dildo sticking up from it, with a price of $1,250 and a label proclaiming it to be The Sybian. A tablet display inside the box is silently displaying a woman bound to a similar device, frantically struggling through what looks like an endless series of orgasms.

The last you heard, vibrators were handheld devices, not massive fixed-mount equipment costing as much as a cheap used car. Why do you have a feeling this technology didn't exist four days ago in what you used to call reality?

You stare in open-mouthed shock at the current shift's manager.

A middle-aged man in a white shirt and slacks leans back in his office chair, tillting back his head and exposing more of his thinning hair beneath a Condors baseball cap. He looks amused, like he's seen this exact reaction a dozen times.

"I pay you for me to be employed here." Even for late-stage capitalism, this seems like a bit much. "Just to be totally clear that I've understood this correctly, that means that I give you money and then I dance in your club to entertain your customers."

"Precisamundo," the guy says. "But it's not just the shift fee, you also gotta pay the waitresses, the DJ, and the security." His smile looks genuine and friendly, like he's just handed you a birthday present.

You have no idea what the Erogame is trying to pull here. Maybe it's trolling you. Or trying to railroad you into the overly-deep quest at Sam's Strippers. Or maybe capitalism has given up the pretense of paying labor, and is now requiring labor to pay them instead, as the master plan moves into its final phase. Finally you shrug, and turn on your spiked heel towards the door.

"Wait," says the guy, sounding like he's trying hard not to laugh. "On a good night there could be a coupla thousand bucks passin through your hands. The cash flow from that hasta run the whole club, so yeah, you've gotta share. But you keepin a thousand dollars a night is not such a bad deal, amirite?"

You halt with your hand on the doorknob and slowly turn around.

"A thousand dollars a night," you say. It's once again a good thing that you had the chance to turn down Sin of Greed and be numbed to smaller insane amounts of money.

"More if you're good at the business," the guy says, and then his smile fades. "Lot less if you're not. White girl with that hair you've got going, everyone'll want one dance from you. Gettin to dance number two is your job."

Shortly after you've learned that the strip club's theoretically-not-a-boss-because-you're-a-free-agent-not-a-club-employee-but-actually-he's-a-boss is named Mr. Bryan Landau, and that you are to call him Bry without worryin about any Mistas. Almost immediately after he introduces himself, he's handed you off to another stripper, "Tisha."

Tisha is a tiny woman who looks like a wizard animated a naked Barbie doll, only she's not that tall and she's wearing less. She is, there's no mincing this, a bimbo.

Or at least, she looked like a bimbo before she opened her enormous puffy red lips and talked.

Tisha speaks in an accent you're not well-traveled enough to place. She introduces herself using simple words, with a slow care and precise grammar that belies the stereotype of her obvious boob implants, like she'd rather say nothing than craft a sentence less than perfectly. "Have you taken any practice with pole dancing?" she says, as she leads you through a red-carpeted dark corridor with lines of Christmas-tree mini-lights decorating the sides.

"Sorta? I'm not sure it counts?" you say. You have 2 Lvls of Dancing to add to whatever Pole Dancing skill you acquire, so you should get basic competence fast. If it works that way. It might not work that way. "It might take me a minute to, uh, remember things."

The corridor opens up into a huge windowless room, with grids of mini-lights all along the walls, and a ceiling glowing with amber tiles. The walls look like they've been carpeted in the same red as the corridor. The actual floor looks like polished fake redwood, and supports a huge stage of the same material.

Upon this stage are three stripper poles, of which the center one is currently occupied by a stripper who is technically neither topless nor bottomless. A dozen men and one couple are scattered through the many tables and booths threaded through the club, with two more strippers standing or sitting among them, talking. Another half-dozen men are sitting up near the stage. You wonder what backstory the Erogame has invented to explain why Norville has this many men visiting a 24-hour strip club in the morning.

As you observe, one of the men seated near the stage tosses out a bill. The stripper holy shit is that even possible leans down from the stripper pole attached only by her knees and a gravity violation, and picks up the bill with one hand before tucking it into her straps. You can't hear if the stripper says anything because there's dubstep playing over everything, not deafeningly loud, but loud enough for the beats to vibrate.

Tisha is leading you right up to the raised stage.

"Wait," you blurt, "I'm supposed to start the job now? I don't, uh, don't I still need to know a bunch of---"

"This is your test for getting the job," she says.

Your audition is a live-fire test in front of everyone in the strip club.

It's a good thing you've previously been seen naked by half the university and molested on live television, so that the area of your brain dealing with stage fright has already been burned into charcoal.

Tisha walks onto the stage. You try to ignore the screaming of your not-actually-charcoal brain, and follow her.

Tisha proceeds to pick up a spray bottle and a rag, and starts wiping down the pole to stage left. You turn your head to gaze at the stripper the next pole over. Some of it looks physically possible, some of it not so much. If you weren't under ERO 30, you'd swear she already had superpowers. And she doesn't even look to be trying that hard.

There's no way in hell you're getting hired here unless the Erogame helps you out on the dancing skills. But it will, right?

"What do you say is your stage name?" Tisha says, in a low tone you can barely hear under the music.

Starry, the word is almost on your lips, and then it occurs to you that there might have been some local news stories yesterday involving a girl named that. Frantically you try to think of a new alias, Starry, Starlight, Cinderella, Ella, Elsa, Disney thugs shattering your kneecaps, Sheen, Glow, Moonlight, holy shit not Moonlight, Luna, you aged out of MLP but you still can't disrespect Princess Luna that much, "Princess!"

No. No, why, can somebody please shoot you, did you seriously just call yourself Princess what is fucking wrong with your brain.

The music dies, and the DJ off to the stage's right doesn't start another song. The bored-looking audience has now perked up and is gazing at you.

"Everyone," Tisha calls, "This is her first dance, so please be kind to… Princess!"

And the music begins again, a heavy thumping techno remix of a song you don't know.

You swallow hard, drop your backpack on stage, and step over to the pole. You lean back against the pole, put your hands around it like they're tied there, and then you do your best to… shimmy, you suppose it's called. You balance on one heel-spike, and try to slowly rotate yourself around using your hands, shaking your butt as it faces the audience, oh fucking god you look like the greatest dork in creation you have no fucking clue what to do with a pole Tisha is looking skeptical PLEASE EROGAME SAVE ME.

…p-please?

What follows are some of the longest seconds of your life. You try to wrap one leg around the pole, not trusting your ability to wrap both legs without sliding slowly down, and then you shake whatever you can shake, and slowly wobble around the pole, god, why do men even look at this kind of thing in the first place. You try to jiggle your boobs and you don't think even that part works.

Tisha looks like she's just about to open her mouth in dismissal when you clack one heel onto the pole's bottom and raise your other leg high in the air. Then your body smoothly rotates around the pole, showing off your spread legs.

A skill has been created by a special action! Humiliating yourself in front of men using a long, hard, cylindrical object has created the skill Pole Dancing.

You're breathing heavily as you try to shake off the lingering effects of the non-sexy embarrassment that almost crushed your soul. That was fucking awful.

Pole Dancing: Lvl 1 (5%). Passive.

You can do lewd things with a long, hard, cylindrical object. Boost your SED and raise onlookers' LST by (Dancing + Pole Dancing) * 2%.

New and wordless knowledge now lurks in the back of your mind, a sense of possibilities and options. It's a strange sensation the first time you use an Erogame-bestowed physical skill. It feels half like you're doing everything yourself, and half like an alien whisper is running through your nerves and pulling on your muscles.

Keeping your lower foot positioned on the pole's base, you bend your other leg and hook your knee around the pole, giving you two points of contact. Then you lean out semi-horizonally to writhe your upper body, able to focus more attention on being slinky now that the Erogame skill is handling the basics. Wow, you would not be using this skill if your body didn't heal overnight, your knee joint feels like medically dangerous pressure is being put on your tendons and cartilage.

You keep spinning and leaning out near-horizontally, and begin to caress your hands over your legs and thighs. That seductive motion feels like your own intention rather than the Erogame skill, which makes you feel better about what you're doing, like you're not just being the game's body puppet. Though the alien feeling is swiftly diminishing, as each possibility and motion becomes a memory of something you've already done.

One song ends and another immediately begins, a dubstep song that's deeper and more thrumming. You take a breath, trust to the false memories in your muscles, and start dancing.

You grab the pole with your hands, release your legs' grip, and slam your heels to the ground, flinging your head back to a well-timed bass drop, letting your fiery hair whip around you.

You spin on one heel, again kicking up your leg high, so that your whirl stops when your high-kicked shoe clacks into the stripper pole.

A skill has been created by a special action! Dancing in high heels has created the skill High-Heeled Dancing.

AHAHAHAHAHA OF COURSE WHY DIDN'T YOU THINK OF THAT.

You pause the dance you were doing, executing an in-place wriggle move to gain time, and rapidly read the short skill text.

High-Heeled Dancing: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 1 D|S per minute or per maneuver, whichever is less.

Add your High Heels + High-Heeled Dancing to your effective Dancing skill for any high-heeled submaneuver of a dance maneuver that involves your feet. This skill activates automatically if not suppressed.

On the surface it sounds limited, but the new sense of possibilities flooding into you suggests otherwise. You smile at the small audience, put both your hands on the stripper pole---

---push yourself off the ground with a High-Heeled Jump, twist your hands, and now you're attached to the pole upside-down, four feet off the ground level.

It's hard to see from upside down, but you think some people's jaws just dropped.

Lifting your hands to your side so you're held in place only by your high heels pressed against the pole, you writhe your torso like you're trying to escape from chains.

Dancing is so much easier when not all of your body has to obey all of the laws of physics.

Lifting yourself back up around the pole, so that you're now rightside-up but high off the ground, you wrap your legs around it and spin. This maneuver suddenly brings your attention to the pressure of the pole against your pantied pussy, and you realize that as a good girl you should not do that too often unless you want to end up being very teased and possibly a bad girl.

And the beat goes on.

Pole Dancing has increased by 1.

High-Heeled Dancing has increased by 1.

Even the other strippers are staring at you now as you ballet-twirl around the pole on the toes of your high heels, and all the male gazes on your sluttily-dressed form are starting to make you feel… appreciated. You're still nervous as hell and the dance still requires all your attention. But you're dancing lewdly for men, for the first time in your life, and they seem to like it.

Your hands run all over your body, deliberately squeezing your breasts. Even caressing the clothing over your pussy. Touching yourself but not touching yourself. Or only a little, you're still being good.

Violating yourself along with physics, fascinating men with your impossible moves and open sluttiness, causes your SED to go up by 1!

After a few more moves you remember that you are supposedly a "stripper", and for a stripper you sure are wearing a lot of clothes you're not taking off.

Hanging upside down from the pole again, your lips mouth the words Strip Tease, and your hands begin to toy with the knot of your shirt, loosening the cloth to let it slide down/up over your breasts more, then a little more, the aureole around the nipples beginning to emerge. You tighten your legs together in their upside-down position and begin to ease fabric up/down your hips as well.

But just then the song ends, and the DJ doesn't start another one.

"This is done," Tisha says. She looks mostly surprised and appreciative, and only a little like she's trying not to laugh.

You let yourself fall off the pole and execute a High-Heeled Landing. Then you bow like an actress on stage at the end of a play. It's probably not what a stripper does after a dance, but you don't know what else to do instead.

The audience bursts into mad applause, not over-loud given the small numbers, but still heartening.

There's seven one-dollar bills, two fives, and one twenty on the stage. You're abashed to realize that you were too self-absorbed to remember who gave you which tips.

You pick up the money and your backpack, give your best attempt at a sultry look to all the men around the stage, and then turn to follow Tisha out a different door.

Your heart is still beating faster. That… wasn't unpleasant.

Following the tiny bimbo leads you into a huge dressing room. To your left, the whole wall is a mirror, with head-high partitions dividing the space before it into stalls. On the opposite wall are two rows and many columns of lockers, most of them with combination locks. The music from the main room is muffled, but still clearly audible.

"Jesus cock-sucking Christ," Tisha enunciates carefully, once you're both into the room. She leans against one of the dividers, staring at you. "The fuck. Where did you learn that dance?"

Given what happened when you first met Charles, it seems smarter to just outright lie. "A little place across the state border in Nevada, a former Buddhist temple they bought out and turned into a home for expert pole-dancers. It's kind of a cult, they wouldn't teach me anything until I'd swept floors there for a while."

"Jesus cock-sucking Christ," Tisha says, her tone different this time. "You need to visit another temple to learn lying, Princess."

Okay so you suck, excuse you for living. "I'm sorry it took me that long to remember I was supposed to be taking off my clothes---"

"Your clothes stay on." Now Tisha again looks like she's trying not to laugh.

"Uh, what, but, isn't that what a stripper does? Strip off their clothes while dancing? That's why they're called that?"

Apparently you've made a mistaken assumption.

A very mistaken assumption, as it develops. Clubs which serve alcohol can't be full nude, so the dancers here need to wear clothes. Like Tisha's infinitesimal microkini that conceals literally nothing besides her nipples and labia, and is actually more obscene than being naked. You're past trying to understand the logic of the sex industry at this point.

Plus, you are now a "dancer," since "stripper" seems to be an impolite term.

"So, uh," you say, "am I in?"

"I will tell Bry so. Anyone can see you only practiced your own idea of pole-dancing in private, but unusual dancing is good, and your tricks surprised me. In a month you will dance better than anyone here except Lina and me."

"Thanks. Um, by the way, would it be all right if for today I just danced on stage, and didn't do any lap-dances until tomorrow? I mean, just for my first day so I can watch to learn how everything works?"

Tisha gives you a startled look, and proceeds to explain in short, precise sentences that there's not much point in being a dancer if you don't do private dances. Otherwise you'd just be paying the club a stage fee to dance, and not taking in any money except a few bills tossed on stage.

"Okay…" you say slowly.

While you're still hesitating, Tisha starts explaining the rules for lapdances. You can freely touch men. They can't touch you. You can put a man's hands on your thighs or most other areas, and then he's allowed to touch you there. They're not allowed to touch your genitals period. Their clothes stay on. If you see penis, walk away and tell security. You don't have to accept a lapdance request from anyone you don't like, but be polite to a customer unless it's time for security to toss them.

And then Tisha informs you that before you start dancing here, you need to give Bry a lap-dance to check that you can do it properly and that you understand all the rules.

And before that, since you haven't claimed to have done lapdances before, Tisha is going to give you a lapdance to show you how it's done.

None of this is optional if you want to work at the Purring Kittens Club.

You're wavering on whether to proceed, and from Tisha's keen gaze, you're guessing she can see it. It's not just your determination to be a good girl for Charles. Something about this whole situation doesn't feel as appealing as the other adventures you've been on.

But you're not ready to give up yet.

You've been escorted to one of the club's "VIP rooms", a small room with padded walls done in fluffy bright red upholstery, and sealed off from the surrounding corridor by a heavy curtain rather than a door. You've been seated in an armless couch, the same bright red color, but done in faux-leather. The music here is quieter than it was on the main floor, but still loud.

A tiny bimbo is rubbing her ass into your lap.

It's not nearly as stimulating as you were, uh, afraid it would be. If you were a man with a bulge in your pants, maybe Tisha's ass would be rubbing down your dick and working you up? As it stands, your clitoris isn't getting much of a workout here. It's just your upper thighs and pelvis, getting shoved around by warm flesh.

Okay, let's be honest here, you were expecting a lap-dance to be some type of incredible erotic experience and that is not happening to you right now. You are not in any danger of being a bad girl.

You're admittedly being… reminded of what a good girl you're already been today, as places close to your pussy get touched. And it's being done to you by a woman. You think that at LST 18 (21) you might be beginning to appreciate that fact? Maybe? You're not sure.

Perfectly timed to a beat-drop from the muffled music, Trisha whirls up from your lap and shimmies in front of you, deliberately licking her huge lips. Her eyes lock on yours, giving you a sultry look better than anything you could manage. For a second you think you're feeling the bisexuality, but then Tisha leans forward to shake her fake boobs in your face and the moment is gone.

Tisha rubs her breasts all over your torso, moaning softly as she does, and okay to be honest you'd rather just be getting a hug. What Tisha is doing doesn't feel right and you're not sure why.

The muffled song from behind the door ends, and Tisha stands up. You rise up from the couch yourself a moment later.

You're expecting Bry to sit down now in your place, but instead the man murmurs "Back in a minute" and ducks out of the room.

"He walked to the bathroom," Tisha says to your puzzled look. She presses her hand above her groin, indicating the bladder area. "Needing the bathroom is not comfortable for a man when you sit on him."

The two of you wait for Bry to return, and you lean against the padded wall and think.

Having experienced a lap dance for yourself, you flatly don't understand how three fucking minutes of that is worth forty fucking dollars to a man.

Well… you suppose that if the man comes in his pants, that might be worth $40 to him. Especially if the next-best alternative is a low-end blowjob at $150. Maybe being brought to orgasm by a lap dance has some of the same emotional benefit for a man as sex, so long as it's a woman making him come? You're not quite sure how men work, but it's a fact that they purchase lapdances, so you guess that must be true.

But golly, how high is the FUK of an average stripper if she can grind a man to orgasm in three minutes through his pants and underwear? Maybe the men wear lubricated condoms under their undershorts, and edge themselves before coming into the club?

Or maybe the wealthier men are willing to pay more than $40 and take more than one song to come? But if it takes a man four songs to come, he'd be better off buying a blowjob instead. So logically, to earn your pay as a stripper, you've got to be dextrous enough with your ass to rub off a horny man in nine minutes, through a layer of clothing… no, six minutes is more realistic. Three lap dances for $120 wouldn't beat a blowjob for $150.

So you've got to make Bry come in six minutes if you want to be hired… probably? But between FUK 15 and whatever Erogame skills apply, you should be able to do this if other strippers can. Oh, right, he also went to the bathroom to put on a condom.

Bry walks back into the room and seats himself on the couch, smiling in a way that looks more cheerful than lustful. "You'll need a microkini ta work here," Bry says. "There's a place downstreet. For now, take off everythin but the panties and the heels."

You begin stripping down to your panties and heels, feeling embarrassed-in-a-good-way as you do. It's legal so long as no money changes hands, you suppose.

Quest begun: Come Into His Parlour

Bring Bryan P. Landau to orgasm in six minutes with a lap dance, despite the grave obstacle presented by his pants.

Success: +3000XP, +1 FUK, the boss is quite impressed.
Failure: Personal enlightenment about the importance of checking your basement assumptions before you start building apartment complexes on top.

You toss away your shirt and miniskirt, and straighten your head with newfound determination. Right. You can do this. You're not sure what that "failure" line in the quest is about, but it doesn't matter. Because you won't fail.

A new song starts up, and you sashay forward, licking your lips the way Tisha did, trying not to be self-conscious about how you're probably doing that wrong.

Mr. Bryan P. Landau looks as relaxed and amused as if this happens to him every day. It probably does. You wonder how the dancers trade off the duty.

You carefully seat yourself down over Bry's lap, facing him on the couch, your legs folded up to touch his thighs with your knees. Unable to stop yourself, you glance down at his fancy wristwatch. Six minutes to make him come, and it's probably going to take the first minute just to get the Erogame skill.

So you'd better not delay.

You thrust your crotch against Bry.

You adjust the angle, and try thrusting again.

"Gently," Bry says. "You're not tryin to hammer in my nail."

He isn't even hard yet.

Panic rises in the back of your mind, and you do your best to subdue it. Worst case scenario, you wait until you have higher stats and try again at another strip club.

You rub your crotch against him more gently, trying not to let your nervousness show on your face, trying not to ask Am I doing this right? over and over.

Bry says nothing.

You whirl up from his lap the way you remember Tisha doing, then plump your ass down on his lap and grind against him while you face the other way. This allows you to see Tisha, who's watching you with a neutral expression.

You grind your ass against Bry, gently as requested, rhythmically over and over, waiting for him to get hard, praying for him to get hard. You don't know if this even counts toward acquiring a Lap Dancing skill if he's not hard.

Part of your mind goes to the 30 stat points waiting in your status screen and thinks about bumping your FUK. You know you shouldn't do it, it's terrible game strategy and this just isn't that important, but you think about it anyway.

How long has this song been going on? Bry still isn't hard. Oh, god, how can you be doing this badly, you thought you might fail this quest but you didn't imagine failing this utterly. What does he want from you, what does he need from you… you don't think shaking your breasts in his face will make him hard…

You look down at Bry's watch. One and a half minutes have passed, a quarter of your time.

No, fuck this, you will not fail. If you want to turn Bry on, maybe you've got to stop awkwardly lap dancing and be real.

You slink up from Bry's lap, slide around to put yourself facing him again with your crotch over his. You grab Bry's hands, held dutifully at his side, and hold his wrists down to the couch like you're taking him prisoner.

Then you start thrusting your crotch against him.

To your own rhythm.

You rub your pussy against his groin, not concerning yourself with whether you're hitting his cock right, it's yourself you're stimulating now. You lean forward enough that your naked torso is rubbing against his shirt with each thrust. You keep your eyes locked on Bry's, and only a short time seems to pass before your lips part and you give a low, breathy moan, faking nothing. Your pussy's inner temperature is warm and rising.

Oh, you hope he… wait, you should say this part out loud. "I hope you get hard quickly," you breathe into Bry's ear, "I can't do this for long without being bad, I shouldn't be bad, it's bad if I come, I shouldn't be bad, I'll have to stop if I get close, oh, mmm, don't be mean to me, don't hold back…"

The first song is ending, the second song starting, but there's a hardness under his slacks now.

A skill has been created by a special action! Pleasuring a victim despite the pants trying to shield him has created the skill Clothes Can't Stop Me.

YES. Your lips barely mouth words, even as your hips shift to better target the hardness below you.

Clothes Can't Stop Me: Lvl 1 (4%). Active. 2 DOM / 5 sec.

Reduces skill penalties associated with performing an ero action through clothing.

Light clothing: Decrease penalty by Lvl * ERO% / 2.
Heavy clothing: Decrease penalty by Lvl * ERO% / 4.​

This skill is replaced by rather than stacking with the perk Naked Before Me. It can also evolve into the corresponding skill when Lvl * ERO% / 4 exceeds 100%.

HELL YES AGAIN. Whether you become a stripper or not, you're grinding your ass to grind this skill until it works through plate armor. "Your clothes can't stop me," you breathe to Bry, and his eyes widen slightly.

You whirl up, and without bothering to slow the motion, plop your ass firmly onto his crotch and start rubbing. If you're trying to get him off, rather than stimulate yourself, then from your experience with Tisha you think using your ass should be more effective.

Rub, rub, rhythmic motions. You try to slink your upper body for his viewing satisfaction at the same time, sometimes reaching back to run your hands over his arms.

After what seems like far too short a time, the second song sounds like it might be nearing the end. Edge Other, you half think and half whisper, so you'll know if he's getting close… he's not.

You tamp down the gathering panic and try to think, try to flip through your mental inventory of other skills. Do you have anything that can make Bry come faster. You can't make him chase you to raise his LST, you can't Strip Tease for him. Maybe… maybe you could use Extra Large Sausage: The Man Always Comes but is that actually a porn trope…

Clothes Can't Stop Me has increased by 1.

There's an intake of breath from behind you. Then Bry's hands snake up around you and caress your sides. You lean back into him. Then you moan in surprised appreciation as his hands cup your breasts and---

"Wrong," Bry says, without any noticeable huskiness in his voice. "I'm not allowed ta do that, remember?"

OH GOD FUCKING DAMMIT. You grab Bry's hands away from your breasts, but it's too late, you can feel the moment is gone, along with your chance.

The second song hasn't even ended when Bry gently pushes you off him.

Quest failed: Come Into His Parlour.

You turn to face Bry with your expression under the best clampdown you can manage. Your upper lip might be quivering anyway.

"You were gettin a little too inta that," Bry says from his couch. He doesn't seem angry, and the cheerful smile is back. "It's better than bein a dead fish, but remember, these are customers, not guys you're fuckin. Summa the guys here aren't nice people, not alla them, but more of them than ya'd think. You do not wanna have feelins about them." He smiles wider. "Good dance, though."

"Was I close to making you come?" you say with a slight quaver in your voice. Would you have been able to win if you'd just remembered the fucking rules?

"Come? What, no…" Bry looks at you, and his eyebrows go up. "Princess, did ya think you had to get me off?"

You nod in some confusion. "Isn't that the point?"

There's a snorted laugh from behind you, and you turn to see Tisha with her hands over her mouth, visibly trying to contain herself as more muffled laughter leaks out of her.

Bry looks like he wants to facepalm. "Princess, you get a guy off, he's not exactly buyin any more dances, is he?"

"She is, she thinks, she thinks that is what we do." Tisha seems to be having some trouble expressing herself, probably because she's laughing too hard.

"Now I'm wonderin," Bry says. "How'd you think a strip club works?"

You're blushing, but you manage to answer. "Um, I thought it involved women who strip, as in, take their clothes off in a seductive fashion, which gets the men worked up, and then they pay us to writhe around on their laps and get them off in a way that isn't legally prostitution."

"Stop that," Bry says to Tisha, who is now laughing so hard she has tears in her eyes. "That'd be a perfectly reasonable business ta be in. Princess is makin sense, she just doesn't know the facts."

"I… don't actually understand why men would go to strip clubs if they don't get to come," you say helplessly. "Just working him up and teasing him and never letting him come each time… okay, that's actually really hot, but, it's not right if I'm doing it to trick him into paying another forty dollars every three minutes."

"Tisha, stop laughin at her, I mean it. People aren't born knowin this stuff." Bry rolls his head around on his shoulders, like he's trying to loosen his neck. "You've got the wrong idea about what a club sells. Men are more complicated than just wantin to get in their nut. Well, some men are. Enough to keep us in business. If I had ta pick one thing, I'd say what a strip club sells is pretty girls actin interested."

"Acting interested…?" you say.

"Yeah, everythin else is just window dressin. The dances are just there ta make it real. The part the guy lives for is where the pretty girl is cozyin up to him, acting all friendly, he knows he's got somethin she wants. He's got the power for once, he can take her or leave her. Him sometimes buyin a dance is what gives him the power. And it's real, she's doin it for him, she's not just smilin until she gets her dime and then walkin away. She's gotta dance for him, earn what he gives her. The setup wouldn't work without the dance. But the dance isn't what they're buyin." Bry scrunches up his face, looking contemplative. "Other guys, they can't open up to a girl who won't touch them. If a girl doesn't think you're good enough ta touch, it's hard ta open your heart to her, no matter how much she says she likes ya. So the guy comes in here and pays like crazy to have someone he can talk ta. That's the second biggest crowd."

It's a dizzying set of ideas to take in, and by the end of it you're looking down at your feet and feeling slightly sick.

You run your fingers through your hair, collecting it over your shoulders. It's not a necessary gesture given your other abilities, but it feels comforting to do it.

"That isn't how I thought a strip club worked," you say quietly. You have the same sense of untargeted dismay as when you first found out that the price of a blowjob is $150. You don't want to rush out and say the dancers are doing something wrong, or that the men are doing anything wrong, but this whole situation feels not-right. "I'm sorry, I need to think about this. Maybe I'll come back this afternoon, or tomorrow, or next week, but I need to think about it first."

You're expecting Bry to react to this somehow, maybe get angry with you for having wasted his time, but the man looks completely unphased. He gives you his trademark friendly smile. "Actually," he says, "we gotta word for pretty ladies who aren't sure if they wanta dance for us."

An icy shock of adrenaline rushes into you. You tense up and look towards the curtain, ready to bolt at High-Heeled speeds if the next word out of Bry's mouth is merchandise or slaves---

"Waitresses! I just meant waitresses! Christ, kid, did you think I'd say corpses? We hire smokin hot waitresses and let you watch the dancers rakin it in, until you decide ta start dancin for us. You make hundreds of bucks in tips if you know the game, and see the good dancers makin way more. It's how things are done."

[ ] Try working as a waitress in the Purring Kittens Club. You need money to get started on the Ponce quest. (Roll for income, roll for Erogame event.)
[ ] Go see if Tammi and Danni Arcadia are still at the Norville Arms-Marriott, and try to sneak into their room to spy before you buy. Maybe the Mad Inventor route can save you a couple of thousand bucks. (Triggers a conversation with Charles to talk about rules.)

Edit: I mean that Cindy will call Charles to talk about rules before she goes to the hotel.

Spoiler: AN

Holy crap this update kicked my ass. I should've rolled dice to see how Cindy did with Bry's lapdance, but I forgot that until I'd already written the section, and then I just wanted this update done.

I was planning to take an ex-stripper out to dinner to ask her a few things, but then she ended up being sick that day, so I did a bunch of Internet research instead. Hopefully I got this mostly sorta right?

My verdict on last time's voting experiments:
The time delay seemed like it might've been helpful for making complex choices, I may try that again.
I'm not sure I like ranked voting. I didn't get the same sense of being able to understand the trend of opinion. The strip-club option won due to being a lot of people's second choice, and was only two people's first choice, which I'm not sure is healthy for a quest. That's why I folded in the Felice quest request as well, which got the most first choices.

4.2.2: Maid of Time

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 43 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1

[X] Try working as a waitress in the Purring Kittens Club. You need money to get started on the Ponce quest. (Roll for income, roll for Erogame event.)
No. of Votes: 26
Malbutorius
Agilitree
Blackshard
Canadiak
dkljfda
Dragonheart91
Dreikanter
Elitist Oars
Epicr
Equanimitivity
farsan
Flashbunny
Gingganz
Grollo
january1may
KBob
Morat136
mpop
MrBTXz
Nordvegr
redzonejoe
ShaperV
Sirrocco
Tabac Iberez
VanillaTentacle
zup

[X] Go see if Tammi and Danni Arcadia are still at the Norville Arms-Marriott, and try to sneak into their room to spy before you buy. Maybe the Mad Inventor route can save you a couple of thousand bucks. (Triggers a conversation with Charles to talk about rules.)
No. of Votes: 13
ScrewFate
Aeodyn
DarthSquidious
DocAutomata
gilgamekk
GulibleLeprecon
kalkin
Kandagger
kimagurena65536
pepperjack
Proxima
Spectral Waltz
wasprider

[X] Set Charles straight on the facts of life. He is in our harem, not the other way around, and being dom to our sub doesn't change that.
No. of Votes: 2
Ephemeral
Aeodyn

Total No. of Voters: 40

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (22,850 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 158/300
SUB: 330/390

BOD: 21
LST: 18 (21)
SED: 16
FUK: 14
PRV: 21 (23)
ERO: 27

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $1582

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Maid: Lvl 1 (87%). Passive.

Your Maid skill is added to the effective level of all Maid subskills, and boosts your general ability to serve with perfection in a maidly capacity.

If you are not wearing a maid uniform, your effective level in all Maid skills is divided by 2, rounded down. Any standard uniform that distinguishes servants in a place or occasion, including nudity, may be deemed a maid uniform. It goes without saying that anything you wear at your true Master's command and pleasure is the most proper uniform possible.

Maid Mémoire: Lvl 1 (75%). Passive.

You can perfectly recall up to Lvl * 3 commands, each with up to Lvl * 1 details, without additional memory aids.​

You once tried, very briefly, to work as a waitress in Starbucks.

You can now report that waitressing is a ton pleasanter if you're not fat. And if you're serving a half-deserted strip club's day shift, and can often sit down to watch less-than-naked women pole-dancing, and sometimes a customer tips you $50 for no reason, and you have supernatural maid powers. But mostly, not being fat.

To be honest, your supernatural maid powers aren't all that impressive at Lvl 1 and when you're not wearing a maid uniform. It's good for remembering one person's lunch order without writing anything down, and very good for wearing an expressionless smile at all times, but that's about it. It's an odd skill to have embedded in your consciousness, too. Like, you already have the concept of a Maid from having played erogames, so nothing was added there, but it suddenly became easier to act like one if you try. It's not a genre that calls to you, but it does seem useful for keeping your composure as a strip club waitress.

Well, there was that thing in the middle of lunch hour when 20 different business-suited customers walked in over the course of two minutes and sat down at 7 different tables, many looking ominously impatient and some of them rather muscular. Like there was an American Yakuza convention going on nearby.

And of course this happened while the single other maid waitress on the day shift, "Daniela," was taking the lunch break that your own presence enabled.

You almost panicked, you're ashamed to admit. But then you took a deep breath, calmed down, and walked around handing out menus and then taking each table's initial orders for drinks. Casually, unhurriedly, smiling when they complimented your hair, and being very careful not to look at any clocks or wristwatches.

A skill has been created by a special action! Going beyond the realm of human possibility to cheerfully take 20 drink orders in 2 minutes has created the skill Maid of Time.

Maid of Time: Lvl 1 (80%). Special.

You may ignore the laws of duration binding lesser beings in order to interleave up to a total of (Lvl * 30 min) of additional time daily, whenever this is required to perfectly fulfill an unreasonable demand by someone you are serving. If you have a knife-throwing skill, you may throw knives at up to Lvl times the normal rate when acting in a maidly capacity.

You received instructions from Bry to let Daniela handle any orders from private rooms or the champagne room. You only went into the second-floor chambers once, and that was during Daniela's lunch break, when "Chanterelle" insisted that she required a waitress to come to the champagne room every 10 minutes. You found her, yes, grinding on a relaxed-looking guy's lap, but not blowing him or snorting marijuana or any other such iniquities. It felt a little uncomfortable to witness the sexual act, but only because the sexual actors were acknowledging your presence and talking to you. So far as personal witness goes, you've seen worse once or twice over the course of high school.

You're not supposed to talk to customers for more than a couple of minutes. Any interest you get from the customers, as Bry has explained to you, is interest not going to a dancer who actually does private dances for money. The dancers wouldn't like that and neither would Bry.

Despite that, in those two-minute windows of interaction, you have been asked what it would take to get you to start dancing 17 times, asked for a lapdance 8 times, and asked for sex outside the club 3 times. You've usually replied, wearing a Maid's expressionless smile, that they're welcome to name a price and see if it's high enough. It's probably not what you're supposed to reply, but you can't help being curious. So far the highest prices for dance, lapdance, and sex have respectively been $160, $320, and $800. The last price would have been pretty tempting, and you might have asked for the guy's number in case you wanted to try prostitution later, if that guy hadn't been… fat. No, fuck that, you shouldn't feel guilty about that, you need to build body transformation pods, not feel bad over who you find attractive.

Brief snatches of conversation during moments of mutual downtime establish that Daniela wants to move back to Ohio and put herself through medical school, once she accumulates enough money. It gives the two of you less to talk about than you would have hoped. You were tossed out of the premed track by your second semester, and Daniela's bachelor's degree is in psychology. You tell Daniela you expect to end up in the sex industry but you've also been considering becoming a mad inventor and conquering the world, which causes Daniela to giggle briefly.

So far as other club employees go, neither the bartender nor the security seem to be enthusiastic about making small talk. Maybe they're just busy, but you get an impression it's more that you just haven't been here long enough, that you're still an outsider here. The dancers are either writhing on stage or schmoozing customers. Tisha asks how you're doing every half-hour and you always say you're doing fine.

You only feel tense and frustrated and horny when you remember to do so, which is a considerable improvement over this morning. You do remember it a lot of the time, when there isn't much to do except watch another girl make love to the dance pole. Okay, you're probably at least a tiny bit bisexual as of LST 18 (21).

You're too nervous about obvious eavesdropping to listen in on whole conversations between dancers and customers. But what you've seen and heard in passing hasn't contradicted anything Bry said before. The dancers are smiling and eager to please, the men magnaminous as they lay out bills. Now and then a sad-looking person spends $400 to book a private room for an hour.

It's all wrong.

The conversation between you and Daniela wasn't wrong. The way Tisha is checking on you isn't wrong. The fat man who gazed at you with open honest lust and offered you $800 to go home with him didn't seem wrong. If the stereotypical hulky gay bouncers are leading a terrible life, you don't know it from where you're standing.

Everything else in this huge amber-lit chamber is wrong.

You don't know how to say most of it in words. You've worked out that the lapdance from Tisha felt wrong because she didn't desire you and both of you knew that. The dancers aren't being dishonest, the men know it's a lie, but it's wrong just the same. All of this is a shadow of something that ought to be real.

Everyone in this club deserves better. Tisha should have enough money for whatever it is she wants from her life, without her ever having to give a lapdance to someone she doesn't desire sexually. The men should be able to obtain whatever they're looking for in a strip club and will never really find here. The sad guy should be pouring out his heart to somebody who'll find herself falling in love with him… or who'll viciously blackmail him into sexual servitude… or do something with the heart she's being given. Events here can't move forward because they're not real, just a GIF repeating over and over.

And in the end you came to the resigned realization---you could not avoid the final conclusion once your thoughts had come along that far---that "Nobody would bother writing an eroge about anything happening here" is a concise and accurate way to summarize what's wrong with the Purring Kittens Club. And you couldn't stop yourself from wondering if that's a problem you might be destined to fix.

So now you're at ERO 28.

Sigh.

Deciding that everything would be better for everyone if this strip club were more like an eroge causes your ERO to go up by 1!

Quest: Starry's Stripping Society

Build your own strip club, or take over an existing one, and show the world how it should be done. And yet, what is it your strip club will have that matters so much? Besides blackjack and hookers.

Success: +300,000XP, $200,000 monthly income.
Failure: Loss of invested money, ???

You must be at least Lvl 10 and have at least $2,000,000 to begin this quest.

You're pretty sure you're not going to do this quest, but the puzzle it poses is sticking in the back of your mind. What would a strip club need to be like, to be a worthy setting for an eroge? You can see something is wrong here, it doesn't mean you know what's right. What goes on at Starry's Strippers?

Yes, yes, obviously your strip club would have sexbots. But that can't be your answer to everything. Or at least, it can't be your only answer to everything.

It's 3pm now, and the day shift is turning into the afternoon shift. Your earnings this shift…

Spoiler: Dice for earnings

d100, +15 for The Coals Relighted, a natural 2 is as bad as a natural 1.

Earnings table for the day shift:

1-2: Something bad
3+: $50 + SED * $1
10: $50 + SED * $2
30: SED * $5
50: SED * $10
70: SED * $20
90: SED * $50
100+: add d100 * $100
Nat 100: Something good

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 73+15 = 88

For: Waitress shift #1, income

Rolled on: August-02-2017, 10:20am

See dice roll details

73

…amount to a total of roughly $260, in various bills tucked into the waist of your skirt and then deposited back into your new combination locker, plus a few instances of credit cards. Sharing with the bartender and the kitchen turns that into $190. The dancers sharing their tips with you turns it back into $280. Bry adds in an additional $50 in cash for five hours of legally mandated minimum wage, making a disgusted face that he assures you is directed at California state law rather than anything personal.

"Keep in mind, three-thirty is unusually good for a day shift," Daniela says. She, Tisha, and Bry are hovering around you throughout this process, either to stop the dancers from cheating you, or to stop you from cheating the kitchen staff, or maybe both. "We don't usually get a lunch rush. Normal day shift's about a hundred, maybe a hundred-fifty if you do your makeup just right. Don't expect this every day."

Bry shoots her a look.

"Afternoon shift is better and evening shift is where the money is," Daniela adds hastily. "Oh, tip Tisha ten for helping you out. She's the unofficial club mom before Maureen gets in."

"That is not mandatory," Tisha says.

Daniela gives you an eloquent glance that clearly states like hell it's not mandatory. You peel off two $5 bills from your gains and hand them to Tisha, who accepts them without any apparent pause or dismay.

With this, your current wealth is $1582 plus $320 equals… $1902. (Hey, you were going to be an accountant, you're so good at math you can do stuff like that in your head.) So, ninety-eight dollars short of getting started on Better Than That Ponce. If you obey Mom's rules, you ought to earn a total of four thousand dollars before you spend two thousand, but it may make sense to begin the quest sooner than that. Maybe you can get a sense of how long it will take, and that will give you an idea of what to do next about Felice.

Plus, let's be honest here, earning $320 in six hours is a novelty that has not worn off on you. Maybe by Friday you'll be making thousands of dollars a night as an escort, but this is Wednesday and you aren't.

"Can I do another shift?" you say as you stare at the stack of cash, wondering how high your BOD would have to be before you could physically manifest dollar signs in your eyes.

"Not until you eat somethin, Princess," Bry says, to nods from Tisha and Daniela. "Doesn't matter if it's day shift and you sit down sometimes, I haven't seen you takin a real break. Pick anythin you want off the menu, I'll tell the kitchen it's on the house."

They don't look like the types to take Sorry I'm not hungry right now for an answer. You keep your expression casual as you reply, "I'm a bit picky about what I eat, but the Subway a couple of blocks south of here probably has something I can handle." You'll just spend enough time outside to make it plausible, and then head back in.

4.2.c* [CA]: The Voices Have a Point

So now you're strolling around the neighborhood surrounding the strip club, feeling thoughtful and only slightly existentially horrified. It's a pretty nice neighborhood. Fancy restaurants, upscale shops, well-dressed people staring at you. It probably didn't exist yesterday.

You wonder what would happen if you used 30 stat points to bump up your ERO to 58 before walking back to the strip club. You can't help but feel curious, and maybe even guilty. For all you know, raising your ERO to 58 would fix everything wrong with the Purring Kittens in a snap. Why, it could fix everything in a 500 mile blast radius.

Charles would tell you not to do that, of course, and he'd be right. Though you should maybe make clear, before any issues like that come up and his surfacing dominant side gets confused and angry, that you're not offering to let him give you orders about things like that. Just promising him a chance to persuade you if he joins your harem. You're unsure about whether threats of spanking would count as "orders" or "persuasion", but you can decide that later.

Actually, over the last five hours, you've noticed something else that you wish you could talk about with Charles. It's not that walking around frustrated and horny doesn't fit into your soul's eroge, but…

From your backpack's side pocket, you pull out your cellphone---your old cellphone with the broken screen, not the new burner phone---and weigh it in your hand. The skill text for Erogamer's World claims that nobody is ever too busy for sex or romance, not when you're around. You shouldn't worry about interrupting or distracting Charles if you call him in the middle of the day. Charles will have enough free time to talk to you. Or rather, his day will have already retroactively gone that way, but only if you actually decide to call.

It's just… scary, to call him. And not just because he might order you to do another three thousand edges. You don't want to seem to be bothering him too much, or too often. Charles still hasn't said that he'll move to Norville and be your boyfriend, and that makes you terrified that you'll say one wrong thing and lose him. That any sentence you say might be the sentence that ends your relationship. You know that Charles would tell you that common sense says that's unhealthy, but fuck him sounding all calm in your imagination. He's not the one who's never had a boyfriend before, who's going to make some stupid move that screws everything up and destroys something precious and irreplaceable forever, who can't even talk with her boyfriend about how scared she is for fear of sounding all clingy and emotionally dependent and yandere.

…Charles would also warn you, if he were here inside your head watching you decide this, that if you don't give him important information and he has to find out the hard way, he's not going to be happy with that either.

Mom would probably say something along the lines of Cindy, honey, I've only been playing eroge for one day, but I'm guessing they involve a lot of disasters that could've been avoided by people just talking to each other.

Even Blake Layton would tell you that what's scary ought to be not knowing the right thing to do, since if you know the right thing to do, you can just do it. You already know that calling Charles would be the intelligent thing to do.

Some part of you is aware that if Cinderella Sheen were watching somebody else waffle over this, she would take her wonderful epigraph about how she'd rather be scared of what might happen than of what might not happen, and apply it to words said and unsaid. Never mind imaginary Charles, imaginary you is giving you raised eyebrows at this point, and gesturing significantly at a Wisdom and Courage Check in progress.

OKAY FINE YOU'LL MAKE THE FUCKING PHONE CALL FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST WOULD YOUR INNER VOICES STOP YELLING AT YOU ABOUT IT

You tap the Call button for Charles's contact before you can change your mind.

Charles leaned back in the office chair of his hotel room in Carson City, Nevada, pushing his laptop lightly back with his fingers. The screen showed an email proclaiming that a scheduling error had caused his next meeting to be pushed back by thirty minutes, leaving him recently fed and with some unexpected downtime.

Not unheard-of. But one could call it… improbable.

Charles took out his cellphone and looked at the screen. Why did he have a feeling that…

A few seconds later, Starry still hadn't called. Feeling slightly silly about it, but still with a strong intuition about what might follow, Charles ducked into the bathroom to take care of necessities, tilted the shades across his motel room window, put on his headset, and sat down on the hotel's bed.

Almost immediately, the theme music to E.T. began to emanate from his cellphone.

Charles tapped his headset to pick up. "Hello, Starry," he said dryly. "Who could possibly have guessed you'd pick this very moment to call me."

"Something wrong?" Starry's voice sounded apprehensive.​

"Oh, not at all," Charles said. "My next meeting improbably got moved back thirty minutes and I found myself with some unexpected downtime. So I finished up some things in my hotel room, put on my headset, sat down on my bed, and waited two and a half seconds."

"I'm sorry about your meeting." Starry's voice was small, in the headset piping it into his ears. "I don't decide that type of thing, it just happens when I make a phone call."​

"Eh, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining," Charles said. "It's better than you calling me in the middle of something." Sure, it gave him creepy feelings he didn't even know how to describe, but he couldn't deny the massive convenience. "So what are you up to, and should I be taking off my pants to hear about it?"

There was a worryingly long pause from his headset.

"Uh, after this morning, I decided I'd go try being a dancer at a strip club, but strip clubs didn't work the way I thought they did. I've spent the last five and a half hours as a waitress instead. Still pays pretty well. Three hundred and twenty dollars for a shift is pretty good, right? I could rent a house and feed two people if I earned that much every day."​

"Strip club waitress? That's… surprisingly sensible of you," Charles said.

"Charles. I'm capable of being sensible. Sometimes I choose not to be, it doesn't mean I can't do it."​

Charles reserved the right to reserve some doubts about that. "And what did you think you'd be doing at a strip club?"

"Slowly taking my clothes off while dancing to get guys worked up, then grinding on their laps to get them off."​

"That's not far wrong," Charles said. "You usually start out naked and it's rare for the man to actually come, but that's it. Why didn't you become a dancer?"

"Because that's not what a strip club actually sells. It sells men an experience of sexual power over women, but that power is ultimately illusory. Other men are coming in here and paying $400 to rent a private room for an hour because they can't open up to a woman who won't touch them, but those relationships are never going to progress. Both kinds of men keep looking for something here because it's the only place that gives them even scraps of what they want, but the club doesn't contain anything but scraps. The women are giving lap dances to men they don't desire and moaning when they're not turned on, and, I'm not saying that's dishonest, nobody's really being fooled here, but this whole larger situation is just wrong."​

Charles stared at the cellphone in his hand. "Starry, did you---"

"I didn't get that by reading minds, honest."​

If she'd deduced all that just from walking into a strip club and looking around, it wasn't very much less scary. It was hard sometimes to reconcile his perceptions of Cindy the Young Girl and Starry the Inhuman Power. "Are you thinking about doing something to the strip club? Improving it?"

"I thought about whether I could, but it would take more power than I'd dare to use, and I knew you'd tell me it wasn't a good idea. You know, it's not fair that I don't get to accuse you of reading my mind when you say things like that."​

"Fair. I'll still repeat that you shouldn't go around changing people's minds or bodies without asking them." To put it very, very, extremely mildly.

There was another long hesitation from the headset.

"I… wanted to talk about that, actually. That was part of why I called. I, uh, I want to be explicit that in this relationship, I'm not offering you the right to order me not to, uh, do things like that. Just, uh, the chance to persuade me not to."​

"I didn't think you were offering me that," Charles said, even as the monster inside him started wondering what exactly counted as persuasion and licking its lips in anticipation.

"Cool, good. It's just… communication about that kind of thing is important, right? I don't want to be, uh, a roller coaster that suddenly swerves away from where you thought it was going."​

"Thank you," Charles said sincerely. "I hope you're still regretting what you did last time."

"About that---"​

"How did you manage to get forced into an orgasm as a strip club waitress?" Charles felt surprised at how annoyed the predator inside him wasn't; it was laughing instead of furious. "Was it a girl who did it to you? Tell me all about it."

"You… don't sound angry?"​

"So long as you didn't deliberately disobey and you accept whatever punishment you're getting." Charles shifted slightly in bed, having been given reason to adjust his pants.

"Actually I haven't had an orgasm yet and, uh, that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about."​

"No," Charles said, feeling like the one word was a song. "And for asking, you get---"

"Please, Charles, we need to talk about this."​

It was a gentler curve, on the roller coaster. He could handle this one. The predator inside him wasn't being disrespected, just told to wait to receive its dues in their due time. The monster could be patient when it had to be, step back and let Charles Adan run its game. "Sorry," Charles said. "Okay, what is it?"

"I, uh, I think these exact rules aren't… working for me."​

And it was also strange how concerned the predator could be at the thought of its prey incurring any harm other than the exact suffering it had intended to inflict. "What's wrong?"

"But uh it's something I can put up with if I have to and I don't want you to feel like I'm trying to take back a promise---"​

"Cindy," Charles said, letting some sternness into his voice. He wasn't even sure which part of himself it was coming from. "If we're going to do this at all, then if at any point you even suspect you might be suffering in a way I didn't intend, you need to check in with me immediately. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be giving you orders right now, but if I am, then that's an order."

"Yes, sir. So, uh, back when I was deciding to go to the strip club in the first place, I made that decision in part because the other things I could've done today seemed more likely to involve orgasms. And I thought, uh, that I shouldn't do any lapdances on my first day, because if I was grinding too hard on a man's lap, I might end up being a bad girl. I was really frustrated and tense and wet after I finished redoing my morning punishment. It wouldn't have taken many licks on my lollipop to get to my creamy caramel center."​

"Go on." Charles had to lift himself off the bed and adjust his pants again.

"And then when, uh, I first got to the strip club and still thought I wanted to be a dancer, a girl gave me a lapdance to teach me how to do it, which was when I realized that she was moaning without really wanting me. Then I had to give the club manager a lapdance so he could check I'd learned it right."​

…okay, that made sense, one unpaid lap dance to check her skill made sense. Starry hadn't been taken advantage of by some scumbag. He didn't need to kill anyone.

Then Charles involuntarily grinned. "Wait, did you still think lap dances were supposed to make men come?"

"Yeah, but I failed that quest."​

"I wouldn't have guessed it was possible for you to fail."

"Well, sure, if I'd wanted to, I could have amped up my sexual talent to the point where I was the greatest lover on Earth and all of Cindy's native sexuality vanished like a drop of ink in the ocean, and then made that guy come so hard it literally killed him."​

"Do I need to list the reasons why that would be a bad idea?"

"No, I thought of all of those reasons already. I thought of them before I ran into you on Monday. Cindy knew it was a bad idea as soon as she saw it was possible. Honestly, Charles, sometimes I feel like you're underestimating me. Cinderella wasn't insane, and it's not like I ate the rest of her and spit out her common sense."​

"I'm glad to hear we're on the same page then." It was odd how her words could be so reassuring and so deassuring at the same time.

"Anyway, while I was giving the manager a lapdance, I wasn't grinding as much as I would have otherwise, because I didn't want to end up being a bad girl. I probably couldn't have made him come either way, but that's not the point. I think all the holding back and me being afraid of ending up as a bad girl, uh, I think I shouldn't try that right now. I think I need to be allowed to decide to do things that might involve fucking, without me being afraid that I'm rationalizing that choice because I want an orgasm. And if I end up fucking somebody, I need to fuck them as hard as I would usually. I can tell them I'm being punished and that I shouldn't come, and tell them when I'm getting close and give them a chance to tease me more. I can try to hold back my orgasm for as long as I can, and if I fail you can punish me for it. But I shouldn't be going around worried about whether I'm being secretly bad, or trying to figure out exactly how much I should grind on somebody's lap."​

"Because Starry didn't come to Earth to not do things, and you're holding back enough of your abilities already."

"Not, uh, exactly, I mean sort of but… I think it's just more than I can handle right now. I'm just not experienced enough at anything I'm doing to, uh, juggle all the emotional bowling pins."​

Charles kept his voice as gentle as he could, though part of him seemed both touched and angry at the same time. "Did it occur to you that you could call me up before the lap dance and talk about what was allowed?"

"I didn't realize exactly what had gone wrong until later, and then I called you the first time I could and before I did anything else sexual."​

"Ah. Good girl."

"So, uh, would that be okay? How does your inner predator feel about a change in the rules like that? I don't want it to feel like I'm trying to go back on my word or take away its new toy."'​

Charles frowned at the phone. That phrasing disturbed him, like she thought the monster inside him was her dom and had been giving her orders. The only three things the monster had ever said to her was that she was beautiful, that she needed to say when she was close, and to close her eyes.

"Charles?"​

Leaving her hanging wouldn't be nice, even though he felt like he needed time to consider. "Ah," Charles said, "I'm actually thinking maybe we should abort the whole thing. Just say you've been punished enough for now, and we can pick this up again the next time I get to Norville."

There was an intake of breath on the other end of the line, and then a swallowing sound.

"I, Charles, sir, I don't---Charles, I cried this morning, but it was a good crying. Cindy needed to cry that way. She'd needed it for a long time. When she, when I was done crying, everything had this golden glow around it and, and I needed it, I needed all of this. If we just call off the whole thing, it feels like I'm being slapped for checking in with you. Sir."​

Charles felt more than a little like he needed to safeword out of this situation. But he didn't know if people like him got to safeword under the BDSM rules, or if it was always their job to stay on duty and take care of whatever mess they'd made. "Cindy," he said in a calm voice, "we were supposed to try this and see if it worked, and if it started to go wrong we were supposed to stop. The only reason I was willing to unleash even the faintest tinge of my inner predator," monster, "on you, was because I trusted you to use your safeword if you got into trouble physically or emotionally."

"We're not talking about that big of a problem! I'm still okay, it was just a little hiccup. I'm reluctant to say this to you of all people, but Charles, I think you should calm down and not panic about this?"​

It'd been a large enough problem to make her call him rather than just keep on accepting her punishment. "Could be I'm overreacting, yeah. The problem is, I'm not in Norville where I can monitor what's happening. You're in a pretty unusual situation, and I'm not sure if either of us should trust your sense that this is only a little hiccup. I'm also quietly panicking because I haven't had any downtime to google BDSM since last night, and I don't know how anything works or what mistakes to avoid."

"I kind of wish you wouldn't, honestly."​

"Say what?"

"I'd rather you not get your ideas about BDSM from the Internet, especially if you're in a frame of mind where you think other people know the rules and you don't."​

"Cindy, I don't have the faintest idea of what we're doing right now. Staying ignorant doesn't seem wise."

"Yeah? Well, people on the Internet also don't have any fucking idea of what we're doing. Under their idea of how things work, I should've run away from you on Monday night and called the police."​

Charles flinched. "Jesus, Cindy."

"I'm sorry, it's just---Charles, have you seen the way the Internet discusses BDSM? Even leaving out Monday night, if we posted a script of our phone sex to Tumblr, there'd be twenty thousand notes of criticism inside of twenty minutes, with a Google Docs itemized spreadsheet of the top fifty-seven things they thought we did wrong and all the reasons we should break up immediately. Mostly blaming you, because you're the dom and you're male. You'd have to scroll down a long way to find the first reblog saying that you were getting off on punishing me, I felt all glowy when I was done crying, and maybe that meant we were both doing something right. 'Oh, that BDSM relationship just hit an unimportant speedbump and they should fix it and keep going,' said nobody on Tumblr ever."​

"So what you're saying is that I need to find somebody who's been in real BDSM relationships and ask them about it personally?"

Another long pause.

"It'd be a lot better, probably, but… Charles, I'm not sure I'm on board with a standard BDSM relationship being our goal. It… um. Should I say this now? I should say this now. It wasn't the idea of BDSM that Cinderella Sheen was attracted to before she got superpowers."​

"Romance novels?"

"No. Uh, do you know what an eroge is? An erogame?"​

"It sounds like it should be an abbreviation for erotic game, but I've never heard of it."

"It's a genre of, uh, visual novel. A visual novel is a cross between a video game and a book, and an eroge is a genre of visual novel that includes sex scenes. Cinderella spent six months secretly playing eroge when she was sixteen. Uh, eroge aren't unrealistic the same way that pornography is unrealistic. They're a different kind of unrealistic. But what I'm trying to say here is, uh, BDSM was made to be realistic, Cinderella was pulled toward erogames, and fuck reality I have superpowers."​

Charles silently mouthed the words fuck reality I have superpowers. "On a scale of 1 to 10," he said, "how much would I be panicking right now if I knew what an erogame was?"

"Uh, my improbability field seems to be taking inspiration from it in a way that I can't control, so maybe 9 or 9.5? It's really not the same as porn, though. But if you want to understand what's going on with us, I'd say that rather than reading up about BDSM right away, you should try playing some eroge first. Let's see, for you, maybe download Katawa Shoujo… no, that might not have much you'd be interested in. Sagara Family? I didn't play many eroge where I was the story's Charles."​

"The story's Charles?"

"Not literally. You're a lot more sensible. I only meant a protagonist that discovers their inner dominance and takes control of the other characters... huh. I think I just realized something."​

Charles consciously relaxed his tense grip on his cellphone. Step one, stay calm. Stay calm. "Is your improbability field turning me into one of those protagonists?"

"I'm pretty sure the erogame… um. Let me rephrase. I'm almost certain my improbability field didn't change you. There's no need for it to make a Charles when a person like that must already exist somewhere, right? So I think this is who you were all along, and now you're waking up to it. But, uh, the thing is, Cinderella Sheen never did anything like this when she was alive. Like, her mind had the circuitry, but it wasn't getting electricity. So now Starry is unfolding Cindy's latent potential for perversion in a slow, regulated process. Once I get the courage to strip on a street corner, I find it easier to walk nude in a protest march the next day. And I'm pretty sure that process is um, um, just getting started? So, uh, I just now realized that if our story route isn't doomed to end tragically in two months with you not being able to interest me any longer, then my improbability field must have led me to a nice, intelligent, altruistic gentleman, who, uh. Whose awakening dominant side has the potential to become way, way, way too extreme for the current me. And, uh, I'm just now realizing that might not be a very pleasant state for Charles Adan to be in, and you might be having some issues with that."​

"NO FUCKING SHIT, SHERLOCK!"

"I'm sorry I didn't realize earlier. But, uh, at least that proves I wasn't reading your mind?"​

Charles didn't know whether he ought to be crying or laughing once he was done screaming. "And you don't think," Charles said, feeling like keeping each word level was a task like grabbing a bucking horse, "that this means that your improbability field is making you sick, and I'm already sick, and this isn't going to end well for either of us."

"I think that's what a lot of naive people would say about any BDSM more extreme than fur-lined handcuffs. Well, those people don't understand what some other people want, or enjoy, or need in strange ways. People should be allowed to be what they are."​

"And if somebody's strange need is to hurt a young girl in a way that strikes him as extreme and mentally ill?"

"As long as there's an improbability field making sure the young girl he encounters is one who has a strange need to be hurt in those ways, I don't see a problem. He might need to wait a couple of months, though."​

Part of Charles was most pleased by this.

The rest of him was considering turning himself in to a psychiatric hospital.

"Charles? It's going to be okay. Really."​

Charles swallowed, and managed to clear his throat. "I'm seriously worried that what you're describing is both of us developing complementary mental disorders."

"Pffft, mental disorders. That's what doctors used to say about homosexuality and masturbation, remember? And the key points they were missing were, one, everyone was having fun, two, what does a mental disorder even mean besides somebody thinking differently than you do, and three, who the fuck did they think they were."​

"I'll be sure to tell my hallucinations that after I start hearing the voices."

"Charles, it will be fine. And anyway, we should just worry about what's immediately ahead of us. Things are changing fast, and none of us can truly know what our lives might be like in the faraway future, like next Tuesday. So, uh, about the rules for my punishment?"​

Charles flopped himself onto the bed mattress with a soft thud, careful not to crush his headset as he did. "I can't handle this right now. Your punishment is over, go ahead and come, we'll take this up again when I can get to Norville."

"Please, sir? Just having an orgasm now doesn't feel right."​

"You can hold off longer if that's what you want."

"That doesn't feel right either. I can't just take back control of my orgasm after all this buildup, that would be, it would be…"​

"Let me guess," Charles said, feeling a vengeful impulse that wasn't coming from the monster inside him at all. "It feels like you were on a roller coaster that suddenly did a 180 and sent you flying the other way? Well, there you have it. Justice has been served."

There was a long silence from his headset.

"When I realized what I'd done I apologized and tried to make up for it, Charles. This isn't good."​

"I'm sorry. But, Cindy, I need to be able to stop giving you orders. I don't know if the dom gets a safeword in BDSM---"

"Who fucking cares how it works in BDSM?"​

"Anyone who cares about however many decades of experience they have with avoiding terrible, terrible ideas. Maybe the dom always has to be ready to stay on duty. Or maybe everyone gets a safeword. I don't know. But I do know that I need to not be giving you orders right now. If I had a safeword, I'd be using it."

"God damn it. Okay, uh, I don't want you to push yourself or do anything you don't want to do, but how about if instead you make a suggestion?"​

"Suggestion," Charles said dryly. He suspected that in BDSM you were not supposed to keep pushing the dom like this after he safeworded, and he wondered if Starry didn't know that, or didn't realize what she was doing. Or maybe it was the sub's privilege to ask for a little more help. He didn't know.

"Yeah. If I don't want to just have a sad unhappy orgasm, what's your suggestion for how I should finish out the teasing instead? I promise I won't take it as a command, and that I'll change it if I feel like it. That can be your own way of trying to make the turn less jarring for me, and then that will be fair."​

The odd thing was, giving her a suggestion felt completely different from giving her a command. Different and a lot safer. "You promise you won't take it as an order."

"Yeah."​

"I'm trusting you on this, Cindy."

"I promise that whatever you tell me to do, I'll disobey it at least a little."​

"Then," Charles said, not suppressing the vengeful tone from his voice at all, "I suggest you tease yourself for at least one minute every half hour. Go to a bathroom or some other isolated place, spend at least one minute right on the verge of coming. Also, get to the edge twice every time you walk through someplace nobody can see you. Use your time powers if you need to not be late. Sound good?"

"Uh, when do I come?"​

Starry sounded apprehensive for some reason.

Go figure.

"I don't think I have any suggestions of my own, so you might as well use the rules you thought of earlier. You can't deliberately look for an orgasm, but you shouldn't fret about whether you might be rationalizing a choice that puts you in pleasure's way. You can move your hips as much as you want, but you have to try to hold back your climax. If somebody might make you come, you need to tell them you're being punished, and offer them a chance to tease you more instead. Just keep on with that until you end up having an orgasm anyway."

"Oh."​

Starry said it in a very soft voice.

"Do I… get to come tonight? If I haven't already?"​

"That's all up to you," Charles said, aware of the vicious edge in his voice. "I'm just making suggestions. You're perfectly capable of deciding for yourself when you want to stop following my suggestions. If you're waiting for me to suggest that you have an orgasm, you'll be waiting a long time. I don't see why I'd ever make a suggestion like that when I know you can give yourself an orgasm any time you want one."

"Oh."​

And now Charles was very, very hard again.

He couldn't believe he was about to do this, but, well, he was giving up. It'd been a long half of a day, and he didn't have the strength right now to control himself. "You don't have to, of course," Charles said. "But I think I'd like to have a nice relaxing orgasm myself, and I'd enjoy it if you happened to start teasing yourself right this minute. Not staying on the edge, just edging over and over. I wouldn't mind if you decided to count them."

There was a pause, and then soft sounds of breathing came from Charles's headset, little gasps.

"One."​

"Holy shit, seriously?" Charles said. "My god, you must be incredibly horny."

"Oh. Oh, I am. Do you think I'm a s-slut? You can call me a slut if you waAAAAHant. Two. I've been t-tense all day and then you said those su-suggestions and I got s-so. So. Three."​

Charles stripped his pants off, then his underpants, aware that if this was posted to the Internet, there'd probably be a five-page list of everything he was doing wrong now. And worse, they'd be right.

"N-nine oh god."​

Charles didn't take things slowly this time. He did have that next meeting soon.

Instead, still feeling the vicious sense of freedom that came from knowing Starry could stop doing this whenever she wanted, he kept his own voice quiet when he came.

Then he went on listening to Starry's moans and whines and counting, while he cleaned himself up and started to assemble his briefcase.

"Ei, ei, eighty-nine oh god please sir are you close?"​

"Nah," Charles said. "I came a while ago."

"You bastard!"​

"Hey now. I didn't give you any orders. If you decided to tease yourself for a few minutes, that's not my responsibility." Charles took a waterglass over to the tap and began to fill it. "So how are you feeling right now?"

"N-nearly out of my mind and, and trying not to think about all the people staring at me."​

The waterglass dropped into the sink with a shrieking ting and a splash that drenched the counter. "Have you been in public this entire time?"

"Uh huh! I, I mean, I wasn't naked, I just put my hand under my panties, but it was obvious what I was doing. I am now slightly more perverted."​

"I didn't mean for you to do that!"

"I know, and of course I'll always inform you about that type of issue when you're giving me orders rather than suggestions, sir."​

"STARRY! That's not---god damn it! What if somebody calls the police?"

"I think my improbability field will prevent… oh. Yikes. That is a police car. Hold on while I parkour onto a rooftop."​

Charles had lost his ability to words.

There were some barely audible thuds from his headset and something that sounded like tree branches rustling, and then Starry's voice sounded again.

"Kay, I'm on the roof now. I need to hop further in case the police saw me come up here, but since I'm currently out of anyone's line of sight, your suggestion says I have to edge twice."​

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? JUST GO!"

"Mm. Mmm. I don't think I'll take that uh. Suggestion."​

"Wait, why did I think that relaxing my control over you would be a good idea? This is the dumbest decision I've ever---"

"FUUUCK! Oh god, that was so close it hurt. That was three edges just to be disobedient. Now I'm running away again. See, this is the type of heart-pounding adventure I could never have if I listened to the sort of snooty people who are all like, 'In a healthy BDSM relationship you shouldn't end up fleeing the police.'"​

"THEY HAVE A POINT, STARRY!"

"I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm saying I want to live my new life to its fullest and explore all its possibilities, including some stupid ones, and that's why I don't want a normal healthy BDSM relationshiiiiiiiip---"​

There was a clattering sound from his headset, and then a heavy thud that caused Charles's heart to stutter.

"Oops. I shouldn't have tried doing that one-handed. Maybe I'll buy a Bluetooth earpiece for the next time I have to flee the police while talking to you?"​

"NEVER do this again! That's an order!"

"That's not an order I'm offering you the right to give me, sir. Although I am open to persuasion. Very, very open. Uh, you do realize I'm probably going to get more and more outrageous until you move to Norville and get me under control? That's not a threat, I won't be doing it deliberately, but I'm guessing that's how this will go."​

"God Almighty, ruler of all the heavens, what have I done to deserve your wrath?"

"You raped a girl, duh."​

"I raped the inhuman horror that ate Cinderella and spit out her common sense!"

"Wow, burn. Okay, I need to hang up, I shouldn't try to make this next jump one-handed. But in all seriousness, I feel a lot better now. Even if it means I'm going to be very insane soon, I'm glad we had this talk."​

"I'm not."

"I don't need to read your mind to know you don't mean that. Bye, Charles! Talk to you later!"

-beep-​

Spoiler: Author's note

In this chapter, Cindy ends up fleeing the police. But in a healthy BDSM relationship, you should not end up fleeing the police! BDSM was deliberately designed to make bad erotica from a literary perspective, because BDSM has numerous features intended to prevent things from going wrong. From an author's standpoint this removes the conflict that comes from things going wrong, the tension that comes from the reader worrying that things will go even more wrong, and the humor that comes from funny rooftop chases. But people who don't have the Erogame backing them up should stick to BDSM, because in real life it is bad when things go wrong! Sometimes characters inside this porn quest talk about BDSM, and they may sound like they don't like BDSM rules, or explain why they think it's okay to break BDSM rules. Any dialogue like this is a plot device in an online porn quest, not a balanced debate about BDSM reaching a reasonable conclusion. This wholesome family-friendly message has been brought to you by the letter Q, the number 12, your favorite breakfast cereal, and the actual real-life beliefs of the author.

4.2.4*: Shoedrop

Fluid Unformed: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 10 D|S.

Whenever you are transitioning between one scene and another, you may elect to have all sex-related fluids vanish from you and your clothing. (For example, semen on your face, wetness on your thighs, or silicone lubricant on your fingers.)

This skill will not work on fluids which remain relevant to the plot, such as evidence of a rape, or sticky panties that enable someone to deduce you're a slut.

THUD.

Ouch.

Okay, your High-Heeled Landing wasn't quite up to that. You managed to drop down and land on just your left shoe, or left heel rather, instead of both feet.

You're limping slightly as you walk down the city block on which the Purring Kittens complex rests. Ugh, you hope you haven't twisted a foot, or if you did you hope it regenerates before tonight. That will not be fun if you're going to waitress all afternoon.

Though, uh, it's possible you'll have other things on your mind.

Maybe you're only imagining your clitoris throbbing in time with your heartbeat? Well, if it is throbbing, it's only sending out barely noticeable tickles, and you definitely won't be able to come that way even if you concentrate on it. You did another two edges on the last roof, since it was the last time nobody could see you, and it refreshed all of the agony like it had never started to fade.

Oh, and you're pretty sure the police are no longer following you. You're not sure they were chasing you in the first place, actually. Maybe the police car was only there by coincidence, or maybe the officer saw you executing High-Heeled Jumps onto a rooftop and decided not to report it so nobody would think he was crazy. You haven't acquired a "Wanted" status effect, at least.

You're not telling Mom about that part of your day.

You're still smiling without being able to control your grin, as you turn the sidewalk's corner and walk towards the Purring Kittens building, only slightly favoring your left leg. You got to hop rooftops in near-anime style, your current running speed in combination with your higher jumping letting you make the average gap with room to spare. You gained one level each in Jumping and Landing. You gained the incredibly convenient Fluid Unformed skill when you started to wipe stickiness off your thighs using the spare shirt in your backpack.

And much, much, much more importantly, you found out that Charles needs you as much as you need him. He's incredibly unlikely to find another… partner… for his inner predator. For him, it's you or nobody. Or you in two months for him in two months, rather. Maybe there'll be other girls for him in the harem you're building, but good luck finding one anywhere else.

You haven't pointed that out in so many words. You don't think Charles would take well to you having that power over him. It might be for the best that he doesn't realize he's hooked.

But you're feeling so much more secure in your relationship now. Knowing that you'll both develop complementary mental disorders is almost like getting an engagement ring.

Oh, and before, you tried experimenting with temporarily shifting your hair to Earth's Tones before you asked Charles for that suggestion, to see if he got less sadistic at lower ERO. You were worried about whether maybe the Erogame was controlling him after all.

You can now report that Charles's sadism seems independent of your current ERO level.

Three cheers for science.

The more disturbing scientific observation is, you're starting to suspect that when you're interacting with Charles, you might get a little more… Starry. Maybe higher SED unlocks some natural human ability to have different faces around different people, or maybe it's less natural and you need to make a greater effort to turn off your Erogame Character Alternate Personality Support. You weren't planning to end up running from the police when you set your schedule this morning.

Although, now that you think back on the text conversations you've had with Charles, it seems like maybe you were more Cindyish when you were thumbing in texts? Maybe it's hearing the physical sound of Charles's voice that reminds you to pretend to be an alien? Or you have more time to think and be Cindy when you're thumbing texts? You can't think of a good Erogame reason for you to think differently in text and speech, but random weird psychology is a thing too.

(Telling Charles the truth about the Erogame might solve the whole issue the way it did with your Mom, but you can't do that yet. Your relationship has to be more solid first, right? Right?)

You push open a glass door and step into the lower level of the Purring Kittens, the floor with the sex shop. You head straight towards the back and then, before starting up the red-carpeted stairs, you glance to your right at a corridor promising bathrooms. You edged eighty-nine times, but you technically weren't edge-riding for your half-hourly minute. Maybe it doesn't count…?

No. You don't want to be late for work. You've invoked Slack to arrive "not late enough to get Bry annoyed with me," but you're not sure how much Slack you still have left on your mystic clock. You therefore decide that your previous session with Charles counted towards your half-hourly minute, or maybe this is another bit of mandatory disobedience.

You grin again as you start up the stairs. You're… actually really liking this suggestions-instead-of-orders business. Having your limits pushed and being obedient was important, it was something that needed to happen to you. But it also feels much less nerve-racking to be able to make your own decisions whenever that helps. You know this afternoon is going to send you around the bend, but teasing yourself into insanity feels much safer if you can modify the rules at any time without relationship consequences. Maybe you should ask for more "suggestions" in the future, and save orders for special occasions.

Imaginary Charles says in a dry tone that this is probably exactly the type of thing he could learn by reading a basic BDSM text, and you tell Imaginary Charles to shut up. You like him the way he is, and the thought of his inner predator being turned into a safe sanitized standardized Internet-approved service dom is horrifying.

You pause on the stairwell's landing between the first and second floor, as you realize that nobody can see you here.

This is going to drive you completely out of your mind.

You swallow, look around again, and slide your fingers under your miniskirt, under your panties. Your fingers inflict quick, harsh, hurried rubs on your clit. You don't need to be gentle with yourself anymore, not when the recently stoked fire hasn't subsided and you're so very wet. It feels like you've already been masturbating, your fingers feel good instantly, warm pleasure goes to heat and builds and builds and "One," you whisper, and pull away your fingers even though they feel magnetized to your clitoris, waiting for the heat to subside enough that you think it counts as a separate edge when your fingers go back and rub and rub and Edge Self you couldn't stop this otherwise and ooooohhh FUCK. You're panting with what's almost a physical pain, cut by a razor blade of need and pleasure.

When you look up again you see a middle-aged man in business casual staring at you from the top of the stairwell.

Slowly, his angular face transitions to a grin.

Your cheeks are flaming instantly, like all the embarrassment from your last public masturbation is also carrying over to now. You realize your hand is still shoved down your miniskirt, and you quickly yank it out.

"Getting ready for a lap dance?" he inquires in a velvet tone.

"Uh, no, I'm actually a waitress here," you say, and smile brightly. "But I'm following a dare somebody gave me, so I have to masturbate almost to an orgasm and not come, every time I'm somewhere nobody can see me. Guess I was wrong about that last part. Tip me well if I end up serving your table?"

The man visibly swallows. His face tightens up.

You step back nervously as he approaches you down the stairs. The man reaches your landing between floors and looks down, where nobody is coming down the stairs, and then looks up again where nobody else has followed him down.

No. He can't be planning violence. One scream from you and the security will be here in seconds.

The man turns toward you and you flinch, he takes a step towards you, you step back, and he says in a very low voice, "I'll pay you four hundred and eighty dollars if you step into the downstairs bathroom and blow me. Right now."

Tha-that would only take like five minutes, and it's probably as much as you'd earn in this whole next shift, and having a cock in your mouth sounds quite interesting right now, but it would tease you even more, maybe you could offer him a fuck instead for even more money, no that would be so much worse, but not so bad you'd give up a hundred dollars not to be teased so horribly, and, and, and you shouldn't make this rather big decision while your pussy is still twitching from the fading edge, you don't know if you're thinking straight. "N-not right now," you say in a squeak. "Uh, thanks for the offer, maybe ask me again tomorrow if I'm here?"

"Otherwise," the man says so low it's almost a growl, "I'll tell Bry what I saw you doing."

For a second you don't understand the words, like your brain's word center hiccuped.

Shock washes away some of your arousal, rebooting some of your mind. He's---that means---he's trying to---threaten you into---

What would Charles say what would Mom say what would---

"Really," you say in your best imitation of Karinna Coral's purr, looking right into his eyes and refusing to flinch again. "I could tell Bry what you just tried to threaten me into doing. I'm pretty sure you'd never be allowed in the Purring Kittens again."

"I'm one of the top spenders at this club, bitch. He'd fire fucking Lina if she pissed me off. You coming downstairs or am I going upstairs?"

The man's watch looks expensive. His clothes fit him perfectly. His shoes have been recently shined. He offered you five hundred bucks for five minutes. His voice sounded utterly confident so far as you could tell. He could be a top spender. Bry seemed nicer than that. That could be an illusion.

Drama on your first day would certainly not make a good impression on the boss. You'd tell you not to come back.

In the back of your mind, you're aware that your current LST and PRV and Teased status are almost certainly enough to avert emotional trauma from this man extorting oral sex from you without using physical violence. He doesn't look awful or smell awful. It's rape under the law, but that was going to happen to you someday and it could certainly be worse. Part of you feels a weird relief, like it finally finally felt the Erogame's other shoe drop, and now it can stop anticipating the fall.

VOTING IS LOCKED UNTIL 8 HOURS FROM THIS POST'S TIMESTAMP.

[ ] Take him up on it for…
-[ ][AMT] $480.
-[ ][AMT] (Write-in higher demand, median price will be used.)
-[ ][STRA] Report him to Bry if he refuses your price.
-[ ][STRA] Walk away if he refuses your price.
-[ ][STRA] Give in if he refuses your price.
-[ ][STRA] Offer intercourse if he refuses your price.
-[ ][STRA] Some other strategy. (Write-in.)
[ ] Refuse.
-[ ] Just be honest if he follows through on reporting you to Bry, let those chips fall where they may.
-[ ] Some other strategy. (Write-in.)
[ ] (Write-in.)

Spoiler: Erogame event roll

I plan that in the future, I won't usually display random encounter results while you're still thinking about them, so that you won't know yet exactly what kind of luck you're facing. You'll only know afterwards if you were making your choice in the face of a 1 or a 100. In this case, I'll show the operation in advance to help introduce the system.

First day at the strip club: Event window = ERO * 2.
Negative ero event: 1-28
Positive ero event: 73-100
The Coals Relighted and you're doing this for the first time: +15 to the roll, a 2 is as bad as a 1.

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 13+15 = 28

For: Event

Rolled on: August-03-2017, 11:51pm

See dice roll details

13

Result = 28: A negative ero event is encountered, but it's just barely terrible. So, OOC, the man isn't secretly planning to chloroform you.

Spoiler: Author notes

A lot of commenters expressed cautious thoughts about this relationship, comparing it to the standards of traditional BDSM, remarking on the participants' inexperience with BDSM, and suggesting that they take things slower and more carefully. Many of them were concerned that Charles might be doing something wrong and getting too extreme too fast, and that he might be turning dangerous or evil.

I do try to show commenters' thoughts occuring to the characters wherever those voices would fit well inside their heads. Of course, between Charles and Cindy, all those thoughts were completely in-character for exactly one of them.

There were also a lot of commenters who felt that Cindy was being too pliant to Charles and should maybe not follow along with everything he said, so I tried to work that in too.

I hope both groups are happy with the inevitable outcome!

4.2.5: Extortion for Beginners

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (23,150 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 158/300
SUB: 350/390

BOD: 21
LST: 18 (21)
SED: 16
FUK: 14
PRV: 22 (25)
ERO: 28

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $1902

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 46 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[X] Refuse.
-[X] Just be honest if he follows through on reporting you to Bry, let those chips fall where they may.
No. of Votes: 17
pepperjack
Arkatekt
DocAutomata
Dragonheart91
Firedon
Gingganz
Gnarker
Jaso
Kandagger
LaTeChien
Malbutorius
Nordvegr
Proxima
Prustan
ShaperV
Xenia
zup
[X] Refuse.
-[X] Just be honest if he follows through on reporting you to Bry, let those chips fall where they may.
-[X] Tell Bry that we are probably going to quit this place anyway, it's not to our taste really, so it's okay if he wants to fire us to appease the client. But perhaps he should check to see if any of the other girls have been coerced in this manner before?
No. of Votes: 8
Elitist Oars
Canadiak
gilgamekk
Helix
KBob
kimagurena65536
napkintooth
Spectral Waltz
[X] Refuse.
-[X] Just be honest if he follows through on reporting you to Bry, let those chips fall where they may.
--[X] (Only if asked to leave) Tell Bry that we are probably going to quit this place anyway, it's not to our taste really, so it's okay if he wants to fire us to appease the client. But perhaps he should check to see if any of the other girls have been coerced in this manner before?
No. of Votes: 6
january1may
Automatonation
Blackshard
Piell
ScrewFate
slicedtoad
[X] Accept
-[X] Use Edge Other and Tears of Milk to drive him to the edge
-[X] Extract extra payment out of him when he begs us to finish him off
--[X] Offer him the option of trading his clothing for a waitress outfit as a form of payment
No. of Votes: 3
Jetsmillion
Dutchman
VanillaTentacle
[X] Refuse.
-[X] Just be honest if he follows through on reporting you to Bry, let those chips fall where they may.
-[X] If it comes to it, perhaps Bry should check to see if any of the other girls have been coerced in this manner before?
No. of Votes: 3
kozinc
MrBTXz
Tesla
[X] Conditionally Refuse.
-[X] Tell him we're just a waitress and the money is nice, but not that important.
-[X] If he wants us, abide by Bry's rules and ask outside the club, and abide by our rules and ask nicely.
-[X] Just be honest if he follows through on reporting you to Bry, let those chips fall where they may.
No. of Votes: 2
Alkaiser009
kataklyst
[X] Refuse.
-[X] Just be honest if he follows through on reporting you to Bry, let those chips fall where they may.
--[X] Tell Bry (privately) that we are probably going to quit this place anyway, it's not to our taste really, so it's okay if he wants to fire us to appease the client. But perhaps he should check to see if any of the other girls have been coerced in this manner before?
No. of Votes: 2
Sirrocco
lucero
[X] "Accept"
-[X] Once he is in the stall, start edging him with your hand, repeatedly. Spend points on FUK and SED as necessary to maintain control.
-[X] Take his pants while he's distracted by being edged, leave his underwear around his ankles.
-[X] Tell him we're just a waitress and the money is nice, but not that important.
-[X] Walk out while he's still on edge (without ever going down on him) and leave his pants outside the bathroom door while telling him where they will be.
-[X] If he wants us, abide by Bry's rules and ask outside the club, and abide by our rules and ask nicely.
No. of Votes: 1
wasprider
[X] Take him up on it for…
-[X][AMT] $600
-[X][STRA] Walk away if he refuses your price.
No. of Votes: 1
Grollo
[x ] Refuse.
-[ x] Just be honest if he follows through on reporting you to Bry, let those chips fall where they may.
-[x ] Maybe preempt him by reporting what he threatened to Bry or Tisha.
No. of Votes: 1
Rockeye
[X] If things go badly unleash the hair. Also put this blackmailing asshole on our list to be extorted for money later.
No. of Votes: 1
Dragonheart91
[X] Take him up on it for…
-[X][STRA] Some other strategy. (Write-in.)
--[X] Accept his offer. Then as soon as soon as we're both in the bathroom and he drops his pants, scream loudly. Give the bouncer/Bry a tearful story admitting you were mastrubating in the stairway before coming back to work (after our lap job performance, I don't think Bry would find that out of character for us), but when this guy started coming down the stairs and saw you, he pulled you into the bathroom and started demanding a blowjob while threatening our job.
No. of Votes: 1
edale
[X] Refuse.
-[X] Just be honest if he follows through on reporting you to Bry, let those chips fall where they may.
--[X] (Only if asked to leave) But perhaps he should check to see if any of the other girls have been coerced in this manner before?
No. of Votes: 1
DarthSquidious
[X] Refuse, but give him your number and tell him you're free this evening. You don't care about the money, and you don't care about this job, but you do care about him.
No. of Votes: 1
Dreikanter
Total No. of Voters: 47

A man in business casual stands a foot away from you in the middle of a stairwell, staring at you with a triumphant expression while muffled strip-club music wafts down from above.

It's a funny thing. If you'd asked yourself one hour ago what you would've done in this situation, you would have imagined yourself trying to negotiate up to a thousand dollars, or trying to come up with a clever way to extort him back by recording the sexual encounter. You would have expected yourself to be feeling scared and violated and maybe, if the Erogame was kind to you, turned on.

Your actual feelings are remarkably unified, and can be summed up as someday someone is going to blackmail me into sex, but it's not going to be this asshole.

Could this be an erogame character's pride? Maybe it is. It needs to take more than this to force you to your knees and part your lips.

Now that you think about, sometimes when you played eroge you'd roll your eyes at the characters who frightenedly marched into the storage room in the face of some small threat, got recorded having sex, and were soon forced into doing worse things. You kinda wished the scared schoolgirls on screen would tell the extortionist to take his trivial leverage and shove it. Maybe it's not how things go in standard eroge, but it's how things would go if you wrote an eroge.

This doesn't even seem worth your dignity to lie. Yeah, you were masturbating in the stairwell. You're not going to lie about that to Bry, not when he's played fair up until this point. If Bry tries to placate the asshole by firing you, fuck the Purring Kittens Club. If Bry kicks out the asshole and then tells you not to come back either, which is what you'd probably do if you were him, then you weren't planning a lifelong career as a waitress anyway.

Maybe Karinna Coral gets to blackmail you at some point, but this asshole doesn't. You don't even want to bother with a counterplot to force money out of him, because that would mean interacting with him further, and you don't want this asshole in your erogame ever again.

…That does lead to an interesting thought. And attempted rapists ought to suffer some indignity for their efforts.

You give the man your best tremulous, frightened smile, trying to consciously invoke Erogame Character Alternate Personality Support if it exists, and say "Do I still get the money?"

The man gives you a superior look. "If you're good with your mouth."

You swallow as if frightened, turn to look down the stairs. "Uh, we, we shouldn't both go into the bathrooms at the same time because the cashier knows to watch for that and I'll get fired anyway. And, uh, is it okay if I buy flavored lube from the shop because I'm really, really not sure I can do this otherwise, I always use flavored lube for oral---"

"Bitch, if you're not in the men's bathroom two minutes after I walk in, your ass is on the streets."

You turn and walk down the stairs, because you don't think you can keep the eyeroll out of your voice if you say anything out loud.

You head on over to the lube section at first, bending over to examine it as you hear the man walking past behind you. Sound of door to the bathrooms opening, check. You keep a bottle of strawberry-flavored lube in your hand, in case he faked the door and is sneaking back to check on you, as you walk over to the costume section and pick up a $12 flimsy-looking sexy maid uniform.

No, the maid uniform isn't part of this plot, you just feel you should have one on hand because of your Maid skill. The sex shop is right here, and you might not be coming back.

You replace the flavored lube on its shelf.

The cashier rings up your maid uniform, and you stuff it into your backpack.

You lean against the nearest wall and pull out your new burner phone, a small but working Android slab. You put a careful finger over the part of the screen where the clock appears. Then you start browsing the app store, trying to maintain your sense of being unhurried.

Slack has increased by 1.

Okay, that means you have at least 10 minutes left. This shouldn't take that long.

Mr. Asshole bursts out of the bathroom door as soon as you relax your hold on time, looking every bit as enraged as expected.

You pull your phone back in your hand, clutching it to your breasts as you say in a wavering voice, "I texted my boyfriend and he says I c-can't. Please don't get me fired. Please. I need this job."

Mr. Asshole marches right up to your face. "You stupid bitch," he hisses, "you think this is a shit test? You can forget about the money. If my dick is not in your mouth in thirty seconds you are gone."

God, what a moron. Maybe it's less obvious if you've never played eroge, but still, what a moron. You're holding a cellphone ten inches from his head. For a second you're tempted to go the extortion route yourself and wring him dry… but it's just not worth having this in your life.

"Please just let me go back to my job," you whimper. "I need to be at the tables."

"Ten fucking seconds."

"D-don't touch me! I'll scream."

The asshole just stands there.

Hello, ten seconds are up now? You're going to feel irate if he just walks away and proves this was a bluff.

Then the asshole smiles, like he's just seen something delightful. "Bry's going to hear about your stupid blackmail scheme too."

"What?" you say, the indignation in your voice not feigned.

"Trying to whore yourself to me. Then threatening to yell rape if I didn't just give you cash."

"That never happened!" you quietly wail.

"New face like you? Nobody believes you. You're gone. You're gone from every club in this city. Last chance, bitch."

You can't be bothered to come up with a rejoinder. Is he going to do this or not?

The asshole's face twists into new fury. "And you're gone, fucker. Maybe I'd have let you off if you hadn't wasted my time."

The asshole stomps up the stairs, and you follow, feeling curious. What does happen when the erogame character refuses to be blackmailed right at the beginning and the extortionist tries to follow through on their weak starting hand? You're not sure you can ever recall seeing that happen.

Time to see what material Bryan Landau's made of.

"…and then she said she'd scream unless I gave her a thousand dollars."

Bryan Landau, wearing a neutral face, looks to you. "That what happened, Princess?"

You won't show off the recording you made unless Bry seems to be having trouble figuring out the truth. You want to see what he thinks without it.

You take a breath. "My dominant wasn't letting me come today, and I also had to edge myself every time I walked through someplace where nobody could see me. I thought that included the stairwell between the first and third floors, but I was mistaken." Despite your attempt at a crisp, matter-of-fact tone, you're blushing rather intensely. You have been a very naughty girl today and Bry is giving you a look. "This man saw me masturbating, and offered me four hundred and eighty dollars to blow him right away in the downstairs bathroom. I was tempted since it was a lot of money for five minutes' work, but I knew I was too horny to be thinking clearly, so I told him no and to ask again tomorrow. Then he threatened to report me if I didn't blow him. Which is legally an attempted rape, in case anyone in this room is unaware of that."

Mr. Asshole, who was looking at you in surprise as you shifted to a calm and indeed Maidly demeanor except for your blush, is now gazing at you in a rictus of fury. Like he thinks he can intimidate you or something. Bry still looks neutral.

"I told him that if he tried that, I'd report to you what he'd just tried on me. He said he was a top spender here and that you'd fire fucking Lina if she pissed him off. I acted scared and compliant, and said we shouldn't go into the downstairs bathroom at the same time, because the cashier would notice. I also said I needed to buy flavored lube before I could do oral. He went into the bathroom." Like the obliging little moron he is. "I went back upstairs and asked a waitress who was the big spender with the angular face that had just gone downstairs, because the guy wanted to tell Bry something, but I hadn't gotten his name. It was technically true, get it? That way I'd still have been able to report on an attempted rape by Jeremy Willagher if he'd just run off afterwards. If he's pulled this on me, maybe he's tried pulling it on other girls here too."

Spoiler: Die roll

Difficulty: 30/50/70/90

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 33+15 = 48

For: Bry's reaction

Rolled on: August-08-2017, 12:39am

See dice roll details

33

One success.

Bry looks back at Jeremy Willagher.

"She's lying through her fucking teeth," the asshole says through gritted teeth, "and I'm walking out of this club for good if I see her here again."

"Yeah, she's out," Bry says. "You can go, Jeremy. I've gotta handle her severance."

…you thought you were more ready for that than you were.

Mr. Asshole wears a triumphant sneer as he brushes past you, shouldering you out of the way, and slams the door behind him.

You look at Bry and raise your eyebrows, trying to conceal how much this hurts inside. You've never been fired before and it's… humiliating. Not in any kind of good way. You thought Bry was better than this, too.

"Even if you were tellin the truth, Jeremy tips Raven about a thousand bucks a night," Bry says. His voice is more subdued now, and he looks pained. "Raven's dad just got outta the hospital. But I'll ask around, and if he's tried that line on any of ours, I'll toss him once Raven's bills are paid. I need to explain to you why you're not comin back after?"

"Because I created drama by masturbating in the stairwell," you say.

"Yeah. And cause you don't belong here. Don't take this the wrong way, Princess, but you thought you were comin here to get men off, and if you're that hot to go then that's what you oughtta be sellin. Though you're too mucha a cinnamon roll by a baker's dozen, and I'd tell you to get out of the whole industry if I thought ya could. But I know, I know, you need the money. You gonna make whatever rent you came here ta pay?"

"Uh, earning another hundred and twenty dollars would be nice? There's a guy who might be still around upstairs, who offered me one-forty for a lapdance while I was waitressing. Is it okay to take him up on that before I go?"

Bry silently takes a roll of bills from his pocket, peels off six twenties, and lays them in front of you.

You pick them up, feeling a little hollow. He probably thinks you're in more trouble than you are. "I'll pay you back later," you say.

"You don't hafta. Severance pay."

"I know," you say. You're doing it anyway once you hit your first million dollars. "Got any advice for what I should try next?"

"If you were really doin yourself on the stairs? Waynie over at Passionate Nights would love you ta bits."

Of course there's the question of whether you can trust Bry's recommendations. "Uh, I also heard somebody mention T. C. Coil's Escort Service?"

Bry's face instantly tightens up. "Stay the fuck away from there. Stay the fuck away from whoever mentioned it. I didn't tell you that and we never talked about this. You gettin me?"

"Yeah," you say. Well, that's one point in favor of Bry's knowledge and helpfulness. "Thanks. Thanks very much. Uh, do I need to worry about Jeremy Willagher sending thugs after me? Like is he secretly a captain in the mafia?"

"Just an ad agency bigwig. One more walkin asshole of a Los Angeles exec who thinks he's hotter shit than he'll ever be." Bry lifts his chin towards the door. "Good luck, Princess."

You turn to the door, and walk out of Purring Kittens forever.

There's a pang in your heart, as you stride away from the three-story building, past the Greek restaurant next to it. You're not running yet, because you haven't decided where to go from here, and also because you didn't want to leave.

Bryan Landau was right. That strip club wouldn't ever have been home for you.

There were people there you liked anyway.

Something about all of this feels unfair. You thought you were more immune to consequences than this.

Well… you masturbated in your workplace where somebody could see you, and walked into a classic eroge sextortion setup. The result could have been that you earned another $480 and kept on having the Purring Kittens as an available place of employment. Instead you elected to call the extortionist's hand and see what happened. Because you thought you'd be okay with being fired. Then you got fired.

You don't feel like you made any wrong choices, but… you wish some die roll in the game had gone differently.

You're feeling pretty horrible, to be honest. It's the first time something bad-flavored has happened to you in the Erogame. It doesn't feel like you're scared because the Erogame might escalate next time, although that's an issue too. You're feeling awful because you failed. In the future there'll be more hidden dice rolls or whatever going on in the background, and you'll fail some of those too, maybe get fired a few more times. The thought makes you want to curl up in fetal position. You have to keep reminding yourself that it's better than never getting to live at all.

It might be worth remembering that you didn't lose completely.

You take the little burner phone from your backpack's side pocket, where you stowed it while following Mr. Asshole up the stairs. You unlock the screen, stop the ongoing recording. Then, as you continue to stroll down the sidewalk to nowhere in particular, you press play.

"Please don't get me fired. Please. I need this job."

"You stupid bitch, you think this is a shit test? You can forget about the money. If my dick is not in your mouth in thirty seconds you are gone."​

The voices seem clear enough. You were mostly just getting Mr. Asshole's lower face in this part of the video, but there was a clear shot of him exiting the bathroom at least. You can't be expected to perfectly aim the camera from where you were clutching it to your chest---

A skill has been created by a special action! Using your phone to record a video for purposes of blackmail and extortion has created the skill Candid Camera.

The picture scrolls up, as if held by a shaky hand, to clearly depict Mr. Asshole's face, and the camera focuses better as well.

But… if you got that skill now… but…

You pause the video. "Info, skills, Candid Camera?"

Candid Camera: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 5 DOM / min.

Any microphone you wield can pick up audio acceptably from inside a pocket or around a corner. Any camera you use is more likely to point in the direction of interesting scenes and focus well on them.

You press play again, and see your phone continue to capture the exchange. At a minute and nine seconds in, your hand seems to shake and Mr. Asshole's picture goes out of focus, the sound quality worsening as well.

"Candid Camera," you murmur, willing the skill to stay active this time.

The picture improves again.

…you guess your day wouldn't be a day without at least one episode of existential wobbliness.

The video goes dark blue as past-Cindy stows the phone in her backpack's side pocket. The sounds of her heels on the stairway continue to come through audibly, though significantly muffled.

Candid Camera has increased by 1.

The audio gets slightly better.

Later in, after Mr. Asshole finishes his description of your imaginary misdeeds to Bry, you halt the playback and the skill. Bry doesn't need to be part of this, or your own calm-sounding reply.

So, Jeremy Willagher is an executive at a Los Angeles ad agency? Probably with image-conscious corporate customers? Sounds like a workplace that wouldn't appreciate a massive Internet dogpile of negative publicity.

Not that you intend to interact with that asshole ever again. If the Erogame takes requests, you hope it takes that one.

But now you have a lovely gift for introducing yourself to Karinna if you decide to do anything with her route. One rich asshole, neatly wrapped and ready to have his pride snuffed out between her fingers, either by extortion or simply destroying him, as she pleases.

You continue walking to nowhere in particular, in the rough direction of the Sun, the closest you can get to riding off into the sunset when you don't have a horse and the sun isn't setting. As a conclusion to your brief career at the Purring Kittens, it doesn't feel very triumphant, but it's not a total failure.

You suppose you ought to start the Better Than That Ponce quest now, for making Felice and your mother healthy. That was the supposed goal. But that requires raising your ERO to 29. ERO 29 is only one accidental epiphany away from ERO 30 where the game stops being physically possible, a potentially big step that you wish you could discuss frankly with Charles, and maybe should talk about with Mom instead. You didn't actually consider that earlier when you were trying to fulfill the Ponce prerequisites. Maybe wait until you have an epiphany that raises you to ERO 29 anyway, to delay the progress of that stat for as long as you can? Or maybe you should...

[ ] Accept the Ponce quest, which means you…
-[ ] Raise your ERO using a stat point
-[ ] Meditate on why you spent six months playing eroge, trying to use up that lurking insight to raise your ERO
[ ] Hold off on accepting the Ponce quest, and…
-[ ] Twincest twins, spy before you buy
-[ ] Ask Karinna on a date to break Miroa, now that you have a nice introduction gift
-[ ] Look into Passionate Nights, which turns out to be a fetish escort service

(Reminders: Twins provide enough EXP to reach Lvl 10, which means perks. The text on Mad Inventor says it has a minimum ERO of 30. You have the $2000 required to accept the Ponce quest and see what comes next, but your Mom wants you to earn $4000 before actually spending $2000.)

4.3*: Proactive

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (23,150 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 133/300
SUB: 350/400

BOD: 21
LST: 18 (21)
SED: 16
FUK: 14
PRV: 22 (25)
ERO: 28

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $2010

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 50 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1

[X] Hold off on accepting the Ponce quest, and…
-[X] Twincest twins, spy before you buy
No. of Votes: 27
Jetsmillion
adara
Alkaiser009
Arkatekt
bellanon
Dragonheart91
farsan
GulibleLeprecon
Helix
KBob
Killako
kimagurena65536
lucero
mpop
MrBTXz
Nordvegr
pepperjack
Proxima
ScrewFate
Serenities
Shadowrust
Sirrocco
Spectral Waltz
TannimFodder
VanillaTentacle
wasprider
Xenia

[X] Hold off on accepting the Ponce quest, and…
-[X] Look into Passionate Nights, which turns out to be a fetish escort service
No. of Votes: 11
Malbutorius
Aeodyn
Amador
Blackshard
Budda002
gilgamekk
Grollo
january1may
Karnven
Soul Shocker
ZenithOfLust

[x] Hold off on accepting the Ponce quest,
-[x] Ask Karinna on a date to break Miroa, now that you have a nice introduction gift
No. of Votes: 2
dkljfda
Sofixon

[X] Accept the Ponce quest, which means you…
-[X] Meditate on why you spent six months playing eroge, trying to use up that lurking insight to raise your ERO
No. of Votes: 2
Elitist Oars
Gingganz

[X] Accept the Ponce quest, which means you…
-[X] Raise your ERO using a stat point.
No. of Votes: 1
Tabac Iberez

[X] Hold off on accepting the Ponce quest, and…
-[X] Give a copy of the blackmail tape to Raven.
No. of Votes: 1
napkintooth

Total No. of Voters: 44

You've been aimlessly strolling through this new nice neighborhood for a few minutes now, not keeping exact track of time. You pass nice houses with well-kept front gardens full of curling vines and arranged flowers. You cross over busy streets lined with small boutique shops full of… artisanal cauliflower, you don't know.

Raising your ERO to 29 feels like something you should not do, and you're trying to figure out why. Didn't you want to help Felice?

Well, you can honestly say at this point that you're feeling pretty certain you'll be able to share your good fortune with Felice. Something is bound to work out, either the Better Than That Ponce quest, or Mad Inventor, or Blessings of Slaanesh Be Upon this House. The question is more how to communicate to Felice that good things are on the way and she just needs to hold on.

That still doesn't answer why you're feeling extremely reluctant to raise your ERO again.

Because… you still regret using 5 stat points to bump ERO from 13 to 18, on Sunday night? You have the general sense that life is better when you let your stats rise naturally, with the possible exception of BOD?

Your stats are unbalanced, and you're worried that your unfolding-of-your-self is running too far behind the changes in your Erogamer's World?

On reflection, you played the Erogame pretty conservatively today, maybe more conservatively than you really intended. You went to an ordinary strip club to earn ordinary money, planning on not doing any lapdances because you wanted to be a good girl for Charles. Then you ended up not even pole-dancing. Then you refused a customary and standard setup for an extorted blowjob, because you felt snooty and wanted to hold out for a more impressive extortionist. All for good-sounding reasons, but the fact remains, it's mid-afternoon and you haven't made a single person come. Is that someone who's ready for ERO 29? Maybe the Erogame kicked you out of the club because you were at risk of getting comfortable earning a few hundred dollars per day without doing anything sexual.

...Yeah, being fired like that really threw you. Threw you out of whack, for a loop, off your stride. It's no surprise you haven't recovered a dozen minutes later. You're probably feeling more critical of yourself than you should be.

But that doesn't mean your current line of thought is wrong.

You stop at an intersection while a line of three cars goes by, and then cross on to the next residential street, pursing your lips in an attractive frown.

You were scared of the Erogame in the beginning when you knew nothing. You were also incredibly grateful and reaching up for your new life with both hands. Now you know a little more about how the Erogame works, so logically, you should be less conservative now than on Sunday or Monday when you knew almost nothing. Did you start playing more timidly, when you weren't as incredibly excited by the prospect of a new life, as eager to show the Erogame you were playing along, as driven to prove to yourself what you could do?

It's now Wednesday. Despite what seems like four months rather than four days of time, in reality you've just given two handjobs, one blowjob, and gotten "raped" once in a manner that might be described as "extremely dubious nonconsent." Your matrix of nectars has a single entry from Monday morning. It wouldn't be surprising if the Erogame randomly opened a trapdoor in the sidewalk and dropped you into an alternate sex dimension out of sheer metaphysical frustration, like a GM whose players try to stay safe in the starting inn throughout the whole campaign.

You shudder slightly, trying to shake off the nervous feeling this thought engenders. If the Erogame wants you to be more adventurous, it can show you a line of violet text saying so. It's not like you wouldn't listen. Right?

Besides. You shouldn't project your own feelings onto the Erogame. It's you, not the Erogame, that's afraid you're failing a Wisdom and Courage check.

When the Erogame appeared to you on Sunday afternoon, you needed a quest to get your next level. You considered trying to give your first kiss away to someone, or going on an exhibitionist walk, but in the end the quest you chose was trying a new fetish on Tumblr---a quest you thought you could do from your bedroom. You redeemed yourself later that night with Blake, you think. But it might still have been a warning sign.

On Monday and on Tuesday, you tried to make sure you were still allowed to go to college, to be sane normal if you wanted to be, despite everything else going on. And you were allowed to take your classes. If your evenings got any stranger than that, it's because part of you didn't want to be normal.

Well, let's be precise here. Part of you was terrified of ending up normal.

Another part of you was terrified of spiraling into corruption, and ending up naked before the glare of the colorless suns whose light is an infinite frenzy of lust and perversion.

Yet another part was terrified of falling behind on LST and PRV, and not adapting to the Erogame fast enough to handle it the first time somebody raped you for real.

Logically speaking, your situation is frightening. Finding things to be afraid about doesn't make you silly. What's happening is, in fact, objectively scary.

But there's no eroge that tells the story of a frightened young girl, just entering into her sexuality and her power under scary, uncertain, wondrous circumstances… who always takes the least sexy option she can get away with and so manages to keep everything under control. If you tried that in an actual computer-game eroge, you would certainly end up at a Bad End, the game punishing the player's lack of courage.

The perk Innocence Temporarily Regained does suggest that the Erogame might be fine with the story of a nervous female character who tries to take tiny cautious steps and promptly gets dragged into sexy adventures anyway. But even if cowardice doesn't lead to a Bad End, you are not fine with your story being like that. If your eroge isn't going to happen to you, it needs to be the story of you moving forward in your own chosen direction. For your own sake, apart from anything the Erogame might or might not do.

You do know of positive things you want. You want more adventures with moments of happiness like lightning bolts lighting up the sky. You want a nice house for your harem, and you want Charles to be in that harem, and you want the two of you to be in love. You want to fall in love with other men and women as awesome as Charles---though maybe not right away. You want to be rich enough to buy nice things for yourself and destress your Mom. You want Dad back. You want Felice to be healthy, and maybe become real friends with her and go on ero adventures together, so your life isn't all new faces. You want obesity cured worldwide, so you can stop feeling guilty about your unfair personal blessing. You adore being able to run at 22MPH, and you wouldn't mind having more magical-girl powers like those.

You aren't thinking about the details too hard, but you know you want… and need… to be pushed deeper into submission. You also want to go further into the dominant side you discovered when you teased Blake.

So why not raise your ERO? Why not embrace your fate? Wouldn't that help achieve all those desires?

You frown as you continue walking, thinking about this.

Because… because that's putting the cart before the horse. Even if you're being proactive about embracing your destiny, there are much simpler places you haven't gone. You've never had a threesome, you've never kissed a girl, you've never had sex in public, you feel reluctant to have sex with people you don't know, you've never explicitly asked a man to fuck you. You haven't mastered the basics of the basics of eroge life.

And you shouldn't feel ashamed of being shy, because that would be pointless. You're getting better and you will get even more betterer. But now that you've grasped this whole "unfolding" concept, you know you haven't unfolded into the bold, adventurous woman who belongs in the eroge you want to live. Maybe you should try a few more steps of that before you decide you're worthy of ERO 29.

You take your cellphone from your backpack, and check the time. 3:46pm. It's been over 30 minutes since your last extended edging session, so it's time for you to find a bathroom and tease yourself for another minute.

Or… find somebody else to tease you. Not just exhibit yourself at a strange man. Have him touch you.

Ahead of you on the residential street where you're walking, a sweaty middle-aged man in good health is swinging a pick, breaking up the dirt of a square-foot patch in his front yard. You slow down as you approach him.

He looks up from his work, and his eyes widen as he sees you, Dressed As a Slut.

I'll give you a blowjob if you agree to tease me and not let me come.

You think the words, and they don't leave your lips.

The man looks at you, you look at him. The silence becomes awkward. You scream telepathic messages at him to work up the courage to invite the slut in for a coffee.

"Nice hair," he says.

"Thanks," you say. "Good luck with your garden."

You turn from him and keep walking down the sidewalk.

Apparently you still can't proposition a man without a line of violet text giving you permission.

You shouldn't feel ashamed. You shouldn't. Your shyness will fix itself given more LST, more PRV, more life experience… or maybe just the Teased bonus you're not getting right now because you're not aroused. It's inevitable that you'll get better. You could fix yourself in five seconds if you really wanted to.

Godfuckingdamnit, you weren't even smiling at him. You should have been posing and smiling at him. No wonder he didn't try to flirt with you. Wait, was the compliment to your hair a flirt? And then you didn't flirt back? Shit. But you can't go back now and try again, it would be just too horrible. No, it probably wasn't a flirt, he wasn't smiling either.

You're not going to feel ashamed, and you're not going to push yourself too hard, but you are going to be more proactive this afternoon. You're going to do the naughtiest thing on the ero menu that you, uh, actually want to do.

Which would be… what?

Having been asked this question, your mind comes back with an answer surprisingly quickly. You kept thinking about it somewhere in the back of your thoughts, but it never quite made the top of your priorities. Still, it's obvious what or rather who are the naughtiest things you want to do.

Twins!

Unlike the innocent bystander hoeing his lawn, the Arcadia twins are clear ero characters in their own right. Propositioning them might embarrass you, but you know it won't embarrass them. Plus the violet text said they already like you, if you recall correctly.

"Info, quests, uh, what was it called… info, quests, off the road."

Quest available: Off the Road

Tammi and Danni Arcadia have finally run into each other again after a long separation. They'll be celebrating in their own special way. They find you cute and wouldn't mind including you in their special celebrations. You remind them of Beth Cordova, and they never did get to say goodbye to her properly.

The Arcadias can be found in room 211 of the Norville Arms-Marriott until Sunday evening.

Success: +10,000XP, increased relations with Danni Arcadia
Failure: +20,000XP, increased relations with Tammi Arcadia
Accept: Y/N

You grin as you reread. That definitely sounds like nice, clean, innocent yuri fun that will let you get some of your firsts out of the way without a lot of drama.

You pause, reflecting on the sentence that just ran through your mind. If your story has an author, you just taunted It.

…Maaybe you should try listening at the hotel door first, just to make sure there's nothing obviously terrible going on. The twins did not seem like serial killers when you saw them, but maybe the rules are different for ero serial killers.

Actually, maybe you should sneak inside their hotel room and try to catch a glimpse of what those two do before committing. The Passive form of You Forgot to Lock the Door seems a lot less bothersome now than it did a couple of days ago. The Arcadia twins are obviously high-level ero characters, they shouldn't be traumatized by some voyeurism even if they catch you.

Though you have some unfinished business before you head to the Marriott.

You touch "Y" to accept Off the Road, and begin jogging down the residential street at a faster pace.

Even after another three blocks, you still don't see any bathrooms or private places. There's only one obvious place where you could even sit down.

You sit down at the bus stop at the end of the block, take out your cellphone, and set a timer for one minute.

Then you set the timer for two minutes. Being fired from a job really took it out of you, and all the self-criticism afterwards didn't help. You're not trying to medicate that away with masturbation, but you do need to switch your frame of mind and get back into your ero groove.

You put your right hand under your panties, and begin tapping one finger on your clit, lightly. The two minutes won't start until you get to the edge, so you can take your time. You're curious as to how long it will take your clit to wake up and remember how much it's already been teased, starting from your current base of definitely-not-in-the-mood-at-all.

After not very long at all, you can feel the urge to switch to firmer strokes. You keep up the steady tapping until it becomes clear, from your pussy's increasing frustration, that you'll never get to the edge this way.

So you move on to soft, gentle strokes. The pleasure commands more of your attention, washing away your contemplative mood with increasingly urgent reminders that you've already been teased and teased and teased today without an orgasm.

You want to work yourself faster, get this over with before the bus comes. Instead your malicious finger begins going all the way from the bottom of your pussy, over the lips, up to your clit, presses down and rubs just a little, and then reverses course and starts trailing down to the bottom of your lips. Your finger picks up moisture, and your body shivers as the rub over your pussy lips becomes a wetter slide. Slide, rub, slide, oh, slide, rub. You'll get to the edge this way eventually. You think. It'll just take a while.

You aren't sure how many minutes pass before you're a shivering horny mess again, your hand down your panties but remaining almost motionless as only a light, variable pressure on your clit suffices to keep you trembling on the very edge. It's so horribly frustrating you almost forget to start the two-minute timer. You're breathing rapidly, your chest heaving with loud inhalations and exhalations as you try to prevent your voice from moaning.

One minute and twenty-two seconds later, the bus comes.

You don't.

Teased: You have undergone 10 cumulative points of erotic teasing, with no relief for 0.8 days. Sexual stimuli of any kind impact you as if your LST were 3 higher, you can be aroused 170% faster, and once aroused you are disinhibited as if your PRV were 3 higher.

4.4.1** [TDA]: Amazon's Terms

The elevator door slides open again as you let go of your brief hold on time. You burned maybe 20 seconds of your remaining Slack, continuing to rise between floors without ever getting there, in order to do what good girls do when they're alone in an elevator and nobody can see them.

You take your hand out of your panties, and walk on shaky legs past the guy staring at you, into the hotel corridor of grey-red plaid carpet and dark faux-wooden walls.

Isn't it nice how every time you tease yourself to the edge again, it feels like all the remaining time between that and your last tease gets erased. It's just like you didn't spend ten minutes running across town, like you're right at the end of your last tease with people getting off the bus in front of you while you shiver and bite your lip.

Room 211 is at the end of a long corridor, leading up to a lone door at the very end. The hotel room is adjacent on one side to what looks like a maintenance closet, and on the other side to an ice machine.

So… a good room for being loud without disturbing the hotel neighbors.

Part of you just wants to knock on the door and beg them to have mercy on your poor weeping pussy. Although---as you're remembering only now, god damn it---you'll need to tell them you're being punished today, and that they're allowed to tease you even more if they want…

You gulp, as you remember Danni Arcadia pressing up against Tammi Arcadia in the elevator despite her twin sister's protests.

What's the chance they won't take you up on that?

But, but they'll let you come at the end, right? They have to. Because, because they just have to. Oh god maybe this wasn't a good idea.

You walk on your still-shaking legs over to the end of the corridor, look back down the corridor to verify that nobody is watching you, and press your ear against the door to listen.

A skill has been created by a special action! Listening with your ear to a door has created the skill Eavesdropping.

Eavesdropping: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive.

Whenever you press your ear against a door to listen, this skill helps you hear just enough to advance the plot, no more and no less.

Oh fuck you, you motherfucking motherfucker of motherfuck.

Even as you think this, it feels like your hearing sharpens and you can hear soft moans.

Just… soft moans.

That's all the information you're getting.

Okay, on to the next step.

"You forgot to lock the door," you whisper with your hand on the door handle.

You Forgot to Lock the Door has increased by 1.

As you slowly ease the door open, the moans become more audible. Low, breathy female sounds, at once pleasured and agonized.

As soon as the opening is wide enough, you poke your head around the open left side of the door.

The bed isn't in direct line of sight, but in the mirrors adorning the wall closet on the right, you can see the head of the bedboard, and the face of a red-haired, freckled woman in her mid-twenties. You can also see her shoulders, bare as if naked, and her right hand, handcuffed to the right bedpost with padded handcuffs. Her eyes are scrunched tight, her face tensed up. As her lips open you hear another despairing moan, an erotic sound that seems to travel right down your spine and into your recently tormented pussy.

It's just a guess here, but you're guessing the other twin is occupying the bottom half of the bed.

You ease the door open faster, once you see nobody can see you. You don't want to be caught by somebody passing through the corridor. Then you step inside, trying to soften the impact of your footfall.

A skill has been created by a special action! Sneaking in high heels has created the skill High-Heeled Stealth.

High-Heeled Stealth: Lvl 1 (2%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

The quantity (log base 2 of your probability of not being discovered, minus log base 2 of your probability of being discovered) increases by 0.5 per Lvl, relative to the base value this quantity would otherwise take on. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

You ease the door shut behind you, holding the handle down as the door moves back into place, and then letting the bolt slide quietly back into the doorframe.

As you take another step into the room, more of the mirrored bed comes into view, along with the slowly twisting naked upper body of whichever twin is on the bed. She's well-curved, but athletic, the freckles extending all over her body. Her arms pull despairingly at the handcuffs, her hands open and clench, open and clench.

Given the way Tammi and Danni acted in the elevator, you're going to guess this is Tammi Arcadia until contradicted.

Tammi's lips open, but her eyes are still clenched shut. "Please," she whimpers, "please, please, please…"

An identical voice, sounding amused. "Please what?" Danni says, even as Tammi gasps and tenses up, writhing.

Huh. You'd have expected Danni's mouth to be, uh, busy. Maybe she's using her hands? You don't hear a vibrator.

You slide forward another stealthy step, bringing Tammi's hips into view, along with her bare, hairless pussy visibly glistening. Two layers of hotel towels, placed beneath, show the dampness absorbed from there. You can smell the sex in the air from where you're standing, an overpowering tuna-fish-like scent that you'll just have to get used to.

A high-pitched whine breaks from Tammi's throat, and she writhes, her pussy visibly pulsing on nothing.

Another step brings Tammi's knees into view. From the twisting of her thighs it's obvious that her legs are also bound. Still no sign of what's happening to her.

"Please what?" says Danni's voice.

"Please, don't tease me like this, I hate it like this, it's the worst ever…"

"Make up your mind, silly. This morning you begged me not to spend all day teasing your clit again, so I stopped touching your clit. You didn't ask me not to work you up to the edge over and over again."

"Th-that's n-not what I saaaaiohhhhh, I said, let me gooohhhhh."

Two more stealthy steps let you gingerly move your head to where the foot of the bed is just in view.

You see two freckled hands working over Tammi's left foot. Danni is pressing down slowly, rhythmically, working the sole with both thumbs, even as Tammi gasps and writhes again.

Hoooooly shit. The unseen twin is pushing Tammi toward an orgasm using a foot massage.

You're not sure whether you're more scared at the thought of that happening to you, or excited by the prospect of learning how to do that to someone else.

"Mm, almost there," Danni's voice says. "Do you want me to let you come this time? It'd feel sooo good after all that waiting."

"Y-you fucker, you're not going to let me come, you neEEEEver---"

"Fucker? Just for that, you'd better try not to come now. You know what starts happening if you come, and it won't stop until Sunday."

"N-no, no, please no, sis, just let me go, I don't like this any more…"

"You're such a liar." Danni's voice giggles.

You watch, mesmerized, as Danni works up Tammi further just by pressing her hands firmly into the other's foot. Sometimes Danni switches from one foot to the other, sometimes she briefly tickles the foot and Tammi lets out a tiny scream. Tammi's pussy is twitching at a greater frequency, she's moaning louder and more often.

"I'm, I'm going to…" Tammi gasps at one point.

"You liar. You're just trying to get me to stop."

"EEK! Aha haha oh no, no no, ohhhhhhhhh…"

You can't stand it. It's too, it's too hot.

Your own hand slips into your panties. You want to get close to the edge and deny yourself just at the moment when Tammi finally gets denied, if your ERO lets you do that.

You go as slow as you can without stopping, which makes it all the more impressive how much more slowly Danni is ramping up Tammi. The bound twin is moaning continuously, her whole body twisting and jerking futilely in her bonds in an erotic display that has your mouth dry, her untouched pussy glistening.

Just as you can neither hold back any longer or touch yourself any longer, the hands disappear from Tammi's foot.

A tiny sound comes from your own throat, unheard over Tammi's agonized gasps,

Tammi goes on writhing for what seems like a full minute before her body begins to calm down, and her moans finally change into broken sobs. Oh, oh fuck, you have to learn how to do that to someone, Charles has to learn how to do that to you.

The other twin's head comes into view in the mirror, smiling from what you can see from the side, Danni's mouth moving to Tammi's pussy.

You look away, as for some weird reason your brain finally notices that these two are sisters, and starts buzzing alarms about being icked out. Oh, come on, you've played like a dozen eroge where incest was a plot point, why now…

Because they're real people instead of anime drawings, apparently. And because, now that both heads are in view, your brain has noticed they're sisters.

Also: Part of your brain is hearing another person sobbing, and wants to run right over and rescue her from the handcuffs. You know you were sobbing yourself just this morning, and it was a good cry, and that probably wouldn't have sounded any different? You think? But you weren't here when safewords were negotiated and you don't actually know this is consensual. Or maybe it's just really, really hard for you to ignore somebody else crying. You lack the experience to not be completely distracted by that.

Tammi's sobbing intensifies, then turns into moaning again. You glance at the scene again, unable to stop yourself, and see that Danni is licking Tammi's pussy lips without touching the clit, while her fingers pump busily inside her cunt.

Then you realize that if you can see Danni's head, she might see you. You quickly step back into the hotel room's bathroom, moving to a position where Danni shouldn't be able to see you in the mirror.

Tammi is kept on the edge for a while, you're not sure how long. She alternates between sobs, moans, gasps, and occasionally five-second episodes of despairing laughter.

Eventually you hear a spring-bouncing sound, as of somebody standing up from a bed.

"Okay, sis," says a twin's voice. Tammi is still blubbering. "You stay put while I get us something to eat, all right?"

On your silent heels, you step into the bathtub and hide behind the shower curtain. Oh, great, now you're the serial killer.

Tammi's sobbing goes quiet. Then her voice speaks, in a strained tone that returns all of the earlier concern you tried to shove down. "God damn it, Danni, I'm serious, I need to---"

The voice then becomes muffled, as though something is being stuffed into Tammi's mouth. That's… not right, is it? You shouldn't gag a person when you're leaving them alone, tied to a bed?

You remain motionless, not even breathing, as Danni Arcadia passes through your field of vision and shuts the door behind herself.

…now what?

You hesitate for a while, during which it sounds like Tammi briefly struggles to escape and finally gives up. You're not sure whether you should open the door and pretend to have entered the hotel room just now, or if you should admit to having heard.

As you step out of the bathroom, Tammi lets out a muffled shriek. Her eyes are open, and focused on you within the mirror.

Well, that settles that.

You hold out your open hands in a peace-gesture and step around the bend, approaching the king-sized bed where Tammi is bound and gagged.

"Don't worry, I'm not a serial killer!" you say.

…you really need to work on your opening lines.

It takes you some work to undo the gag around Tammi's mouth and fish out the panties stuffed inside, which you're pretty sure are glistening with more than saliva. Tammi gasps when the panties are finally removed.

"Awesome h-hair girl," she says between swallows. Seems she remembers you, or at least your hair. "What are you doing here?"

"Uh, I heard somebody moaning like they were in, I guess not pain, actually. The door had been left a little open. I peeked inside and found a bit of a situation." You hesitate. "You're Tammi Arcadia, if I remember correctly?"

"Yeah," Tammi says. Her gaze is fixed on you, and she looks frightened. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm not sure. What's going on?"

"It's complicated," she says, her voice barely audible.

Go figure. "Uh, I'm listening?"

Tammi looks away from you, exhaustion visible on her face. You can't blame her, if she's been teased for two days in a row. But she hasn't told you to go away.

You seat yourself cross-legged on the side of the bed next to Tammi.

The hotel rooms that normal people get are nowhere nearly as impressive as the penthouse room. The walls are painted beige, and lit by ordinary ceiling fixtures. To either side of the king-sized bed is a wooden nightstand surfaced by a protective glass plate, each nightstand with a lamp on it. Mixed female clothes have been tossed casually to a corner of a room, next to but not touching the wall heater underneath the closed and shaded window.

The top of the king-sized bed is solid, black-painted metal in columns rising to an ornamented black top. Solid metal columns perfect for stretching apart a girl's arms using two pairs of handcuffs, especially using padded handcuffs that won't so much as scratch the paint, no matter how she struggles. The handcuffs look pretty serious and solid despite being padded, with heavy-looking dull links for the chain. The cuffs are wide enough, combined with the padding, to help prevent somebody from injuring herself if she pulls on them really hard.

You're guessing Danni Arcadia has the keys. Meaning that the way this quest should work, Tammi's stuck here until Danni gets back. Maybe you could try using your hair to pick the locks, if you're willing to risk confusing the Erogame about how Tammi got out of her cuffs. It's not like that would make this quest devoid of sex scenes.

Part of you doesn't want to free Tammi. Her naked form is perfect, more adult than yours and better-shaped, and she's still glistening with sweat. She really is incredibly attractive, especially helplessly handcuffed to a bed. She sounded so erotic before, when she was being teased. Could you talk her into giving consent for you to tease her, if she thinks you might accidentally make her come? You can't help but wonder what sounds she'd make if you did make her come… oh, you're bisexual now. Yay!

"You were touching yourself watching us," Tammi says, her voice a little stronger, and you realize you've been caught staring. The twin manages a shaky smile. "Pervert."

"Uh, uh how'd you know?" you say through the sudden warmth in your cheeks.

Tammi deliberately sniffs.

High-level ero characters are amazing. "I'm surprised you could smell me over all the Arcadia in the room."

Tammi rolls her eyes. "You were holding your fingers right next to my face when you undid the gag."

The fire in your cheeks heightens. "Okay, yeah, I was teasing myself at the same time you were being teased," you say. "I couldn't stop myself, it was just way too hot. I didn't realize you were in trouble." You hesitate. "Are you in trouble, or is this… consensual?"

"Please don't call the police," Tammi says. She looks scared again.

"I promise I won't call the police," you say. "Do you have a safeword you're not using?"

"We… don't have that kind of relationship."

"What kind of relationship do you have? I'm really curious, to be honest."

Tammi closes her eyes, her head falling back against the pillow from where she was craning it up to see you. "It's complicated."

"Did you get into the handcuffs willingly?"

"Danni's willing to fight harder to get me into the cuffs than I'm willing to fight back and risk hurting her. I knew that, and I still walked into her hotel bedroom after I saw her for the first time in three years. It's complicated."

"Still listening. Uh, it's not impossible I could help somehow."

Tammi's body heaves an exhausted laugh. "Cut that tangle? Not likely."

"I'm serious. I can't edge somebody by massaging their foot but I do have some unusual talents. I'll be genuinely shocked if there's nothing I can do here." You're a game protagonist on a quest. The way games work, if the only way to sort Tammi's personal life is to pick up the Solar System and move it to somewhere else, there'll be some way for you to do that. "Uh, for example, I perceive that when you look at me, I remind you of someone you used to know. Someone who left you abruptly enough that you didn't get to say or do everything you wanted."

Tammi's eyebrows go up. "Wow. 'Kay, I'm impressed." She hesitates. "Maybe it's not such a long story. Danni always used to do this sort of thing to me when we were teenagers. I always wanted to get her back, and never could. She was always, always dishing it out and never taking it, you know? One day we met a girl named Beth, she's the person you remind me of. Stuff happened. Danni ended up tied to the roof of a car. I managed to get her down without untying her, moved her to a bed in cousin Becky's cabin, and finally got some revenge." Tammi's voice is angrier now. "She couldn't handle it. She did it to me for years, and she couldn't handle it when I got back at her just once! She was mean after that. I moved away from home, I changed some, and when I finally meet her again I'm hoping she's grown up. I, even if she can't grow up, I'm at least hoping to be with the old Danni again, you know? The one who's slightly less mean. But she hasn't grown up. She hasn't changed at all."

Your head sways as you try to process all this. "Uh, do you want to be let out of your handcuffs?"

"Yes. But she's got the keys, and I don't want you calling the police. I don't want her arrested." The freckled face scrunches up, looking like she might be about to cry.

You hesitate. You don't want to glitch the Erogame by using your hair, but you're not feeling okay with leaving a victim like this. "I could stay here and try to threaten Danni into letting you go? I won't call the police, but she doesn't know that."

Tammi's head drops back against the pillow. "Danni knows I'd say everything was consensual, just to keep her out of trouble. And, and she's right, fuck her."

"I could say I'd taken cellphone videos of the incestuous sex and threaten to reveal that. I mean, not that I'd ever do that actually, but I could threaten. I think that's illegal whether it's consensual or not?"

Tammi's freckled face grins wryly. "It's not incest. I know we look similar, but Danni isn't my sister by blood."

"Bullshit."

"She was adopted into my family when we were both nine years old."

You don't care how much of a standard trope this is in hentai. You don't care what erotic novels claim in order to meet Amazon's terms and conditions. You are NOT standing for this. There HAS to be a limit. "She's your identical fucking twin! I saw you side-by-side, you could be clones!"

"It's a bit of a funny story…"

If this wasn't an erogame you'd be certain she was lying. The fact that you even have to consider this proposition is making you regret your own existence.

You lean over the bed, staring directly into Tammi Arcadia's face. "This right here? This is my start of darkness. If I check the legal records later, and I find some ludicrous backstory set up to make the hot twincest girls be not related by blood, it's going to traumatize me so much that I become a supervillain."

"We're… kinda related?"

You fold your arms and keep staring at the bound girl. "I'm listening."

"Fifty years back, there were twin brothers named Virgil and George Arcadia."

"Go on."

"Virgil married a girl named Clarissa Samms, who also happened to be one sister from a pair of twin sisters. Virgil said he enjoyed being married to someone who understood what it was like to be a twin, so his brother George got the idea to find his own twin to marry, Jill Olmstead. And then Karen Samms and Constance Olmstead got the same idea---"

"No."

"And when Karen Samms married Christopher MacDougal, it turned out that his twin, Roderick MacDougal, liked Constance Olmstead too."

"No."

"All four couples had kids, and later when an Arcadia-Olmstead boy fell in love with a MacDougal-Samms girl, an Arcadia-Samms boy and a MacDougal-Olmstead girl decided to try courting each other too. They all got married in the same ceremony."

"No."

"Danni Arcadia was born to the first couple, and I was born to the second couple on the same day an hour later. We have no parents or grandparents in common, so we're second cousins, which is legal in every country."

You have been reduced to making inarticulate sounds in your throat and clutching at the air with feeble hands. This is, this, this---

"Sure, we happened to end up sharing some genes, but it's not like we're ever having kids. We call each other sis, since we were raised together after Danni's Mom died, and we pretend to be twins since it saves on explanations. But it's not incest."

"The reason it's not incest is that English has no WORDS for what's being pulled here!"

Then you realize with horror that your sense of being icked out has, in fact, vanished over the last minute. Apparently when you are an erogame character, this type of excuse totally works on you.

Tammi is laughing at the expression on your face, not realizing the dire fate to which she's condemned the Earth.

Then the woman goes into a convulsive coughing fit, probably from the stress put on her strained voice. It shakes her breasts in an interesting way that you feel guilty about appreciating.

"I don't cough think you can get me out of this without cough getting Danni in trouble," she says after her fit slows down. "Not unless you know where to find a heavy bolt cutter in the next ten minutes."

"Do you… want me to make you come, at least?" You squish down the part of you that is unconfident of your ability to do this. The way she's been teased, you could probably diddle her clit with a guitar pick and make her come.

Tammi hesitates for rather a while. Finally, she shakes her head, the muscles of her face all tightened. She looks ready to cry again. "She'd know. She'd get meaner. I don't want that. I want my old sis back. Do you really think there's something you can do?"

You're not sure how to convey your certainty that you can do something, combined with your not having thought of any ideas whatsoever, and your earlier claim to special talents. A shot in the dark, a bluff… "I believe you can think of something I can do. Even if it seems difficult or weird."

"I… I guess? Danni's a social sadist. She likes company when she's tih, uh, teasing somebody. She used to like me being her company." Tammi's face screws up, and a few more tears leak from her eyes. "If, if it hadn't gone like this, if you hadn't walked in on this, I would've liked for us to have met you together, and seduced you together, and handcuffed you to a bed and… teased you together."

Uh. "So, uh… you're saying I should stick around, and talk to Danni while the two of us tease you together, and I can try to work things out between you?"

"And, and if you can fix things between us, get her to let me out of these cuffs so we can do you instead. Together. Like, like old times." More tears leak from Tammi's eyes, dripping down the sides of her face into her burnt-orange curls. "I'd be ever so grateful to you. For the rest of my life."

Double uh.

"What… does your eternal gratitude include, exactly?" you inquire cautiously.

"Oh, jeez. I know you're from out-of-town and you don't need money---"

"Uh, what makes you think that?"

Tammi rolls her eyes again. "You booked a room in a hotel, so you're not from here. You got a room on the penthouse level, so you're rich. You came to Norville to run parkour with Berberg, so you're really rich."

"It could be my boyfriend who's rich?" you venture.

Tammi snorts, wrinkling her nose. "His shoes weren't expensive enough. You're too innocent to be his professional escort. And getting your hair done like that cost you… twenty-eight hundred dollars."

You have to admit you're impressed, even if she came to the wrong conclusion at the end. There's a brain topping off that erotic body. "Well, just for the sake of curiosity," you say. "What if I was a Norville native, or not that rich?"

"For fixing things up between us? I guess… if you were sticking around here, I'd offer you seven nights of me doing anything you wanted. If you weren't rich I'd offer you seven thousand dollars cash, since a grand a night is about what I charge when I'm on the make." Tammi grins. "I guess you could fly me out to wherever you are. Bet your college boy would love that." She blinks at you, looking hopeful.

Hoooly smokin' moley.

[ ] Be socially sadistic with Danni upon Tammi, while trying to fix her and Tammi's relationship.
-[ ] But don't go into the cuffs yourself. Safety first! Tiny cautious steps FTW!
-[ ] You were, uh, intrigued by what you saw. And Tammi's gratitude is worth $$$$$ + Charles-bait + help setting up as a sex worker, maybe.
[ ] Let Tammi out using your hair, possibly derailing the quest and its XP.
-[ ] Raise your ERO to 30 first.
-[ ] It should be okay, there was a sex scene.

(Discussion determines relationship-fixing plan, if any. Plan determines difficulty of die roll. Being willing to go into the cuffs grants +35 advantage. Letting Tammi out of the cuffs costs -10 disadvantage.)

VOTING IS LOCKED UNTIL 24 HOURS AFTER THIS POST'S TIME-STAMP.

Spoiler: Authorial note

I apologize to anyone who voted thinking this was going to be innocent yuri fun with no D/s overtones, but the twins had an established backstory with Beth before I started writing their segment here. This was never going to be innocent uncomplicated fun, even if you hadn't taunted the author and Murphy by saying so out loud.

4.4.2 [TDA]: Magi-cal Gift

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (23,150 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 128/300
SUB: 338/400

BOD: 21
LST: 18 (21)
SED: 16
FUK: 14
PRV: 22 (25)
ERO: 28

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $2010

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 52 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 1593-1671]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[x] Plan Both Sides
-[x] Secure Tammi once more, then slip back out of the hotel room. Do what it takes to "randomly" run into Danni outside
-[x] Show that you're really pretty attracted to her, ask about her sister and so forth. See if you can get her to open up and/or invite you in. Basically, try to get as much of the quest prompt as you can from her side of things without admitting that you've been int eh room and talked with Tammi. It's highly likely that she wants to steer her relationship with Tammi somehow, and you can help with that.
-[x] Try to figure out a way to get the relationship to a happier place for *both* of them, while playing apprentice top with Danni and learning everything you can from her about technique.
-[x] Bonus points if you can get them to cuff you to the bed afterwards and do all of these fascinating things to *you*.
No. of Votes: 17
Plan: ◈Both Sides
Alkaiser009
DarthSquidious
Datcord
edale
Ephemeral
Gingganz
Jetsmillion
Kandagger
Killako
kimagurena65536
mpop
pepperjack
ScrewFate
ShaperV
Sirrocco
wasprider
Xenia

[X] Be socially sadistic with Danni upon Tammi, while trying to fix her and Tammi's relationship.
-[X] You were, uh, intrigued by what you saw. And Tammi's gratitude is worth $$$$$ + Charles-bait + help setting up as a sex worker, maybe.
No. of Votes: 5
fluxoid
dkljfda
napkintooth
Par Tzu
zup

[X] Call mom and let her know you won't be home for a while (Sunday?).
No. of Votes: 3
fluxoid
gilgamekk
Par Tzu

[X] Try to get the twins to tell you exactly what happened with (or to) Beth
No. of Votes: 3
fluxoid
gilgamekk
Par Tzu

[X] Be socially sadistic with Danni upon Tammi, while trying to fix her and Tammi's relationship.
-[X] You were, uh, intrigued by what you saw. And Tammi's gratitude is worth $$$$$ + Charles-bait + help setting up as a sex worker, maybe.
-[X] Regag Tammi with your own panties and, if possible, only appear to Danni when she discovers them to her stunned surprise.
-[X] Express admiration for Danni's edging skills and ask to be taught them.
No. of Votes: 2
Elitist Oars
KBob

[X] Let Danni catch you teasing Tammi. Tell her you heard someone through the door, and caught them at it, and couldn't resist.
-[X] Let it slip that you're being a sub and aren't allowed to cum today. That should open the door for Danni and Tammi to tease us till midnight (at least)
No. of Votes: 2
fluxoid
Par Tzu

[X] Let Danni catch you teasing Tammi. Tell her you heard someone through the door, and caught them at it, and couldn't resist.
-[X] Let it slip that you're being a sub and aren't allowed to cum today. That should open the door for Danni and Tammi to tease us till midnight (at least)
-[X] You were, uh, intrigued by what you saw. And Tammi's gratitude is worth $$$$$ + Charles-bait + help setting up as a sex worker, maybe.
No. of Votes: 1
gilgamekk

-[x] Reach out to Mom and Charles to contact us in case we do not respond to them within 12 hours.
No. of Votes: 1
Killako

[X] Let Tammi out using your hair, possibly derailing the quest and its XP.
-[X] It should be okay, there was a sex scene.
No. of Votes: 1
Grollo

[X] Text your mother and charles and let them know where you are.
No. of Votes: 1
Gingganz

[x]vote Cindy things this is a tsundere situation and tries to bring out their love
No. of Votes: 1
Dragonheart91

Total No. of Voters: 27

You swallow, looking down from where you're sitting at the freckled face of $7000 the beautiful naked redhead who is spreadeagled and handcuffed to the hotel bed. Are you ready for $7000 this? Being tied up and teased by $7000 two beautiful women who aren't into strict consent? Four hands and two mouths roaming over your body, and you $7000 unable to stop them? Would Cindy from Saturday have never mind you are not even finishing $7000 that thought this time.

Besides, being dominated by sexy lesbians is $7000 something an erogame character needs to be able to handle. You won't get $7000 any readier for it if you keep on turning down adventures.

"I t-think I'm up for being handcuffed to the bed by you two," you say, ignoring the slight shivering sensation in your spine. It's… not regret, just nervousness now that you're not-quite-imagining your approaching future. "Uh, I'd like to be paid in money at first, but reserve the right to convert the money back into nights of your time. Like, you pay me seven thousand dollars first, but then I can pay you one thousand dollars to get a night of your time, up to seven times. Also, if I end up spending the night, I absolutely need to be out by six forty-five in the morning, and six AM would be better." You've started thinking of some obvious precautions.

An expression of surprise has appeared upon Tammi's freckled face, but soon straightens out. "Right, your family gives you a budget for hairdos, but not a lot of cash you can spend freely. Okay, I'm not poor myself, and this is worth seven grand to me. But that's if you can really fix things between me and Danni, not just get yourself into the handcuffs."

Well, you're sure motivated now to get this relationship straightened out. You're also working on terribly little information, and maybe not much time to learn more. "Do you know how long it usually takes Danni to get food?"

"She turned the nightstand clock so I couldn't see it," replies Tammi from her bed. "But the bags said Winco the last two times, and she's walking, not driving."

A quick Google Maps search says the nearest WinCo Foods grocery is a 12-minute walk from the Marriott.

You swing your bare legs over the side of the hotel room's bed and stand up, the nervous energy driving you to your feet. You need to plan quickly, you're not sure how much Slack you have left but it's probably a couple of minutes at most.

You pace in a small circle, your eyes going to where Tammi's red halter top and miniskirt from Monday have been carelessly tossed into a corner of the beige-walled room, next to the air-conditioning unit. You wonder how Danni manages to take Tammi out of bed to use the bathroom, but that's not the most important question you should be asking right now.

"Success" in Off the Road earns 10,000XP and increased relationship with Danni. "Failure" earns 20,000XP and increased relationship with Tammi. Maybe, if you hadn't snuck into this hotel room, "success" is the path where you run into Danni and the two of you end up teasing Tammi together, but you never find out about deeper relationship problems. But does that mean fixing their relationship would be bad, since it counts as "failure"? Or does the 20,000XP reflect "failure" in the form of you being lured into the handcuffs and teased, the same way that 20,000XP in Refuse the Giftsex reflects failure in the form of giftsex?

Probably in the game's intended version of this quest, if you hadn't snuck into the room, you were supposed to hear Danni's side of this story first.

You turn back to the girl tied to the bed. "What did Danni say when you tried talking to her about this?"

"She went on being mean. Every time I tried to tell her she was pushing too far, she just laughed like, like I was some girl who thought she didn't enjoy being tied up." Tammi's face tightens. "I suppose you think we're bad at communicating."

"The thought crossed my mind," you say cautiously.

"Look, we weren't into doing things the Fifty Shades of Gray way, we never sat down and negotiated. I didn't want things to be that way between us. It would have been…" Tammi trails off.

"A game?" you say.

"Dead," says Tammi. She has her face turned away from you, looking at the hotel-room door. "The corpse of what we had, after we killed it by talking about it too much. Do you tell your college boy exactly what he needs to do to get you into bed?"

You wince, thinking of other things you haven't told Charles. Maybe you're not the one to lecture other people about total communication. "So, uh, without hearing how things looked to Danni, based only on what you say, it's easy to imagine one thing that could've gone very wrong."

"Go on," says the naked girl handcuffed to the bed.

"Uh, maybe Danni isn't a switch and you really hurt her by tying her up. I understand you don't like to think of your relationship in BDSM terms, but tying people up and teasing them isn't something that has to be symmentrical and fair. It might seem to a switch like turnabout is always fair play, but maybe Danni just isn't built to take what she dishes out. Not everyone is built to take it."

Tammi's face has screwed up several times while you're saying this. It looks like she's trying very hard not to yell at you. "Are you telling me to apologize?"

"If Danni's not a switch then, uh, yeah, you might owe her an apology for dishing back one percent of what she did to you in a physical sense, because it wasn't the same for her mentally. You're not really twins, apparently, and even if you were twins you wouldn't have to be totally alike in that way. Maybe you genuinely actually no-kidding raped her."

Tammi flinches.

"But, uh, that's not necessarily true," you say. That flinch made you flinch, but unfortunately the next thing you have to say is worse. "It's also possible she's just selfish. When she wasn't in charge one time, it wounded her ego, and she's been lashing back at you without caring about the results." Which would explain why repairing the abusive relationship counts as "failure."

Tammi looks away from you. "She's never really hurt me," she whispers.

Even with as little reading as you've done, you suspect victims in abusive relationships sometimes end up talking just like that. "She left you tied to a bed, alone, and gagged. What if your nose got stuffed up? What if there was a fire in the hotel?"

"Look, don't… don't go judging us, okay? That part's normal for us. Danni and I both decided to live our lives to the fullest instead of fretting over all the worries, and if one of us burns to death in a hotel fire then fine. I once rode a motorcycle while wearing a vibrator, going down Highway 1 by the beach at eighty miles an hour, with no helmet so I could see the whole world around me when I came. Sure, I could've died. Everyone dies. Not everyone gets to come on a motorcycle first."

Wow. It's not that you don't understand what she's saying, but if you didn't have Erogame Logic on your side plus supernatural lock-picking hair and an emergency perk point, you would definitely insist on having the True Immortality skill before you let this person handcuff you to a bed. Coming on a motorcycle sounds interesting, but there's a bit more you want to experience in your life, rather than getting that far and stopping.

Although… that whole everyone-dies concept may not actually apply to you any more.

The term "privileged" hardly seems sufficient.

You wouldn't make Tammi's choices if you were as mortal as she, but maybe it's no longer your place to criticize her.

"I understand," you say. "I don't suppose you can be more specific about the backstory with Beth? I feel like I'm working blind here."

Tammi looks away again, and her voice sounds evasive. "It's Beth's story to share, not just mine, you know? But I don't think it was about Beth, I think it was about what I did to Danni afterwards. Unless Beth and I teaming up to get Danni had something to do with it."

There's obviously a long and extremely ero story here, but you don't have time to drag it out of Miss Reticent. "Okay, uh, and to be clear on my goals for fixing this relationship, the main thing you want is for Danni not to push you too far?"

"It's not how long Danni keeps me tied up, or how hard she ti-teases me, it's that she doesn't seem to listen anymore!" Tammi's voice goes high. "No matter what I do, she acts like she thinks I'm just trying to get out of the handcuffs! I think I'd pay seven thousand dollars just to get her to believe me when I say I'm being serious!"

How the heck does a relationship get this wedged up? Like, has Tammi tried waiting until she's not in handcuffs and writing "Dear Danni this is really actually serious," getting the letter sealed by a public notary, and attaching a thousand-dollar check to make clear it's important? But realistically, you have to admit it's not unusual for real-life relationships to get more screwed up than this.

Or maybe the problem is on Danni's end, if Danni has her own reasons for not wanting to believe anything Tammi says. Maybe Danni's having too much fun. Maybe she doesn't want to face that she could've hurt Tammi for real.

But if that's true, how are you going to persuade Danni that she's been pushing Tammi too far? Why would Danni believe you, when she didn't believe her own adoptive identical twin sister?

"So, uh," you say. "I'm still uncertain about a lot of things. But I think I should try to catch Danni before she comes back, and talk to her alone." If the quest hasn't been derailed too far, you need to hear the original dialog lines you were supposed to get from Danni Arcadia, including whatever she'd have said when you first saw Tammi. "Really, I should talk to Danni without her knowing that I've already talked to you. And see how she treats you. Which means we're going to need a code, some hand signals maybe, so we can communicate in front of Danni without her realizing that we're cooperating…"

A subsequent hurried argument establishes that you do have to gag Tammi again before you leave, because Danni will not believe she accidentally messed up the tie and Tammi got her mouth free on her own. You guess you're… fairly sure that Erogame Logic isn't likely to have the next plot development being Danni finding her sister dead of suffocation.

Silence Mortal: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

Gags applied by you, to you, or in your presence, will actually prevent people from making loud noises.

Gags never cause anyone to suffocate due to allergies, a runny nose, or panties going down the back of somebody's throat.

"Oh, hey! Elevator towel girl! Uh, uh, Arcadia?"

Somebody who, so far as you can tell, looks exactly like Tammi in all ways except freckle pattern---you are memorizing freckle constellations now so that you'll be able to tell who's who---turns around in surprise just as she's entering the Winco checkout line. Danni Arcadia is no longer dressed in a naked towel, and is instead wearing painted-on jeans and a stylish black jacket with only a lacy bra underneath, the jacket unzipped just far enough to make that fact obvious. She's just as voluptuous and athletically toned as her sister second cousin.

Spoiler: Danni Arcadia

You really want to learn how to look that good. For which you need money for proper clothes, you guess.

Danni's eyes are roaming up and down your own form, sluttily dressed in the height of Goodwill fashion. She's smiling like she doesn't hold your inferior clothing against you. "I take it we've met?" she says.

"You don't remember? It was Monday night. We were in the elevator at the Marriott. You were drunk and trying to make out with…" You glance around at the store, as if realizing what shouldn't be said in public. "That woman who looked, uh, similar to you. That you'd just found out was also in Norville. Tammi, she said her name was."

"Whoops," Danni says, sounding wry but not actually embarrassed. Then the person ahead of you in the grocery checkout line finishes up, and Danni has to turn some of her attention back to her… items. Wow. Why does Danni Arcadia need a toilet scrubber, an electric toothbrush, and a pack of nine-volt batteries along with the deli food and sexual lubricant? You feel like a very low-level ero character right now.

…it's at this point that you suddenly realize you have no idea how to proceed from here. You ran to the supermarket in time to meet her, but you have no idea how to seduce Danni Arcadia, or get her to seduce you, or however this quest was supposed to start.

You don't know how to flirt a teenage boy into bed without you plainly offering your body. Danni is a grown woman in her mid-twenties.

Maybe you should've gotten your ero game on a lot earlier, and not tried this for the first time with seven thousand dollars on the line.

Well, too late now for regrets. At least you have SED 16.

You take a deep breath, and prepare yourself… to flirt.

"If I'm remembering correctly," you say, tilting your head as though to look curious, "that woman also said, 'Stop that we're in public' and then asked 'Please can we crash on your couch? Please? We'd be ever so grateful.'"

Danni snickers, glancing over at you before returning to bagging her items. "That sounds like Tammi all right. Maybe it's too bad I already had a hotel room of my own."

That's her flirting back, right? Right? And that means you're allowed to flirt a little more directly in return? "Well, to be honest, my boyfriend and I wouldn't have wanted company on that particular night. It was, uh, our anniversary." Your zeroth anniversary, but still an anniversary. Wait, Danni needs to know you're available now. "And Charles had to leave town before dawn. I go by Starry, by the way."

"I'm Danni. I have a vague memory of you and your boy running out of the elevator?" Danni says, as she swipes her credit card through the payment terminal. "You missed an interesting time after the lights went out. God, I can't believe I was drunk through that. Good thing Tammi took pictures."

"Oh, I'm sure I'll have other interesting times in the future," you say. Is that the correct level of flirting? Please let it be the correct level. Damn it, smile, you need to be smiling. "But I wouldn't mind seeing those pictures too. Did you do anything with all those lingerie models I left to you?"

"Nope. Would've any other night, but not right then."

The teenaged boy waiting in line after you is openly staring at both of you. Neither of you seem to mind.

Danni takes her bags, then waits around while you quickly pay $1 for the random bottle of water you picked up as an excuse for being here. Her waiting for you is a good sign, you're pretty sure.

"Want some help carrying a bag?" you say when you're done. "You're heading back to the Marriott, right?"

"Sure," Danni says, and hands you one of the three grocery bags she's been dealt. She brushes her fingers over your hands as she carries out the maneuver, but you can't think fast enough of how to brush her fingers back.

You drop your water bottle into the bag, and follow after Danni as she walks out the sliding doors.

Faint wisps of clouds in the sky above fail to obscure the lowering Sun halfway to the horizon, as the two of you turn and head down the sidewalk in the direction that leads towards the Norville Arms-Marriott. The air is cool, but your bare toes in open-toed heels can feel heat radiating off the sun-baked concrete.

You can't seem to control your nervous trembling. This feels like being Luke Skywalker flying down the Death Star trench. If you go too fast, if you go too slow, if you say the wrong thing, you might hit the walls of the trench and crash… and your X-Wing costs seven thousand dollars.

"By the way," Danni says as the two of you turn to head down the sidewalk leading to the Marriott, "that's the best hair ever. Where did you get it done?"

"Se~cret," you say in a singsong. You run your fingers through your hair, flipping it over your shoulder to show off the internal details better. "I might tell you someday, if we get to know each other well enough."

"Or I could extract the information from you some other way," Danni says, offering you another sexy smile. If you're not imagining it, her hips are swaying a little wider as she walks.

"Ah-hah," you say nervously. "Uh, but what if I told you the truth and you didn't believe me?"

Danni's cheerful, sexy smile widens. "Even if I did believe you, I might just get curious about something else."

This reply is distracting you and oh god you need to think of another flirty thing to say, shit shit shit come on brain "I don't let just anyone interrogate me, you know."

"Really? What does it take for you to get yourself interrogated?"

Talk, talk dammit, "Let's see. I might want to see you demonstrate your interrogation skills on someone else first."

"Someone else?" Danni says. If you're reading her expression correctly, she's wary and also interested. "Like who?"

"Well, you've already got somebody you're planning on interrogating, since your grocery list included K-Y jelly."

"I could be planning to use it on myself," Danni says.

You give her the sexiest smile you can, trying to add some sway to your own hips. Stay on target. Stay on target. "You don't look like the kind of girl who uses a toilet scrubber and K-Y jelly… on herself."

Extra Large Sausage has increased by 1.

AHHHHHH FUCK FUCK FUCK

Thankfully Danni just snickers, seeming to take your horrible horrible porn dialogue as a joke. "That's right, I'm not," she says.

"What are you doing with the toilet scrubber, electric toothbrush, and nine-volt batteries?" you say, letting your fascinated curiosity into your voice.

"Se~cret," Danni says, almost perfectly copying your tone from before.

"What does it take for me to find out?"

"Tell me where you get your hair done," Danni says straight back.

God fucking damnit. How are you going to evade… "But then you'd have everything you want from me, and no reason to pay attention to me any more." You give her your best sad eyes.

"I can think of something else I want from you," Danni says.

"Re~ally?" you say, putting your finger to your lips as though in surprise, and widening your eyes. It feels like you're approaching the final stretch now, which is generating a panicked sense of having no idea of how you're actually supposed to fire the proton torpedo down the thermal exhaust port.

"Mm-hm," Danni says. "But whether you get to give it to me depends on how you answer another question."

"Oh?" You make your face smile cheerfully, while Obi-Wan Kenobi's ghostly voice screams at your trembling nerves to calm the fuck down.

"Mm-hm. You seem like an open-minded woman, but before I take a woman back to my hotel room to ask her about her hair stylist, I need to know that she's… the right type of open-minded."

Right. Danni doesn't want you going to the police if you discover her naked twin handcuffed to a bed with no safeword.

Well, you're pretty sure of what Danni wants to hear. You just have to hope that nobody on the Internet hears about you saying it. Ever.

You make a show of looking around to verify that nobody is near you on the sidewalk, and lower your voice. "It's okay to keep some things in the family. Twins are twice the fun. Safe, sane, and consensual is boring, boring, and boring."

Danni starts giggling helplessly, even staggering slightly as she goes on walking with her grocery bags. "Wow," she says when she gets herself under control. "I'd have to live pretty dangerously to hang around a person who thinks that safety, sanity, and consent are boring."

"And you are, in fact, hanging around me, in the sense that you haven't grabbed back your grocery bag and started running away," you reply.

"Maybe I think you're just joking."

"Oh, I think you'd have to live pretty dangerously to hang around a person who made that joke."

Danni is looking at you thoughtfully. "Do you go around telling that joke to just anyone?"

"Just incredibly sexy and attractive girls who don't stop fondling their lover when their lover tells them to stop."

"Mm. And you're not running away from me. How dangerously do you like to live, then?"

What would the ero character you're playing say to that… "I'm not looking to hurt anyone or get hurt," you say. "But I know that I can't get everything I want---everything I need---if I try to stay too safe."

"Well, you certainly sound like an interesting person to get to know better," Danni says. Then her voice drops into a more serious register. "Though I'm kinda in the middle of something today, sorry. Maybe we could meet up again Saturday afternoon, if that's all right by you?"

…because she doesn't want you to see Tammi tied up? Or doesn't want to release Tammi in order to handcuff you? "I, uh, can't do Saturday," you say. "I don't suppose Monday?" You know she can't.

Danni shakes her head, looking genuinely sad. "I leave town Sunday night. Shit."

"I, uh, also shit. Are you sure today doesn't work?"

"No, sorry."

You keep your breathing controlled. How did you fail? What went wrong? Is the quest just randomly making you return on Saturday night? That doesn't feel like you're on the right track. Maybe you could get 10,000XP that way, but not the $7000, you're pretty sure.

You can't guess how to flirt your way around this obstacle when you don't know what went wrong.

Which just leaves your other modality of seduction.

You put on your best nervous and awkward appearance---which you are sure is realistic---and give Danni a pleading look. "Um, can I be plain here? I was really, really interested in what I saw in the elevator. If I hadn't run into you at WinCo, I was thinking of trying to look you up anyway. And, uh… despite some recent epiphanies about how I want to live my life, and having great sex with a man who didn't stop when I said stop, I've never actually been with any girls before."

"Oh my gosh," Danni says. "Friday? Can you do Friday?"

"Nooo I can't." You give her a sad look. "Also Charles is denying me orgasms right now, and he's been making me frustrate myself over and over, like I had to touch myself while taking the elevator down because I have to masturbate almost to an orgasm and stop every time I'm someplace nobody can see me. I'm really horny, and I can only come if somebody else makes me come. And every time I got close I'd have to tell you and give you a chance to tease me more instead, and I have to try not to come if I can. Are you positive today doesn't work for you?"

Danni looks up at the sky. "Am I being tempted?" she asks the emptiness above her.

"Look, uh, whatever it is you do to your sister, uh, if you've got her all tied up right now and no room to handcuff somebody else to the bed, and that's why you can't take me right now, uh, I guess what I'm saying is, I'm interested in both sides of things. Do you need somebody to hold an electric toothbrush in place while you use the toilet scrubber?"

A red light stops both of you from proceeding further. The two of you wait on a sidewalk corner next to a mattress store, holding your grocery bags.

"I don't let just anyone use my toothbrush," Danni says. She doesn't sound offended, but she isn't smiling either. "Or my sister."

"Oh," you say. "Well, good to know you care about her." You allow some of your sincerity into your voice. "We shouldn't hurt the ones we don't love."

Danni laughs, sounding as young and girly as your own age level. "Oh, I wouldn't say love is required, but I know what you mean. And I do love Tammi very much."

The two of you resume walking and pace on quietly for a block, as you frantically rack your brains trying to think of how to proceed. What were you supposed to do in the standard version of this story? Try to blackmail Danni by threatening to reveal her incestuous relationship, then get blindsided by her later when she revealed it wasn't really incest?

You guess there's nothing for it but to try the next step in your plan. "Uh, can I ask you a bit of a startling question? Please don't be too alarmed."

"Sure," Danni says, skipping slightly to hop over a crack in the sidewalk.

"Uh, so, we all have our special talents in life, and mine is that sometimes I'm weirdly good at reading people. So, uh, please don't freak out when I say that my intuition is telling me that something isn't totally perfect between you and your sister?"

Danni stops in her tracks so fast you think for a second she'll fall over. She swivels around to stare at you.

"I mean, uh," you say, "I get the sense you're the type of person who likes company while using the toilet scrubber. And it's not that you're too risk-averse to trust me around your sister even with you watching me. You feel like things are fragile between you and her, and you're afraid of bringing in an outsider." The last part really is a guess, but if Danni loves Tammi enough to make this relationship worth repairing, she has to have noticed something's wrong.

Danni goes on staring at you.

"Uh," you say, "I can sometimes, uh… fix things, too? When I can see that they're wrong?"

Then Danni smiles, and it doesn't have the warmth from before. The redhead sets down her grocery bags on the sidewalk, and strides around to stand in front of you, face to freckled face. "A-ma-zing," she says, her voice louder and tenser now. "So you're claiming to be psychic, huh? How many fingers am I holding up behind my back?"

Shit. You close your eyes, and make a show of fisting your hand against your temple. You'd ordinarily have one chance in five of getting the right answer… no, six, because she could be holding up zero fingers. Okay, that's going to be your guess, zero, because she seems tricky. Please, Erogame?

You open your eyes.

"Two and a half," you say.

The young man walking towards you along the sidewalk, from behind Danni where she can't see, brings down his fist and the two and a half fingers held up there. He winks at you.

Danni looks surprised, but not shocked. She turns around, as though searching for mirrors. The young man is now straight-faced again, walking past the two of you without looking. You try to memorize his face---angular cheekbones, thick unruly eyebrows, scruffy beard---because if you run into that guy again, he's so getting oral.

"What number am I thinking of?" Danni says.

One hundred and seventeen point four eight? But no, the eroge character you're pretending to be right now isn't that psychic. In this eroge plot, the character Starry gets a few weird hunches, but most of her information is from having secretly talked with Tammi. In this eroge's plot, Starry and Tammi are conniving together and that lets Starry pretend in front of Danni to be more psychic than she really is.

(Of course the real Cindy is far more supernatural than that, and knew Beth Cordova's full name without being told. Hence the irony.)

"Um, Danni," you say, as Starry would, "I did get the sense you were trying to be tricky, and at first I thought maybe you were holding up zero fingers. But the actual reason I was able to guess it exactly is that the guy who just walked past us helpfully held up two and a half fingers. My hunches could be me unconsciously reading body language, not a magical gift. Or maybe there's a vast unknowable power feeding me information about other people's sex lives for reasons I can't begin to understand. I don't know how I work, I just live in here."

Danni snorts, but she's looking at you less angrily now. She goes over and picks up her bags again, and starts walking towards the Marriott. "I don't disbelieve that there's anybody like that in the world," she says. Her voice still sounds tense. "But I think, if people like that existed, they'd be very rare. I think you're a friend of Tammi's, and she managed to text you on her phone while I was drunk and before I handcuffed her."

"You could make her unlock her phone and check for texts like that," you say. "Or any calls she made during that time."

"If she was setting up something like this, she might delete the texts?" Danni sounds thoughtful rather than angry. "I'm not going to be Agent Scully, but I don't want to believe either. You haven't said anything so far that has to be more than good guessing."

"Uh, I look a bit like someone that you have unfinished emotional business with and that you never got to say goodbye to properly?"

A slight hitch in Danni's step. "So Tammi hooked up with you because you remind her of Beth too?"

"No! I swear to God I met Tammi for the first time in that elevator on Monday! Look, why would Tammi have told you to stop getting handsy, after meeting you for the first time in so long, if I was her friend and knew all about the two of you?"

"Because your boyfriend didn't know about us."

"Yeah, he didn't know because neither did I! We ran out of the elevator because it was our anniversary night and neither of us wanted company just then!"

Danni walks quietly toward the hotel for the next block. You want to ask her what she's thinking about, but you can't admit you don't already know.

"I'm serious about my being able to fix things sometimes," you say after the silence has stretched for a while. "It's… sort of what I do, on some occasions anyway. I know something's wrong here. I know something's very wrong." Danni wouldn't be hesitating to take advantage of you if she didn't care about her sister. "I think you should maybe… no, I know that you should talk to me about it. Beth sounds important, maybe start with her?"

It's a while before Danni speaks again. "If Tammi sent you, I'm going to be really really pissed. She won't like that."

"I swear to God, I met you both Monday in the elevator."

"The thing with Beth was a long story," Danni says. "But, the tee-el-dee-ar is, Beth made Tammi really scream, harder than I'd ever made Tammi scream before that. And ever since then, things haven't been… right." Danni trails off.

"No matter how far you try to push your sadism," you say. You think you see where this story's plot is going. Today's episode of Eroge Street has been brought to you by the number G, the letter 3, and the author O. Henry. "No matter how mean you try to be, for your sister's sake."

Danni glances at you, looking sad and vulnerable. "Yeah. No matter what I do, it feels like Tammi isn't really reacting. Or isn't reacting enough. I don't know how to say it! Something's missing, I don't know what. I keep wondering if Beth was really out for revenge, and Tammi knew that. Maybe now Tammi thinks I'm just playing, and she doesn't think it's r-real enough with me." It sounds like Danni's voice is hitching despite an effort to control it.

"Have you ever tried mentioning any of this to Tammi?" you say, somehow managing not to scream this question at the top of your lungs.

Danni shakes her head. "Tammi isn't very good at admitting what she needs. If she was left to herself, she wouldn't let anyone tie her to a bed for more than a couple of hours. But she still came into my hotel room even though she knew perfectly well what would happen to her, and then she spent the next two days whining about it. It's adorable and I love her for it, but I can't talk about things with her, you know? Tammi needs to believe she doesn't want to be tied up, so she can get off on struggling. It wouldn't work for her if she thought she was just playing a game. If she ever admits to herself what she needs, she can't get what she needs. Ever again! For the rest of her life! I know you must think I'm being stupid but I can't just talk with Tammi about what's wrong! I really can't!" Danni looks like she's nearing tears.

"I think," you say, impressed with yourself for how calm you're sounding, "that I ought to see you and Tammi together. Maybe I can fix things."

"Okay, but, but Tammi can't know that's what you're doing, all right? She doesn't… she can't know we have that kind of relationship to fix! She needs to believe you're just somebody I brought in to help…" Danni hesitates, looking at you.

"Sadistically tease her to the edge of orgasm over and over again?" you say.

"Sure, that." Danni's voice is a bit strange, but she doesn't contradict you.

"I think I can work under those conditions," you reply.

Then you reach out, pinch the fabric of Danni's jacket over her arm, and pull her slightly towards you to keep her from walking directly into the lamppost ahead of her while she's busy looking at you.

"Thanks," Danni says, her voice wavering slightly. "Do you really think you can fix things? Figure out why Tammi… why something's wrong?"

You've got half of this figured out already. Tammi wants Danni to listen to her and not be so mean, well, now you know what that problem looks like on Danni's side. Danni thinks Tammi isn't reacting, or isn't reacting enough, or isn't reacting the right way, that something feels missing.

If this eroge plot stays symmetrical, then, just like the real story behind Tammi's complaint about Danni's sadism has nothing to do with Tammi having tortured Danni, the real reason for Danni's complaint about Tammi's "underreaction" or "something's missing" will have nothing to do with Beth torturing Tammi better than Danni did.

But regardless, you are going to fix this. Whatever the key to this quest, there will be a way for you to do it. Because you are the Erogamer. Because helping people with weird erotic problems is what you do. And most of all, you're going to do this because you really really really want $7000.

"I'll have to see Tammi to be sure," you say. "But this does seem like exactly the type of thing I go around solving." Not that you've done a lot of it yet, but you can see where your destiny is heading.

"I, I want to believe that but, but…" Danni's voice is trembling. "What do you need to do? What do I have to do?"

You purse your lips thoughtfully. "Maybe just try to be around Tammi normally, the way you would've treated her before the whole thing with Beth, and let me see---uh, no, wait." Tammi also complained about Danni having not grown up. "Actually? Here's your instructions, Danni Arcadia. Just be yourself around her. Treat Tammi the way you would if everything was already fixed and things were already the way you wanted them to end up. Don't put on any kind of pose for her benefit unless it's who you want to be." You'd put even odds on this instruction fixing everything all by itself. "If you start to feel like something's wrong, then, the exact moment that feeling starts, let me know right away and I'll see if I can figure out what isn't perfect and straighten it back."

Danni sets down her grocery bags, wipes away the wetness that's appeared at the corners of her eyes, picks up the grocery bags, and resumes walking. "Kay," she says.

You're pretty sure that their Ideal Encounter doesn't include Danni crying the whole time. "Aside from that, uh, please just believe in me and leave fixing the relationship up to me, so you can relax and have fun?"

"Kay." Danni whispers. She sniffles, and looks at the approaching hotel. "We, we weren't not having fun, you know, it was just, something was missing…"

"Yeah, I know," you say. Among the things Tammi has definitely not asked you to do is make Danni not tie her up anymore.

"I g-guess you do know. How will I let you know when I feel like something's wrong? I can't say it in front of Tammi."

"The two of us will have code signals, of course, so we can communicate right in front of Tammi without her realizing that we're cooperating." You are proud of yourself for keeping a totally straight face as you say this.

"Like me rubbing your clit three times? Just three times and then stopping, I mean?"

"Uh," you say. This is generating distracting mental imagery. "Uh, uh, uh, s-sure, that works."

"Oh, right, you've never been with a girl," Danni says. She's smiling now. "Don't worry, I'll make sure you enjoy yourself too. Just relax and let me worry about that part." Her right hand reaches over to hand you another of her two remaining grocery bags.

Unthinkingly, automatically, without considering the consequences, you take the bag in your free hand.

Danni's freed-up hand promptly slides along your back and briefly dips below the edge of your miniskirt's rear, touching just the top of the cleft between your buttocks and making you shiver. "H-hey," you say, unable to defend yourself with both your own hands carrying grocery bags.

"If you can really fix everything," Danni breathes, "I'll make you come no matter how much you try not to."

Separately convincing each of Danni and Tammi Arcadia to let you be with both of them causes your SED to go up by 1!

4.4.3*** [TDA]: Relationship Counseling

You're standing in front of the Norville Arms-Marriott first-floor elevator deck, trying to hide your face behind brown paper grocery bags, sometimes emitting faint whimpering sounds.

"So you haven't even fantasized about being with a girl before?" Danni says. The statuesque redhead is standing right behind you, her breasts beneath the black jacket pressed against your back, and her scarlet lips breathing almost into your ear.

The two young teenage boys standing nearby are gazing at both of you in fascination, neither of them even pretending to be looking at the elevator displays.

Danni's finger pokes into your exposed ribs and makes you yelp. "N-no!" you blurt out. "I only noticed I was bisexual like really really recently!"

There's a middle-aged, very-well-preserved woman standing next to the boys, and she has her lips pursed in a frown and is staring at you disapprovingly. She looks remarkably like an older Mary Poppins. She's also blushing.

Why is the elevator taking so long to get here, why are you doing this to me Erogame, please I thought I was being good…

"If you think about a girl using her mouth on you, or you using your mouth on a girl, which seems more interesting?" Another sharp poke in your ribs to remind you that you are being bullied.

"A g-girl using her mouth on me." You can't even bear to look at Older Mary Poppins anymore.

Danni's mouth moves closer to your ear, but she's still careful to speak loudly enough for the others to hear. "Would you rather pull a girl's hair or have your hair pulled?"

"Have my hair pulled," you reply miserably.

More warm words breathe into your ear. "How often do you touch yourself?" says Danni. "Say it nice and clear."

"As, as, often as my boyfriend tells me to, s-so every half-hour today."

Three slight gasps from beside you.

The elevator door dings open, and you rush in like shoggoths are following you.

Danni strolls in leisurely afterwards.

Mary Poppins restrains her two teenage boys from entering. "We'll wait for the next elevator," she says, the heavy disapproval in her voice only matched by the redness of her cheeks.

The elevator door slides closed and you slump against the mirrored wall with a moan. You would ask in a whining tone why Danni Arcadia is bullying you, if it wasn't such a stupid question.

"I can't believe how adorable you are," Danni says. She's grinning widely. She pokes you in the ribs again, hard enough to make you yelp.

"Stop bullying me," you whine, giving up on trying not to say it.

"Kay."

You flinch, waiting for the extra poke in your ribs that's certain to follow this statement, but instead Danni does nothing, even as the elevator doors slide open again.

The two of you step out into the dark-wood-paneled, grey-red-plaid-carpeted corridor of the Marriott's second floor.

"Are you disappointed I'm not bullying you any more?" Danni says, as the two of you turn toward 211. "If you like me you have to be honest."

"Y-yes EEP!"

She just poked your soft, vulnerable belly button and almost made you drop the groceries. You're starting to rethink tie-up shirts, it leaves you exposed and you're going to be meeting a lot of sadists in your life.

The two of you reach the end of the long corridor where room 211 awaits, the door guarded by the same Do Not Disturb sign that was there on your departure.

"Stay outside a minute," Danni whispers. She withdraws a card from her pocket and slips it through the door's access reader, then slips inside and shuts the door behind her before you can screw up the interruptiness to ask her why.

Shortly after, the door opens again. Danni, now holding a finger over her lips in the universal gesture for quiet, beckons you inside the room.

You step in on your Silent high heels, and quietly put down your grocery bags next to where Danni put the third bag, then slip off your light running backpack too.

Danni closes the door behind you.

Before you is a redhead handcuffed to a bed, the different constellations of freckles on her cheeks barely serving to distinguish her from the identical-looking redhead beside you. The restrained girl is blindfolded, now, with what looks like a thick sleeping mask. That was probably what Danni was doing. Danni also took out the gag, and Tammi's mouth works visibly as you watch, swallowing repeatedly.

Danni steps to your right of the bed, and leans over and breathes on Tammi's stomach, just a breath.

Tammi tenses up, but doesn't speak.

Then Danni looks back at you and smiles at you, invitingly.

You smile back, nervously.

Danni slowly trails her hand along Tammi's naked body from Tammi's knees to her nipples. Tammi silently writhes under the hand, twisting her legs and shaking her breasts. She inhales sharply, but doesn't speak or moan.

It's an erotic sight, and the thought of trying to do anything about it is making you freeze up. Everything feels inhibited, like being surrounded by choking clay again, like being with a girl requires you to start over from Sunday.

Danni silently beckons you over to the bedside, and you force yourself to silently step there.

Giving you a reassuring smile, Danni takes your arm by the wrist. Like she's read your mind and knows your paralysis, Danni moves your arm to slowly trail your own fingers over Tammi's body.

You feel the faint warmth coming to your fingers from the light touch, as your fingers are dragged over Tammi's bare thigh, over her hip, and then her stomach. Tammi jerks away from you, and Danni moves your hand to follow the motion's path, slowly, to trail up Tammi's ribs and back up to her stomach. Then Danni resumes pulling your wrist to drag your fingers up over Tammi's body, following the same path to the underside of Tammi's smoothly curved breast, and finally her nipple.

Danni stops there, and moves your hand in a circle, trailing your fingers over Tammi's nipples again and again.

It feels so soft, and the rest of Tammi's body looks so soft, and she's so vulnerable and you could do anything to her when she's handcuffed like this. Half-formed images try to flit through your mind, of the things you could do to a helpless soft girl, all of them shot down by some ashamed inner censor before they can fully form.

"Does that feel good, sis?" Danni says, her voice loud in the quiet hotel room. "Annnswer."

"Y-yes," Tammi says, in a hoarsened voice ravaged by gags and teasing.

"I'm sorry I had to leave you alone and let you get all cooled down," Danni says. Her voice sounds entirely sincere. "I'll warm you up again, and then we'll have lunch, kay?"

"Please don't…" Tammi murmurs despairingly, while Danni keeps moving your wrist so that your captive fingers go on circling the soft skin around Tammi's nipple.

This is sorta consensual, you're pretty sure. Tammi is secretly on board with it, because she knows you're going to fix her relationship with her sister, right? Tammi's just pretending otherwise so Danni doesn't realize anything has changed. Even if Tammi didn't originally want to be in these handcuffs, she probably wants to be in them now, so, this is definitely, uh, consensual enough. As an erogame character, "It's complicated but I guess that's sorta consensual enough" is probably a relatively good day for you. This is your life now.

Danni lifts your wrist back into the air, and lets go of it. She reaches over and pinches Tammi's other nipple between her fingers, but only gently, just teasing it for now.

Danni uses her free hand to point to Tammi's other nipple, her command clear.

You try to quiet the trembling in your own hand as you reach forth and begin softly pinching Tammi's nipple, not enough to hurt, maybe not even enough to pleasure her, just enough to tease. The nipple yields to your manipulations, despite its erectness. Vulnerable. Defenseless. You could pinch it if you wanted, you sort of want to, but you don't know if Tammi is into pain and you forgot to ask either sister.

Danni lifts her hand and gestures you away, and you step back from the bed.

Danni climbs onto the bed, puts her head down, and begins to suck on Tammi's nipple. Softly at first, then louder, the breast beneath moving visibly as the nipple is sucked into Danni's lips and then released and then sucked up again.

When Tammi's breath hitches, Danni releases the captive nipple with a loud sucking sound, then climbs back off the bed.

You start to move forward toward your own nipple, but Danni puts up a stopping hand. She makes a circling gesture with her hand, behind her head, that puzzles you.

You tilt your head, eyes wide to show your confusion, and mouth with exaggerated lip movements: What?

Danni repeats the gesture. This time she uses her non-circling hand to grab up some of her neck-length sienna curls, while her index finger circles around them.

Oh, right. Danni doesn't want your long hair to fall onto Tammi and give your non-Danni presence away, so she wants you to use a hair-tie.

You use both hands to sweep all your hair over your shoulders and smooth it down, making it into a river rather than a cloak. Then you execute a deep bow, to demonstrate that your hair stays in position afterwards.

When you straighten, Danni is staring at you with wide eyes.

WHAT, she mouths at you.

You tap your hair. Then you form your right hand into a fist, hold it out in front of you, put your left thumb and forefinger together above the fist as if holding something, and draw it back towards you, and then let it go. Then you put your left hand down in a flat plane, and use your right middle finger, held downward and stiffly, to repeatedly poke at the surface from above.

You step forward and climb onto the king-size bed, bending over supported on your knees, while Danni is still looking totally confused. Your gestures didn't mean anything, of course, but the enforced silence is a great excuse for failed explanations.

Focusing your attention on Tammi again, you carefully put your head down over Tammi's other nipple. Her skin tastes salty, probably from sweat, and there's a hint of something else you can't identify, a little fruity maybe, like some fading lotion. Or maybe Danni licked her there right after Danni ate a tangerine.

You open your mouth wider, and press your lips down all around the areola, forming a seal and sucking up the breast into your mouth, gently, you're not sure how much vacuum pressure is safe to apply to nipples. With the breast firmly in your mouth, you start swirling your tongue over it, slowly. You're still too nervous to be fully in this moment, afraid that the Lesbian Police will burst into the room and arrest you as an impostor who doesn't know how to lick nipples---

The breast is torn out of your mouth with a loud pop as Tammi jerks her body away as best she can in the bed. "You're not Danni!" The surprise in her voice sounds almost realistic.

"Guess what!" Danni says, the cheer in her voice also sounding almost realistic. "I made a new friend today!"

"I, oh shit, oh god, listen to me, I, I d-don't want you to go to the police but you have to make her let me gommmphhhhh---"

"Do you want the gag again?" Danni says sternly. Despite the tone of her voice, she's looking at you nervously as she holds one hand over Tammi's mouth.

You nod at Danni and give her a thumbs-up. A glance at Tammi's cuffed left hand didn't show her making the thumb-in-fist gesture which would secretly signal you that she's being truly-serious-this-time.

Danni smiles back at you. She taps her lips, then points at you.

"Hi, I'm Starry!" you say in your own cheerful voice. You try to think of what Danni would want somebody pretending to be her sadistic assistant to say. "I've never been with a woman before and I've just started exploring this part of my sexuality, so please tell me how to pleasure you better. I'm sorry I'm not allowed to make you come, but I'll try to be good to you."

"S-seriously?" Tammi says. Her blindfolded face is turned towards you. "You're not going to help me?" Again, the horrified incredulity in her voice sounds almost realistic.

You reach out and carefully brush away one of Tammi's curls where it's falling over her face, and might be tickling her nose, which the blindfold doesn't cover. "I won't help you escape, but I'll do my best to make you feel better," you promise in the compassionate voice of Starry pretending to Danni that she's pretending to be Danni's sadistic friend to fool Tammi, so that you and Tammi can fool Danni into not knowing that Tammi knows you're Starry. Though actually you're Cindy. Or at least you think you're Cindy? You might have to go back and check all the steps to make sure.

Okay, you need to stop admiring how confusing you've made this story's plot, and focus on having your first lesbian experience. Tonight is supposed to be good for you too, and you keep being too nervous to feel like more than a bystander at the erotic events going on around you.

You sit down on the bed beside Tammi, the mattress yielding beneath you. You gaze at her vulnerably naked body, now blindfolded instead of handcuffed. You could touch Tammi anywhere, and she wouldn't see it coming, and couldn't make you stop.

You can imagine it being you in the cuffs, unable to see, unable to stop anything. You think it would excite you, even if you were frightened. Tammi has much more experience with this, and she'll be less frightened. It's okay for you to take advantage of her. It's allowed.

You should touch Tammi. You should tease her. You should do something.

Your mind is blank.

Danni comes around to your side of the bed, and leans over you. "Scared?" she murmurs into your ear.

You nod. "I'm not sure what to do next," you say, softly but not trying to stop Tammi from hearing. "I've never done anything like this before."

"Do you want to touch her?" Danni's voice is also soft.

"Y-yeah I just don't know where to start and---" You don't know how to describe the hiccuping and faltering thoughts going through you like sparks from a broken wire. You've read enough to know that you're not supposed to just go straight for a woman's pussy without foreplay. You already touched her nipple and you feel like now you're supposed to touch somewhere else. But if you start wiggling Tammi's toes or something, it'll just be weird.

"Sit astride her," Danni says.

"O-okay." You obediently lean over the bed, crawling into position over Tammi. "Uh, uh, where exactly should I sit?"

With an amused, exasperated look, Danni uses one firm hand to guide your butt to directly over Tammi's groin. That's… faster than you were expecting to go. Obediently you sit up and rest your your butt on Tammi's groin, your miniskirt riding up but your panties preventing direct contact. Your knees are folded beneath you (which is a thing you can do now that you're thin) and you hope that's preventing you from crushing Tammi's bladder with your full weight.

Your position puts you looking down at Tammi's upper body. Her body looks tense, taut, waiting for whatever you're going to do to her. She has freckles all over, without any patch of skin you can see as untouched. Her breasts are beautifully curved and her nipples fully erect, the reddened aureola glistening with your and Danni's saliva. Her arms are spreadeagled from the handcuffs, and that exposes her armpits, which are devoid of hair. You're pretty sure you're feeling some kind of predatory impulse towards those naked, vulnerable armpits. You just don't know what you want to do to them. You feel like you want to eat them but that can't be right.

Are you supposed to rub Tammi's pussy with your butt, now? Is the position right for that?

"Just kiss her," Danni says. She has a kindly look. "Any time you don't know what to do with a girl, just kiss her until you think of something, kay?"

Oh.

You lean over carefully, putting your weight down on your hands, so that you can lean in your head towards Tammi's head, and kiss her lips with your lips. They're softer than Blake's lips, or Charles's lips, and you feel surprised that the stereotype is true. You feel like you ought to lock lips with her, but Tammi still has her lips pressed tensely shut. So you run your tongue over those lips, teasingly, and once your tongue has moistened them and teased them for a while, Tammi opens her mouth for you and lets you put in your tongue.

It's warm in there, and wet, and slippery, welcoming your tongue. You wonder if this is what it feels like for a man's penis to invade a vagina. It feels good. You wouldn't mind doing this for a while.

You shouldn't be terrified that Tammi is getting bored, right? Danni will tell you if you've been doing this too long.

Tammi gasps into your mouth, and her body tries to writhe beneath you.

You lift your head slightly, leaving a trail of saliva down to Tammi's lips. "What's she doing to you?" you say softly.

"S-she's touching my pussy but not my clit, oh, oh sis, please, please it's been daysmmmph---"

You cover her mouth with yours again. You… like this. You like kissing a girl while another girl toys with her helpless body. It's not like taking advantage of Blake, it's, it's, you don't have the words. You like this.

Suppressing a girl's moans with your lips while she's being helplessly toyed with by another girl makes your PRV go up by 1!

"Keep your weight on her," Danni instructs you. "It keeps her in place so I can tease her better."

"Okay," you breathe, and obey, shifting your legs and hands so that your full body weight presses on Tammi. Your naked belly is matched to hers now, it feels like warmth is pouring into you from everywhere your skin touches her skin, and Tammi moans into your lips again. With most of your weight supported by Tammi, you can hold yourself in place with one hand, and your other hand begins exploring her hair and scalp. Other things are happening behind you, you know. Poor Tammi.

When Tammi's moans are louder and more frequent, you feel Danni's weight shifting around on the bed, behind you. "I'm going to touch you now," says Danni's voice. Her hands tangle in your hair, warm against the strands, and if not for the warning you might have jerked down and smushed Tammi's lips.

Danni's hands pull you to an upright sitting position, the hard yank on your head drawing a gasp from your lips.

Then Danni's hands move downward, and forward, and around you.

Her fingers are undoing the knot of the tied-up shirt of your slutty attire.

…okay. Danni didn't ask before she started, but, you did choose her, and you came here, and you knew she wouldn't ask for permission.

So, that means Danni's going to do whatever she wants to you, now.

…okay.

Your untied shirt is drawn back, pulling back your arms with it. But Danni doesn't finish pulling off your shirt all the way, leaving your arms and hands tangled in it behind you, as she reaches forward and begins toying with your own nipples, firmly.

You can't help but arch your back, thrusting your breasts forward even though Tammi isn't able to see it. A heavy exhalation escapes your lips as Danni's hands follow you inescapably.

"What's she doing to you?" Tammi says breathlessly from below you.

"Nipples," you whisper back.

Danni goes on molesting your breasts. For a while. She's apparently in no danger of getting bored. Small, soft moans escape you, you don't think you could come this way even if you had hours, but you've been teased all day and every tweak, every pinch on your nipples is reminding you of that. You feel… so erotic, right now. So ero. Sitting on a naked handcuffed girl with your hands trapped behind you in your own shirt, and your helplessly exposed breasts being teased.
This is how life should be.
Finally Danni's hands finish pulling off your shirt. Her hand invades your hair and grabs it, her warm fingers gathering the strands well away from your scalp. She pulls you off of Tammi, and your body scrambles to follow your head.

You're sitting on the bed, with your head trembling at Danni's chest level, and Danni's hand tangled in your hair. You're scared and your panties are wetted through. Your mind feels like it's having trouble with words, and you just want to leave all the thinking to Danni and do whatever she tells you.

"Do you want to tease her?" Danni says.

You look at Tammi's erotic, naked body. Her pussy is glistening with frustration and whatever Danni was doing to it before. You feel afraid to touch her pussy, like it might be trapped. Wanting is the wrong word, but you'll do it if Danni tells you to, and you want Danni to tell you to. You manage to nod.

Danni seems to catch some of your state of mind, because she doesn't ask you any more questions, just guides you gently to crawl between Tammi's legs.

She takes your hand, now holding your fingers directly, and moves your finger in a gentle circle over Tammi's clit. The blindfolded girl flinches, and gasps. You remember what it was like when you touched yourself, before, how quickly the burning pleasure and the frustration came back when you were already so hot and so teased. Danni keeps moving your fingers, slowly, through three more circles, and when she lets go, you keep moving your fingers yourself at the same speed. You can feel Danni's gaze on you, on Tammi.

Tammi is already tensing up, trying to jerk her legs and hips away from you. Your hand follows her inexpertly, granting her small moments of relief but never letting her escape. It probably won't take long for her to get close. Part of your mind prays to something inhuman, sending it a request, and you know without words that the request is answered. Edge Other, it would be called, if it needed words.

Your eyes flicker to Tammi's right hand in its cuff. The angle at which she holds her right hand is supposed to be Tammi's secret signal to you of how close she is to coming. So that you can convince Danni you have a supernatural ability to know how close to orgasm people are.

You do pay attention to Tammi's hand, glancing back and forth between it and the clit you're teasing. This is much better than Edge Other's simple signal. You can see how Tammi's hand trembles upward when you rub her slippery-moist clit more firmly. You can see how slowly her arousal fades when you shift to toying with her pussy lips instead, making her whine with frustration.

You can see what Tammi's feeling, even if it's only in the angle of her hand, and it makes you feel so much closer to her. More intimate. Like she's right there talking back to you when you touch her clit, instead of your caresses being words shouted across a void whose other side you can only imagine.

You rub faster. You want to edge her. You want to make her almost come, and take it away, to be cruel to the helpless girl the way you've been cruel to yourself all day. You don't know if what you're feeling is sadism, or so much empathy that what you're doing is masochism at one remove.

Tammi's right hand angles higher, and higher, trembling in the cuffs.

"She's starting to get close," Danni murmurs from where she's watching your rubbing fingers and Tammi's writhing body.

"I, I kn-know." You can use words still, for now. "But she's not th-there."

Danni nods, giving you a look that's wary and impressed and amused all at once. "Kay, you tell me when she's at the edge."

Your fingers go slipping and sliding over Tammi's clit, sometimes teasing her pussy lips. Knocking at her entrance without properly going inside, whenever you want to gather more slipperiness to your fingers. Sometimes she writhes away and you let her. She's so frantic, so hot, she's been teased so long that you don't need to worry about steady rhythms to keep pushing her closer to her next awful denial of pleasure.

Edge Other pings. But Tammi's left hand, high as it is, hasn't clenched into a fist. You slow down your teasing anyway. Your lips manage to form words. "N-not at the edge, but, but getting close."

Danni nods. "Stop moving your hips around, sis," she commands. "Let her tease you. Or else."

A despairing whine from Tammi's throat, but her hips stop trying to jerk away from you, and just tremble beneath your fingers.

You slow down more.

Tammi is breathing heavily, panting, like she's too tormented even to moan. Her hand starts to clench into a fist. You slow down and just leave your fingers on her clit, pressing down lightly without sliding. Her hand opens. You rub, slipping and sliding fingers around her clit, one side and the other, firmly pressing down. Her hand clenches into a fist and you yank your hand away an instant before Danni says "Stop!"

You look at Danni and smile.

Edging Tammi almost as cruelly as Danni does causes your FUK to go up by 1!

Tammi is writhing around on the bed freely, now that nobody is touching her. Her hands yank futilely at the cuffs. "F-fuck, no, please, don't stop, don't do this to me, please, PLEASE…"

There's something in you that wants to believe in this, wants to live in this world of the play within the play. Wants to believe that the handcuffed writhing girl in front of you didn't consent at all and is just your victim to be teased and teased and teased.

"Shhh," you whisper, from the part of you that believes in that story. "It's okay. It's okay." You know just what you want to do to her now, and it's so cruel, so hot, your breath is fast with wanting it. "Danni, c-can you hold her down?"

Danni is smiling widely as she clambers onto the bed to sit on Tammi's groin, helping to pin her. Sometime while you weren't paying attention, Danni's jacket and jeans came off. She's naked now and so pretty, just like Tammi is so pretty. You wish there were two of you so that you could embrace Danni and make love to her too.

Your fingers start rubbing Tammi's clit again, slowly, rhythmically, slowing down more and more the more Tammi's hand rises. Tammi is moaning loudly, half-weeping, but Danni keeps her hips pinned in place and she can't escape. Soon your hand is hardly moving at all, just pressing into Tammi's clit lighter or harder, occasionally making another slipping motion, and Tammi's hand is trembling halfway to a fist.

A skill has been created by a special action! Keeping Tammi trembling on the edge of orgasm for a full, agonizing minute has created the skill Edging.

You rub a little more, push Tammi's hand to where it's almost but not quite closed into a fist as her breathing spirals out of control. Danni is facing you astride Tammi, mostly staring down at Tammi's pussy and your fingers, and sometimes looking up at you wide-eyed.

Edging has increased by 1.

Finally, Tammi's hand pulls convulsively into a fist, and you pull back your fingers. The bound girl draws a great sobbing breath and then starts crying in her handcuffs, little choking sounds.

You glance at her left hand, suddenly worried, but Tammi isn't giving you any emergency signals.

Danni pulls you forward for a kiss over Tammi's pinned body, trying and failing to writhe beneath you.

Danni is a more aggressive kisser than Tammi, she kisses like she knows she's in charge. Her tongue forces your lips open and invades. Her hands find your breasts again, and you moan into her eager mouth.

Danni slides off her victim's belly, and grabs your sensitive hair again to maneuver your head around to between Tammi's thighs.

Lllp, you think.

Tammi's scent is overpowering when you're close, like clams or oysters with a hint of sweetness and orange blossom.

You gingerly lower your head, stretch out your tongue, and poke at the vulnerable clit in front of you. You can't easily see Tammi's right hand when you're like this, so you Edge Other, and then you… try to do to Tammi what you remember Charles doing to you, a rhythmic lapping motion on Tammi's clit.

You freeze up, briefly, as you feel Danni's hands behind you, pulling down your miniskirt and panties to pool around your knees. Then your knees are shifted by a pair of hands, one at a time to draw out your clothes from under you, leaving you entirely naked except for your high heels, which you've almost forgotten you're wearing.

"Keep licking her," Danni orders you, and you bend back to your task with your muscles tensing up. You know what's going to happen to you, with your legs spread like this, helpless to resist anything that anyone wants to do to you.

You inhale a great gasp as Danni's fingers invade your pussy. Hard and fast, pressing firmly forward against oh oh oh that must be your G-spot. Your tongue spasms on Tammi's clit, disrupting your rhythm, and Tammi moans in response.

Your back is arched, you're moaning into Tammi's pussy even as you go on tormenting her and she tries to writhe away from you, your own hands keeping her hips in place. Edge Other pings at you and you give Tammi three more licks before stopping, making her tense up and gasp. Danni's fingers have slowed down, building you up in a merciless crawl towards your own denied pleasure. Danni's other hand is pressed down on your back to keep your head down and in place. Everything feels right, it's right for you to be teasing Tammi like this, it's right for you to be vulnerable while you do that, with another girl doing whatever she wants to you.

Soon you're mewling on the brink of your own orgasm, barely managing to gasp out "I'm close!" so that Danni can deny you. Danni keeps going and your whole body tenses up as you realize this is it, this is your reward.

Danni's fingers stop and your hips shake and shiver as a desperate whine leaves your throat.

You aren't allowed to slide down very far before Danni starts building you up to the edge again. "I'm---" you gasp.

"You've got to try to hold back, right?" Danni says, and you try, you try to push the pleasure away, but Danni goes on sliding fingers over your clit, doing something with her slippery digits that feels like you're being rubbed slowly and endlessly.

"If you keep---" you whine.

Danni keeps going.

"Oh, oh, oh, don't stop, I'm coming, don't stop---"

Danni stops and your pussy spasms, you thought you were coming, but you're not, it's not even a ruined orgasm, you just came closer to the edge than you thought was possible.

Then Danni does it again.

And again.

And again.

You've lost the thread of what you were doing to Tammi and are just moaning pathetically into her pussy as Danni's other hand keeps your back pressed down.

Finally you're grabbed by your hair and led around to where your own pussy is pressed over Tammi's lips, and now your head is being gripped and shoved into Danni's pussy where she's sitting astride Tammi's hips and facing you. Danni says something to Tammi, some kind of threat that you barely register.

Tammi's tongue begins sliding over your clit, sucking gently. She's more skilled than Charles was, but she's teasing you less intensely, less fiercely. Keeping you near the edge, not on it, you're twitching and tensing as pangs of pleasure go through you, but not tensing up all the way. So you're barely coherent enough to obey Danni's whispered commands to lick like this, lick like that, move your fingers faster inside her.

It goes on for a while. Danni's taking her time, seeming to enjoy educating you and correcting you as much as she enjoys your tongue. An unbearable burning pleasure is suffusing your whole body as Tammi's slippery tongue keeps you hanging somewhere below the edge, the whole day's worth of arousal torturing you, making your skin feel like it's overheating from the flame burning inside you.

You don't know how long it takes before Danni gasps and tries to shove her whole groin into your mouth. You keep licking, because you know that's what you're supposed to do, until Danni pulls your head away from her.

Tammi is still running her wet tongue around and around your clit, keeping the fires lit inside you. You're moaning continuously, language having left you, all the words spreading out from your mind into the surrounding waters in the place where you're submerged.

Danni leans back on the bed and grabs a tissue from the nightstand, using it to wipe sweat from her forehead. "Whew," she says. "Kay, Tammi, you can stop licking her."

The tongue stops and you give Danni a desperate, longing look filled with all the words you can't use anymore. Please make me come. I was good. Please make me come. I need to come.

Danni pats you on the head.

There follows an interval in which Tammi's blindfold is removed, and she's fed bites of tuna salad sandwich and hummus with snap peas and carrots. Danni tries to feed you too, but you shake your head, so she just keeps your head in your lap as she sits on the bed besides Tammi, and goes on stroking your hair.

You've been teased so badly that you've gone beyond just needing to come, into becoming a new species of being, a feminine container of pure need and frustration. Anyone could use you like this, male or female, and you would let them. They could do what they wanted to you, torment you even more, and it would be right.

Danni's fingers go on running through your hair.

Slowly you return to yourself. You've regained something like self-possession, like coherence, when Danni removes your head from her lap and announces that she has to pee.

"Is she gone?" Tammi whispers, after you both hear the sound of the bathroom door closing.

Your eyes were watching Danni in the mirror. She did go into the bathroom and close the door. "Y-yeah," you say. The first word you've spoken in a while.

"Are you okay?" Tammi says.

Shouldn't you be asking her that? "I, I think so. I think so? I think so."

"I gave you a signal and you didn't notice," Tammi says.

"Oh," you say. "Oh. I'm sorry---"

"Don't worry about it," Tammi says. She looks sad. "I just wanted to tell you that I wanted Danni to do that for me too. Hold my head in her lap. She used to."

And if you can get Danni to do that with her sister again, you'll get seven thousand dollars.

The thought doesn't wake you up as fast as you hoped it would. But it wakes you up some. Focus, Cindy. You had a plan, remember? Before you got teased again?

You sit up shakily from where you were lying on the bed, and then lean forwards towards Tammi. "I should, I should tell Danni that I sensed that from you," you murmur. "That you wanted her to hold your head."

"That plan actually worked?" Tammi whispers. She sounds surprised.

"Yeah. Danni totally thinks I have unnatural powers." You wonder if you'll ever become close enough to Tammi for her to learn the real reason you're smiling.

"I really, really hope this works." Tammi's throat works, swallowing. "I miss her so much."

You nod.

Tammi's body is sweaty, now, glistening slightly beneath the bright-white bulbs lighting the room from above. You're sweaty too, and probably look much the same. You feel unsatisfied, unfinished, and it's not just that you've been teased out of your mind AGAIN and still not come. You wanted to see Tammi's orgasm, wanted to complete your sex with her by making her come? You needed to be teased even more? You don't know. It's not that something was wrong, but that something right isn't there yet.

There's the chunky sound of the bathroom door opening, and you startle, jerking your head away from its conspiratorial position next to Tammi's.

You slip off the bed, and take a few steps forward to catch Danni by her arm before she returns to the bedside. Danni looks a question at you, and you pull her nude form back into the bathroom. She slinks in beside you, graceful on her longer legs. Come to think, you're pretty slinky too when you're wearing heels.

"What is it?" Danni says, when you've shut the door again.

You don't answer for a moment, taking deep breaths. You lean over the small but nice sink on the marble counter, you don't know if it's real marble or not but it looks nice either way, and take a moment to wash your hands and splash your face. That also brings you a little more back to yourself.

"Sorry," you say, when your hands are less sticky and you're drying them in a hand towel. "That was intense. I had trouble wordsing."

Danni grins, a quick flit of a smile, and then looks concerned again. "Did you figure something out?"

"I, I lost track for a while, sorry. But at the end, Tammi was looking at you stroking my hair in your lap, and remembering when you would do that for her. She wanted you to do it for her too. She was envious of me, and sad that I got that from her own sister and she didn't."

Danni's eyebrows go up. "Really?" she says, though she still keeps her voice low. "Are you sure?"

You nod.

"But---but that doesn't make sense? That's not what Beth---"

You hold up your hand, taking another deep breath. "Danni, I, I don't think you're right in your whole theory about Tammi. About her wanting to be pushed the way Beth pushed her. I think something totally different is going on."

"Like what?" Danni says. She looks confused, and worried.

"I'm… still trying to figure that out. But I'm very sure that being meaner to Tammi isn't going to fix this, and that you should go ahead and hold her head in your lap and stroke her hair."

Danni looks… well, she looks like somebody just told her that everything she'd been trying, and everything she'd suffered, had been in the wrong direction. You know the feeling. You still haven't gotten around to dropping all your accounting classes.

Some intuition unlocked by your high SED tells you to touch Danni's arm, and you do. It helps that you've had sex with her, it makes you less afraid to touch her, to be intimate in other ways. "Danni, you need to start doing nice things with your sister again, and not trying to be any meaner to her than you naturally want to be. And… and actually paying attention to the things she says. Even while she's in handcuffs, if she says she's being really serious. Part of what's wrong with the connection between you is that Tammi feels like you don't listen to her anymore…"

You stop.

Suspicion is sliding over Danni's face. "Yeah. That's just what Tammi said before she left."

"And you didn't listen?" you say.

Danni looks tense. Like she's ready to fight you, or defend herself from you. You take a step back without meaning to.

"You know," Danni says, her voice a little higher, "now that I think about it, that was really impressive, you being able to keep Tammi right on the edge like that. It took me years to learn how to do that to Tammi, and I had to make love to dozens more women before I could do it to people I'd just met. Not bad, you being able to do that the first time you've been with a girl ever."

You gulp. You wouldn't blame somebody who learned things the hard way for being annoyed with the Erogamer's bullshit-level bullshit. "I… do want to learn how to do that without relying on my weird intuitions? If there's anything you can teach me about how to read the signs more normally, I'll be grateful."

"I mean I don't believe it. Tammi called you in for this."

"Uh, you mean you think I've been Tammi's friend for years and that's how I know how to edge her?"

"You know what'd be even simpler than that?" Danni is smiling, a mean, angry look. "If sis was working with you to make me believe you're psychic. You kept glancing away from where you were teasing sis's pussy, looking over my shoulder at something else. Like if she was holding up a finger to warn you, say."

You can't help it. You flinch.

"I'll give you a chance to prove I'm wrong, though," Danni says. "One chance." She hops up to sit on the bathroom counter, and spreads her legs wide, still wearing an angry expression. "Go ahead."

"What?" you say blankly.

"If you're for real, you won't have any trouble teasing me and keeping me on the edge too." Danni crosses her hands over her chest, more lifting her breasts than concealing them, and thrusts her pussy out at you skeptically.

These words take a moment to sink in, and then you can't suppress the laugh that bubbles up from you.

It's like a free riiiide, when you've already paid…

The relief on your face must be showing, because Danni's expression shifts more uncertain.

"Thanks for giving me a chance," you say in your persona as Starry, who in this eroge plot is going to have been a little more psychic weirdly good at reading body language than she was maybe letting on to Tammi. "Sometimes when people go all skeptical on me, they just shut me down no matter what I try to show them."

"Uh huh," Danni says.

Though just to check… you take a deep breath, and put your face into your hands, as though resting your head there a moment, so that Danni won't see your lips move as you subvocalize.

Info // Skills // Edging:

Edging: Lvl 2 (62%). Active. 10 DOM / 12 sec.

The skill of keeping someone trembling on the verge of an orgasm without going over. If you choose to make the victim come at the end, the intensity of their orgasm is enhanced in proportion to how long they've spent on the edge before then, with a time T spent on the edge enhancing the orgasm by a multiplicative factor of (1 + 0.178*Lvl*ln((T + 1 sec) / 1 sec)). Higher levels of this skill enable you to keep someone even closer for even longer.

Be careful about using this skill for extended periods on an inexperienced submissive, or anyone whose life has been starved for excitement and pleasure, unless you want them following you home like a stray puppy.

…that sure is one expensive skill. Though it makes sense, even if Edge Other only costs 1 DOM for a single edge, this skill could be the equivalent of edging someone repeatedly and rapidly.

Even if you use up all of your DOM, you can only keep somebody trembling on the verge of an explosive orgasm for a mere five minutes before you'll have to stop. Wait, are you full up on DOM now? You were certainly being mean to Tammi, but maybe not for very long… you were edging Tammi without explicitly Edging her, it obviously trained the skill but did it use up DOM?

Status? you mouth with the barest breath animating the words.

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (23,150 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 224/320
SUB: 400/410

BOD: 21
LST: 18 (22)
SED: 17
FUK: 15
PRV: 23 (26)
ERO: 28

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 1
Money: $2009

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: Tammi Arcadia, Danni Arcadia
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

4 minutes of edging, if you run yourself dry and don't recover any energy from the process. Good enough.

You take another deep breath, then step forward and reach your hand to cup Danni's pussy, where she's sitting on the bathroom counter. You reach in for lubrication, since she's wiped down her outer lips, and then begin rubbing her, the same slow, slick motions Danni showed you to use on Tammi.

"Do that faster," Danni says imperiously. She lifts her head, tossing her sienna curls and looking at you down her freckled nose. "I don't have all day for you to pretend you've never done this before."

You rub your fingers faster, feeling a flash of annoyance at her attitude. "You mean you haven't been teased and teased and teased like some of us and you just had a nice orgasm, so now I have to work harder to get you worked up again."

"Yeah, that's right," Danni says. "You wanna complain about that? Because you can complain about it all you want."

You grit your teeth, and speed up your hand more.

"Mm," Danni says, and smiles. Apparently she's not too sensitive for what you're doing, even after her recent orgasm. She's definitely wet enough that friction isn't an issue. "You're better at that when you're too angry to pretend. Mmmmmm."

Screw you. You want to speed up your hand even more, but you don't, because you think your fingers will get tired very fast if you try that.

Instead you reach out your other hand and pinch Danni's nipple. Not crushing it the way you hurt yourself for Charles, but still applying a significant pressure.

Her mouth forms an 'O' of surprise, and her back arches for you.

Edge Other, you remember to think, and you go on rubbing almost viciously. Your other hand doesn't let up the pressure on her nipple.

In less time than you'd have expected, Danni is tensed and trembling on the counter. "Oh," she says in a half-moan, "oh, I'll give you this one for free, but, but this what I'm like when I'm close."

Edge Other hasn't pinged at you. You smile sweetly at her. "Liar, liar, pants on fire," and Danni gasps again as your fingers apply more pressure to her nipple.

Another look of uncertainty crosses her face. Her body relaxes, looks less tense, though she still trembles sometimes as your hand goes on rubbing. "Okay, you caught me, I'm not really close." She breathes in evenly, deeply. After a while, she adds, "This is teasing, but I can't come like this. You've got to speed up more if you want to work me up to---ahhh!"

Your fingers just released her nipple for an extra shock of punishment, even as your hand stops rubbing her pussy. "Liar," you say. Edge Other pinged at you while she was talking.

Danni's mouth hangs open. She looks frightened, like she's trembling with more than the orgasm you just denied her.

Her scared expression makes you want to…

Your left hand goes around to pull her hair, and she parts her lips like she expects to be kissed. Instead of kissing her, you yank back on Danni's curls. Her hands go back involuntarily to support herself, and then she's trapped. She can't move her hands now without falling over, the way she's leaned back and you're still pulling her hair. Her head is being forced to look up at the ceiling, exposing her naked throat.

You lean in to kiss her throat once, nibble a little, and then your right hand cups her pussy and starts rubbing again. Edge Other.

Danni trembles and gasps shortly after, just as you take away your right hand.

You shift your pattern, putting your fingers inside her, thrusting hard and fast, curled to press on where you hope her G-spot will be, the way she went after you. Edge Other.

It takes longer for Danni to reach the edge this time, but she moans louder as you do her that way, pounding her with your fingers without touching her clit. Her thighs are squirming more, as she goes on staring helplessly up at the white bathroom ceiling, without much freedom of movement from where your hand holds her hair and pulls back her head.

Ping.

This time you don't stop. "Time for your Edging," you say, and if you're not imagining it you can feel the DOM flowing through you continuously, a predatory energy, like darker blood moving in your veins.

An uncanny intuition tells you to speed up the three straight fingers you're thrusting into this twitching, soaked pussy. Then to slow down, then to speed up. Your thumb brushes her clit in passing.

Danni is moaning continuously, her breathing spiraling up and out of control, her thighs trembling and twitching. She can't defend herself, not with her head pulled sharply back and both her arms needed to support herself.

Time passes.

Edging has increased by 1.

A high-pitched whine breaks from Danni's throat. She tries to lift her head, and you pull her hair back harder.

"K-kay I b-b-believe you, now m-make me come---"

You don't let up. Danni has been mean to you today, not to mention poor Tammi. She needs to be bullied too.

The naked, vulnerable girl makes an abortive effort to close her thighs and you yank hard on her hair. "Keep your legs spread, skeptic," you hiss at her.

She does.

Listening to Danni's increasingly frantic moans is satisfying. Tammi was tied up, but you were secretly collaborating and conspiring with her, she was voluntarily giving you signals and that complicated things in your head. What's happening now with Danni is straightforward. You have her head pulled back and you're bullying her, nothing faked, no pretenses.

Sweat is beading all over Danni's trembling form, glistening on her breasts and thighs, the hands she's resting on the bathroom counter to support herself. Her legs and bare feet, the only parts of her that can move freely, kick futilely in a way that doesn't interfere with your torment at all. "Pleeasse…" she moans.

Unnatural wisdom lets you sense an approaching peak in Danni's natural rhythm, something in her biology that doesn't change as smoothly as the skill text suggested. She'll come so hard if you make her explode… right about…

"Now," you breathe. "Come now." Danni's entire body goes taut, her abdomen bunching up and her arms stiffening, as you speed up your thrusting fingers.

And then you take away your hand.

"NO!" Danni shrieks. Her thighs slam shut and then open again, her feet kicking wildly back and forth. She tries to thrust out her pussy at you desperately, and it's one of the cutest things you've ever seen.

Denying Danni an orgasm at the exact, perfect moment for her to explode causes your FUK to go up by 1!

You step between her thighs and lean forward to lick her exposed throat, feeling an urge to bite in like a vampire. Her legs convulsively clench around you and pull you in, like you might be hiding a cock that could go inside her and bring her relief. You want to wrap yourself around her too, but you can't do that from here. You lean your body against her instead, your breasts nestling beneath her own thanks to the height boost from her sitting on the bathroom counter. She's sweaty all over. Warm and wet.

"That must have been so terribly frustrating," you murmur. "It would have been so perfect if you'd come right then, that exact moment." You kiss her throat again, using tongue. Salty. "I hope you're making a note here about this experiment being a huge success."

With the hand you have in her hair, with the lips you have on her throat, you feel Danni trying to nod. You don't let her.

"And now that we're done with your disturbing lack of faith," you say, "We need to talk about relationships, kay?"

Tammi's eyes widen as she sees you marching Danni forward with your left hand still gripping her curls.

Her body starts trembling on the bed.

"Hey… sis," Danni says. "So… Starry here… she does relationship counseling too, she's super good at reading people actually, and she says that I… might have accidentally… it was an understandable mistaEEK!"

You keep your right index finger pressed to Danni's ribcage like a gunpoint, ready to jab again. Wow, you bet this is more fun than marital counseling the way the professional psychologists have to do it. "Leave out the excuses," you command.

"Starry says I was too mean to you! And I need to listen to you when you say you're really serious about something! And I'm sorry I kept trying to treat you like we were both teenagers again, I could feel something was wrong and I didn't know what to do and I kept trying to put things back the way they were." Danni's voice has gone small.

The silence that follows is broken by Tammi's broken voice. "D-d-does she mean it?" she says, looking at you.

You nod. You may not actually be able to read minds, but for Danni to just be faking this confession doesn't seem like it would be a good eroge plot.

"I'll let you out of the handcuffs now," Danni says, still in that small voice. "And then Starry says you want me to hold your head in my lap too. Is that---is that really true?"

"Yes it is," Tammi whispers. "Yes it is. Yes it is."

You let go of Danni's hair, and she goes over to where she tossed her pants next to Tammi's clothes, and fishes a key out of her pants' back pocket.

You pluck the key out of Danni's hand before she can reach the cuffs.

"Hey!" Tammi says with a touch of trepidation.

"You need to stay cuffed for this," you tell Tammi, and then, "You're not finished apologizing," you say to Danni. As you take Danni's hair again, such a convenient handle it makes, and give her a push up onto the foot of the bed, between Tammi's legs.

Danni obeys.

You decide that you like relationship counseling.

You go over and sit beside Tammi's head, stroking back her hair, even as Tammi squeezes her eyes shut and begins moaning.

And… crying.

You go on running your fingers through Tammi's hair. You feel a little empty inside, right now, because you can see that these two love each other so much, and you're not part of it. You made this happen, but you're not inside it, not like the threesome earlier. This, right now, is a moment of love between two people, not three. You know that you don't love Charles as much as these two love each other, not yet, and he certainly doesn't love you that much, not yet. Even if you're destined to fall in love in the future, this is something you don't have now. It makes you feel envious, and scared, and a little sad. Scared, in the part of you that's afraid you'll never have this. Sad, in the part of you that's already convinced you'll never have this, that believes not even the Erogame has enough power to give this to you.

It isn't long before Tammi stiffens up and her arms pull helplessly against the handcuffs… and then she screams "No!" as Danni pulls her head back and leaves her to flop around. Danni raises her sticky face to gaze at you anxiously, and you smile back to tell her it's fine to bully her sister a little. If your smile is a bit hollow, nobody here knows that except you.

The game repeats itself a few more times, enough for Danni to start smiling again. Tammi is bucking wildly enough that you go ahead and sit down on her hips, using your hand to spread back the protective folds from Tammi's clit so that Danni can lick her victim steadily and gently. Without any pause, this time, without any letup, just an unbearably slow climb as Tammi moans louder and louder and louder.

Somebody had better do this for you soon or you're going to shank a bitch.

You have to grab the bedspread with your hands to stabilize yourself as Tammi's screams reach a fever pitch and her body frantically tries to throw you off. You're kind of slippery down there which isn't helping.

And then Tammi comes loudly enough to hurt your ears, which goes on for a while, and then she goes limp. You quickly grab the key and undo the cuffs around her right arm, left arm, left leg, right leg, so that she can curl up and Danni can crawl over to cuddle her. Danni's weeping too, now.

You pretend you have to go to the bathroom, and leave them be.

4.4.4*** [TDA,CS]: Off the Road

Does hiding in the bathroom while two sisters cry together count as enough of a scene change for you to invoke Fluid Unformed? You don't know, so you take a quick hot shower. You need something to do anyway, to distract you both from that sad sense and from… things.

Cleaning up your sticky parts is, uh, challenging. Your whole body flinches and you let out an audible moan when you accidentally direct the water from the shower head over your clit. You can't bear to scrub yourself with a towel, so you use your hands to try to lather yourself, and then you have to stop several times, and then you have to rinse yourself off with oh those beating pulses of warm water.

It feels good, if futile. If the rest of the night goes as you think the Erogame has scheduled it, you're going to be all sweaty and wet again very soon. Danni said she'd make you come if you were good, and that's… probably going to… take a while.

You shiver beneath the warm water, trying not to think about what's going to happen to you. Some tiny part of you suggests that you theoretically have the option of it not happening to you and is buried under an internal dogpile. You have no choice here, you're just a victim, you have no choice but to go obediently into the handcuffs and be teased even more, because, because the eroge plot calls for it and you need the experience points. Because you've spent your past life not writhing erotically as you're teased by gorgeous twins, and you don't want to live like that anymore.
Wait, actually the $7000 makes an even more plausible excuse. Okay, that's your new story, you're being forced into this because you need the money. Three cheers for capitalism making a mockery of consent.

You give your clit a quick rub just to see what happens, and whimper out loud. Why in god's name are you doing this to yourself?

…well, there's no need to worry about being driven insane by the coming tease, even if it goes on for hours and hours, since you're obviously insane already.

When you emerge from the shower, Danni and Tammi are lying on the bed together and smiling at each other. Or possibly that's Tammi and Danni, you're not close enough to check precise freckle patterns.

Spoiler: The Arcadias

("Second cousins." Right. You are going to check their actual legal backgrounds as soon as you can afford to pay somebody for that. And then possibly turn evil.)

"Hi," one of the Tadamni Arcadias says softly. "Thanks. We owe you a lot." She seems nervous, whichever one this is… okay, you think Danni had a little triangle freckle thing on her nose that the speaking twin doesn't have, so that one is Tammi. Tammi turns her head to her sister. "One of the things I missed most was… teasing people together with you, instead of you just getting me."

"I missed it too," Danni says softly.

Tammi sounds very hesitant, very vulnerable. "Do you… want to jump her, tie her up and get her good? Together?"

Danni looks at you.

You're aware that you're blushing.

But, you have to do this because seven thousand dollars.

Danni looks back at Tammi. "Starry's a little scary," she says.

Awwwwwww.

Tammi hugs Danni. "Sis," she says softly, "this all started with us and Beth, somehow, even if it was us being silly about it afterwards more than anything Beth did to us. If it got fixed up with us both doing Starry, it'd… fit, you know?"

Danni looks at you. "You're sure you're into being tied up and having things done to you?" Danni says. "And you're not the vengeful type?"

"Hmmm…" you say thoughtfully. "Well, exploring my submissive side, definitely. I haven't really had a chance to check out vengeance, though… I could turn out to be the vengeful submissive type… especially if I don't get to come real soon now…"

Tammi shoots you a look. Her fingers, in her lap, shift to show seven fingers, tapping them on her thighs as though to remind you of the true deal. "If we tie you up, you'll get plenty of chances to come," she says. "Promise."

"Chances? Plural? You mean I'd get to come more than---" You stop, and shoot a sidelong glance at Danni. You're squandering the dignity you've built up here, but, in fairness, you've just been offered multiple orgasms and you're not sure how else you can obtain release before you go mad. "Deal," you say. "I'll go quietly, officer."

Tammi is gentle about it as she carefully secures your right hand in its cuff, asking you if it's too tight or too loose, having you yank hard on the cuff once it's attached to the bed. The same procedure is carried out on your left hand, and then your feet. New towels are laid beneath you on the bed.

When you're all secure, you lie in bed and stare up at her with your breath coming faster. Now that she's finished securing you, Tammi's smile is slowly shifting from nice and kindly and gentle to something much more… possessive. She runs a hand over your body, squeezing your thighs and thumping your belly, an act of ownership on the merchandise she's paid for.

This was a terrible idea, you knew it was a terrible idea, and you completely deserve what you're about to get, says Charles's voice in your head.

"Come on, Danni," Tammi says softly. She trails her hand around you, and you tense up. Oh god, you're so hot, so hot already and now they're going to tease you more, how could you have done this. "She's helpless now, see? We can do whatever we want to her."

Danni's freckled face leans over into your field of vision. "Promise me you just read body language and can't psychically mind-blast people," she says.

"I promise I can't do that as of right now," you say. "What cosmically powerful skills I could develop in the next half-hour out of sheer desperation if I don't get to come soon is a totally difFERent ISsue."

"Stop scaring my sister," Tammi orders with her finger in your belly button.

It's gentle, at first, when the twins start to make love to you. Four hands trail over you in light caresses that still feel warm, two mouths… lick you, never where you need it, wandering from thighs to knees to the underside of your breasts. Tammi lifts her mouth to ask you if hickeys in visible places are okay. You say breathlessly that it's fine (also feeling reassured that she bothered to ask). Then you promptly squeal as two pairs of lips fasten inescapably onto your neck, sucking just hard enough to be painful as two tongues squirm all over your sensitive skin.

There's a fire burning below your belly, like a microwave oven going beep, beep, beep insistently to remind you that it's been hours and hours since anybody took out your reheated lasagne.

You start to moan helplessly as the mouths fasten themselves onto your naked, exposed, bare, freshly showered armpits and start suckling there. Oh god, you're so sensitive there, you can't stand this.

The sucking, licking, nipping mouths don't let up this time, just staying at your armpits and working together. The warmth inside you is growing, glowing. Your pussy clenches on nothing, an involuntary motion, and your breath stops with it. The mouths go on eagerly squirming into your sensitive sensitive flesh and you can't stand it, your hands pull on the cuffs but there's no escape.

Oh… oh, god… what if they're going to make you come like this. You'll have to confess to people you lost your yuri virginity through your armpits.

It goes on and on, you stare at the ceiling, and look down at the red-haired heads burrowing into you and eating you, you shut your eyes, you moan desperately, you keep quiet, you beg them to stop, you beg them to go faster, you frantically shake your legs and try to clench your thighs together like it'll stop the frustrating warmth, and the twins just ignore you and the tongues keep on squirming on your sensitive, sensitive skin.

You focus on the pleasure, the tongues in your armpits, the heat burning inside you, trying to urge it along, you clench your thighs repeatedly in the hopes it'll transmit something, anything to your pussy or your clit, you're almost at the edge you're so close---

Then you remember and let out a cry of horrified despair, relaxing your body.

The licking at your armpits stops.

"Something wrong?" asks one of the Arcadias, raising her head and looking concerned.

"I, I j-just remembered, I'm being punished, I can only come if somebody f-forces me into it, and, I have to tell them that I'm being punished, and give them a chance to tease me more each time, and try to hold b-back until I'm forced into it." You think this is Tammi you're looking at, so you switch to look desperately at Danni. "You promised you'd force me to come if I could fix things!"

"Oh, right," says Danni. "I did say that, didn't I? I almost forgot." She's absentmindedly running a finger around your nipple, making you tense up, as she looks thoughtful. Then she smiles at you kindly. "But don't worry, I remember exactly what I said now."

"You were almost about to come there, weren't you?" says Tammi. "I'm sorry I stopped just then, but I was worried about how you sounded." She sounds sincerely apologetic. "We are grateful to you and we're going to make you feel sooo good, I promise. Don't worry about telling us when you're about to pop, but do try hard to hold back, okay? That'll make it so much better when you come."

"Oh-okay," you say.

You have a bad feeling about this.

The Arcadia twins hold a whispered conference, and then they sit up and scoot around to the foot of the king-sized bed.

You feel your high heels being removed from your feet.

Oh, n-no, they're not going to---

You close your eyes and moan desperately as the hot, sucking mouths and squirming tongues engulf your toes. It's the most erotic sensation you've ever felt, slip, slide, oh god the webbing between your toes being flicked by her tongue like little folds of pussy, your thighs spasm, it goes on and on and on and you tense up and try to push away the approaching burning wall of sensation, refuse the coming release like a good girl, and the slick feeling at your toes goes on and on like they're suckling ten tiny clits one after another.

Just as you can't hold back any longer, they stop.

You let out a horrified whimper.

Both of the twins are giggling. "I really missed this," one of them says, and then there's a sound of something being wetly kissed that isn't you, and a shlicking sound followed by a moan.

You squirm in your handcuffs, you can't see what's actually happening at the foot of the bed, you can just barely see one Arcadia twin's head leaning back, her eyes closed in sleepy pleasure.

Then they part, and crawl over you again. "We'll make you come for real this time," one of them promises.

The two twins begin to trail their hands along you again, like they're starting over from the beginning.

This time though you tense up as a twin's fingers go lightly along your ribs, generating a ticklish sensation. "Oops," says that twin, sounding apologetic.

…no. Oh, god, no.

Another twin's hand trails lightly over your belly, and you manage not to tense that time, praying it's an actual accident, you just have not show vulnerability, not show any sign that you're---

You let out a shriek as a mouth closes over the arch of your foot, something indefinably changed in the squirming-tongue sensation that makes it different from what was happening to your toes before.

The licking ceases at once. "I'm sorry," a twin's voice says. "I didn't mean to tickle! Are you ticklish?"

You open your eyes from where you've squeezed them shut involuntarily, gazing at the twin who's risen up from the foot of the bed, her breasts swaying temptingly at you. She looks sincere, and very concerned.

"Just let us know if we hit somewhere ticklish, and we'll stop," she says, Tammi, you think it's Tammi. "We just want to make you feel good."

No, no, no.

Whichever twin isn't talking is giggling helplessly, even as the first twin shoots her a quelling look.

Because Danni thinks you're psychic.

She thinks you know the other twin is lying.

The twins start trailing their hands over you again, you try not to tense up, then you fail and tense up and go on desperately trying not to laugh.

Mouths fasten onto your ribsides and suckle gently.

A helpless giggling sound is torn from your throat. "Ahaha---" You forcibly stop the sound, oh shit, oh shit.

At once the suckling stops. Tammi leans over you with a confused look. "Why didn't you tell us you were ticklish there?" she says. "Do you want to be tickled?"

"YOU FUCKERS YOU WERE PLANNING THIS FROM THE BEGINAHAHAHA NO NO AHAHAHA NO GOD NO PLEASE AHAHAHAHAHA---"

Two savage hands are tearing into your ribcage, and you're barely conscious enough to see Tammi sigh, crawl to your side and start tearing into your ribcage as well four hands tickling oh god no no NONONONONONO.

When your flailing, screaming body has stopped breathing, the hands stop and you frantically gasp for air.

"Danni," says a voice while you're still panting desperately, "you've got a problem with subtlety. Do you even subtle?"

Danni is still giggling. "She totally knew you were lying. She couldn't not know you're lying."

"I knew that, you silly, but she didn't know I knew so I could've gone on playing cat-and-mouse for a while. Oh, and Starry," fingers press into your ribs and you freeze up, "you really should look up people's names on the Internet before you go on dates with them, you know? If you'd looked up Danni Arcadia's name or mine you'd have found out about the tickle twins."

"Tickle twins?" you shriek.

"Mm-hm! Tickling is what we're all about, actually. Teasing pussies and not letting them come is just something we learned because it makes people so much more awfully sensitive to being tickled." Tammi smiles at you, then turns to address her sister while you're still gaping in utter horror. "What should we do with her next? Ticklish trivia?"

"I don't know if that game is going to work here," Danni says, frowning down at you. "Starry's too good of a guesser."

Tammi rolls her eyes, then turns to address you where you're trying to sink into and through the bed to escape. "The rules of ticklish trivia are pretty simple, kay? We ask you a question, and if you get it wrong, you get tickled, and if you get it right, Danni will lick your clitty for a while."

"D-d-do I get to come then?"

Tammi smiles compassionately down at you. "What do you think?"

"You promised I'd get to come!" you wail, your arms yanking with futile desperation against the cuffs softly biting into your wrists.

"I promised you'd get chances to come. Maybe Danni will decide to make you come. That's a chance, right? You can't say that's not a chance."

"THAT IS TOTALLY NOT A CHANCE YOU BITCAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!"

"Don't call us names!" Tammi admonishes you. "Now, here's the first question. How many freckles do I have?"

You stare at her naked body with desperation, frantically trying to count freckles on a patch of skin, multiplying numbers in your head for an estimate. Tammi stands up on the bed, bouncing on her toes a little, and then turns around, like she's letting you try to count all of her freckles. She even shows you the soles of her feet for a few seconds, like you could possibly count the freckles there in that instant.

"Time's up!" Tammi says.

PleasepleasepleasepleaseErogameplease "Four hundred and thirty-six!"

Tammi's eyes go wide, even as her sister starts giggling.

"Told you so," says Danni.

"So she does the Rain Man thing too…?" Tammi says, though now she seems a bit uncertain. "Okay, we're going to have to make the next questions a lot harder. But rules are rules. Danni?"

And then two warm, wet lips descend on your pussy and all rational thought leaves your mind. You moan, and arch your body to try to push your pussy further into Danni's slicking sliding tongue of pleasure, you wring your wrists in their inescapable cuffs, your legs spasm and fail to close, leaving your thighs naked and exposed and vulnerable.

Your head thrashes and turns and in the hotel closet's wide mirror you see a glimpse of how you would look to anyone watching you: your naked body frantically flexing itself and showing off its curves, a cute naked redhead's mouth between your legs, an identical naked redhead watching the scene with one hand between her legs and another hand on her breasts and her eyes sleepy with pleasure. Even now there's something in you that feels relief at the sight, knowing that this is an ero scene, and that you're finally on the other side of that computer screen you couldn't pass through.

Tammi makes herself come three times while you're being teased, masturbating herself slowly and luxuriously, letting you see what you can't have, moaning her pleasure so you can hear it too. You thrash against your bonds and accomplish nothing.

It seems to go on forever and ever and finally it ends with an agonizingly sharp sting of pleasure that leaves you weeping into the hotel bed's pillow, no small amount of the tears stemming from awareness of what happens next. No, no, oh god no.

"She was trying to come that time," Danni says, the words only half-penetrating your consciousness. "That's pretty naughty of her, don't you think?"

"We'll work out what to do about it later, right now we're still playing ticklish trivia. I can't believe she got the first question right. You don't suppose she really is reading our minds?"

"I don't know. Maybe?"

"Well, how about if we ask her a question whose answer we don't know and look up the answer afterwards?"

"Let's try it."

"Okay, Starry, are you listening? Remember, if you don't answer, you lose. Starry?"

A hand pokes your knees and you shriek. "Yes!" you cry desperately.

"What's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" Tammi says.

"Nerrrrd," says Danni.

"You got the reference so that makes you a nerd too," Tammi says. "Starry?"

"African swallow or European swallow?" you say.

There's a certain quiet in the hotel room, as the three of you glance at each other and silently decide nobody else ever needs to know exactly what went on in here.

"European swallow," says Tammi.

"Twenty-four miles an hour, I looked it up after I saw the movie." You… couldn't actually win this game, could you?

"Tricked you!" sings out Tammi. "The question was actually about an African swallow."

"THAT IS NOT FAIR THAT IS NOT HOW TRIVIA WORKS NONONONO STOP STOP I GOT THE ANSWER RIGHT STOOOOP---"

The hands scratching up and down your stomach don't stop, and you howl and shriek and then at one point, after somebody's fingernail invades your bellybotton, start hiccuping at the same time you're screaming.

The twins are saying taunting things about a tickle-loss lasting for fifteen minutes and them going through all your body parts in alphabetical order starting with your abdomen and armpits, but you won the trivia question before this which "isn't fair" so you "owe them a loss" so they're going to go on for thirty minutes and do your armpits too.

You're wriggling and shrieking too loud to listen, there's two hands digging into your stomach and two more in your armpits and oh god you're going to die, you're going to die, you're going to be tickled to death, there's no subspace for this torment no escape from it you can't turn your mind away it just goes on and on and the more they tickle you the more sensitive and ticklish you get it's like fire you can't get away from you scream and shake and the tickling follows you and the fingers just dig deeper---

Eventually they stop. "Whoops," Tammi says. "Looks like we went a little overtime."

"Sorry," Danni says. "We had fun though! So it's okay."

Fucking bastards, you want to reply, but it comes out "Ahahahah no no stop no tickle hahaha noooooo no don't tickle me stop let me go no no nononono please please I'll do anything I'll lick you I'll be your sex slave I'll make you queen of somewhere just STOP TICKLING MEEEEEEE!"

"We did stop tickling you," Danni says. "But I don't see why we should bother if you're just going to keep laughing."

You're panting frantically, eyes glazed over with both tears and insanity so that the ceiling looks like it's twisting off into some lovecraftian side dimension, your body so sensitized that even the air above your skin is ticklish. Still at Danni's threat you desperately try to swallow the ongoing howls of laughter that threaten to bubble up from you. Even though you've learned extensively over the last you-don't-know-how-long that if the twins want to tickle you they will tickle you no matter what you say or do, and also, that they want to tickle you.

"I've got to pee," Tammi says, as she slides off the bed. "Let her recover 'til I get back, kay? I want to tickle her harder next time, so she needs to rest now."

Danni nods, and from somewhere nearby fetches a cup of water that she gently trickles down your dry, scratchy, overstressed throat. Your eyes track Danni desperately, hoping she'll leave for some reason, any reason, while Tammi is still in the bathroom, and then you can invoke any remaining Slack you have and try to learn really really fast how to pick handcuffs with hair. You no longer care about money or XP. You no longer have any other goals in life besides NO TICKLE.

"W-what time, what time is it," you croak out. The light is on in the room, the curtains are heavy, you can't make out exactly how dark it is outside.

"Not telling," Danni says. "That way the tickling just seems to go on forever."

"W-why the hell hasn't this hotel room gotten any noise complaints?"

"After I tied Tammi up I talked to the day shift receptionist and the night shift receptionist. I let him fuck me every day, and then I lick her out every night, and they've been keeping the rooms near us clear and ignoring any complaints. Honestly, I'm surprised that worked as well as it did." Danni looks at the clock you can't see. "I should take care of her again pretty soon, come to think."

Your brain frantically weighs two alternative courses of action. "You should, you should only go take care of that after Tammi gets back, because if you go do it now I might escape while nobody is watching me."

"Aww, are you trying to make sure you get as much time as possible not being tickled? Tammi can tickle you all by herself, you know…" Danni then frowns. "No, wait, you knew I'd think that. Do you have some plan for escaping when neither of us can see you?"

You nod.

Danni smiles. She pats your stomach, just the simple touch causing your horribly oversensitized skin to flinch and wriggle. "Good job," she says, "I have no idea at all how many layers of reverse psychology you're trying to use on me. I guess when Tammi gets out we'll just torture you until you tell us your escape plan."

Your eyes widen in horror. "W-w-what if I didn't have a plan?" You don't have anything they'd believe.

"We'll just go on tickling you. That works for us too."

"What hell dimension spawned you two? Are you even human?"

"Should you really be asking us that, miss psychic?" Danni pats your stomach again. "We're just sadistic ticklers who get off on hearing you scream, who only use our compassion to understand how to tickle you even worse. That's normal for a human being, right? Because human beings are awful. At least we lick your clitty too."

"I helped you!" you say desperately.

"You really did," Danni says. "You helped us a lot! We're repaying your good with evil."

"You promised you'd make me come if I repaired your relationship! At least do that part!"

"I don't know," Danni says thoughtfully, "I did promise I'd force you to come if you fixed everything, but, I don't know, there might be a little sense of something missing still left? I'm not sure."

You are going to raise your ERO to 75 and perk The Maou the Merrier just to give Earth a Demon Dimension so that there are magical demonic contract rules somewhere and you can get her fucking soul for this.

You hear the sound of the bathroom door opening and your mind makes a desperate scream to the Erogame, to whatever is above the Erogame, to God if God exists, to let you out of here, to let this instant be the time that---

Your new burner cellphone rings, the default melody barely audible from inside a side pocket of the runner's backpack that you dropped beside the grocery bags thirty thousand years ago.

"That's Charles he knows this hotel room number he knows your names and if you don't let me out to answer the phone he's going to call the police!"

Danni starts to smile, then frowns as she examines your expression. "When did you have time to do that after you met me?"

Your mind thinks back frantically, you actually did it before you even found Danni of course, but has Danni ever left you alone since you---"You left me outside the room for a minute before I went in, remember? That's when I knew the room number, so I texted him then."

You shoot a direct glare at Tammi, who's now returned to Danni's side. She knows how long you've really had to make that call.

Your phone stops ringing.

"I don't actually want you arrested!" you say, directing the words at Tammi more than Danni. She strikes you as slightly saner. "But if you're lucky Charles tries again in a minute, and if you're not lucky you'd better let me call him right now before he calls the police!"

"Danni, get that phone," Tammi says, and then she leans over your bedside. She's smiling, looking more respectful than angry. "Now, just in case you weren't clever enough to set up any codephrases or this whole thing is a bluff, I'm going to put you on speakerphone and you're not going to say where you are, or who you're with, or that anything's wrong. Try anything, and I'll hang up before you finish, and then you'll find out how we tickle when we're out for revenge."

Shit. Fuck you, you weren't smart enough to set up codephrases.

"Where's your---" Danni calls from near the door, but then your phone starts to ring again, and moments later Danni is nearby holding the phone.

The answer button is pressed, and the speakerphone button.

And Charles's voice says,

"Hey, Starry."​

"Hey," you say, in the best normal voice you can manage. Shit shit how do you play this---

"How are things going?"​

"Fine. Just the usual for me."

There's a pause from the phone.

Think, Charles, think, oh god please think…

"Where did I drive you the first time we met?"​

"You didn't drive me anywhere," you say. "We met on a hiking trail."

Again a slight pause.

"Glad you're safe. Were the Arcadia twins enough fun that we should look them up together sometime, or should we look elsewhere?"​

Wait, what's he really asking---right, he wants to know if it's the twins that have me or somebody else---

"Hi, Mister Charles," says Tammi. She's lifted the phone away from you.

"Oh, hello. Who's this?"​

"You don't need to pretend," Tammi says. "We all know at this point."

There's a pause, and then Charles's voice bursts from the phone in a frantic rush.

"Starry are you all right are you okay what was the name of the coffeeshop on the corner?"​

You say in a wavery voice, "They haven't injured me. I'm still hoping to resolve this without the police but we need to make them let me go. Starbucks."

"What are they doing to you? What color is my car?"​

"Silver, and, and CHARLES THEY'RE TICKLING ME IT'S NOT FUNNY THEY WON'T STOP THEY'VE BEEN TICKLING ME FOREVER YOU HAVE TO MAKE THEM LET ME GO!"

Pause.

"Oh. That's a relief."​

"NO IT'S NOT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THEY'RE LIKE TICKLING HANNIBAL LECTERS THEY'RE SERIAL TICKLERS!"

Tammi lifts the phone away from you. "Okay, we're serial ticklers, but we don't hurt people," she says firmly. "We don't kill people, or eat people, or do anything permanent at all. We just tickle them a lot. And if you let us tickle your girl for this evening, the next time you're in Norville I'll do anything you want for a whole night, blow you for hours, let you tickle me until I scream. Anything you want."

"If you get back in town before Sunday night you can have me too," Danni chimes in. "Have you ever had a double blowjob from two beautiful twins? I bet you haven't."

You stare at them in horror.

No. No, Charles couldn't possibly go for this. Not Charles Adan.

"As tempting an offer as that is, I'm going to have to ask you to let Starry go. If she says no, then that's a no."​

Thank you, thank you, ohGodCharlesthankyou.

"We can show you how to tease Starry too," Danni says, a low sensuous promise. "We can show you how to tickle her right."

"Say, Mister Charles," says Tammi, "Starry hasn't done anything bad recently, has she? Been a naughty girl someways?"

"Starry was awfully bad," says Danni. "When we teased her she was trying to come even though you told her to try and hold back. She definitely deserves to be tickled, Mister Charles."

"I bet she gets up to all sorts of mischief when you're not around to keep an eye on her," Tammi says. "She seems like that kind of girl. Did she have your permission for this?"

"She needs to be taught a lesson about staying safe," Danni says. "She let us handcuff her to the bed when she hardly knew us at all, just because she thought we were going to force her to come. She shouldn't be inconveniencing you to get her out of trouble that's her own fault for being so reckless and naughty."

"You could tell us what to do to her," Tammi says. "It'd be just like you were punishing her yourself. Although we won't hurt her with anything more than hickeys, we aren't into that."

"You could stay on the line and listen," says Danni.

There's a rather longer pause from the phone.

"Charles," you say in your hoarse, tormented voice. "Charles, they're tickling Hannibal Lecters, remember, don't let them get inside your head!"

"I'll be honest, Starry, I wasn't happy about suddenly finding unexpected texts saying I needed to call in on you and make sure you're safe. I could have been in the middle of an extra-long meeting and not gotten around to checking my personal phone for hours, never mind finding a good time to make this call. I'm going to be even less happy if I end up having to spend time talking to the police. Though I suppose I could just call the hotel."​

"N-no, you can't just call the hotel, Danni already AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAAAAAAA---"

Tammi moves the phone away from your screams, as Danni goes on exploring the depths of your knees. "Doesn't that sound sexy?" she says. "Come on, you know she deserves it. Do you want to hear what a bad girl sounds like when she's being licked and she can't come? We're really good at that."

You're still panting and giggling when Charles's voice comes from the phone again.

"As much as I agree with you that Starry is in serious need of a lesson about risky behavior, I intend to administer that lesson myself. I'm still going to have to ask you to let her go."​

"Then you've gone ahead and asked us, Mister Charles," Tammi says. "But we're going to keep tickling her unless the police show up. And they'll find Starry tied to a bed with two lesbians having sex with her. Say, is Starry from a family that dislikes it when family members get that kind of attention from the police? Maybe even from the news, if word gets out? It might be better for her if she was just tickled a little."

Sudden ice chills over your blood. Charles---Charles thinks you're---does he think it's okay if the police find the alien hybrid?

You open your mouth to cry at him that it's okay, it's fine if the police find you. And then you stop in paralyzed uncertainty on the twin unknowns of whether that's actually true, and worse, what Charles might conclude from hearing you say it.

When the voice comes from the phone again it's so grim it doesn't sound like Charles.

"You will not hurt her."​

"We'd never, ever hurt her," Tammi says with deep sincerity.

"Cross our hearts, hope to die," Danni says. "We've never hurt anyone, and we really like Starry. She's so adorable and helpful and innocent and ticklish."

"Do you want to listen while we tickle her?" says Tammi. "Or make suggestions?"

Another long pause, and then from the phone comes a defeated sigh.

"I shouldn't try that while driving. Wouldn't be safe. But I'll call in now and then, and the minute I don't get an answer, I'm calling the police no matter what."​

"Of course," Tammi says.

"As for suggestions… I don't know, maybe help teach Starry to try harder to hold back her orgasms? Say, stimulate her while she tries to hold back, and if she lets herself get too close, switch to tickling her for a while?"​

"CHARLES!" you shriek.

"Oh, and don't force her to come. If I hear about her having an orgasm, I expect that to have been her decision, not yours. Agreed?"​

"Absolutely. We'll get started on training her right away," Tammi says. "Bye for now."

"CHARLES YOU BASTARD TRAITOR---"

Tammi clicks off the phone, and turns to you with a happy smile on her lips and a sparkle in her eye, her nimble fingers flexing like the dark dripping tentacles of Shub-Niggurath. "I like that guy. Now, just like I promised your man, we're going to start immediately on training you. That means we start out by tickling you, because it's important to punish people before they make a mistake and not just afterwards."

"WHAT KIND OF LOGIC IS THAT?"

"Tickle Logic."

Before your shattered soul can even begin to figure out how to argue with this, not that arguing is going to do you any good whatsoever, your attention is called elsewhere.

"Hey," says Danni. She's holding up---

You scream in absolute horror, scream like you're about to die, death might be better than what awaits you now.

"Remember you asked what this was for?" said Danni.

She's holding the electric toothbrush.

5.0.5** [TDA]: Denouement Scene

"Hey, Starry. You still okay?"​

"I---oh---oh, oh, oh---no, I'm n-not okay, I warned you last time, I was about to die, and now I'm, I'm dead ohhhhh oh fuck EEEP oohhhh."

"Starry, I'm sorry, but I really need to go to sleep now, it's a long day tomorrow. I'll check in on you as soon as I wake up. I just need you to confirm one last time that the twins aren't doing worse than tickling and teasing. When you were taking off your clothes in front of the Starbucks, who ran across you?"​

"The f-f-FOOTball players," you say miserably.

You don't know how long the nightmare has gone on. The twins told Charles not to mention the time or they'd hang up.

Even the Arcadia twins are yawning now, their hands wandering over you in a sleepy way, only rubbing you enough to make you moan and tickling you enough to make you squeal, no more hanging off the precipice of orgasm and no more endless torture. Your body is far beyond exhausted, every single muscle sore from all the frantic motion that's been wrung out of you.

"Good night, then. Please don't worry about how I'm doing on my side. I was annoyed at first, but I'll be honest, this was hot."​

"G-good to heeeeaar." You tried to put as much sarcasm as you could into your voice, but it's hard to control your tone when there's hands.

"I'm sure you'll feel better in the morning. Just remember, all of this was one hundred percent your fault, and I expect you to show proper gratitude for how I've gone out of my way to help. And what has Starry learned today?"​

"That Starry's boyfriend is a rotten basTAAAAARRD AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA NONONO STOP I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY LONGER I'M TOO EXHAUSTED I'LL DIE I'LL DIE!"

"Thanks, you two. Good night to you as well."​

"Good night, Mister Charles!" they chime in unison.

The phone clicks off.

"Today was a really good day," Tammi says softly. She's lying on your left side, snuggled up to you with her warm body pressed to your side, one hand over your left breast, where it gently toys with your nipple. Her hips are damp and sticky against your own. "I'm so, so happy right now."

The girl snuggled up on your right side reaches across you, her arm sliding gently across your stomach, still slippery with the artificial lubricant that was used to enhance your torture. She caresses Tammi's arm. "I love you," Danni whispers.

"I love you more," Tammi murmurs back.

"I love you mostest," Danni says, her voice wavering.

"I hate you both to the ends of eternity."

The Arcadia twins giggle, and squirm over against you to kiss your neck from either side. You'd die before you confessed to them it feels nice.

The light clicks off, the wandering hands stop and a blanket is pulled over your three warm bodies.

You try to keep awake so you can escape once the Arcadias are asleep, you really do, but you realize to your horror that you're so exhausted, even your hair is limp. And then you're just out like a light.

You awake slowly, muzzily, the first understandable sensation that of the warm body pressed against your right side, and then the finger pressing into your lips. The morning cuddle feels… nice… deeper than nice… you want to wake up in the same bed as other people again, it's so much better than waking up alone. Something in you is starved for it, desperate for it. No surprise there. You have a lot of touching to catch up on.

You open your eyes to see Tammi smiling down at you, dimly illuminated in the light coming through the room's curtains. She's holding the key in her hand. "It's six in the morning," she whispers. "Don't wake Danni up. She didn't promise to let you go."

You hold very very still.

Your left wrist is freed, then your left ankle, then your right wrist, then your right ankle.

Very slowly, very carefully, you inch over to your left, away from where Danni was snuggling into you. Slowly, you roll off the bed.

And then you're free.

You don't flee, naked, straight out the door. It's now possible once more for you to have goals other than NO TICKLE, and one of those goals matters deeply to you.

Still holding a finger against her lips, Tammi goes over to where her purse has been tossed against the wall. She takes out a flat square silhouette, and what looks like a pen, and she unfolds the silhouette into a familiar paper rectangle…

She's really writing you the check.

Seven thousand dollars.

The thought still seems unreal. It's not just this one lump sum, it's that this is how much you can earn in a night of erogaming at Lvl 9. There'll be more amounts of money this large. You really don't need to save more than half of this, you have $3500 it's okay to spend. On a nice laptop, and on nice clothes, maybe even jewelry though that feels hard to imagine, and… and you can't think of anything else you want, your mind is so numbed. Except that you could rent that beautiful penthouse again for a night if you felt like it, if Charles was in town, and it would be slightly over a fifth of what you just earned.

You pull your heels on (you can now jump off the hotel balcony if you need to), and tug on your miniskirt, and shrug on your shirt which you don't bother to tie up. You pick up your backpack from by the door, moving as silently as only a high-heeled girl can.

Tammi hands you the check, and you're no longer poor.

Something in the hitch of your breathing, the quivering in your lips must communicate itself to Tammi even in the dim light, because she folds you into an embrace without asking.

"Are you all right?" Tammi breathes into your ear. "What's wrong?"

You can't tell her the truth, that you didn't realize, how much of a wound not having $7000 had left on your psyche, didn't realize what it would be like to be healed. "Y-you, you don't think say maybe the problem is I was tickled too much?" Your whisper doesn't sound as angry as it should.

"No," Tammi breathes back. "Some girls need to be tickled. We can tell."

You really want to assault her with intent to tickle, but that would wake up Danni and things would not go well for you.

Part of you wonders if Tammi's claim can now be true, in the reality you inhabit, if she really could tell that you were a girl who needed to be tickled. You know that things feel different this morning, and you have a sense that you should think about that on your own before you go looking at your stats. Numbers can't say everything.

You pull yourself from Tammi's embrace, and put the check into your backpack. You mentally request the Erogame to deposit it immediately, and on some inarticulable level you feel the request go through.

Are you crying? You're crying. Tammi probably has no idea why you're crying. She thinks you come from a rich family, not from a family that can't afford a new ceiling light in your bedroom.

"Thanks," Tammi whispers, "I really, really mean it, thanks. From both of us. You've helped us so much."

You turn and stare at where Danni is still sleeping in the hotel bed, the dim outline of her form.

The thought occurs to you to wonder if you actually did solve everything in this quest. If the "failure" route with 20,000XP for being lured into the handcuffs and TICKLED FOR HOURS was, in fact, the best ending.

…you can't believe you're thinking this. A sane person would just be running directly out of the room right now.

But on the other hand, it would be a shame to go through a whole night of unbearable tickle torture and get anything less than maximum XP and all available quest rewards.

Let's see. Tammi thought that her tying up Danni and taking revenge on her had turned Danni mean. But actually, Danni felt like something was missing, that Tammi wasn't responding in some way that Danni wanted her to respond. And Danni thought that was because Tammi was missing the honest vengeance that Beth had taken on her.

The last puzzle piece is what, exactly, Danni felt like she was missing. The love of her sister?

In real life, you'd guess that there wasn't any grand explanation. Danni would just have had some weird feeling that would hopefully go away once the rest of the relationship was repaired.

But this is an eroge plot. Everything should wrap up neatly at the end. There has to be some insight, some dramatic revelation, as to why Danni felt something was missing, and once you see what it is, it ought to fit.

Spoiler: Your dice rolls for solving Off The Road!

In retrospect, I shouldn't have phrased that as a +35 "bonus" for being willing to get into the handcuffs. I should've talked about how that willingness moved the difficulty thresholds, not that the +35 was a bonus to the roll.

I'll try not to do that again, but of course I'll abide by the results that I got this time.

Success thresholds for "Off the Road":
25+: Convince Danni to let you tickle Tammi (the quest's "success" route)
55+: Reconcile the twins, get lured into handcuffs and horribly tickled (the "failure" route)
85+: ??

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 75+50 = 125

For: Off the Road

Rolled on: August-22-2017, 08:40pm

See dice roll details

75

…aaaand somehow it was only when I saw that result that I realized why I shouldn't have called the +35 a bonus, especially combined with the +15 actual bonus from The Coals Relighted. That's taking us into Sage Dice territory. But abiding by the result, and again taking into account the bonus from The Coals Relighted, we now make the critical roll:

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 93+15 = 108

For: Off the Road (crit)

Rolled on: August-22-2017, 08:40pm

See dice roll details

93

Welp.

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 8+15 = 23

For: Off the Road (crit 2)

Rolled on: August-22-2017, 08:40pm

See dice roll details

8

Double crit it is, hidden reward gets upgraded to ???

Your eyes widen as you stare at the sleeping naked girl half-shrouded by a blanket, as the obvious thought comes to you. It couldn't be that simple, could it?

Of course it is. In ordinary life you ought to doubt the idea that's leapt into your mind, but this, beyond any question, is the ero answer.

"Tammi," you whisper, "I didn't finish fixing things. Because I got distracted go figure."

"What?" Tammi whispers.

"I did what you paid me for, Danni won't be so mean to you anymore. But I didn't do everything Danni needs for her to be happy. If you want her to be happy, you need to trust me now, and do what I say."

In the dim light, you think Tammi is staring at you uncertainly.

You smile, wondering if she can see in this light that it's more you baring your teeth. "Yeah. For your sister's sake, you'll just have to believe in me. I'm sorry if that's more difficult now, but that's your own fault for horribly betraying me, isn't it?"

"Wakey-akey, Danni-anny!"

You sing out the words, and Danni Arcadia sleepily opens her eyes to find that---

Danni Arcadia pulls on her right hand. Then on her left hand. She tries to lift one leg, then the other.

"How the hell!" The panicked look in Danni's eyes makes you feel so very warm inside.

"I've got no idea," Tammi says from where she's standing nervously beside you next to the bed, shifting back and forth. "Starry said I could cuff you without waking you up, so long as I was gentle and she was rubbing your clit in exactly the right pattern to distract your sleeping mind. And it worked, I guess? Either that, or she was using psychic powers to keep you asleep and molesting you for a cover story."

You suspect you didn't actually need to rub Danni's clit for that. Logically, Good Morning should consider handcuffing somebody as a sexual act all on its own. Having an ero character wake up handcuffed to a bed perfectly fits the purpose of the Good Morning skill. That's what you suspected, but it wasn't a good time to risk being wrong, so to be sure you diddled Danni.

"But---but sis---why'd you go along with it?"

"Starry said she had something to say that was important to our relationship and you… needed to be in handcuffs to hear it?"

"So she just said that, and you let her out and cuffed me instead?"

Tammi glances at you. "Yeah," she says in a small voice. "Starry, are you sure---I mean, this is a lot like what happened with Beth before---"

"Yes, it is, isn't it," you say. You look at Danni. "I talked to Tammi. At the end of that unspecified thing with Beth, Tammi got you off the car's roof rack without untying you, and spent a week getting revenge on you. Tammi thought you couldn't handle it, that you couldn't take what you dish out. She thought that was why you turned mean. She thought that's what this whole problem was about."

Danni looks rather nervous, maybe because of the way you're smiling, or trailing a possessive hand along Danni's well-toned thighs. "N-no, that had nothing to do with it, although that was very bad of Tammi because I'm not the sister who gets tickled in this relationship---"

"Oh?" you say. "Did you get revenge for it afterwards?" Your hand trails further up Danni's body, and she tenses up as you go along her stomach, pressing hard enough that you can feel the muscles under skin.

"Maybe?" Danni says shiftily.

"And that was around the time you started to feel like there was something missing." You pause with your hand on Danni's breast, looking at her seriously now. "So you tickled Tammi more, and worse. You weren't trying to get revenge anymore, you were looking for something else, you didn't know what was missing, just that it never happened---and that's when it all went wrong."

Danni stares back at you wide-eyed. Tammi is staring at both of you.

"And now, all the pieces of evidence are in place," you announce, and lift your other hand to make some type of dramatic gesture. "The murderer---is in this very room! Wait, sorry, wrong denouement scene." You've just always wanted to say that. "As I was saying, all the pieces of evidence are in place. Danni Arcadia, even if you're really Tammi's second cousin instead of her twin---"

"You told her?" Danni cries out, sounding even more betrayed than before.

You're not touching this one. "Whatever your theoretical relation, it's obvious on looks alone that you two share a whole lotta genetic material. I wouldn't be surprised if it was every single chromosome because fuck probability. I don't even know how unlikely that would be, but I doubt that whatever is in charge cares. Which leads us to consider the obvious next question---how likely is it that of two such similar people, one would be a switch, and the other a pure dominant? Oh, it's possible---but what's even more likely, Danni Arcadia…" You lean forward over Danni, locking eyes with her. "Is that, when Tammi tied you to a bed and took her revenge, some part of you realized… you also need to be tickled!"

"Wow," breathes Tammi. "…Really?"

"NO!" shrieks Danni. "That's not true! Sis, don't listen to her!"

"That's what you were missing! That's why you kept pushing Tammi! You were unconsciously trying to provoke her into tickling you again! I should have realized the moment you yielded to me when I was edging you in the bathroom! You're every bit as switchy as she is!"

"I am NOT! Tammi needs to be tickled, I tickle her, that's the only way both of us can be happy!"

Tammi looks back and forth between the bed and you. "Starry, are you sure?"

"It's not just the obvious explanation, it's the only explanation that makes sense," you declare confidently. Or to be more precise, it's the obvious eroge plot development and the only denouement that fits the literary rules, but you are under no illusions about what passes for causality around you these days. "And you, Tammi, since you thought Danni couldn't handle being tickled---I'm guessing that even though you felt it was very unfair, you stopped even poking Danni in the ribs sometimes, because you wanted so much to have your old sister back. Am I right?"

Tammi nods. Her eyes are filling up with tears.

"And of course that just made it worse for Danni. Just like her trying to be meaner to you, like she thought you needed, made things worse for you. And it all happened…" you pause dramatically. "Because both of you are ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE AT COMMUNICATING I MEAN JESUS FUCKING CHRIST JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER NEXT TIME." You're starting to see where Charles is coming from on the wisdom of traditional BDSM relationships.

Tammi swallows. "I just---I just need to tickle her too sometimes? And that fixes everything?"

You nod solemnly. "Yes. But not just tickle her, be mean to her. You have to remember, Tammi, that Danni can't admit to herself what she wants. She has to believe that she's in the cuffs unwillingly, or she can't get what she needs on an emotional level."

"Kay."

You smile beatifically at Danni, savoring her expression. You never knew that glares of absolute hatred could be so nourishing for the soul. It's like eating all the cheeseburgers in the world, with your heart.

Tammi approaches the bed.

Danni yanks wildly at her cuffs. She's so pretty like this, her body twisting and curving and displaying everything she can't protect. "Sis! Sis don't you see, we tickled her half the day yesterday, she's just out for revenge, she's lying so you'll go along with it! She's like a Hannibal Lecter of relationship counseling! Don't let her get inside your head!"

You shuck your clothes in seconds and approach from the opposite side of the bed as Tammi, flexing your own fingers. "I've never tickled anybody before," you say in the darkest tones you've ever uttered in your life, "but I bet I'm a really fast learner. Tammi, can you show me how to do that thing where you two kept picking out the exact worst spot where I didn't want to be tickled? I bet if you guide me through doing it to Danni a few times, I'll be able to use the skill all on my own."

"Sure! We need to tickle her all over first, though, to find out where she's most sensitive. It's been years so it might've changed since last time."

"I bet it's her feet. Can I try her feet?"

"Feet are complicated, start with her armpits. We'll trade off turns so that we can see the effects of what we're trying without mixing it up."

"Got it." You kneel on the bed with your hands in Danni's armpits, making her flinch in a way that seems to travel straight down your spine into your poor teased pussy. You don't start tickling yet, savoring the moment. "This is almost like science, isn't it? It's like we're experimenting on her."

"I think it's more that science is like tickling. I mean, tickling came first."

"---sis stop you have to think about AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAAHAHAA STAAARRRRY I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS I'LL FIND OUT WHERE YOU LIVE AND TICKLE YOUR WHOLE FUCKING FAMILY UNLESS YOU TELL HER TO STOOOOOOOP---"

You wait, impatiently and increasingly aroused, with your restless fingers lurking in Danni's armpits, while Tammi delivers casual scratches on Danni's feet. As far as you can see, she's probing each of Danni's soles with one fingernail at a time, maybe drawing patterns. Though from Danni's thrashing and shrieking you'd think the t-t-toothb-brush was being used on her. Is it your turn yet? Is it? Is it?

How about now?

It's got to be almost your turn now, right?

You bounce on the bed in the hope that this communicates your impatience to Tammi.

"Oh, right, you have to go soon, don't you," Tammi realizes out loud, or at least you think that's what she says over Danni's screeching. She holds up one finger in a wait-signal, and then lifts her other hand from Danni's feet. "But try poking her armpits a little before you dig in. Try different patterns and places, you know? And only do one armpit at a time, don't split your attention."

You poke at the central pit of Danni's armpit, wishing your fingernails were longer, and Danni flinches. Poke, flinch, poke, flinch. What happens if you drag your finger across the armpit this way? Danni tenses up, looking like she's trying not to laugh. Different direction? Danni tenses less. Change the angle of your hand to use your fingernail, tiny giggle. Oh god you can't stand this any more, Danni teasing you with her nakedness and helplessness, she's so naughty being handcuffed to a bed like this. Okay, so, the most sensitive spot was here, she liked this angle least, and she doesn't like fingernails, so…

You dig your finger in deep and wiggle it fast and Danni lets out another forced giggle.

Then something inside you snaps and you just reach out to both armpits and attack, digging in with your fingernails all over the armpit, there's this mad drive inside you to tickle her more and more, you crawl over her to dig into Danni's sides and then her belly button, she screams for that, you dig your finger in deeper, oh god you can't stand this there's so many areas on her body taunting you with their need to be tickled, you need another six arms so you can tickle her all over simultaneously, you need tentacles.

(You don't grow tentacles.)

Tammi sits back and sighs, her expression showing exasperation and understanding. Occasionally she reminds you of the existence of places like the crease between Danni's thighs and her hips, or points to the tiny patch of skin between Danni's pussy and her ass. Tammi leans over to talk her advice into your ear over Danni's screaming while you savage Danni's feet, scrubbing your fingers on the soles up and down, left and right, going in circles, you can't try any more elaborate patterns than that because your frantic drive to make Danni suffer won't let you move your fingers any more slowly. You lack the patience even to hold the t-t-tooth-b-brush in place, although Tammi does carefully hold Danni's foot in position and bend back her toes so that you can scrub her foot with the same hairbrush that Danni used on you.

Danni screams and writhes and pleads with you prettily, and it's so hot you can't stand it, you were teased so much yesterday and now you're so aroused you can't stand it, you're sticky with a constant warmth, sometimes Danni is in position to writhe against you and you always have to move because you feel like you could come within seconds, you realize your mouth has been whining over and over "Need to come, need to come, need to come" and the only outlet for your desperation is digging your fingers into soft stomach and trying to pin down the exact angle on the hairbrush that makes Danni go from cursing to begging.

Tammi shows you how much you should press down with your fingernails in order to leave reddened trails but not damage the skin, and the thought that any part of Danni's body might not have a reddened trail on it makes you frantic. You search out the backs of her knees, and then stay there a while crossing every square centimeter of her skin with trails over trails, because it turns out Danni really doesn't like being tickled on the backs of her knees, judging from her howling and bucking against the handcuffs. You lie in front of her belly so you can suck on her belly button while your fingers dance all over her ribs unpredictably.

When Danni's breath starts stopping in mid-scream, you look behind you to see that Tammi has begun attending to Danni's feet again, which engenders confused feelings of jealousy at having to share your victim, plus more and more arousal at the thought of how terribly Danni must be suffering. You can't stand this, you're so hot you could explode just from rubbing your thighs together.

You rub your thighs together and whine when you realize what you're doing and have to stop, while you lie on Danni's warm, writhing body and lick her neck and stick your tongue into her ears.

"It's six-twenty-five, Starry. Do you want to come before you go?"

Those might've been the only words in the world that could distract you from your revenge. Your head whips around, and you nod frantically.

"Just tickle Danni from a position where I can reach your pussy, and then stay put, okay?"

You crawl to where you're perched above Danni with your body aligned with hers, using your palms to support yourself while digging your fingers into Danni's armpits. You thrust out your hips and shake them desperately, wildly, here here here.

A finger gently strokes over your clit, light and slow. You mewl and try to thrust out your hips more. The light, teasing touch goes on, and on, until you're trembling and tearing up and you're barely able to focus on continuing to dig your fingers into soft vulnerable armpit to ensure Danni keeps howling.

And then Tammi's fingers plunge into you, three fingers, deep hard thrusts that feel so full, so full. But so slow, so slow, if it were fast hard thrusts you'd come instantly.

You resist without even thinking, trying desperately to push against the pleasure even as you rock your hips against Tammi's fingers, your body learned last night that when you get to the edge you don't come you never come you just get tickled again.

The slow, hard thrusts are pushing you to the brink anyway. Your body is shaking to near collapse, your whole world is just your pussy and the fingers you still have digging savagely into Danni's armpits.

And then Tammi's fingers slow down further, just slow enough not to force you into orgasm with your trembling body trying to hold back the pleasure. You're hardly aware that your mouth is drooling saliva onto Danni's wildly shaking breasts as you moan and moan and endlessly moan.

"Well, I'm not Danni, and I didn't promise you that I'd force you to come," Tammi's voice says, you're barely sensate enough to understand. "I told Mister Charles that I wouldn't do that, remember. He said it had to be your decision. But you can come if you want to. Just stop holding back, and once you start coming I'll make sure you come nice and hard."

[ ] Come. (This has serious consequences.)
[ ] Keep holding back. (This also has serious consequences.)

(Neither option interferes with quest rewards.)

Spoiler: A/N

I give up. Writing good porn is really hard. The porn here isn't going to stand with the greatest erotica ever written and I just need to post it anyway. Hopefully it's not too bad by you even if it fails to make anyone come in their pants.

Thanks to my bisexual friend ThirdSquid (so-called to distinguish from Sirrocco or DarthSquidious) for going on a date with me and checking the lesbian sex in 4.5.2 and 4.5.3. (It goes without saying that it's in no way her fault if this porn fell short of my ambitions.)

I hope nobody complains about the consequences of whichever choice wins the vote. You were warned, after all.

5.0.6* [TDA]: My and Your Feelings

(Update 1 of 4.)

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 59 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 1743-1889]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Come. (This has serious consequences.)
No. of Votes: 59
HellKing666
Alkaiser009
Andelevion
Arkatekt
BastetsChosen
BFldyq
chrnno
DarthSquidious
Datcord
DB_Explorer
Diraniola
Dreikanter
Elitist Oars
Ephemeral
FeepingCreature
Flashbunny
fluxoid
Gettys
gilgamekk
Gingganz
Grollo
Guile
Helix
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
insignia33
january1may
Jaso
Kandagger
kozinc
Kurogami
Lavida
Learned Knave
lucero
Lurkerman
Malbutorius
matacusa
MrBTXz
napkintooth
Nordvegr
P90Techie
pepperjack
Prefixmancer
Prustan
relinar
RoaSiD
Sasha
ScrewFate
ShaperV
Sirrocco
Spectral Waltz
Tesla
tetheredd
Theminimanx
UsurperOfTruth
Uvigz
VanillaTentacle
wasprider
Xenia
ZenithOfLust

[X] Keep holding back. (This also has serious consequences.)
No. of Votes: 13
Proxima
Asswer
Blackshard
fractal42
GulibleLeprecon
Jetsmillion
KBob
Mastigos2
Soul Shocker
storybookknight
Strelok
TesselatedPattern
zup

[X] Keep holding back
No. of Votes: 2
SoulofaGremlin
Andigatron

Total No. of Voters: 74

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (23,150 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 32/340
SUB: 440/440

BOD: 21
LST: 20 (26)
SED: 17
FUK: 17
PRV: 24 (28)
ERO: 28

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $9009

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Tammi's fingers stroke into you, out of you, steadily, mercilessly, and you hardly have the coherence left in you to think and make your decision, to remember that you promised Charles you wouldn't take his suggestion as an order. You try desperately to push back against your own pushing-back, stop yourself from stopping, spread your legs a little wider and submit more to the pleasure---

Your moan starts to build into a scream. It's all you can do not to fall over onto the howling, writhing naked redhead you're tickling, and only the terrifying thought of Tammi's fingers no longer stroking your pussy keeps your hips in place.

The pleasure is rising, now that you're fighting your body's fighting, trying so desperately to come. If Tammi stops now you'll kill her and then not be friends with her anymore.

The fingers stroking in and out and in and out of you… slow.

And don't stop.

The coming explosion is building and building, to the point where you're afraid you won't be able to take it. It feels like all of the teasing is being layered over you into a release that's going to rip you apart.

Your hands lock up and stop tickling, your arms lock up, your thighs clench convulsively against Danni's bare hips. A recently traumatized part of you is terrified at the thought of how cute and ticklable your feet must look with the arches bending and flexing and your toes grasping frantically at air.

Tammi's fingers slow down more.

You've stopped breathing, you're focused so desperately on trying to go over this edge, trying to make the ecstasy blossom. All your self seems to be concentrated into the burning pleasure building up around the merciless fingers that control your existence, the building pleasure blotting out your sense of body and boundary. Your self-awareness is going away, leaving a screaming female animal with her soul dangling from three fingers.

The fingers speed up. Fast, hard, satisfying strokes that at first leave your body shocked at this unfamiliar experience, uncomprehending of what could be happening to it instead of being teased.

Then the breath leaves you in a scream that must echo through half the hotel floor and possibly the rest of Earth, all your muscles locked up and your mind blotted out to the point where you can't remember your name, you're losing it, losing everything, consumed in orgasmic flame that blots out the distinction between yourself and anything that isn't an orgasm.

The fingers speed up more.

When you regain sapience you seem to be lying motionless, your body laid over a girl and your head buried in what feels like boobs. You don't remember collapsing there. You don't know how long your orgasm went on. It could've been minutes. Your muscles are aching like you've run for hours.

You're also feeling… stickiness.

On your wobbly arms, you manage to push yourself off Danni's body to a crawling position, and look down and behind you. There's a big wet spot on the towels laid over the bed, centered on where your hips were just resting… so, you either female-ejaculated on Danni, or you just lubricated that much for that long, or god help you, you've just peed on her.

…were you humping Danni's knee for clitoral stimulation while Tammi kept on pumping you? You think you were?

Your cheeks are fiery flames full of fire. Now that you're no longer teased out of your mind, no longer horny beyond the possibility of embarrassment, you seem to remember… things. Like Tammi asking you if you wanted to come, and you shaking your ass in the air like you were begging for Tammi's fingers. Well, you were begging for her fingers. There were one or two words to that effect in your incoherent, shameless moaning.

Well… there's nothing wrong with being a shameless, naked female creature who begs to come. Right? It's embarrassing, now that you no longer have your Teased bonus, but you firmly believe that it is an okay way to live your life. Unless it's just the clouds of enveloping pink afterglow making you still feel that way.

You sit up, shakily, and stretch your hands above your head, aware of how the motion is lifting your breasts and displaying your curves.

You're feeling very shameless right now.

Blake made you a human being and Charles made you a woman, but as of this morning you are an ero woman. All sorts of perverted eroge activities feel more attractive, in this pink afterglow. You would totally hide under a table and blow a guy.

You realize that you're smiling goofily at the beige wall you're facing. This realization seems to only make your smile wider. Hello, Mr. Beige Wall! I am your friend because in my present mood I am a friend to all physical objects!

Then something catches your eye, in a freckled face framed by red hair and held down to its pillow. Danni's eyes are huge, and she's staring at you in… awe? Is that awe?

You turn your head to see that Tammi is sitting at the foot of the bed, gazing at you with the same wondering eyes.

"…what'd I do?" you say without much hope.

Tammi looks at Danni.

Danni looks at Tammi.

Tammi and Danni look at each other.

"Nothing," they chorus in unison.

You put your hands on your sitting hips and glare at Tammi, which doesn't work, so you turn to glare at Danni in case that works better. Danni does look more intimidated, possibly because she is chained up and you have fingers, but she still doesn't say anything. You maybe don't look as scary with your cheeks still on fire.

"Did I do something embarrassing?" you say.

Tammi smiles, shakes her head, and chuckles, seeming to shake herself out of whatever trance she was in. "Starry," she says, "has anyone ever told you that you're beautiful and helpful and nice, ridiculously innocent for being so sexy, and just unbearably cute when you're embarrassed?"

"Meep," you say in a tiny voice, as the flood of compliments overwhelms your underdeveloped compliment buffer and cascades through the rest of your brain like a tide of molten chocolate.

"She's so adorable it drives you crazy," Danni says. "It makes you want to tie her up to something and embarrass her in front of lots of people who could clap and cheer each time we made her say 'meep' again."

You remove one hand from where your face is in your hands, and put that hand in Danni's armpit. "You should say meep."

"I'll be good!" Danni says quickly. "You don't have to---MEEEEP! MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP!"

"Starry?" Tammi says. She sounds hesitant, and looks serious.

You still your fingers, though you don't remove your hand from Danni's armpit.

"So," Tammi says, "I was going to say all this before you did the thing. You can tell I'm telling the truth, right?" She has her hands clasped tightly in her lap. "I was going to say: I want to see you again sometime, and not just in bed, because you seem like a really nice and interesting person."

"Oh," you say in another small voice.

"I like what I've seen of you so far. I want to get together sometime and watch a movie, or go shopping together, and get to know some of the other things about you."

she thinks you can detect lies

so she actually means that

This is, different, it's a new thing. Blake wanted you to be his mistress. With Charles, you've been the pursuer and him the pursued since after that first night. Tammi doesn't need anything else from you, she's a more skilled lover than you are and now she has her sister back, and she wants to hang around you anyway.

Some distant part of you is surprised that you're not more shocked, incredulous that you're not more disbelieving. Maybe the fact that you can believe her means that some part of you is beginning to heal? You're pretty now, verging on beautiful, and sexually willing. It shouldn't be surprising if people start to want to be around you more.

"And, Starry, you've gone way above and beyond," Tammi says, her voice hitching slightly. "It's a favor I couldn't pay back even by having sex with you for seven nights, you know? Listen, after I moved away from home to Los Angeles, I found out that people would pay me to tickle them, or pay to tickle me. And then I stopped doing that even though it paid better, and just worked as an ordinary escort a few times a month, because," she glances at Danni, and draws a deep breath, "I couldn't take it any more that tickling was happening and Danni wasn't there."

"Sis…" whispers Danni.

"So," Tammi says, "I'm going to tickle Danni here for the next two days until she agrees to move to Norville and live with me."

Danni's expression is… complicated. "Sis," she says in a high-pitched voice, "I don't think you need to---"

"Don't contradict me," Tammi says, accompanied by a shriek as she, without looking, rakes a hand down Danni's naked bound foot. "And then on Saturday and Sunday, I'm going to tickle Danni more until she agrees to start a double act with me, as tickle twins for hire."

Danni parts her lips, and then, wisely, closes them again.

"Danni and I can make a lot more together, even if we're picky about clients," Tammi says. "So… we owe you tremendously, and it's the type of owing that's allowed to involve more than just sexy times. That was what I was going to say before, because I'd figured that either you're not from a rich family after all, or you'd rather they not find you. It would be honestly okay if you wanted to crash in my house for a month."

"Oh," you say in a small voice.

"It's not just owing you," Tammi says. "I wouldn't mind being around you more."

Danni nods, from where she's tied to the bed.

"I do have a really nice house," Tammi says. Her fingers work over each other. "I… I got one with a lot of extra rooms, back when I first realized how much money I could make as a fetish escort, and I thought Danni and I would get together again soon and maybe we'd adopt kids."

"S-sis," Danni says in a choked voice.

Tammi glances at Danni, and then back at you. Her eyes are watering. "You could also take the cottage in the backyard that I use with clients sometimes, if you'd rather not live in the same space as me and Danni. I can just use hotel rooms for a while."

"Oh," you say faintly. You know on some level what the Erogame is trying to offer you, what the game is arranging as an available bonus reward for completing the hidden part of the quest. But there's also a real, live person saying these things to you for her own reasons and it… kind of makes you want to run away and hide from her being nice at you.

Tammi's hand pats Danni's foot, causing a flinch from the bound redhead. "And Danni owes you a whole lot too."

"You bet I owe Starry a lot. A lot of EEEEEK!"

"So if you stay with me," Tammi finishes, "you can tickle Danni all you want after she moves in."

It is clear from Danni's expression that she has her own ideas on that subject, though she maintains a wise silence while handcuffed.

Your voice sounds unsteady in your ears. "I, I'll have to think about that. I was looking for a place where I could stay with Charles if he moved here, and maybe… maybe some other people too, later on, because I'm not the monogamous type. It might be nice to use that cottage for a while? I'll have to think about it."

"Does Charles know you really are psychic?" says Tammi.

You start to nod and then freeze.

"Thought so," Tammi says, looking rather nervous. "I mean, looking back, it seems like he knew."

You let out a breath in resignation. "Okay, seriously, what did I do?"

"I---felt you come," Tammi whispers, the awed look in her face again.

You look at Danni.

Danni nods.

"Oh," you say. You don't know if this is because of the eroge plot you made up about Starry maybe being psychic, or if it's something… deeper. Something tells you it might be deeper. "What exactly happened?"

"It's really hard to find words," says Tammi. "Do you have words for it, sis?"

Danni stares up at the ceiling, eyes locked on nothing. "There was an orgasm, and it wasn't my orgasm, or not-mine either. It wasn't happening in the pussy I usually have, because that pussy was right where it usually is and the orgasm wasn't in it. I knew it was a very nice orgasm, but the part where I could feel it was weak and wavery and… don't you know more about this than we do, Starry?" Her eyes refocus on you. "Shouldn't you be telling us what happened?"

You shake your head. "I've never come that hard before, or experienced anything that intense, so… this part is new to me too."

"Oh," chorus Tammi and Danni, and there's a moment of silence in the hotel room.

You probably have some extremely important game text to read as soon as you're alone.

Tammi is first to break the silence that's fallen. "I… hope this doesn't seem like I'm chasing, you know, a psychic experience," she says, looking nervous. "Danni and I, we're not total strangers to the idea that there's more to the world than the mundane? I once spent a night with a biology startup guy, and I posed him a question I said was imaginary, about two people like me and Danni having the ancestors we do and turning out the way we did. He said that off the top of his head he couldn't set up a formula to calculate exactly the chance of two people like us sharing at least three-quarters of our genes, but he could say how much it was less than, and it was less than two trillion to one. And ever since then, I've wondered if God, or Fate, or Purpose, has some plan for us that needs us to look like twins while really being cousins. If that's why we were born, if that's why our grandparents all got married, if we have a reason for being brought into this world. Part of me has always felt like I've been watching and waiting for that to be justified. Maybe even a purpose that involves Danni and I being in love, and being amazing at tickling and teasing. It's hard to see how that would fit into a cosmic master plan, but I think there are reasons for everything, in the end. And I believe that whatever purpose there is for us, it's something that's worth it, if we live up to everything we can be… are you okay, Starry?"

"S-sorry," you say, trying to tamp down on your flinching. "I, I sort of got triggered there, but, it's not your fault and it's a long story." You're pretty sure you know their reason for existence, the answer to their lives, but hey, no pressure if you decide it was just a one-night stand.

"Well, I won't say any more about that then," Tammi says, her hands again tightly clasped in her lap. "Just, Danni and I won't look at you funny just because you're not totally normal, and we also won't cling on to you as the only sign we've ever found of something beyond the ordinary. My email is tickletammi at gmail, and you can message me that way too. My house is at 1077 East Teuthida Avenue, and the back door has a keypad whose code is K-U-T-Y-0. To get into the cottage in the backyard, use the rightmost key hanging on the wall in my living room. Raiding the fridge is fine and so is coming in at 3 in the morning. I'll be in this hotel room tickling Danni until Sunday night, unless you have some way of sneaking her to my house without letting her escape or having anyone notice we're carrying her around. It's fine for you to use the house before I get back, and you can also drop by this room and tickle Danni with me whenever."

You nod mechanically, still feeling dazed and somehow ashamed.

"I won't lie, some of that offer is because I'm really really curious about you being psychic. But I liked you even before that, and I was going to offer you crash space, though maybe not the cottage." Tammi hesitates. "You… weren't used to anyone saying nice things to you, at least not anyone you liked back. I'm guessing you don't get close to anyone who doesn't know, and anyone who finds out about you either runs away from you or starts acting weird about it. You act like someone who hasn't been touched as much as she needs to be touched. Do you want a hug now?"

You don't have words, so you nod.

Tammi scootches over on the bed, and puts her arms around you, and squeezes you tightly. "I'll also understand if you run away instead," she breathes in your ear. "I'll understand either way."

You stay like that for a while. You haven't been touched as much as you need to be touched, even now.

"I'm sorry," Tammi says, relaxing her arms without removing them. "I know you have to go. It's probably way past six-forty-five and now you're going to be late for whatever. I feel guilty about keeping you here, like I should be kicking you out for your own good."

"I think I'll be okay so long as I don't look at a clock. If I can't see time, it can't get me."

"Then, I won't bring up this subject again if you say not," says Tammi. "But if it's okay to talk about it, I confess that I am super incredibly curious about the psychic powers. Is there any kind of story you can tell us about that?"

"Uh," you say. In all honesty you can't blame her for being curious, and if you filter your harem for people with no sense of wonder, you'll end up around some pretty boring people. "Uh, it's fine that you're asking, but there's not much I can tell you?"

"You mean you don't know anything at all beyond what we've already seen," Danni says, lifting her head from the pillow to look at you, "or you can't tell us what you do know?"

You wave your hand vaguely.

"Well then," Danni says, looking rather sly for a woman spreadeagled and cuffed to a bed, "if you were just making up a story for fun, what would it be?"

"Making up a story for fun?" you say.

Both twins nod their heads.

"This is a trap, right? You're hoping I'll let something slip without realizing it?"

Both twins nod their heads again.

You think about this for a minute. You can see a certain opportunity here, and you do owe them something.

"So," you say, "this isn't going to be the least bit true, not at all. But, imagine a university where, like, some people are psychics, and some people are not psychics, but they're both studying on the same campus and they know about each other. Imagine I was going to that university to learn how to… fix up marriages, more or less. To learn how to do things like what I did today."

The twins nod again. "You're really good at it," Tammi says.

"Not by psychic standards. Anyway, imagine that psychics are longer-lived than non-psychics, and this causes a bunch of rivalry within this university. If a position gets filled by a psychic, it's going to stay filled for a long time, you know? So the chancellor of the university is a psychic, but the council immediately below him is always made up completely of non-psychics, and that's supposed to keep things fair."

Tammi has a fascinated look, as does Danni.

But they both tickled you unmercifully for hours and hours, so they both deserve this.

"And then imagine that I accidentally manage to seriously piss off this council of non-psychics, and they're going to sentence me to a fate worse than tickling. So I have to run away from their, uh, anti-psychics. Like, their soldiers can't do anything psychic, but nobody else can be psychic around them either. And these soldiers are very good at martial arts and other kinds of takedowns that don't involve psionics. If they find me I don't stand a chance."

"Where might a university like that happen to be?" says Danni with wide eyes.

"Mars," you say promptly.

Both of the twins suddenly look a lot more skeptical. "Mars," says Tammi.

"Hey, you did tell me to make stuff up," you say. "Why, did you think there'd be some kind of disguised truth in there, or some kind of hidden message? Because there totally wasn't, just so you know, no matter how much time you spend looking. I was just making up a completely false story that was not the least bit true."

The twins look at each other.

"I don't believe you," Tammi says. "There has to be some meaning buried in a story like that."

You hold out your hands in a gesture for peace, smiling. "Okay, you got me. It wasn't just a story. I really am…" You pause.

"Yeah?" says Danni.

"A marital counselor on the run from the martial cancellers sent by the mortal councilors under the Martian chancellor."

Thirty seconds later you're outside the hotel room, naked and holding your things, and then Tammi slams the door in your face.

That was essentially the reaction you were aiming for, so you shrug on some clothing, sling your backpack over a shoulder, and head off to the elevator.

5.1 [WS]: Thursday Morning-After

"Hi, Mom. I'm outside the hotel right now, not being followed so far as I know. I was a little, uh, tied-up last night, but they let me go on time." You smile encouragingly at your phone's video camera, making sure that the open city streets behind you are visible in the background.

The tiny image of your mother peers out of your new burner phone, which unlike your last phone is powerful enough to handle Skype. It looks like she was in the middle of brushing her teeth in your home's upstairs bathroom. "Dear," your mother says, "if you tell me to mount a rescue mission if you're not physically in the house at seven, you must be physically in the house at seven. I'm not going to mount a rescue mission on room 211 if you're not in it, but I want you to come here as fast as you can, so I can see nobody is pointing a gun at you off-camera. It seems like a good general rule that if you say you'll---"

"Yes, Mom, I know, Mom, I'll be home on time, Mom. But I want to try doing this without using up more of my Slack. Can you order me to make your bed before seven o' clock?"

"Make my bed?"

"Yeah," you say.

Your mother's eyes on the tiny screen angle slightly downward. "Does this have anything to do with why you're wearing a maid costu---oh my GOD you have MAID powers!"

"I have a power that lets me do maid things in unreasonably short times if I'm dressed as a sexy maid. I am not going to let you abuse it, Mom, I still have to do all the work myself. I just want to see if it lets me finish making your bed…" You look at your cellphone's clock. "In less than sixty seconds from when you tell me to, from your perspective."

"I'm totally abusing it, dear."

"You are not."

"Am too!" says your mother, who is forty fucking five years old.

"Just… just give me the order, Mom."

"Maid! Have my bed made, the sheets changed, and all the dishes washed, before seven AM!"

"Mom!"

"Thirty seconds, dear."

The call ends.

You stand there, briefly stunned. Then you shove your phone into your backpack, and start sprinting along the sidewalk.

Your apron-skirt flutters in the air behind you with the wind of your running, revealing your panties.

…fuck your life, you are going to have to wash the dishes. You're pretty sure this skill does not work if you are not intending to do your assigned task perfectly. You have an intuition that you can't even stop to look at your pending Erogame messages until you're done, because that's not what a perfect maid would do.

And so a girl dressed only in a short-skirted maid outfit with a deep-cut neckline flees along the morning sidewalks of Norville.

You get looks from the businessmen and working-men who walk the sidewalks at this hour, and glances from some women too. Mostly gawps at your twenty-mile-per-hour running speed, probably, but you think you can detect one or two leers, and there's more than one whistle of surprised admiration.

You don't mind.

Running uses up too much of your attention to read violet text, but not so much that you can't think. The pure joy of watching people and houses go by so fast, of feeling that you're no longer a huge scarcely-mobile slug, hasn't faded entirely. But there's room in your mind now for other things besides burning muscles, whooshing trees and wheeeeee.

(Except when you parkour over cars that have stopped in the middle of a pedestrian crossing. That is never going to get old.)

Something inside you feels stronger and you don't know why. Higher LST, higher PRV, those don't seem like answers.

You were tied up and teased and tickled for hours, you begged, you screamed, you were cuddled and then tortured some more. It didn't feel like being "raped" by Charles, or hurting your nipples for him. You really honestly wanted out of those handcuffs, and… now you've learned that even when you really want out of the handcuffs, it can still be okay? So now you're stronger? It doesn't feel like you endured enough trauma to call yourself a survivor.

It doesn't feel like "endured" is the right word. You were on fire with being tickled, you've never felt anything that intense or wanted to get away from it so much, but it was also ero. And because of that the fire tempered your metal instead of melting it?

The thought of asking an attractive stranger if he wants a blowjob feels like something you could do now, though more to prove to yourself that you can then out of any deep-seated desire to collect his nectar.

And you could do that now because… even if he says no and you're embarrassed, that's not as bad as the tickle torture you've already endured? No… no, that's totally wrong, that's not it at all. You just feel more ero. Like being exposed to lesbian teasing and tickling developed you, like film in an old-fashioned camera.

Maybe what you're feeling is that your LVL went up?

But in the end what you're feeling isn't a number, even if there's some number that moves with it.

The streets are blue-grey with dawn, but sometimes you pass through nearly horizontal shafts of golden sun, as you race through the endless minute of six fifty-nine AM. You don't stop to catch your breath at all, this time.

You finish drying off the last dish in the kitchen sink… just as your mother comes down the stairs, dressed in an unflattering nighty, looking yawny. Her eyes widen when she sees you.

You make sure you are wearing a properly expressionless smile as you turn around to greet your mother. "Everything's been done, ma'am!" you say with toneless cheeriness, completing your task.

Then you scowl at her.

"I try not to swear around you," says your mother, "but that's fucking incredible, honey."

"I," you announce in distinctly grumpy tones, "have to go read some game text. It's extremely important, and somebody made me wash dishes first."

"Can you make breakfast instantly too? I'd like homemade pizza with---"

"No."

…you feel bad about this. You are a Bad Maid. You are so not being perfect right now.

And Mom is giving you a sad look, the child abuser. "Oh, well," she says in a quavering voice, "I'll just eat gruel and bread crusts, since that's all I have time for."

You turn away from her and stomp down the hall towards the stairs leading to your bedroom, yanking off your ruffled top as you go. You're never wearing a maid uniform in your house again.

What a lovely bed you have. It's not the softest, to be sure, or the widest, but there's no handcuffs attached to it and nobody will tickle you here.

You flop onto the bed with a groan, flipping yourself over to stare up at the whitish ceiling.

Some people worry about venereal diseases, pregnancy, and the loss of their self-respect in the Morning After.

Your mornings-after consist of finding out what awful new skills you've acquired since the last time you became too distracted to read.

"Busy mode off, show unread messages."

The Nectar has increased by 1.

Oh, right, you've got more entries in your nectar table now, like you thought would show your willingness to play along with the Erogame. Now that Danni and Tammi Arcadia have ridden your face and forced you to repeatedly lick them to orgasms while you just ended up being endlessly teased.

And what does their nectar do.

The Nectar: Lvl 3 (40%). Passive.

You gain benefits from consuming sexual fluids you have personally extracted from others. (With the Mad Inventor perk: sexual fluids extracted via machines of your own creation that you personally operate.) Every person's precious bodily fluids convey different potencies, hinted at by tastes and sensations you may learn to identify. Mixing synergetic sexual fluids yields greater results, but the fluids must be mixed in situ.

Known nectars:

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Blake Layton | A taste of vanilla-flavored cake; a sense of spreading warmth, as of kindness or a sunny day. | ? | +10% to the rate of experience gain in stats and skills, 6 hours. | ???
Tammi Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | ???
Danni Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | ???

Figures. "Next," you say wearily.

A skill has been created by a special action! Being tickled for reasons and justifications unknown to ordinary concepts of sanity has created the skill Tickle Logic.

You barely manage not to scream out loud and alarm your mother. Nononononononononono. Please don't let this, please don't let this, please don't let this be a Passive skill---

Tickle Logic: Lvl 3 (88%). Passive and Active.

In the system of Tickle Logic, the sentence "P -> Q" is valid if and only if "Q" says that someone gets tickled. If you don't want that to be you, you'd better make sure it's somebody else.

Tickle Logic is an ultra-anti-intuitionistic system in which any even or odd number of negations can be canceled out of a formula, making the proposition "NO NO NO NO NOT Q" equivalent to "Q".

Passive: Let X stand for the base probability that someone is tickled, and let Y stand for the Lvl of the Tickle Logic skill. The new probability that someone gets tickled, divided by the new probability that nobody is tickled, is equal to the quantity (X*((1 + 1/e)^Y))/(1-X).

Active: By expending SUB or DOM, you may further increase the chance of yourself or somebody else being tickled. Results as above, but let X equal the base probability of that particular person being tickled, and let Y equal the energy expended divided by 10. You may not expend more than Lvl*20 energy in this way.

"Can I, like… restore from an earlier savepoint before the Arcadia twins? Please?"

The game is silent. Your bedroom doesn't answer either.

"Please?"

"Pretty please? I'll promise to perform oral sex on fifty people if you just let me not have that skill?"

"A hundred people?"

"…next."

Being endlessly teased by the Arcadias until you can't think of anything but the fire in your pussy, and being tickled by them until just their breath on your skin makes you scream, makes your LST go up by 1!

Yes you recall that quite well, thank you. "Next."

Tickle Logic has increased by 1.

"Next."

Extensive training and correction in cunnilingus causes your FUK to go up by 1!

"Next."

The Nectar has increased by 1.

"NEXT."

Being reduced to shamelessly crying and begging for an orgasm, promising to do anything if they'll just let you come, and then being tickled instead, makes your LST go up by 1! Thereby rendering your helpless flesh even more sensitive.

"Thank you, next please."

Tickle Logic has increased by 1.

"NEXT."

Giving in to the dark side and tickling a helpless, unconsenting victim without remorse causes your PRV to go up by 1!

"Are you shitting me? That should make my Justice stat go up by 1! Next."

Coming so hard you forget your own name causes your LST to go up by 1!

A truth has been revealed by an unusual event! Orgasming so hard that you forget your own identity, blurring the boundaries around your self's definition of its existence, has revealed the Distinction Between Self and Other.

You have lost the status: Teased.

Yikes. You don't think you've ever seen a skill being described as "revealed" before.

You draw a deep breath, mentally bracing yourself for what's probably going to be a whoooole lot of existential disorientation. "Info, skills, Distinction Between Self and Other."

Nothing happens, and you frown at the violet text to see if you made a mistake…

Oh. Yikes again.

"Info, Truths, Distinction Between Self and Other."

Info // Truths // Distinction Between Self and Other

Distinction Between Self and Other: Lvl 1 (0.01%). Active. Special.

The territory of a self is created by a self's deeply believed boundary around 'me' that distinguishes it from 'not-me'. For a self to become aware of these boundaries renders it imaginable that these boundaries might change.

The consequences of this truth are absolutely unavoidable, and include dangers that transcend absolute immortality.

Pale shadows and lesser imitations of these consequences have been incarnated as Reality Skills, where they still rank among the most powerful and perilous aspects of your Erogame.

My and Your Feelings: Lvl 1 (0.1%). Active. Special.

While all experiences must be the content of some experiencer, an experience need not be the content of only one experiencer. It is possible for qualia to belong to more than one consciousness simultaneously.​

The violet text seems to somehow radiate an aura of… the thought that comes to mind is being in a room with a huge sign saying "ABSOLUTE TERROR" hung on one wall.

You aren't actually forced to run out of the room screaming, because even the words "ABSOLUTE TERROR" are still just words.

It's still disquieting.

Also, holy shit, 0.01% progress towards the next level? At that rate of daily progress you'd reach Lvl 2 of this skill in… thirty years or so.

You feel a strong temptation to pull the bed's blanket over your head and try to hide. Why. Why are you being forced to confront elaborate forms of existential disquiet at seven in the morning. You were just getting used to the Erogame, so your life is an eroge now, fine, you're handling that, and now the violet text is going on about "dangers that transcend absolute immortality." How about dangers that transcend cute boys and lesbians, can you stick to those for a while longer?

Oh, and it turns out that pulling your blanket over your head doesn't make the violet text go away. You can still see it, the violet letters are sort of… beyond the blanket.

"Next," you sigh.

Quest completed: Off the Road

Goal #1 complete: Tease Tammi together with Danni. +10,000 XP, increased relationship with Danni Arcadia.
Hidden goal #2 complete: Reconcile Tammi with Danni and be teased and tickled by both of them. +10,000 XP, increased relationship with Tammi Arcadia.
Hidden goal #3 complete: Discover Danni's hidden submissive side and team up with Tammi to tickle her. +15,000 XP, greatly increased relationship with Danni Arcadia and Tammi Arcadia, Danni and Tammi become available as allies during quests.

Your level has increased by 1!

Well, there is that at least.

You can finally, finally have perks now! Two of them, after selecting Marshmallow Test and keeping an emergency perk in reserve. Or one of them, since you're waiting on ERO 30 to take Mad Inventor. Your eagerness is matched only by your nervousness about selecting the wrong perk somehow.

The next-message button is still active, you notice, even though you can't think of any other messages that should be pending. "Next?"

Quest updated: Refuse the Giftsex

The police are closing in on the Mall Rapist and will arrest him within the next 24 hours. Soon the streets will be safe for you again!

Well… you think you see how this works. This quest appeared at Lvl 1, and the bonus perk point it offers is probably a reward for early courage. You hit Lvl 10, and immediately after, the quest updated saying you have only 24 hours left to go get raped.

…you are no longer totally sure you should not do this.

Your new PRV of 24 is well within an 8-point perversion tier of PRV 30, which is supposed to be protective against rape according to the perk There Are No Stops On The Rape Train. Your LST is 21 and that's probably as horny as a teenage boy, many of whom would not be traumatized by sex from a woman who was rude about it.

You know how valuable a perk point is, now, that it's worth at least a hundred million dollars. You didn't know that when you made your earlier decision not to do this quest unless you started feeling enthusiastic about it.

On the other hand. You'd assumed previously that Refuse the Giftsex was going to be a gang-rape by the Redcaps, based on the "increased relations with the Redcaps" you saw as a reward for "failure". But if the police are about to catch the "Mall Rapist", singular, then… then it's probably the Redcaps who rescue you, which you guess would make more sense for producing "increased relations" even under Erogame Logic.

Rape by one lone rapist feels scarier than gang-rape now that you consider it. If there were lots of gang members, they'd be watching each other, and know that killing you would bring down a lot more cops on their friends. They'd be more confident in their ability to keep you under control, which would make them less likely to actually kill you. One lone rapist could do… anything.

You don't think you're in a state of mind now where nonconsensual intercourse, of itself, is going to permanently traumatize you. At most you'd cry yourself to sleep one night and you probably wouldn't even do that. The Mall Rapist being nauseatingly smelly, or holding a knife against your throat, or cutting your throat and letting you bleed out until you die, that still sounds traumatic.

But, you first saw this quest at Lvl 1. The game wouldn't be set up to throw a Lvl 1 Cindy into a blender, would it? The Mall Rapist is probably clean, handsome, and courteous apart from having a gun. The game calls it giftsex.

You stare up at the bedroom ceiling.

Being able to take three perks and keep a fourth in reserve isn't a trivial gain. You were thinking Mad Inventor plus Ero-Inventory so you'd never be without your devices, but that's with two perks. With three you could go for the Real Mad Scientist Inventor trifecta straight off. Or Mad Scientist might be interesting to go ahead and take now, since there's no minimum ERO, if you're planning to complete the trifecta later. Or you could get Ero-Travel as well as Ero-Inventory, and take buses to where Charles is and then "come" back to your house. Or add Wait I'm Not Ready For This and never again have to worry about gaining stats too fast. Or take Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder, to be safe in this case and all future cases, and then use the quest to get the perk point back.

There's a tiny voice in you that wants to take the protective perk and then try this, able to speak openly at PRV 24. A part of you that's imagining what to wear for the adventure, whether to go dressed as a slut or as a terrified girl in ordinary clothes.

The other voices in your mind are much louder. One of them really is a terrified girl in ordinary clothes, even if she's fading by the day, even if she never wanted to be herself and now she's almost gone.

You have until six-twenty-five AM tomorrow to think about it, but the fact that you'd rather think about this later suggests that it would be serious non-self-care to do this. It might have been different if you'd kept the Teased status, that tiny voice might have been louder at LST 21 (27) and PRV 24 (28), you'd probably be basically safe at that level of horniness. Hell, you might have been that desperate to find someone who wouldn't stop fucking you hard if you gave them a chance to tease you more instead. But you're no longer Teased now, and you're not going through all that again. Not for a while.

You frown at the still-active button for a next message. You can't think of any other game messages you should be expecting. There aren't any other active quests you have running that ought to be level-gated the same way.

Unless…

When you…

Oh, god damn it.

God. Fucking. Damn it.

You can't even bring yourself to say the word, so you poke the Next button with your finger.

Stunning the Arcadias with a clear, undeniable display of your psychic powers causes your ERO to go up by 1!

5.2.1 [WS]: What It Appears To Be

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (28,150 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 32/340
SUB: 432/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 17
FUK: 17
PRV: 24
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 40
Perk Points: 2
Money: $9009

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Info // Character Stats // Level:

At LVL 10, you are now a proper Erogamer and true, at the beginning of this second leg of your journey. Be ready; the game thinks you are.

You can increase your level by completing the quests the Erogame offers you, or by causing romantic and sexual events to happen to you or around you. The more difficult the challenge, the greater the rewards.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

Raising your BOD to 21 has brought you to the point of being pretty enough that people actually notice. You're the prettiest girl in the room, so long as the room isn't too large.

You can increase this stat by using your body itself to bring happiness into the world, through the grace of your feminine form, its presentation and concealment, its motions and ornamentation. Getting naked and letting men perv on you works too.

Info // Character Stats // Lust:

A LST of 21 makes you the horniest person in the room, if there aren't too many teenaged boys in it. Your body is unusually receptive to pleasure, and other sensations.

You gain in this stat by allowing yourself to feel your urges and wants and desires fully, and by following through on them. Or by deliberately driving yourself mad with frustration. It's two sides of the same coin.

Info // Character Stats // Seduction:

Your SED of 17 lets you express your wants and desires in conversation without messing up too badly, and even persuade people to things they weren't already thinking, putting you well above average for a human being.

You can increase this stat by pursuing and being pursued, by catching others and being caught, by tending to their yearning and not just their reward, by understanding sex as a thought inside other people's minds and not just a collision of bodies.

Info // Character Stats // Fucking:

Your FUK of 17 describes you as well above average in bed even before taking your Erogame skills into account, someone whose passion and eagerness would make her a good lay even if she wasn't the Erogamer.

You will increase in this stat by giving others pleasure and other sensations, watching the results and learning from both your successes and mistakes, and always aspiring to become ever better in bed.

Info // Character Stats // Perversion:

At a PRV of 24, you are now the most perverted person in the room even if the room is in coastal California, so long as it's not in San Francisco. You aren't shameless, but oh, you do enjoy your shame.

You can increase this stat by listening to parts of yourself whose voices were previously drowned out by other parts; or by stepping off the roads you've always walked, and not immediately turning away from what you find beyond.

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At an ERO of 29, your life has become unmistakably an erogame, taking place in a physically realistic and socially impossible setting. The people around you end up doing the sorts of things that characters in erogames do, although they still act in their own interests and according their own psychologies. None of the people you run into will be literally impossible to find in an ordinary world, nor will they do anything beyond the bounds of probability for that person. But gathering multiple such people into one place and time, and improbably exact circumstances, will sum to events that would never happen in an ordinary world at all.

Your effects on the larger world are still mostly confined to Norville, but they've begun to seep out in small ways.

As you continue to push the bounds of realism, the social impossibilities will become more blatant, the first signs of physical unrealism will begin to show, and your influence will sink deeper and farther into your domain.

(And also High-Heeled Parkour, Maid, and Maid of Time each increased by 1 after you left the hotel.)

So. Your ERO is 29 now.

You're probably going to hit ERO 30 very soon now. You will be lucky if you get to Friday morning without hitting it.

At which point the plots are no longer even theoretically supposed to obey the laws of reality.

Even with Mad Inventor, the best upside ever, that still scares you. Maybe not absolute terror but pretty high up there. You enjoy not needing to obey all of the laws of physics all of the time, but that's just you, other people shouldn't be allowed to break them too.

You sigh at the bedroom ceiling. There's clearly a part of you that considers having to obey the laws of reality to be the same type of choking inhibition as being unable to proposition a stranger for sex. You haven't shied away from using your current powers to create eroge plots that aren't strictly mundane. You want to be safe, but you don't want to be constrained, and it shows in your behavior.

Just… what does it imply, what does it do, if the world is around you is no longer obeying the laws of nature? Where did the twins cousins come from, if the chances are two trillion to one against anyone like that existing? It still feels somehow like the Arcadia twins weren't created, like the Erogame isn't just manufacturing people, but you don't know what the alternative to that is. If other people start to have "talents", as The Sheen called them, where would those people come from? Would they be normal people who found themselves able to do things one day, or would they remember always being able to do them? You probably won't confront all this the instant your ERO hits 30, things probably start out slow. But it might not take until ERO 40 before it all starts leaking out.

Not that you were ever all that emotionally attached to nature obeying the laws of nature. It's just, it's unsettling. It seems like it might have larger implications than just your sex life. Physicists might write you and complain. Charles is liable to be distressed about it once he catches on, and not without reason, though it isn't your fault per se.

At least this does mean you can get started on the Better Than That Ponce quest for curing Felice and your mother. Though it might also make sense to delay that a little longer, in case using Mad Inventor after you hit ERO 30 lets you build a transformation ray for less than $2000? You're not sure.

Anyway, you'd better go ahead and take the Marshmallow Test perk now, before you manage to forget somehow.

"Info, available perks, Marshmallow Test."

[ ] Marshmallow Test:

Receive two additional perks, for a net of one more perk than you would've had otherwise. This perk can only be taken after reaching Lvl 10 and only if it is the first perk you have chosen other than your starting perk.

You reach out a finger, and poke the little checkbox.

Winifred Greenwood Sheen is sizzling tofu in a frying pan, still wearing her frumpy nightie, more of one-piece frumpy pajamas really, as you storm back down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"Did the Erogame zap you again, honey?" she says without actually looking at you, carefully shaking salt and pepper over her tofu strips.

"I just poked the little checkbox for the Marshmallow Test perk," you snarl. You stomp over to the kitchen table, and sit down hard in your slightly-broken padded rolling chair, which squeaks in mild protest. "Guess what happened."

Your mother turns her head now, looking more sober. "It said you weren't eligible, because you had a secret perk you didn't know about?"

"No, I have 3 perk points now, all right. I also got a message saying I'd unlocked a new perk called More Marshmallows that---stop laughing Mom this isn't funny."

"Be logical, dear. If it wasn't funny, I wouldn't be laughing."

"Anyway. On the More Marshmallows perk, I can get an extra perk point if I don't take any perks until I'm level fifteen. Or I can take a perk called the St. Petersburg Marshmallow Test and get two-to-the-power-of-N perks by waiting until level N-times-twenty. So, like, two more perks if I wait until level twenty, four more perks at level forty, eight more perks at level sixty, but as soon as I actually take the St. Petersburg Marshmallows, the test stops and I can't get any more. Unless of course that unlocks yet another perk because there's an entire tree of perks based on never taking perks. Mom, back me up on this. Even if I'm trying to be all grownup and responsible, I can still tell the Erogame to fuck off at this point, right?"

Winifred Sheen doesn't answer immediately, turning her attention back to the tofu strips. She takes the spatula and flips the tofu strips over, sending up the not-so-delicious scent of frying tofu and causing the sizzling oil to crack and popple louder. "Remind me, dear. How hard are experience points, levels, and perks to come by?"

"One perk every five levels, and sometimes there's a quest that gives a bonus perk but I think they may be very rare. Like, there's a bonus perk point from the quest for installing you as queen of a country---"

"Wait wait wait wait. You actually got a quest for that?"

"Yeah, it's called Become a Princess, but I haven't taken it yet. It's five million XP for success and has three question marks for failure, so I think I'm a tad underleveled right now."

You haven't seen your Mom look this stunned since Tuesday morning. "I thought I was joking!" she says.

"Mom, important life lesson, be careful of what you say as a joke around the Erogame. It does Time Control, I don't think it's going to balk at regime change."

"Right," your Mom says shakily. "…I do think I would like being a queen?"

"You'll love it, actually. The quest said I get vastly increased relations with you if I succeed."

"Though I want a nice country, not North Korea after it's been invaded---"

"And there should be a palace ready for you when you move in, and it has to be a real country with at least five million people and not one of the tiny ones like Liechtenstein. I know, I know, it was all in the quest text, now pay attention to your tofu before it burns. Anyway, Lvl 10 took thirty thousand XP, Lvl 11 is going to take forty thousand. That's per level, not total. The first four levels the required XP doubled each time, so at least that's not happening any more. I'm not sure where the level XP curves are going from here. I skipped over a lot of intervening steps after my first date with Charles, which got me sixty thousand XP. That wasn't sixty thousand XP for having sex, it was sixty thousand XP for, uh, you had to be there, but it would have been a really good eroge on a literary level. The sex with the Arcadias was intense and I solved an ero mystery and saved their marriage and that was worth thirty-five thousand XP. Building my own strip club is only three hundred thousand XP and I need two million dollars to start that quest. The way the curve is looking, I think it's probably going to be a serious chunk of time before I get anywhere near Lvl 15." Your mind is afraid it knows where Mom is going with this.

"But you got level five on Monday night and level ten on Wednesday?"

"I got level nine on Monday night and level ten on Thursday morning. That's three days for one level and it's probably going to slow down even more from here." Your mind is afraid it knows where Mom is going with this, and it really doesn't like what she's about to say.

"The perks you told me about sound extremely valuable, honey. Having one more of them could make you that much better off for the rest of your life. I know you want to start doing mad science right away, but it might be worth waiting a few more days to see if maybe level fifteen will come around in another week." Mom has turned her attention from the tofu strips to draining noodles into a strainer.

God fucking damn it. It feels like you've been waiting on perks for months. "I'm not into this type of teasing, Mom! If this was a computer game, I'd be setting up to be the kind of player who ends the game with fifty unspent character points because I wasn't absolutely sure which stat I wanted to boost. Maybe I end up gaining XP slower and getting the next five levels slower because I don't have any perks to help me. I don't want to turn my character into one specialized on the Not-Having-Any-Perks perk tree!" Unless there's an achievement for having fifteen unspent perk points which gives you access to any three perks at a time… but you can't count on that kind of easter egg. It's the type of experiment that you'd want to see tried by a pseudo-future-Cindy first, and you don't have good enough Time Control.

Your mother is carefully scraping noodles out of the strainer and into a bowl. "I know you probably don't want to hear this, sweetie, but sometimes the path to leading the happiest years doesn't go through leading the happiest days. That is a lot of what being a responsible adult is about."

"Self-care and noticing what you really don't want to do needs to be a thing! If you don't lead any happy days, you don't end up leading any happy years either!" Your fists clench in frustration on the tabletop.

"But I don't think you've had that problem the last few days, honey?" Mom scrapes the sizzling tofu strips into the bowl of noodles.

You can't speak, you're so frustrated.

"Though," Mom says more quietly, as she shakes pepper over the tofu and noodles, "I do understand you've had a lot of unhappy days for a long while before now." She turns, carrying the bowl with her to the table.

"So you think that perks are extremely valuable and worth making sacrifices for." You stare angrily at Mom as she sits down across the table from you, her silverware already in place. You know it's irrational to be upset at the messenger for bearing the message, but your Mom is still the one saying the words.

"Well, yes, honey. One of those perks is for bringing Frank back from the dead."

"There's a quest with a bonus perk point that I have to do in the next twenty-four hours if I'm going to do it at all. It's to go near Luther Ave by the mall and get raped."

Your Mom has stopped with the first forkful of noodles halfway to her mouth.

You look down at your clenched fists. "Sorry," you whisper, consciously relaxing your hands.

"Oh," Mom says. She speaks slowly, cautiously. "And you'd rather do that, instead of waiting until level fifteen for perks, since it's one more perk point either way?"

"No, Mom, I wasn't saying that, I was making a point about… about the tradeoff between perk points and not leading the happiest days. But I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, it was hurtful."

Your Mom eats several forkfuls of her noodles before she speaks again. "I believe that I see your point."

"It was a bad point. I shouldn't have made it."

"Why is that quest worth a bonus perk? It doesn't sound as hard as conquering a country."

You hesitate, but then reply. "I think it's a reward for beginner's courage. It's a quest I first saw at Lvl 1."

Your Mom's fork pauses in mid-air, then continues. "I accidentally gave that quest to you while you were leaving the house Sunday afternoon," she says. "That's how you found out I could give quests." She doesn't sound as disturbed as you feared, but she doesn't sound happy either.

You nod. "I haven't seen any other quests with perk points in them, just that and Become a Princess."

"I think," your Mom says after eating some more of her food, "upon further reflection, the advice I'd give you depends on whether we believe the Erogame is what it appears to be."

You tilt your head in puzzlement.

Your Mom is looking at you soberly. "If we think that you're going to be spending the rest of your life playing this game, as a game, with fixed rules laid out in something's rulebook, then I would advise you to call up the police and ask whether the rapist's other victims were physically injured. I'd say to think seriously about how unpleasant you would find the experience, and whether you might be ready for it tomorrow morning, with me waiting nearby in case something goes wrong. If your life is a cold-blooded game with fixed rules, you need every advantage you can find, because your life could depend on you having that extra perk point the game offers you in the beginning, the bonus perk that only requires courage instead of an epic quest. But if what's really going on is something else entirely, then one perk point within the game might not be important at all, compared to how you're doing mentally."

The hairs on your neck rise a little. "I haven't been thinking about the second set of possibilities because they're too disturbing and I got tired of freaking myself out every minute."

"Cindy. Honey. I know you better than that. You couldn't not think about disturbing possibilities to save your life."

You turn away from Mom's sympathetic look, staring at the empty pots on the stove. The painting in the hotel penthouse with you and Mom and Dad all together again didn't seem like the work of a cold-blooded rulebook, as you noticed at the time. "You know you're real. You know the people around me aren't figments of my imagination. You know I didn't commit suicide, blot out the memory, and end up with this as my afterlife. You should not be making me worry."

"Well," your Mom's voice says wryly from across the kitchen table, "I do know that I exist and that what's going on isn't you in a coma having hallucinations---"

"Being in a coma wouldn't let me understand calculus."

"That's all well and fine for you," says Mom. "I haven't learned any calculus. For all I know this could be me in a coma having hallucinations."

You roll your eyes. "Let's just agree that from now on there's no solipsism at family meals."

"Aha, just what I'd expect to hear from a figment of my---"

"Mom."

"Fine, fine," says Mom. She takes a swallow from her waterglass. "I suppose I should ask, did you encounter any hints before this that you're secretly God?"

"No. And how would that even happen? Haruhi Suzumiya is a fun anime, it makes no sense as something that would happen in real life."

Mom finishes chewing her latest forkful of noodles. "God can make herself be my daughter if that's what God wills," she says piously.

"Why would God want to do that? And why incarnate as me of all people on Earth?"

"Are you saying I'm not worthy to be the mother of God?"

You give Mom a flat look.

"Anyway," says your Mom, "suppose God chose someone to be at random and you happened to be it."

"Why did God stop pretending to be an overweight girl last Sunday afternoon, and start pretending to be the Erogamer instead?"

"Inscrutable divine reasons," your mother says, smiling.

"I don't know how to say this exactly, because I didn't know how my life would go, so I took too many accounting courses and not enough philosophy courses. But I'm pretty sure the philosophy referee is blowing a whistle and hustling that explanation off the field."

Rejecting an inadequate explanation causes your WIS to go up b$)!(*%#)($%#)@#%​

"Aliens, then," your Mom proposes. "Sunday afternoon is when they got here after detecting our radio signals."

"Sure, that's exactly what I'd do for first-contacting a primitive civilization, if I was on ultra-high-tech super-advanced drugs."

"The aliens don't think like we do," Mom says solemnly. "They evolved under different circumstances."

"Maybe I didn't pay enough attention in biology class, but I'm really not seeing the evolutionary logic that goes from life developing on a giant gas planet to 'make an all-powerful ero-themed game and target it on a girl in Norville, California.'"

"Time travelers?"

"Tell me what the Time Lords could possibly be thinking that ends with Cinderella Sheen seeing a faceful of violet text one Sunday afternoon."

"We're in the Matrix."

"Why would AIs do this any more than time travelers would."

"Because they were programmed to do that by time-traveling aliens who evolved under different circumstances!"

"We're not making progress here, Mom."

"A wizard did it?"

"Mom, it doesn't matter who you say did it, all of these explanations have the same problem."

"Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf!"

"Okay, that explanation has a new problem."

"Harmonic convergence, ancient astronauts, the ultimate mystery of the cosmos which no one can ever understand until they depart this life."

"Moooooooom," you whine.

"Wait, I have it," says Mom. "Our universe is a computer simulation, and the people running it decided to start up the Erogame."

"Why. Seriously, why would they spend I can't even imagine how much time computing all the atoms in all the galaxies going around the way science says they should, and then one Sunday afternoon toss that all out the window?"

"They like to watch the faces you make when you're confused."

You put your forefinger and thumb to your mouth and try to whistle, which just makes a pffft sound and a faint high-pitched noise.

Your Mom chuckles.

She dares to laugh at God's ineptness, does she? You try to whistle again, again, again, again, and on the sixth try you manage a piercing blast that makes Mom drop a noodle off her fork.

A skill has been created by a special action! Whistling has created the skill Whistling.

"Info, skills, whistling," you say out loud, while your Mom is hastily using a napkin to wipe the table.

Whistling: Lvl 1 (10%). Active.

You can whistle.

"Did you really just get…" says Mom.

"Yes, I did, now why would anyone do that, I can think of a lot of other things God ought to be prioritizing higher if Sunday is when God decided to start blatantly messing around after mostly hiding for the last billion years."

Your Mom gives a helpless shrug, and resumes eating her noodles.

"Those aren't even the possibilities that freak me out," you say. "The real existential nightmare is that this is an actual eroge in a higher dimension and something is playing me and everything I think is my choice is just them clicking their equivalent of rounded rectangles with text in them."

"I'm honestly sorry I brought up the subject," your mother says. "I guess it's less funny if it's you."

Okay, you're going back to thinking about the Mall Rapist. Even arguing with yourself about whether to go get raped in an alleyway is less disturbing than the thought of that inner argument being an illusion and the actual choice being controlled by something more real than you are, selecting options on Its computer screen.

Anyway.

Part of you is still shocked that your Mom didn't just say no, don't do it. But you know on some level that she's made more sacrifices in her life than you, and been through worse. Maybe she's thinking of a time she didn't grit her teeth and study hard for a test, and some part of her life went permanently down the drain, because she didn't sacrifice enough for that extra perk point.

Mom didn't say to do it. She said you should think about it seriously. You can see a perk point being worth that much consideration. You thought so yourself.

"What would you actually do?" you say. "If you were me. Would you go to Luther Avenue if the police said that none of the previous victims had other injuries? Tell me honestly."

Your Mom eats several more forkfuls of her fried-tofu noodles before speaking, the fork going down and up somewhat mechanically. Then she holds up a finger. "Let me finish eating first."

You realize what you just said.

"Never mind," you say, "you don't have to answer, I shouldn't have asked---"

"Let me finish eating first."

5.2.2 [WS,CA]: Enough Reality

Severe trigger warning: Discussion of non-ero rape.

Spoiler: Spoilery trigger details, do not read if you don't want major spoilers for this section.

Cindy is going to find out that when her Mom was a girl she was raped by her uncle and her father didn't believe her, and her Mom is going to say that she thinks it was the latter part that did the psychological damage much more than the rape itself. And that although Winifred Sheen knows the feeling is wrong, sometimes she feels indignant about people who only got raped claiming to be hurt so much, and she's wondered if they're just feeling broken because society told them to feel broken.

Minutes pass. Your Mom finishes off her noodles. The Sun rises higher over your backyard, visible out the kitchen's window. You try to say nevermind a few more times, feeling increasingly alarmed, and your Mom doesn't listen.

Finally Mom pushes away her bowl, and drops the silverware to lie at its side.

"I wasn't sure I was ever going to tell you this," your Mom says, "but I've realized that things have changed. With Erogame Logic around, you need to know this immediately. You've met Frank's family. You know your aunts, uncles, and cousins in Colorado. Where's my side?"

You stare at her in puzzlement. "Your parents died, Mom. Dad's family is all we have left."

"Why don't I ever talk about my parents? Why haven't I shown you any photos of them? Did either of my parents have any other relatives?"

You've never thought about this. "Because… it hurts too much to think about them? Wait, are you an alien and all of this is from your side of---"

"NO. No, dear." Mom's face is dead, like she's controlling every inch of life out of it. She sounds like she's forcing out the words one by one. "My father thought I was lying about what my uncle did to me."

You stare at her blankly.

Then you nod.

"My parents were alive as of four years ago, and the other branch of your family is in Montana. I don't think either of us should have anything to do with them. If Erogame Logic brings you into contact with anyone else whose last name is Greenwood, walk away."

You stare blankly at the kitchen table.

You nod again.

"I don't think you should make your decision about your quest on the basis of what I would do."

You nod.

"But the answer is that I would go."

You look up in total shock.

"It's not a politically correct thing to say," your mother says, her voice still sounding flat, "but at least in my experience, what happened after the rape was much worse than the rape itself. The rape was just my uncle holding me down to a hard basement floor and putting his penis in me. When my father slapped me afterwards and said I should stop lying, that was what hurt me, not the penis in my vagina. When I was older, I read things written by other survivors who talked about their rape putting them off men forever. I wondered why that didn't happen to me. I wondered if I was already too bad inside for the rape to break me properly, if I wasn't as innocent as I was supposed to be. Later I thought instead that maybe everyone spends so much time talking about the horrors of rape that it sets people up to act traumatized. I was young and the thrusts hurt me physically, but not nearly as much as breaking my leg falling off my bike, and that broken leg didn't put me off bicycles forever. I felt indignant inside, I thought that the women who just had the penis in their vagina had no right to act so hurt around people like me, whose fathers slapped them afterwards. I've never said any of that out loud before, because I know I'm wrong to feel that way, like I'm winning a victimhood contest. I didn't want to seem to be boasting to other survivors that I'm stronger than them. I didn't want to tell them their pain is their own fault for believing what society told them about how traumatized they're supposed to be. Maybe it's different for everyone. It probably is different for everyone. Maybe I was traumatized by my uncle's penis in my vagina, and I shifted the blame onto my father because from him I'd expected better. To be absolutely clear about this, if you are raped and you come to me and tell me it was traumatic, I will hug you and not argue. I know my feelings aren't right." Your mother takes a drink from her waterglass. "I'm sorry, my throat was dry. But I think that if I were raped by a stranger in a dark alleyway, and nobody slapped me afterwards, and afterwards he was sent to prison, well, I'd do that in exchange for a perk point, yes. The last time something like that happened it didn't go that nicely and I didn't get a perk point afterwards."

"I'm s-s-sorry," you say in a very tiny voice. CHECK your PRIVILEGE you FUCKING IDIOT.

Your mother looks suddenly alarmed, life returning to her eyes. "I didn't mean it that way! My life is not how you should measure the scale of bad things that can happen to you. It's good that nothing that bad has happened to you. You should not decide on the basis of what I'd do, and you absolutely shouldn't feel the way I feel."

"I'm really, really sorry," you say with your throat sticking. You are glad to God that you haven't already gotten yourself erogame-"raped" by a handsome, clean, courteous rapist and then gone to your mother asking for help sorting yourself out over part of you having enjoyed it.

Your Mom stands up, takes the bowl to the sink. She starts the water running, begins washing the bowl, the motions still looking mechanical.

"Maybe I shouldn't have said anything," your Mom says, her voice lowered again. "Don't mention it to your father after you bring him back from the dead. I didn't tell him because I wanted it all over, not to, to water it like a plant so it could grow into this huge shadow over my life. When I was sexually attracted to Frank, he would sometimes hold me down, and we both enjoyed that. I worried he'd have trouble enjoying it if he knew. I didn't think it made a difference what happened to me before, it seemed unfair that it might make a difference to him."

You stand up from the kitchen table, your chair rolling into the wall behind you with a thud. "Mom, I'm sorry, I can't handle any more of this right now---"

"I'm, I'm sorry---"

"No it's fine it's good you told me I promise I won't let it be a huge shadow I just need to go, go process."

You turn, then you turn again to go over to where your mother is standing and embrace her, because God and the Heavens forbid that she think you're abandoning her over this, and kiss her on her cheek and accept a kiss back and then you flee up the stairs to your room.

Then you shove your bedroom window all the way open and take out the bug screen, and parkour yourself onto the roof of your house. Because you are a living anime character, and lying on house rooftops to think is one of your many many privileges. Lately you've been using your bedroom in this house only for thinking about disturbing things, and you don't want to remember your bedroom that way once you're gone.

The roof tiles below you are sharp and hard, not pleasant for lying on, but the sky above you is blue and has pretty clouds in it today.

You stare up at them for a long time.

…did your mother always have this backstory? No, no the Erogame did not do this to her retroactively, this was always true and you didn't realize. People who don't want to see their parents again are more common than orphans. Especially orphans who have no other family left anywhere in the world and who never show any pictures of their parents or talk about how they grew up. You should have noticed that the hole in your family was larger than two dead grandparents, you just took things for granted.

You feel like you want to cry, but can't cry, because these aren't your tears to shed and you don't have the right.

Luther and Sixth. You should think about Luther and Sixth instead.

You swing back into your room, to pick up your new cellphone, and then parkour yourself back up onto the roof again.

None of the Mall Rapist's other victims have been seriously injured beyond the rape itself, as far as you can tell from the local news and police blotter. Maybe he hits them, but if so, the brief paragraphs don't bother recording it. He wears gloves, and a mask that covers his whole face, and…

Oh, look at that. He wears a fucking business suit.

He probably isn't smelly. He probably sounds polite while he's holding the knife, and doesn't hit you if you're obedient. That's what a rape should be like for a brave Lvl 1 character.

You run shaky fingers through your hair, trying to calm yourself. The voice inside you that was trying hard to imagine this as an adventure has gone silent after hearing what your Mom said, and after reading that there were other victims who weren't erogame characters. What's left is a very loud voice in your head that worries this would be a horrible, horrible idea and that you are not uninnocent enough for this to not break you. Society has told you many times that you will be traumatized if you are raped, and you are neither sure that society is wrong, nor sure that you can just choose to disobey the instruction if it is wrong. Telling yourself "it's just a penis in my vagina" might be doing its own type of violence to your mental integrity, to the part of you that gave it more meaning than that.

This, this isn't something you need to decide now. You have until tomorrow morning to take any action on this, you might have higher LST or PRV then. Or higher ERO. Or just higher LVL.

…would there have been fewer victims if you'd ended this quest earlier? Would the Mall Rapist have been arrested right away, or beaten up by the Redcaps, if you'd just gone and finished this quest immediately? Did the Erogame put this rapist here in the first place? Most rapists don't wear business suits. Is this whole thing your fault, in a way?

You're not going to think like that. You can't live like that.

And you're not doing anything about this right now, so you shouldn't think about it right now. The only question you're facing now, this minute, is what to do with the rest of this morning, and whether to take a first perk or try waiting longer for more marshmallows.

You try to refocus your mind.

You can't.

Clouds drift by overhead.

"Erogame," you say, with your voice wavering a little, "I'd like a distraction, please."

More clouds drift by overhead.

And then finally, your phone plays its ringtone, showing an increasingly familiar number on the screen.

You pick up.

"Hey, Starry. How are you doing?"​

"Hi Charles. I'm free and out of the hotel room. When we first met, I paused time at a stoplight."

"Christ, Cindy, are you okay? You sound awful."​

Hearing the alarm in Charles's voice makes you feel better, for reasons you choose not to contemplate right now. "Yeah, I am feeling awful. Nothing to do with the Arcadias. Just… I just learned something about someone I met that would violate her privacy to repeat to you."

"Oh. Don't repeat it, then."​

"The thing with the Arcadias ended just fine."

"Good to know."​

Charles sounds cautious.

You sigh into the phone. "Don't worry, I'm not really mad at you. I could have told you to call the police. I didn't."

"That's what I thought. I didn't see any options short of that, what with my being in Nevada at the time. Was there something I could have done?"​

"You could have, say, NOT encouraged them to tease me until I couldn't hold back an orgasm any longer, followed by tickling me, over and over and over again."

"Was that out of bounds? If they were going to torture you regardless, I thought it might as well be a way that turned me on. Didn't you say earlier that knowing I'm turned on helps you handle it?"​

You growl at the phone, and then, in case the low grumble doesn't travel through the ether, say, "Grrrrrr! Arg!"

"I see you've had an orgasm."​

"What?" you say in surprise. "How can you tell?"

"Your growl doesn't have the sensual undertone it does when you're horny and desperate. Did they force you to come or was it your decision?"​

You hesitate. No, you are not going to accept pushback on this, Charles made it very clear that he was giving suggestions, not orders. He's not allowed to flip out because you took him at his word. "My decision."

"That's good to hear."​

You blink in mixed confusion and relief. "Did you want me to come?"

"No, my fantasy was for you to obediently deny yourself for me, being teased more and more and more until you were reduced to absolute desperation by the next time I got to Norville, and you greeted me naked and begging on your knees for an orgasm, writhing and whining without my even touching you, offering to do absolutely anything. I'm glad to know it's possible for you to do something other than what I fantasize about."​

You sigh into the phone, but your lips have turned up without your choosing it. "Charles…"

"That was the other reason I didn't suggest a way for you to come. I thought you might become desperate enough to do it of your own will eventually, if you could will it at all."​

"God damn it, Charles. I really didn't end up as your slave, honestly I didn't. It wasn't that close a call."

"I wasn't sure you'd know if you had."​

"You've seen me disobey you."

"My conscious orders, yes. I wasn't as sure about whether you'd been reshaped to conform to my sexual fantasies, including the ones about punishing you. You push an unreasonable number of my buttons."​

You sigh into the phone again, still smiling. "That's just a sexual improbability. But I don't blame you for checking."

"I would, in fact, be turned on by you teasing yourself again for me now. Will you?"​

You hesitate. "No," you say finally. "I think I want a break from that for a while."

"And if I ordered you?"​

"I'm not offering you the right to give me that order."

"Suppose I said I was going to punish you for coming. Yes, it was just a suggestion, but I'm going to punish you anyway."​

"I wouldn't feel right about being punished for violating suggestions, and I think you shouldn't do it. No, let me rephrase, you shouldn't do that so I wouldn't go along with it." Saying this feels scary, but the part of you that isn't scared feels like it's necessary, that you have to utter these words to protect yourself. Protect yourself from you.

"How about if I was there and wanted to randomly punish you because I felt like it?"​

Again the corners of your lips turn up in an unwilled smile. "That sounds more negotiable."

"If that's not free will, I'm probably never going to be able to tell the difference. Starry, I really have to run now, it's a busy day for me. I'm glad you're out and safe."​

"I have multiple options for housing you now if you stop by Norville," you say quickly. "We could even get the penthouse again if you wanted it, I earned some money. And I can get at least one Arcadia twin to have sex with you while you're here, maybe both of them." You feel that you have been an impressively good girl in this regard, and you're hoping for a pat on the head that acknowledges it.

"I've told my company I want to overnight in Norville if possible, and I promise I'll do that as soon as I can. Though let's maybe save threesomes for after our second date at least."​

The words I love you occur to you, even though you know they're not true and probably won't be until you've had more time to be with him in person. "I like you," you say instead.

You think you can hear the shape of smiling lips in his voice.

"I like you too."​

The call clicks off.

"That went well," you say to the air, to the open sky.

Part of you is relaxing, now, discarding its fleeting mental images of Charles being angry at you. Of Charles trying to punish you for the orgasm, demanding that you always stay teased, becoming too controlling too fast for you to handle. There seems to be some part of you that always expects the worst of Charles, no matter how many times he's given the right answers before. Something in you always waiting for him to fail, for the relationship to explode, or implode, or maybe just plode.

Always bracing for the blow to fall, for the happiness to be taken away.

That's not how Erogame Logic works, you don't think. True love is a thing in eroge, not every path in every game ends in tragedy. But you keep getting anxious anyway until the next time you hear Charles's voice and he gives the right answers again. Not anxious about the next challenge to overcome, anxious that everything is about to fall apart beyond repair. Maybe you've internalized too much of the voice of the Internet and its endless criticism, sparing nothing its gloomsaying and finding nothing worthy of celebration, not even in love.

Your thoughts go back to the day's schedule and perks, moving more easily this time. You're still upset about what happened to your mother, you're still unnerved about whether to forgo the extra perk or go it. But you can think about other things now. Talking to Charles seems to be good for you in ways you don't fully understand. Maybe it's just the reminder that sometimes, things do turn out okay.

Your mother will be okay too, possibly? She seems to be doing okay.

She told you she didn't want this to be a huge shadow over her life. You told her it wouldn't be a huge shadow between you. You should listen to both her and yourself.

And even in the case where it turns out Mom's not doing as well as she thinks, where she's been properly deep-down wounded the way that story logic demands, the flip side of story logic is that problems can be solved. Maybe Mom just needs her own therapeutic dosage of LST, PRV, and Erogame Logic. Weird as that is to think, it's what Mom said she wanted, and you think you understand better why she said so. She's not the same as you, but she's also had enough reality in her life.

You guess you could mark it down as one more reason to forge ahead in the face of higher ERO, and go on leveling until you have the power to give Mom literally anything she needs.

So…

Perks.

Mad Inventor has to wait for ERO 30, so you need to save one perk point for that. You need to save one perk point for emergencies. That leaves one perk you could take today.

If you take a perk at all.

…do you believe the Erogame is what it appears to be?

(VOTING IS OPEN LOCKED UNTIL 24 HOURS AFTER THIS POST'S TIMESTAMP.)

[ ][REAL] Knowing as little as you do, you'd better take the Erogame's appearances at face value. No perks as yet, maybe you can hit level 15 in another week and get More Marshmallows.
[ ][REAL] Whatever is going on, you suspect that minmaxing perks isn't really what your future will be about. You can take a perk now if you want.

What perk, assuming the vote above goes for taking a perk?

RANKED VOTE, rank up to 9 [PERK] choices, lower numbers are more preferred.

Example: [1][PERK] True Love Conquers All.

Only one perk option wins; you're not taking multiple perks right now. The ranked vote is so that you don't need to worry about what others will find popular when selecting your most favored perk; you can still rank other choices.

You may vote for a [PERK] regardless of how you voted in [REAL].

The full perks list can be found in 2.8.2.

[ ][PERK] Ero-Inventory.
[ ][PERK] Ero-Travel.
[ ][PERK] Mad Scientist.
[ ][PERK] Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder.
[ ][PERK] No perk right now, but maybe soon.
[ ][PERK] (Write-in.)

What are you doing this morning? (RANKED VOTE, rank up to 9 [DO] choices.)

[ ][DO] Take Blake's virginity.
[ ][DO] Go on a date with Karinna Coral to deal with Nathaniel Miroa the drink-spiker.
-[ ][KAR] Give Karinna your special present: a blackmail video and one man's pride ready to be snuffed. (Big reaction boost.)
-[ ][KAR] Give her the present, but ask her to wait on crushing Jeremy Willagher until Raven is done milking him for cash. (Medium reaction boost.)
-[ ][KAR] Reserve that card to play later.
-[ ][KAR] Actually, don't do this with Karinna at all, handle Miroa yourself.
[ ][DO] Go to campus, learn things, see whether anything interesting is going on. (Leads to interaction with the Buffy fans from the arcade.)
[ ][DO] Shopping.
-[ ][SHOP] With Tammi Arcadia.
-[ ][SHOP] By yourself.
[ ][DO] Start the Better Than That Ponce quest.
[ ][DO] Doing something ero might cheer you up further.
-[ ][ERO] Ask a stranger to have sex with you. You want to prove you can.
-[ ][ERO] Explore the alchemy system more thoroughly, trying various nectars. You could be missing out on all sorts of useful benefits. (Synergizes with Mad Scientist.)
-[ ][ERO] Walk around town in just high heels and thighhighs.
-[ ][ERO] Find cute boys, wriggle on their laps to grind Clothes Can't Stop Me, make them come in their pants.
-[ ][ERO] Write-in.
[ ][DO] Take a long bus trip to meet Charles. (Ignored unless the perk vote also says to take Ero-Travel.)
-[ ][BUS] See how interesting ERO 29 lets you make a bus trip.
-[ ][BUS] Study engineering things quietly in your seat, preparing for Mad Inventor.
[ ][DO] Seek employment at Passionate Nights.
[ ][DO] Test how much XP you can generate by posting sexy vids of yourself (delays perking even if that was otherwise chosen above).
[ ][DO] Get the rape over with instead of fretting about it all day.
[ ][DO] Write-in.

(VOTING IS OPEN LOCKED UNTIL 24 HOURS AFTER THIS POST'S TIMESTAMP.)

5.2.3 [WS]: Uncertain of the End

A brief pair of tiny updates and a vote. In part to lock the previous vote, but also I need to try doing more and shorter updates anyway.

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (28,150 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 32/340
SUB: 450/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 17
FUK: 17
PRV: 24
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 3
Money: $9009

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 64 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 1952-2095]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Task: DO

Options:
(Write-in) Study a bit. Maybe try to make some progress on your PhD plan...
Doing something ero might cheer you up further.
Get the rape over with instead of fretting about it all day.
Go on a date with Karinna Coral to deal with Nathaniel Miroa the drink-spiker.
Go to campus, learn things, see whether anything interesting is going on. (Leads to interaction with the Buffy fans from the arcade.)
See if you can actually help the police catch the Mall Rapist. Maybe it has a hidden goal?
Seek employment at Passionate Nights.
Shopping.
Start the Better Than That Ponce quest.
Take a long bus trip to meet Charles. (Ignored unless the perk vote also says to take Ero-Travel.)
Take Blake's virginity.
Test how much XP you can generate by posting sexy vids of yourself (delays perking even if was otherwise chosen above).
Test how much XP you can generate by posting sexy vids of yourself (delays perking even if that was otherwise chosen above).
Write-in. Go pay back the $120 that Bryan Landau gave us at the Purring Kitten. If he asks, tell him we got it for letting ourselves be tied up and tickled.
Write-in. Learn some Capoeira. (Either find an instructor or try to learn from basic online videos.) Hopefully it counts as a dance subskill but can be used for some basic self defense.

Winner: Start the Better Than That Ponce quest.
[1] Aoinfinity
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] GGS109
[1] january1may
[1] Lavida
[1] ShaperV
[1] Sirrocco
[1] SoulofaGremlin
[2] Gingganz
[2] Guile
[2] Waffle_Iron
[2] wasprider
[2] Xenia
[3] Blackshard
[3] Ephemeral
[3] Grollo
[3] Jaso
[3] Nordvegr
[3] pepperjack
[3] Prustan
[4] kimagurena65536
[4] Mei Mei
[4] napkintooth
[4] zup
[5] DarthSquidious
[5] Hyperion042
[5] Sasha
[5] Strelok
[8] fluxoid
[-] Flashbunny
[-] LancerisDead
[-] lucero
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle

First Runner Up: Take Blake's virginity.
[1] Gingganz
[1] Jaso
[1] Mei Mei
[1] napkintooth
[1] pepperjack
[1] Prustan
[1] wasprider
[1] Xenia
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] fluxoid
[2] GGS109
[2] Nordvegr
[2] Sirrocco
[2] Strelok
[2] zup
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Hyperion042
[3] ShaperV
[3] SoulofaGremlin
[4] Ephemeral
[4] Lavida
[4] The Undead Martyr
[5] Grollo
[5] Guile
[5] kimagurena65536
[7] january1may
[9] DarthSquidious
[-] Blackshard
[-] Flashbunny
[-] LancerisDead
[-] lucero
[-] Sasha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] Waffle_Iron

Second Runner Up: Get the rape over with instead of fretting about it all day.
[1] Blackshard
[1] fluxoid
[1] Grollo
[1] Hyperion042
[1] Sasha
[1] Soul Shocker
[1] Strelok
[1] The Undead Martyr
[1] zup
[2] LancerisDead
[2] ScrewFate
[2] trooperist
[2] VanillaTentacle
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] Mei Mei
[3] napkintooth
[3] wasprider
[3] Xenia
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] january1may
[7] Ephemeral
[7] Guile
[9] Gingganz
[9] pepperjack
[9] Prustan
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Flashbunny
[-] GGS109
[-] Jaso
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Lavida
[-] lucero
[-] Nordvegr
[-] ShaperV
[-] Sirrocco
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] Waffle_Iron

Third Runner Up: Doing something ero might cheer you up further.
[1] DarthSquidious
[1] LancerisDead
[1] ScrewFate
[1] trooperist
[1] VanillaTentacle
[2] Blackshard
[2] Grollo
[2] Mei Mei
[2] ShaperV
[3] Strelok
[4] fluxoid
[4] Nordvegr
[4] Sasha
[4] Xenia
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] pepperjack
[5] Prustan
[5] zup
[6] Ephemeral
[6] Gingganz
[6] napkintooth
[6] The Undead Martyr
[6] wasprider
[8] january1may
[8] kimagurena65536
[8] SoulofaGremlin
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Flashbunny
[-] GGS109
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] Jaso
[-] Lavida
[-] lucero
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Waffle_Iron

Honorable Mention: Go to campus, learn things, see whether anything interesting is going on. (Leads to interaction with the Buffy fans from the arcade.)
[1] Ephemeral
[1] Guile
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] january1may
[2] Jaso
[2] kimagurena65536
[2] pepperjack
[2] Prustan
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] fluxoid
[3] GGS109
[3] trooperist
[4] ShaperV
[5] Nordvegr
[5] SoulofaGremlin
[5] wasprider
[6] Lavida
[7] Gingganz
[7] napkintooth
[8] DarthSquidious
[-] Blackshard
[-] Flashbunny
[-] Grollo
[-] Hyperion042
[-] LancerisDead
[-] lucero
[-] Mei Mei
[-] Sasha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Strelok
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Test how much XP you can generate by posting sexy vids of yourself (delays perking even if that was otherwise chosen above).
[1] kimagurena65536
[1] Nordvegr
[2] Hyperion042
[2] Sasha
[2] Soul Shocker
[3] LancerisDead
[3] Lavida
[3] ScrewFate
[3] The Undead Martyr
[3] VanillaTentacle
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] Jaso
[4] pepperjack
[4] Prustan
[5] Blackshard
[5] Gingganz
[6] DarthSquidious
[6] fluxoid
[6] Guile
[6] ShaperV
[6] Xenia
[7] Aoinfinity
[7] Strelok
[8] Ephemeral
[-] Flashbunny
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] january1may
[-] lucero
[-] Mei Mei
[-] napkintooth
[-] Sirrocco
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] trooperist
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] wasprider
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Go on a date with Karinna Coral to deal with Nathaniel Miroa the drink-spiker.
[1] Waffle_Iron
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Lavida
[2] napkintooth
[2] The Undead Martyr
[3] Gingganz
[3] Sasha
[3] Sirrocco
[3] zup
[4] Blackshard
[4] Guile
[4] SoulofaGremlin
[5] Hyperion042
[5] Xenia
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] Grollo
[6] january1may
[7] DarthSquidious
[9] wasprider
[-] Flashbunny
[-] fluxoid
[-] GGS109
[-] Jaso
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] LancerisDead
[-] lucero
[-] Mei Mei
[-] Nordvegr
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prustan
[-] ScrewFate
[-] ShaperV
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Strelok
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle

Honorable Mention: Shopping.
[2] SoulofaGremlin
[3] Guile
[3] january1may
[4] DarthSquidious
[4] GGS109
[4] Hyperion042
[4] wasprider
[5] Aoinfinity
[5] ShaperV
[6] kimagurena65536
[6] zup
[7] fluxoid
[7] Lavida
[7] pepperjack
[7] Prustan
[7] The Undead Martyr
[8] Gingganz
[8] napkintooth
[-] Blackshard
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Flashbunny
[-] Grollo
[-] Jaso
[-] LancerisDead
[-] lucero
[-] Mei Mei
[-] Nordvegr
[-] Sasha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Strelok
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] Xenia

Honorable Mention: Seek employment at Passionate Nights.
[2] DarthSquidious
[3] kimagurena65536
[3] Soul Shocker
[4] Gingganz
[5] Ephemeral
[5] fluxoid
[5] Lavida
[5] napkintooth
[6] SoulofaGremlin
[6] Strelok
[7] wasprider
[8] Aoinfinity
[8] pepperjack
[8] Prustan
[-] Blackshard
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Flashbunny
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jaso
[-] LancerisDead
[-] lucero
[-] Mei Mei
[-] Nordvegr
[-] Sasha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] ShaperV
[-] Sirrocco
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Task: PERK

Options:
Cinnamon Roll
Absolute Territory.
Cinammon Roll.
Cinnamon Roll:
Ero-Inventory.
Ero-Travel.
Everywhere Erogenous
Fake ID
I'm Not Explaining This Again.
In Nomine Status Quo
Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder.
'Little Death' Note
Mad Inventor
Mad Scientist
More Competitive Than You
No Comparision
No perk right now, but maybe soon.
Perfect Subbing.
Poly Graph Test
Prize
Sex God
Sin of Pride
That Is Not How Hypnosis Works
The Cand|e in the Mirrors
True Love Conquers All
Urban Legend.
What Are You Doing Here
You Didn't Hear That

Winner: No perk right now, but maybe soon.
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] Flashbunny
[1] Gingganz
[1] Hyperion042
[1] january1may
[1] Jaso
[1] kimagurena65536
[1] Mei Mei
[1] pepperjack
[1] Prustan
[1] Sasha
[1] ShaperV
[1] Sirrocco
[1] Strelok
[1] Waffle_Iron
[1] wasprider
[1] zup
[2] GGS109
[2] Lavida
[4] LancerisDead
[4] ScrewFate
[4] VanillaTentacle
[6] fluxoid
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Blackshard
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] lucero
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nordvegr
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] Xenia

First Runner Up: Mad Inventor
[1] Blackshard
[1] GGS109
[1] LancerisDead
[1] Lavida
[1] Nordvegr
[1] ScrewFate
[1] VanillaTentacle
[2] Grollo
[2] pepperjack
[2] Prustan
[2] Sasha
[2] ShaperV
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] Mei Mei
[5] DarthSquidious
[5] january1may
[9] kimagurena65536
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Flashbunny
[-] fluxoid
[-] Gingganz
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] Jaso
[-] lucero
[-] napkintooth
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] Strelok
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] wasprider
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Second Runner Up: Mad Scientist
[1] napkintooth
[1] Xenia
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] Gingganz
[2] Hyperion042
[2] Mei Mei
[3] fluxoid
[3] january1may
[3] kimagurena65536
[3] Lavida
[3] pepperjack
[3] Prustan
[3] Sasha
[3] ShaperV
[4] DarthSquidious
[4] GGS109
[4] Strelok
[5] wasprider
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Blackshard
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Flashbunny
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Jaso
[-] LancerisDead
[-] lucero
[-] Nordvegr
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] zup

Third Runner Up: Ero-Travel.
[2] Ephemeral
[2] lucero
[2] Xenia
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] GGS109
[3] Grollo
[3] LancerisDead
[3] Nordvegr
[3] ScrewFate
[3] VanillaTentacle
[4] january1may
[4] pepperjack
[4] Prustan
[5] fluxoid
[5] Strelok
[8] Aoinfinity
[-] Blackshard
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Flashbunny
[-] Gingganz
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] Jaso
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Lavida
[-] Mei Mei
[-] napkintooth
[-] Sasha
[-] ShaperV
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] wasprider
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder.
[1] fluxoid
[2] Jaso
[2] LancerisDead
[2] ScrewFate
[2] VanillaTentacle
[2] wasprider
[3] Ephemeral
[3] lucero
[4] Xenia
[6] january1may
[6] pepperjack
[6] Prustan
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Blackshard
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Flashbunny
[-] GGS109
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Lavida
[-] Mei Mei
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nordvegr
[-] Sasha
[-] ShaperV
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] Strelok
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Ero-Inventory.
[1] DarthSquidious
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] kimagurena65536
[2] Nordvegr
[3] Strelok
[3] Xenia
[4] fluxoid
[4] ShaperV
[4] wasprider
[5] pepperjack
[5] Prustan
[-] Blackshard
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Flashbunny
[-] GGS109
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jaso
[-] LancerisDead
[-] Lavida
[-] lucero
[-] Mei Mei
[-] napkintooth
[-] Sasha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Cinnamon Roll:
[1] Grollo
[3] Gingganz
[3] Jaso
[4] Aoinfinity
[5] kimagurena65536
[5] ShaperV
[-] Blackshard
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Flashbunny
[-] fluxoid
[-] GGS109
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] LancerisDead
[-] Lavida
[-] lucero
[-] Mei Mei
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nordvegr
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prustan
[-] Sasha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] Strelok
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] wasprider
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: What Are You Doing Here
[1] Ephemeral
[1] lucero
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Blackshard
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Flashbunny
[-] fluxoid
[-] GGS109
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jaso
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] LancerisDead
[-] Lavida
[-] Mei Mei
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nordvegr
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prustan
[-] Sasha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] ShaperV
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] Strelok
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] wasprider
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: True Love Conquers All
[1] Aoinfinity
[2] Hyperion042
[-] Blackshard
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Flashbunny
[-] fluxoid
[-] GGS109
[-] Gingganz
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] january1may
[-] Jaso
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] LancerisDead
[-] Lavida
[-] lucero
[-] Mei Mei
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nordvegr
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prustan
[-] Sasha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] ShaperV
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] Strelok
[-] The Undead Martyr
[-] trooperist
[-] VanillaTentacle
[-] Waffle_Iron
[-] wasprider
[-] Xenia
[-] zup

Total No. of Voters: 37

--[X] And drop a point into ERO to unlock it.
No. of Votes: 6
VanillaTentacle
Blackshard
LancerisDead
Nordvegr
Sasha
ScrewFate

-[X] Send them to Charles (first?)
No. of Votes: 2
SoulofaGremlin
Nordvegr

-[X] As soon as we gain 30 ERO naturally.
No. of Votes: 1
Grollo

Task: REAL

[X][REAL] Knowing as little as you do, you'd better take the Erogame's appearances at face value. No perks as yet, maybe you can hit level 15 in another week and get More Marshmallows.
No. of Votes: 18
SoulofaGremlin
Aoinfinity
Elitist Oars
Flashbunny
Grollo
Hyperion042
january1may
kimagurena65536
Mei Mei
pepperjack
Prustan
Sasha
Sirrocco
Strelok
The Undead Martyr
Waffle_Iron
wasprider
zup

[x][REAL] Whatever is going on, you suspect that minmaxing perks isn't really what your future will be about. You can take a perk now if you want.
No. of Votes: 16
glowarama
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
Ephemeral
fluxoid
GGS109
Gingganz
Jaso
LancerisDead
Lavida
napkintooth
Nordvegr
ScrewFate
ShaperV
VanillaTentacle
Xenia

Task: ERO

-[X][ERO] Walk around town in just high heels and thighhighs.
No. of Votes: 10
VanillaTentacle
Grollo
LancerisDead
Mei Mei
pepperjack
Prustan
ScrewFate
SoulofaGremlin
Strelok
trooperist

-[X][ERO] Explore the alchemy system more thoroughly, trying various nectars. You could be missing out on all sorts of useful benefits. (Synergizes with Mad Scientist.)
No. of Votes: 9
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
kimagurena65536
napkintooth
Sasha
ShaperV
The Undead Martyr
wasprider
Xenia

-[X][ERO] Find cute boys, wriggle on their laps to grind Clothes Can't Stop Me, make them come in their pants.
No. of Votes: 7
fluxoid
Aoinfinity
Elitist Oars
Grollo
kimagurena65536
Nordvegr
zup

-[X][ERO] Ask a stranger to have sex with you. You want to prove you can.
No. of Votes: 6
VanillaTentacle
Ephemeral
Gingganz
LancerisDead
ScrewFate
Strelok

Task: SHOP

-[X][SHOP] With Tammi Arcadia.
No. of Votes: 12
SoulofaGremlin
Aoinfinity
DarthSquidious
Gingganz
Guile
Hyperion042
january1may
kimagurena65536
Lavida
The Undead Martyr
wasprider
zup

-[X][SHOP] By yourself.
No. of Votes: 6
fluxoid
GGS109
napkintooth
pepperjack
Prustan
ShaperV

--[X][SHOP] If convenient, ask Mom and/or Charles for ideas.
No. of Votes: 1
january1may

Task: KAR

-[X][KAR] Give Karinna your special present: a blackmail video and one man's pride ready to be snuffed. (Big reaction boost.)
No. of Votes: 10
SoulofaGremlin
Aoinfinity
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
Grollo
Hyperion042
Sasha
The Undead Martyr
Waffle_Iron
Xenia

-[X][KAR] Give her the present, but ask her to wait on crushing Jeremy Willagher until Raven is done milking him for cash. (Medium reaction boost.)
No. of Votes: 4
Lavida
Elitist Oars
Ephemeral
Gingganz

-[X][KAR] Reserve that card to play later.
No. of Votes: 3
zup
napkintooth
Sirrocco

-[X][KAR] Actually, don't do this with Karinna at all, handle Miroa yourself.
No. of Votes: 2
Guile
wasprider

-[X][KAR] Reserve the Jeremy Willagher card to play later.
No. of Votes: 1
january1may

Task: BUS

-[X][BUS] Study engineering things quietly in your seat, preparing for Mad Inventor.
No. of Votes: 3
fluxoid
napkintooth
wasprider

-[X][BUS] See how interesting ERO 29 lets you make a bus trip.
No. of Votes: 2
pepperjack
Prustan

Task: DO

[X][DO] Go to campus, learn things, see whether anything interesting is going on. (Leads to interaction with the Buffy fans from the arcade.)
No. of Votes: 1
mpop

-[X][DO] Change hairstyles to something new first; that way we won't freak out Charles by still having Coals Relighted.
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536

-[X][DO] In prep for maybe eventually taking the Sex God perk, our porn name is Goddess Ostara.
No. of Votes: 1
kimagurena65536

Task: INV

-[X][INV] Not until you reach ERO 30 naturally.
No. of Votes: 1
january1may

Task: PON

-[X][PON] Wait for how it goes before taking the Mad Inventor perk, if applicable.
No. of Votes: 1
january1may

Total No. of Voters: 37

You stare up at the sky, the coarse rooftop tiles still digging in to your back.

Whether the Erogame is real… well, in one sense, it can't be. What's really, ultimately going on is not that Erogames are a thing and sometimes they spontaneously boot up on a randomly selected person in a randomly selected solar system. There's something behind the Erogame, something that caused it.

But that doesn't mean you can rely on limited perk points not being important.

You suspect that you're not just going to spend the rest of your life playing through a rulebook. But you don't know. You don't know the deeper story.

And if you're not getting Mad Inventor for it, which you aren't at ERO 29, then it's not worth blowing the prospect of More Marshmallows just yet.

(GOD FUCKING DAMN IT.)

It's not a firm decision, you felt pretty torn about it, you may revisit it when you get ERO 30. But of the perks you can get at ERO 29… none call to you quite loudly enough to override the ominous dry whispers of the voice of patience.

Then what to do today instead?

Thoughts drift in and out of your mind, like clouds in the sky above you.

You close your eyes, putting your right hand on your chest, where your heart should be, if your inner reality hasn't been replaced by infinite vaginas. You can feel something beating in there, anyway.

You think… after the shock you just got… that you want to do something kind today. Something life-affirming, in the face of the awfulness of reality. Or in the face of the existential disquiet that surrounds the prospect of replacing reality with something else.

There's the Better Than That Ponce quest, which at the very least helps your Mom and Felice, and possibly a good number more people than that. If you're holding off on the Mad Inventor perk, then you might as well go ahead on what you can do at ERO 29.

Or… go back to Blake Layton and properly sex him. Not just because you want to fulfill your oath before things get even weirder God-knows-how. It seems like a callback to simpler and more innocent times, the distant era of Sunday. You should return to Blake while you can still be the shy-but-sexual Starry that he remembers, and have that girl be real.

Or do both. Both sounds good. You need to remember that you can do more than one thing in a day, now that you have enough energy for that.

When you descend the stairs to the first floor of your house again, you're wearing your Sexy Nurse costume, more or less because it's the only clean outfit you have left besides Sexy Maid. You aren't in the mood for serious shopping, but you're going to have to hit Goodwill again soon. Your lightweight backpack dangles from one hand.

Mom is stashing her worn laptop into her briefcase as you descend the stairs, and you pause for a moment, watching her. She's dressed in her work clothes, a simple black skirt and blouse that make her look as professional as a mildly overweight woman ever can, and she's preparing for her workday with a focused look.

"Hi?" you say, and Mom startles before she finishes zipping her bag shut. You probably activated High-Heeled Stealth without meaning to.

"Hi, honey. Bye, honey. I'm off to---"

You zip across the floor at High-Heeled speed and hug Mom as hard as you can, producing a satisfying whoof of expelled air as she straightens in your arms.

Then you pull yourself slightly back, to look Mom in the eyes. "I'm okay now," you say, your voice only a little tense. "I just needed to process."

Your Mom nods, and you think you can see her neck trembling slightly.

"I'm not going to do it right away, but… I think I might go to Luther early next morning. I'm not sure."

Your Mom flinches, and you can feel the tension in her beneath your hands. "I shouldn't have said anything," she whispers. "Cindy, I was wrong, you shouldn't---"

"It's not… totally for the perk," you say, surprised by the own steadiness in your voice. "Your story made me realize, I've just been, been waiting for the awful thing to happen to me, because I know it does in erogames. Maybe the point of this isn't to show a courageous low-level player how wonderful ero rape can be, or to offer me a big reward for doing something I'm scared of. Maybe the point is that afterwards I've done it and I haven't broken, just like you didn't break. Then I'm done waiting and done being scared and I can go play the rest of my erogame. Maybe that's what the perk is there to get me to do."

"Oh," your mother says in a wavery voice. "But what if you're my innocent girl who isn't already as broken inside as I was, and you're horribly traumatized like everyone else says?"

You exhale. "Then I put some of my stat points into LST or PRV, and I'm fine," you say, pronouncing the words like you believe in them.

"Perv. You have a Perversion stat too."

You nod, cheeks heating only slightly. "Uh, yeah, I was too embarrassed to mention it earlier. It, what you said, it didn't form a huge dark shadow over our relationship or anything, but I think I actually believe now that my mother is not a pure innocent flower who needs to be shielded from anything sexy, which is good, because I can talk about more things with you." Though definitely not everything.

Your Mom takes a step forward and hugs you, returning the embrace you gave her.

It's okay. It's going to be okay.

"It should go without saying," you say into her shoulder, "that, if there's anything you want from the Erogame, anything that I might be able to give you now or someday, just let me know. I'm going to start the Ponce quest today, the one you gave me yesterday, so I can get you a higher BOD score. And LST and PRV too, once I figure out how. And I'm going to make you queen of somewhere nice, and if you want something more, like being worshipped as a goddess, I'll figure out how to do that too."

"T-thanks, honey." Mom's arms are shaking more. "I'll wake up early tomorrow. Don't go to Luther without me." It's the weakest-voiced absolute command you've ever heard.

"Oh, and, I was going to do this earlier, but somebody made me wash dishes and I forgot. Hold on, let me see if this works." You step back from the hug and reach into your backpack, whispering an attempted command to whatever power deposited Tammi's check.

A small roll of paper bills touches your searching hand, and you draw it out.

Your Mom's eyes go to the money, then back to your face. She smiles, then, a little sadly. "You need to build up your own finances first. That's the rule when a chick is leaving the nest. You don't have to give me any of the money you earned as a waitress---"

"I earned seven thousand dollars last night, for, uh, stuff. That's how much I can earn in one day at level nine if I get a good quest. This is ten percent of that, so seven hundred dollars." You take Mom's fingers and fold it around the roll of bills. "I, it's, it's not finished, Mom, we're not r-rich yet, but, but I think that supernatural sex workers don't get cash crunches. You shouldn't quit your job now, because it's not certain, but, you probably can in a week. It's, it's almost over."

You can hear Mom's breath hitching, over and over, as she tries to breathe.

"Now," you say, "this is my money, so, so m-my rules, Mom. You're not allowed to save more than half of this, or use it to pay bills, or anything else mature and grownup. You need to spend at least three hundred and fifty dollars on, on frivolity and clothes and pointless things and being happy."

Mom's face crumples, "I can't, I can't," she covers her face with her hand that isn't holding fifty-dollar bills, little choking sounds coming from behind her fingers.

"That's all I was going to say and I think I should go now," you can't watch this, you can't look at it any more than you could stare straight into the sun, so you spin on one high heel and turn to go back up the stairs.

Your Mom's voice comes from behind you, stopping you.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"You're w-welcome," you whisper, without looking back at the unbearable light of the sun, and continue up the stairs.

5.3: Ways and Means

So you parkoured out of your bedroom window, then took a running jump from your roof onto a neighboring house that looked like it had smoother tiles. You activated High-Heeled Stealth too, in hopes your landing wouldn't thump on their roof and startle somebody.

And it finally happened.

A skill has been created by a special action! Simultaneous use of High-Heeled Running, High-Heeled Jumping, High-Heeled Landing, High-Heeled Parkour, and High-Heeled Stealth while wearing a sexy nurse costume has synthesized the skill High-Heeled Roofhopping.

High-Heeled Roofhopping: Lvl 1 (10%). 1 D | S / jump.

In accordance with long-standing mahou shoujo tradition, whenever you are dressed in a costume that could plausibly denote a magical girl, you are empowered to leap from roof to roof in order to travel faster than ground traffic. Houses and other buildings are arranged in such fashion as to permit this. This doesn't damage any roofs, wake up anybody with loud thumps, or cause anyone on the ground to, like, notice.

Speed is equal to your base running speed boosted by High Heels plus your High-Heeled Running plus your High-Heeled Roofhopping times 10%.

The Erogame… is either a cold-blooded rulebook that happened to be set up to do that whenever you first combined those five skills… or…

You're standing on the peak of the neighbor's roof, looking at the houses spread around you, the varicolored roofs both flat and peaked, bricked and tiled and done over in plain concrete. Once this sea of buildings was a jungle of trees that forced you to use the sad small canyons carved through it, the little rivers of the sidewalks. Now it's an endless highway of trampolines that you can reign over like a nurse-uniformed empress on a shingled throne.

…or the Erogame is trying to cheer you up. And succeeding.

Just the thought alone isn't enough to remedy the shocks you've taken, but you're pretty sure that once you actually start hopping roofs, you're not going to stop for a while.

So before you start, maybe you should actually know which way you're heading.

"Info, available quests, Better Than That Ponce."

Info // Available Quests // Better Than That Ponce

For thousands of years, alchemists and explorers have futilely spent their lives and their deaths seeking a Philosopher's Stone or a Fountain of Youth… an ancient quest that is about to end. Because an eighteen-year-old girl decided the sorta-friend who ate lunch with her wasn't pretty enough.

Success: ???
Failure: ?
Accept: Y/N

You gaze thoughtfully at the violet letters. Now that you think of it, what could the Ponce quest possibly be?

An incredible miracle diet? Even if Felice was losing a pound of fat every day, it would take weeks for her to get to BOD 15. Months. Any transformation that takes longer than a day or two, and it would make more sense to wait on higher ERO and Mad Inventor. If this isn't going to be as easy as drawing a magical circle or building a transformation ray, neither of which should be possible at ERO 29, it's hard to imagine how the heck a natural-law-abiding means could get your Mom or Felice to BOD 15 in a couple of days. And you can't afford to go much over the stated budget of $2000, either. The Erogame knows those are your requirements, right?

You touch the Y.

A new violet rectangle shows itself.

Quest updated: Better Than That Ponce

After a frantic scramble to find a new venue when their previous hotel unexpectedly canceled on them, the fourth Conference on Applications of Proteins and Peptides is being held in Mauss Auditorium in the Norville annex of CSU Bakersfield, with the keynote lecture being given on Friday morning at 8:00am.

Many conference attendees will also be present for drinks and hors d'ouevres at a reception starting 7pm on Thursday evening, held in the Wainscott room of the Norville Arms-Marriott where many conference attendees are staying.

You stare at the violet letters.

You go back to the start and read it again.

Then you take your new Android phone out of your backpack and look up what a "peptide" is.

Then you reread the violet text a third time.

…what the heck are you supposed to do at a conference like that, use oral sex to inspire the scientists to invent a miracle? Roll dice to see if your tongue is good enough?

That couldn't actually work, could it? The phrase "Not even at ERO 29" comes to mind, and god help you, you're not sure if it's true.

At any rate, it sounds like the quest doesn't start until this evening. So apparently you'll be taking Blake's virginity first.

Your face takes on a smiling solemn expression as you gaze out over the sea of roofs, as you think back to a Sunday night and a Monday morning that will be among your most important and precious memories for however long you live. The end of this quest… should be fitting, of that.

(Voting is open immediately.)

[ ] Finish the quest at ERO 29. Show Blake how much you've learned since he blessed you into humanity. For all he's done for you, he deserves to experience you at your best.
[ ] Finish the quest at ERO 15. Blake is the only person you've ever had normal sex with, and you don't want that memory diluted. It may be the only memory of normal sex that you'll ever have.

5.4.1: Meaningless or Fun

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 70 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 2103-2159]
##### NetTally 1.9.9
[X] Finish the quest at ERO 15. Blake is the only person you've ever had normal sex with, and you don't want that memory diluted. It may be the only memory of normal sex that you'll ever have.
No. of Votes: 28
Proxima
Andelevion
Aoinfinity
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
Diraniola
Elitist Oars
GGS109
Grollo
Killako
kimagurena65536
kozinc
LancerisDead
Lavida
Learned Knave
Malbutorius
Mitale
napkintooth
Nocramaster
NotaWriter
Par Tzu
pepperjack
Prustan
Sirrocco
wasprider
Xenia
zachol
zup
[X] Finish the quest at ERO 15. Blake is the only person you've ever had fairly normal sex with, and you don't want that memory diluted. It may be the only memory of fairly normal sex that you'll ever have.
No. of Votes: 6
Guile
Electric Heart
january1may
Mei Mei
MrBTXz
Spectral Waltz
[X] Finish the quest at ERO 29. Show Blake how much you've learned since he blessed you into humanity. For all he's done for you, he deserves to experience you at your best.
No. of Votes: 4
Kurogami
Gingganz
ScrewFate
VanillaTentacle
Total No. of Voters: 38

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (28,150 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 32/340
SUB: 435/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 17
FUK: 17
PRV: 24
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 3
Money: $9009

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

You ponder the Blake Question for only moments. You're surprised you're not more tempted by the prospect of doing this the ERO 29 way. Say, try to get the Erogame skill for turning up in places you shouldn't be, and then show up on Blake totally by surprise, dressed modestly with naughty lingerie underneath for later. You'd ask Blake for math help in front of other Mormons, who would assign the two of you a respectable female chaperone, who would turn out to be a Naughty Mormon who likes to watch and often "chaperones" the members of a secret sex cult in the midst of their church.

But no, you're not tempted by that.

You're not sure why not, but apparently you're, like, totally not tempted by that at all.

…Blake means something else to you than that, you guess. Warping a hidden sex cult into his church feels more like scribbling graffiti on his existence than doing him a favor. Unless he says he'd like that, in which case you will totally do it for him.

You're still going to do the demure clothing with sexy lingerie underneath, though.

With a solemn gesture, you reach your hands up to your head and run your fingers down through the crimson-and-coal of your hair, the color fading to an earthy grayish brown in your fingers' wake as you stroke down through the strands. You looked this way on Sunday night too, you tell your hair, from when I left my house until right after Blake left on Monday morning.

You pause, wondering if you'll now remember anything about your hair changing as you left the house, but apparently not. You do remember, back in the motel, looking in the mirror a couple of times and seeing this long, earthy-brown hair that you had while Blake was there, after which you created The Coals Relighted and forgot what hair you'd ever possessed before, which is still short black hair on Sunday afternoon and all other earlier times you can remember as per your instructions back when you accidentally created Time Control.

Good enough.

You hesitate with your thumb on your cellphone, about to message Blake to make sure he's available this morning for deflowering.

You… don't actually need to check that, right? Nobody is ever too busy for sex or romance, not when you're around. You don't need to message Blake in advance. You can get clothes first, and text Blake only when you're ready to appear to him. That seems like more fun, and… it won't give Blake an hour to work himself into an anxious nightmare, either, if he's given to those.

You stow your cellphone into your backpack, securing it carefully, no outside pockets this time, your heart is beginning beat faster in anticipation.

You look out at the black and brown and grey rooftops in front of you, the sea of trampolines.

You're standing perched with your high heels on a mildly angled rooftop, facing east towards the rising sun just like the bedroom window you climbed from. In front of you to the east is a backyard, the main street of your house behind you to the west, and then after the backyard, an alley, a backyard, and another house. You don't think you can jump that far.

But then you don't need to travel east from this position. You need to travel north.

…it really makes you wonder what would happen if you'd needed to travel east, but never mind.

You turn left, to the north, in the rough direction of Goodwill, facing the long row of houses that also occupies your street, or their roofs rather. It looks like… you could climb up this rooftop a little towards your right to reach the angled line of the peak for a height boost, and then, physics fuckery permitting, run along that narrow line to gain speed for reaching the next house over.

And after that… well, the Erogame will provide. You should maybe not be thinking about exactly how, existentialhorrorly speaking. You have a feeling the Erogame isn't literally permanently rearranging housing to allow you to make each jump, that would leave a lot of traffic jams in your wake, but… maybe you're weaving slightly sidewise back and forth in probability, your feet touching down on closely neighboring alternatives to actuality, places where houses almost were and could have been?

Eh, whatever.

Time to fly.

You bend down, kneeling to touch the roof with one hand, the classic starting position for a race.

Go.

You straighten up and in almost the same motion scramble west up the rooftop, faster, turn wobbling to face north, no damn it you need speed, you slam your heels down on the narrow line of the peak and try to start sprinting as fast as you can, and then at the end of the line you push down with your feet with everything you've got and leap---

---not looking at where your feet are landing on the angled ledge on the other side, if you look reality might notice you not being realistic. Instead you just land, and keep running forwards, and push yourself harder to run up a further-angled roofside without losing momentum, and then again your knees and hips flex with all their strength to send you soaring across a larger gap, to a lower but flat roof---

---no you can't roll through a parkour summersalt on landing, you can't lose that much momentum, instead you just take the shock, it feels like somebody hit you in the knees lightly with a baseball bat, but you're not paying attention you're just swinging your hips and forcing your legs to move, because maintaining your momentum is everything when you're jumping from one roof to another.

By the sixth roof, it's routine enough that you can look briefly away from your feet to see the lawns and rows of parked cars passing you by below, at speed.

A girlish figure in a sexy nurse costume goes leaping across the sky. If anyone on the ground heard her laughter, they'd look up and catch a glimpse of her panties, but nobody does.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1468636889852151

---another fucking wide street coming up, but you can make the gap, you can make this one too, you're starting from a three-story apartment complex and that gives you enough height combined with High-Heeled Jumping to push, soar, land on top of the telephone pole without thinking about it too hard, bounce though it feels like your much-abused knees are going to snap---

---and muff the jump when one hip finally fails you.

There's enough time for a fractured moment of horrified awareness, that you are not going in the direction you wanted to go.

A terrified shriek bursts from your lungs, as in the second fractured moment the world whirls around you frantically with the angular momentum imparted by your failed jump, leaving you utterly unable to know what's about to happen to you.

And then your pinwheeling body crashes spreadeagled into green leaves and all of the poking twigs, into the side of the towering hedges guarding the two-story house you were actually aiming for.

The side of the hedge calmly accepts your momentum, then drops you another two meters onto the lower bushes terraced beneath, accompanied by some small ripping sounds and a crunchy rustle.

A girlish figure in a ripped-up sexy nurse costume lies motionless on top of a slightly used topiary. Her lungs are heaving frantically, and if anyone were looking at her, they'd be quite interested in what these chest motions are doing to her torn costume.

Sooooo… it turns out that even if you're in shape to run now, you are still not in shape to repeatedly jump from roof to roof all the way to Goodwill. Being able to sprint for fifteen minutes probably means you've reached ordinary health for a girl your age, the Erogame graciously allowing you to grind some invisible STR and VIT stats. But going roofhopping is going to take being athletic.

At least you got… up to Lvl 3 in High-Heeled Roofhopping, you think, plus assorted levels in Jumping, Landing, and Stealth. You're not sure. The violet text went by pretty fast.

Eventually the broiling fire in your lungs subsides to a mere roasting, and you manage to flail yourself off the bush and fall in a dull thud to the lawn below. Operation Fall Over is carried out using only your arms, which still mostly work, unlike your legs, which fell off your torso half a mile ago and are now resting on somebody else's lawn.

After panting and wheezing for a few moments, sounding like a girl in the throes of some intense sensation that is unfortunately not an orgasm, you try to sit up.

That works.

You try to stand up.

You are not going to space today.

Dammit.

You let yourself flop over onto the grass again. It's cool here, and slightly wet, and a tad dirty, but anyway this sexy nurse costume has outlived its usefulness to you. Your hair is full of twigbits, but remembering that it isn't fixes that.

Now how are you going to get to Goodwill? You recover fully with a night's sleep, but you don't heal ultra-fast from ordinary exhaustion. You didn't have unlimited stamina when you were being t-t-tickled yesterday. You are definitely not running anywhere. You don't know if there's any good bus connections wherever you are now, and even the thought of walking to a bus stop feels like too much to ask of your leg stumps.

A truly bizarre thought occurs to you.

Do you… if you're really going to be rich, if you can make seven thousand dollars a night at least once a week, then, even if you don't have a fat bank account now, you could… to get to Goodwill, you could just…

A couple of minutes later, you sit up again, crawl over the grass to the curb, and with a mighty heave, pull yourself up to your feet.

You open the car door.

You half-fall into the passenger-side seat.

You shut the car door.

"Hi," you say to the cute guy staring at you. He doesn't seem able to keep his eyes off your chest, which you suppose you can't blame him for, given all the strategically placed rips made by Wardrobe Malfunction. "Uh, this is the Lyft I ordered, right?"

Traffic is moving slowly down Main, the old two-lane street that bizarrely serves as a central artery through Norville. You usually avoid taking the Main bus if you possibly can, but Lyft's maps apparently decided it was the shortest route for your car.

Your leg muscles don't feel like they hurt as much anymore, unless they're just numb. Part of your brain is shrieking about wasting $7.91 on this Lyft and how you should have waited longer to see if you recovered and could run on your own to Goodwill. You have to repeat seven thousand dollars to yourself over and over and over again, but somewhat to your surprise, the mantra is working.

Being chauffeured like this, just pressing buttons on your phone and then a car appears and takes you somewhere at real car speeds without you needing to think about directions, this is civilization, this is the world that real people with real money live in. Starting from bus hell, you've gone straight past the middle-class purgatory of owning a car that has to be tended by mechanics and fed oil and circled around futilely looking for parking for twenty minutes, and entered into the Future of cars that just appear and drive you places.

Although, now that you think about, you could have Ero-Travel if you chose. There's human civilization, and then there's the Erogame.

Your Lyft stops at a red light, and the driver resumes trying to glance at your chest without it being obvious. Which is kinda futile, considering that he wears glasses so he has to turn his head halfway to his right in order to surreptitiously glance at you. You know that women are supposed to be offended by this, that you should be feeling "creeped out", but you still remember horribly well what it's like to not have men staring at your chest. Also, you're wearing a torn sexy nurse costume, cut the guy a break.

He's cute, too. Totally has down the "earnest black grad student wearing glasses" look, including a haircut that at first looks plain and short on top, but is subtly styled into small afroish curls if one looks closely, fading smoothly down the sides of his head into a shave. You find that you are aware that his hair looks more interesting than the greyish-brown long hair you have right now, along with the fact that you could have hair that is vastly better than his hair, right now if you so decided. You don't want to be the girl who spends the rest of her life obsessing about her hair, but it's nice to know that you are making a conscious decision not to outshine others while totally having the option any time you like.

Also. LST 21 is… uh, well, this is how the world is experienced by an eroge character as horny as an average teenage boy, you guess. There's some type of magnetic pull on your attention, just because you are sharing a car with a male who isn't fat and is dressed okay and has a decently executed hairstyle that rewards a closer look. It seems that over the last few days you have skipped quickly through the stage of having a sex drive but still needing a reason to switch it on, and into the state where just being in the same car as an attractive man makes your mind start generating… thoughts.

You don't know how much of it is your own heart's truth, versus your mental image of how eroge characters are supposed to think. But every time traffic moves and your driver starts trying to focus attention on traffic again, you're aware that you have the option of making his life harder by reaching over and starting to rub the crotch of his pants. You somehow suspect that, if you do, the probabilities against him considering this as unwelcome sexual assault are very much bent in your favor. And your car won't crash, either.

It's a very naughty, very liberating thought. He keeps looking at your chest at stoplights, and you could just reach over and start rubbing his jeans right now if you wanted, because civilization's rules don't apply to Starry. When it comes to sex, you have all the privilege of an empress in what you are allowed to grope.

The more you think about it, the more you're tempted to do it, if only to see what happens, how it makes you feel.

But… it probably does count as a mildly significant life choice. Not a point of no return, but a point of slightly less return than usual. There's a suspicion, in the back of your mind, that maybe the Erogame offers you more of what you take it up on. If you run for long enough, you'll get offered roofhopping. If you choose Marshmallow Test you'll get offered More Marshmallows. The back of your mind has further theorized that the game design is configured intelligently enough not to shove the next steps down your throat, since that might make you afraid to try new things. All of your horrible passive skills like You Forgot to Lock the Door or Fleeing or Tickle Logic came from events you couldn't avoid, or choices you didn't realize at the time you were making. The game is designed to offer more voluntary temptations after you deliberately choose to give in to a temptation… maybe. It is only your Day 5 of all this, and the Erogame doesn't come with a manual.

Blake, Charles, the Arcadias, none of those sexual encounters were simple or brief. Even Jace Wayman at the campus bus stop meant more to you than this would. If you reach over and start rubbing this guy's pants, you'll probably be offered more meaningless fun in the future.

This doesn't have a negligible impact on your own self-definition, either. You vaguely saw your driver's name in the Lyft app, but you didn't remember it. Part of the question you're considering is whether the cute guy needs a name. Like, it's important that he has one, but maybe it doesn't always have to be important that you know it. Is meaningless fun bad because it's meaningless, or good because it's fun?

At LST 21 your hormones are willing and at PRV 24 your mind can handle it, but that doesn't answer what you want.

[ ] Reach over and discover the sexual freedom the Erogame offers you.
[ ] Continue to treasure your remaining shyness. Nothing needs to be rushed.

5.4.2**: Five-Star Rating

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 73 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 2171-2239]
##### NetTally 1.9.9
[X] Reach over and discover the sexual freedom the Erogame offers you.
No. of Votes: 28
MrBTXz
Andigatron
Budda002
Charl
chrnno
Diraniola
Elitist Oars
Ephemeral
Flashbunny
Guile
Ice1039
january1may
Jaso
Kandagger
kimagurena65536
LancerisDead
Lavida
Lucerna
P90Techie
sagemo
ScrewFate
Spectral Waltz
Strelok
The Undead Martyr
Thrice.Great
VanillaTentacle
Waruiko
ZenithOfLust
[X] Continue to treasure your remaining shyness.Nothing needs to be rushed.
No. of Votes: 17
storybookknight
alphabeta
Anomen
Aoinfinity
fluxoid
Gingganz
Hyperion042
jobn
Mei Mei
murklins
pepperjack
Prustan
Sirrocco
Sofixon
somervta
Xenia
zachol
[x] Continue to treasure your remaining shyness.
No. of Votes: 5
fictionfan
Blackshard
Goldenlima
Higure
zup
[X] Claim another nectar from this guy.
No. of Votes: 4
Diraniola
Dragonheart91
Lavida
napkintooth
[X] No. Not every NPC needs to be sexed. Not all roads need to be taken.
No. of Votes: 1
wasprider
Total No. of Voters: 53

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (28,150 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 32/340
SUB: 312/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 17
FUK: 17
PRV: 24
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 3
Money: $9001

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Your hand starts from your lap, then hangs uncertainly in the air, then the light turns green and your hand hastily returns to your lap. You believe in Erogame Logic, but not strongly enough to plop your hand in his lap for the first time while he's driving.

Meaningless fun is still fun, right? And, as for it being meaningless, well, it's meaninglessness that gives meaning to meaningfulness! Because, if nobody ever had meaningless fun, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and meaningful fun. Just like how, if people didn't know they would die, they wouldn't be able to appreciate life. Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, oh wait you're going to be immortal once you reach BOD 100, uh, nevermind then.

You can visualize so clearly what it would be like to just reach over and touch him. You don't think you're afraid, just undecided. Like your LST and PRV have reached the precise level for decision paralysis, making both options seem equally attractive.

You're not undecided about how this feels in your imagination. Imagining rubbing him through his pants while he has to drive and making him come is, uh, that image appeals to you, yes. Thinking about how you could do it any time you pleased is making your breath come faster, putting a pleasant tension in your belly.

Is that enough? Have you had enough, from the fantasy being a fantasy? You don't have to do everything that crosses your mind.

The light ahead of you turns yellow, and the car begins to slow.

No. No if it's pleasing to imagine then you should just do it, there's literally nothing for you to be afraid of here, not venereal diseases, not car crashes. Every factor that could make a difference between the attractiveness of the imaginary option and the attractiveness of the actual option is just, just little bits of that old choking clay that used to surround you. If it seems fun in your imagination you should just do it. Want, take, have.

The car has halted, now, and the anonymous Lyft driver again has his head turned slightly right so that he can glance at your scantily-clad breasts out of the corner of his eyeglasses.

Slowly, you reach out your left hand, slowly enough for the Lyft driver to notice, waiting until his eyes drop so you can see that he sees. It doesn't tremble, your hand, which is good, because in your imagination that isn't how this goes. You can see he's looking at your hand, but he doesn't say a word, doesn't open his lips, even as your hand drifts over to his side of the car, into his personal space, and settles squarely on the fabric of his slacks, resting lightly on his crotch.

Spoiler: Round 1

Sexual encounter: Starry the Erogamer vs. nameless Lyft driver!

Sexy Combat System Version 0.0.0.0d; version_string="totally made up on the spot let's see what happens"

Starry:

LVL: 10
FUK: 17
LST: 21
PRV: 24
Arousal: 500/10000

Nameless Lyft driver:

LVL: 1d10 = …9!
FUK: 10 + 1d9 = …16!
LST: 15 + 1d9 = …24!
PRV: 15 + 1d9 = …20!
Arousal: 200/9000

Round 1!

Starry ATK roll:
d100 = 25 + 10 (LVL) + 17 (FUK) + 14 (torn nurse costume) + 10 (surprise!)
= 76!

Driver DEF roll:
d100 = 28 + 9 (LVL) - 20 (PRV)
= 17!

Damage: (76 - 17 = 59) * 24 (LST) = 1416!
Driver is at 1616/9000 arousal!
Driver is SHOCKED AND TURNED ON and cannot counter!

You press down on a resistance in those slacks, and the driver draws a shocked breath, which you are deciding does not count as a "no". Especially since you're pretty sure you've just discovered he already has an erection. What a pervert, getting hard just from looking at a girl in a torn nurse costume with her nipples barely not showing. It seems you've encountered a naughty Lyft driver.

The light changes, and you start your fingers gently rubbing. Your eyes flick up to your driver's face, verifying that he's looking in the right direction and safely driving you through the traffic, though he seems somewhat glazed. Then you return to pressing down around his zipper area and moving around your hand.

Rub, rub. You try moving your fingers in a circle around the tented firmness and his thigh jerks slightly beneath your hand. So you repeat what you just did, over and over, as your own breath starts to come more heavily.

Your thighs are shifting slightly beneath your skirt. Can you make this man come just from this, if he's that horny and naughty? That would be mean of you, making him mess his pants like that. Or you could lean over and use your mouth just before, if you pleased. You should make sure you know when that's about to happen, so you can decide how mean you're feeling today. Edge Other.

Edge Other has increased by 1.

The man's breath is coming faster, and you glance up at his reddening face to confirm it's still pointed at the traffic. Although the stoplight ahead just turned yellow, gee, thanks Erogame. But it's not your part in this fantasy to be afraid. You keep on pressing down and circling the peak in his pants.

Spoiler: Round 2

Starry ATK roll:
d100=43 + 10 (LVL) + 17 (FUK) + 14 (torn nurse costume)
= 84!

Driver DEF roll:
d100=78 + 9 (LVL) - 20 (PRV)
= 67!

Damage: (84 - 67 = 17) * 24 (LST) = 408!
Driver is at 2024/9000 arousal! Driver has recovered from shock!

The car slows to a halt at the traffic light, and your nameless victim turns to look at you squarely with dark-irised eyes, so brown they're almost black.

Before he can speak, you strike first, SED 17 enabling you to make your voice a sensual purr. "You know," you sensually purr, "this is my first time riding Lyft." Your fingers never stop moving on his crotch.

"Really," he says, and you're surprised at how steady his male voice sounds for somebody who was almost choking a minute ago.

"Lyft drivers rate their passengers too, don't they?"

He nods, his eyes going back and forth between your smile, and the nipples that just barely aren't peeking out of the rips in your nurse costume.

"It's so unfair," you purr, "drivers having that kind of power over us, when we need five-star passenger ratings just to keep riding…"

His jaw drops slightly, not that you blame him.

Spoiler: Round 3

Starry ATK roll:
d100=17 + 10 (LVL) + 17 (FUK) + 14 (torn nurse costume) - 5 (terrible porn dialogue)
= 53!

Driver DEF roll:
d100=90 + 9 (LVL) - 20 (PRV)
= 79!

Driver COUNTERS!

But he recovers fast. "Yeah," he says, his voice lower. "We could make you do almost anything for a five-star passenger rating, couldn't we."

Wait a minute---

His hand moves through the air, faster than yours did but smoothly enough that you could in theory object, and tries to settle on the miniskirt of your nurse costume. But the fabric is stretched too flat between your legs to give him any contact, and after a moment's hesitation he simply worms his hand underneath the skirt's waistband and rests his fingers over your wet panties.

Spoiler: Round 4

Starry ATK roll:
d100=44 + 10 (LVL) + 17 (FUK) + 14 (torn nurse costume)
= 85!

Driver DEF roll:
d100=8 + 9 (LVL) - 20 (PRV)
= -3!
Critical: d100=48 + 9 - 20 = 37

Driver takes (85 - -3 = 88) * 24 (LST) * 2 (crit) = 4224 damage!
Driver is at 6248/9000 arousal!

Driver ATK roll:
d100=21 + 9 (LVL) + 16 (FUK) + 10 (surprise!) + 10 (under skirt) - 5 (terrible porn dialogue)
=56!

Starry DEF roll:
d100=71 + 10 (LVL) - 24 (PRV)
=65!

Starry is still UNMOLESTED!

"Hey," you say weakly, a touch of indignation in your voice, though he hasn't started moving his fingers yet. Just what kind of victim does he think he is?

He smiles at you, like he knows he has you just where he wants you, and then his whole body jerks. Your own fingers haven't stopped moving, and it seems he's turning himself on too by touching you. You rub a little harder, a little faster. Serves this pervert right.

Spoiler: Round 5

Starry ATK roll:
d100=55 + 10 (LVL) + 17 (FUK) + 14 (torn nurse costume)
= 91!

Driver DEF roll:
d100=27 + 9 (LVL) - 20 (PRV)
= 16!

Driver takes (91 - 16 = 75) * 24 (LST) = 1800 damage!
Driver is at 8048/9000 arousal!

Driver ATK roll:
d100=85 + 9 (LVL) + 16 (FUK) + 10 (under skirt)
=120!
Critical: d100=70+9+16+10=105!
Critical: d100=78+9+16+10=113!
Critical: d100=55+9+16+10=90

Starry DEF roll:
d100=41 + 10 (LVL) - 24 (PRV)
=27!

Starry takes (120 - 27 = 93) * 21 (LST) * 4 (crit) = 7812 damage!
Starry is at 8312/10000 arousal!

The light changes, and he turns his eyes back to traffic, and---

His fingers start rubbing you through your panties.

Your whole body twitches like a fish on a hook with the sudden shocks of pleasure all through your body and spine, oh, oh shit, you weren't expecting this. You're so vulnerable now that you've become like this, so easily toyed with when you're already wet. The Arcadias played you like an instrument, but you were so hot already back then that they never just reached down and rubbed you like this, rubbed you fast without stopping, your brain wasn't ready to accept this input from your body.

Your moans interrupted by gasps are having an effect on him too, and you can feel the trembling in his legs, transmitted to the fabric beneath your fingers. You unzip the zipper, frantically undo his belt as more shocks run through you and your arousal rises rapidly, your fingers starting to shake as you put both hands around the barely cloth-protected penis and start stroking. He is the victim here, you are molesting him, he needs to be made to understand that.

Spoiler: Round 6

Starry ATK roll:
d100=51 + 10 (LVL) + 17 (FUK) + 14 (torn nurse costume) + 10 (under pants)
= 97!

Driver DEF roll:
d100=86 + 9 (LVL) - 20 (PRV)
= 75!

Driver takes (97 - 75 = 22) * 24 (LST) = 528 damage!
Driver is at 8576/9000 arousal!

Driver ATK roll:
d100=35 + 9 (LVL) + 16 (FUK) + 10 (under skirt)
=70!

Starry DEF roll:
d100=63 + 10 (LVL) - 24 (PRV)
=49!

Starry takes (70 - 49 = 21) * 21 (LST) = 441 damage!
Starry is at 8753/10000 arousal!

The car rolls on for a while as the nameless Lyft driver keeps one tightly clenched hand on the steering wheel. His other hand rapidly and aggressively diddles you, the squishing sound of your panties making it quite audible how little the scrap of well-lubricated black fabric is protecting you. The slick cloth surface makes you twitch each time it slides smoothly over and around your clit, but you're getting in your own revenge too, your hand gripping him and tugging relentlessly.

Oh, and your body is trembling, your lips are issuing moans, and your hips are twisting as you try to force yourself not to squirm away from his merciless fingers. You can feel the fire rising fast.

N-no, you can't let him make you come first! That's not fair!

Your fingers are starting to shake, but you manage to undo your seat belt, pull out his cock through the fly of his underwear, spit on your hands and start to work his penis over, letting your hands slick and rub by turns, trusting more to instinct and FUK 17 than any conscious planning you could manage right now.

Moments later his own fingers pull aside your panties and plunge into your defenseless pussy, drawing out lubrication that he promptly uses to make fast, rhythmic motions directly over your clit.

Oh.

Spoiler: Round 7

Starry ATK roll:
d100=84 + 10 (LVL) + 17 (FUK) + 14 (torn nurse costume) + 20 (direct contact) + 10 (shameless moaning and writhing) - 10 (distracted)
= 141!
Critical: d100=85+10+17+14+20+10-10=142!
Critical: d100=55+10+17+14+20+10-10=112!
Critical: d100=95+10+17+14+20+10-10=152!
Critical: d100=56+10+17+14+20+10-10=113!
FINISH HIM!

Driver DEF roll:
d100=93 + 9 (LVL) - 20 (PRV)
= 92!

Driver takes (151 - 92 = 59) * 24 (LST) * 5 (crit) = 7080 damage!
Driver is at 15656/9000 arousal!
Driver ORGASMS!

Driver ATK roll:
d100=92 + 9 (LVL) + 16 (FUK) + 20 (direct contact) - 10 (distracted)
=127!
Critical: d100=49 + 9 + 16 + 20 - 10 = 84

Starry DEF roll:
d100=47 + 10 (LVL) - 24 (PRV)
=33!

Starry takes (127 - 33 = 94) * 21 (LST) * 2 (crit) = 3948 damage!
Starry is at 12701/10000 arousal!
Starry ORGASMS!

You know you don't have much time. Your fingers slide up and down and over his flesh, caressing and rubbing by turns, demanding that this cock come for you now. Edge Other pings, and it's without thinking about the decision that you twist yourself half off the passenger seat and plunge your mouth down to his cock, sealing your lips around only the head as your busy hands keep working.

The car fills with a guttural male roar, a car honks outside, and a surge of liquid like you're squeezing a bottle blasts into your mouth. Followed by another surge, and another, but with just the head of the penis inside your mouth there's room to take it all in instead of choking. You swallow, and then swallow again the taste of egg white with a touch of tangy spiciness like curry powder, fizzing down your throat. His semen is thicker than Blake's, like he's been backed up for a while, and some of it is sticking to your teeth.

And then you can't think about that.

You hold still, hold still with every muscle trembling. Your position is precarious, your body twisted over from the passenger side, one knee on the seat and the other half of your wide-spread thighs almost off it. You can feel the driver's arm is stretched to the limit below you plus he's leaning sideways, but he can't stop now, he can't, you're coming, you're coming, and then your eyes squeeze shut as everything goes white---

…

You shakily straighten up, and do the best you can to sit back down in your seat and straighten up the wardrobe out of which your breasts seem to have malfunctioned. You give a hmpfh, to indicate that you had no choice in this and are just an innocent woman who was taken advantage of in the unfair power dynamic between rideshare drivers and passengers. It comes out as a more satisfied hmpfh than you would have liked.

That didn't go as planned.

The car makes a turn, drives two more blocks, and pulls into the Goodwill parking lot.

You push open the door, still without looking at him, and step out. It seems your legs are shaky, from all that roofhopping no doubt, but you manage.

"Four and a half stars," his voice says from behind you. "But I suppose I could round it up to five since it's your first time using Lyft."

You fling an arm back and give him your middle finger without looking, not halting your strut towards the clothing store, and swaying your hips as you go.

Ero achievement: Used your hands to make an anonymous Lyft driver come, and swallowed it. +150XP.

Quest begun: Sex Drive (1/250)

Personally administer orgasms to 250 different car drivers while they are driving. Their drive must begin from some intent other than receiving your attentions, such as a rideshare, or picking you up as a hitchhiker.

Success: Gain Ero-Travel. If Ero-Travel has already been obtained via perk, the perk point used is refunded (and you do not gain another perk after exceeding ERO 75).

New nectar:

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Driver #1 (plate 76ND2X) | A touch of spiciness as of curry power, fizzing slightly down your throat. | +5 to all dice rolls involving financial negotiation, 2 hours. | ?? | ???

Spoiler: Author's Note

So I thought I'd try a Sage-style sexfight to see how it went. As it went, the Driver coming up LVL 9 on the first 1d10 to determine his LVL, followed by strong stat rolls, made this battle more matched than I'd expected. I have no idea if I'll use this system again; it was arithmetically tedious but also gave the sex an unplanned, uncertain rhythm that I liked. I also suspect this ad-hoc system I just made up might not make sense in general for sex-fighting, even if it happened to work sensibly here; I suspect that lower-level opponents might have low enough LST to make a big difference and that in general the factors here aren't scaling right.

5.5.1: It Just Has a Basement

You cheerfully strut your walk of shame across the Goodwill parking lot, feeling the stickiness in your panties and wanting to preserve that badge for a little longer before unforming the fluid. You feel slightly glowy. Not the floating euphoria of other nights and mornings, just, it's like the sky is shining a little brighter and so are you.

You pause and look up at the Goodwill building thoughtfully, your hands on your hips and your head tilting slightly as you think. Maybe… instead of looking for a lingerie store after this trip (even though there will just happen to be a lingerie store right nearby), you should check what can be found in the Goodwill if you go inside at ERO 29? You should've thought of that earlier, it could have saved you some Submissive Energy. Well, 40 SUB to change your hair there and back again isn't much. You, uh, you tend to gain SUB pretty quickly. Even when you were supposed to be the sexual predator. Shut up, imaginary voices laughing at you, either you muffed some dice rolls back there or the Lyft drivers around here are fucking leveled.

You look around, wondering if anyone is watching you, you don't want to get another point of ERO for this… eh, you're just being silly. You cheerfully take off what's left of your nurse uniform, lift up your hair (with your hands), wrap the uniform around it, unwrap the uniform, and put the uniform back on again. There, anyone watching you was probably too distracted to notice your hair changing.

You stroll into the Goodwill at ERO 29.

Despite your half-formed expectations, there's no naked women changing in the middle of the store and no rows of used vibrators lining the wall. That's probably more of an ERO-60 Goodwill. Though…

Though now that you think to observe it, there's not a lot of fat people in this store right now. Or anyone dressed as poorly as a Goodwill shopper's station in life ought to sometimes warrant. Oh, there's a couple of women in torn clothing, but the rips look strategic, their hair is neat, and their nails are manicured.

Your feet hesitate, and then you continue walking toward the racks. This, this concerns you. But you don't know what the Erogame is, what it does, so you don't understand what kind of threat or insult, if any, is being leveled at the kind of person you used to be.

Even if it's just a question of who randomly happens to be in this store right now, it's still… disquieting. It seems to imply a lurking threat that the next step, at higher ERO, will be the fat or ugly people in Norville being slowly wiped out of existence, along with their friends' memories of them. Or them being reformatted into someone else, rather than cured and healed.

Your former kind isn't wanted by society, isn't allowed to exist socially. It's all too easy to imagine being rejected by reality too. Even if you have a feeling that's not quite what's happening, even if this is sideways metaphysical bullshit rather than killing or mindwiping anyone, it's still… sad. All the fat people just quietly going away, because reality doesn't want them any more---that wasn't the miracle you prayed for.

A handsome man in worn clothing compliments your hair, his eyes not shying away at all from your torn nurse's uniform, his gaze openly appreciative. You nod shortly to him, and turn away to begin sorting through the clothing racks.

There's sexier items now, and more of them, and not all of them in your own size; this higher ERO level isn't catering to only you. There's a whole yard of navel-length women's shirts on the display racks, and a stack of skirts running the full gamut from mini to micro to mini-micro. You don't see lingerie, but you'd have no longer have any trouble dressing like a slut out of this.

Of course what you want this time is demure outer clothing, but that's here too. Or maybe demure isn't quite the right word. The outfit that fits you perfectly is full-coverage and old fashioned but still… dominant.

Spoiler: Demure, but dominant

After exiting the changing room, you find a shorter, flatter pair of high heels; stilettos would be wrong for this.

Your BOD was stable through yesterday and you have some money now, so you also grab three sexy-normal outfits and three slutty outfits. With this much clothing, it might start to be worth doing laundry.

You're almost ready to head over to the cashier when you finally see it.

At the back of the store.

An opening in the floor.

Stairs leading down.

"Those weren't there before!" you whisper to yourself in ominous tones, and head on over.

Your feet clack down one bare concrete step after another. If this stairwell wasn't brightly lit, you might be getting worried. You are so ready to parkour out of here if this goes bad.

At the bottom of the stairs is a door, which you open quietly, High-Heeled Stealth now running, and nervously peek around the opening crack.

Okay, yep, this is where this Goodwill keeps their secondhand lingerie. Along with their black vinyl corsets and thigh-high leather boots and higher-grade French maid outfits. Tagged, colored, and priced as per the Goodwill standard.

There's a lot of it. Like, a sixth of the floor area of the full store above, though with far fewer shoppers.

The ceiling is lit by many light emplacements in warm colors, and the walls are done in a pleasant light orange. It's just the contents that look like they ought to be in a darkly lit room with black walls.

You step on in, with your mouth a little more slack than usual.

What. What backstory. What type of backstory is possibly supposed to explain---you were just expecting a simple rack of nice lingerie in the store above---you know, never mind, you are just going to ask somebody straight out and see what happens.

You walk smoothly up to the nearest customer, a tall, middle-aged man with muscular arms exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of his formal black shirt. He glances up at you.

Spoiler: Dice roll for this encounter

Lower roll threshold: ERO / 2 = 15.
Upper roll threshold: 100 - ERO / 2 = 85.
The Coals Relighted: +15, a 2 is as bad as a 1.

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 39+15 = 54

For: Goodwill

Rolled on: October-06-2017, 07:58pm

See dice roll details

39

The dice gods have spoken and they say "Meh."

"Nice selection they have here," you murmur, giving an appreciative look to the black leather armbands he's examining.

"Indeed," he says in an equally low voice. "That's lovely hair. Who did it for you?"

Who, you notice he's asking, not where. Something about the tone of his voice makes it clear that he doesn't expect the answer to be a hair salon.

"It was a one-off thing at a private party," you say back, taking a flying guess as to where this might be heading.

He smiles politely. "I'll bet. Come here often?"

You hesitate, weighing options, and then say, "It's my first time, actually. I have to say I'm impressed. Most Goodwills don't sell nearly this quality of leather corsets."

"Welcome to Norville," he says, the corner of his mouth twisting up in half of a wry smile. "Though from the looks of it, you're acclimating fast." He gives the torn fabric containing your breasts a deliberate, appreciative glance. "Just keep in mind, everything you see is here because somebody gave it up, in the end. Not everyone who comes to Norville finds their dream."

What.

What.

You smile back at him with your heart and head both racing, and mosey over to the lingerie rack while you think very quickly.

Some aspects of this are increasingly obvious in retrospect, like, your city now has a 24-hour strip club, which has people there at 10 in the morning. And… and also a big-shot Los Angeles executive drove to Norville which is a 90-minute drive away from LA, in order to visit that strip club. And in order to obtain whatever other services Norville now has a statewide reputation for offering.

You, you grew up here, and now it's…

You run your hands through your hair, a calming gesture you only recently became capable of using on yourself. There aren't orgies going on in the streets. The Goodwill upstairs is almost the same.

Norville just has a basement too, now.

That's all.

…it's probably not going to stay that way. It hasn't stayed that way. Norville U now has a student sex cult, an open student sex cult, over and above however many student sex cults are hiding in the dorms' basements.

Maybe you should, maybe you should move to Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Do this somewhere that isn't the only home you've ever known. Unless that would be pointless, because whatever's happening is going to cover the whole Earth in another year, and all you'd gain for Norville would be a little time.

Not that you've started being against sex or sex work, not that Norville can't use the economic boost, it's just, it's just…

You wish you knew what was happening, where this is going, where it will all end.

With fingers that only shake once, you pick up two dangerously lacy bras, and even more dangerously lacy panties with side-ties and sheer fabric over the crotch, plus thigh-highs, and you take both into the women's fitting room for comparison… the second set is nice... wait, the red and black theme goes with this hair, not the hair you'll have later. You are off your lingerie-picking game for sure.

Back out you go, and get something in just black this time.

Spoiler: Black lingerie

This will work, you think.

You get dressed again, you're ready to check out now. And just as you pick up your backpack you turn around and notice… it.

Spoiler: Noticed

There's a penis sticking out of a little hole in the wall. Not next to where the men's changing room should be, it's on the opposite wall from there.

And there's violet text next to it.

Secret area discovered: Goodwill Gloryhole!

A useful resource for when you need nectar, energy, or some quick sexual degradation. This Gloryhole can provide up to 5 cocks/day.

This is a clean Gloryhole in a nice area. It would be very impolite to let any semen go on the ground or furniture, and if so you may be barred from returning to this Gloryhole in the future.

Quest available: Gloryhole Girl

Make his cock come without you seeing or touching any other part of him, and without him being able to see you or touch you. Is there really a human being on the other side of the hole? Some questions are better left unanswered… on both sides.

Objective #1: Drain 10 cocks: +1 FUK
Objective #2: Drain 100 cocks: +2 PRN
Objective #3: Drain 1,000 cocks: Personal forcefield, aura of awe, ability to fly.
Objective #4: Drain 10,000 cocks: ?????

You blink, then blink another several times, then squeeze your eyes shut, then open them again. The penis and the violet text are still there.

That was… a very fast followup with an offer of even meaninglesser sex, if you're correct about how the Erogame behaves when you prove you can be tempted. Or maybe there was a secret area here to be discovered all along, and this is, again, just the operation of a cold-blooded rulebook, onto which your wondering brain is drawing patterns in the clouds.

You'd be tempted to just walk out of the changing room immediately, if not for the part of you that's scared and wants to run out of the changing room. Which is stupid, and makes you remember how much you shouldn't be scared of a penis at Lvl 10.

Okay, thinking about this rationally… there are arguable reasons why you ought to do this, pick up some small easy benefits with a total lack of commitment or risk. You're low on DOM, and even if you get some energy back by dominating Blake, skills like Edging or Tears of Milk use a heck of a lot of DOM. You could tease those five cocks and pick up some more Dominant Energy. And get five nectars, for whatever those are worth…. none of this is actually tempting you. Why are you still here?

Because you could get more experience with penises. You're Lvl 10 and you've touched, like, three of the things. You feel like a horrible impostor who should know all about penises and how to operate them by now. You could get more experience in a totally neutral non-scary context, before you meet Blake again. That's what's actually tempting you.

Okay, you're a little interested in some other aspects of this experience. Even though part of you is complaining that you just had sex like fifteen minutes ago and what are you, some kind of slut? Which is annoying you, and tempting you to get down on your knees just to teach that part a lesson, because like seriously your brain should have caught on to some facts by now.

But there's also a lot to be said for just getting on with your morning. It would take you a long, long time to get to Blake if you stopped at every cock between here and there.

[ ] Start your path to glory.
[ ] Move along.

(EDIT: Clarification: "Start your path to glory" is just a tongue-in-cheek way of describing her experimentation with these five cocks, it doesn't mean she's adopting Objectives 1-4 as personal goals if this vote wins.)

(Voting has now closed.)

5.5.2**: Indecisive

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (28,300 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 81/340
SUB: 342/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 17
FUK: 17
PRV: 24
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 3
Money: $9001

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Driver #1
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 75 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 2242-2388]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Start your path to glory.
No. of Votes: 45
ScrewFate
abyssmal_kismet
alphabeta
Andigatron
Andrew Wyght
angelofwhim
Argentorum
Blackshard
Budda002
D.Rockstar
earfluffy
Epicr
fictionfan
Flashbunny
Grollo
Helix
Hyperion042
Ice1039
january1may
KBob
Koonri
Kurogami
Lucerna
Lumarin
Malbutorius
matacusa
mkire
MrBTXz
Nordvegr
Orz
P90Techie
redfog
reeezzzaaa
Robotninja
SETIFAN
slicedtoad
Soul Shocker
Spectral Waltz
Strelok
TooApathetic
VanillaTentacle
Waruiko
wille179
ZenithOfLust
zup

[X] Move along.
No. of Votes: 45
pepperjack
Alkaiser009
Andelevion
Aoinfinity
Blacksoul
chrnno
DarthSquidious
DB_Explorer
Diraniola
Dragonheart91
Elitist Oars
Ephemeral
FeepingCreature
fluxoid
Gingganz
Gnarker
Goldenlima
Guile
HiMyNameIs_REDACTED_
Jaso
jobn
Kandagger
Killako
kimagurena65536
Kingreaper
kozinc
Lavida
Mei Mei
MissileTeatime
Mitale
napkintooth
PhotonDragon
Prustan
Random Asian Person
Raron
relinar
ShaperV
Sirrocco
SkySkimmer
Sofixon
SoulofaGremlin
The Undead Martyr
Theminimanx
wasprider
Xenia

Total No. of Voters: 90

Conflicting thoughts cross your mind as you stare at a penis sticking out of a wall in a Goodwill dressing room.

being able to fly would be nice

1000 cocks is kind of a lot

those superpowers might not seem as cool by the time you're that late in the Erogame

the PRN stat is unnerving, porn is not a genre that appealed to you the same way as eroge, the ERO stat is pornographic enough for you on its own, but you aren't committing to finishing 100 cocks if you start here

some of the mental images playing out in your mind are kind of hot and you were just thinking about how when something seems hot you can just do it

you want to get to Blake sometime before November

but it's not like you need to rush

To be honest, the whole "disembodied cock" concept is weirding you out a little. More than a little. But you don't want to get in the habit of running away without trying things when the Erogame makes you an offer. You can always walk away at any time. This is the ultimate no-strings-attached sexual experience, that's the point.

You hesitantly reach toward the male appendage sticking out of the wall.

You withdraw your hand.

You reach forward again.

You withdraw your hand again.

You slap your arms down at your sides and ball up your fists, aware of the embarrassing heat in your cheeks. You are being silly. On your life path, turning all shy around a cock that doesn't even have an attached person is not okay. Someday, if your ERO keeps rising, penises might start spontaneously sprouting from every surface around you okay never mind that line of thought is not helping.

You kneel down and put your head level with the penis, staring at it. Your recent life has featured some cock, but the only time you've had leisure to stop and look at the cock was early Monday before you started Blake's morning blowjob. You don't have the pattern of veins on Blake's cock memorized, you didn't take any pictures. You couldn't say whether Gloryhole Cock #1 is more or less wrinkled in the skin beneath the head. You just know that this cock looks different from Blake's cock.

You reach out again and tentatively poke the penis, then freeze as you think that there probably is an actual human being on the other side of this, and what does he think about his penis being touched with your finger…

God damn it, Cindy, make up your mind, you think to yourself.

You reach up and enclose the cock in your hand.

Gently, without rushing, you tug your hand up, and down, taking the leisure to feel how the skin moves over the muscle or cartilage or whatever that lies beneath the skin of a penis… okay, that's actually kind of a weird thought. Does anywhere else on the body do that? You pause to try to move around the skin on your arm and verify that it does feel like your skin can move a little over the raised tendon you can feel underneath. Okay, so it's not a weird inhuman feature of penises on that account.

You stretch out your tongue and take a lick, trying to pay attention this time to what penis actually tastes like. Aside from tasting soft, it mostly tastes like skin, you think. Blake's cock had some stray hairs toward the bottom of its underside, you noticed because they tasted hairy on your tongue. This cock seems shaven, if that's a thing for cocks.

You wonder what the man on the other side of this glory hole (if there is one) must be thinking. He's felt a poke, a tug, a lick. Does he think you're teasing him? Is he weirded out? Does your wanting to know all these facts, about the mind attached to this penis, mean that you are not cut out to be a Gloryhole Girl? You almost open your lips to speak, to see if the man answers you, but you're in a changing room and people outside can hear you. And maybe knowing anything about the penis's owner damages the ero-logic of the Gloryhole.

What part of this seemed hot in your imagination, again?

The part where you made this penis come…

You start tugging again.

This would go better with some lube.

You reach down toward your built-in lube center for some of your nectar, hesitate for reasons you don't understand, then spit into your hands a few times and use that instead.

Tug, tug, stroke, stroke…

What seems like only half a minute later, you're caught by surprise as a stream of white fires out of the cock you're stroking, catching you squarely on your exposed chest.

You jolt backward in startlement, and then, as you remember the penalty for letting any semen hit the floor, quickly move forward again so that the next spurt and the next hits your chest. The fourth spurt is weaker and goes over your torn nurse costume, and the fifth spurt would have dribbled onto the floor if you hadn't moved even closer, almost touching the cock with your lips, with the semen dribbling onto an area of the breast exposed by your ripped uniform.

Ero achievement: Gave Nechtan Kelly a handjob and cruelly ruined his orgasm. +100XP

…you took your hands away just as he was coming.

You feel like you want to apologize, but even as you hesitate again to speak out loud, the cock withdraws into the wall.

Moments later---faster than makes sense unless there's a line waiting, or time is being bent around you, or this portal has just reopened somewhere else---another cock appears, dark-skinned, shorter but thicker than the previous one.

You run a finger over the white liquid on your chest, and with some hesitation, lick off that finger. Egg white, with a crisp apple-like taste and a sharp sensation.

Checking your status screen doesn't show any new Nectars, though. How much exactly do you need to consume? You run a finger over your chest again---

A skill has been created by a special action! Rubbing semen into your skin has created the skill The Lotion.

The Lotion: Lvl 1 (6%). Passive.

"Would you please rub this on your skin, dear? No is fine." --- Buffalo Bob

Coating yourself with a dose of nectar gives you benefits analogous to consuming the nectar. You may find it more convenient to combine and harmonize multiple nectars in this way, but at Lvl 1 the benefits remain only so long as the lotion stays on your skin.

Known nectars:

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Gloryhole cock #1 | A crispness like an apple's tartness, a sharpness like metal touching your tongue. | +5 to all dice rolls involving the BOD or LST stats, 3 hours. | ?? | ???

Your eyes linger on the violet text that says "Gloryhole cock #1."

…this, this isn't really feeling like your thing.

You stand up, and look at yourself in the dressing-room mirror. Heat rises into your cheeks again as you see the slopes of your breasts and some of your ruined nurse uniform decorated with what is obviously semen. This goes far beyond dressing like a slut. It announces to anyone who sees you that you're…degenerate, corrupt, perverted, hentai…

Spoiler: Decorated

This… this might be your thing.

It's, it's making you feel conflicted inside, but you need to acknowledge your perversions. You need to own this, that seeing yourself like this is making you much more wet than when you were just touching the penis.

You look to one side, blushing harder without being able to help yourself, and take another look back at the new cock sticking out of the wall.

You can think of other things you're curious about, like how much DOM you get from dominating a cock for one edge's worth. If it's more than 1 DOM, could you keep using Edge Other on a cock indefinitely while filling up your DOM bar?

But…

You don't need cocks sticking out of a wall to do experiments like that.

You can do it with a real human victim who can moan and sweat and cry for mercy where you can see his face.

If you're going to suck off one cock after another in a glory hole, you should do that because you have the kink for that, not because you were too scared of cocks that have people attached.

This may be your kink someday, you didn't hate it. But you're not ready yet to embrace it unhesitatingly, without changing your mind like 20 times.

You told yourself you'd give it a try, and you have. You didn't enjoy it hugely, but you did acknowledge that it made you wet to see the girl in the mirror looking so openly obscene with semen on her. That's enough. You did what you set out to do and shouldn't make yourself any more uncomfortable.

You pick up your backpack and shopping basket, and head out of the Goodwill changing room. Hoping, as you do, that there isn't some actual human being who is now being compelled by the Erogame to keep his cock stuck into a portal forever, waiting for you to get more into gloryholes.

You step into the basement of Goodwill where all the ero clothes are kept for resale, and think Fluid Unformed.

…Which doesn't work.

"Fluid Unformed!" you whisper, alarmed.

Nothing.

You tamp down a frantic urge to drop your shopping basket and flee away as fast as you can. So, so anyone who sees you knows what you did, that's not that's not too that's not too…

There's only half a dozen people browsing the selection of erotic clothing here, but some of them look ero themselves, like the tattooed woman with spikes emerging from the sides of her lips like tusks, or the man in a pure black suit over a black collared shirt and black tie.

Nobody's noticed you yet, but, but, but they will very soon.

With legs that tremble slightly under your miniskirt, you, why are you doing this, you stride over to a rack of not-quite-clothes that would expose your breasts and pussy under straps and panels of black rubber, and pretend to be looking them over, while the semen is still glistening under your neck and on your clothes.

Why, why are you doing this? Why aren't you running away?

…you know why you're doing this. You need to own that.

A thick-bodied woman who manages to make it look far better than you could, huge breasts only half-contained in a decorated black bodice, happens to look in your direction then.

The woman's eyes widen only briefly, and then she smiles, slowly.

Knees trembling, you manage not to look away. Instead you stare back at her with your cutest deer-in-headlights expression.

The woman drifts in your direction, the motion of her feet invisible beneath a long black dress, but you can hear the heavy steps.

What… is she going to do, what is she going to do to you… is she going to drag you into the changing room first, or just reach over and start fondling you…

When the woman arrives before you, she looks you up and down, then leans over and in your ear whispers, "Slut."

You inhale sharply, as just that one word, whispered so heavily, seems to set off a wave of warmth from your center. You realize that you're staring at your own toes with your head bowed and neck shivering, waiting for her to escort you away, or just start rubbing under your panties in front of everyone.

But no hand touches you, and seconds later you hear the woman stepping away.

Did she, did she not realize she could have had you, right there? Or did she just not want you…

You look back at the rubber not-clothes in front of you, and swallow again. What was that?

There's, there's some kind of need inside you, something that the Arcadias awakened but didn't finish feeding. A hunger exacerbated by the ease with which the Lyft driver toyed with you. You don't think it's LST spiraling out of control, the stat description doesn't suggest that LST 21 should be anywhere near an endless frenzy. It's probably just one more buried starvation working its way to your surface, needing to be sated before you can be sane.

You might need… to go wild, at some point. Though you'd be wiser to do it under more controlled circumstances than these.

You think of Blake, and imagining his face calms you down some.

You go to a section of wall that carries what look to you like restraints and bondage things, picking out four pairs of thick-padded, wide handcuffs---not exactly like Danni had, but close enough. Blake won't require them, you don't think, but they seem like good items to have on hand.

You pause, looking around the basement, at all the straps and collars and spiked boots and spiked earrings and chain bracelets and strict corsets. You're realizing that you want to adorn yourself, maybe not with this, but with something. You want to start on the "presentation and ornamentation" aspect of BOD, and not just to grind the BOD stat either. It's one more hunger inside you, waking up and noticing itself.

But this isn't where to start that journey. These ornaments, these ways of presentation, aren't right for Blake.

You pick up a rubber paddle and slap it against your hand, producing a louder sound than you expected from the very light hit, and a pure stinging sensation with almost no sense of impact beyond the sting. You take a deep breath, swallowing, and replace the rubber paddle back in its spot. Charles will want to select his own, when he's ready, when you're ready.

You get two more knowing smiles, but no more whispered accusations, by the time you make your way to the door up to the main Goodwill and exit the basement. Fluid Unformed works once you're on the stairs.

It's maybe a good thing that you're not already wealthy and don't have Ero-Inventory, or else you'd be tempted to buy an awful lot of things "for later."

On your way to the checkout line, you notice a small display full of cheap clip-on earrings, of which the most attractive seem to be some simple golden clips. Trying those on in a nearby mirror makes something inside you wobble. You need earrings. They're not as important as high heels, but you also need earrings to exist. You'll have to get your ears pierced at some point, but these clip-ons will do for now.

It all comes to $42, now that not everything you want is on sale, and you pay it with only a slight agonizing pain.

5.6 [ST]: Den of Iniquity

Once you've stepped outside the Goodwill, you stuff most of your purchases into your backpack, which is now bulging slightly. You take off your nurse outfit and drop it in the trash, that thing is done, and then slip into your new modest-but-dominant outfit. Curving your hips and running your hands over your legs as you change, for the benefit of the teenage boy who stopped to stare at you despite his mother's attempted hisses.

Next, finding a place to meet Blake. You are not running around with him looking for a motel to rent again.

There's the cottage Tammi offered you. You'd ask her for permission before bringing over anyone who might be dangerous, but Blake really doesn't strike you as dangerous. You also kinda suspect that whatever social bond now exists between you and her, the result will end up mirroring the Erogame's having awarded you that cottage as a usable sex area.

Though alternatively…

You turn back and gaze thoughtfully at the Goodwill, now with its added basement. You've spent several hours here since you gained your power.

You spent a couple of days at Norville U, and now it has the Natural Sexuality Movement.

Are you affecting the entire city this strongly, or are your effects more concentrated when you spend time in one place? A small city having a reputation as a center for sex work is one thing. A Goodwill selling spanking paddles, or a student sex cult operating openly, both seem higher-ERO than that.

And if so, the Norville Arms-Marriott is going to be one hell of a den of iniquity by now.

The desk receptionist might not blink an eye if you show up naked and ask to rent a room for iniquitous purposes, so long as you keep your hair at ERO 29. Though that is, at this point, just a theory…

You start to walk in the direction of the Norville Arms-Marriott, not breaking into a run just yet.

After a block, you duck into a tiny store crowded with patterned cloth in a wild variety of clothings, scarves with golden dragons embroided on them, saris in swirling scarlet. There's a single woman standing behind the front counter, which is a glass box full of jewelry that sparkles under tiny piercing lights shining down.

You're the only customer here right now, so you saunter over to the sales counter in your modest clothing, lean over the top surface, and grin. "Hey," you say to the woman. "Got anything really sexy in this store? Where by sexy I mean more like obscene. You know, Norville-style."

The woman's eyes widen, and then she regains her composure. "It's not my specialty, but I might be able to turn up something," she says. She steps out from behind the counter, and goes over to a rack from which she lifts off a white patterned dress whose fabric looks like an unusually light weave. "This top is designed for layering, but you could wear it without other layers."

Looking at the dress, you have to admit you're impressed. The neckline would show off a lot of breast, the thin fabric wouldn't do a great job of obscuring what's left, it seems clingy enough that it would stick to your skin and outline your nipples, and the bottom would be so high on your thighs that it would show off everything every time you bent over.

You shake your head. "No, I mean obscene enough that I'd be arrested if I wore it on the sidewalk, even in Norville," you say. "You sure you don't have a basement where you keep all the really good stuff?"

"Sorry," the woman says, sounding sincere about it. "I think for that you want a specialty store."

You walk out of the store feeling thoughtful. That had a different feel from the Goodwill, or the Natural Sexuality march. Maybe the effects are stronger when you spend a lot of time in one place.

(You also bought the clingy white dress for $25 and stuffed it into your increasingly crowded backpack. You're worried about forming a shopping habit, but it has a mix of normal-clothing-ness and open sluttiness that you think would really push Charles's buttons.)

To the Norville Arms-Marriott it is, then. You might want to rent a room there anyway, for the Ponce quest and the biology convention. You might as well get that room now and use it with Blake too.

As you approach the hotel from a couple of blocks off, you spot an older woman going in the same direction, who seems to be having some trouble trying to pull four heavy luggages at once. And if she was trying to dress as anything other than a staid professor, she sure blew that hard with the tweed jacket.

You slow down from your high-heeled run, and stride up from behind her. "May I?" you say, reaching for the handles of the two largest luggages. The older woman glances at your demure clothing and sincere face and nods, whereupon you start pulling the luggages along behind her.

"Thank you," she says.

"You're welcome," you say. You like to think you'd be helping her even if this wasn't an obvious plot point. "Are you here for the biology conference, professor…?"

"Turk," she says. "I am, and yourself?"

"Starr. Just a student."

She gives you a second, appraising look. You probably look a bit young to be a biology grad. "Are you here with someone?" she says.

"I'm a local, attending Norville U." It occurs to you that you might need to actually register for this conference and get a badge, somehow---unless ERO 29 says you belong in any scene, including scientific conferences, so long as you're sexy and the plot requires it. Well, you'll think about that post-Blake.

The two of you trudge along, dragging your heavy luggages, as you try to figure out what sort of dialogue lines you should be uttering next in this plot point. You don't think you're supposed to seduce this person. She appears to be in her late fifties or early sixties, dressed very staidly, with the only hint of ornament being the deliberate-looking white streak through the black hair gathered in a ponytail behind her Indian complexion. She certainly looks like a perfectly normal scientist showing up for what she expected to be a perfectly normal conference.

"Mind if I ask a question?" you finally say. "Biology-wise, I mean."

"It's the least I can do," she says, glancing down at her luggages you're pulling.

"Suppose this conference was going to solve the overweight epidemic… uh, plus some general health things. Like, taking a middle-aged woman and making her more vigorous and younger-looking. How would that happen?"

Professor Turk shoots you a startled look. "I'm not sure I understand."

"I'm saying, supposing for a second that you imagine that this conference came up with a miracle pill to make people thin and healthy and pretty, how could that happen? Like, I know it's unlikely, but if it happened anyway, what would be the reason?"

"Why do you ask?" Professor Turk looks cautious, maybe a little alarmed, like she's worried you're a raving lunatic who's about to accuse her of being part of a vast government conspiracy to suppress the healthiness pill.

You should probably avoid any hint of abnormality in your answer. After the Charles debacle---as well as it worked out for you---you shouldn't risk even sounding like a time traveler.

"Uh, I might write a novel at some point," you say. It's not really a lie, you'll probably write a book eventually if you get around to being immortal. "The main character attends a biology conference that figures out how to make overweight middle-aged women be thin and healthy and young-looking again. How would I write that story to be realistic? I can't offer you much for the consultation, but I could name a character after you." Namely, the character of Professor Turk who will someday appear in your hypothetical autobiography.

Professor Turk frowns, though she also looks relieved. "I'm not sure what you're imagining goes on at conferences, but they are not typically occasions for doing new work. Conferences are forums to report on work already done."

Your face scrunches up a bit. "Okay, so, you're saying somebody here would need to have already invented that pill, if it was going to come out of this conference at all?"

Professor Turk looks halfway between concern and puzzlement. "Do I need to explain how far off science is from making a pill like that? If it was that easy, I'd take the pill myself. Or is the story set in the future?"

"I get that it wouldn't be easy, but, suppose it happened today anyway. Like, if it happened in real life, what would you think had happened?"

"A very large, very secret, very well-funded international collaboration picked this conference to announce results that are literally decades ahead of the state of the art," Professor Turk says, not sounding like she believes it either.

You think about this with your face scrunching up further. "I don't think that would work on a literary level. The protagonist has to be involved somehow in making the breakthrough happen… I think… even though she's not a biologist herself."

"Conferences aren't where breakthroughs happen," the Professor says. "Conferences are where we badger people for all the critical details they left out of their methodology section, discover that somebody else just solved the problem we've been working on for the last three years, and hatch glorious dreams of collaboration around joint funding proposals that never get funded."

"So, uh, it sounds like what you're saying is, scientific conferences are where scientists confer, which I guess makes sense. Then the protagonist would have to make sure the right two scientists met each other and shared their ideas? By inviting them both up to her hotel room for tea, say, and helping them get friendly with each other."

"That would make more sense," the Professor says. "Though, to be clear, their meeting would be the beginning of a long project involving many other participants and many other lines of research."

"So the scientists wouldn't be able to invent the pill the same night, then," you say. "Even if they were being, uh, intensely inspired."

"No," the Professor says, "they could not. That is not how science works."

"And get the first pills made by… the next morning, or the next night at the latest, because my protagonist is impatient."

"That is not how anything works."

"Not normally, no, I get that. But would it be impossible, or just super low probability?"

"There's a certain level of improbability beyond which there's not much difference. The story you're talking about isn't science fiction, it's fantasy." Professor Turk sighs---are your ears saying correctly that it was a very British-sounding sigh, or are you being influenced by the tweed jacket? "Though, heaven knows, if you even explained correctly what a peptide is, you'd be doing better than usual on popular science. But it sounds like you're picking the wrong conference for this hypothetical breakthrough. You do understand what peptides are? Like proteins, but smaller and less useful? We study them because they're easier to muck with than real biology? Peptides send biological signals to the real machinery, or gum up the workings of some process we want to block. There have been attempts to devise a peptide that will instruct fat tissue to die---only subcutaneous or visceral lipid cells, that is, and not say the myelin in nerve tissue---because it's plausible we could do that by pressing the right biological switch to set existing machinery in motion. There's no single biological signal that tells a body to become healthy or pretty."

You have a feeling you know what her answer to your next question will be. "And if the people who take the pill need to shed all their excess weight and rejuvenate reasonably fast, like… a couple of days instead of months?"

You can see from the look in Professor Turk's eyes that she's lost some respect for you. "That's not peptides, it's magic. The human body doesn't have any existing mechanisms to do that, and we can't trigger a process that doesn't exist. That really is impossible and not just improbable. If you want to help on public understanding of science, say it's being done with nanotechnology rather than peptides. And I'd rather not my name or appearance be used in any such story."

"Uh," you say quickly. "Uh, don't worry about that too much, actually the protagonist in my story just needs to have a conversation like this one with a biology professor, who can totally say all that stuff you just said and represent the science accurately."

Professor Turk gives you a startled look. "Wait, so your story is actually about an author who consults a biology professor for advice about a novel she's writing?"

You nod. "Uh, sure."

Professor Turk chuckles, a surprisingly cheerful sound given her earlier sternness. "Well, if you are properly representing the science, I suppose I wouldn't mind that much credit." She pauses thoughtfully. "Though if I'm going to appear in an erotic novel, I don't want to appear as some dowdy old scientist. I'd rather be a beautiful young girl whom the author seduces---maybe by promising her a cameo appearance as a distinguished biologist in their next novel, for the sake of completing the cycle. Don't give me that surprised look, I've mothered enough students to have heard what you were really saying when you talked about the two scientists being invited up for tea."

The open-whooshing doors of the Norville Arms-Marriott cut off any possible reply, and Professor Turk drags her massive luggages over to the reception counter, behind which waits the same shave-headed and enormous-spectacled guy that you remember from Tuesday morning… wait, does that mean he's the guy that Danni was fucking in exchange for his ignoring any noise complaints about 211? You give him a second once-over, but he's dressed in ordinary receptionistwear and looks as professional and receptionisty as ever.

Though the front desk is different from how you remember. Wider, taller, and curvier. What that signifies, you have no idea.

There's three people chatting animatedly down the hall, outside a door leading to what might be the hotel's breakfast room or restaurant. One is a rather handsome middle-aged man who has the sleeves of his academic-looking shirt rolled up to expose muscular arms, followed by an attractive middle-aged woman whose scientific-looking blouse is unbuttoned one step too far, and a timid-looking attractive female grad student hanging back from them and wearing a necklace with a certain resemblance to a collar.

…okay, apparently this quest is not as easy as you noticing the only two attractive scientists at the conference and seducing them into a threesome.

At 10AM it's too early in the day for Professor Turk to check into her room, and this is handled by her dropping off her luggage at the front desk to be rolled away into a small storage area.

"How would I go about getting permission to attend the conference reception at seven?" you say while the receptionist is trundling off the heavy wheelers. You're not sure you should ask, but you don't quite have the self-confidence to barge in on scientists like that.

"I doubt anyone will demand you show identification so long as you dress well and behave yourself," the Professor replies. "The reception is when spouses, sponsors, and students are brought along, so they won't be checking badges---not there, anyway."

The receptionist returns with four storage tickets, which Professor Turk accepts and heads off towards the breakfast room after she awards you a thank-you and a shake of hands. Though she does stop to chat with the other three scientists on her way, apparently not noticing or not considering it significant that the three of them have a visibly higher ero level than is usual at a science conference. (So far as you know, anyway.)

That leaves you alone at the front desk. The receptionist is giving you a neutral look that doesn't seem like he recognizes you. You did have light brown hair last time, and weren't as pretty.

"Hi," you say. "What type of hotel room do you have that would…" You pause to think. So far your best guess is that you're supposed to introduce somebody to someone at this conference, and make sure they become special friends. You have no idea how to figure out who. Are you supposed to be flirting with everyone who looks ero-ready, listening to them talk about their science discoveries and trying to figure out which two ideas match up… or maybe more than two ideas… how could you possibly know enough biology to figure that out?

Well, you can think of one way to muddle through that issue, if the Erogame lets you get away with it.

You'll just introduce everyone to everyone.

"Do you have a room that would work well for an orgy?" you say to the receptionist.

The guy doesn't even blink. "Penthouse D has three bedrooms, two with king-sized beds plus two adjacent king-sized beds in the master bedroom. Eight hundred and forty-nine dollars includes a complimentary basket of condoms, extra towels and bathrobes, non-stain scarlet sheets and bed linens, and full cleaning afterwards."

You do blink. Hard. $849 is, is, is, it's really really hard to come to grips with the idea that, especially when, you haven't earned money again yet, just that one time, but there was also the waitressing, you really are not going to run out of money you have sexual superpowers, you are doing this in order to get a solution to fat and possibly eternal youth for Mom, you knew this quest would end up costing $2000, but,

But, but,

But but. That's what but.

"When are you planning the occasion?" says the receptionist.

You put your brain's screaming financial center on hold. "Well, I'm still considering venues," you say, "but I was thinking of maybe eight or nine pm tonight. Oh, but first I'd want to call over a boy I know and dominate him and take his virginity, and he'd probably get here in, say, about fifteen minutes from now. That won't take a basket of condoms or scarlet sheets, so you could wait until later for those."

This is oddly liberating.

"Check-in would ordinarily start at 1pm, unless you want to pay for an additional day," says the receptionist, still with an unblinking expression.

AAAAHHHHHHHHH

No shut up shut up financial brain centers, the main Cindy brain is not going to pay an extra $849. You could get a regular room for $79 or whatever that was. Or just wait until 1pm. You can't start on the conference until later anyways, and six hours seems like plenty of Blake time.

Or…

You give the receptionist a considering look. He is known to be corruptible.

[ ] Get a regular room and call Blake to meet you here.
[ ] Wait until 1pm to call Blake here.
-[ ] Read up about biology in the meantime.
-[ ] Read up about calculus and engineering in the meantime.
-[ ] Get started on inviting attractive scientists to your orgy in the meantime.
-[ ] Look in on Tammi and try again to learn her advanced tickling skills in the meantime.
[ ] Get underneath that conveniently high reception desk, start blowing the receptionist, and don't let him come until he agrees to offer you early check-in to the penthouse.

[ ] Plan Way Too Much
= invite Blake to library, study with him and tease him until 1pm, then take his virginity in the penthouse

5.7.1** [BL]: Studying Biology

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (28,400 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 86/340
SUB: 332/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 17
FUK: 17
PRV: 24
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8934

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Driver #1
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 81 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 2425-2482]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Plan Way Too Much
-[X] Reserve the room.
-[X] Ask Blake to meet us at the library for a study date.
-[X] Study Biology and tease Blake to a frenzy.
-[X] Come back here at 1 PM collect the room key and Blake's virginity.
No. of Votes: 21
Plan: ◈Way Too Much
Aoinfinity
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
DB_Explorer
Diraniola
Elitist Oars
Gingganz
Grollo
Guile
january1may
kimagurena65536
Mei Mei
MissileTeatime
MrBTXz
Nordvegr
Pbkan
sharps
Sirrocco
Spectral Waltz
The Undead Martyr
wasprider

[X] Get underneath that conveniently high reception desk, start blowing the receptionist, and don't let him come until he agrees to offer you early check-in to the penthouse.
No. of Votes: 7
fluxoid
Argentorum
Ice1039
insignia33
redfog
ScrewFate
zachol

[X] Plan Way Too Much
No. of Votes: 3
Lavida
Alkaiser009
gilgamekk

[X] Wait until 1pm to call Blake here.
-[X] Read up about biology in the meantime.
No. of Votes: 1
Xenia

[X] Wait until 1pm to call Blake here.
-[X] Get started on inviting attractive scientists to your orgy in the meantime.
No. of Votes: 1
napkintooth

Total No. of Voters: 33

Eventually, your eyes slide away from the handsome receptionist and the invitingly tall desk in front of him. No, you're not quite ready to use sex to get your way in everything. Not yet.

Besides. You could also just meet Blake in the library, have him help you study enough biology to fake your way through a conference on peptides, and incidentally make sure he's extremely ready to be deflowered by the time 1pm comes along. That still counts as "normal sex", right? Sure it does.

"All right," you say to the receptionist. "I'd like to reserve Penthouse D, to be ready for an orgy starting at 8pm or later, but also with me checking in earlier at 1pm to deflower an innocent boy. I don't suppose you take cash?"

They do. But they'll also want a credit card for breakage or incidental charges.

You hesitate, but the front desk guy assures you that whoever checks you in at 1pm is the only person who needs to know your real name, so… okay.

And then you're heading out of the Norville Arms-Marriott, and taking out your new burner phone, navigating to Contacts and a name you entered in long before, against this day.

You pause before you send the text, loitering outside the hotel as you are. You take some deep breaths of the morning air, feeling the morning sun on your skin and the warmth starting to radiate up from the sidewalk pavement. You close your eyes, and turn your attention away from the distant car-engines and occasional honk of the city.

You think of everything that happened with Blake, trying to remember what he remembers.

You remember the two of you standing in front of the motel door, staring at each other awkwardly. You remember freezing up when you thought it was your job as the erogame character to start removing Blake's shirt. You remember Blake's shaking hands when he began to remove his shirt himself.

Shyly sexual. Awkwardly sexual. Driven, desperately courageous, to be sexual. That's the Starry that Blake remembers.

…that's still you, you think. Less shy, less awkward, with less need to be so driven, but you are still all of those things. You don't think you'd have any trouble now unbuttoning a boy's shirt. But you haven't had much practice in dominance since Monday when you left Blake, you've never taken anyone's virginity before, and that leaves plenty of nervousness at the thought of screwing this up.

Blake also remembers your retroactively grey-brown hair, and this date needs to start at ERO 15. After opening your eyes and glancing around, you run your hands through your hair to make the shift.

Then you begin thumbing a message into your phone.

< this is Stanley Stone from Walgreens, call me when you get a chance

You're not sure whether Blake needs to worry about people reading his messages. Any message you could think of that gave more of a hint, like "I'm ready to give you that thing", sounded like a drug deal in progress.

Then you loiter on the sidewalk, looking at your phone, waiting for a call or an answer, feeling a tension inside you that isn't unpleasant.

Your phone sings its little tune, deedle-deedle-deedle-dum, and you bring it up to your ear in answer.

"Hello?"​

Blake's voice is boyish, higher than Charles's, less sure of itself. If Blake is afraid now, or glad to hear from you, or shocked, you can't hear that much over the phone connection.

"Hello, Blake," you say in a low voice, as seductive as SED 17 can make it. "Do you know who this is?"

"Starry?"​

You smile at the phone. "Yeah," you say. "It's me, and…" Actually, Blake doesn't need to know right away what's going to happen to him in three hours. He doesn't need time to worry about it. "How would you like to help me study some biology?" you say in your low, seductive tones.

"I---I---uh---yeah, sure!"​

"Great! Can you meet me at the Norville U library in about ten minutes? I think Floor 5 would have the biology books."

There's a pause from the phone.

"Uh, uh, by study biology do you mean actually study biology?"​

"What else would I mean?" you say in confusion.

"Oh. Uh, that's fine too!"​

"I mean, it turns out I've got to learn enough biology to fake my way through a conference on proteins and peptides. It'd also be helpful to learn whatever science already knows about how people get overweight and why aging happens. Like what actually goes on when skin wrinkles, things like that." That's probably more like three days worth of studying, but you'll do the best you can in three hours.

"Oh! Oh, I can definitely help with that! My Dad works at a biology startup and he takes his work home with him a lot."​

You stare at the phone. Was that true 10 seconds ago? Like seriously.

You are going to be pissed if you find out that the Erogame just rewrote Blake's brain and history for something this trivial.

Alternatively, you are going to be scared if the Erogame predicted this far enough in advance to maneuver exactly the right ex-Mormon boy into Walgreens.

And you are going to be confused if the lesson here is that reality itself just doesn't work the way you thought it did.

"Just to check," you say into the phone, "have you got plenty of time free today? Say, until four PM or so, though I don't know if we'll go that late." By the power of the Erogamer's World, you are not too busy…

"Yeah, actually! Physics got canceled, the TA's sick. Uh, uh, please don't take this the wrong way, but, uh, would it be okay if, can you dress in a way where I won't get in real trouble if somebody sees me together with you? Just a little trouble?"​

You smile at the phone. "Oh, yes," you say. "I got some nice modest clothes, and some less modest things to go underneath them." He'll just have to imagine that part. At first.

"Uh, uh, uh thanks."​

You're about to ask him politely if he can wear his own Mormon clothes, which make him look very innocent and corruptible. Then you remember which side of the BDSM spectrum you're living today. "Make sure you wear your Mormon clothes, I like those. Oh! And bring with a couple of extra pairs of your underpants. In case, you know, something happens to the first pair. Or the second."

There's an audible inhalation from the phone.

"Uh, this is that type of date, then?"​

"Wait, did you think I wasn't going to tease you while we were studying?" you say, feeling slightly worried that he was ready to do that without asking anything in return. Him being submissive shouldn't mean that he's a doormat. "I'm not just using you for your mind, Blake, that wouldn't be nice. You'll get to come this time too." You pause. "Eventually."

"Oh-oh-okay. I really don't want to get in trouble, though."​

"Floor 5 of the library has a quiet corner screened off by some bookcases, with a desk that would conceal everything below our waists," you decide.

"Okay."​

There's a silence, and you realize that the submissive has accepted your instructions, and is probably waiting in increasing terror wondering if he's supposed to say something else. You need to not leave decisions to him.

"Good boy," you say. You want to say something more seductive than this, and at SED 17 you ought to be able to do that, but your mind is blank… no, maybe you just need to say the obvious. "Thanks for helping me on this, Blake! I'm looking forward to hearing the cute sounds you make each time you're allowed to come! See you soon!"

You press the red hang-up button on the phone, before Blake is forced to figure out how to respond to that. God dammit you're feeling all nervous again. Shouldn't you be over this, after Charles and the Arcadia twins?

You need to remember that Blake does not have 53 years of submissive experience and memories of 11 more experienced dominas to compare you against, and that he is liable to be grateful for your company even if you fuck something up.

…You think you actually believe that. Which is nice.

Okay, new goal for this sexual encounter: you will go through this without feeling nervous, without beating yourself up, and without freaking out every time you roll over a speedbump. Blake is a teenage virgin boy and you're not trying to sex him as hard as possible, since you don't have No Comparison and you don't want him mooning over you forever. You can try to relax here. Really.

Another race through the city center. You push yourself to run faster, this time, having realized that you need to become more athletic before you can roofhop.

You slow down to a jog through the Norville campus. Some people give you odd looks, before blinking as if to derecognize you and looking away.

As you slip through the mighty doors of the library, you realize you're now carrying your academic backpack again. Well, whatever.

And then you reach the nearly deserted Floor 5 of the library. Your heels send you tapping you off towards the far right corner of Floor 5, which now contains a maze of bookcases that you're pretty sure was not there yesterday. Bookcases that contain massive rows of… zoology journals from the 1970s, at least on this shelf. Not going to be much traffic here, check.

Spoiler: Dice roll: Will there be traffic here?

Ero random encounter roll: Library, with shenanigans ongoing: ERO x 2 probability.
1-15 negative ERO event
86-100 positive ERO event

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 62

For: Library: random ero encounter?

Rolled on: October-18-2017, 02:32pm

See dice roll details

62

…looks like a quiet day in the library.

At the end of the maze, there's a desk showing the upper half of a cute boy, maybe slightly younger than you, with black hair in short curls and a cleanly shaven chin, wearing a button-down white shirt in the classic Mormon style, with a dark gray necktie. The boy's bottom half isn't visible, screened off by the solid sides of the dark wooden desk where he's sitting. The desk has room enough for two, and there's an empty chair next to him.

A slight mist of sweat is visible on Blake Layton's forehead. Either he ran to get here, or he's nervous.

It's all… nostalgic, and nice.

You slip around the side of the desk, and hug Blake into you, pulling him sideways in his seat so that his head goes into your boobs. Your boobs aren't large enough to marshmallow-hell him, but it's the thought that counts.

"H-hi," Blake says into your boobs.

"I missed you," you breathe, realizing as you say it that it's true.

"I, uh, it's embarrassing to say this, but I mean it, honestly. You look even prettier than last time," Blake says.

Thoughts of what exactly to do next flit through your mind, the inner debate settled by Danni's widely applicable advice: if you don't know what to do next, start kissing.

You release Blake from your hug, and then you step carefully over him, straddling your legs across Blake's lap and chair, still facing him. Blake looks at you with that adorable wide-eyed shocked expression as you carefully sit down on his lap, putting your lips level with his. You pull his head close to yours and kiss him, once, twice, thrice you kiss him, and then you start exploring his mouth with your tongue.

There's a pokey sensation beneath your dress. You wiggle your hips on it, and keep kissing Blake. You don't activate Edge Other; if Blake can come this quickly, with this little stimulation, he deserves his release.

Blake's face is red when you break the kiss.

"I missed you too," Blake says.

"Have you been all right?" you say. You're still unsure of what happens to people when you don't complete their plotlines, and it worries you. "Mentally, I mean?"

Blake nods, a more serious look coming into his eyes. "I've been reading up about… people like me…" He looks past you, searching, like he's checking for eavesdroppers. "Uh, I'm not really comfortable talking about it here," he says in a quieter voice. "But I've been careful not to believe everything I read. I've tried looking for ways to, uh, meet the right type of girl, but I didn't see anyone on collarspace.com who sounded like anyone I'd want to meet ever."

A tinge of guilt enters your own consciousness. Maybe you shouldn't have promised Blake to find him a mistress. It's possible---more than possible---that beginning that quest means Blake can't find a mistress until you do it for him. "I'm staying on the lookout too," you say.

Blake nods, still with that serious look. "Uh… am I supposed to call you mistress?"

You shake your head. "I don't want my relationships to just fall into BDSM patterns. I want to make my own way." You think of calling Charles sir. "Unless it feels right, I mean. Would it feel particularly right to you to call me mistress?"

Blake shakes his head.

"Me neither," you say. "And that settles it."

You pick yourself up off the chair and slip around and to the side, placing yourself in your own chair. You reach your hand over and start rubbing the split of Blake's pants, so his cock knows it's not being abandoned.

"First," you say, "we need to come up with a study plan."

"Are, uh, are you going to do that while we study?"

Your hand goes on rubbing at the same speed. You have little enough DOM that you haven't activated Clothes Can't Stop Me. But you don't need supernatural going-through-clothes abilities here. Blake knows you as an ordinary girl, a slutty one to be sure, but not an alien, not a psychic. He's the only person who knows that Starry. It's okay for your hand on his crotch to just do what an ordinary girl's hand would.

"I'll stop rubbing if you get too close to coming," you say. The thought occurs to you that you shouldn't accustom Blake to the idea that a good mistress can edge him without any help on his part, because a dominant girl who isn't you might not be able to. "Raise a hand if that's about to happen to you."

Blake swallows, an lllp-ing sound.

Actually, can you still practice the Clothes Can't Stop Me skill just by rubbing Blake through his clothes the normal way, without spending energy? Only one way to find out.

You were wondering how But She Was Such a Good Student would interact with ero things. The not-very-surprising answer is that, like your hair, it never gets in the way. There's always a part of your consciousness that's free to smile at Blake, to lean over and kiss him when he's especially helpful, or pay attention to a particularly good twitch when you get the angle of your fondling just right.

With Blake present to point you in the right directions and answer quick questions, most of your studying is done through your laptop. You want to know about proteins, peptides, being overweight, and aging, especially the parts of aging that make people less pretty. Why does all that happen?

Blake says to start with the ideas behind proteins, which feel vaguely familiar at first in virtue of high school biology, but then delving further leads down a rabbit hole of increasing fascination. DNA gets turned into RNA that gets turned into proteins, okay, yeah, you hadn't forgotten that much, but Wikipedia also describes the enzymes that tease open a stretch of the double spiral so that a transcriptor can start moving along copying off the messenger RNA, which gets sent over to the ribosome which is made of 60% RNA itself.

Clothes Can't Stop Me has increased by 1.

It's not the main thing you're trying to learn right now, which is more like "okay but what are scientists doing with peptides nowadays and how can I understand them when they talk about it." But all of this seems more fascinating than you can remember biology being before. It all feels real to your Good Student's mind. That stuff is actually going on down there, all these tiny machines inside you. Well, maybe not inside you anymore, you're not sure you're still made out of stuff that takes up space, let alone conventional biology. But the tiny machines are still inside Blake and Felice and your mom. Put together enough tiny machines and you get a person.

You know you don't have unlimited time to study, so as soon as you have the basics of proteins and their technical language stamped into your newly pliable mind, you say it's time to move on to understanding obesity and aging. Blake says that's more complicated and he should look through the stacks for a book about aging that isn't aimed at the high school level. You agree, but before he's allowed to leave, you reach inside his pants and caress his cock through his underpants until Blake's breathing is coming faster. You don't think he'll get in religious trouble for walking around with a visible erection under his pants, especially with ERO 15 on guard, so you explain to his reddening face that his embarrassment is part of the point here, that you're getting off on it. Then you edge him twice to make sure he's leaking.

Then you start trying to grasp metabolism while he's gone, Good Student ensuring that your mind makes the transition without skipping its stride.

Scientific knowledge of what the hell was wrong with you seems a lot worse-organized than what you're reading about ribosomes, less well-studied. You start poking around at random: a bunch of papers seem to think "sirtuins" are important for regulating insulin sensitivity, and then Wikipedia thinks sirtuins are also about DNA repair…

Blake returns with a book, and no erection.

This cannot be allowed to not stand.

As soon as Blake sits down, you reach under his underpants and fondle him to erectness, then start tugging firmly and fast. Tears of Milk, you think cruelly. Soon Blake raises his hand, then whispers "Stop!" in a high desperate voice, but the skill says to give him a few more strokes before you take your hand out.

Blake thrashes around in his chair and it's adorable.

"So," you say, "what's the story behind aging? Is that something you can summarize?"

Blake takes a few seconds to recover, then says in a rather high voice that the simple version of the story is that aging is what people do instead of getting cancer.

Cells have hard limits on how often they replicate, because cells accumulate DNA damage over time that could damage the soft limits and cues that tell cells when to replicate, and if there's just one cell that starts replicating infinitely, that's cancer. That puts a limit on how much the body can regenerate itself, tissues wearing out as they get older because of cells breaking down and not being replaced. Trying to remove the natural limiters on cell division might seem to help at first, but you'd probably die of cancer two months later.

"So to solve aging, you'd have to start by solving cancer, which you'd have to do by solving DNA repair, which coincidentally has to do with the same bunch of sirtuin molecules that have to do with controlling weight," you propose, wondering if that was true before Sunday. You don't see any reason why the same set of molecules would be in charge of insulin sensitivity and DNA repair. The Erogame couldn't possibly be retroactively messing with that, could it?

"Uh, I don't think it's that simple," Blake says distractedly.

"How does the DNA in sperm and eggs not disintegrate over time?" you say. "Why does the cancer clock start over for the embryo when people have sex? Could you turn people immortal by, like, messing with sex things?"

"I'm pretty sure noooOOOOooot," Blake says. "I don't know why the DNA in germline cells is more resistant to daaaAAAAaaamage, though."

Because there are cellular processes that can repair DNA using the information from unbroken strands, and those processes are turned up inside the germ cells. But why wouldn't those be turned up everywhere? You don't get it, and Blake doesn't knooOOOooow either.

You stop repeatedly edging Blake, and crack open Blake's book on aging, The Seven Deadly Sins of Senescence by Aubrey Longbeard, which seems helpful if the stuff inside it is actually right. It claims that aging boils down to: cells not reproducing enough; senescent cells that have deactivated due to DNA damage and are now cluttering up the system; "protein cross-linking"; some garbage that accumulates outside cells, like amyloid plaques, and inside cells, like lipofuscin; mitochondria blowing up because that's where all the high-energy work gets done so mitochondrial DNA damage occurs even faster; and, of course, the cumulative DNA mutations that everything seems to come back to. There's also the body making less of hormones like melatonin and thyroid and of course the sex hormones… it doesn't all come back to DNA damage, there's other clocks that try to wind down the body's activity level as it gets less resilient with age. But the reason why there's a biological clock in the first place sounds like mostly cumulative DNA damage, plus some other factors like garbage accumulating inside and outside cells that no existing enzyme happens to take care of.

Clothes Can't Stop Me has increased by 1.

Trying to read up about the outer parts of aging suggests that the reason people start looking old is muscle loss, and skin wearing out because skin cells aren't replicating and regenerating the skin.

You are starting to understand why Professor Turk did not think this problem could be solved with one peptide.

Renting the penthouse was definitely the correct decision. This could take an orgy with, like, thirty different scientists to solve.

Good Student would let you go on like this forever, but Blake is looking worn.

"You wanna take a break before we start learning what goes wrong with overweight?" you say, not stopping the slow rubbing motion your hand is making around and around the tent in Blake's pants.

"Yes," Blake says in a high-pitched voice. "May I please be allowed to come now?"

"Pants down," you say to him. "Underpants too."

Blake looks around nervously, and obeys.

You slip down from your chair, going under the desk, wondering as you do if---yep, there goes the violet text.

"H-how are you even fitting under there?" Blake squeaks, as you take him into your mouth.

A skill has been created by a special action! Giving Blake a blowjob underneath the desk has created the skill Lurking Beneath.

Lurking Beneath: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

So long as you are mostly shielded from view by a table, desk, or other furniture, you do not encounter any spatial obstacles to blowjobs, handjobs, or footjobs. Penetrative intercourse is not possible at Lvl 1.

While you lack explicit proficiency in spatial manipulation, this skill will work better when you don't think about it too hard.

You try not to think about it too hard, as your wet lips bob up and down on Blake's cock. You focus as hard as you can on pleasuring the big thick thing inside your mouth, on trying to pulsate against it with your tongue. Every time you think about what size the desk actually is, you bump your head on the underside of the desk.

Edge Other pings at you.

Edge Other pings at you.

Lurking Beneath has increased by 1.

Edge Other pings at you.

"You want to come now?" you say.

"Yes!" a high, desperate whisper comes from above.

Edge Other pings at you.

"Okay," you breathe with your lips touching the head of Blake's penis, touching and vibrating against the tip as you speak. "Come. Come in my mouth."

Driving Blake wild with your obscene encouragements causes your SED to go up by 1!

You begin moving your wet lips up and down. Slowly.

Tears of Milk, you think. You're so mean. You're so mean and it's making you so wet.

You move your head up and down a few times, then move your lips all the way down and keep them there. You pulsate your tongue against the huge thing filling your mouth, pressing more and more lightly with your tongue as it moves and slides, until at the end your tongue is just staying in place without moving at all. Blake bucks, trying to get more friction, and you move with him. A slight taste of warmth and vanilla-cake-flavored egg white enters your mouth.

You pop your mouth off, and sit back in your chair. "There!" you say. "You got to come a little. Now pull your pants back up."

Blake is pouting and it's adorable.

"If I hadn't started believing in materialism," Blake says in a whisper, "I would be asking you if you were literally Satan."

"I'm suffering too, you know." You want to send him under the desk to lick you, but you don't think he would fit down there. You'll just have to endure the increasing squishiness under your panties. "So how do fat cells work? And why do people get overweight?"

"Actually I think I need lunch," Blake says. "Do you want to get lunch together? Uh, sorry! Sorry. I forgot you don't like to talk about food."

"I don't like to remember that it exists, yeah," you say, keeping your voice even. Maybe if you can cure obesity for everyone, if you can understand what went so wrong and understand why you're safe now, you'll be able to think about eating again without flinching. "I'll study on my own until you get back."

It's almost 1pm now, and you lean back from your laptop and the open book next to it, exhaling.

Blake returned, you edged him cruelly, you learned about the science of obesity.

Scientific knowledge about obesity is a mess. Good Student isn't enough to unravel it. The primary idea you've managed to pick up is that obesity doesn't seem to be a single disease so much as a diffuse nebula of horrors, things that can go wrong and then cause other things to go wrong, and when enough of those things have gone wrong you're trapped.

Fat cells release signaling chemicals that cause inflammation. Inflammation causes insulin resistance and leptin resistance. Leptin resistance causes hunger and then eating too rapidly causes insulin resistance. Food in plastic containers that gets microwaved can end up containing estrogenlike substances that make people fat. Some company managed to get a regulation passed in California that requires a particular kind of flame-retardant material in sofas, so all the furniture companies just do it that way for convenience, and that releases chemicals your body mistakes for hormones. Your living-room sofa could've been making you and Mom fat.

Around 80% of the science papers end by saying, "But of course you should still eat less and exercise," like every individual author thinks their discovery is a rare, small exception to the rule that obesity is caused by stupid fat people stuffing their faces with cheeseburgers. Do scientists not read each others' papers? Or maybe they just want to emphasize that of course they're not weak-willed fat people looking for excuses. God forbid anyone think the author was siding with stupid weak fat people looking for acknowledgment from science that something is wrong with their bodies beyond their being bad greedy fat people who deserve it.

You now know enough about the chemistry down there to know what "lipids", "triglycerides", and "ketones" are, and the difference between subcutaneous fat and visceral fat, and that glucagon and ketones are opposed signals for anabolism and catabolism which is why it's almost impossible to put on muscle and cut fat at the same time, and that "fatty acids" are in fact acidic so maybe if the fat cells released all their fat at once that would literally melt people?

You're starting to feel a bit nervous about whether or not the upcoming miracle cure can work reasonably quickly, like a day or two.

But you're still going through with this quest. A cure for obesity sounds nice to have lying around the house, and it would give you a type of closure. Even if it takes like two weeks to work, and you end up using ERO 30 and Mad Inventor instead to cure Mom.

Also you're posting the cure to the Internet unless Charles is pretty persuasive about talking you out of it. You know he's probably going to complain about social upheavals and humanity making its own way into the future but, like, seriously.

You remove your hand from Blake's pants, absentmindedly licking the traces of vanilla off your fingers to clean them. "I think we're done here," you say.

"You said I'd get to come eventually!" Blake whispers. His face is pleading, and it's adorable, and it makes you want to just edge him over and over until he breaks down and cries.

"I said we're done here." You smile at Blake, and deliberately lick off your fingers again, showing tongue. "We need to go somewhere a little more private, like the room I reserved at the Norville Arms-Marriott hotel, where check-in time wasn't until 1pm."

Blake's eyes widen, and then he starts to smile, and then the smile vanishes and he looks uncertain, and now he's looking tense. "Okay," he says, his voice sounding strained.

You can guess what he just thought. You weren't going to tell him in advance, but now it looks like he's worrying about it anyway. "Yes, I'll be taking your virginity this time."

Blake starts to smile, and then again looks uncertain. "Really?" He pauses. "Are you sure that's okay with you?"

"Very sure."

"Because if you're nervous---"

You lay a finger across Blake's lips. "Hush, you. I admit, I'm a little nervous about my ability to teach you how to pleasure a woman. But that's all I'm nervous about, now."

"Oh," Blake says. His throat works hard, and he swallows. "If, uh, remember that if you change your mind I'll still be okay with you stopping anytime you want to."

It's nice. Like, it's not so much that the statement itself is one you find nice, as that Blake is trying to be a nice person and that's nice. "Don't worry," you say. "I won't order you to do anything I don't want you to do. Now let's go ruin your sweet innocence forever."

You rise from your chair, and Blake stands as well. The boy picks up his backpack, as do you, but then he hesitates instead of following you. "Please don't get mad at me, but, I can't be seen getting into a car or going to a hotel with you. I mean, not with you, I mean not not with you, I can't be seen with any girl, my church still doesn't know---"

"I'm not offended," you say. "I think illicit sub rosa liaisons are sexy, which is good considering how often they're likely to come up. We'll just travel separately and meet up at the hotel. I'll go first so I can get my room card. Text me when you're there, and I'll come down to let you into the elevator."

You step forward and kiss Blake again, pulling his body closer to you like you own it, as you do at least temporarily. You kiss him thoroughly, starting when you want to start, stopping when you want to stop, and rubbing him through his pants as you please.

"Follow me in five minutes," you say.

5.7.2 [HRM]: Shenanigans

You're waiting outside of the elevator in the Norville Arms-Marriott hotel, apparently the only elevator that goes up to the penthouse level, turning over a key card in your fingers impatiently and a bit nervously.

The elevator is stuck again, according to the guy at the front desk.

Nobody is trapped inside it this time.

It's going to be repaired in just five minutes or so.

You fucking know the Erogame is in the middle of pulling something on you and Blake. You just don't know what. And that's making you nervous.

The front doors of the hotel slide open, and a slightly overweight boy steps through, in classic Mormon white collared shirt and dress pants. He's just taking his phone out of his pocket when he sees you waiting by the elevator, and with a quickened step he puts the phone away and heads towards you.

Simultaneously, a woman in her late fifties, with an Indian complexion and a white streak through her black hair, steps out from the room behind the front desk, pulling the largest of her heavy luggages. Which she starts trundling toward the elevator where you're waiting.

Simultaneously a tall, freckled, voluptuous redhead steps out from the door leading to the hotel's restaurant area, dressed in a slightly open bathrobe and nothing more, and she starts heading toward the elevator.

Your brain does not process these facts fast enough for you to do anything except stand there frozen on the spot.

All three of them reach the elevator at the same time.

All three of them say "Hello," addressed to you, at the same time.

Except that Blake says it nervously, Tammi says it seductively, and Professor Turk just sounds professional.

And then all three of them look at each other, visibly surprised.

No. No you cannot be having harem shenanigans it is too early for you to be having harem shenanigans there is not enough raw material in your love life for harem shenanigans. The Erogame is really really reaching here.

Professor Turk is the first to speak. "Can you do introductions?" she says to you.

Your new cellphone rings.

It's with a certain sense of inevitability that you take it out from your pocket and accept the call.

"Hi, Charles," you say to the phone. "Just a second, I'll put you on speakerphone so that everyone can hear everyone else."

Because no.

Because fuck this.

If the Erogame thinks you are going to flail around trying to keep the pieces of your harem from colliding, it has another think coming. You refuse to live the rest of your life like this. You remember what you thought eroge characters should do, and you are doing it right fucking now.

Charles's voice, when it issues from the phone's speaker, sounds surprised.

"Starry? I just thought I'd check in to see if you were still okay."​

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm currently standing in front of a hotel elevator with a Mormon boy I ran into named Blake. Yes, I do find him attractive and would totally do him if he said he wanted it. Also standing in front of the elevator is Professor Turk, a middle-aged biologist, and Tammi, a beautiful woman who tied me to a bed last night and made extensive use of me. Everyone, the voice on the phone is Charles, my boyfriend. Now, does anyone have a problem with any of that?"

Blake is trying not to stare at Tammi, his eyes flickering between Tammi's face, and her loosely tied bathrobe exposing the curves of her breasts and thighs.

Tammi is looking in surprise at you.

Professor Turk has her eyebrows raised and is looking interestedly at the phone.

When Charles's voice speaks from the phone this time, it sounds somewhat alarmed.

"What are you doing with a biology professor?"​

"No, wait," says Professor Turk. "Wait, that is not the part I would expect a boyfriend to object to, and I can't help but feel that biology professors are being impugned here."

"You have a boyfriend?" says Blake. There's tones in his voice you can't read.

"As of Monday night, yes," you say. "I hope that's okay, because I'm not apologizing for that or anything else. I've done nothing that I'm ashamed of. None of this is anything that I need to justify, or hide, or defend, to anyone else in my life. Ever. Period."

"I," says Blake, "I didn't mean---"

"Sorry," you say more quietly. "I know you didn't mean it that way." It was the Erogame you were yelling at, not him.

The only person here who legitimately has something to hide is Blake, the closeted atheist. Your romantic life is not going to involve you concealing a bunch of secrets from half of your polyamours, and if the Erogame thinks it can impose generic harem antics on you---

"Uh, Starry, why did you change your hair?" says Tammi.

"What happened to her hair?"​

In sudden and blind panic, you shift your hair to have the property of having been light and brown from Wednesday afternoon onward.

"Nothing happened to my hair!" you say quickly. "It has not changed at all. It is light brown, like it always has been. See?"

"Uh… right," says Tammi. "It looks the same… as before. I… don't know why I thought…" She sounds a bit uncertain.

"Starry what just---"​

"Charles! We are not talking about my hair right now, not in front of other people!"

"I see," says Professor Turk, nodding. "Your relationship is in that phase."

"Is that the biology professor? Starry, seriously, what are you doing with her?"​

"I just asked her a couple of science questions!" you say defensively.

"What kind of science questions?"​

"This conversation is not going the way I would expect it to go," Professor Turk says. "But for the sake of preserving peace in your odd relationship, I'll answer. It happens that I'm visiting Norville to attend the fourth international conference on applications of proteins and peptides. Starry asked whether it was plausible that techniques for weight control and whole-body rejuvenation would be developed at this conference. I explained the reasons why that was not remotely plausible. She said she was writing a book about an author who asks a similar question of a biology professor, though I begin to suspect this was not the whole truth."

"God damn it, Starry---"​

"I wouldn't have published any stories without giving you a chance to talk me out of it. Okay?"

Tammi is staring at you with wide eyes. "You asked the professor what?" Tammi says. "Oh my gosh."

"This conversation really isn't going the way I'd expect it to go either," Blake says.

"Wait a minute. Did the Arcadias find out about… stuff?"​

"Yeah, sorry, I should've mentioned that. I had a little accident with my personal boundaries this morning and now Tammi and Danni know about some of the stuff."

"Is it okay if I ask what stuff?" says Blake.

"No," you say. "You are a sweet, innocent boy who is not allowed to know about stuff. Got that, everyone?"

"Yes," Tammi says immediately.

"I wish my life had stuff," says Professor Turk.

"You really shouldn't say that around---Starry, she didn't know what she was asking, please don't involve her in the stuff."​

"I believe it is my decision whether I want to be involved in unspecified, mysterious, vaguely alarming stuff," says Professor Turk. "I can handle myself, you know, I'm a biology professor."

"That's it," you say. "That's it, we're done, harem shenanigans are over now. We will all sort out the rest of this later. Charles, I didn't promise you that I wouldn't talk to biology professors. You already know that if you don't like my life choices about what science questions I ask biology professors, you need to come to Norville and do something about it. And I don't want to hang up on you again, not after what happened last time, but I know you have an urgent meeting coming up soon."

"Yeah, I do have to run, but Starry, please don't do anything unspeakable, okay?"​

"I'll make sure we have a chance to speak about it first."

The call ends and you shove the pocket into your phone, then raise your head to face Tammi, Blake, and Professor Turk, all of whom are looking at you.

"Clearly I spent my youth incorrectly," says Professor Turk. "I didn't realize this was an option for how I could have spent it instead."

"Is whatever you're doing now something that you want help with?" Tammi says, her freckled face now looking serious.

"Help?" Blake says in a higher-pitched voice, his eyes again darting to Tammi's loose bathrobe and the freckled curves inside.

"I," you say, "what, no, that's not what I, I mean, uh, actually, unless---"

You pause.

This is Blake's very special occasion.

You don't particularly want to share that occasion with Tammi, but you are not the center of the universe no matter what the Erogame thinks. Other people's desires matter too.

You turn to Blake.

"Uh, do you want Tammi to help us?" you say. "With the thing?"

Blake is having some complicated expressions as he looks back and forth between Tammi and you.

"Wait, why are you talking in code to him, I thought he was supposed to not know about your stuff," says Professor Turk.

"That was stuff, this is the thing," you say.

"I, uh, I, uh," Blake says.

"I'm feeling left out here," says Professor Turk. "When do I get something I can talk about in euphemisms?"

You look over the Professor again. She's too old to be, well, not-old. But you're not exactly immune to the feels when she talks about not having enough shenanigans in her life. Maybe if you're getting thirty scientists for an orgy anyway, some of them will be old enough themselves to find her attractive? Does being old work like that? The white streak through her hair looks artificial, or at least managed; she still cares about her appearance, even if she can't be pretty anymore. From what you can see from here, the rest of her shape isn't so bad for being old. She might still have something left of her sex drive. The Erogame could probably include her in if you asked.

"Possibly later tonight," you say. "I'll talk to you at the conference reception, maybe."

Professor Turk looks surprised, and then nods. "I'll look forward to discussing it," she says solemnly. "The issue, that is."

There's a murmuring mechanical whoosh coming from behind the elevator door now.

"Blake, sorry to rush you, but you need to decide," you say.

"Um… no, then," Blake says, sounding apologetic about it. "I don't think I'm actually ready for---"

"You don't need to apologize," you say.

"He most certainly does," Professor Turk declares sternly. "I have no idea what for, but until somebody gives me some answers I'm going to start making up my own. Apologize, young man."

"Sorry?" Blake says.

The elevator door pings and whooshes open, and you hurriedly step into the small mirrored room. A swipe of your keycard through the reader on the control panel lets you press and light up the button reading P… wait a minute, this hotel has twelve floors beneath the penthouse level now, instead of eight?

Tammi strides in on long legs, pressing the button for the second floor. Professor Turk drags in her luggage and selects the sixth floor. Blake, with a nervous glance at the others, sidles in and selects the tenth floor, because of course he's not supposed to be seen going to a hotel room with you, though it's possible that ship has sailed.

The door closes.

"Seriously, though," Tammi says, as the elevator rises to the second floor. "Let me know if you need help with something important, and I won't ask too many questions about biology conferences."

The door opens, Tammi steps off the elevator, the door closes.

"I begin to wonder," remarks Professor Turk, as the elevator rises up again, "whether there is perhaps some aspect of this conference about which I have not been informed."

"Yeah, you might want to ask about exactly how Norville got selected as the site location," you say. "After your previous conference hotel suddenly canceled on you."

The elevator door slides open on the sixth floor, and Professor Turk steps out after a startled glance at you. "Maybe I should," she says.

The door slides shut.

The machinery hums as the elevator begins sliding upwards once more.

The gentle whirring whooshing sound fills the silence.

"Please excuse me for asking this," says Blake, "I know you don't have to explain yourself to me, but what the heck?"

You slump against the mirrored wall. "Remember I warned you about my sex life getting complicated? Well, that happened not slowly."

"What did you do after I left on Monday?"

"Had my virginity taken by Charles on Monday night, participated in a nude student march on Tuesday night, got tied up and mercilessly used by Tammi and her girlfriend on Wednesday night, and now I am confident enough in my own sexuality that I think I can handle your first time properly, okay?"

The elevator door opens on the tenth floor, and closes on it emptily.

Blake looks like he's trying to decide whether to be horrified.

"You," he says, "you didn't do all that for me, did you? Because you felt guilty about not being able to---"

"I did it for me."

There's an expression on Blake's face like he maybe doesn't totally believe you.

The penthouse level opens before you, and you grab Blake by his nice white shirt and pull him out of the elevator with you, stomping your feet as you march forward. So, what, Blake thinks it's all about him, now? Does he think he's the center of the universe? Because if you are not the center of the universe then Blake definitely does not get to be the center of the universe.

"Blake," you say, "I don't know if the BDSM books say this, but either way it's true. Second-guessing your domina's life choices is a dangerous game."

"I'm sorry?" Blake says. There's an undercurrent of fear in his voice.

"Ha ha, you silly. That's not the way a subby boy uses his tongue to apologize."

"Lllp," lllps Blake.

5.7.3* [BL]: No Choices

Blake steps through the penthouse door with a look of awe, gazing around at the decor of the huge living room area into which you've entered, the decor different from the previous penthouse but on par with it. The primary light of this room, instead of cheery wall lights, is a great chandelier hanging from a vaulted oaken ceiling, with hundreds or maybe thousands of pendants that all seem to glow independently with a sunset-golden light. The windows are large, but not floor-to-ceiling, and gauzy veils are drawn over them like curtains, letting in only a diffuse blue light from the sky beyond. There's no paintings on the walls, only an intricate wallpaper that shows thousands of tiny flowers, images of small dandelions and roses, arranged into larger patterns that depict bigger flowers.

The whole living room floor is tiled with matching dark brown shag rugs, carpets that look inches deep, laid end to end from one oaken wall to another.

You guess that would be useful if people were having sex on the comfy rugs and got them dirty? The hotel could just remove the rugs and clean those, instead of needing to clean the carpet.

Also, you really, really need to earn enough money to live somewhere this nice on a regular basis, like seriously. Could Tammi's cottage be this nice, if she has money? You can't imagine her cottage is actually this nice.

"This is a hotel room?" Blake whispers, like he's afraid the room will hear him.

"It's a hotel penthouse," you say equally quietly, in shared respect. The room gets to you too.

"Penthouse… like the magazine?"

"No. The magazine was named after these. The rooms that very rich people use, on the top floors of hotels."

Blake walks forward, his head turning slowly. You recognize the feels.

You slip off your heels and drop them by the door. Maybe you'll put them on again later for sexy reasons, but you just want to feel those rugs with your feet.

Your eyes lid in involuntary ecstasy as you walk forward after Blake. Deep, soft rugs like this must be what rich people use instead of the cheaper drugs that they've made illegal for poor people.

"What are we doing here?" Blake murmurs.

"Stuff happens here at eight," you say. "But we can use the place for now."

"Are we allowed to be here?" Blake says.

You smile, from behind him where he can't see. "The person who rented this penthouse knows exactly what I plan on doing here, and is totally on board with it."

"Did you, uh, have sex with him?"

"Depends on how you define sex, but anyway, that's not your concern."

Blake walks toward the side of the living room, and looks through an open door on the left wall. You follow him, peering over his shoulder.

Two adjacent king-size beds, in crimson sheets and quilt.

"Those aren't beds for just two people having sex," Blake says.

"Those aren't beds for just three people having sex," you say. "Three people can fit on one queen-size bed, though it's crowded. Blake, are you all right?" You want to hug him, but his neck is hunched and his shoulders are trembling.

He shakes his head. "It's nothing," he murmurs. "Just stupid thoughts."

You move closer, and, somewhat tentatively, put your arms around the boy dressed as a Mormon, hugging him gently from behind. He doesn't resist. "Tell me," you say softly.

"This is what the elders would say is everything wrong with the world," Blake says lowly. "My father yells about things like this. What goes on in rich people's hotel rooms. Decadence, immorality."

"It's okay," you say. "You're an atheist now, you get to have fun."

Blake doesn't answer.

You hug him tighter. "What are you thinking?" you breathe again. "You can tell me."

"I'm wondering if I can be sure my father is wrong."

"Well, yes?" you say. The twinned beds stretch before you, open and inviting in blood-red coverlets, and you honestly can't see anything wrong with it. "If there's no God to disapprove of it, and nobody gets hurt, then why isn't it just fun? I mean, I'm not saying the absence of God corresponds to a total absence of morality, but we're not going to be overdosing on lines of coke or strangling prostitutes today."

Again Blake doesn't reply.

"Tell me what you're thinking," you command again.

"It could be about… good behavior."

"Good according to who?" you say. You're genuinely not getting this.

"It's just," Blake says. "I know there's people who aren't Mormons who'd still think this is wrong. They'd say that there's rules that people have to live by, that only having sex with one person at a time is part of being, I don't know, orderly… and that everything in society is falling apart now, and part of it is that the people who are supposed to be in charge are spending mad money to rent expensive penthouses and have fancy orgies, so they can show off how much they don't have to obey the rules that apply to the rest of us. Even if they're not God's rules. You don't have that sense at all, that them having orgies on a bed like this might be going too far?"

"You could have two girls on this bed," you say, puzzled. "You still could, just say the word. All it would mean was that you liked the thought of losing your virginity in a threesome and there was more than one girl who wanted you to be happy."

Blake's shoulders hunch more. "Am I just being silly?" he whispers. "Wondering if my father could be right about the order of the world falling apart, in a way that has nothing to do with God and everything to do with us?"

You don't answer for a second, thinking about bodies that change and heal overnight, about Conceptual Hair and Time Control, about jumping from roof to roof between houses that can't possibly be arranged like that, about a tiny city with a twenty-four-hour strip club, about ERO 75. With a tinge of worry, you shift your hair's temporal properties again so that it was the Coals Relighted that Tammi and the professor should remember seeing, during the time when they saw it before. You don't want to mess up their memories or timelines any more than you have already.

What are you doing with a biology professor?

"Maybe the order of the world is falling apart," you say, softly by Blake's ear. "Or changing in a direction that nobody knows. But if so, it's not caused by threesomes, or pre-marital intercourse, or anal sex, or anything like that. That's just people finding happiness. Gay marriage doesn't cause hurricanes, global warming does."

"So what you're saying is, the order of the world is falling apart, but not because of us."

Well... not because of Blake, anyway.

You move around Blake, and sit on the edge of the bed, crossing your legs beneath your modest red skirt that almost perfectly matches the scarlet coverlet. "Are you thinking of not doing this?" you say. That would not leave you in a good position, with the oath you made, which doesn't actually say that Blake gets a choice.

But Blake shakes his head, kind of sadly. "No," he says. "I'm just trying to think about how guilty I should feel for doing it anyway."

"I thought if you knew the right thing to do, you could just do it," you say, before realizing that maybe you ought to shut up.

"I know I ought to do this and not feel guilty," Blake says. "I know it's not wrong, I know we're not hurting anyone, I'm not stupid…" He swallows. "I'm not sure I can explain."

You have a strong sense that what Blake actually needs is for God to speak to him and reassure him that this is fine. And Blake doesn't know you well enough, or trust you enough, for him to be reassured by you instead. You turned down the chance to be his goddess.

The real problem is, you let Blake Layton see something that reminded him about morality, and now he thinks he's a responsible human being who has to make his own decisions. You don't know how to undo that mistake.

You'll just have to make the best of this bad situation.

"You can take as much time as you want to think," you say gently to Blake, smiling like you think his true goddess would. "Just stand right where you are, close your eyes, and think for as long as you want. Don't open your eyes until you're done. That's an order."

"Okay," Blake whispers. He closes his eyes.

You quietly rise up from the bed, slide forward a few steps, and begin to undo his tie.

"Hey," says Blake, without opening his eyes.

You pull the tie off over his head, and begin to undo the top button of his collared shirt.

"What are you doing?" says Blake, still without opening his eyes.

"Helping you think," you say primly, undoing the next button, and the next. "Remember, you can think for as long as you want."

You move Blake's arms upwards so that you can take off his shirt.

"I'm not sure we're doing this right," Blake says.

You pull off his undershirt as well, and then your fingers move lower to begin undoing his belt. "In fact," you say, "you're not allowed to step away from this spot, until you make up your mind about whether what's happening to you is immoral. And you have to explain it to me, out loud, before you're allowed to open your eyes, so I can make sure you don't need to think longer."

You kneel to pull down his pants, then his underpants, and decide to leave them pooled around his feet instead of trying to take off his shoes. It's not like he's allowed to move anyway.

"You really don't do things the way Mormons do," Blake says. "YEEEP."

Was he not expecting you to just directly put your mouth on his penis? Maybe he was expecting you to fondle his nipples first, or something? Well, if so, that's his problem for having unrealistic expectations.

You suckle contentedly on what's in your mouth, relishing the semi-softness even as it straightens out and hardens. Edge Other, you think, so as not to be taken by surprise. You're not hurrying this cock along, just playing with it, but you did tease it for a while earlier.

"W-what if I have trouble thinking about this while you're doing that?" says a nervous voice from above you.

You take the cock out of your mouth, firmly stroking the slick length with your hand for as long as it takes you to say, "Then I guess I'll be doing this for a while," following by you promptly sliding your lips down his length again, accompanied by some tongue pulsing… no, you need to slow down. Relax yourself. Blake needs time to think.

You reach your hands around and start caressing Blake's butt, which feels all soft and vulnerable. You experimentally try pulling it toward you in order to thrust the cock into your mouth.

Blake makes a sound.

You slowly pull back your lips, swirl your tongue around the cockhead a few times, open your lips with a smacking sound, say, "Shhh, concentrate," and then close your lips and swirl your tongue some more.

As much as Blake's been teased, could you edge him just by swirling your tongue around the head of his penis?

There's no reason not to find out.

As it turns out, the answer is, yes, but it takes a while, and Blake tries several times to jerk his hips, and sometimes his hands clutch helplessly at the air like he's resisting the urge to grab your head and force you to blow him properly. Mmmm.

"Touch my head if you're about to come," you breathe onto the penis. Maybe you can save on DOM and help train Blake for sex with normal girls at the same time.

Blake whimpers.

"And keep thinking about sexual morality," you say.

Soon Blake has touched your head several times, despite your effort to go slow, by the time he starts to say, in a stuttering voice, "I've d-decided that what we're doing is FINE---"

You started speeding up as soon as he started talking, of course.

"Why?" you say in a pause between edges.

"Be beCAUSe it's not hurting anybody and, uh, and UH---"

You're not sure how much DOM you have now and Edging is expensive, but you're blowing 10 DOM on keeping his cock right on the very, very edge for 12 seconds while he answers.

"UH be, because, uh, because---"

Okay, 24 seconds. Hopefully you picked up some extra DOM anyway with all the teasing you did before.

"---it doesn't CAUSE global WARMINNNG!"

You pull back your mouth, and look up at Blake while your hands go lightly slipping and sliding over his slick penis, watching the light jerking of his hips as he's kept warm and trembling. Does he really think he'll get away with this? "That's just repeating back what I said," you say. "You're not even using your own words."

"It's true though!" Blake says.

Somehow his expression still comes across as honest and pleading even with his eyes closed.

Okay, you probably did suck out a few of his IQ points, and a case could be made for a teacher's mercy in this classroom.

You rise from your kneeling position, ignoring the twinges in your knees and hips, and sit down on the bed. "Fine, you can open your eyes," you say, "and sit down in front of me. On the floor. Naked."

Blake hastily tries to step out of his pants, and almost falls over, and then he tries to undo his shoelaces while bent over and mostly naked, but he pulls the shoelace wrong and ends up struggling with the knot. You watch it all with a newly warm, newly sticky feeling underneath all the clothes you're still wearing. Being clothed while he's naked feels like something you want to do, but it has its inconveniences.

And then there's a naked boy sitting on the rug in front of you with a freshly tormented penis poking up from his hips, looking up at you with a scared, adoring expression that makes your heart throb.

"Now, Blake Layton," you say in a voice grown more purring and seductive than before, "there's only one choice here you actually get to make."

"W-what?"

"Actually," you say, "I take that back. You get zero choices. I'm ordering you to say which of these three options sounds the most like you, like the real Blake Layton, and then that one's going to happen to you."

You don't know him well enough to make his special occasion perfect without needing to ask.

You lift a hand with three fingers raised, and touch them one by one.

"First, I can help you learn about sex," you say. "You'll be allowed to touch me wherever you want, do whatever you want to me, and I'll tell you how it makes me feel."

"Second," you say, "I can train you to please a mistress, including how to use your tongue to apologize, and how to make sure she comes on your cock before you're allowed to come afterwards."

"And third," you say, "I can be mean to you and tease you over and over until you cry, and you'll never know which times you'll be allowed to come, but I'll use my pussy sometimes and you'll come inside me at least once."

You have trouble saying the words, you've become so breathless yourself. You need to do something about the stickiness inside your panties soon.

"So," you say to the naked boy in front of you, "you have to tell me honestly, which one of those sounds most like the real you inside you?"

[ ] Teaching
[ ] Training
[ ] Teasing

5.7.4** [BL]: Alternatives to Telepathy

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (28,400 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 162/360
SUB: 272/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 19
FUK: 17
PRV: 24
ERO: 29 (15)

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8085

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Driver #1
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Busy Mode: On

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 83 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 2487-2561]
##### NetTally 1.9.9
[x] Teaching
No. of Votes: 32
Helix
Aoinfinity
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
DB_Explorer
Diraniola
Dreikanter
earfluffy
edale
Elitist Oars
fluxoid
Gamerlord
Grollo
Guile
january1may
Jaso
Kandagger
kimagurena65536
kozinc
LancerisDead
Mei Mei
MrBTXz
NotaWriter
Prime 2.0
Prustan
reeezzzaaa
RoaSiD
Sirrocco
wasprider
wichajster
Xenia
zup
[X] Training
No. of Votes: 7
ScrewFate
Gingganz
Myardius
Phillbie
Prefixmancer
Spectral Waltz
Strelok
[X] Teasing
No. of Votes: 2
Ice1039
Firedon
[X] All Three, In Order
No. of Votes: 2
Ephemeral
Lavida
[X] Teasi-- no! Training! Training!
No. of Votes: 1
zachol
Total No. of Voters: 44

Blake takes a while to answer your question, his eyes going distant, though they never leave you.

"Is the first choice actually okay?" he finally says in a weak voice. "It sounds like you might prefer the other two more---"

"This isn't a choice," you remind him. "You're not deciding what you want. You're telling me who you are."

The naked boy sitting in front of you looks down at the floor. "Then being trained isn't me, I don't think. And I don't mind if you tease me sometimes but it's not who I am… are you sure that's all right by you? You're not disappointed?"

You stretch out a leg under your dress and use your bare toes to boop Blake in the forehead. "Look, I know I said I didn't want my relationships to just fall into BDSM patterns, but there's also a lot of well-tested wisdom in those traditions," shut up Charles laughing in your head. "Like knowing who you are, and not pushing yourself to do too much, or change too quickly."

For a second you wonder if you're going to see violet text announcing that a skill has been created called Blatant Hypocrisy.

Blake doesn't call you on it. "Okay," he says in his small voice, still looking down. "Now what?"

"Now you can do whatever you want to me," you say, smiling.

Blake looks up. "I think I want to be told what to do," he says. It sounds like he's struggling to get the words out. "I don't want to be trained, but I feel afraid because I don't know what to do… and maybe it's not me to figure it out. I want you to tell me what to do, and then I'll know. Is that okay?"

You frown. "I could do that, but then I won't know what you want," you say. "I don't know Blake Layton well enough. If there's a time when you want to fondle my breasts, I won't know to give you just that order, just then."

"Oh," Blake says, looking a little downcast.

How did he think that was supposed to work? You're not telepathic, at least not without skills that are a lot scarier than you want to invoke. You have no way of knowing what goes on inside Blake's private…

You consider this idea.

"Actually," you say, "I think the solution is for me to order you to say out loud any sexual thoughts you have. Like, if you think about licking my nipples, you have to tell me so. I might or might not order you to do it, but you have to tell me. Then I'll tell you what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and how long to do it. That way you won't have to make any choices, and I won't be in the dark trying to guess."

Blake's cheeks are redder than they were, and his dick is very hard. "I can't say all the sexual thoughts I'm thinking. I can't."

"Then say as much as you can." You say it in a prim voice, crossing your legs underneath your modest skirt as your pussy temperature rises again on seeing his embarrassment. "Starting now."

"I---I want---to have sex with you." It seems to take Blake half a minute to stammer the words out.

"In what position?" you say. "What do you imagine when you imagine that?"

Blake has his head turned towards the wall, like he can't bear to look at you. "You---sitting on me, riding me."

Oh my. "Look me in the eyes while you say things like that. Am I doing anything else while I'm riding you? Are you imagining me playing with my breasts, or holding down your hands to the bed?"

"Kissing me," Blake says in a strangled voice, while he's forced to look you in the eyes. "Doing, doing it to yourself. Masturbating."

"Good boy. What other sexual thoughts have you had?" Confess your sins.

"I w-want to see you come."

"How?"

"I want to make you come. With my hands. With my mouth. With my penis."

You smile. "I suppose it's possible you could persuade me to allow that. What else?"

"I want you to make me come again and again until I can't anymore."

"Keep going."

"I want to know what's under your dress. I want to see you naked again. I, uh, but I also want to touch you under your clothes before you take them off."

"Oh my. That's a naughty fantasy. What other naughty fantasies do you have?"

"I want to come o-on you. And inside you, but, also on you. Where I can s-see it." Blake's voice is starting to whine. "Please can I stop saying things now?"

"For now. Come sit on this bed, and kiss me. With tongue."

Blake staggers a little, as the naked boy pushes himself up from the floor, sits down beside you on the bed, the mattress dimpling around him and leaning your own body towards him.

Then, as ordered, Blake leans over to kiss you.

You spend a time luxuriating in the feel of Blake's tongue tentatively pushing against yours, the slippery wet thing probing at your own tongue, in your mouth. Some part of you that's reading way too far ahead in ERO thinks about how a tongue is more exciting and wet and alive in your mouth than just a penis, and maybe combining the two is the point of tentacles.

You break the kiss to tell Blake to push his tongue in further, and to tell him that his tongue feels exciting and wet and alive.

And slowly, gently, you guide Blake's hand underneath the waist of your dress. See how slick my panties are, you murmur. It means I'm ready for you. You could fuck me right now if you wanted, or put in your fingers. Ordinarily you'd need to warm up a girl first, like by being in bed for a while and kissing.

With your hand over Blake's hand, you show him how to move. You can do this even over my panties. Oh. That f-feels good.

Blake keeps circling his hand over your panties, and you go on kissing him, even as your hips start jerking in tiny motions, wanting to move more.

Just so you know, I'm unusually s-sensitive. Vulnerable. Easily toyed with. You could make me come with just this. How do you feel about that? Would it feel unfair if I came so easily? W-women can have more orgasms than men, but, when we're all wound up, like when we've been teasing a subby boy for hours and hours, coming can, can make us less tense, use up the tension. So you shouldn't always make the girl come right away, even if she's as easy as me. Do you like me when I'm tense and wet? When I'm this responsive?

Blake whispers words in reply, without stopping the inexorable motion of his hand.

No, it wouldn't feel unfair.

Yes, he likes you being so responsive.

I'm---I'm getting closer. It feels like little waves and spikes of warmth and pleasure, coming from where you're touching me. So, so what I'm going to do now, is, I'm going to say, on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is not aroused at all and 10 means I'm coming, how aroused I am. This is, this is around a 7.

I can't tell you in words exactly what your fingers should do. But you'll try things on me, and I'll gasp and I'll moan and the numbers will go up or start to fall back down again, and that's how you'll learn. Once I get to nine, try to keep me between nine and nine and a half for a while. Oh. I'm at seven and a half now. Oh. Seven and three quarters. If I say ten then keep doing exactly what you're doing, don't change the motion at all, don't speed up or slow down, while I come.

There's an earnest expression on Blake's face as he listens to all this teaching, something gentle and innocent and beautiful.

Now put your hand underneath my panties and start trying things, whatever comes to your mind.

Blake's fingers move beneath your panties, push aside your clitoral hood, and make direct contact with your clit---

Stop! Too sensitive. No, it's okay, Blake, it's okay, you're not born knowing this. Get some wetness from my pussy, move your fingers more slowly, with less pressure. Try not to push back the hood protecting my clitoris, it's too sensitive, you don't want to attack it directly with your fingers… it'll be easier once you can see what you're doing. For now, just go slow. Okay, a little faster than that.

Eight.

Eight and a half.

Nine. Y-you should change things soon if you're not nine and a quarter making me come.

Eight.

Seven. Blake, it's fine, you're learning. Right now you're learning that just poking your fingers an inch or two inside my vagina without thrusts hard enough to move my clit around isn't very effective as stimulation.

Seven and a half.

You're not sure how much time passes, you haven't been looking at any clocks, by the time you're leaning into Blake and trembling into his arms and saying nine and three-quarters, nine and a half, nine and a quarter, nine and three-quarters and finally, when Blake rubs you a little too hard, a little too long, the word ten passes your lips and you shiver and moan and cry out and your hips jerk without meaning to and Blake's hand doesn't follow quite fast enough, it doesn't have exactly the same rhythm when it resumes. It's not the most satisfying orgasm you've ever had, although it definitely was one. It leaves you wanting more and that's fine too.

You stand up off the bed, trying not to show the vulnerability you feel now that Blake's made you come on his hand. He's smiling, the smug bastard, and it makes you want to show him what's what, even as another part of you wants to bend over on the bed and be taken. Take off my clothes, you say, at least the top layer, and Blake obeys without losing that smug smile.

When your outer layer has been stripped off and he's had a chance to stammer out what your lingerie makes him think about, you go get your high heels back and do a little dance for him, a dance that involves you bending yourself around him like he's your stripper pole, rubbing yourself on him.

When your victim seems nice and ready, you kneel before him while he goes on standing, presenting your lingerie-clad body to him for his delight. You tell him it's his turn to say numbers between one and ten, and then you take him into your mouth.

It doesn't take you long to learn to keep Blake somewhere between what he calls nine, and nine and a half. It feels nice to hear his straining voice say the words, instead of relying on magic. More intimate.

Then you start living a little more dangerously, trying to keep him right around nine and three quarters.

Ten, Blake finally gasps at last. Ten, ten ten ten---

You don't choke, this time, though you do manage to drool some saliva-mixed semen onto your breasts, not intentionally, before you swallow the rest of it down. A touch of warmth like sunshine spreads through you.

Blake staggers a few feet to his right and collapses onto the bed, panting.

You quietly remove your bra and panties, and drap yourself over the back of his naked body, hugging him.

Blake takes some time to recover, and then goes off to use the bathroom, and then returns to find you on the bed with your raised legs widened obscenely for him. It's time for him to use his tongue.

It takes longer for him to arouse you this time. Four. It's okay, Blake, I'm not as wound up to start with this time, oral sex is supposed to be harder. You can stop licking if you want, and we can do something else.

Blake doesn't even bother to answer that, just raising his head to glare at you with a glaring glare of bloody-minded determination, the glare of an ex-Mormon boy who will make you come on his face. He lowers his head and continues to run his tongue over you, trying different rhythms and patterns.

In time he finds a technique that fits you, and then you're moaning for him, shuddering and crying out, pushing your hips into his face. Again, he can't quite keep the rhythm through your orgasm, like he's some type of unmagical normal human person who doesn't learn every sexual technique perfectly the first time he ever does it. You should maybe have moved your hips on purpose earlier, so Blake could practice keeping rhythms…

When you raise your head and body again, you see Blake looking at you in a way you can only describe as smouldering.

He tells you what he's thinking. It's changed from last time. He's imagining himself ramming himself into you, very hard and fast.

Do it, you say breathlessly, and lie back and raise your legs.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

He forgets to kiss you until he's done, and then he tries to apologize for that, and you say that you didn't remember about kissing either.

The two of you look at each other, and smile, and laugh.

There's a session of pillow talk then, when Blake's cock doesn't pop up again right away. You ask if he's thought yet about what he wants in a goddess, what you should be on the lookout for during your own sexual adventures. You're a little afraid the answer will be that his goddess is you, only you, exactly you, that you push an unreasonable number of Blake's buttons…

Blake thinks he might like the TA teaching his philosophy course in that way, she's strict, but nice. Also married, unfortunately.

Actually Blake liked Professor Turk too, to give an example you've both met. The scientist seemed like a good person, and knowledgeable and trustworthy, she was smart and funny and she could be stern when she wanted to be. If somebody with Professor Turk's air of authority and intelligence was giving him orders, Blake would feel good about believing in her.

It's too bad she's old, you say.

…weren't you going to come up with a fix for that, tonight? Come to think, transformation pods are also a thing, probably, or they will be.

Blake shudders and moans in your hands, and a small stream of white drips out of his penis and onto your naked breasts.

For proof of having been defiled by him, it's not very dramatic, just two small streaks of white fluid. You're proud of them still, considering how much work they took to earn.

Blake looks down at you, as you kneel before him with his semen on your naked breasts, and smiles in that way that makes him look much more masculine.

Then he whispers "I think I'm done," and collapses onto the bed in a cute little heap.

There's probably an Erogame skill for fixing that, if maybe not an ERO 15 one. Still, six orgasms is respectable and you're trying to be a normal girl right now.

You rise and sit beside Blake's huddled form on the bed, and run your hands over his body, trying to relax and reassure him rather than arouse him, pressing down firmly instead of caressingly, like the beginnings of a massage you don't know how to give. Maybe you could get a skill for massage? But the more orangish light filtering into the bedroom reminds you that time might be getting on with itself.

"Tell me what you're thinking," you murmur after a time. It's become Arc Words between the two of you, over the last hours.

Blake takes a while to answer. "That I hope there's other girls out there like you," he finally says, half-muffled into a pillow.

"There are," you say firmly, "including at Norville U," hoping that this is one of your statements that the Erogame hears and warps into reality. "Well, not girls exactly like me. But I'm sure there's girls who are more, uh, authoritative than me, and smarter, and extra-moral too. Professor Turk would make a lovely girl your age, if somebody gave her the chance to be one again."

"That's a weird thought," says Blake.

"Stranger things have happened," you say.

"I don't think they have," says Blake.

He's already thanked you, and spoken words trembling with gratitude. That all happened hours ago, well before this last orgasm. Everything's already been said.

You're feeling sad. Sadder than you expected to be. Are you feeling sad because of the ending of a story, the finish of a quest that entangled you, even if later you meet him again to provide him with a domina? Have you lost the psychological anchor of knowing you needed to meet a normal boy again? Is this just random domdrop, your brain having exhausted itself of endorphins over the last hours?

The naked boy turns over in his bed, and looks at you.

"You look sad," he says, and he doesn't keep a steady voice when he says it, either. "Is it because you don't want to say goodbye? Goodbye for real, like you were planning on telling me now?"

You don't answer.

Are you feeling sad about not being somebody who could be the goddess of a boy that good and upright?

"You, you know, it doesn't have to be goodbye if you don't want it to be," Blake says. You don't need telepathy to know that he wasn't planning to say this, that he promised himself he wouldn't say this, that the words are being squeezed out of him.

Are you sad that you aren't keeping him?

Blake looks at you with an expression that's open, vulnerable, innocent like the rest of his soul. "Tell me what you're thinking," he says. "Please."

That's not fair. He's not allowed to do that to you.

"Okay," you whisper, and look away from his pleading expression while you try to figure out what you're thinking.

The light in the room doesn't redden and dim while you think, it just feels that way.

"I'm worried," you murmur after a time, "that there's a part of me," you're not so blind as to have no understanding of the voices inside your own head, "that would vote to string you on, and not say goodbye properly, just because you're---an option. Because, oh no, what if I want to study biology with you again on Saturday but I've already told you goodbye? People don't like to give up their options, you know? They like to know they can always do it later. You could show somebody a menu with an item they don't really want, like, I don't know, tuna tofu tacos, and they'd never order it in a hundred years, but as soon as they think it's about to be taken off the menu, they panic. I'm not saying you're the taco! I like you, and that's why it matters to me, that I know it's better for you if I tell you goodbye…"

"You're afraid you're being selfish," Blake whispers.

"It's not even selfish, just… stupid, if that's how it turns out. On Tuesday morning, on Wednesday morning, I also woke up and thought, should this be the day I take Blake's virginity? If I tell you that I might see you again, but I won't ever choose to see you again, that means asking myself every day if I ought to see Blake today and the answer always being no. That's not good for me either."

"Then don't choose," Blake says, a hitch in his voice. "Don't decide what's going to happen to you. Just tell me---what you feel about me. What you feel about us."

That's not fair, you think again, although of course it's as fair as fair gets.

You close your eyes and think. What are you feeling? What did you feel?

[ ] Arousal and excitement. You like having someone to order around and lick you, you like seeing his innocence and you like corrupting it, and you want to bring him along on more adventures.
[ ] Fondness and worry, the same thing you felt on Sunday night. Blake deserves a nice life, a happy ending to his route that isn't entering your harem.
[ ] Fellowship and indignation. You are not okay with Blake's happiness depending on you in the first place, or the fact that he might be literally unable to find a mate without you because it's your quest. It's an offense against his human dignity by whatever the Erogame really is, and maybe the Erogame will listen if you tell it so directly? Blake deserves his own life and his own story.

Spoiler: Author's Note

The first choice restarts the Blake-for-harem route. The second choice doesn't preclude a Professor Turk route where she adds Blake to her own harem, but does mean I won't be constantly offering "Do you want to involve Blake with this?" options.

5.7.5 [BL]: Good Ending

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (28,400 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 380/380
SUB: 183/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 20
FUK: 18
PRV: 24
ERO: 29 (15)

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8085

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Blake Layton
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Busy Mode: On

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 86 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 2564-2614]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Fondness and worry, the same thing you felt on Monday night. Blake deserves a nice life, a happy ending to his route that isn't entering your harem.
No. of Votes: 23
abyssmal_kismet
Andelevion
Aoinfinity
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
DB_Explorer
Diraniola
Dr. Professor Robot
Elitist Oars
Flashbunny
gilgamekk
Gingganz
Helix
january1may
Linarka
MissileTeatime
MrBTXz
Proxima
Sirrocco
Sofixon
Spectral Waltz
wasprider
zachol

[X] Arousal and excitement. You like having someone to order around and lick you, you like seeing his innocence and you like corrupting it, and you want to bring him along on more adventures.
No. of Votes: 8
Argentorum
Ice1039
kozinc
NotaWriter
Pbkan
Shadowrust
Valmit
Xenia

[X] Fellowship and indignation. You are not okay with Blake's happiness depending on you in the first place, or the fact that he might be literally unable to find a mate without you because it's your quest. It's an offense against his human dignity by whatever the Erogame really is, and maybe the Erogame will listen if you tell it so directly? Blake deserves his own life and his own story.
No. of Votes: 5
ScrewFate
LancerisDead
MissileTeatime
Theminimanx
zup

[x] "I really like you, you know? You're adorable and shy but still eager and nice and fundamentally a good person, and I'm going to go do things that are loud and wild and that would completely terrify you. I'm incredibly thankful that I got to be your first, and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but the important point is that it'd be an utter travesty if I was your best match, I know there's better matches than that, I'm reasonably sure there's better matches than me literally in this actual building right now, and it's genuinely a fundamental flaw in the universe that you're in my room right now instead of theirs, and somebody should really go and do something about that one of these days.¹ The point is, I want to be your friend, Blake. I want to meet you in a cafe for snacks in a few months, and you'll tell me all about the exciting scary adventures that you've had, and all the things that you're unsure on, and I'll commiserate and give you helpful but embarrassingly specific advice. I want to be the person who'll always take you seriously, that you can always call if you're unsure and who'll definitely, at the least, listen to what you're saying and think about your troubles with you. Look, this world is negligent and unsafe, but it's not so cruel as to make your future life's happiness dependent on one person you met one day. Trust in me as your teacher and friend: you can get what you want, a person who fits you, probably not perfectly, but with all the bits that you need so that the rest doesn't matter. We'll just have to keep looking a bit longer."
No. of Votes: 2
FeepingCreature
MissileTeatime

Total No. of Voters: 36

When you open your eyes again, you can see from Blake's expression that he's already read yours.

"I'm thinking that I like you, in the sense of being fond of you, and wanting good things to happen to you," you say. "I liked our time together and, and I feel like you deserve a better life than---" You stop, swallow. "I feel worried that you won't find the girl who is right for you. That's… what I'm feeling."

Blake turns away from you again, hiding his face. "I understand," he says, and something inside you cracks. "Just… I know that I don't have the right to ask this. I don't have the right to ask anything from you. But what I'm thinking right now is, I don't want to never see you again. Even if I can never belong to you, I still want to see you again. Is there a chance of that? That's what I'm thinking right now." He takes a breath. "Now you know what I'm thinking, but you're the one who decides."

You force yourself to exhale, to stop holding your breath, and think.

It would be convenient in a way if you could tell him there was no hope of that, to not keep him hanging. But you suspect that it would be a lie. Even aside from the Worthy Goddess quest, you don't want to never see him again either.

"Blake," you say softly. "I won't lie to you and say that it's impossible. But don't wait to see me again, Blake, don't hold on to hope. My life is changing fast, and by Sunday I could be moving to Los Angeles." Or portaling into another dimension. Or becoming much less of a good fit for you. "And then on Monday, I might come back to Norville and introduce you to a goddess worthy of your worship, somebody like Professor Turk only your own age. Even after that, I'm not swearing we'll never see each other again. Maybe a month later you'll walk into a bathroom, and find me pulling down your pants before you can get over your shock enough to ask me what I'm doing there…"

"Uh," Blake says, turning to face you again. "What?"

"Maybe I'll show up now and then where I have no reason to be, and give you blowjobs at the least convenient times. Maybe I'll be hiding in the closet on your wedding night, to handcuff you and your bride and have my way with both of you. Maybe someday when the order of the world has broken down all the way, you might see my reflection standing behind you in the mirror, putting a hand on your shoulder, and then the monstergirls won't ever touch you, even while everyone else is being dragged off into their lairs. And sometimes you'll feel a pair of warm lips teasing your cock, and you'll know then that I'm thinking of you, whatever I've become---"

"Is this actually goodbye or are you messing with me?" Blake looks vulnerable, and it stops your words in your throat.

"I'm sorry," you say, and mean it. Blake must think you're joking, and you shouldn't have picked that moment to talk about your own fears. "It's just, I don't know my own future. I really don't. I really don't know what lies ahead of me. I'm not promising never to see you again. I might show up tomorrow with a girl I think could be right for you, we might run into each other a year later and vigorously say hi. I'm just saying… don't wait for me, Blake. Don't look for me. I'd make that a command if I thought it would help. Don't hope to see me again, even if you do."

You think you can see him struggling with the words I won't, words that can't leave his lips.

You don't ask him what he's thinking, what he imagines and desires. You expect you know, and you don't want to hear it said.

Blake gets dressed.

You kiss him goodbye. There's tears in your eyes, but not in his.

For whatever it's worth, you plead with the Erogame in your heart that if Blake Layton is about to find his own happiness, you don't want it to interfere because you left a quest open.

-+​

You really, really don't want it to interfere.

# </< #%​

Blake departs, the door shuts behind him, a story ends.

You turn to gaze at violet text, hovering in the corner of your vision or your mind. You've gained another two points of SED since the first one. And a point of FUK, maybe because the process of teaching somebody else made you think harder about sex. Levels in Edge Other, Edge Self, Edging, two levels in Tears of Milk. (You didn't set out to tease him stupid, per se, but a boy can only have so many real orgasms and you couldn't see how else to fill all that time.) You gained 1,000 XP for finishing up the Virgin Remover quest to take Blake's virginity, plus 5,000 XP as a bonus for taking it so thoroughly he couldn't get hard again afterwards. And…

A skill has been created by a special action! Saying goodbye to Blake Layton has created the skill Good Ending.

Good Ending: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. ? / use.

A skill exercised at the finish of an erogame route, when you part ways with another and renounce your intention to determine their further destiny. This skill causes their # relative to your #% to take on felicitous outcomes not requiring your direct intervention. They may remember you and miss you, but not in a way that prevents them from moving on someday.

Invoking this skill does not prevent you from seeing the person again, but relegates any such interactions to the form of a side-story or epilogue rather than re-entangling them in your affairs, unless and until you choose to involve them again in the main plotline.

That's… that's…

You didn't mean to do that.

…maybe you did.

"Info, quests, a goddess worthy of worship," you say in an unsteady voice.

Info // Active quests // A Goddess Worthy of Worship

Among the dominant women you meet, pick out one who is reasonably stable, mostly sane, a truly good person deep down, and has an available vacancy in her harem for a 17-year-old ex-Mormon college student who hasn't come out to his family.

Success: 50,000XP
Failure: Tonight was the happies@(#&$(*#^%@{)*$&%#)@#inds a mistress all on his own and you don't get any XP for it.

Time limit: 30 days from the night you met Blake Layton.

So, so Blake will have a nice life even if you don't hook him up with Professor Turk. He'd just have to endure a few lonely weeks between now and when he finds his own happiness. He'd be fine without you. You should be happy about that, right?

You turn away from the penthouse door, and walk towards the veiled gauze across the windows, obscuring whatever lies beyond. You can see through the veil that the sun is lowering in the sky, though it's not near the horizon yet.

For the first time since Sunday, the thought occurs that part of you wishes you could sit down and have a meal in the hotel restaurant, a salad with dressing maybe. You're not going to do it, certainly, but there's a part of you that isn't scared by the thought anymore, that believes sitting down to eat would be a restorative action. Just a part, though, there's still also a part of you that wants to annihilate the concept of eating from reality and from any metaphysical realms beyond.

Ice cream? says a tiny voice.

Pretty much all of you is still horrified by the thought of eating a Fattening Elixir.

You lift aside the gauzy curtain from one of the windows, exposing yourself to the world, and the world to you. From these heights you can see half of Norville laid out before you, like a princess in a castle overlooking her realm. The buildings peter off toward the edges of your small city, and die away into roads and plains, which fade into the everpresent mountains of California that hide the horizon wherever you go. It reminds you of fleeting fears you had about you being dead, and Norville being your afterlife, and nothing truly existing beyond this town. But that can't actually be true, since Charles just this morning said he was in Nevada. So it's not really the case that only emptiness exists on the other side of the mountains, and this safe haven is all that's left.

You turn away from the window.

You gather up your nice modest clothes, pull on the long red dress and long-sleeved white shirt. The panties you were wearing have lost structural integrity, so you toss them into the hotel garbage can along with the matching bra. What kind of shy, blushing maiden needs panties anyway? Unless it's to hold in a vibrator.

You put away your backpack in a closet, and your wallet and house keys into the hotel room's safety box. You might come back with a lot of company the next time you return to this room.

And then you step out of the penthouse and head down the hotel corridor towards the elevator. The conference reception doesn't start just yet, but there's probably scientists you can talk to in the hotel's lobby, or in the hotel's restaurant. Your day is over now, and it's time for your evening to begin.

With a half-conscious thought, your hair rises about you as it transforms and frees your power, a flash of scarlet glow lighting up the coals within the black. The unexistent metaphysical strands lift in a defiant salute, like a declaration of war against the ordinary, before the glow fades and the strands drop back to hiding beneath a pretense of normality.

Today has been a day of endings, so now it's time to finish out a much older quest.

…that prospect unnerves you more the closer you get to actually doing it.

Also you've got to stop thinking that shit, it'll make your ERO go up by 1.

5.8.1: Civic Tradition

You push through the door of the hotel restaurant.

Almost immediately your eye is caught by a middle-aged man, sitting at a table right next to the door. Somebody who seems obviously ero, as well as scientific. He's not trying to hide either fact, with the printed PDF he's reading, and the black metal-spiked bracelet on his left wrist. A multicolored plaid shirt, and his hair drawn in a ponytail, serve to complete the look.

"May I?" you say, putting your hand on the empty chair at the other side of his table. You're smiling prettily and promisingly. The glass window to the lobby shows the faint reflection of a cheerleader-attractive girl in a modest dress, looking oh so friendly and inviting. You spare a strand of thought to be grateful to the Erogame for the recent SED you've earned, not to mention everything else it's given you, that lets you become that girl instead of her being locked inside your imagination. You don't want the Erogame thinking you just complain at it all the time.

"Be my guest," the man says, sounding unsure of why you're approaching him. His smile back at you is no less friendly for that.

You slide into the chair. "I'm Starry, a student at Norville U," you say. "You would be Professor…?"

"Dr. Crowly," he says, and he extends his hand across the table, for you to shake, which you do.

Around you is a subdued murmur, the occasional clink of silverware, the screeching of a chair being shoved back from a table. A server deposits a plate of food in front of a man elderly enough that you don't think he's a good orgy prospect, and the next spot over, two women in their late twenties have their feet tangling under their table. Maybe forty tables all told, in this restaurant, and thirty of them occupied. It's dinnertime, you guess.

Being around other people eating isn't as unpleasant as you thought it might be. A taste of bitterness, no more.

"So, what brings you to the fourth international conference on applications of proteins and peptides?" you say. "Assume I know which end of a ribosome subunit points up, but not much about whatever it is that you do."

Something about the man's demeanor seems to relax slightly, now that you've seemingly identified yourself as one of his Kind. "Oh, he says, "my lab has been trawling through a database of sequenced genomes, looking for alleles that correlate with inverted graviton flows, and we think we can transmodulate the neutron receptors if we invert the p-values and use fifty percent more technobabble in the warp core."

(Dr. Crowly doesn't actually say this, but that's essentially what it sounds like to you.)

"What does it do, though?" you say.

"What do you mean, what does it do?" says Dr. Crowly. "It publishes the papers, that's what it does, or else it gets the hose again."

"What's the application? Does it cure aging, cure cancer, make more sirtuins inside fat cells…"

"I suppose it might be helpful with all of those things," says Dr. Crowly, "if anybody ever figured out how to synthesize positronic muffins without any standard deviations, which is about twenty years out from being practical even in a crisper. So what brings you here?"

You fold your hands on the table and smile wider, as you try to figure out how to go about inviting a scientist to an orgy. Even at SED 20 it seems like a daunting task. "Well… how much have you heard about our fair city of Norville?"

Dr. Crowly tilts his head slightly, and looks at you more closely. "If you're asking me whether I'm aware of your city's reputation…"

"I'm certain you're aware of its reputation, considering that spiked bracelet you're wearing," you say.

Dr. Crowly smiles and shrugs his shoulders. "I wear it most of the time, but fair enough."

"And I'm a Norville U student," you say. "You can imagine what type of girl applies to attend college in Norville, right? I'll give you a hint, it's not the type who wears panties under her dress."

There's a certain light in Dr. Crowly's eyes. "I admit, this city's reputation is less exaggerated than I was afraid it would be."

"So," you say, "you might've also heard about the tradition with the local student branch of Norville U's Natural Sexuality movement, and any scientific conferences that happen to be hosted in Norville?"

"Not really," says Dr. Crowly, shifting slightly in his chair.

"Well, I'm just here by myself on my own behalf," you say. "Because there isn't any tradition like that."

"I see," says Dr. Crowly.

"I rented Penthouse D in this hotel out of my own budget, because I certainly couldn't be using student organization funds."

You've lowered your voice now, and Dr. Crowly has lowered his own voice in answer. "And what's in Penthouse D?"

"Three bedrooms, one of which has two adjacent king-size beds," you say. "Room for lots of scientists." You grin.

Dr. Crowly doesn't answer right away. He takes a sip of his milky coffee, replaces the cup by the side of a small plate that shows the remains of a former salad, and seems to be thinking hard.

"So… you're trying to organize an informal evening workshop on applied reproductive biology," he says.

You nod. "That's the tradition," you say.

"How long has this tradition been practiced?" he says. "Because this is the second time I've seen somebody try to organize an informal evening workshop, and the first one didn't go too well."

You frown. "What went wrong?"

"Eleven men, two women one of whom was only interested in the other woman, and the organizer was clueless and didn't give the standard opening talk about how to ask explicitly for consent."

You wince, not needing to fake it. "Ouch," you say.

"Nothing too terrible happened, just that both women left and then the workshop was effectively over. I hope you're not offended when I say that you look rather young, and that I worry you've only done this before in the company of friends. Organizing an evening workshop with strangers isn't impossible, but it does require an experienced workshop organizer and that the strangers know the rules."

It takes some effort for you not to let the trembling in your stomach make it into your voice. So he's a real scientist and an experienced group-sex practitioner, fine, you're the fucking Erogamer. You can violate physics, never mind social probabilities. A successful orgy of scientists should be nothing to your power. You are not a stupid little girl who's in over her head, or at least, you're not just a stupid little girl who's in over her head.

"Yeah, there was a change of student administration in the Natural Sexuality organization just recently," you say. "And yeah, I've been firmly attached to a bed a couple of times but I don't have any experience organizing a workshop with strangers. But I think a lot of your fellow biologists here do know the rules. They decided to come to a science conference in Norville. Have you actually looked around you?"

Dr. Crowly pauses. He turns in his chair, his gaze sweeping the restaurant, and then stops. You follow the direction of his eyes, and you see a woman who's reading a printout with reddened cheeks, shifting in her chair like she has an itch somewhere she can't scratch.

Dr. Crowly looks back at you, his eyes wider than before.

"So, uh," you say. No, no uhs, you have to sound confident. "What I'm saying is, if we cancel the evening workshop, I think a lot of your colleagues here will be unhappy."

"Holy hell," Dr. Crowly mutters. "I don't recognize any of them either…? I should know at least some of them, if they're all part of our special interest group. This makes no sense."

"And," you say, reaching your hand over the table to cover his hand, where it rests by his teacup, "I won't be leaving the workshop, so nobody has to go home disappointed." You smile at him again.

Dr. Crowly leans back in the chair, though he doesn't remove his hand from under yours. "As pleasant a thought as that may be," he says, "you're not going to be able to do much of that and supervise the workshop at the same time."

You frown. How much supervision does an orgy need, exactly?

That you have no clue about that question may mean that there's a serious problem.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to supervise the workshop?" you say. "I'll still take care of inviting everyone, but you can give the standardized speech about consent and keep an eye on things?"

Dr. Crowly shakes his head. "I can't afford the risk," he says. "I'm sorry. This is the kind of thing where a disaster can end the workshop organizer's career, if the organizer already has a career. I think there's a reason your tradition says that the organizer has to be an innocent-looking youth."

Damn. You take a deep breath, thinking. Have you come across anyone who could…

Tammi Arcadia did say to call on her if she could help.

Tammi might have supervised orgies before, in her professional career? She might know the standard rules? On the minus side, Tammi is not the world's greatest consent enthusiast. On the plus side, she did catch on that this conference was important, and she respects your psychic power. She could maybe do things in the usual standardized way for orgies if you asked her to?

The only alternative that comes to mind is you frantically reading up about how to run orgies, maybe having to burn Slack on that. And having to spend a bunch of time supervising and not getting too deeply into the fun yourself, which, yes, you do have mixed feelings about. You don't have time left before the reception to run around on a quest to find another orgy supervisor…

"I hope you're not too disappointed about not getting to be fucked by eleven horny scientists who only have you as an outlet," Dr. Crowly says wryly.

"That doesn't sound too bad, but I was planning on having at least thirty scientists at the workshop," you say, trying to sound confident in their attendance. "What's a good gender mix for that, do you think? Never mind what's realistic, what'd you say if reality wasn't an issue?" You run a hand through your hair, sweeping the unexistent strands back over your shoulder.

Dr. Crowly has his eyebrows raised. "I suppose I'd hazard eighteen women and twelve men as the optimum balance," he says, "since on average the women at orgies tend to be more interested in other women than the men are interested in other men, with all of the usual caveats about cases of individual variation such as me. You won't be able to arrange that ratio, though, not unless you bring in some women who aren't attendees. This conference isn't a sausagefest, to be sure, but there is a statistical disparity in interest in evening workshops. I think you would be doing very well to end up with, say, six men and five women plus yourself, and you'd be wiser to invite women first so that you know your budget for men. Don't be surprised if you fail outright on that step."

You nod. Three women to two men roughly seems like the ratio you've seen among obviously ero attendees. "If I could get eighteen lady scientists attending," you say, "would you be impressed enough to come up to Penthouse D at eight after the reception ends?"

Dr. Crowly looks at you, and then gives you a measured nod. "Yes, I would be. Though make the time nine o' clock, some of us will want to go back to our rooms and freshen up first."

Subquest begun: Come With Me If You Want Everyone To Live

Get 30 attractive scientists to attend your informal evening workshop on applied reproductive biology.

Progress: 0/18 female scientists, 0/12 male scientists.

"It's a deal," you say, and rise to leave Dr. Crowly to his remaining coffee.

[ ] Ask Tammi Arcadia to help organize the orgy, but to please be standardized about it.
[ ] You're a big girl now, you can organize orgies all by yourself. Quickly read up on standardized practices, burning Slack if required.

5.8.2* [TDA]: Invitations

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (33,400 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 380/380
SUB: 163/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 20
FUK: 18
PRV: 24
ERO: 29 (15)

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8085

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Blake Layton
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 88 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 2617-2731]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Ask Tammi Arcadia to help organize the orgy, but to please be standardized about it.
No. of Votes: 16
Sofixon
edale
Helix
Hyperion042
january1may
JimTheArtificer
kozinc
MrBTXz
napkintooth
Nordik
Nordvegr
NotaWriter
SoulofaGremlin
Valmit
wille179
ZenithOfLust

[X] Tammi isn’t doing anything that terrible when you knock on the door.
No. of Votes: 13
wasprider
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
Diraniola
Elitist Oars
fluxoid
january1may
Lavida
Nemonowan
Pbkan
Prime 2.0
ScrewFate
zachol

[x] Walk in on Tammi doing something slightly-evil enough to Danni to make you ponder whether or not to call the Natural Sexuality group for their standardized orgy supervisor instead.
No. of Votes: 5
Sirrocco
Gingganz
Grollo
The Undead Martyr
wichajster

[X] You're a big girl now, you can organize orgies all by yourself. Quickly read up on standardized practices, burning Slack if required.
No. of Votes: 4
Ephemeral
Aoinfinity
gilgamekk
Professional sheep

[X] Didn't you say this is a tradition of the Norville U Natural Sexuality movement? If that's true, surely they must have resources, reference martial or someone who could supervise the orgy. You should give them a call.
No. of Votes: 4
MissileTeatime
Gingganz
Sirrocco
The Undead Martyr

-[X] Stress to Tammi the importance of making sure that all attendees come out of the orgy with their careers and professional reputations intact, if not necessarily the reasons for that.
No. of Votes: 2
napkintooth
january1may

-[X] Additionally take The Cand|e in the Mirrors perk, even though Cindy doesn't actually know about that. Do it anyway.
No. of Votes: 2
Proxima
edale

-[X] Stress to Tamy the importance of making sure that all attendees come out of the orgy with their careers and professional reputations intact, if not necessarily the reasons for that.
No. of Votes: 1
JimTheArtificer

Total No. of Voters: 39

Down the end of a long, ominous hallway, a "DO NOT DISTURB" sign hangs on the handle of a hotel door from behind which comes an endless sound of desperate, terrified laughter and cries of "Nononononono…"

Like seriously, is everyone on this hotel floor deaf?

Maybe everyone who doesn't enjoy hearing girlsounds has already been reassigned to a different hotel floor. And now everyone who remains is a pervert.

You glance at the door you're currently passing, marked 207. If you walked into that room, would you find some perverted boy masturbating to the screams of a girl being tickled…

Well, if you tried the door, you probably would. But maybe another time. You're pressed for minutes right now, if you want to invite 30 people to an orgy before the evening's done.

(Still, in the back of your mind that there's a part of you that increasingly wants to just go for things like that, spend a day just doing everything that crosses your mind… would it be so bad to spend 10 minutes of Slack going into 207 and punishing the naughty boy who must be in it…)

You stride on, and knock on the door to room 211.

You wait.

You knock again harder.

The screaming laughter turns muffled, as if a pair of panties has just been stuffed into somebody's mouth, and then dies away entirely.

The peephole set into the door changes luminosity, dimming faintly. You smile for Tammi's eye.

The door opens, a freckled hand reaches out and pulls you inside the room, the hotel door is shut again, and the naked redhead before you sprints back to the bed.

The shrieking laughter starts up again, louder now that you're in the same room.

"I'm trying not to give her any rest," the naked redhead says breathlessly, as her long fingers work savagely on both sides of the ribcage of the naked redhead handcuffed to the bed. "Can you tickle her while I go to the bathroom? It's been hours and I was almost on the verge of giving up and stopping, but if you help out now I can keep going."

"MMM-MMMM-MMMMMM!"

"I'm kind of in a hurry---" you begin. Then you remember you're here to ask Tammi to do something for you. "But I can tickle her for a little, just don't dawdle or anything, please?"

"I'll poo as fast as I can," Tammi says. "Start tickling her before I stop, kay?"

You sigh, sit down on the nice soft hotel bed, and dig your fingers into Danni's soft, vulnerable, terrified armpit. You just know this is going to get you all hot and bothered and turned on, and that you're not going to have enough time to take care of that properly.

Some time later you've pulled down your dress, taken out Danni's gag, sat down on her face, and are now tickling her soft belly somewhat less mercilessly whenever you're fully satisfied with her licking.

She did it to you, okay?

Tammi, just emerging from the bathroom, looks at the situation in front of her and giggles. She sits down at the side of the bed, her hand casually poking into Danni's ribs every time the handcuffed girl tries to inhale a breath.

"What's up?" Tammi says. "Is there something I can help with?"

"I---uh---so---oh---I'm---planning---have you ever---uh---" You're having trouble concentrating, but you don't want to lift your pussy off Danni's tongue or stop tickling her. "Have you---um---have you ever organized---I mean supervised---an orgy? Like---with a lot of---people---professionally."

Tammi's face scrunches up as she processes this. "You mean an orgy where there's a lot of professional girls brought in?"

"No---I mean---like a private friendly orgy---with thirty people---who aren't pros---but mostly know the rules---and somebody has to give---uh---the standardized talk first---about how you need to, to ask for consent."

The tongue licking your clit withdraws, like the handcuffed girl underneath you is about to try to say something, and you promptly dig your fingers harder into her belly. Whatever she was about to say is lost in the fit of screaming that follows.

"AHAHAHAHANOOONONOONOEEEEEEEHAHAHAHA," says the background noise, which gets even louder because your clit is not being licked at all right now and that is unacceptable.

"I've been to friendly orgies," Tammi says. "What about them?"

Without the warm tongue running over your clit, as delinquent as that absence may be, you're able to think and speak more clearly. "I'm going to invite thirty scientists from the conference to an orgy," you say breathlessly, while your hands go on punishing the bad girl screaming beneath you. "I, I might be distracted by, you know, getting fucked a lot, plus I've never really organized---an orgy---before---it's at nine---" You remember to scratch Danni's belly less savagely now that she's started licking again, you wouldn't want her to learn the wrong lessons about obedience. "Nine pm---in Penthouse D---I was hoping you knew---how to supervise an orgy, like, like giving the starting talk about consent---so that it goes, well. It's important---that it be nice and professional---and nothing goes wrong---and nobody's career gets harmed by anything that happens---very important---okay?"

Tammi's fingers have stopped tickling, though yours haven't. She gives you a look that contains questioning, and wonder, and maybe awe. "What happens if thirty scientists attend the orgy and it goes nicely?"

You're not sure how much you want to say about this… no, with Professor Turk having said what she did in front of Tammi, the cows have already flown the coop. "Uh---possibly the right scientists meet each other---and the thing that I asked Professor Turk about---that she said couldn't happen---happens---or maybe not, I'm not sure about a lot of details here---it just, uh---seems like the obvious thing to try---uh---it's a hunch I got---" It's getting harder to think.

"Holy shit," whispers Tammi. "Holy holy shit."

"AHAHAHAWHATAREYOUTALKINGHAHAHAHABOUT."

"There's a scientific conference in this hotel," Tammi says, "and the real reason Starry came to Norville is because if she can make the right scientists meet each other they're going to cure aging. Starry, are people like you where all the big scientific breakthroughs come from?"

Is that the story you're enacting right now? But what kind of effect would that have on the Earth's history? "No," you say, before you can think about it too much. "I think for now it's just me and just this one orgy. Uh, Danni stopped licking, can you find new ways to motivate her?"

"No wait this is HAHAHAHA serious HAHAHAHAHASTOPFUCKINGTICKLINGMEHAHAHHAHAHAHA THISISSERIOUSSHITYOURETALKINGEEEEEEE."

Tammi has shifted over to closer to the foot of the bed so she can get Danni in her knees, even as her face keeps that look of wonder and awe. "And you want me to help?"

You were going to offer to pay her, if you had to, but it doesn't sound like you have to. Which is good because there is a part of your brain that will not shut up about how long it used to take you to earn a thousand dollars. Maybe you should offer to pay Tammi anyway, just to increase the chance she'll act professional, but, but it's too early. You're honestly just not ready for that step. "Um, if you're certain you can run an orgy," you say. "And, like, not go off tickling somebody you think secretly needs to be tickled."

Tammi looks like she doesn't know whether to laugh or be horrified. "Geez, Starry, what do you take me for? I'm not, I'm not crazy!"

You glance downward at the identical redhead handcuffed to the bed who is currently screaming laughter into your pussy instead of licking you. "Are you sure?" you say before you can help yourself.

"When I work as an escort I don't tickle people all the time! Even people who totally, totally need it!"

Something in the back of your mind is pointing out that Tammi screwing up the orgy is exactly how the non-transhumanist status quo would be maintained on a TV show. The Erogame gives off a powerful impression that it doesn't give two tiny fucks about the status quo. Even so, the thought is still making you nervous. "Are you honestly, seriously sure you can do this the traditional standardized safe sane consensual way?"

"I can absolutely do this! Most of the friendly orgies I've been to weren't that formal or organized, but I had one friend who gave a consent talk at all her orgies and I can absolutely remember how those went mostly! Penthouse D at nine? No, I should get there earlier---do you have a room card for me---I need to get condoms, and lubricants, and snacks, and alcohol, and I should go get my toy collection---that should all take an hour or two at the most, so I can go on tickling Danni for a couple of hours and then get started---and I'll set three alarms to make absolutely sure I don't lose track of time---and I'll make this the safest, sanest, consensualest orgy this hotel has ever seen! Promise! I won't let you down! Oh, I'd better buy some more electric toothbrushes to tape into Danni's armpits and knees and ribs and belly button, so she doesn't get bored while I'm gone---"

"FUCKYOUHHAHAHAHASTARRYSHESCRAZYHAHAHAHAHADON'TTRUSTHERHAHAHAHAHAHAHALETMEDOITINSTEADPLEASEILLBESOGOODHAHAHAHAHA."

"Danni!" Tammi says in aghast tones. "This is serious! Super duper serious! This is not the time to be trying to escape!"

"SORRYSORRYIWASNTTHINKINGNONONONOTMYFEETNOTMYFEEEEEETHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!"

…You hope you've made the right decision here.

Professional. Elegant. Sexy. Trustworthy. Reliable. Sensual. Inviting. Cheerful.

Words like those go running through your head in a loop while you smile and seductively murmur, "An informal evening workshop on applied reproductive biology."

The words drop into the surprised quiet between three chairs scooted together in one corner of the lobby. One chair contains you. Another chair contains a vaguely Scottish guy with glasses and a top of curly brown hair, who looks too young to have the PhD he apparently has. The final chair contains a solemn-looking beautiful woman, maybe in her late thirties, with a red dot on her forehead; she looks almost exactly like you imagine Professor Turk would look if Professor Turk were de-aged only that far, unless that's just you having trouble telling apart faces inside the Indian ethnicity.

The older woman is acting very deferential around the younger guy, who looks far less serious and dignified than her, and it's throwing you off your stride.

"Are you serious?" whispers Dr. Altare. His eyes are wide and startled. He pauses. "I'd think Norville would get a lot more conferences with a tradition like that."

"Well," you say, keeping your own voice low, "I think the question you ought to ask yourself is why we get any conferences held here."

"Fair," murmurs Dr. Altare. "Wait, does that mean the organizing committee…"

Prof. Samara says nothing, just leans in Dr. Altare's direction. Around her neck is a golden chain of thin links, with no visible give or slack in it.

"So," you murmur seductively, "Does our workshop interest you at all?" You turn to look at Prof. Samara. "Or you?"

"I'll be deciding for both of us," Dr. Altare says, a touch of sternness entering his voice. "I'm sure a student in the Natural Sexuality movement understands that, right?"

You nod automatically. Though to be honest, you're taken aback---even a slave ought to have a say before she's exposed to any risk to her career or her reputation.

Maybe Dr. Altare will ask her in private later, or Prof. Samara would have given him some sign if she were nervous? You should not be quick to judge the relationships of everyone you meet as the Erogamer, not unless you want to have a very, very indignant life ahead of you.

"Who's coming?" says Dr. Altare.

"Oh, I hope everyone will be coming," you say, with what you hope is a seductive sensual inviting smile. "I'll personally assure that there won't be anyone left lonely."

"Samara won't be coming if she knows what's good for her," says Dr. Altare. "But I mean to ask who's attending."

"Of course," you say, keeping your hands folded primly in your lap. "I don't think I should give names just yet, but I'm hoping to get thirty attendees total. So far the confirmations have come from a nicely matched mix of dominants, submissives, sadists, masochists, homosexuals, heterosexuals, rather a lot of bisexuals, men, women, and at least one person who doesn't want to be put into any categories at all." You've learned that some people don't react well to being directly told the sex ratio unless you mix it up with other information. Apparently the sex ratio at the orgy is one of those taboo topics that matters a whole lot, but which nobody is allowed to talk about directly, so instead there are careful sideways conversations you're still trying to get the hang of. "Oh, and there'll also be the workshop organizer, but she's not on the menu unless she wants to be."

Dr. Altare gives you a keen look. "The workshop organizer?" he says.

"A woman with more experience at workshops than I have," you say.

"Why isn't the organizer the one doing the inviting?" Dr. Altare says. "Because she's not as pretty as you?"

You have the sense that you're being tested. "She's more beautiful than I am, actually," you reply cautiously, "but she might not be participating, and I am. People should get to see what's honestly on offer while they're deciding, right?"

"Right," Dr. Altare says, the corners of his mouth crinkling. "Well, thank you for the invitation, and I'll let you know soon what I've decided."

You keep getting that answer, and while you can't blame him or any of the others, it's starting to make you nervous. You start to rise from your chair and then pause midway. "Oh, right," you say. "Are either of you into older women? Late fifties but well-preserved, say."

"Why do you ask?" Dr. Altare says, again with the tone that makes him sound like he's interrogating you as a student.

"Because there's an older professor I'm thinking of asking to the informal workshop, but I don't want to do that if nobody there is going to be into her," you say.

"Nobody except you, you mean?" says Dr. Altare.

You shake you head. "I'm not attracted to her the way I am to you and Samara," you say. "But that doesn't mean I can't invite her so long as somebody is."

Dr. Altare smiles then. "I see," he says. "On second thought, I'm sure we'll be happy to attend your workshop, and it's not impossible I'd loan Samara to this older friend of yours, though no guarantees, of course."

You grin back. There's something weird and exhiliarating and scary about having a SED that has, over the last couple of hours, gone up to 22. Half the time you don't know why you're winning at seduction---maybe you'll understand later, when the Erogame has had time to sink deeper into you, but for now it feels like magic. You could see that Dr. Altare was probing for something, and found it when you impulsively happened to mention Professor Turk, but you haven't the faintest clue what just went down.

"See you in Penthouse D at nine pm," you say.

The recent PhD nods, and next to him the older woman who is a full fucking professor at fucking MIT bows her head submissively. Shouldn't she own him?

"Can I ask about your own orientations?" you say. "So that I can make sure things are staying balanced."

"She's a bisexual slave masochist, and I'm a bisexual switchy switch," Dr. Altare replies. "If you'll pardon me, we need to get going, the reception is soon." He gives you a friendly nod as they rise up together and head for the elevator, Prof. Samara always walking two steps behind Dr. Altare and to his left.

You glance at the clock in the hotel lobby. 6:45pm, it says. As for your own progress…

Spoiler: How are you doing at recruiting 30 ero scientists?

Rolling d100, thresholds at 30/60/90...

<30: you're not making much headway, you need to seriously up your game
30: progress has been halting, you need to rethink your approach and come up with a couple of clever ideas
60: you're making progress but too slowly, you need an idea for speeding things up but it doesn't have to be spectacularly clever
90+: you're doing fine

+15 from The Coals Relighted, a 2 is as bad as a 1…

Groon the Walker rolled 1 die of 100 faces, total: 39+15 = 54

For: Recruiting scientists for orgy

Rolled on: November-07-2017, 05:51pm

See dice roll details

39

54 + SED 22 = 76.

(Yes, I should've included SED into the dice roll modifiers, but I forgot.)

…you have around 10 confirmations counting those two, and another 10 maybes. And four outright nos that scared you, making you think you'd already failed, before you saw that there were more ero scientists present than 30.

You're starting to worry. You have an arithmetical problem here.

Suppose half the maybes say yes. Then you need to talk to, say, 20 more people in order to get another 15 attendees. The reception lasts an hour, then it breaks up at 8pm and people start heading back to their rooms to check email or freshen up. Maybe you could grab one or two people afterwards, like in the restaurant, maybe the Erogame would help but… it doesn't feel like there's enough time. You have to invite one person every 3 minutes and these conversations are not going that fast.

Could Tammi help invite people? No, she'll be busy shopping by now... Should you be wearing scantier, sexier clothing? But your intuition at SED 22 is telling you that your modest, serious clothing has been helping you rather than hindering, when it comes to seducing scientists.

You purse your lips and frown sensually at the hotel lobby. You've got to think of something here.

(Voting is locked until 24 hours from the timestamp of this post.)

[ ] Burn all of today's Slack. (Which means you won't get to use Slack to make sure you can be with everyone at the orgy.)
[ ] This is important enough to be worth adding +5 points to SED.
[ ] Maybe your Mom can come by and masquerade as a biology professor and invite people to the orgy… no, this is a terrible idea and you should not do it.
[ ] Write-in.

[ ] You forgot about Meganekko! Put on glasses for +2 SED. Then have Tammi order you to finish inviting people. Maid of Time at half-power should still have 40 minutes left after you used some this morning. Check the quest text to see how much progress you've made, and dip further into Slack only if required.
[ ] Glasses for +2 SED, then add +3 SED. It's time to test the waters on spending stat points---you shouldn't be so timid around that without trying it.
[ ] Singing skill is based on SED, right? See if you can use the power of Erogame Logic to end up singing a seductive welcome song for the scientists at the reception. Wearing glasses, of course.
[ ] Meganekko + Maid of Time + quest tracker + spend 1 stat point on SED to see what happens.
-[ ][ALL] Try to end up singing, too.
-[ ][ALL] But don't try the singing part.

(Voting is locked until 24 hours from the timestamp of this post.)

Voting is open.

5.8.3: Seductiver

Spoiler: Author's note

OOC: I was impressed with all the reader suggestions. I'd have accepted any one of these ideas as adequate, given the Ero Logic in play and that the original roll wasn't missed by that much. All the ideas together could've fixed this situation even from an original roll of 3 (after taking the +15 and +22 into account). Not bad, but have you ever heard of overkill?

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 92 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 2801-2850]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Meganekko + Maid of Time + quest tracker + spend 1 stat point on SED to see what happens.
No. of Votes: 19
zachol
alphabeta
Aoinfinity
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
edale
Elitist Oars
fluxoid
Fouredged
Gingganz
january1may
KBob
kozinc
Lavida
Pseudonym
ScrewFate
sharps
somervta
Valmit

[X] You forgot about Meganekko! Put on glasses for +2 SED. Then have Tammi order you to finish inviting people. Maid of Time at half-power should still have 40 minutes left after you used some this morning. Check the quest text to see how much progress you've made, and dip further into Slack only if required.
No. of Votes: 6
pepperjack
gilgamekk
Grollo
kimagurena65536
napkintooth
Sirrocco

[X] This is important enough to be worth adding +5 points to SED.
No. of Votes: 1
Lavida

[X] Glasses for +2 SED, then add +3 SED. It's time to test the waters on spending stat points---you shouldn't be so timid around that without trying it.
No. of Votes: 1
Lavida

[X] Maybe it's that your credentials are weak, and you need some professor bonafides? Get Professor Turk to help! You know. If she's into that kind of thing.
No. of Votes: 1
Guile

Task: ALL

-[X][ALL] But don't try the singing part.
No. of Votes: 16
zachol
alphabeta
Blackshard
DarthSquidious
edale
Elitist Oars
Fouredged
Gingganz
january1may
KBob
napkintooth
Pseudonym
sharps
Sirrocco
Theminimanx
Valmit

-[X][ALL] Try to end up singing, too.
No. of Votes: 5
Lavida
Aoinfinity
fluxoid
ScrewFate
somervta

Total No. of Voters: 27

"Status," you murmur.

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (33,400 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 358/400
SUB: 163/450

(+) BOD: 21
(+) LST: 21
(+) SED: 22
(+) FUK: 18
(+) PRV: 24
(+) ERO: 29

Stat Points: 35
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8085

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Blake Layton
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: Off

You look over your six ability stats, then gaze at the 35 stat points, feeling shivery despite the comfortable air of the hotel lobby and the warm leather of the chair beneath you.

You've been keeping stat points… not because stats are easier to raise when they're lower and you're minmaxing for the long term. You don't want your stats to go up as fast as possible. You've enjoyed raising your ero stats the natural way. Raising them with stat points doesn't feel like leveling, it feels like teleporting past a perfectly good dungeon area you could have had fun exploring. Even BOD, which seems like the least scary stat to raise, isn't begging for points. You're okay being cheerleader-pretty for a while before you move on to being the most beautiful woman in the world.

You're just wondering if maybe refusing to spend any stat points means you're underpowered for a Lvl 10 quest like this one. Maybe the design of the Erogame assumes that you're spending stat points, and you're going to start failing quests.

Maybe you should spend at least one point on SED just to stop being scared of spending stat points.

And then watch to see if that single point does anything terrible to your mind.

You grimace at the empty air. One stat point in SED won't have scientists falling over each other in their rush to sleep with you. Is there some further buff you could add that's more temporary? All the SED-boosting skills you can remember are related to clothing or dancing, and the reception doesn't seem like the right place to do a strip tease or wear only a towel. But you've been accumulating so many skills, you're not sure you remember them all.

The thought occurs to you that you shouldn't be trying to remember this with just your mind.

"Info, skill list," you whisper to the empty air, to whatever it is that hears you.

Info // Skills:

Wield Vibrator: Lvl 1 (10%).
Edge Riding: Lvl 5 (63%).
Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 4 (46%).
- Cute Cold Resistance: Lvl 8 (84%).
Strip Tease: Lvl 3 (10%).
Reverse Strip Tease: Lvl 1 (25%).
Extra Large Sausage: Lvl 3 (0%).
Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit: Lvl 1 (80%).
You Forgot to Lock the Door: Lvl 2 (0%).
Edge Other: Lvl 5 (63%).
Tears of Milk: Lvl 4 (30%).
Edge Self: Lvl 6 (11%).
Good Morning: Lvl 2 (80%).
The Nectar: Lvl 3 (80%).
- The Lotion: Lvl 1 (6%).
Erotic Statuary: Lvl 1 (60%).
Meganekko: Lvl 2 (2%).
High Heels: Lvl 3 (76%).
- High-Heeled Running: Lvl 9 (84%).
- High-Heeled Parkour: Lvl 4 (62%).
- High-Heeled Jumping: Lvl 4 (22%).
- High-Heeled Landing: Lvl 4 (38%).
- High-Heeled Dancing: Lvl 2 (75%).
- High-Heeled Stealth: Lvl 2 (60%).
- High-Heeled Roofhopping: Lvl 3 (34%).
Dancing: Lvl 2 (33%).
- Dancing Dancing Revolution: Lvl 3 (50%).
- Freestyling: Lvl 2 (75%).
- Pole Dancing: Lvl 2 (45%).
Wardrobe Malfunction: Lvl 3 (75%).
Convenient Censoring (Hair): Lvl MAX.
Penitence: Lvl 1 (20%).
Fleeing: Lvl 2 (10%).
Asking For It: Lvl 1 (25%).
Destructible Outfit: Lvl 1 (25%).
Strip Other: Lvl 1 (25%).
Bloody Bedsheets: Lvl 1 (50%).
Naked Towel: Lvl 1 (97%).
Muffled Moans: Lvl 3 (84%).
Dressed Like a Slut: Lvl 2 (77%).
Clothes Can't Stop Me: Lvl 4 (84%).
Maid: Lvl 2 (17%).
- Maid Mémoire: Lvl 1 (75%).
- Maid of Time: Lvl 2 (20%).
Fluid Unformed: Lvl 1 (75%).
Candid Camera: Lvl 2 (38.5%).
Eavesdropping: Lvl 1 (25%).
Silence Mortal: Lvl 1 (50%).
Edging: Lvl 4 (22%).
Tickle Logic: Lvl 3 (88%).
Whistling: Lvl 1 (10%).
Lurking Beneath: Lvl 2 (20%).
Good Ending: Lvl 1 (50%).
Erogamer's Body: (Lvl MAX).
Erogamer's World: (Lvl MAX).
Conceptual Hair: Lvl 1 (26%).
- My Hair Always Looks Like This: Lvl 1 (80%).
- And It Never Gets in the Way: Lvl 3 (88%).
- It Does What I Want: Lvl 3 (36%).
- I Have All of the Hairstyles: Lvl 3 (10%).
- I Know All About Hair: Lvl 0 (0%).
- However I Like It: Lvl 2 (60%).
- All Along, I Have Always Been Hair
Time Control: Lvl 1 (0.7%).
- Slack: Lvl 4 (36%).
Distinction Between Self and Other: Lvl 1 (0.01%)
- My and Your Feelings: Lvl 1 (0.1%).
To Mine Own Me Be True: Lvl MAX.
%%+++%#%: Lvl ? (??)

Jeez, that's a lot of skills you've ended up with. Maybe just quickly look at each line of violet text… Strip Tease, yeah, that's exactly the type of useful skill you can't use here. Extra Large Sausage uses a ton of energy, also nobody makes porn about scientists so maybe Porn Logic wouldn't work on them. You've already whispered Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit under your breath a couple of times, on the surprisingly rare occasions where a scientist openly expressed concern about authorities shutting down the orgy. The Nectar… maybe if you pick the most suave guy here and blow him, his nectar will grant a temporary SED increase? Oh fuck your life you totally forgot about---

"Info, skills, Meganekko."

Meganekko: Lvl 2 (2%). Passive.

Your eyes change to require whatever prescription glasses you're currently wearing. You may at will temporarily prevent your eyes from reverting, if you need to be adorably blind and helpless with your glasses off. Give them back, please!

+10% to SED for characters who like intelligent girls. -10% to SED for characters who don't.

God fuck you in the ass, you could've been walking around with +2 to SED this whole time you forgot Maid of Time too. Even at half-power from not wearing a proper uniform, that'll give you around 40 extra minutes after the Maid Time you expended this morning.

Never mind. You weren't underpowered for a Lvl 10 quest because of not using stat points. You were failing because you were charging into this quest blindly instead of strategizing.

So you can use Maidpower to finish inviting all the scientists on time, and only use Slack on top of that if you haven't gotten enough yeses… plus half of the maybes, or possibly a third to be sure… Oh fuck you with a fucker, you didn't need to guess and worry about that part either.

"Info, quests, come with me if you want everybody to live."

Info // Active quests // Better Than That Ponce // Come With Me If You Want Everyone to Live

Get 30 attractive scientists to attend your informal evening workshop on applied reproductive biology.

Progress: 7/18 female scientists, 6/11 male scientists, 1/1 nonbinary scientists.

The violet text sinks in, and then you grimace. Apparently when a man says "Maybe" he'll come to an orgy, that actually means maybe, and when a woman says maybe, it's more likely that she'll end up deciding no. You wish Dr. Crowly had warned you about that, it seems like another important fact to know for maintaining a good ratio at orgies. Though it's probably another of those things that everyone has to dance around and talk sideways about.

Anyway, during the upcoming reception you'll know to focus on inviting more ero women. It's a good thing you thought of checking the quest progress…

Now that you think about it, would you have had all these ideas a week ago? Maybe you are getting smarter and not just in a calculus-learning way, on the occasions when you remember to try to be smart.

If so, at least that part seems to be integrating smoothly into your mind. This stuff felt like it was 100% totally your own idea, and not at all like advice was being whispered into your subconscious by inconceivable Things on a higher plane of existence.

You rise up from the hotel chair and begin walking towards the elevator, to go back to the penthouse and get your glasses… wait, do you have your glasses in your backpack? When was the last time you were wearing them, exactly?

Hold on, maybe you shouldn't be thinking too hard about that. The less you can remember whether your glasses are already in your backpack, the easier it is for the Erogame to slip them in there. Or that's how it would work according to quantum bullshit, if the Erogame's metaphysics are anything like quantum bullshit.

That's a clever thought too, right? Maybe you really are getting more cleverer.

Shortly afterwards, you're standing in your penthouse, holding that pair of glasses you bought at Goodwill, staring at violet text with an expression that is pleased, yet grumpy.

A skill has been created by a special action! Remembering that you did indeed put your glasses into your backpack this morning has created the skill Check Luggage.

Check Luggage: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 10 D|S / use.

Up to Lvl * ERO / 10 times per day, rounded down, you may suddenly remember that you've already put any ero-related item you own into any enclosed space you could have already accessed.

To invoke this skill, it must feel at least a tiny bit plausible that you could've moved the item there normally and forgotten about it. Naturally, as you practice this skill, you will become more accustomed to your extremely unreliable memory about all the odd places you once left a pair of handcuffs. Eventually it will start to seem totally reasonable to you that you could've earlier broken into somebody's locked house to hide a full latex jumpsuit in their closet, and only now remembered the fact.

If at any point Lvl * ERO / 10 exceeds 40, this skill evolves into the skill Ero-Inventory.

Fuck your fucking fuckhole with a fucker, you should have thought of that too. You should've realized after you saw the Clothes Can't Stop Me skill that prestiged into Naked Before Me. Ero-Inventory is a perk that gets refunded at ERO 50, so it's a type of thing you could do easily at ERO 50. Of course there's a weaker skill you can practice earlier. It's obvious.

Yeah, never mind, you probably haven't gotten any smarter. Anyone smart enough to be a real science major would've figured this out much earlier. Right?

"Hi, Tammi," you say into your burner cellphone, as you wait by the hotel elevator.

"Hello. I'm at Walgreens now, what's up?"​

It takes a second to adjust your mind to hearing Tammi use a Normal Responsible Adult Voice, maybe because she's in a Walgreens with other people around. "I've got a weird request that I want you to follow exactly, okay? Don't add anything else to what I tell you to say."

"Um. Okay."​

"Please order me to finish inviting all the scientists on time."

There's a surprised intake of breath from the other side of the phone.

"I order you to finish inviting all the scientists on time!"​

"Of course, ma'am, I shall be certain to do so," you say, and then pause. "Yeah, that worked. Thanks. That was all."

The voice on the phone gets quieter, the background noise muffled, like Tammi's holding a hand over the phone and whispering into it.

"So… did you run away from other psychics, who gave you a psychic block that only lets you use your full power when somebody who's dominant over you gives you a command---"​

Ding.

"Talk to you later," you say, "I gotta get into an elevator now," and press the hang-up button as you step inside with a sigh. Next time you see your Mom, you'll be sure to mention how Tammi reacted, and how your request gave away information you wish it hadn't. And how it sure would've been nice to be able to call your Mom instead for Maid orders---if you'd been able to trust Mom to just order what you asked, instead of slipping in a command to run home and do the laundry too. You hope that makes the point well enough.

The Wainscott room of the Norville Arms-Marriott proves to not be on the lobby level, where you were thinking for some reason that it ought to be. A prim request to a fellow hotel maid results in instant directions to a third-floor room, delivered in a timid voice. You're going to have to watch that, and only be prim when it's useful for seducing a scientist. Otherwise you might end up doing this less than perfectly.

The Wainscott room is huge, with a high ceiling that must be claiming territory on the fourth floor above. The walls are paneled in the dark oaken wood that seems to be a Norville Arms-Marriott trademark. From the high ceiling dangles an array of eight chandeliers, fake-golden arms dangling fake-silver pendants that oh good heavens that's visible rust who is supposed to be cleaning this place---

You pause, take some deep breaths, and walk into the reception.

There's not many scientists here at exactly 7pm. And for some reason your mind was expecting them to show up in lab coats or something, even though that's not how the scientists dressed when you were talking to them before, and for that matter, it's not how the TA dresses in your college biology class. They just look like a bunch of professors gathered into one room. Some wear suits, some wear vests, some wear shirt-and-skirt combinations not much different from your own.

One of them is quite pretty, and she's wearing a spiked earring.

You take another deep breath to fortify yourself, and wade in.

20 minutes later by the clock, and what you suspect is maybe half an hour of personal time, it's becoming clear that the +2 SED from your glasses aren't helping quite enough. The scientists are 10% more interested in you, that sounds about right. But you've only picked up 3 more Erogame-confirmed women and 2 more men, and you need 8 more and 3 more respectively in the next 40 minutes of clock time.

"I don't know if I'd really have fun," says the upper-twenties postdoc you're chatting with in a corner. If you're reading Dr. Reya's expression correctly, she's nervous; and if you're reading her chest correctly, her nipples are hard beneath their bra.

You smile invitingly, and say, "I could try to personally persuade you that you're having fun," and she leans away from you slightly.

You could swear Dr. Reya is attracted to you, but something's stopping her from moving on it. Telling other people you've found them pretty has sometimes helped, sometimes not. One man turned you down after you tried to hint that you and Tammi might have some girl-girl fun where he could see, and you haven't tried to hint that again.

You feel like you're barely on the verge of understanding this interaction.

Okay. Okay, you should do this. One stat point can't erase your mind or plunge you into the dark pseudo-future of Doctress Sextara.

Status, you barely whisper, and as though swatting a fly, your hand reaches out and flicks the (+) sign in front of SED.

…any bright ideas, newly upgraded you?

"Can I have some time to think about it?" says the pretty grad student, after you've spent a few seconds trying to think of ideas, and you're pretty sure from past experience that this is going to end up at a no. So you might as well risk…

You channel Maid.

"I certainly don't want to pressure you into doing anything you don't wish to do, ma'am," you say with more primness in your voice, your smile seeming more professional. "But Miss Arcadia does need to know who's coming soon, so she can make sure things are properly organized. I think you should be safe tapping me on the shoulder any time in the next ten minutes, but I'll assume it's a no if I haven't heard from you by then. I hope that's all right? No is perfectly fine, and you can say it now if you like."

The pretty grad student looks startled---not surprising, you did just undergo a personality change. She asks you more questions, which you answer, and you in turn ask her politely if she's fine with the basic consent rules that Tammi has sketched out.

When she excuses herself a couple of minutes later to think more, the Erogame quest text shows her as another woman attending.

So… shortly after you added the point to SED, your mind came up with a plausible-sounding theory. It was the theory that most of the women you're inviting want to hear that the orgy will be safe and well-organized. They don't need to be told that somebody there will find them desirable. All the pretty women on Earth who aren't you have heard enough catcalls to know that. The men, maybe, like to see you smiling invitingly. But for the average ero female scientist you should be channeling more Maid, trying to show them that the informal workshop will be a safe place for an adventure.

But is that actually true? Or would Dr. Reya have agreed to come anyway? And if the insight is real, did the understanding come from the added point of SED, a whisper from the game system? Or is it just the placebo effect, would you have thought of exactly the same idea earlier, if you'd expected yourself to think of something clever?

Maybe the way adding SED increased your seductiveness was just by having you believe in yourself as somebody who could understand people and come up with complicated theories about them.

Or maybe not. You don't know.

But being able to understand a little more about human interaction is nice, either way.

Reconceptualizing yourself as somebody better at understanding human interactions causes your SED to go up by 1!

5.8.4 [ST]: Fairy Godmother

Info // Character Stats // Seduction:

Your SED of 24 makes you the most seductive person in the room, even if the room contains some other novice sex workers. Frank sluttiness accounts for most of your attractive power, the honest generosity with which you give of yourself; but your caring for others' happiness and needs is also shining through.

You can increase this stat by pursuing and being pursued, by catching others and being caught, by tending to their yearning and not just their reward, by understanding deeper desires than sex and meeting them by opening more than only your thighs.

There's five minutes left on the wall clock until 8pm when the reception ends. You've accumulated 17 out of 18 women, and 10 out of 11 men, plus one person who doesn't care to be put into categories.

The remaining man should be Dr. Crowly, who's smiling and talking to one of your other orgy attendees on the far corner of the room. Based on what he told you before, he'll confirm as soon as you've got everyone else.

The trouble is, you can't see any more obviously ero women left to invite, that you haven't tried to invite already.

Which just leaves…

Does she count? Is she allowed to count? The quest text did say that you needed to invite thirty attractive scientists… but it didn't say they all had to be attractive to you.

"How goes the evening?" says the smiling woman in her upper fifties, with a streak of white through her well-coiffed hair. She glances around the room, confirming that nobody else is standing near the two of you, and lowers her voice. "And what of… the issue?"

"Yes," you murmur, lowering your own voice, "I was meaning to speak to you about the issue."

Professor Turk nods conspiratorily, and draws a step nearer to you. She probably thinks she's being humorous, and has no idea what a dozen people in this room are thinking about seeing her whispering to you.

"So," you say, "did you find out why this conference is being held in Norville, after your previous hotel canceled?"

Professor Turk frowns at that. "No, but there's definitely something up," she says. "I asked the chair of the organizing committee and he said that Norville's conference facilities were the best among the remaining options, which doesn't seem entirely plausible now that I think about it. He didn't seem comfortable with my asking, either."

"I see," you say. You look away from her for a second, considering how to say this. At SED 24 you can imagine yourself being smooth, suave, seductive… but you don't feel like you should be pulling that on Professor Turk. She's not ero. Not yet. Right now she needs to decide whether to be part of the game at all. You should just be Cindy at her.

You look back and see Professor Turk waiting patiently for enlightenment.

"Well," you say, "the first thing you should know is Norville's, um, reputation. This town is a central location for sex work and uh, kinky people."

Professor Turk's eyes go wide, and the wineglass in her hands rocks, but she manages not to drop it.

"What," she whispers. "Wait. Are you saying---someone on the organizing committee---supported moving the conference to Norville because they wanted to---"

You nod. "Yeah, that's the obvious explanation. Also Norville U is, uh, there's a student movement here called Natural Sexuality… have you heard of that at all?"

Professor Turk shakes her head. "No, never. Are you serious about all this? If you're joking, please tell me."

"Not joking. And the local Natural Sexuality student group has a tradition about extra-friendly welcomes for scientific conferences held in Norville."

Professor Turk's shoulders unstraighten, and she looks more relaxed, though she doesn't smile. "Thank you for informing me you're joking," she says.

You sigh. You can't blame her for being skeptical, this whole "conference orgy" thing would've never ever happened in Reality Classic. "And, uh, I felt hit pretty hard by what you said before, about your life not being adventurous enough. So, um, I was thinking of inviting you to, uh, an informal evening workshop on applied reproductive biology."

"I'm truly flattered," Professor Turk says, sounding sincere about it, "but you're quite a bit younger than half my age plus seven."

"Honestly I'm not sexually attracted to you either, but I do like you. So I checked, and a few of the other scientists coming said they're attracted to well-kept older women. I don't think you'd be lonely."

Professor Turk stares at you.

Professor Turk stares at you some more.

"I'm trying to decide if you have a very good straight face or if you're crazy," the Professor says. "One does meet a certain number of literal lunatics as a biology professor."

"Yes, I know it sounds pretty Alice in Wonderland," you say. "But you strike me as somebody who's good at reading people. I think on some level you already know that I'm telling the truth, and this is real."

Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit has increased by 1.

"Yes," Professor Turk says slowly, "I guess I do believe you, though I'm not sure why I do..." Her confused expression looks like truth and sanity are having a firefight inside her brain and she was a civilian casualty of the crossfire.

"It's not something I'd want to pressure you into," you say. The reception is dying around you, the surrounding babble quieting as people begin to wander away, singly and sometimes in pairs. The seventh hour of the day is approaching its end. "Obviously it's all going to be safe, sane, consensual, and private. But I don't know if a more erotic way of living is something you want for real. I don't know if it would be the right thing for you. Just… if you want the story of your life to be something other than what it's been… I can make it be a different story."

Professor Turk looks away from you, her eyes seeming to contemplate the far side of the room, where the drawn curtains reveal a window into a wider city and distant lights.

You wonder what it's like to suddenly believe that there's an orgy at your biology conference, and be invited to that orgy knowing the chance is real, after leading whatever life Professor Turk has led before this.

"This must be how Cinderella felt when her fairy godmother asked her whether she truly wanted to go to the ball," Professor Turk murmurs. "Despite her never having danced with more than one person before."

That makes you laugh out loud. "Well, between the two of us, you strike me as more like the wise fairy godmother type," you say. "But we don't have to follow our usual story roles all the time. Besides, having been the Cinderella is probably good practice for being a fairy godmother."

Professor Turk nods, still staring out the window. "One glorious night until the magic ends at midnight?"

Somehow you don't flinch.

Somehow you don't scream.

Somehow you don't run.

"Yes, well, actually that whole fairytale was just a dumb legend, even if some people name their children after the characters," you say. You're astonished by how much your voice doesn't shake. "Besides, the prince comes back for Cinderella eventually… and all the time between was Cinderella's own fault. She, she should have just stayed at the ball instead of running away at midnight. She should've trusted the prince when he said he loved her. She could've had more faith in her fairy godmother, embraced her destiny with courage, and everything would've been fine right away."

Professor Turk has turned and is now giving you a curious look. "Well, if we're going to be that rational about it," she says, "I think if I received a fairy-godmother wish, I wouldn't waste it on going to the palace ball and looking pretty. I'd use it to wish for more wishes and then get started on wishing for cures to all major diseases."

Again you manage not to flinch. "Then you're a good person, I guess," you say. "But I, I think a lot of people who'd lived their life in rags would be pretty tempted by going to the palace ball, and," you turn away and look at the window on the other side of the room.

"This conversation is now obviously a metaphor for something completely different and I have no idea what," Professor Turk says. "But for what it's worth, I'm sorry for saying whatever it is that I just said."

You nod without looking at her. "So," you say. "So, Cinderella, do you want to go to the ball? It'll be a glorious happy night, and, and then the magic doesn't end at midnight, your story can keep going differently, it'll just take some courage on your part. How does that sound, for an offer from a fairy godmother who isn't setting you up for disappointment?"

"That seems a fair way of putting it," Professor Turk says, sounding cautious in the face of your inexplicable fit of emotion. "Just to be clear, you're reminding me that if I find tonight enjoyable, I can go arrange myself for similar things to happen again."

"Yeah, something like that," you whisper. You look back at her. "You wanna go to the ball, Cindy?"

"I'll have to think about it," Professor Turk says. "But I'm leaning slightly in favor and would appreciate a spot being kept open for me. And it's Sonia, by the way, since if we're to be on a first-name basis I'm not fond of the name Cindy."

"Okay. The workshop is nine pm tonight, Penthouse D. Doors open at eight-fifty, doors close at nine-ten sharp for the opening talk, so you'll need to make up your mind before then."

"Are you all right?" says Professor Turk.

"Yeah. I'll be fine." You can always just kill yourself if the magic ends, so there isn't any future where it does.

Professor Turk nods to you and heads off. Somewhere in the distance, a church's bell begins to strike the eighth hour.

A fairy godmother whispers words of sorcery under her breath.

Info // Active quests // Better Than That Ponce // Come With Me If You Want Everyone to Live

Get 30 attractive scientists to attend your informal evening workshop on applied reproductive biology.

Progress: 18/18 female scientists, 10/11 male scientists, 1/1 nonbinary scientists.

"Sonia Turk," you murmur, "you shall go to the ball…"

A tap of your finger on Dr. Crowly's shoulder as he's walking out, some words that produce a startled and impressed look upon his face, followed by him nodding to you. And it's done.

You spend a minute looking out the window at the city again before you go. You're helping people now, aren't you? You're asking your own fairy godmother to cure obesity and aging for everyone, not just you. So you shouldn't feel guilty, right? At least not today?

Except that you're really doing this for Mom and for Felice, and Charles might talk you out of spreading the cure any further. If you do give the cure to the world, that would feel good, you guess, but you don't think it will inspire you to spend the rest of your life organizing more orgies at biology conferences. You won't feel ecstatic tomorrow if the Erogame offers you another biology conference that might cure AIDS, you'll feel like you're being guilted into doing things. A more moral person like Professor Turk would leap at the chance, and that's why she could be a good mistress for Blake Layton and you can't.

It's a good thing the Erogame doesn't seem to care who deserves its powers the most, and just gave them to a random teenager. Well, it's a good thing for you. Maybe not so much of a good thing for everyone else.

On your way out, in the corridor just outside the Wainscott room, you come across a horrified-looking girl who seems to be hyperventilating and whispering something that might be ohshitohshitohshit. She looks like a senior dolled up with obvious makeup to make herself look older, dressed in a woman's suit that fits her body but not her demeanor.

You're puzzled by why she looks familiar. From the way her eyes widen when she sees you, she recognizes you too. It's also telling that she grabs you by the sleeve and hustles you into a nearby hallway.

"Are you going to the conference, can you invite them tomorrow, I thought the reception was at eight, I don't know how I made this mistake, there was a conference poster right outside the clubroom and I thought it said eight, oh god, I told everyone I could do this on my own, and now Coral's going to laugh at me and then she's going to kill me---"

Oh, that's where you've seen her before. She's the woman who ran up to you after you walked out of the library naked, and made you lead a nude protest she'd scheduled for a cold evening in March.

Which, if reality has now been edited to be consistent with this fact, makes the ex-organizer of Natural Sexuality in Norville a total blithering airhead.

You ignore the voice inside your head that points out that somebody else also had the bright idea of there being a nude protest walk on a March evening. You made that up on the spot, she planned it.

"---you know about the school tradition right, I mean I know you don't show up to meetings often, but you're obviously a true believer---"

It seems the delegate from Natural Sexuality has arrived to try to organize the traditional conference orgy. And she got the time wrong and arrived too late, as expected from somebody who'd schedule a nude protest at nighttime in March.

"It's okay," you say, interrupting the wibbering panic happening next to you. "When I thought you weren't showing up, I went ahead and took care of everything for you."

"You---what?" The ex-leader of Natural Sexuality in Norville has an expression like somebody just stuffed a handful of live fish into her gaping mouth.

"I organized the conference orgy on my own. You can go home now." You can tell, somehow. This person isn't very ero, and she doesn't want to become more ero. She might not think much of showing up tonight and donating her lips and hips, she might not mind it, but she wouldn't be into it. She shouldn't be pulled into your world.

You extract your shirt-sleeve from the girl's limp fingers, and turn to walk away.

Then you turn back. "Did this event have a budget? I've been paying for things out of pocket."

5.9.1 [TA]: Opening Talk

Quest updated: Better Than That Ponce

The informal workshop has been duly scheduled. Now the attendees need to become more comfortable around the group and each other… which you can best catalyze by leading the way in visibly enjoying yourself.

Some of the people around you are sprawled down on the deep brown rugs of the penthouse living room, some sit in laps two layers deep on the lone sofa. Some wear tweed vests, some wear less. Two woman, and one man, have already changed into lingerie. Dr. Crowly has donned a solid black latex suit that looks like he must be roasting in there… no, wait, he's thin, it's probably fine. One shy-looking grad student is wearing just a lab coat over panties, though you didn't see anyone at the reception wearing a lab coat. Another is wearing a full-body mesh suit that conceals absolutely nothing. One man is wearing only the lanyard with his conference badge. One woman is wearing nothing except her tweed vest. Some attendees look nervous, others appear relaxed. A still-dressed Professor Turk is among the ones looking calm, and you wonder if that's appearance or reality. Murmurs of quiet conversation pervade the room, mostly not naughty from what you can overhear.

The great chandelier hanging from the high oaken ceiling has been set to glow reddish-golden, sunset colors. It's long since night outside, but the curtains and veils have been drawn fully over all the windows, creating a timeless bubble of early-evening no matter what the stars are doing beyond.

Against one wall stands a narrow grandfather clock, partially obscuring one of the huge fractal flowers made out of smaller flowers on the room's wallpaper. The clock face's big hand is slightly past the 9 numeral, the narrow hand almost to the 2. It's nearly time.

You haven't really been able to maintain your solemn mood while there's so many interesting areas of exposed skin and covered skin this close to you.

The doorbell rings, and you go to answer it.

Spoiler: Starry greets you

"Don't worry," you say to the two women and one man standing there, now looking nervously at you, "plenty of other people are still wearing clothes too," and you lead them within.

Almost as soon as they sit down on the rug, a small wooden box laid at the side of Tammi Arcadia's chair, within which rests a brass cylinder, rings out an echoing chime. The sound seems to hang in the air like mist, and the room quiets down almost immediately.

(Tammi really does have some nice things.)

"As we all know by now," Tammi Arcadia says, as everyone turns to look at her, "the Natural Sexuality student group at Norville U has an interesting tradition about conferences." She pauses for effect, casually smoothing back some curls of red hair. She's dressed now in a curvy black suit and spiked high-heeled boots that look more dangerous than sensual, her legs crossed where she sits on her armchair, and she's talking in her Serious Adult Grownup Voice. "Unfortunately, they couldn't do it this year. So everybody here just happened to stop by this hotel room that somebody happened to rent, and it doesn't have anything to do with any Norville U student groups. Everyone got that?"

There's nods, and some murmured yeses. Some people smile, some people don't.

"Rule one," Tammi says, "ask. Ask explicitly and out loud, and wait for an answer. Ask if you can touch, then ask again if you can escalate. If you get permission for a kiss on the lips, you have to ask again before you can kiss on any other lips." That gets a few chuckles, but not many. "In fact, we're all going to practice right now, to make sure we know how. Turn and face the nearest person next to you that you don't already know and who isn't already paired."

There's a minor scramble as people pair up. You turn at first to the man who just entered and who sat down next to you, but he's already turning to face another woman, and you end up facing another girl who hardly looks older than you do, wearing unsexy bra and panties and nothing more. Non-Doctor Laura, if you're remembering her right. Dr. Crowly in his full black latex suit cheerfully strides across the room to rescue the lab-coat girl, who managed to end up alone and unpaired on the other side.

"First," Tammi says, continuing to speak as she rises up from her cushioned throne to sit down next to the final unpaired woman, "you're each going to ask one another if you can do something, and the other person is going to say no. Then you're going to ask again, and the other person is going to say yes. These answers don't count for real. We're just making sure everyone has some practice saying no, saying yes, and asking for consent. First, both of you take turns asking to do something sexual, and answering no. Do that now."

You open your lips, but the girl opposite you is starting to open her mouth too, so you close your mouth at the same time she does, and then you decide you're going first because you're the Erogamer so it's your responsibility, but by the time you've made up your mind about that, she's already parted lips again and whispered, "Can I kiss you?"

She gives you a pleading, seductive look when she says it, the bastard.

"No," you whisper back. It's harder to say than you thought it would be. "That was hard, can I have a hug?"

She actually starts to reach for you before she manages to halt herself and grimaces. "No," she says, sounding like she has to force the words out.

You do your best to look sad, sniffling slightly as you blink repeatedly as though holding back tears. Clearly Non-Doctor Laura needs help practicing to resist emotional blackmail. Who knows what dubiously-consensual situations she might end up in if she's this easy to pressure.

The two of you are both glaring at each other by the time Tammi Arcadia tells you all to take turns asking questions and saying yes.

"May I please stick my finger up your ass?" she whispers at you, and you meep before you manage to force yourself to answer, "Y-yes."

You need a good return salvo… okay, you've got one. "May I please masturbate you in front of everyone and make you come loudly so everyone can hear you?" you whisper, and her cheeks turn even redder when she says "Yes."

Serves her right.

You then have to force your distracted attention back to Tammi, who's now talking about how there are no pictures allowed, and since cellphones can take pictures in both directions, just duck into one of the large closets if you need to briefly use a cellphone. Tammi points out the bedroom with two king-sized beds as the main orgy room, the second bedroom as the BDSM-scene room, and the third bedroom as the quiet cuddles room. The living room is for talking and cuddles. Tammi reminds everyone that this hotel does have rooms in the event that someone wants real privacy, whether for a BDSM scene or aftercare. Alcohol is in the kitchen. Condoms are everywhere. Somebody accidentally left some vardenafil in the refrigerator. The house safewords are "Red!" or "Safeword!" Yellow means that somebody is being pushed close to their limit but doesn't want to end the scene yet, and green means to keep going.

"Please don't stand around watching other people," Tammi says, and somebody raises their hand. "Yes?"

"I'm okay with being watched," says the girl wearing only a lab coat and panties. "Does anyone here not like being watched? I want to make sure we're not ruling out something that everyone is okay with."

"It'd be pretty unlikely if nobody objected in a group this size," Tammi says. "But we can check. First, let's all close their eyes… that includes you, miss." You hastily close your own eyes too. "This way, nobody except me knows who objected. Okay, now anybody who's not okay with being watched, raise their hand… huh. It seems like everyone here is okay with being watched, so never mind then."

You open your eyes again. Probability, ha ha, you remember when that was a thing.

Then you shoot a startled glance at Professor Turk, who gazes back at you looking at her. Professor Turk might be blushing, though it's hard to tell with her complexion. So she's okay with being watched too, huh.

"At nine thirty pee em," Tammi continues on, "we're going to have a game of Tit for Tat in the living room area. That's a version of Truth or Dare where people offer to trade truths or dares, not just point to somebody and tell them what to do. For example, I might offer to trade a kiss with tongue to anyone who'll tell me their most embarrassing sexual fantasy. You might say that's not enough and offer to trade that for two kisses. At ten thirty pee em, Starry will… you want to explain?"

You stand up in front of all the assembled scientists, SED 24 enabling you to not look terribly nervous as you do. "I'm writing an erotic novel," you say. "A pretty ridiculous one, where there are probability-bending effects in play whenever the protagonist has sex. In the novel, an orgy at a biology conference improbably ends with a cure being developed for obesity and aging." Several people chuckle or snort. "I'd like to make that part as realistic as possible, so I'd love for anyone who can to talk about whatever work of theirs could be part of the story. Like, if you're working on something that could be used to increase sirtuin activity in fat cells, come by and say what it is. I'd be extra interested if some of you here have ideas that could interact with each other, since that's the point of the orgy in the story. And of course it'd be most wonderful of all if some people really do meet at an orgy and find a synergy between their ideas worth working on---that's the type of thing Norville's Natural Sexuality student group would be forever proud to have been part of. Though I'm acting totally on my own, of course."

You sit back down.

"Now, there's---there's thirty of us," says Tammi. She clears her throat, as though setting aside some strong emotion. "So---so we'll have to do the next part pretty quickly, because at ten seconds per person, that's five whole minutes. Just say your name, whether you're attracted to men or women or both, and whether you're interested in dominating or submitting or neither or both. Optionally you can say briefly, like in five seconds, if there's anything you're especially interested in…"

And it goes around the room, Tammi's finger pointing out one person after another.

Women, both, both, both, women, both, men, both…

Submissive, switch, neither, submissive, dominant, switch, neither…

"I'm probably bisexual and submissive," says a graceful and fully-dressed woman in her late twenties. Katia, if you're recalling correctly. "I haven't experimented with either, I'm just guessing based on population averages."

And, uh, things. People here are interested in things. Just like there's some women and one man here who are only interested in men, meaning, not interested in you, there's some interests being declared that are not within your current PRV score.

"I'm into receiving needle-play. I brought my own needles."

But also, go figure, a number of declared fetishes that intrigue the protagonist.

"Massages with happy endings."
"Being treated as a pet."
"I like toying with pussies and making women moan for me."
"My pride is my tongue."
"Spanking, both receiving and giving."
"I reeeeaaally need to be tickled."
"Too many fetishes to list, I'm Uncategorizable on Fetlife if you want to look them up."
"My special talent is that I can get a new erection seven times in one night."

All of the temptations bop into your mind one after the other, leaving no space for you to acclimate, adjust, or absorb. It's a dizzying buildup and you feel more dazed than aroused. You're being surrounded by options, flooded by them. You'd make metaphors about starving people in buffet restaurants, if it wasn't still too soon. People's declarations seem to be getting more intimate as the circle proceeds, as if each confession is giving courage to the next.

"Being made to come into my pants," says one soft-spoken male postdoc, cheeks aflame.

You know you should feel nervous about how you've effectively promised sex to so many people. You ought to be worried about whether you're in over your head. There should be enough of the old Cindy left for you to feel cornered, like now you can't back out. What you feel instead is more like an urge to dive into a pool of naked bodies and do everything at once. Go wild. Want-take-have. It's not, it's not the end of your story, it can't be the end at just LST 21. Lots of people have LST 21. You've just been starving your whole life, starving for gone-wild-ness, and you'll be okay after you feed.

"I---I want to be used any way anyone wants," says a woman with straw-blonde hair in short spiral ringlets. "Please---don't ask me---just tell me what you're going to do with me first---I'll safeword if it's not okay."

There's inhalations. Some people look shocked, or at least surprised.

"I'm not too good with remembering faces and bodies," a thick-mustached man says, speaking out of order. "I'm worried I won't be able to remember who said that. So how about---pardon me. Be informed that I'm going to pull off your pants and write 'USE ME' on your pubis, over your pussy, so I can remember."

The woman gasps and freezes. She doesn't object.

The man starts to rise from his place when Tammi raises her hand and makes a quelling gesture.

"Wait until we finish," says Tammi.

"And then, please take it to the BDSM room," another woman says.

Several of the men and a few of the women have developed their own kids-in-a-candy-store expressions.

And you---

You're staring down at your own pelvic area, still under panties for now, imagining letters inked on your skin. You're trying to resist the gravitational pull into subspace, a compulsive urge to follow the slave-woman when she goes to be marked. Like in the basement of Goodwill, when you walked out of the gloryhole room with a man's semen smeared on your breasts, and a dominant-looking heavy woman whispered in your ear and called you a slut. The same feeling is coming over you now, to freeze in place and let yourself be led away by the hand. You're fighting that urge, but, you're not sure you should fight it. Tammi's here to keep watch. These are all academics with careers to protect. This is the safest imaginable environment if you did let yourself fall down that hole, be swept away and submerged in that deep current. It's just, then you wouldn't get to do other things tonight, like---

It's the turn of the girl sitting next to you in just bra and panties. "I'm Laura, I like women, I'm a switch, I don't have any special, uh, wait, uh, I'd like someone to m-masturbate me in front of everyone so they can all hear me come." She's gazing firmly down at the floor and not looking at you at all.

---like that.

It's your turn now. Tammi had you go last.

"Starry," you say, "bisexual, switch, and," your mind is whirling, dizzy with all the temptations, with the urge to just reach out and take a thing that you desire, you don't know which, but your mouth has to speak so it can decide your priorities for you. "I want---"

(Ranked vote. You can vote for up to nine options. 1 is the most preferred, and any ranking in 7-9 will denote dispreference. More than one option will win.)

[ ] To be fucked hard and repeatedly
[ ] To be served
[ ] To be touched
[ ] To be taught
[ ] To be dominant
[ ] To be helplessly toyed with
[ ] To be seen
[ ] To be embarassed
[ ] To be shameless
[ ] To be sadistic
[ ] To be perfect (Maid option)
[ ] To be dominated
[ ] To be tied up
[ ] To be used without being asked
[ ] To be pounded hard in all my h-holes
[ ] T-to be hurt… a little…
[ ] To be teased (you got enough of this on Wednesday)
[ ] To be tickled (ditto)
[ ] To be hurt more than a little (not unless it's Charles, and even then not until you're ready)
[ ] To be raped

Also: What would people think about my posting the intermediate chapters as they're written, without waiting for the votable chapter at the end?

(Non-ranked ordinary vote.)

[ ][META] I'd rather you post chapters as they're finished.
[ ][META] I'd rather only see chapters when there's a vote at the end.

Spoiler: Context for the above vote:

My life has picked up pace since the start of the academic year, and I'm worried about whether this story is losing audience because of the time between updates. Also I'm worried about the general health of QQ---it seems like a lot of stories stopped updating, and most of the quests on the current board are very recent ones. Does anyone know what's up with that, or does that always happen in September? I wish there were some way to buy an ad, but I asked and it seems there isn't.

5.9.2** [TA]: What Do You Want?

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 96 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 2859-2993]
##### NetTally 1.9.9
Options:
(write in) To get to know as many of you as I can.
To be dominant
To be dominated
To be embarassed
To be embarrassed
To be fucked hard and repeatedly
To be fucked hard and repeatedly (didn't she already commit to using slack and everything to try to have sex with everyone she finds attractive?)
To be helplessly toyed with
To be passed around, often (write-in)
To be perfect
To be perfect (Maid option)
To be pounded hard in all my h-holes
To be sadistic
To be sadistic (I don't see Starry being ready for hardcore pain-play)
To be seen
To be serve perfectly (Maid option)
To be served
To be shameless
To be taught
To be taught (let's face it, a lot she can learn here)
To be tied up
To be tied up (same as with the crossed out tickle option, we had enough of that on Wednesday)
To be touched
To be used without being asked
To cover myself in everyone's sexual fluids (write-in)
To experience (a bit of everything, especially trying new things)
T-to be hurt… a little…
Winner: To be seen
[1] Andelevion
[1] Rem
[1] ScrewFate
[1] Theminimanx
[2] Alkaiser009
[2] DarthSquidious
[2] Diraniola
[2] Guile
[2] Hyperion042
[2] january1may
[2] Lavida
[2] Lunaloyalist
[2] Nordik
[2] NotaWriter
[2] Pbkan
[2] wasprider
[2] wille179
[2] zachol
[3] BastetsChosen
[3] Blackshard
[3] kimagurena65536
[3] Mr. Tebbs
[3] Sirrocco
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] DOOMPOTATO
[4] Dr. Professor Robot
[4] Grollo
[4] Jirachi
[4] Prime 2.0
[4] Soul Shocker
[4] Spectral Waltz
[5] Beholder_of_Words
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] End of Line
[5] napkintooth
[6] Dragonheart91
[6] Gingganz
[7] Ct613hulu
[7] Dreikanter
[7] kabs
[8] Pseudonym
[-] adara
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Blacksoul
[-] Burnlogic
[-] chrnno
[-] edale
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] fluxoid
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gnarker
[-] Helix
[-] kozinc
[-] marmar
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] Ozimantus
[-] Professional sheep
[-] Questingdragon
[-] SkyJack121
[-] Strelok
[-] TesselatedPattern
[-] The_Shameful
[-] Valmit
[-] Zonoro
First Runner Up: To be dominant
[1] Beholder_of_Words
[1] chrnno
[1] Ct613hulu
[1] DarthSquidious
[1] Jirachi
[1] kabs
[1] Nordik
[1] NotaWriter
[1] Ozimantus
[1] Questingdragon
[1] Strelok
[1] Valmit
[1] wille179
[2] DOOMPOTATO
[3] General Lewdendorf
[3] Spectral Waltz
[4] Alkaiser009
[4] Dreikanter
[4] january1may
[4] ScrewFate
[4] SkyJack121
[4] TesselatedPattern
[5] Gingganz
[5] Grollo
[6] Pseudonym
[7] Soul Shocker
[7] The_Shameful
[8] Sirrocco
[9] Helix
[9] marmar
[9] Zonoro
[-] adara
[-] Andelevion
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] Blacksoul
[-] Burnlogic
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dr. Professor Robot
[-] Dragonheart91
[-] edale
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] End of Line
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] fluxoid
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gnarker
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] kozinc
[-] Lavida
[-] Lunaloyalist
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] Mr. Tebbs
[-] napkintooth
[-] Pbkan
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Professional sheep
[-] Rem
[-] Theminimanx
[-] wasprider
[-] zachol
Second Runner Up: To be shameless
[1] Alkaiser009
[1] askldjflkajskje
[1] Diraniola
[1] Gingganz
[1] kozinc
[1] SkyJack121
[1] Spectral Waltz
[2] BastetsChosen
[2] Beholder_of_Words
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] Rem
[2] ScrewFate
[3] Andelevion
[3] DOOMPOTATO
[3] Ephemeral
[3] Jirachi
[3] Ozimantus
[3] wasprider
[3] wille179
[4] adara
[4] Blackshard
[4] Ct613hulu
[4] fluxoid
[4] Hyperion042
[4] kabs
[4] Lunaloyalist
[4] MissileTeatime
[5] DarthSquidious
[5] Dr. Professor Robot
[5] Dragonheart91
[5] edale
[6] End of Line
[6] gilgamekk
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Blacksoul
[-] Burnlogic
[-] chrnno
[-] Dreikanter
[-] fictionfan
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] Gnarker
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Helix
[-] january1may
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Lavida
[-] marmar
[-] Mitale
[-] Mr. Tebbs
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nordik
[-] NotaWriter
[-] Pbkan
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Professional sheep
[-] Pseudonym
[-] Questingdragon
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Strelok
[-] TesselatedPattern
[-] The_Shameful
[-] Theminimanx
[-] Valmit
[-] zachol
[-] Zonoro
Third Runner Up: To be fucked hard and repeatedly
[1] BastetsChosen
[1] Dr. Professor Robot
[1] edale
[1] Pbkan
[2] Helix
[2] Mitale
[2] Spectral Waltz
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] fluxoid
[3] Gingganz
[3] Guile
[3] Pseudonym
[3] ScrewFate
[4] Andelevion
[4] Beholder_of_Words
[4] Dragonheart91
[4] Mr. Tebbs
[4] Nordik
[4] Ozimantus
[4] Zonoro
[5] Diraniola
[5] Ephemeral
[5] wasprider
[6] Grollo
[6] Sirrocco
[6] Strelok
[8] gilgamekk
[9] Rem
[-] adara
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Blackshard
[-] Blacksoul
[-] Burnlogic
[-] chrnno
[-] Ct613hulu
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] DOOMPOTATO
[-] Dreikanter
[-] End of Line
[-] fictionfan
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] Gnarker
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] kabs
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] kozinc
[-] Lavida
[-] Lunaloyalist
[-] marmar
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] napkintooth
[-] NotaWriter
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Professional sheep
[-] Questingdragon
[-] SkyJack121
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] TesselatedPattern
[-] The_Shameful
[-] Theminimanx
[-] Valmit
[-] wille179
[-] zachol
Honorable Mention: To be taught
[1] fictionfan
[1] january1may
[1] kimagurena65536
[1] Lavida
[1] napkintooth
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] Dr. Professor Robot
[2] Dragonheart91
[2] gilgamekk
[2] Jirachi
[2] SkyJack121
[3] Diraniola
[3] Prime 2.0
[3] TesselatedPattern
[4] BastetsChosen
[4] Gingganz
[5] Andelevion
[5] Blacksoul
[5] General Lewdendorf
[5] marmar
[6] Ct613hulu
[6] DarthSquidious
[6] Dreikanter
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] kabs
[6] Mr. Tebbs
[8] askldjflkajskje
[-] adara
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] Beholder_of_Words
[-] Blackshard
[-] Burnlogic
[-] chrnno
[-] DOOMPOTATO
[-] edale
[-] End of Line
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fluxoid
[-] Gnarker
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Helix
[-] Hyperion042
[-] kozinc
[-] Lunaloyalist
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] Nordik
[-] NotaWriter
[-] Ozimantus
[-] Pbkan
[-] Professional sheep
[-] Pseudonym
[-] Questingdragon
[-] Rem
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Strelok
[-] The_Shameful
[-] Theminimanx
[-] Valmit
[-] wasprider
[-] wille179
[-] zachol
[-] Zonoro
Honorable Mention: To be used without being asked
[1] Burnlogic
[1] End of Line
[1] Grollo
[1] Helix
[1] marmar
[1] Soul Shocker
[1] Zonoro
[2] Ephemeral
[2] fluxoid
[2] MissileTeatime
[2] Professional sheep
[2] Pseudonym
[2] Strelok
[2] The_Shameful
[4] napkintooth
[4] Sirrocco
[4] Valmit
[4] zachol
[5] kimagurena65536
[6] Mitale
[6] SkyJack121
[6] TesselatedPattern
[7] Dragonheart91
[7] january1may
[7] Rem
[8] Diraniola
[9] DarthSquidious
[9] Dreikanter
[9] Gingganz
[-] adara
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] Andelevion
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Beholder_of_Words
[-] Blackshard
[-] Blacksoul
[-] chrnno
[-] Ct613hulu
[-] DOOMPOTATO
[-] Dr. Professor Robot
[-] edale
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] fictionfan
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gnarker
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] Jirachi
[-] kabs
[-] kozinc
[-] Lavida
[-] Lunaloyalist
[-] Mr. Tebbs
[-] Nordik
[-] NotaWriter
[-] Ozimantus
[-] Pbkan
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Questingdragon
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Theminimanx
[-] wasprider
[-] wille179
Honorable Mention: To be perfect (Maid option)
[1] Aoinfinity
[1] Blackshard
[1] Dreikanter
[1] Ephemeral
[1] Hyperion042
[1] Lunaloyalist
[1] Sirrocco
[2] adara
[2] Ct613hulu
[2] kabs
[2] kimagurena65536
[3] Beholder_of_Words
[3] Grollo
[3] napkintooth
[3] Pbkan
[6] Blacksoul
[6] january1may
[7] edale
[7] Ozimantus
[8] DarthSquidious
[8] Helix
[9] Elitist Oars
[9] Mitale
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] Andelevion
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Burnlogic
[-] chrnno
[-] Diraniola
[-] DOOMPOTATO
[-] Dr. Professor Robot
[-] Dragonheart91
[-] End of Line
[-] fictionfan
[-] fluxoid
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gingganz
[-] Gnarker
[-] Guile
[-] Jirachi
[-] kozinc
[-] Lavida
[-] marmar
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mr. Tebbs
[-] Nordik
[-] NotaWriter
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Professional sheep
[-] Pseudonym
[-] Questingdragon
[-] Rem
[-] ScrewFate
[-] SkyJack121
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Strelok
[-] TesselatedPattern
[-] The_Shameful
[-] Theminimanx
[-] Valmit
[-] wasprider
[-] wille179
[-] zachol
[-] Zonoro
Honorable Mention: To be served
[1] adara
[1] wasprider
[2] Gingganz
[2] Ozimantus
[2] Valmit
[3] Alkaiser009
[3] Ct613hulu
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] kabs
[3] Nordik
[3] NotaWriter
[3] Strelok
[4] Guile
[4] kimagurena65536
[5] SkyJack121
[5] TesselatedPattern
[6] edale
[7] Helix
[7] Sirrocco
[8] Soul Shocker
[8] Zonoro
[-] Andelevion
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Beholder_of_Words
[-] Blackshard
[-] Blacksoul
[-] Burnlogic
[-] chrnno
[-] Diraniola
[-] DOOMPOTATO
[-] Dr. Professor Robot
[-] Dragonheart91
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] End of Line
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] fluxoid
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gnarker
[-] Grollo
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] kozinc
[-] Lavida
[-] Lunaloyalist
[-] marmar
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] Mr. Tebbs
[-] napkintooth
[-] Pbkan
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Professional sheep
[-] Pseudonym
[-] Questingdragon
[-] Rem
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] The_Shameful
[-] Theminimanx
[-] wille179
[-] zachol
Honorable Mention: To be pounded hard in all my h-holes
[1] Dragonheart91
[1] fluxoid
[1] Guile
[1] Pseudonym
[1] The_Shameful
[2] Burnlogic
[2] Grollo
[2] Mr. Tebbs
[2] Zonoro
[3] edale
[3] End of Line
[3] Helix
[3] Mitale
[4] Diraniola
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] kozinc
[4] marmar
[5] Blackshard
[5] Nordik
[5] Pbkan
[5] Sirrocco
[5] Spectral Waltz
[6] Beholder_of_Words
[6] Ephemeral
[6] Valmit
[7] Aoinfinity
[8] Gingganz
[8] january1may
[8] Questingdragon
[8] Rem
[9] gilgamekk
[-] adara
[-] Alkaiser009
[-] Andelevion
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blacksoul
[-] chrnno
[-] Ct613hulu
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] DOOMPOTATO
[-] Dr. Professor Robot
[-] Dreikanter
[-] fictionfan
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] Gnarker
[-] Hyperion042
[-] Jirachi
[-] kabs
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Lavida
[-] Lunaloyalist
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] napkintooth
[-] NotaWriter
[-] Ozimantus
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Professional sheep
[-] ScrewFate
[-] SkyJack121
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Strelok
[-] TesselatedPattern
[-] Theminimanx
[-] wasprider
[-] wille179
[-] zachol

Total No. of Voters: 67

-[X] Preferably simultaneously
No. of Votes: 1
Pseudonym
-[X] Only towards women. My dispreference for CBT is somewhere over 9000.
No. of Votes: 1
Pseudonym
-[X] Preferably towards women
No. of Votes: 1
Pseudonym
[X] to see how many mouthfuls of cum you can taste at one time.
No. of Votes: 1
Fouredged
[X] To be dominant
No. of Votes: 1
kabs

Task: META
[X][META] I'd rather you post chapters as they're finished.
No. of Votes: 30
zachol
adara
Aoinfinity
Beholder_of_Words
Ct613hulu
DarkDaemon
DarthSquidious
Diraniola
Dr. Professor Robot
Dragonheart91
edale
Elitist Oars
fluxoid
gilgamekk
Guile
kozinc
Lavida
marmar
Mitale
Mr. Tebbs
napkintooth
NotaWriter
Prime 2.0
Pseudonym
Questingdragon
Sirrocco
TesselatedPattern
The_Shameful
TricksterPriest
Valmit
[X][META] I'd rather only see chapters when there's a vote at the end.
No. of Votes: 19
ScrewFate
Alkaiser009
Andelevion
Azerick
BastetsChosen
Blackshard
Dreikanter
fictionfan
Grollo
Helix
january1may
MissileTeatime
pepperjack
SkyJack121
Strelok
Theminimanx
wasprider
Zonoro
zup
-[X][META] Whatever Groon prefers.
No. of Votes: 2
Pseudonym
MissileTeatime
[X][META] Whenever Groon wants.
No. of Votes: 1
gilgamekk
-[X][META] maybe post the chapters with a day or so between them, once they're finished and ready to be posted?
No. of Votes: 1
MissileTeatime
-[X][META] In fact, I'm not sure why they're even split in the first place.
No. of Votes: 1
january1may
Total No. of Voters: 51

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (33,400 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 343/420
SUB: 163/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 24
FUK: 18
PRV: 24
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 34
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8385

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Blake Layton
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

"To be seen," your mouth says. "To be shameless---to be fucked hard and repeatedly---to have lots of people come in my mouth---" You stop, swallowing, as other words enter your mind. To be helplessly toyed with, an image of you being handed off from one person to another while they rub your newly sensitive and vulnerable pussy and make you moan for them. To be used without being asked permission, following that other woman into slavery---

Then your mind draws back from that, despite feeling the pull. It might be a flare-up of worry about what happens if you submit too much and dominate too little, in this Erogame. Or maybe it's a sense that you're becoming imbalanced in your own self, a worry that there's a class of fantasies you're starving so that you can feed other fantasies more.

You don't know why your mouth says it. All you know is that you glance over at Laura, the woman who asked to be masturbated, and then you find yourself staring down into your own thighs and garters as you say, in front of everyone, "And, and to be d-dominant."

There's a quiet around you, even as you begin to curse yourself a millionty trillion times for looking down and stammering while you said that.

"That is the most adorable thing that has ever happened," somebody whispers.

You manage to lift up your head so you can glare in that direction.

"That's it for the opening circle," Tammi Arcadia says, smiling down from her little chair-throne at all the orgy participants. "Have fun!"

People look at each other questioningly, like the inexperienced don't think it's their turn to speak, and the experienced are afraid to speak over them. A lot of people are sideways-glancing at you. Well, you did call this orgy.

At SED 24 you're not frozen, at SED 24 you're not choked by the attention, at SED 24 your mind doesn't just go blank. It takes willpower to steel yourself, but you can. You need to break the ice and there's an obvious way to do that.

You lean over towards the woman sitting next to you in just her underwear, Laura-who-doesn't-have-a-PhD. New instincts tell you to lower your voice, rather than putting her on the spot. "Hey," you whisper almost in her ear, but not touching, "you want to be made to come right away? Before the workshop splits up, to make sure everyone gets a chance to see you?"

Laura nods, just a little.

Okay then.

You stand up, and hold out a hand to Laura, who seems shaky as she takes it.

You feel like you ought to smooth your clothes out, but you're not really wearing clothes, just panties and stockings with garterbelt. You smooth your hair back over your shoulders instead.

"Laura," you say, loud enough this time for everyone to hear. With more time to compose yourself, your voice doesn't crack this time as everyone turns to look. "Do I have permission to touch you?"

Laura nods.

You move closer and hug her from behind. She's warm. You can feel her stomach and abdomen trembling beneath your arms, and her hair smells damp, like she showered before coming to the orgy.

Be shameless, you remind yourself, SED 24, you can do this. "Do I have permission to masturbate you and make you come so everyone can hear?"

"Sure," she says in a wavery voice.

Your own cheeks are pinking as thirty-some people stare at you and her. They're seeing you, the girl with her bare breasts and garters, moving her hand slowly down the stomach of a woman in just plain panties and bra. Part of you can't believe you're doing this, not in front of biologists. Your hand moves lower, going over the panties instead of under---

Tammi clears her throat, seeming to break loose of a trance. "This should be done in the master bedroom," she says crisply. "In case anyone wants to stay in the living room and not plunge in just yet."

You take Laura's hand and walk her forward into the master bedroom.

The crimson sheets have been changed, the crimson quilt smoothed out evenly, since Blake left this room. You don't think you need two adjacent king-size mattresses for this performance, but the center of the bed is the center of this room and it's the obvious place to be.

You bring Laura over to the bed and push her bottom, gently, but enough to signal her to climb onto the bed. You follow her, and prowl in your best catlike posture to the center of the two beds, where you sit with your legs spread. You pat the space between your legs, and Laura crawls over and sits between you.

You can do this, right? You helped dominate Tammi when Danni guided you. You tickled Danni with Tammi watching. You edged Danni and made her lick Tammi without anyone supervising you. You've just spent a whole afternoon teasing Blake, but… but you knew them better, when you did all that, you knew what they wanted. All of that was part of a story, you weren't just, you weren't just sitting on a bed and suddenly trying to dom a stranger…

Biologists come through the wide door to the bedroom, one after another, the man in the full latex suit, the man wearing only his conference badge on a lanyard, two women in lingerie, a woman in just a lab coat, a woman in mesh suit that shows everything. Briefly your brain marvels that all these people just happened to bring that stuff to a biology conference, before you remember again that they've all heard stories about Norville, in this revised reality.

About twenty people are crowding around the double beds to watch this, including Tammi. Professor Turk shuffles in too, her face looking placid, controlled maybe.

Somehow it's thinking of Professor Turk watching this, judging the two of you, that's most embarrassing. It's like a real college professor is watching you do this and not just ero characters. But, but that's fine.

You hug Laura firmly from behind her. She's trembling now. You… think that you shouldn't ask her if she's ready, that you shouldn't remind her that it's okay to back out, that it would be cruel to test her courage more than once. You wish you knew for sure that the thought was SED 24 telling you what Laura needs, and not just your own mind making things up.

One of the people staying in the living room closes the bedroom door, and the twenty of you are all alone in your little world.

Your fingers glide down over Laura's stomach, and press on her panties from outside. You can feel the softness beneath them, warm and squishable, but if she's wet down there, she hasn't soaked through her panties just yet.

You stroke your right hand over her panties, like you're petting a cat, soothing the pussy.

After thirty seconds of that, she doesn't seem to be trembling any harder than before, and she's definitely not moaning.

You put your hand under her panties, and start to rub, the same rhythm you'd use on yourself, but slower.

Your victim isn't wet yet. Is she regretting having asked for this? Or is she feeling ashamed of herself for taking so long to get aroused, like you would feel in her place? If SED 24 lets you magically guess correctly then you think it's the later one.

You remember thinking, at LST 12, that you ought to edge yourself for Charles before going to bed with him, so as to not force him to spend too much time on foreplay. What's a normal woman's LST, even the LST of someone who shows up for an orgy? How long does it take for an ordinary woman to orgasm when a stranger with FUK 18 is masturbating her? If it's ten minutes, then this was a terrible idea. Is FUK 18 even enough to do this at all?

A couple of watchers are fidgeting with what might be impatience. If it's SED 24 telling you this and not just your imagination, the energy in the room might be starting to fade.

"Take off your panties," you say in low tones, and it actually sounds seductive by the grace of SED 24. "Let everyone see."

A shiver runs through the warm flesh you're still hugging with your left arm, and then Laura is unfolding her legs from where she's sitting crosslegged. She has to lean back on to you to take off her panties, and the fuller contact is nice. Warm. You press yourself against her back after she's done taking her panties off, her skin warm against your nipples.

You put your fingers into your mouth and lick them, lubricate them thoroughly, before you reach between her legs again. It feels like reaching between your own legs, in this posture, like you're masturbating yourself at one remove, with everyone watching.

Time passes.

She's wet now, but she's not moaning, and you don't think the tightness in her muscles is from an approaching orgasm.

Laura speaks again, sounding very embarrassed. "It---" she says. "It might take a vibrator…"

"We can do that if we have to," you say. But you've thought of another thing to try. "Would it help if people besides me were touching you, in other places too?"

You can feel her swallow, in your arms. "Maybe?" she squeaks.

"Do they have permission?"

Laura nods.

"Tammi," you say, "can you suck on her toes?"

Soon after, Laura is breathing more heavily in your arms, as one pointy-bearded PhD student who crawled over to your left side toys with her nipples, and Tammi makes love to Laura's toes. You lubricate your hand again, tasting sweet-fishy nectar as you do, and go back to rubbing Laura's pussy steadily.

Again time passes, but this time Laura is stiffening up, tensing and sometimes moaning. You imagine that she's ashamed, and turned on, and trying to prove to herself that she can do this. You don't know if you're right.

A man is hugging a woman from behind, and you think he's rubbing himself against her gently. Two women have their hands in each other's pants, though it looks more friendly than frantic. Though you didn't overhear any whispered requests for permission, which makes you suspect those people already knew each other.

People don't look bored anymore.

"Oh," Laura breaths out shakily. "Oh."

"Are you going to come soon?" you say.

"M-maybe. Not, yet."

"Come nice and loudly when you do so everyone can hear."

Laura is tensing up and breathing heavily when she moans out, "I, I don't, I don't think I can go over the edge like this. I'm sorry, I need a vibrator…"

You don't have to decide how to react, because Tammi immediately removes Laura's toes from her mouth with a wet plopping sound. Tammi gives Laura's instep a long, slow lick, and then rises to slide open the bedroom door.

A murmur of conversation washes through from the living room before the door closes again.

You go on rubbing Laura's pussy like it's your own, as best as FUK 18 can let you do. Part of you considers thinking about dumping points into FUK so you can make her come without a vibrator, but the thought passes quickly; it doesn't seem like a good enough option to be put to an internal vote.

The pointy-bearded guy by your side goes on sucking on Laura's nipple.

When Tammi slides back into the bedroom, she's in the process of fitting a non-lubricated condom over the head of an enormous device the length of your arm.

"Have you ever tried the cordless version of the Hitachi Magic Wand?" Tammi says to Laura, in the same tone you imagine she might use to ask somebody if she'd ever been with a girl before.

Laura shakes her head.

"Have you ever tried a Hitachi Magic Wand at all?" Tammi says, in the same tone as asking somebody if they are in fact a complete virgin.

Laura shakes her head again.

Tammi grins.

It's with an odd sense of guilt that you hold out your own hand for the vibrator, since it looks like Tammi would enjoy doing this herself. But you think it would be the wrong move if you just gave up your victim to Tammi.

Tammi doesn't look regretful as she slaps the vibrator into your hand. The controls puzzle you on first sight, and then you remember to shape your lips and half-breathe the words, Wield Vibrator.

As though by the animal instinct of some animal that evolved to use vibrators, your finger presses the round button, then the upper rectangle once, and the huge Magic Wand roars to life within your hand. A display shows two blue bars lit, and the bars look like they go up to four.

Laura stiffens up and lets out a loud moan as your Ero-guided hand presses the wand between her legs like they were your own. For a second you wonder if you really need Wield Vibrator for this, and then you realize how hard it would be to do this the normal way without being able to see where you're aiming.

Another instinct leads you to wind up your left hand in Laura's hair again, pulling her head back slightly as your right hand presses the wand into her harder.

Can you really feel the shame in Laura's trembling, can you really hear the conflict in her moans? Is it SED 24 that's telling you how Laura needs to be seen, is afraid to be seen, she couldn't come before because she was too nervous with everyone watching, but the cruel vibrations pouring into her clit are going to make her come in front of everyone whether she wants to or not, and the thought is making her scared and wet? Is she really thinking that, or is it just your mind making things up?

A ragged "Oh-oh-oh" comes from Laura's throat, like she's trying to stop herself from moaning, and trying to force herself not to stop herself.

And then she just stops breathing entirely.

"I think she's about to come," you say out loud, and you press the top rectangular button again, turning the vibrator up to its third level.

Laura doesn't make a sound. All of the muscles you can feel pressing into your front are fully tensed.

Then a long, low, breathy moan comes from Laura's throat, even as her hips jerk frantically against yours. She comes quietly, but beautifully. You can feel her head turning as she tries to look away from all the people looking at her. You keep her head pulled back, gently, not letting her go.

Are her moans rising in pitch because she's over-sensitive and you're keeping the vibrator pressed to her? The Erogame skill would tell you that, right?

Finally you feel Laura's back relax a little, and that's when you pull the vibrator away---hoping that you're not just imagining that you ought to, that you're not depriving her of an ongoing orgasm.

The onlookers burst into applause as Laura collapses backwards into your lap, and you allow yourself to be knocked down onto the bed with your arms going around Laura to hug her. She's breathing raggedly.

Trying to masturbate a girl comes with a lot of nervous responsibility, you're realizing.

…but it isn't unfulfilling when it works.

You can see now, from your prone position, that the pointy-bearded man who had his mouth on Laura's breasts has sat back up into a kneeling position on the bed. It puts him above you, and he's looking down at the two of you and grinning.

For as long as Laura doesn't say anything, you go on holding her tightly. You don't think you're supposed to be saying anything, or if you do need to say anything you don't know what it is. A hug ought to count as aftercare on its own, right?

Finally Laura breathes, "Thanks," and makes as though to rise off you, so you remove your hands and give her a push up.

She's smiling uncertainly, maybe more of a grimace, as she twists around from her sitting position on the bed to look at you. "I, um," she says.

With another leap of faith and twinge of nervousness, you decide to trust the spark of intuition that's just crossed your mind. You sit up yourself, and lean forward to whisper in Laura's ear. Maybe the man sitting on the bed near you will hear, but it's the most privacy you can manage.

"You don't have to do anything to me if you don't want to," you whisper. "Putting on a show like this together doesn't mean you owe me an orgasm back."

"Thanks," Laura whispers again, and then she crawls off the bed and walks to the bedroom door, slowly, taking even steps, like she doesn't want anyone to think she's running away. You think she's okay, though, that she just needs a break and to process a little---if that also isn't just your mind making things up. You desperately need some way to verify how much SED 24 actually lets you know.

People have turned away from you now, are speaking to each other in murmurs. One woman begins to skin out of the clothes she's wearing, while another woman smiles upon her.

The ice has officially been broken.

Now what?

The bearded man sitting on your left leans toward you and speaks, a low masculine voice filled with humor. "So," he says, "you want to be seen, to be shameless, to be fucked hard, to have people come in your mouth, and to be dominant."

"Yeah," you say, forcing yourself to look him right in the eyes. "That's right."

"I don't usually submit to people I don't know," he says. "So no guarantees. But if you want to tell me what to do, I might not mind doing it."

Tell him to do… what? You look at him and your mind goes blank. It feels like parts of you voted to be dominant without really saying a lot about what that meant. If you just ask one man after another to fuck you and then pull out to make sure the nectar goes in your mouth, while women ride your face whenever it's not occupied, that's not very dominant, is it?

Before you can finish your slide into inward panic, an older, slightly balding man with bushy eyebrows has walked to the side of the bed nearest you.

"Excuse me," he says, "but can I talk to you briefly? Sorry about that." The second sentence is spoken to the point-bearded man still sitting and looking at you.

You try to keep your relief from showing on your face as you stand up and follow bushy-eyebrows out of the bedroom door, carefully shutting it behind you. You give a quick look back at the orgy room as you go, but nobody is in visible despair over your departure. People seem to be doing fine at talking to each other, and another woman is taking her clothes off. They can have sex with each other without you there to make it happen, it looks like.

There's eight people left in the vast living room of the penthouse, five women and three men having three conversations.

The bushy-eyebrowed man walks over to the edge of the room, by the veiled window, and sits on the rug-softened floor. You sit next to him. It's not uncomfortable with the rugs being this deep.

"Sorry if I pulled you out of there for nothing," the man says, speaking in low tones but not quite a whisper. "But it looked to me like you were having trouble answering him and I thought you could use an excuse to leave for a minute. Actually, I hope you're not offended if I say that you looked almost exactly like a student trying to figure out lab equipment with no instruction manual."

Your breath leaves you in a sigh. Right, because everyone here is a fucking professor. Actually, if you're remembering correctly, his name is Dr. Kavenski and he actually is a professor. "Yeah. Thank you. That was a good call."

Dr. Kavenski nods. "Anything I can help you think about? I have some experience in related matters."

You study his face, not wrinkled, but with a visibly receding hairline; you'd guess him at forty or so. The man is still dressed the same way as he was at the reception, in slacks, a button-down collared purple shirt… and a solid black leather vest buttoned over the shirt, which is the only sign that he's an ero scientist and not just a scientist. You're surprised the complete outfit looks as academic as it does. Maybe it's the enormous bushy eyebrows poking out of his head that do it.

You could use advice, yeah. And he's a professor who knows the subject, even if, perhaps, it's not what he's a professor of. At least you hope not, that your ERO hasn't gone that high.

"I'm a little new to being dominant," you say.

"Yes," he says, "I suspect a number of us guessed that."

"That guy asked me if I wanted to give him orders and my mind went completely blank. I mean I had no idea what to tell him to do."

It feels like a mortifyingly embarrassing confession as you say it.

But Dr. Kavenski doesn't blink. "It's all right," he says, "and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, if you look at your own selfish sexual desires and try to fulfill them. Just think of a sex act you want to do, and then tell the submissive to do that. The way that boy asked you for an order, he made it clear that if you asked him for something he didn't want, he knew how to say no."

"I'm a little new to… wanting things," you say, after some hesitation. At least, wanting things more complicated than for anyone to desire you or touch you, ever. "I think I understood what you're saying but my mind still feels blank."

The older man nods. "It can be a confusing question at first. You probably grew up with a number of cultural signals telling you to focus on the other person's pleasure in bed, to ask yourself what they wanted instead of what you want. There's some naturally self-centered people who need to hear that repeated, but for people with naturally other-focused personalities, it sinks in too deep. The first time I ever asked myself what my ideal sexual encounter would look like was when I dated a dedicated submissive who managed to convince me that she really, honestly got off primarily on being used without any respect for her own desires. That was the first time that I felt it was mandatory to ask myself what I wanted in a purely selfish way---it just being permissible wouldn't have been enough for the previous me. Now, I'm not saying that being selfish is what it means to be dominant, but I am saying it's a place to start when somebody offers to serve you and you can't think of what to ask for."

You take all this in with wide eyes, deciding somewhere in the back of your mind that you're going to burn a couple of minutes of Slack on this, so as to not feel rushed about getting back to the orgy. You suppose it's only natural that professors sound complicated when they're talking about sex, but still, wow.

"Another place to start," the man says, "is to ask yourself how you know that you want to be dominant in the first place. There should be some particular thing you want to do that's dominant, right? Can you look towards the reason you believe that you're dominant?"

You wonder if this is his sideways way of asking you, Are you sure you have dominant potential at all, little girl?

And your real answer, which you can't say to him, is that you know you have the potential for dominance because you are a female erogame character.

Well, no, it's not just that. You also know that you can be dominant because you've been dominant. But the pointy-bearded guy who made the offer was older than Blake, he didn't seem scared or shy or…

"I've been dominant to a boy who looked all scared and shy, and that made me feel like I wanted to order him around," you reply, realizing. "Laura seemed shy. Most of the people here don't look shy." They also aren't being bad, the way that Danni was being bad when you edged her and then forced her to lick Tammi.

The man grins. "You know, it's perfectly okay to only feel dominant towards one particular type of person," he says. "That's not a flaw. That's not something you have to change."

You shake your head. "I feel like I have the potential for more," you say. "I'm certain of it, actually."

Dr. Kavenski doesn't demand to know how you can be sure, he just leans back with his bushy eyebrows rising, though he looks more thoughtful than skeptical. "Well, if you're having trouble figuring out what you want, we could run through some of the common subcategories of dominance," he says. "Sadist, top, lady, mistress, owner, mommy," he seems to pick up on your wince, "okay, not mommy then. You could enjoy seeing people in sexually charged pain, and in general I'd say sadism generalizes to the desire to cause other people intense sensations and control their experience that way. You could enjoy being in control of a scene, being the one organizing it. There could be some particular fetish you want to practice, like tying people up. You could want a submissive who looks up to you and treats you with great respect and obedience. You could want submissives to serve you so that you can get particular things from them. You could feel a need to own a person completely and have them as property. Do any of those sound like something you want?"

Your brain tries to go through the things he's said, but it's all too… BDSM. You aren't really into traditional BDSM, you're into a related but ultimately different perspective on the sexual universe.

What do dominant female erogame characters do? You skipped through most of those sections pretty quickly, the first time around. Does any of that seem appealing now that you're looking back at LST 21 and PRV 24? Taking advantage of shy boys, sure. Making other girls wear vibrators to school, giving a boy a footjob under the table and forcing him to come in public. Tying up a shy submissive girl in the gym for other men to use, while you pinch her nipples… those all sound a lot more interesting than they used to. But nothing you can remember seeing is something a dominant female erogame character would do at an academic orgy.

Yeah. That's why your mind is blank, that's why you're having trouble figuring out what to do.

A dominant male erogame character could just line up all the girls at the orgy and fuck them one after another. But again, the opposite strategy of bending over the bed and having men fuck you does not seem very dominant.

You guess you could get on top of one boy after another.

Or pretend that everyone here who's a submissive is in your harem, and treat them the way you imagine you'd treat your future harem.

The word ojou-sama crosses your mind. That's a kind of dominant female erogame character who'd be at home at an orgy. If you were an ojou-sama, you might order two girls to make love to your toes while another kneels between your legs... you want to add, "And have someone feed me peeled grapes," but you're not sure you're ready for that.

And no matter what you want, there will be enough people here who are into it, because fuck probability.

You try to look inside yourself for your own selfish desires. What do you actually want to do that's dominant?

(Ranked vote, [1] is the most preferred option.)

[ ] Be the ojou-sama and pretend this is your harem.
[ ] Be the sadistic slut… a little sadistic. Very carefully.
[ ] Someone here will have brought rope. Be the girl who enjoys taking advantage of someone while they're helpless.
[ ] Be the girl who pushes men to the bed and rides on top of them.
[ ] You're the girl who's in charge. Find that woman who wanted to be treated as a slave, and orchestrate the things that happen to her.
[ ] You're the apprentice in the sex cult. Find more experienced doms to train you at things.
[ ] Find the people here who are already visibly shy or submissive, like the man who said he wanted to be made to come in his pants. Only try to dom them. Everyone else can just fuck you.
[ ] You've changed your mind about this. It's enough to be seen, to be shameless, and to get fucked a lot.

Spoiler: Author Notes

Most of this delay was just a sudden workload (that unfortunately is probably going to resume after Christmas). But I realized that another part of the difficulty was that every specific dominant option got voted down and "To be dominant" got voted up without further commentary. This became easier to write once I figured that out, and that it meant Cindy would go blank as soon as somebody actually asked her to dom them. Thanks also to zachol for the suggestion, "So what she says is a really stuttery and blushy "I w-want to be d-dominant tonight..." that makes all the actual doms coo and grin." That was super helpful on getting the chapter started.

Also this story now has its very first piece of fan art hooray hooray! I feel like I ought to be offering Andelevion a reward, but I don't know what kind of reward would fit well in this quest. Other QMs give roll bonuses but that doesn't seem like enough? Suggestions are welcome.

5.9.3**: Pleasured

Spoiler: Author's note

Work crush is continuing. I'm posting this all at once, despite the previous meta-vote, because these delays are proving long enough that I didn't want you to have to refresh your memory four times. I don't know if I'll be able to update any faster going forward, but I wanted to move on past the vote at the end.

Ranked votes seem very unstable. 5.13.1 was written while Ojou-sama was in first place, which it was for most of the vote. The final winning choice listed below was fit in later in the update.

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (33,400 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 373/420
SUB: 163/450

BOD: 21
LST: 21
SED: 24
FUK: 18
PRV: 24
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8385

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Blake Layton
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: On

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 101 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 3024-3168]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
Be the girl who pushes men to the bed and rides on top of them.
Be the ojou-sama and pretend this is your harem.
Be the sadistic slut… a little sadistic. Very carefully.
Find the people here who are already visibly shy or submissive, like the man who said he wanted to be made to come in his pants. Only try to dom them. Everyone else can just fuck you.
Someone here will have brought rope. Be the girl who enjoys taking advantage of someone while they're helpless.
You're the apprentice in the sex cult. Find more experienced doms to train you at doing dom things, but who will dom you too, maybe as a punishment for fucking things up
You're the apprentice in the sex cult. Find more experienced doms to train you at things.
You're the apprentice in the sex cult. Find more experienced doms to train you at things.[/QUOTE]
You're the girl who's in charge. Find that woman who wanted to be treated as a slave, and orchestrate the things that happen to her.
You've changed your mind about this. It's enough to be seen, to be shameless, and to get fucked a lot.

Winner: You're the apprentice in the sex cult. Find more experienced doms to train you at things.
[1] Andelevion
[1] Blackshard
[1] Ephemeral
[1] Fouredged
[1] Gingganz
[1] GulibleLeprecon
[1] january1may
[1] kimagurena65536
[1] Lavida
[1] madness
[1] Malicious_Consent
[1] Mister Spicy
[1] Mitale
[1] napkintooth
[1] Pseudonym
[1] rchalle
[1] reeezzzaaa
[1] ScrewFate
[1] SkyJack121
[1] Soul Shocker
[1] TheWorld_IsGreat
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] DarthSquidious
[2] Diraniola
[2] Malthkind
[2] Sirrocco
[2] somervta
[2] Stasis
[2] The_Wanderer
[3] anon101
[3] Crawkid
[3] Dragontrapper
[3] gilgamekk
[3] Kurogami
[3] loneangel
[3] Mei Mei
[3] Mojiizen
[3] Nordik
[3] Phillbie
[4] BastetsChosen
[4] Burnlogic
[4] Ct613hulu
[4] edale
[4] Eler0
[4] General Lewdendorf
[4] Jirachi
[4] Pbkan
[4] Questingdragon
[4] Thrice.Great
[4] zachol
[4] ZenithOfLust
[5] Greckle
[5] Grollo
[5] SoulofaGremlin
[5] Valmit
[6] AltTab
[6] Ando Owen
[6] Derpmind
[6] Nyx
[6] redfog
[7] askldjflkajskje
[7] Elitist Oars
[7] Lisa
[-] Dreikanter
[-] End of Line
[-] Helix
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Octopice
[-] RedKnite
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] wasprider
[-] Zonoro

First Runner Up: Be the ojou-sama and pretend this is your harem.
[1] AltTab
[1] Aoinfinity
[1] askldjflkajskje
[1] Crawkid
[1] Ct613hulu
[1] DarthSquidious
[1] Eler0
[1] Jirachi
[1] Kurogami
[1] Lisa
[1] loneangel
[1] Mojiizen
[1] Nordik
[1] Phillbie
[1] somervta
[1] The_Wanderer
[1] Thrice.Great
[1] Valmit
[1] ZenithOfLust
[2] kimagurena65536
[2] Malicious_Consent
[2] napkintooth
[2] Pseudonym
[2] SkyJack121
[2] SoulofaGremlin
[2] Spectral Waltz
[2] wasprider
[3] Ando Owen
[3] BastetsChosen
[3] Burnlogic
[3] Diraniola
[3] edale
[3] Fouredged
[3] Lavida
[3] madness
[3] Octopice
[3] zachol
[4] Andelevion
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] Gingganz
[4] Greckle
[4] GulibleLeprecon
[4] Malthkind
[5] Derpmind
[5] Dragontrapper
[5] january1may
[5] reeezzzaaa
[5] Stasis
[5] TheWorld_IsGreat
[6] Grollo
[6] Mister Spicy
[7] Blackshard
[7] General Lewdendorf
[7] redfog
[8] gilgamekk
[8] Pbkan
[-] anon101
[-] Dreikanter
[-] End of Line
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Helix
[-] Mei Mei
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Nyx
[-] Questingdragon
[-] rchalle
[-] RedKnite
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Zonoro

Second Runner Up: Be the girl who pushes men to the bed and rides on top of them.
[1] BastetsChosen
[1] Derpmind
[1] Dragontrapper
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] End of Line
[1] Mei Mei
[1] MrBTXz
[1] Pbkan
[1] redfog
[1] RedKnite
[1] Spectral Waltz
[1] wasprider
[2] Andelevion
[2] Ando Owen
[2] askldjflkajskje
[2] edale
[2] Gingganz
[2] Grollo
[2] GulibleLeprecon
[2] january1may
[2] Kurogami
[2] madness
[2] Mitale
[2] Nordik
[2] rchalle
[2] ScrewFate
[2] TheWorld_IsGreat
[2] Thrice.Great
[2] ZenithOfLust
[3] Ephemeral
[3] Helix
[3] Malicious_Consent
[3] Malthkind
[3] Mister Spicy
[3] napkintooth
[3] Pseudonym
[3] reeezzzaaa
[3] SoulofaGremlin
[3] Stasis
[4] AltTab
[4] Crawkid
[4] Diraniola
[4] Fouredged
[4] Lavida
[4] loneangel
[4] Octopice
[4] Phillbie
[4] Soul Shocker
[4] The_Wanderer
[5] DarthSquidious
[5] kimagurena65536
[5] Lisa
[5] Mojiizen
[5] SkyJack121
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] Blackshard
[6] Eler0
[6] gilgamekk
[6] zachol
[7] Burnlogic
[7] Greckle
[7] Valmit
[8] General Lewdendorf
[-] anon101
[-] Ct613hulu
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Jirachi
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Nyx
[-] Questingdragon
[-] Sirrocco
[-] somervta
[-] Zonoro

Third Runner Up: You're the girl who's in charge. Find that woman who wanted to be treated as a slave, and orchestrate the things that happen to her.
[1] Ando Owen
[1] anon101
[1] Dreikanter
[1] MissileTeatime
[2] General Lewdendorf
[2] Greckle
[2] Lisa
[2] loneangel
[2] Mister Spicy
[2] Mojiizen
[2] Phillbie
[2] Soul Shocker
[3] Ct613hulu
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] Eler0
[3] Gingganz
[3] Jirachi
[3] kimagurena65536
[3] Questingdragon
[3] somervta
[3] Thrice.Great
[3] Valmit
[4] askldjflkajskje
[4] Blackshard
[4] Derpmind
[4] Ephemeral
[4] gilgamekk
[4] january1may
[4] Malicious_Consent
[4] Nordik
[4] SkyJack121
[4] TheWorld_IsGreat
[5] Aoinfinity
[5] BastetsChosen
[5] Burnlogic
[5] Diraniola
[5] End of Line
[5] madness
[5] napkintooth
[5] Pbkan
[5] The_Wanderer
[5] wasprider
[5] zachol
[5] ZenithOfLust
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] reeezzzaaa
[6] SoulofaGremlin
[7] AltTab
[7] Dragontrapper
[7] Grollo
[8] Pseudonym
[8] redfog
[8] Stasis
[-] Andelevion
[-] Crawkid
[-] edale
[-] Fouredged
[-] GulibleLeprecon
[-] Helix
[-] Kurogami
[-] Lavida
[-] Malthkind
[-] Mei Mei
[-] Mitale
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Nyx
[-] Octopice
[-] rchalle
[-] RedKnite
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Zonoro

Honorable Mention: Find the people here who are already visibly shy or submissive, like the man who said he wanted to be made to come in his pants. Only try to dom them. Everyone else can just fuck you.
[1] Diraniola
[1] edale
[1] SoulofaGremlin
[2] BastetsChosen
[2] Blackshard
[2] Burnlogic
[2] Dragontrapper
[2] Fouredged
[2] gilgamekk
[2] Helix
[2] Lavida
[2] Octopice
[3] Andelevion
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] askldjflkajskje
[3] Dreikanter
[3] End of Line
[3] Grollo
[3] GulibleLeprecon
[3] january1may
[3] Mitale
[3] Pbkan
[3] rchalle
[3] ScrewFate
[3] The_Wanderer
[4] Ando Owen
[4] kimagurena65536
[4] madness
[4] Mojiizen
[4] redfog
[4] reeezzzaaa
[4] somervta
[4] Stasis
[5] AltTab
[5] Crawkid
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] Ephemeral
[5] loneangel
[5] Malthkind
[5] Phillbie
[5] Thrice.Great
[6] General Lewdendorf
[6] Greckle
[6] Malicious_Consent
[6] Pseudonym
[6] TheWorld_IsGreat
[6] Valmit
[6] wasprider
[7] Ct613hulu
[7] Derpmind
[7] Eler0
[7] Gingganz
[7] Jirachi
[7] Mister Spicy
[7] napkintooth
[7] Nordik
[7] Nyx
[7] SkyJack121
[7] zachol
[7] ZenithOfLust
[8] Lisa
[-] anon101
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] Kurogami
[-] Mei Mei
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Questingdragon
[-] RedKnite
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Zonoro

Honorable Mention: Someone here will have brought rope. Be the girl who enjoys taking advantage of someone while they're helpless.
[1] General Lewdendorf
[1] gilgamekk
[1] Greckle
[1] Questingdragon
[1] zachol
[2] AltTab
[2] anon101
[2] Crawkid
[2] Ct613hulu
[2] Eler0
[2] Jirachi
[2] Mei Mei
[2] MissileTeatime
[2] reeezzzaaa
[3] Blackshard
[3] Derpmind
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Soul Shocker
[3] TheWorld_IsGreat
[3] ZenithOfLust
[4] Dragontrapper
[4] Dreikanter
[4] End of Line
[4] Grollo
[4] Mister Spicy
[4] Mitale
[4] napkintooth
[4] SoulofaGremlin
[4] Valmit
[4] wasprider
[5] Ando Owen
[5] Gingganz
[5] Malicious_Consent
[5] Nordik
[5] redfog
[5] somervta
[6] askldjflkajskje
[6] BastetsChosen
[6] Burnlogic
[6] DarthSquidious
[6] Diraniola
[6] january1may
[6] kimagurena65536
[6] Lisa
[6] loneangel
[6] madness
[6] Pbkan
[6] Phillbie
[6] SkyJack121
[6] The_Wanderer
[6] Thrice.Great
[7] Aoinfinity
[7] Pseudonym
[7] Stasis
[-] Andelevion
[-] edale
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Fouredged
[-] GulibleLeprecon
[-] Helix
[-] Kurogami
[-] Lavida
[-] Malthkind
[-] Mojiizen
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Nyx
[-] Octopice
[-] rchalle
[-] RedKnite
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Zonoro

Honorable Mention: Be the sadistic slut… a little sadistic. Very carefully.
[2] Derpmind
[2] Dreikanter
[2] Questingdragon
[2] RedKnite
[2] Valmit
[2] zachol
[3] Greckle
[3] redfog
[3] SkyJack121
[3] wasprider
[4] DarthSquidious
[4] Lisa
[4] Pseudonym
[5] askldjflkajskje
[5] Blackshard
[5] Eler0
[5] General Lewdendorf
[5] GulibleLeprecon
[5] Mister Spicy
[6] Dragontrapper
[6] Gingganz
[6] napkintooth
[6] Stasis
[6] ZenithOfLust
[7] Ando Owen
[7] Diraniola
[7] gilgamekk
[7] january1may
[7] loneangel
[7] madness
[7] Malicious_Consent
[7] Pbkan
[7] Phillbie
[7] reeezzzaaa
[7] somervta
[7] The_Wanderer
[7] TheWorld_IsGreat
[7] Thrice.Great
[8] AltTab
[8] Aoinfinity
[8] BastetsChosen
[8] Burnlogic
[8] Elitist Oars
[8] Grollo
[8] kimagurena65536
[8] Nordik
[-] Andelevion
[-] anon101
[-] Crawkid
[-] Ct613hulu
[-] edale
[-] End of Line
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Fouredged
[-] Helix
[-] Jirachi
[-] Kurogami
[-] Lavida
[-] Malthkind
[-] Mei Mei
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] Mojiizen
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Nyx
[-] Octopice
[-] rchalle
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Zonoro

Honorable Mention: You've changed your mind about this. It's enough to be seen, to be shameless, and to get fucked a lot.
[1] Burnlogic
[1] Grollo
[1] Helix
[1] Malthkind
[1] Sirrocco
[1] Stasis
[1] Zonoro
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] End of Line
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Pbkan
[2] redfog
[3] AltTab
[3] General Lewdendorf
[3] Lisa
[3] Spectral Waltz
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] Mei Mei
[4] rchalle
[4] ScrewFate
[5] Andelevion
[5] gilgamekk
[5] Octopice
[5] Pseudonym
[6] somervta
[7] BastetsChosen
[7] kimagurena65536
[7] SoulofaGremlin
[8] Ando Owen
[8] askldjflkajskje
[8] Blackshard
[8] Derpmind
[8] Dragontrapper
[8] Eler0
[8] Gingganz
[8] Greckle
[8] january1may
[8] loneangel
[8] madness
[8] Malicious_Consent
[8] Mister Spicy
[8] napkintooth
[8] Nyx
[8] Phillbie
[8] reeezzzaaa
[8] SkyJack121
[8] TheWorld_IsGreat
[8] Thrice.Great
[8] Valmit
[8] zachol
[8] ZenithOfLust
[9] Ct613hulu
[9] Jirachi
[9] Nordik
[-] anon101
[-] Crawkid
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dreikanter
[-] edale
[-] Fouredged
[-] GulibleLeprecon
[-] Kurogami
[-] Lavida
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] Mojiizen
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Questingdragon
[-] RedKnite
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] The_Wanderer
[-] wasprider

Honorable Mention: You're the apprentice in the sex cult. Find more experienced doms to train you at doing dom things, but who will dom you too, maybe as a punishment for fucking things up
[1] Octopice
[-] AltTab
[-] Andelevion
[-] Ando Owen
[-] anon101
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] Burnlogic
[-] Crawkid
[-] Ct613hulu
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] Derpmind
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dragontrapper
[-] Dreikanter
[-] edale
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] End of Line
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Fouredged
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] gilgamekk
[-] Gingganz
[-] Greckle
[-] Grollo
[-] GulibleLeprecon
[-] Helix
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Kurogami
[-] Lavida
[-] Lisa
[-] loneangel
[-] madness
[-] Malicious_Consent
[-] Malthkind
[-] Mei Mei
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mister Spicy
[-] Mitale
[-] Mojiizen
[-] MrBTXz
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nordik
[-] Nyx
[-] Pbkan
[-] Phillbie
[-] Pseudonym
[-] Questingdragon
[-] rchalle
[-] redfog
[-] RedKnite
[-] reeezzzaaa
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] SkyJack121
[-] somervta
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] Spectral Waltz
[-] Stasis
[-] The_Wanderer
[-] TheWorld_IsGreat
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] Valmit
[-] wasprider
[-] zachol
[-] ZenithOfLust
[-] Zonoro

Total No. of Voters: 73

[X] Dump some points. Like, 3 in SED.
No. of Votes: 8
zachol
Ct613hulu
Derpmind
Eler0
january1may
Jirachi
Pbkan
ZenithOfLust

[X] Don't spend any stat points.
No. of Votes: 2
Pseudonym
Malicious_Consent

-[X] But not too carefully.
No. of Votes: 1
zachol

[X] Put 2 points in FCK.
No. of Votes: 1
Jirachi

-[X] If you get an opportunity, ask your mother before doing it.
No. of Votes: 1
january1may

[X] If we spend stat points on SED, make it at least three.
No. of Votes: 1
MissileTeatime

[X] NOT (Dump somepoints. Like, 3 in SED.)
No. of Votes: 1
gilgamekk

-[X] If we do spend stat points on raising SED, raise it to 27 (which should cost three points).
No. of Votes: 1
Pseudonym

Total No. of Voters: 12

You finish thinking---applying a bit of Slack, if that works in the middle of conversation, so that you haven't kept the other waiting. Then you look back at Dr. Bushy Eyebrows and nod.

"Thanks," you say with deeply felt honest sincere gratitude. "I think I know what I want, now. That was really helpful, I owe you one. Let me know if someday you want help cloning your own race of monstergirls or whatever."

Dr. Kavenski snickers, then quickly straightens out his face. "If you thought that suggestion was useful," he says, "just wait until ten-thirty, when you see what I have lined up for your novel's quick-weight-loss treatment."

The words sink into you.

And then you smile. You know without looking at your reflection that at SED 24, and feeling the way you're feeling right now, it's a smile bright enough to light a way through dark places.

"I'll look forward to it," you say, as you rise from the rug.

There's a part of you that still can't believe that this insane plan is actually going to work, that the world could be this easy to change. Even though every indication seems to indicate that the Erogame just does not give a fuck.

But there's also a part of you that's starting to believe it. The quest is doing something. Some of the right scientists for making an obesity cure are at this orgy. And the Erogame has not been doing shit halfway.

You're still smiling as you slide back in through the sliding door into the main orgy bedroom. Not much time has passed in here, you decide, and it looks like the pointy-bearded PhD student is only just starting to crawl off the bed as you walk in. Dr. Kavenski steps back in after you, gives pointy-beard a startled glance (oops), and closes the door behind you both.

"Sorry about the delay," you say to Pointy Beard, and then look around at the room. A few more clothes have come off, a couple of couples are kissing or getting handsy, but you wouldn't really call it an ongoing orgy. "Anyway, um…"

You walk to the middle of the bed's foot, putting you in the visual center of the room. You have to brace yourself mentally before raising your voice, remind yourself that be shameless was also something you decided to learn tonight. "As I guess a lot of you guessed," you say loudly enough that people turn to look, "I'm new to being dominant. I mean, tonight isn't my first time, I've dommed a boy and a couple of girls, but I'm still, uh, learning. If any of you want to take me under a wing and show me what to do to someone, I can pay with my body."

A woman with her hand down Dr. Altare's pants turns to look at you inquiringly, maybe interestedly if you're not mistaken. The man wearing lingerie grins an evil grin.

"But when it comes to what I'd like to, uh, do, that's dominant, I have, uh, harem fantasies. Not of being in a harem. Like I'm the princess and I have a harem. Who're all m-making love to me at the same time, and, uh, serving me and pleasuring me," you remember one of your other agendas tonight, and that you need to offer incentives here, "and one by one they also get to come in my mouth, like I'm granting them release, or like I'm feeding on them."

By the time you're done speaking, you can feel yourself blushing hard enough to light fires with your face. But, but you're allowed to have career goals too, right?

"Is it hot in here or is that just the thermal temperature?" says the man wearing lingerie, who seems to have developed a bulge in his semi-transparent panties.

"Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your Twitter feed," says the pointy-bearded student, sitting up on the edge of the bed.

"I'm sorry to have to point this out," says an older but well-preserved woman in her mid-thirties, looking fine in only a translucent mesh suit, "but there's only so many dicks here and not all of them can come more than once. Leave some for the rest of us, please?"

Dr. Crowly in his black latex has a slightly guilty look. But you don't blame him, he gave you good advice for a more normal orgy.

"I wouldn't want people to worry about that," says one of the oldest men you invited, a man with greying hair and a commanding aura. He's wearing the same navy business suit that he did at the reception. "I know of a lab group in Norville with six young men, all of whom I'd expect to be trustworthy, who could likely arrive on short notice. If other resources were exhausted, that is. So there is no need to restrain our appetites."

Professor Sonia Turk is giving this man a hard look, from an angle at which he can't see. Maybe this guy is the key character on the conference committee, the one who brought this whole party to Norville?

"Objection withdrawn," says the well-preserved woman who spoke before. She sends a pointed look over at Dr. Kavenski, who raises his bushy eyebrows in return. "Though there are certain authors of certain papers on whom I'm calling dibs for at least one round."

"So," says the pointy-bearded grad, looking back at you. "How are we doing this?"

You can feel the heat throbbing in your cheeks, in time with your pulse. This is embarrassing. They're not your real harem. A lot of people are watching who aren't even pretending to be in your harem. Literally all of them are older and more serious than you.

"Well," you say in a voice that sounds more higher-pitched than usual, "I guess somebody puts their mouth between my legs, and two people each can have my toes, my breasts, and suck my fingers, and whenever I feel like it I pick out somebody who looks ready and make them come in my mouth."

It's hard to force out the words.

"Which of us are to serve you first, princess?" says the lingerie man and somehow he has a completely straight face.

That's right, if you're trying to be dommy and mistressy you shouldn't lie down on the bed and wait for whoever wants you to take you. You should actually be pointing to people and telling them to serve you. But who---what if you point to somebody and they say no---you can't exactly remember who here was subby or switchy and who was dominant or vanilla---

You could tell everyone to raise their hands if they want in. But what if only two or three people raise their hands? You'll look terribly stupid.

God damn it, no, that thought itself is what's stupid. There was a time not long ago at all when you would have given anything for only one person to want you, right? The Erogame wouldn't let you down. You just need to have faith in the fantasy that's happening to you right now.

"Everyone here who's interested in being part of my temporary harem, please raise your hand," you say.

Fifteen people raise their hands. It's… gratifying.

"All right then," you say. You don't even try to sound imperious or princessy, you know you can't do that in front of a roomful of professors no matter what SED you have. "Which of you are interested in feet?"

Soon after you scramble onto the bed, your face glowing with embarrassment that feels more sexual now. You pull off your panties. You take off the stockings, so that they can get at your feet. You leave on the garterbelt because it looks more perverted that way.

You spread your legs obscenely, feeling your face warm even further. It's a woman whom you've permitted to be first to kneel between your legs, because somehow that felt even more forbidden and indulgent. She's the one wearing a vest and nothing more, and she looked so beautifully obscene when you pointed to her and said she had permission to lick your pussy and make you come.

At your right foot is kneeling the girl in the mesh suit that hides nothing and presents everything, who said before that her pride is her tongue. The man in lingerie is stepping around the bed to give your left toes an analytic look.

Then you have to lean back on the bed, since this obviously won't work otherwise. But you can still see the woman kneeling by your pussy, because the ceiling has a mirror. You never understood before today why that was supposed to be decadent, but wow, you sure understand now.

The vaguely Scottish-looking Dr. Altare takes your left hand, the pretty Dr. Reya's lips descend on your left breast, the pointy-bearded man takes your other breast again (maybe he's got a fetish), and the graceful lady Katia takes your right hand, looking uncertain but determined.

Nobody has started licking. That's right, you're supposed to be the oujo-sama here, you need to give the word.

"Start one at a time," you say to all the heads you can see. "One at a time so it doesn't hit me all at once. Left foot first, please?"

A shocked breath goes into your throat and stays there as a warm tongue goes over your toes. Lovingly, firmly, not the endless teasing and tickling from last night.

"Right foot," you say.

Oh. Oh. Two tongues at once, on both of your sensitive feet. A throb goes through your pussy, and you wonder if at LST 21 you could come this way, just from having your toes stimulated, even without the Arcadias' 35 FUK or whatever ridiculous stats they have.

"Left fingers," you say, and then you gasp. You're starting to realize what you've let yourself in for.

"R-right fingers." A moan escapes your throat. Four tongues, slipping around your thumb and your thumb and your big toe and over the arch of your foot. You could enjoy just this for hours, or minutes anyway.

"B-both breasts, go ahead. Oh! Oh, oh, oh…"

Two mouths have simultaneously fastened onto both of your sensitive nipples, the left tongue swirling like it's licking around an ice-cream cone, the right mouth harsher, compressing the nipple between lips and lashing it with a tongue.

You just moan for a while, letting your senses acclimate to the overload. You feel a flash of guilt about the woman waiting patiently between your legs, but, but no, you should remember what Dr. Kavenski said, you need to learn to respect your own desires. You know you're teasing yourself like this, and that's not very dommy, but you're also taking what you want, and that is.

Finally you say, "P-please lick my pussy. Slowly."

And then your head just rolls back on the bed and you moan, and moan, and moan in an ecstatic sensory overload. The woman between your legs took you at your word, and her tongue is excruciatingly slow and gentle as it licks up and down your sensitive lips, and then gently sucks on your bud and slowly pulses down on you, sending shocks of pleasure into you. It's slow, but not teasing. Even as your attention is drawn away to one pair of wet lips or another, even as a tongue between your toes shocks you into a sudden groan, there's still one regular pulse of pleasure after another that pulsates up from your center. You know you're going to come like this and not take long, which is a nice change of pace from some of the other things that have happened to you in the last few days.

Very soon it's an effort to lie still and let them all work on you, you know you're going to come, you know what else you want and you gasp, "Kiss me, somebody kiss me while I come." It feels like ages but it's probably only a few seconds before a woman's dark face approaches you and her lips close on yours. You frantically thrust your tongue into Prof. Samara's mouth, and she pushes back, you duel her kiss with your kiss like you're trying to distract yourself from the relentless tongues and the pulses of pleasure going all through your spine. Then you groan up into her lips with a feeling of release and triumph and an odd mortification, like you shouldn't be so easy.

Your legs spasm just as you finish, as your clit is suddenly too sensitive. The tongue on your pussy stops without being told. And the other tongues keep gently sucking. Even right after an orgasm, your thumbs and toes and nipples can handle it, they're not clits. Oh. Oh, you're going to be ready to go again soon. You should, you have something to keep you busy while you're coming over and over.

"I want you," you say to Prof. Samara, "between my l-legs, and, and she," you can't remember the name of the woman in the vest, "is to present her pussy to my mouth." You want that woman, and you want the man whose cock is showing through his transparent panties to fuck you, and you want to hear what Prof. Samara sounds like when she's in pleasure even if she's not allowed to come. But, that obscene bottomless woman, walking around in her top while she flashes her pussy at everyone, so much worse than being naked---you're going to take her first.

Prof. Samara smiles at you and whispers "Yes, ma'am." You can feel her moving around on the bed to go between your legs, and the hot breath on your pussy vanishes, and then is replaced by even warmer breath moments later.

The woman in her vest leans into your vision. "Have I pleased my mistress?" she says, and it doesn't sound like she really means it but that's okay.

"You have," you say breathlessly, and then "Oh!" as Samara's tongue descends on your pussy.

The woman carefully sits astride you. She's wet already, she was getting off on doing you, and that makes part of you feel better about having demanded to be served.

You lift your neck, and start doing to her pussy what the Arcadias extensively trained you in last night.

5.9.4: Many Nectars

There's a little heap of huddled flesh and pleasure lying on a huge bed with crimson sheets. Someone is stroking the beautiful scarlet-black hair of that little heap, the gentle hands of a dark woman who wears a single dot of red upon her forehead. Nearby the little heap, there are occasional sounds of fucking, and the bed bounces underneath the little heap. But the little heap doesn't move. It's been pleasured out.

(You didn't actually forget about your own existence, because each time you started to forget you remembered what happened with the Arcadias last time. Meaning you remembered that there was an "I" whose boundaries could blur, meaning that the boundaries slammed into place. Apparently, learning about the Distinction Between Self and Other is highly effective at preventing someone from using the skill, ever. Hence it being "insanely hard" to use without Hyperhypnoslut, you guess.)

Eventually the little heap regains its animating spirit, and a hand wanders out from its huddle to push down on the bed, causing the flesh to rise up and take on the shape of a naked girl. She had clothes once, but that was a while ago.

"How are you feeling?" inquires the gentle whisper of the dark woman.

Your brain considers this difficult question from several angles, trying out individual words since a sentence would be too hard, and finally you say, "Sated."

It's an apt word. You're astonished at your brain's ability to pick a single word with all the right connotations like that. It's probably thanks to SED 24.

You also feel like, like… like somebody under the effects of fourteen different random nectars.

Info // Skills // The Nectar // Known nectars

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Blake Layton | A taste of vanilla-flavored cake; a sense of spreading warmth, as of kindness or a sunny day. | ? | +10% to the rate of experience gain in stats and skills, 6 hours. | ???
Tammi Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | ???
Danni Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | ???
Driver #1 (plate 76ND2X) | A touch of spiciness as of curry power, fizzing slightly down your throat. | +5 to all dice rolls involving financial negotiation, 2 hours. | ?? | ???
Gloryhole cock #1 | A crispness like an apple's tartness, a sharpness like metal touching your tongue. | +5 to all dice rolls involving the BOD or LST stats, 3 hours. | ?? | ???
Biologist #1 (wearing only a vest) | Cigarettes and whiskey. | ? | The limit of your Extra Large Sausage skill is equal to your ERO, rather than ERO-10. (1h) | ???
Biologist #2 (pointy beard) | A tinge of sharp sweetness like licking a lollipop. | +5 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (1h) | Negate all penalties to SED-based skills from talking about science or mathematics. (6h) | ???
Biologist #3 (Prof. Samara) | The soothing sound of rain. | Increase by 2x your natural odds of mistaking anything for a cephalopod. (permanent) | +15 on all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #4 (mesh suit) | Fake sweetness. Like an artificial sweeter, you guess. | +10 to all rolls to perceive aspects of a person hidden by clothing. (1h) | Your caloric intak@#*^(-#@%)(@-#)%@#@-&^#@(@*&^-#(%&@# | ???
Biologist #5 (Dr. Altare) | Amber sunsets and a wistful D minor. | ? | Increase by 1000x the odds of improbable natural events involving non-PIV sex and recursive fanfiction. (6h) | ???
Biologist #6 (Zach L.) | Your favorite flavor. | ? | When subjected to or applying hypnosis, significantly heighten both superficial resistance, and persistent subliminal effects. (6h) | ???
Biologist #7 (Prof. Eliors) | A taste of fish. Wait, does that actually count? | +5 to Nyotaimori skill (6h) | ?? | +40 to all rolls on mundane biology problems (1d)
Biologist #8 (only a lab coat) | A chalky sweetness like a chewable antiacid. | +1 FUK when taking dicks over 6 inches (1hr) | +15 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #9 (Katia) | A weight lying heavy and squirming on your tongue. | -20% to relative humidity. (1h) | ?? | +40 to all rolls on looking up existing scientific information. (8h)
Biologist #10 | A dark taste, mysterious to identify. | ? | +2 LST, +2 FUK towards those about whom you know almost nothing. (6h) | ???
Biologist #11 (Uncategorizable) | A hint of smooth fur. | You are attracted to animalistic behavior (e.g. purring, biting, scratching) as if your LST was 2 higher. | Increase by 5x your natural odds of correctly guessing which of two people has the larger dick. (6h) | ???
Biologist #12 (Dr. Vasridder) | Smooth, cloying, sweet as honey. | ? | ?? | +1 to all game skills when fucking bees. (permanent) (do not fuck bees)
Biologist #13 (Dr. Kverty.) | Dewdrops on the ground at sunrise. | +1 BOD while being seen giving or receiving pleasure. (2h) | +15 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #14 (Prof. Z. Ohl) | A silvery taste of gasoline, perversely appealing. | ? | +5 to your Attractive Asphyxiation Resistance subskill. (2h) | +40 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (1d)

| Components | Effect
Mystic Eyes of Dick Perception (I) | Biologist #4, Biologist #8, Biologist #11 | You can instinctively guess the penis size of any male you gaze upon. (2hr)
Reagent of Mundane Biology (II) | Biologist #2, Biologist #3, Biologist #7, Biologist #8, Biologist #9, Biologist #13, Biologist #14 | Additional +150 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (12hr) Retroactive 30x increase in the odds of finding people whose nectar contributes to this combination. (-12hr)

A shiver that has nothing to do with desire runs through you, as you read the description of the final reagent. +150 to all rolls on mundane biology… an additional +150, over and beyond the other nectars. That's kind of a lot, isn't it? You don't know what +280 means in game terms, but you'd imagine something interesting ought to happen when you roll with a bonus that large.

So you're still on course to cure obesity, and also cure aging so long as you're in the conference hotel? It doesn't feel real. The world is too big, you're too small.

You turn your head to look around the room, taking in what's happened since you were pleasured.

The air in the room is hot and humid, more breath and sweat having been pumped into it than the hotel air conditioning has overcome. The scarlet bedspread has mostly been removed and tossed into a corner, leaving behind only rumpled sheets. The woman in the mesh suit, now artfully torn in strategic places, is moaning and bouncing on the other king-size bed adjacent to you. The man wearing only a name-badge lanyard is steadily plowing into her from behind. Non-doctor Laura is naked, sitting on the edge of the bed and breathing heavily, using the vibrator on herself as she watches the fucking couple. You're glad that worked out for her. A male-female-female couple seems to be hugging and cuddling quietly toward the foot of the bed, having not vacated to the cuddle room for whatever reason… oh, wow, that's Professor Turk on the left with her hair all disheveled. Good for her too.

But that's all.

"Where is everyone?" you say to Prof. Samara, who's been sitting patiently beside you.

"I think some of them went to the BDSM room," she murmurs, "and some of the rest said they wanted to look in on the Tit for Tat game in the living room before it ends." She smiles wryly. "Sir is probably trading me away as we speak."

You should check if everyone's having enough fun, you guess? Whether the biologists are being sufficiently friendly with one another? The night's not over yet.

You slide off the bed, and walk on shaky legs over to the sliding doors to the penthouse's main room. Prof. Samara follows you, behind and to your left, her clasped-hand posture making her look like she's your slave. It tickles something in the back of your mind, like maybe you wouldn't mind having a real slave at some point. You also feel more like it's okay for you to go around giving sexual commands to people, even if they're older than you. Probably that's a point of PRV there, you pushed your self and your self gave way. You set those thoughts aside for later.

The doors slide open, and you look in on the living room. The mighty grandfather clock shows the big hand on 10 and the little hand on 1, wow you were orgasming for a while. There's more than a dozen people encircled around the floor, including some sitting on what look to be stolen pillows or cushions. Few of them are wearing all their clothes still, but one of those is the postdoc with the thick mustache, who much earlier said he was going to write USE ME on the woman who wanted to be used without being asked.

"---and although very few people know this," the mustached guy is saying as you stagger in, "I have certain unpublished additional works in the same vein, of an erotic nature. They are of short length, and I haven't edited them extensively, but I will trade a private chance to read them for… one blowjob! Women only."

Some of the other participants in the circle are staring at the mustached man with what seems like vast skepticism.

"Did you just try to trade your unpublished---" says the pointy-bearded Biologist #2, and then he's interrupted.

"Oh my god! Oh my god!" says Dr. Reya. Her nubile nude form is bouncing up and down on the pillow she's sitting on, like there's a yoyo inside her that she can't contain. "You're Doctor Diminished on Fimfiction?"

The mustached man nods, though he looks a little surprised. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't spread it around---"

"I can't believe I'm in the same room with you!" Dr. Reya says. "You literally saved my life! I'm not kidding, I was having obsessive suicidal ideation in college before I read Twilight Sparkle's Ways of Keeping Sane. And you have secret porn of it? Really?"

"Well, with the characters as adult humans," the man says. "And of course, that also isn't something you should spread around---"

But by that time Dr. Reya has bounced up off her cushion and run over to the mustached man, whom she's dragging to his feet.

"Wait," says Biologist #2. "Did you just succeed in trading your unpublished erotic fanfiction of your own fanfiction to a beautiful young woman for a blowjob---"

"Apparently," says the man as he's pulled toward the giant bedroom you just emerged from. You limp aside to let him and Dr. Reya pass.

Biologist #2 raises his voice. "It's people like you two what make the rest of us believe we're in a computer simulation!"

The sliding door shuts behind both of them.

"Wow," you say aloud to the room. "That would've never happened in Reality Classic. I mean literally never."

"It's been a truly odd game," says Dr. Altare, as Prof. Samara goes to kneel beside him. "Though even for tonight, I'd have to say that's the weirdest coincidence that's happened in the whole last five minutes." He strokes Prof. Samara's black hair, as though in reassurance, and she leans into him. "Anyway. What am I offered for the right to pinch this slave girl's nipples as hard as you like for one minute?"

"Fuck this, I give up," says Biologist #2. "I've got an unpublished novella---"

You decide at this point that discretion is the better part of sanity, and you turn away from the circle and limp over to check the cuddle room, and then the BDSM room. At least these scientists seem to be getting along with each other fine.

The cuddle room has just three people lying on the king-size bed, curled in a close-enough heap that they don't seem to be looking for company. You wave at them briefly and smile, a flash of awkwardness at your intrusion suppressed by SED and the knowledge that you're the host.

The BDSM room's king-sized bed now includes a number of ropes and cuffs, thankfully not attached in any way that will make the hotel penalize your debit card. They're all empty right now.

Tammi Arcadia has a naked woman standing in front of her, arms and legs both spread wide, who seems to be trying to hold very still as Tammi gently runs a feather over her armpits. The woman's face is screwed up like she's trying desperately not to laugh. Well, everything's normal there.

A man and a woman both with purpling, bruised bottoms are holding one another on the bed. From the rubber paddle lying next to them and the absence of any visible dom, you get the impression that they took turns spanking each other.

Two women are having a conversation standing in a corner, in voices low enough that you can't hear.

You frown at the scene for a moment, not sure why you're feeling like something is missing… oh, right. You still haven't seen the woman who said she wanted to be used without being asked. She wasn't in any of the non-BDSM rooms either. And the bathroom door in this room is open, so she's not in there.

One of the women murmuring in the corner notices you, and pauses her conversation to step on over. "Ah, Miss Starry?" she says in a low tone. "Professor Volkov and Doctor Marshall left for a private room, but Professor Volkov thought you might be interested in joining them. He said room 1207, and left a key card for you in the nighttable." Something in your expression must have given away your straining memory, because she kindly adds, "That's Artyom Volkov, the conference chairman… the man who was wearing a business suit during the opening circle. And the lady who wanted to role-play being a slave. I think he's interested in teaching you with her as a subject."

You feel a little uneasy on hearing this. It's not that anything in particular is setting off alarm bells in your head, but you don't have alarms for male wolves more finely tuned than "Large person in a hoodie following me in the street at night." Nobody used to want to take advantage of you. And from a literary standpoint, you needing to leave the party is sounding like it might start a Subplot.

Your gaze goes to Tammi and her victim, wondering for a second if you should ask Tammi to come with you.

---no, that doesn't actually make sense. If you're about to run into a slaver out to kidnap you, they'd just take Tammi too, which wouldn't leave you any better off. Besides, a subplot like that wouldn't fit with this arc's theme.

"I'll take a look," you murmur to the woman next to you. "If I'm not back by ten-thirty sharp for the weight-loss brainstorming session, tell Tammi where I went and that she should take a few strong guys and come looking for me."

The woman gives you a startled look. "I really don't think Artyom would abduct---oh, you're joking."

You smile reassuringly at her. "Yeah, just joking," you say. "But I really am supposed to be back by ten-thirty sharp. And maybe the slave girl is the one who hits us both on the head and ties us up, you never know, right?"

The woman smiles back at you, looking a bit uncertain.

5.10.1: Limitless Possibilities

Room 1207 contains a single king-sized bed, with white sheets instead of scarlet. It's larger than you remember the Arcadias' room 211 as being, probably a more expensive suite, unless this whole hotel has been upgraded since then. The curtains are drawn completely across the room's one window. The light from the room's lamps is paler, whiter, like this is all happening under bright moonlight instead of a dim sunset, a dreamlike atmosphere.

The older man wearing a navy business suit has unbuttoned his shirt's collar, and is carefully wrapping his black tie around the head of the blonde woman with spiral ringlets. She's completely naked, with "USE ME" scrawled above her pussy. A bulky pair of headphones is placed firmly over her ears, and you think you hear a faint sound of orgasmic male grunts coming from them. Her legs are already bound to her thighs with a bondage tie, making her lower limbs look like stumps. Her stumps are spread in a way that completely reveals everything between. She looks very vulnerable.

Another coil of rope lies on the bed beside her, along with her discarded clothes, and a pink heart-like shape that you're guessing is a vibrator.

The older man finishes tying his improvised blindfold, and then looks over at you. "Starry," he says in a pleasantly commanding tone.

"Professor Volkov," you say back, blushing slightly. Wow that guy has a huge penis hidden in his pants.

Artyom Volkov picks up a pair of panties from the side of the bed and stuffs them into the woman's mouth like that is the most natural action in the world, and turns back to look at you. "You said earlier that you were an inexperienced dominant and that you would pay with your body if anyone showed you what to do," he says. "It was an attractive offer. Is it still open?"

You take a moment to think before replying. The orgy reassured you of some nameless further promise that wasn't fulfilled just by having sex with Blake and Charles and the Arcadias. Something like, you really aren't starving for touch any more, you won't be allowed to starve, you can get fifteen people to pile on and pleasure you any time you need that. You could decide you've had enough for the night, and pass up this next sexual encounter, and it wouldn't mean being lonely forever.

Yet when you look deep within your own soul… you realize that you are still kinda curious about trying out your Erogamer's Body on that enormous dick.

"I'm still open," you say. "Teach me, Volkov-sensei."

"What is it you want to learn?" The older man has a slight smile, like he expects you're about to answer his question wrongly.

"Uh…" You look again at the compact coil of black rope lying on the bed. "I could learn how to tie people up, I guess…?"

A minute later you're wrapping yet another line of thick rope around the woman's lower arm near her wrist, and looping around her upper arm near her shoulder, binding the two parts of her left limb together into a single, unwieldy stump. The blindfolded woman flinched hard at first, the first time you touched her, but then settled.

Volkov then pushes you aside without asking, undoes your ropes, and says, "Again."

The second time feels so easy that you try to deliberately go slower, and do one knot up the wrong way so that Volkov won't be suspicious.

A minute later, after one more deliberate botchery, you're tying the last knots on her other arm. The naked woman is now lying on the bed with her legs bound to her thighs and her lower arms tied to her upper arms, giving her four stumps of appendages instead of four limbs.

You don't feel especially satisfied. You don't feel like you've learned anything here. So you got another erogame skill, whoopee.

The suited older man is smirking at you, like he knows just what you're thinking. "Many new dominants think this is what they need to learn---how to tie a shibari knot, how to avoid striking the kidneys with a flogger. Other dominants think that is what they are supposed to teach, and they hold classes. I think it all very funny. But I can see from the look on your face that you've already understood your mistake. So I ask again. What do you want to learn from me?"

Okay, you can see where this is going. "Dominance," you reply solemnly.

"Be more specific, if you can," says Prof. Volkov. "What do you want to be able to do when tonight has ended?"

Again you hesitate. What is there to learn? "Uh, enjoy myself more when I'm being dominant?" you say.

Volkov makes a hm-ing sound. "Let me see what I have to work with," Volkov says. He points at the naked, bound, blindfolded woman with the huge headphones blocking her ears. "Dominate her."

You tentatively reach out a hand and put it down on her naked thigh. Her body jerks and flinches, and you flinch too, lifting your hand before you think about it.

Then you wince, thinking of how dumb you probably just looked. "Uh, I really have dommed before," you say, "and I think I did uh pretty well actually and I enjoyed it it's just that, uh," you manage to lift your head and look at Volkov gazing at you. He doesn't look as scornful as you feared. "Uh, I have some trouble just plunging into it, you know? Dr. Kavenski already said to me that it was okay if I only felt dominant towards certain kinds of people. But I don't feel like I'm selective, more like I'm… blocked."

Maybe this is a place where it'd make sense to just throw a point into PRV, instead of trying to push past your inner inhibitions. But that feels like giving up.

Volkov steps over to you, stands by your shoulder. His hands reach over to your cheeks and turn your head to look at the victim. The back of his hand is dry and brittle-looking with age, causing you to hide a flinch from seeing that so close up, but his fingers are firm and confident as they press on your cheeks. "Know thyself," Volkov says from close to your ear. "Know your own turn-ons, and also know your turn-offs. Something you need may be absent. Something you cannot abide may be present. Perhaps… you need certainty of your own safety? Such as being reassured that the police are not about to burst in and arrest you. This woman said earlier in your presence that she wanted to be used, and she is not struggling now. But maybe some part of your mind is generating anxieties about it still?"

You shake your head in negation. "More like… I don't know her? Uh, but, uh, it's not that I can't have sex with strangers. I once gave my Lyft driver a blowjob," somehow saying it loud still makes you blush. "But he wasn't just tied up on a bed lying there and not saying anything."

Volkov hehs, a low sound by your ears. "Yes, I imagine he said a word or two to you," Volkov says. "This woman is being rather passive, indeed. There's many forms of submission that you might require, and that she might be failing to offer… or, perhaps, you may need more of a sense that there is a soul inhabiting her flesh. Even if you think you are attracted to a wide range of submissives, you may still need to feel that there is a person present at all. That there is a spirit watching the darkness behind her blindfolded eyes, listening to the sounds of male pleasure, feeling your touch. Is that what you need to know?"

"That sounds… closer to true," you say cautiously.

Volkov gives a dry chuckle. "That presents us with some difficulty. You may not remove her blindfold and look her in the eyes. Earlier, this woman mustered her courage and confessed to me that she wanted to be used, objectivized, dehumanized. Treated not only as a slave, but as a possession made of flesh. I haven't spoken her name because so far as I'm concerned she doesn't have one. If you want to verify how she's feeling, stick your fingers inside her and check her wetness."

You swallow a little. That's higher PRV than you're ready for right now. Even so, you can feel some part of you waking up and responding a bit more to this situation, imagining the spirit behind her blindfolded eyes as Volkov put it. Part of your mind, possibly SED-inspired, is imagining what might be the backstory for this situation: A biologist who'd always had a fantasy about being dehumanized and used, finally mustering the courage to speak up at an impossible orgy at a conference, and being dragged off by Professor Volkov to be turned into a lump of blindfolded tied-up flesh to be used and touched by whoever he let into the room…

The thought occurs to you that what you're missing is a plotline. Even when you reached over and started fondling the Lyft driver, you knew what that meant in terms of plot. You were undergoing character development in the form of becoming able to have sex with anonymous strangers, and he was a Lyft driver suddenly being blown by one of his passengers. That was a valid eroge in both directions.

If this hotel room was in an eroge… you'd either be horny and looking for some faceless woman whose mouth you could push to your crotch, which doesn't really describe you right now… or more likely this would be her story and a big, significant plot development in her own life.

You have no idea about what kind of plot development happened when your hand touched her thigh. That could be what's blocking you? At least you do know this is a Significant Moment in this woman's life, whoever she is. Even if that wasn't true 60 seconds ago, it's definitely the storyline now that you've gone and thought about it.

You focus on that thought in your mind, that this is mattering to her somehow. You take a step closer to the bound form on the bed, and put your hand on her thigh again. This time, she doesn't react in any visible way.

You trail your hand further up her thigh. Her skin is very smooth, even raw, like she ran out from the conference reception and bought a feminine razor and quickly shaved her legs before the orgy.

As your hand moves closer to her groin, the woman begins to tense up again.

Summoning up a bit of courage, you push two fingers into her pussy.

It's hot in there, and very wet, and this time her body arches, as best it can with her limbs tied into stumps. She still doesn't say a word.

You know that on the inside of her nameless mind, in darkness surrounded by sounds of male pleasure, with her limbs helplessly tied and her mouth filled with panties and now with some unknown person's fingers shoved into her pussy… this woman is probably having Emotions and undergoing Character Development.

But you still have no idea what type of character development, and that's making this difficult for you.

"I think it would help if…" you say, and then pause. You don't want to bore her while you work out your issues. You fold over your thumb to above your fingers, still inside her, and you begin to rub your thumb firmly over the hood of her clitoris. She twitches and flinches and a few gasps leave her throat, and you think about slowing down your thumb or maybe being less direct in your stimulation, but then decide against it. She didn't come here to be gently served, you can guess that much.

"I think it'd help me if I knew like anything about her backstory," you say, "like what kind of person she is and why she's here and what this means to her."

Volkov shakes his head slightly. "And that's why I made sure to cut off her sense of hearing before I invited a novice into the room," he says, his voice quieter than before. "I don't much like the concept of a 'scene'---I think that is a hopelessly timid conceptualization of what we do---but if she'd heard you, it would have completely broken the scene. She isn't here to have a story."

Your thumb goes on firmly rubbing her clitoral hood, your fingers sometimes thrusting gently inside her for whatever that's worth. You don't know at this point if your role is to edge her for an eternity, or to force her into a humiliating orgasm, or to ruin her orgasm and then take out the panties in her mouth so that she can lick you. "Look," you say, lowering your own voice too, "I've seriously got no idea why I'm masturbating this woman right now."

"In a perfect world," says Volkov, "you would have had the whim of tormenting her for your own amusement, and her presence here would mean nothing more than that."

"That's what she wants the scene to be?"

"She doesn't want her world to be what she wants. She wants to be enslaved by uncaring masters… who just happen to use her the way she needs to be used." The older man is smiling twistedly. "Ironically, once she started talking to me she found it difficult to stop. I was treated to a confession that went on for minutes and minutes about her fantasy world where people like her were screened by genetic testing, distinguished through advanced neuroimaging, and dragged away at puberty to be sold. I listened to all of it, in case she was about to mention an important medical allergy somewhere in there. When she finished, I told her to shut her mouth and led her away."

Your thumb pauses on the woman's clitoral hood.

"She and I are well matched," Volkov says. "I would feel at home in her fantasy world. But I take it from your expression that this is deeper in the pool than you've swum."

You nod, knowing that your neck is probably trembling slightly. "It's… I'm not sure that's a fantasy world I'd want to live in, myself."

You're also not sure whether you making a woman come to that fantasy could cause the entire Earth to realign itself along those lines.

You really wish the Erogame would provide some help text about that, it's going to scare you out of sex at this rate. Info, Erogame, reality-warping mechanics, you barely mouth with your lips, but there's no pink-violet text. You didn't think there would be.

Volkov reaches down and grabs the woman's breast, his fingers deliberately pinching her nipple and beginning to squeeze… harder, and harder as you watch. A small sound comes from the woman's throat.

"Why wouldn't you want to live in her world?" says Volkov, watching you intently. "We all have our own range of environments to which we can adapt, of course. I don't mean to contradict your own nature, for matters of taste can't be disputed. Perhaps you wouldn't find her fantasy world congenial. But why not?"

"Uh," you say. You glance around nervously at the hotel bedroom done up in white sheets and artificial moonlight, wondering if you ought to just go. Your fingers are still inside the woman's vagina. "The obvious reason with people being enslaved and that not being a good thing?"

"Only those distinguished by hypothetically perfect testing as natural slaves," says Volkov. He grins, like he's talking to a student about his favorite subject, and the woman on the bed wordlessly writhes her limb-stumps as his fingers twist her nipple. Warmth presses closer around your fingers, a pulse of tension. "We can of course stipulate that the testing applies to males reaching sexual maturity as well, in these enlightened times."

"It wasn't exactly gender discrimination that's the problem here and, and why are we talking about this in the first place?"

"I suspect you of having not come to terms with your own desires," says Volkov. "Perhaps that's why you're having trouble. So let me ask again, why not immediately enslave those of a slavelike orientation, if we have the capability to exactly distinguish people of her kind?" A raw gasp comes from the woman's throat as Volkov pinches her nipple with fingernails, very hard from the looks of it.

"B-because it would," you stop and swallow, "what if somebody faked the test, or---or just mistreated the slaves, I'm pretty sure there's things they really actually for real don't want to have happen to them---"

Volkov chuckles, and the woman whines again as he releases the nipple. "A very pragmatic answer. Just like true communism has never been tried, and can never be tried. That is objection enough in practice, I agree. The question I'm asking, to help you discern your own nature in these matters, is whether the practical difficulties are your only objection."

"I---I don't think my answer to that ought to be a question of my sexual preferences," you say nervously. There's good protagonists and bad protagonists in eroge, and you don't want to really cross that line. Maybe flirt with it a little because it's sexy, but not go way the hell over. "It's one thing if a submissive says she wants to be a slave, if that's something she chooses…"

"Must there always be choice?" says Volkov. "Can there always be choice? I could not choose to be a slave, not a happy one. And this nameless flesh before us cannot choose not to be a slave, judging by how miserable she said she was before. Those on the balance's edge may make a real choice, I agree. For others of us there is no choice, only a question of whether we understand or misunderstand ourselves. Whether we comprehend our own true natures, and the worlds to which they correspond."

"I," you say, and swallow. You have an unsteady feeling, like something beneath you is being shaken. Again you look around the room, like you're trying to anchor yourself in the pale walls or rough white carpet. Maybe you're unnerved by the implication that Volkov might be the sort of person who'd drug you and drag you off to a slave brothel, if he thought that would make you happier. "Uh, where are you going with this?"

"You wanted to understand why she is here," the old man says. You're still not looking at him, and his voice sounds even older when you're not watching him speak. It recalls vague memories of a clip from a video whose name you can't remember, either a documentary about old people or a horror film. You're glad the man's hair isn't that white and wispy, that his limbs aren't that thin and bony, or you'd be freaked out right now. "Why she is in this hotel room. Her world did not match her full self."

You close your eyes, hoping the touch of instability goes away. Maybe you really are tired from all the sex you've had today.

"A fish drawn from the water and placed into air will suffocate and cease to be itself. A fish alone in an endless expanse of water, with no predators and plentiful food, is also not being itself. A fish has the capacity to seek food, find mates, and evade predators, and in empty water those capacities are not being exercised. If a fish egg were placed in a sterile ocean and matured there, its past environment would not be the environment in which it could be most like itself. By examining the fish we can deduce a different world that corresponds to it more strongly, a world that externalizes more of its inner nature."

"Um," you say. "What," you say.

There's the sharp sound of a slap, and the hot wetness on your fingers tightens. You open your eyes to see the woman's back arched, and the old man's hand on her breast like he's just spanked it.

"I tied her up and hit her," Volkov says. His voice sounds more normal now. "Mundane society says this is bad. One does not tie up people and strike them. But this woman could not exist as her full self in that world. She didn't die, like a fish out of water, but it went deeper than mere unhappiness. The practice that some call BDSM is a meeting ground for people who cannot exist as themselves within the standard consensus. A woman can go to a kink party, and there she can be tied up and hit… if she agrees to say she has a safeword. But that kink party is itself a least common denominator among sexual alternatives, a shallow lake designed to let many strange fish test its water without fear. The rules in the kink community are not the externalization of our individual worlds." The old man's fingers go to the woman's throat, press there lightly, briefly. "This woman, in her most fitting world, would be enslaved with no safeword. Many kinksters would consider that blasphemy---because, like their predecessors in the sexual mainstream, they think the least common denominator is the world. They think the play party is the patriotic motherland and the rules posted on the wall are the true morality. But in reality it is merely a wide lake of shallow water where a variety of strange fishes may meet and test one another, and some of them find their matches and wander off into a deeper river that runs only for them." Volkov smiles slightly. "In the neutral territory upstairs, there are negotiations, and safewords… but not in this hotel room."

You swallow against a dryer mouth. You've said on more than one occasion that you don't want your life to just fall into the BDSM pattern. What Volkov is saying sounds sort of like that, yes. But you're increasingly appreciating the degree to which not-BDSM is scary.

"To be clear," Volkov says, "I still don't intend on doing anything that would cause you to call the police. I am teaching you something about dominance, something that matters more than how to tie knots." Volkov pauses, seeming to study your face. "Did it help at all? I apologize if I was just forcing you to listen to an elderly man's rambling. We do become garrulous with age."

"I'm… not sure how all that was supposed to help," you say nervously.

The old man voices a brief sigh, and lifts his hand from the woman's throat. "Novices are sometimes confused when they think the meeting-ground is their new world," he says. "Their feelings know that they are not inside an externalization of their true natures, but they do not know their feelings. I thought that might be the source of your hesitation, but maybe I was wrong. What did you tell Dr. Kavenski when he gave you his usual pep talk, and he asked you how you knew that you wanted to be dominant?"

"Um," you say. "I told him about a couple of past times when I'd enjoyed dominating people."

Volkov snickers. "A very concrete-minded young lady. Refine that attitude until it is as sharp as a diamond needle and you will go far in science. Let me ask you a different question. Why must you be dominant tonight? Why now? If I'm not mistaken, you usually lean more toward submission and you are pressuring yourself to do this."

A jolt of nervousness goes through you, as you suddenly wonder exactly how good Volkov is at reading people, or talking people into things. Maybe he has SED outclassing your own the way the Arcadias have FUK. "I, uh, I started to worry that I was leaning too much toward submission and I didn't want to close off my possibilities too early."

"Close off possibilities?" Volkov says, raising his eyebrows. "There is no such thing as keeping them open. Whoever you become, that is who you are."

"I mean," you say, "I'd like to be both dominant and submissive instead of just being one or the other."

Volkov shakes his head. "Even if you are one of those who can choose, I would not encourage you to think that way about the choice. If you choose to be a switch, you have not preserved the reality of both the dominant you and the submissive you. You have rendered the switch you as real and the dominant you and submissive you as unreal. If that is the you who is most like yourself, then so be it. But don't think that you've gained any more or lost any less. That is a poor ground on which to choose."

"Uh," you say, and close your eyes to think about this for a second.

"Even God cannot evade choices like that. The limitless possibilities exist prior to reality. Then, the very act of creating the universe is the Creator lending its own reality to some possibilities but not others. The idea that the Moon could have been black or white is a more absolute truth than the fact that the Moon is white, knowable purely by contemplating necessities. The sum of all possibilities is a truth prior to Creation that constitutes the contents of God's omniscience---the prior understanding of all possibilities and their interrelation. The act of Creation added nothing to that omniscience. It was rather the decision as to which among these prior understandings would become the understanding of Creation. This is God's one choice spanning all of time, which was made in perfect knowledge of the alternatives."

You open your eyes to see Volkov looking intently at you. "As mortals, we know less truth than the Creator and our choices are smaller," he says. "So there is no paradox in saying that a greater choice encompasses our lesser ones."

"This is more philosophy than I was expecting with my sexy shenanigans," you say helplessly. You also decide in the back of your mind that you're going to burn some retroactive Slack so that the tied-up woman wasn't just waiting in the dark completely bored while all this was going on.

"We all have our strange little fetishes," says Volkov. "If you would like to move on to the main event…" He thinks for a moment. "Well, as for what you should do, I propose that you try to make this slave come, with your fingers if you like. I will distract you by fucking you from behind, which I think I would enjoy. She will be doing her best to resist you and trying not to have an orgasm." The older man gives you a charming smile, like he's just told a joke. "I asked her if she had any friends or family who knew where she was tonight, and she said no. So I told her that if she came despite trying to resist, that would prove she was a slut, and I would have her abducted from this hotel and shipped off to my family's mansion in Saint Petersburg."

"And is that true?" you say cautiously.

Volkov starts to laugh, and then his eyebrows go up. "You're seriously asking that," says the older man, sounding bemused. "You are genuinely wondering whether I was telling the truth."

You don't need to check the attribute text to know that this possibility is well within the bounds of ERO 29. "Uh, I've had some experiences," you say.

"So you want to know if the story is reality?" says Volkov. "Well, if you believe the more interesting accounts of quantum mechanics, it is true in some worlds and false in others. Within the great proliferation of alternative hotels, there are some hotel rooms containing people who look like Artyom Volkov and have a rich and not entirely law-abiding family in Russia. Other hotel rooms contain a man who looks like me and is only spinning a sexual fantasy. Each of the Volkovs know which worlds they are in, but from your own perspective there is no truth of the matter. You are in all of the hotel rooms and all of the people in the hotel rooms are you. Anything I say to you on that subject should not make your perspective any different, since some of the people who look like me will tell the truth, and others will lie. So why bother asking?"

You fold your arms and give the old man in a business suit the best Glare you can manage considering his greater age and experience. Unfortunately you seem to lack magical Glaring powers. "Professor Volkov," you say.

"It's just a sexual fantasy," Volkov says reassuringly. "Don't worry about it."

"Was that a lie?" you say, not moving your gaze from him.

"Yes," the older man says, smiling wider.

"Is that a lie?"

Volkov nods again. "Really," he says, "from a wider standpoint the story is just reality in some places and fantasy in others. When I was younger I used to obsess about whether or not I understood other people correctly, agonizing over whether the spirits behind others' eyes were what I imagined them to be. In the end I came to understand that the people I imagined were true in some worlds, and false in others. I accepted that eventually some of me will have the experience of being right and others the experience of being betrayed, and that there exists no truth and no answer about which Artyom Volkov I am today or who the people in front of me really are. You, yourself, are free to focus your thought on either the worlds where you are having some innocent fun, or the worlds where you are cooperating in taking this woman as a slave. You exist in both of those places, and in many others too. But as for what most hotel rooms are like, I invite you to consult your common sense, if you have any sense left after listening to my nonsense." Volkov gives the woman on the bed a proprietary pat on her exposed chest. "Shall we proceed?"

You open your mouth, then you close it again, aware in the back of your mind that you look like an unusually stupid fish, and finally you throw up your remaining hand that isn't inside pussy and say, "You know, fuck it, whatever, let's do this." You can just not make the woman come, if that's what you decide after thinking about this a little longer. Right now your Slack is ticking. "By the way, your theory implies that some of you are in a hotel room with a girl who looks just like me but has weird reality-warping powers not totally under her control, right? What advice would you give to the girl in those hotel rooms?"

"Ha," Volkov says, starting to doff his suit jacket. "The theory of the quantum worlds does not work like that. All of the quantum worlds obey the same laws, and in none of those worlds does the law allow anyone to shift and weave the greater whole. Imagining it anyway… I'd tell the being who looks exactly like you that she is so vastly unlikely that she might as well do whatever she wants, since almost all of the selves of the other people she sees are in more normal hotel rooms. I'm absolutely certain that most of my own selves aren't in such worlds, even taking into account that the girl I'm now seeing is asking me that question. I'm sure the version of you with reality-warping powers appreciates the irony of hearing me say that, but it's still the truth. Why do you ask?"

"Never mind," you say wearily. You take off the garter belt that you pulled on so you'd someplace to tuck your hotel keycards and phone, and toss it on the other side of the bed.

You already weren't wearing anything besides the garter belt and high heels. It was just a walk through a couple of hallways, and this is the Norville Arms-Marriott in Norville, the hotel upon which your reality-warping powers have been working for over 36 cumulative hours. The one woman in the hallway who saw your nudity didn't even blink.

"By the way," you add, "I've just used my reality-warping powers to decide that you have, and have always had retroactively even to my own knowledge, an enormous dick." You have no idea if that's actually the retroactive reason or not. Maybe it's true in some Erogames and false in others.

"Oh, you like big dicks?" Volkov says, now grinning very widely. "I have the most excellent news for you that you are likely to hear in a long while."

5.10.2*: Which World

All right, you admit it, your eyes went wide when Professor Volkov pulled down his underpants and you saw how large he was soft. You knew in theory because of the Mystic Eyes of Dick Perception, but knowing and seeing are two different things.

You were also nervous that Volkov was going to ask you to suck on him to make him hard because, uh, that's a bit outside of your current experience in terms of things fitting into other things, even if it's guaranteed to be theoretically possible.

And also the man looks even older, with his clothes off, and that doesn't actually turn you on.

But instead Volkov went over to the woman bound on the bed and… mauled her, is the word that comes to mind, squeezing and twisting her breasts in a way that scared you a little. You kept your fingers inside her pussy while he did that, and it did feel like she got hotter and wetter just like an eroge would claim.

Hurting the woman is making Volkov hard, and you wonder why you're feeling so uncomfortable, when you know that this is the woman's kink as well as his. Maybe it's just too much for your PRV, the way she's bound and blindfolded and unable to hear anything, with her limbs like stumps, deprived of any agency in this story, turned into a passive bundle of flesh and being hurt.

Maybe it's the thought that this woman could be you, another four days from now, if your PRV keeps going up. That's not something you've come to terms with.

Volkov is hard now and holy shit he's thick and not just long. He's produced a bottle of lube from somewhere, and is anointing himself with a sliding motion like a casual masturbation.

"Don't worry," Volkov says with a wry smile. "I will fuck you gently and not try to put it in all the way. This is not my first time with a woman."

You swallow and say the words.

"Actually," you say, "my special talent is that I can, uh, it will fit."

Volkov pauses. He turns a look on you that is somewhere between shocked, skeptical, and Christmas morning. "No it won't."

"Bet you five thousand dollars it does," you say. You hadn't seen the implication before. But wow, maybe he's never had the chance to pound a woman hard, until now.

"That's… not far short of how much I would…" Volkov's commanding air and aura of calm control isn't what it was sixty seconds ago. The old man is staring at your vagina, his eyes wider than your eyes were on his dick.

"You don't have to be gentle," you say, honestly smiling now. It seems you've found your good deed for the day, worldwide changes aside. Also it hadn't occurred to you how much that aspect of your powers might be marketable to certain select clients. "Do it to me hard, professor."

"Really? I don't have with me a condom large enough to---standard condoms aren't long enough to---" Volkov turns from you, looking toward the door with a tense expression. "Please give me time, I'll send someone to---"

"You don't need a condom I'm on birth control I got screened a week ago with all results negative also a doctor once told me I'm immune to whatever it is you have just follow the fucking rabbit."

Moments later you're bent over the bed with Volkov's freshly lubricated penis behind you, bracing yourself on the bed with one hand while you lower your head towards the tied-up woman's pussy.

You're going to be embarrassed if this doesn't work, not to mention confused and terrified and wondering if you were crazy this whole time.

Something warm and slick nestles up against your labia, already feeling larger and more ominous than Charles or Blake. You've never tried inserting anything this diameter into yourself, never mind lengths.

Hands go around your waist, keeping you in place, controlling you, holding you back as the slick tip pushes inside you, gently but firmly. You realize you're holding your breath and then whooof you're spread wide and oh wow you feel all stretched and, full, and the slick thing is forcing its way deeper you feel like you can just barely take this but it's warm and huge and---and---it's going deeper you keep feeling like it's going to ram against your uterus but instead the fullness just pushes deeper and thicker and deeper and more stretched and wider and finally you feel utterly full at your absolute limit just as the warmth of a man's pelvis presses up against your ass, like you were remade to be exactly his size.

You remember to breathe and inhale hugely. You realize that you were moaning in one long exhalation before, soft breathy sounds that you're embarrassed to remember yourself making.

"Are you---all right?" Volkov says, sounding like he can't believe this is happening.

You manage to twist your head back, the motion also moving your torso and OH GOD you can feel that moving in you, filling places your internal organs ought to be. Volkov has his face screwed up in an rictus of pleasure, you're not sure he can see you. "I'm," you say, it's a little difficult to breathe, "I'm fine and you can start MOOOOVING---"

He isn't even pounding you hard yet, just sliding slowly out, slowly in. But you feel like a balloon that's being fully inflated and deflated each time. Little deflating-balloon sounds escape from your throat. Like the air is being forced out of your lungs, which wouldn't be surprising.

Volkov moves firmly, not pounding you yet. You're bent over with your feet raised in heels like you're on tiptoes, your head down to the bed, presenting your hips lewdly, making your depth fully accessible. On your own, your hips push back a little as Volkov is thrusting into you, and he makes a noise that sounds like a wolf growling.

Then you feel a hand on your back, pushing you forward. "Use the woman," says his voice from behind you. "Toy with her to amuse yourself while you're being fucked."

You feel embarrassed that you forgot you were supposed to be doing that while this is going on, neglecting your victim. Though---though Volkov is trying to tell you not to think like that, not to think in neat little scenes---but maybe you don't want to step into his world, into her world---

The hand on your back pushes you commandingly, and you lower your head to the female flower spread out before you, vulnerable between bound and tied legs.

Without you deciding to go along with it, your mind imagines it anyway, what it would be like if you were using her to amuse yourself, making her come to her own despair in order to accentuate your own pleasure. Something inside you shifts, like another little wall breaking, and you feel a little despair of your own that quickly fades. This is what she wants, her own fantasy. You can guess where the Erogame is going to take your character arc, that in the end you'll become a type of person who can be glad for a new slave's special occasion. You might as well…

Gently, like a kiss, your lips close over the woman's clit, and you suckle it just lightly. She was so hot and wet around your fingers. You won't need to do much to drive her up the wall. You can afford to take it excruciatingly slowly. Edge Other, you think to yourself, so you can finish deciding when the time comes.

Then you whoosh out air that makes the pussy in front of you twitch with your sudden breath, because a massive cock just plowed into you from behind.

You lick the clit lightly, and begin gently sucking once more.

OH.

Volkov isn't going faster, but he's going harder. His hands yank you back as the enormous slick length slides into you, filling you up to where your internal organs should be, followed by the impact on your ass as his pelvis slams home.

You give the woman's clit a quick diddle, some fast focused licking during the next time Volkov is pulling out of you. Then you stop, and let her pelvis feel the impact as Volkov slams into you from behind and pushes your mouth into her pussy. The woman moans around the panties in her mouth, a high-pitched whine that sounds like the desperation of a slut trying not to come.

You resume licking her lazily, desultorily, not bothering to keep a rhythm as Volkov slams into you again and again.

Soon you're moaning continuously as a giant slick object pounds in and out of you. Volkov is moving as fast as Blake did this afternoon, and part of your mind raises a tiny objection about people his age and heart attacks before being shouted down that ERO 29 does not work like that.

You can feel the rising burning pleasure inside yourself, the warning that you're going to come soon, and just then is when Edge Other pings at you. You haven't thought hard about your important decision, it went clear out of your mind for some reason, so instead of letting her come or not come---

"Edging," you cruelly whisper into her clit, and then your head gets rammed into her groin over and over as Volkov pounds into you and you come, come, come. A higher power ensures that your face gets slammed into a pussy at just the right pressure and frequency to keep the attached slut twitching on the edge, edge, edge.

Then you luxuriate in the satisfaction that's washing over you as your orgasm winds down, even as Volkov speeds up more and another growl comes from behind you. Maliciously you keep the magic going, edge edge edge as your face gets bumped over and over into her clit. The slut's bound thighs are trying to move, her hips thrusting at nothing. There's a part of you that appreciates that you can do this, play with this woman just to amuse yourself. And a part of you that can share the alternate hotel room Volkov was talking about, the fantasy this woman is living within her own mind: that the moment you push her twitching slut pussy over the edge and she comes despite trying so hard to resist will be the moment she seals her fate as a slave.

Volkov slams into you hard, fast, hard. Warmth bursts into you, he's coming, he's coming inside you and the woman's pussy writhes beneath you as the magic tells you to give her one strong lick. She'd come so very hard if you made her come right now.

[ ] Make her come.
[ ] Don't make her come.

(The meaning of this choice is worth some thought. Voting is open immediately.)

Spoiler: Author's note

The sex scenes in 5.13 felt really hard to write. The sex didn't feel like it had enough plot, and that made Cindy feel like the sex didn't have enough plot, and that made her not be as turned on, and that meant I wasn't as turned on. I suspect that in the future Cindy is likely to stay away from sex acts where she doesn't have a definite agenda---which could be "Blow this guy just because I want to see how he'll react", but won't again be "Well, here I am at this orgy, I guess I'd better have sex or something."

Also it didn't really help that the general vote for vague dominance kept rising to the top of the ranking while every specific type of dominance kept ending up lower. I'll think about how to avoid that possibility in future votes.

Opinions of creepy professors are not the opinions of the writer. In particular, although I shouldn't have to say this, but in case I do have to say this: don't do anything without safewords in real life where nobody has Erogamer's body and there are no improbability fields. Characters in porn quests can do that without it blowing up, real people can't.

5.10.3: Just Try It

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (33,400 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 370/420
SUB: 283/480

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 24
FUK: 18
PRV: 26
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 34
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8385

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Blake Layton, Biologists #1-14, Mystic Eyes of Dick Perception (I), Reagent of Mundane Biology (II)
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: On

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 107 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 3191-3289]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Make her come.
No. of Votes: 37
ScrewFate
abyssmal_kismet
AramilOniasha
askldjflkajskje
Blackshard
Cutesquid
D.Rockstar
DarthSquidious
Diraniola
Dragontrapper
Dreikanter
FeepingCreature
Firedon
Flashbunny
General Lewdendorf
Gettys
Hyperion042
january1may
Jirachi
jsnider3
Nemesis of suicide
PhotonDragon
Quentin
redfog
SAndD
SETIFAN
Soul Shocker
Spectral Waltz
The_Wanderer
Theli
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
TricksterPriest
Ululemon76
Valmit
zachol
zup

[X] Don't make her come.
No. of Votes: 29
AfroSpic
Alkaiser009
alphabeta
anon101
BastetsChosen
batrax
bluecap
Derpmind
Dragonheart91
Eler0
Elitist Oars
Epitome of Eccentricity
Gavinfoxx
gentlyAmbiguous
Gingganz
Grael Case
Mei Mei
MrBTXz
NotaWriter
Olivebirdy
pepperjack
Proxima
reeezzzaaa
RyubosJ
Skelm
swarm
SwiftRosenthal
The Undead Martyr
Void Between Comments

-[X] This is an experiment. The reality warping version will ensure, that in all worlds, no matter what happens someone will check on her. A final test of courage will be demanded of her, to make her fantasy her reality.
No. of Votes: 2
theonebutcher
Jirachi

-[X] We probably don't want this persons Nectar, now that we know there are permanent nectars.
No. of Votes: 2
theonebutcher
Jirachi

-[X] Assert dominance over the Erogame. Again. Bad Erogame, bad!
No. of Votes: 2
Void Between Comments
Derpmind

-[X] This requires personal follow-up. Be sure to check in on her later, to hear from her what she really wants and ensure no kidnapping without consent occurs. And if it comes down to it, mom and I need a personal slave or two, right?
No. of Votes: 1
askldjflkajskje

Total No. of Voters: 66

You give the poor clit in front of you a sharp lick, and then, instinct telling you the timing down to the tenth-second, you cut the skill and start sucking. Volkov's thrusts behind you are slowing, and your orgasm finishing away, leaving you the dexterity to do this right.

Her bound thigh-stumps convulse frantically but futilely around your head, the bondage leaving them less range of motion so that the smooth ropes only lightly bounce against your cheek. A poor, desperate wail comes from behind her gag, almost as if she really was trying to resist coming and failing, almost as if she really believed this would make her a slave and that it wasn't what she wanted.

Then her hips buck, and a muffled high grunting comes from behind her gag. You go on suckling her clit through the orgasm, which takes what seems like a minute.

Then you give the pussy a long lick and suck, finishing the harvest of nectar. It has a fishy-nutty taste, like it was mixed with mixed nuts.

The enormous dong filling you up slowly withdraws itself from you, and then exits completely, leaving you feeling literally deflated.

You stand up shakily beside the bed, and look down at the woman lying limply there.

Her chest is shaking, like she's crying, or holding back crying. If there's any tears, they aren't visible behind the improvised tie-blindfold. The headphones are still playing faint sounds of male pleasure into her ears.

You're… reasonably sure that she's crying out of emotional release. Or because of the thought that she isn't actually going to be taken away as a slave now. Not because she honestly didn't want this…

If Volkov's view of what passes for reality is correct, there might not be an objective answer to that. Erogame permitting, you could just choose that she's crying because of the thought that she won't actually be enslaved. It wouldn't be mind control, it would be that there was no real answer… because you're spread across different hotel rooms with different women in them? You're not sure you understood Volkov, and you're even less sure that he was right about anything. You don't feel like you're spread across multiple hotel rooms. But whatever kind of intuition you get from being at the center of the reality-warping storm, somehow it does feel like if you chose her feelings you wouldn't be altering the woman in front of you.

One thing you did realize, just before you forced the woman to come, was that the only in-eroge reason for Starry-the-protagonist to not make the woman come was if the protagonist had decided that the woman would be abducted if she came. Meaning, for you to not make her come, would be the equivalent of having the events only make sense in-story if Volkov was a kidnapper.

You turn, wobbling a bit on your heels (because of shaky legs, of course, not because of the heels) and regard Volkov. The naked old man has stepped away to grab a tissue from a nearby desk, and is wiping off his enormous, quickly-shrinking schlong of your own nectar.

You look back at the woman on the bed.

You choose.

"I've got to run back up so I can be there for the brainstorming session," you say quietly into the hotel room. "And… I, I know I don't understand everything there is to know about what it's like to be inside her world and your world, but, take good care of her, okay? Because in a few months I'm going to track her down and check up on her."

What Are You Doing Here is a minor perk. You'll be able to do it no later than your ERO getting to 50.

Volkov stops in the process of pulling up his pants, glancing at you, and then looks away from you as he finishes pulling up the business-suit pants to his hips. "Young lady," he says, "I'll go ahead and tell you now that it was just a sexual fantasy, at least in this hotel room. But you're free to verify that Dr. Marshall leaves the conference just fine."

"You're not going to have her abducted until after that," you say. "You won't be anywhere near the scene, and you'll have a nice public alibi."

Volkov finishes buckling his belt, and gives a very realistic disdainful snort. "This isn't a story and you're not the protagonist, girl. Are you fishing for a confession?"

"Professor," you say, "I grew up in Norville, okay? I know which escort agencies accept underage talent. I know which escort agencies lock up the underage talent, put them through slave training and sell them to an underground brothel near Los Angeles. I know that you meant it. I know you're going to do it." You draw a breath. "I'm, I'm trusting the fact that you even care whether she wants it, and that you asked if I was okay before you started fucking me harder."

The older man doesn't answer. He finishes buttoning his shirt, and reaches for his jacket.

"I won't try to stop you," you say. "I'm just saying, no matter how well you think you hide your tracks, one day I'm going to show up out of nowhere and say hi. She'd better be… I won't say okay, but, she'd better be in her right world."

The old man is wearing the business suit again, looking as powerful and as confident as before. He turns and gives you a direct stare that you might not have been able to take without SED 24 bracing you.

"I hope," he says, his voice low, "that you are not in the habit of sharing your fantastic view of reality with others. I was foolish to share that sexual fantasy with you, and I remind you that slander is a crime."

"I won't say anything to the police," you say, not quite keeping your voice steady. "Because---because it took courage for her to follow you here. I, that's what I respect more than anything. If someone's done with a normal existence, done with fantasies just being fantasies---I of all people have no right to say no."

"You should go," the old man says.

You pull on your garter belt and leave the room without looking back.

A few steps down the hall, there's a maintenance closet.

You decide that the door isn't locked, and that there's a bundle of $50 bills inside. In some quantum worlds, in some versions of this hotel, that's already reality. You're inside all of the hotels, including that one, and now you narrow down your possibilities and be inside only one---

You reach forward and try the door. The doorknob doesn't turn, but a slight push shows that the door was left ajar.

The closet contains a vacuum cleaner, a carpet cleaner, a closed toolbox, shelves of assorted bottles of cleanliness-related substances.

And on the floor, right where you visualized the bundle of money being…

…is a single, shiny, solitary, silvery dime.

You shut the closet door again without picking it up.

Violet-pink text scrolls past your vision as you stroll toward the elevator. You've taken your trip back upstairs as an opportunity to turn off Busy Mode temporarily, in case anything significant happened to you just then, or over the past couple of hours.

So far it all seems normal and expected, relative to your new concept of normality.

Giving into your lustful fantasy and being thoroughly pleasured by fifteen people makes your LST go up by 1, you slut.

Ordering around people older than you, richer than you, and far more highly placed in society than you, causes your PRV to go up by 1!

The Nectar has increased by 1.

Being watched by a crowd of interested onlookers as your naked body arches in erotic displays of pleasure causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Fluid Unformed has increased by 1.

A skill has been created by a special action! Learning basic knots for restraining submissives has created the skill Shibari.

Sounds harmless, but you'd better check that one…

Shibari: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 3 DOM / minute.

The elementary ero skill of tying up your victims in interesting ways and postures. Learning higher arts and techniques within this skill may require you to find more advanced teachers.

Seems okay.

A skill has been created by a special action! Twisting the perspective of time to apply differently to those within and without a conversation has created the skill Talking Is A Free Action.

Talking Is A Free Action: Lvl 1 (50%). 10 DOM / use.

You may talk for up to Lvl * 2 minutes in a conversation desynchronized from the progress of any or all other temporal processes in the universe. For example, you may have a conversation just before someone is about to orgasm, or within the gap between when somebody throws a punch and when you block it. No one else notices this is odd. This skill can be used up to Lvl times per day.

This skill sounds useful, and at the same time, it's embarrassing to have acquired it.

Trying hard to molest a bound and helpless slave for your own sadistic pleasure, and succeeding at least a little, causes your PRV to increase by 1!

You'd also better check her nectar…

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Biologist #15 (Dr. Marshall) | Slightly nutty, a fruit flavor would pair well with this. | ? | Enhances specular highlights on your skin or clothes by 10%. This effect cannot be used to generate unlimited energy because of a balancing reduction in diffuse reflection. (6h) | ???

Wow that is going to be super useful tonight, you're so glad you ate out a 15th biologist.

The violet-pink scroll-right arrow is still hovering in front of you, even as you reach the elevator door and press Up. You're guessing that what comes next will be the existentially terrifying Weird Skill, if there's any weird skill to be had tonight.

The innocent bystander's eyes widened in some minor surprise as a pretty young girl clad in nothing but a garter belt and high heels stepped onto the elevator. He tried to look away, but the mirrors surrounding them ensured that there was unclad flesh in the next direction he tried to look, too. Her hair was a stunning riot of black and scarlet that almost seemed to glow like embers, literally the best hair he'd seen in a lifetime that had spanned Oscar awards ceremonies and Halloween parties for billionaires. Aside from that, she wore no makeup at all, her full lips an unadorned pale umber.

He had to admit, the Norville Arms-Marriott deserved its reputation.

The girl didn't take offense at his sideways-glancing eyes. She just leaned back against the rear wall of the elevator, and…

…bonked her head repeatedly against the mirror as words spilled forth from her full lips. "Fuck my life, fuck my life, fuck my life…"

Quest available: A Fold in the Wolf

After decades of a safe if not completely normal life with his more illegal fantasies staying fantasies, Artyom Volkov's life was disrupted one day when a strange girl looked him in the eyes and told him that she knew he'd meant it and that she believed he'd do it. She spoke of courage, of transcending an ordinary existence, and seemed to believe that in Norville this was not only possible but routine. Unable to clear her words from his mind, he tossed and turned that night, thinking it over. He knew that he was old, that he wasn't risking much if he risked ruining the remainder of his life. Would he die without ever having tried to live?

Despite ethnic stereotypes, Professor Artyom Volkov had in fact accumulated no criminal connections whatsoever over his career as an academician in Connecticut. He could only think of one person who'd talked as if she had the underworld connections he needed, one person who might be able to turn his and Theresa Marshall's fantasy world into reality. The mysterious Norville girl Starry Starr… who was also the only loose end besides him and Dr. Marshall who knew about his intended crime. Her participation might guarantee her future silence. But with no student record showing her name, how could he find her?

Volkov can be found in Room 6F of the Helmut Kaloni Residence on Norville U's campus until Tuesday evening.

Success: +$200,000, +100,000XP, ??
Failure: ???, Theresa Marshall doesn't enter her true world.

Ero achievement: Tempted and corrupted an experienced dom into walking a darker path. +500XP.

5.11.1* [ST,TA]: Two Trillion to One

By the time your elevator has reached the penthouse level again, you've composed yourself, mostly. You don't need to do anything about Volkov for five more days and who knows how many more levels. In retrospect, it makes sense on a literary level too. For Theresa Marshall to achieve happiness, it's logical that you would have to do more work and go on more adventures than just waving her and Volkov off to achieve happiness on their own. It's not like they're the protagonist.

Just, you'd managed to forget somehow, it's the Erogame that warps reality. Whatever the reality-warping mechanics are, they're not your mechanics. Reality sometimes warps in response to things you do, that doesn't mean you're in control.

So now it's time to see how that influence-but-not-control plays out with respect to a "+280 bonus" on "mundane biology".

Does that imply there's an actual die roll taking place on some metaphysical level beyond all reality as you know it? Maybe it's your hair that rolls the dice. They probably live in the same metaphysical house.

Your keycard slips into the mighty wooden door of Penthouse D like a lubricated dick into a limitless vagina, and the lock clicks open.

Right behind the door is a fully-dressed Tammi and a couple of shirtless male biologists, all stepping back so that the door won't bump into them.

"Starry," Tammi exclaims, looking relieved and exasperated. "I was just about to come get you."

"I'm not late, am I?" you say in alarm. Your mind goes back and tries to figure out how much Slack you've expended today, and where… you didn't think your last sexual encounter had taken that long, but maybe it did. There was an awful lot of pillow metaphysics lecturing.

"You're late by three minutes," Tammi says, giving you a stern look. "You said you'd be here at ten-thirty sharp."

"I'm really sorry," you say sincerely, as you step in the doors. "Something came up and I lost control of time."

Tammi opens her mouth, then pauses as she processes your last statement.

"Sorry I'm late!" you call, stepping forward into the living room and… there's only twenty biologists present, counting the two behind you. Maybe some of the other biologists will be along later? Or maybe it doesn't take that many scientists to solve aging so long as you pick the right ones and add a +280 bonus to the die roll.

"It's okay," says Biologist #2 of the pointy beard, "we haven't started. There's a couple more people who said they wanted in on the brainstorm, we're just waiting for them to get to the living room."

"Oh," you say. "Do you know when they're coming?"

Loud cries of female pleasure come from behind the door of the master bedroom, followed by some of the noisier male grunting you've heard tonight.

"Right now, apparently," says Biologist #2.

After a couple of sweaty naked people emerge from the master bedroom and cuddle up together, you step into the middle-front of the living room, where you can address the whole crowd. Some of the scientists dressed themselves again, some of them didn't. Many are cuddling in twosomes and foursomes, some sit by themselves on the thick deep carpet. Three men and two women are crushed together on the sofa.

Professor Turk is wearing nothing except thick black socks and dark blue panties with stars and galaxies on them that, like, she must have borrowed off of somebody here who had a spare pair. You cannot imagine that Professor Turk habitually wears galaxy panties. She's resting her head on the shoulder of a much younger male grad student. That bodes well for Blake's chances if you can manage to age-revert her.

"So, uh," you say. In much same way as SED <10 used to make you a fumbling unspeaker as soon as the conversation turned to romance, at SED 24 you find yourself less articulate than usual when you're not trying to seduce the room. "Uh…"

All the assembled older scientists are looking at you.

You promise the Erogame that one way or another, you're going to end up having sex again during this part of the operation, so this is totally still a sex thing, and then you gulp and speak again.

"I gathered you here tonight," you say, more confidently but still with an attractive hint of shyness, "to have a lot of sex, to honor a hallowed Norville tradition, and help me brainstorm a story I'm writing that I'd like to have accurate science."

"Hear hear!" shouts Dr. Crowly (still in his black latex) and several biologists briefly applaud.

You glance at Professor Turk, remembering the objection she offered and what you made up in reply, and compose your words carefully. "My novel," you say, "is about a protagonist who's an author writing a silly sex comedy, and inside the protagonist's silly sex comedy, a group of biologists have an orgy and manage to come up with a cure for obesity and aging because of tremendously powerful forces of improbability. In the outer story, the protagonist consults serious professional biologists to try to get the science in the novel be as accurate as possible. So, uh, here in reality I'm holding an orgy of biologists so I can find out what the professional biologists in the outer story will say as scientifically plausible stuff that might work as part of a cure if tremendously strong improbability forces are in play in the inner story's orgy of biologists." You carefully smile. "And of course, if anyone here comes up with some actual good ideas, especially together, well, uh, that would be something the Norville U Natural Sexuality movement would be forever proud of. So please do your best to be, like, realistic realistic. Maybe something will come of it." You pause. "Oh, uh, and in the silly novel the author is writing, the obesity and aging cure can't cost too much, like, two thousand dollars or less. And it has to work pretty quickly, like, it should only take a day to get rid of…" You don't know the exact figure, but Felice is significantly heavier than you were. "Around 150 pounds of fat."

Several people try to speak up at once, and by some unspoken ordering of recency and dominance the speaking card seems to end up with the man who started the night wearing only a lanyard, and is now nude. "I think you already know this," the naked man says, "but I'll go ahead and say that it doesn't seem to me to be physically possible to remove that amount of mass from a body that quickly without surgery."

Professor Turk nods. "You'd need nanotechnology," she says. "It literally can't be done with biotechnology alone. To put it in Douglas Adams terms, that requires an Infinite Improbability Drive and not just finite amounts of improbability."

Spoiler: How powerful is this improbability drive?

d100, + 15 for Coals Relighted, + ERO 29 * 2, +280 for nectars
DC 90 / 50* / 50** / 50***

68 + 15 + 58 + 280 = 421
72 + 321 = 393*
3 + 293 = 296**
87 + 196 = 283***
7 + 183 = 190****
41 + 90 = 131*****
87 + 31 = 118******
79 + 18 = 97******

I suppose we could call that a success.

"It's not strictly impossible," says Dr. Kavenski. He's smilng the same smile he was earlier this evening, when he said he had something interesting for your brainstorming session. "I've been waiting all evening to say this, so I'll mention---under usual rules of confidence---that in April I'll be presenting on a peptide we've found that instructs a droplet's transreverse aether modulator to fire keton torpedoes in a permanent snaglomifer until all the triacylglycerol is gone."

"Sounds exciting!" you say. "What does that do, though?"

"I'll second a request for you to drop one technical level and re-explain," says lanyard-man.

Dr. Kavenski pauses, then speaks again. "We found a peptide that instructs a white fat lipid cell to switch on the conversion process from stored fat to ketone bodies, and the conversion process stays stuck in maximum gear until all the stored fat is gone. If we can come up with other implausible but not impossible discoveries to build on that, it could be the foundation of a story about how to move seventy kilograms of fat outside a human body in under twenty-four hours."

Again, several people try to speak at once.

"Oh come on," says the girl who was wearing just a lab coat before. "There's ketoacidosis, and then there's pumping fifty liters of ketones into somebody's bloodstream causing them to spray acidic blood in all directions before they literally explode."

"Indeed," Dr. Crowly says, looking solemn. "If we were being strictly realistic, it would be important to include a paragraph about that risk in the consent form. Otherwise an IRB might raise some concerns."

"Do I need to solve everything here?" says Dr. Kavenski. "I've suggested a way to rapidly get the fat mass out of the adipose tissue, now somebody else just needs to come up with a way to rapidly get the ketones the rest of the way out of the body before the subject explodes." He hmms. "Well, and to be fully realistic, there'd be a problem of how to administer the peptide to the fat cells. Our peptide doesn't pass through digestion, is immunoreactive enough that injection wouldn't be a good idea, and we don't know what it does in other cell types. In the story I guess you could say something about crispers and getting the droplet itself to manufacture the peptide."

"We are assuming large amounts of improbability," you mention, trying desperately to follow along with this.

"So," says Professor Samara, starting to look thoughtful, "We come up with a plausible avenue for provoking extremely rapid transport of ketones to kidneys, and for providing additional lembas rations to the kidney… the energy to form two thousand moose units of additional lembas rations is certainly available under these assumptions. And have the subject drink around five hundred glasses of water…"

"Five hundred glasses of salt water with electrolytes or you're going to die of hyponatremia," says a naked girl. "I'm not sure you can drink that much water no matter how well its electrolytes are balanced."

The muscular grad student whose head is resting in her lap looks up at her. "Powerthirst Mauve is balanced about as finely as possible for that purpose, and you can buy it by the liter at Costco," he says. "I'm not saying that's safe in real life, but…"

"But," says Dr. Kavenski, "if we know what else would go wrong in the body from drinking a hundred gallons of Powerthirst, we can come up with another intervention to patch the damage. If we don't know what would go wrong, we can assume for story purposes that nothing does."

"Hmmm," says Professor Samara. "So to sum up what seem to be the rules, whatever ideas the in-story scientists come up with must individually pass the smell test as plausible, but we can invoke arbitrary degrees of luck in how well everything fits together." Prof. Samara is still naked and curled up next to Dr. Altare, but she doesn't sound at all like she does when she's being a slave, and it's jarring. "In that case, I think we should be able to stitch together a protocol for extremely rapid fat loss out of existing, published results. We're allowed to take any result that works in vitro, and suppose that it interoperates perfectly with everything else in vivo and has no previously unknown side effects."

The woman who started the night in a mesh suit, who's now wrapped herself in a scarlet bedsheet, shakes her head in bemusement. "Under assumptions that permissive, we could genetically engineer a rocket-squid and launch it to Neptune."

Dr. Altare is stroking Prof. Samara's hair from where her head is lying in his lap. "In other words," he says, "we can pretend we're TV-style mad scientists and ask what we'd do to cure obesity if literally all of our ideas worked on the first try."

"Exactly," you say. Your breath is coming shorter now. "Uh, and aging too. I mean, if literally all of your ideas were working, this night, you'd probably cure aging too so long as you were in the room, right?"

"There's some things you can't do even with mad science," Professor Turk says, though she doesn't sound as emphatic as before.

"Is that a challenge?" says Dr. Kavenski. "That sounded to me like a challenge."

"I mean, uh," you say, "correct me if I'm wrong, I know I don't know nearly enough about this, but, um, basically aging is what people do instead of getting cancer, right? Things break down and don't get repaired, because cells have to stop replicating so they don't turn into cancer, and that has to happen because of DNA damage. So maybe you could begin with some method of repairing DNA damage and turn that into the start of an aging cure, because then you could also tell cells to replace themselves more often and repair everything…?"

"Biogerontology is a little more complicated than that," says the well-preserved older woman who earlier called dibs on Dr. Kavenski.

"Yes," says Biologist #2 of the pointed beard. "There was a post about it linked on Marginal Revolution just recently. But if we fix everything listed in that blog post, we should be fine, right?"

"No," say several other people.

"My, uh, my thesis includes some tentative results about triggering senescent cell apoptosis," this is spoken shyly by the soft-spoken grad student who was, at some point while you were being pleasured, forced to come into his pants. "I mean, in real life it'd just kill you, but…"

"But we can come up with a fix for that which would work in the story," says Dr. Kavenski, "given that, in the story, any fix we come up with works."

"Now I'm curious, exactly how much improbability do we have to play with here?" says Dr. Altare.

"Twenty-nine, and plus two hundred and eighty," you answer.

Dr. Altare snickers. "Fair, but I was hoping for an answer like, two trillion to one."

Tammi Arcadia speaks. She's sitting rigidly on her hands, her back very upright, and her face has gone tense. "I think," Tammi says, her voice wavering, "that when it comes to---genetics things---then things that are as unlikely as two trillion to one can---you can definitely say that it happens."

"Two trillion to one isn't much on this scale of insanity," says Professor Turk, though she's giving Tammi an odd look.

"So you're claiming we'd need to hold more than two trillion orgies before one of them hit on a cure for aging?" says Biologist #2. "I'm not sure I believe this controversial claim. We should test it."

Professor Turk shakes her head, glancing again at Tammi, then at you, still with that odd expression. "Are we all remembering that this cure is supposed to cost less than two thousand dollars?" she says. "I don't see how that could be anything but fantasy."

"Hey, this is the proteins and peptides conference," says Dr. Altare. "It's not like we have to manufacture a hundred pills separately. We just pack all our ideas into one long DNA strand. And adjust the dosages of the individual peptides using… wait for it… the 100% generic gene expression template from my lovely professor's keynote address on Friday!"

"I have a feeling this is going to end up as one hell of a large DNA strand by the time this night is over," says Biologist #1, the first woman you ate out tonight. She's wearing her vest again, still bottomless. "And some of the proteins will require continuing doses."

"Ooooh, guess what I'm working on!" says Dr. Reya. "And if you guessed repurposing VZV to act as a persistent transporter for very large DNA strands, you guessed right! Uh, that's herpes zoster which can do over one hundred kilobases of double-stranded DNA."

"I withdraw my first objection," says Biologist #1. "Second objection, how do you target particular---"

"Wait a minute," you say. "Sorry, uh, I just heard something important there. Is this, uh, you're saying the cure is going to be transmitted by a virus. Based on herpes. Are you saying this cure ends up being sexually transmitted."

"It doesn't have to be, but it could be!" says Dr. Reya. "Would that work better in your story?"

"We should write this up as a proposal when we're done," says Dr. Crowly, who has his face in both of his black latex hands. "I've never seen an institutional review board spontaneously immolate before."

"We should actually compile the DNA strand!" says Dr. Altare, and Dr. Reya and Dr. Kavenski both nod.

"Can we throw in my research on stimulating HIV immunity?" says the woman wrapped in a scarlet bedsheet. "I don't have anything else to contribute tonight, and if this is a sexually transmitted cure, we ought to provide the subjects with protection while they're boinking. That fits with the story's theme, right?"

"If we're going that route we should toss in the standard HPV vaccine too," says Dr. Reya. "I mean add the DNA for it, so that the delivered strand manufactures the vaccine. And the DNA for the gd2-deletion herpesvirus vaccines."

"Did you just…" says Biologist #2. "Did you just propose putting herpes inside herpes so that you can herp while you herp---"

A woman stands up, her motions as graceful as if rehearsed. "I'd like to declare the previous BDSM room as a cellphone-okay room," she says. "I think I read a relevant paper about tiny DNA repair fairies and their cowboy hats, but this is too much to remember in my head."

If you're remembering right, that's Katia, the woman whose nectar carried a +40 bonus to looking up existing scientific information. "G-go for it," you say. You raise your voice. "The BDSM room is now a computer room too!"

"If we're trying to compile an actual DNA sequence, I should send my slave to fetch our work laptop," Dr. Altare says.

"May I wear clothes, master?" says Professor Samara.

"Yes, but take them off when you get back."

"Wait, somebody calculated the laundry-folding addresses for tiny DNA repair fairies and now we know their cowboy hats have silver tassels?" says the lab-coat girl. "How the hell did I not hear about this paper?"

"I'll also second that question," says the woman wrapped in an improvised scarlet toga, who also looks startled. "I'd really have expected to have heard."

Katia wordlessly gestures at her laptop screen, and four women crowd over her shoulder to read. "The hell is the Journal of Reproducible Results: Biology?" lab-coat girl says.

"Wait, how do you not know about JRR Biology?" says Biologist #1. "Is the replication crisis not a thing where you come from?"

"I've been hearing an awful lot of new names tonight," Dr. Crowly mutters.

"Oh, oooohhhh, ooohh, oh, I'm close, please let me come this time, please, oh no no don't ruin me again don't aaaaaahhhhhh---"

You pop up your head from the penis, watching it tremble and shake and then two slim beads of pearly white form at the very tip, which you lean over and lick off. Then you look up again at the shaking, sweating face of the male grad student with the come-in-pants fetish. His name was in the nectars list somewhere, but you've forgotten it and it doesn't matter anyway. "Not until you email Professor Samara your thesis draft," you say primly.

"Or at least the amino-acid sequences and the dosage-response stats," Professor Samara says without looking in your direction, from where she's sitting at the room's lone desk and typing intently into a laptop. Dr. Altare is standing beside her and occasionally rubbing her neck.

"But, but my thesis isn't finished or edited, I'd be too ashamed to have anyone look at it, it's embaaaaaaarrassing---"

You don't say anything else because you've put your head back down and are vigorously sucking, slurping, and doing your best to drive your victim to the edge again as fast as possible. You went slower and more teasingly at first, but then you realized each edge was taking longer as Tears of Milk slowly, slowly extracted more and more semen from him in agonizing near-orgasms.

You've decided to take this interrogation as a chance to test Tears of Milk's claim that doing this 18 times in a row---no, 19 times, the skill should level up---will drive a male "completely out of his mind." 209 DOM is an okay expenditure for your current power level, and you'll get some back from dominating him too.

"I am slightly concerned about consent issues here," murmurs Dr. Crowly.

Dr. Kavenski gives Dr. Crowly a quelling look. "Volkov isn't present, but I can guess what he'd say about that and I think he'd be right in this particular case. The masochist appears fully cognizant and responsive and is voluntarily providing feedback to the sadist."

It's not like you need the male grad student to whine about when he's getting close, but if it reassures the other scientists you're fine with it.

It takes another three mini-milkings before the man, with actual tears in his eyes, staggers up from where he's sitting on the bed, and stumbles over to where his pants were dropped. He takes out his cellphone and sends a copy of his thesis draft to Prof. Samara, who reassures him that she'll delete it immediately after extracting the key data.

"And after I've checked it for any other errors," she says, smiling slightly before she swivels her chair back to her screen.

"No!" gasps the grad student.

"Shhh," you say soothingly, your right hand absently jacking him as you lead him to sit back down on the bed. "Shhh. Just focus on the sensations. It's time for you to come now. You earned it, you're a good boy."

You kneel beside the bed and take the penis back into your mouth. You go slower this time, building him up and up and up with smooth, rhythmic motions of your lips and gentle handwork below. Soon the male's bared thighs are shaking beneath you and his breath is coming in gasps. He isn't saying anything now about whether he's close.

Tears of Milk, you think to yourself.

Evil, yes. But you've been curious about this for a while and you have put in a lot of work already. He only has 7 more milkings left to go.

5.11.2 [ST,TA]: Ero Virus

It's late now, almost midnight. Most of the biologists have made their mad-science contributions and headed on home. Also, enough people at this orgy were rich that Tammi said she got enough unasked-for donations to cover the penthouse's cost, pay back the Natural Sexuality student club too, and even reimburse the bottles of wine she brought. That's… nice, and you have to admit it's making you feel better about holding more orgies in the future.

After another 4 tiny milkings the grad student said please make me come for real this time, red, safeword, please make me come, safeword, and then cried in your arms after you finished him off. You felt bad about that, but Dr. Kavenski told you afterwards that you'd done just fine and he was sure the boy would masturbate to this memory for the rest of his life.

A handful of people are still here in the BDSM-and-computer room. Professor Samara seems inexhaustible as she continues sitting at the room's lone desk, compiling the emails she got into a giant DNA sequence. Dr. Altare is yawning as he stands besides her and sometimes rubs her shoulders again. Dr. Reya is in a cuddle-puddle on the bed with Biologist #2 of the pointed beard and the girl wearing only a lab coat (who isn't bothering with panties anymore).

Professor Turk has also continued lurking around, although she hasn't said any more the whole time. She's just watching it all happen, sometimes glancing over at you and Tammi. You're worried about that, and you've tried to look calm, but you can't stop yourself from sweating.

So… yeah. Apparently this is happening… and, and you have no idea what Charles is going to say, and he's going to try to talk you into keeping the cure a secret, and if you release it publicly then literally everyone in the world is going to be paying attention to you, and… you are in so fucking far over your head right now.

All you wanted to do was cure obesity in Felice, and make your Mom healthy and vigorous again, and then also give the cure to everyone else in the world so you didn't feel guilty! You didn't mean to do exactly what you decided to do!

At last, Prof. Samara leans back from her laptop. "I believe we're done," Prof. Samara says. She turns her head around, craning her neck so that she can see where you're sitting on the bed. "Shall I email you?"

Professor Turk speaks, then, breaking her silence. "Can you email it to me first?" she says. "I've been doing some private preliminary work on heuristic detection of probable errors in sequenced DNA, like base pair deletions and so on. I'll email you back the corrected version. Sonia dot Turk at Gmail."

"Certainly," says Prof. Samara. "Thanks for staying around."

You take the chance to grab your own cellphone and, with trembling fingers, set up an alternate email account for Starry Starr. Gmail wants more identification than you want to give, but GMX lets you do it without asking too many questions. You do not want to give Prof. Samara your Cinderella Sheen account. It's more than likely that Starry Starr will need to pick a new name, if you are actually going to be doing this. Not right away, but the girl who was here tonight will have to vanish sometime before she gets a lot of attention. Or maybe the Erogame doesn't work like that, or there's some way to hide your involvement but, but you're at least not giving out Cinderella Sheen's email.

"I've corrected thirty-two probable errors," Professor Turk says a couple of minutes later. "Please substitute the repaired version in your working document once you get my reply email."

"Goodness," says Dr. Altare. "Thirty-two errors? That sounds like a lot."

"Are you kidding?" says Dr. Reya, sitting up on the bed. "The way we threw this together, it's an actual real-life miracle that's there's only thirty-two---"

"I'm kidding," says Dr. Altare.

"It's not a very polished algorithm," says Professor Turk. "I just didn't want to feel left out."

"You can email starrystarr, that's two rs both times, at GMX dot com," you say. Then you frown, and try to control your voice as much as possible. "Uh, what does the protagonist who gets this email do with it to turn it into a cure?"

"I'll email you a private copy of our draft on VZV transport," says Dr. Reya. She rolls off the bed and goes over to the corner to find her purse. "Obviously don't go posting it to the Internet or anything."

"Can I have a copy of that too?" says Professor Turk.

"Uh, let me rephrase," you say. "What does the sexy protagonist who does not know very much about biology do once she has both emails? Keeping in mind she wants it the next day." You look down at your cellphone screen and see that you have an email from Samara. Another frisson of shock and adrenaline quivers through your body.

"Um…" says Dr. Reya. "Okay, I give up, that's too much of a miracle even in fiction. We are talking about at least a week in a lab here."

"Well, actually," says the girl in only a lab coat, sitting up on the bed. "There's a startup in Nevada called Biotinker, which I think is supposed to be able to do that straight-up in real life. They offer rush overnight courier service too."

"What?" says Dr. Reya.

"So your protagonist calls Biotinker on the phone, asks for Riley, and tells Riley she needs a seventy-kilobase DNA strand in a protein wrapper based on a modified herpesvirus, replicated and ready for human-subject injection," says the lab-coat girl. "And then she forwards the emails."

"No, what, hold on, there is not a service that just---" says Dr. Reya. "We spent two months working out a protocol to---there can't be a service that just---" She grabs her cellphone and starts thumbing furiously.

"And that's going to be less than two thousand dollars?" you say cautiously.

Labcoat girl gives you a look. "In the story it can be less than two thousand dollars," she says.

"I'd be interested in any ideas for my protagonist getting the price down further," you say. "I'm pretty sure there's a way to get it down to two thousand."

"Have her seduce Riley?" says the lab-coat girl.

You grimace before you can stop yourself. "Is there any way my protagonist can lower the price without traveling to Nevada? She wants to get this done in more of a hurry than that."

"Oh come on!" says labcoat girl. "I guess, if you're willing to have your protagonist's protagonist also be an author, she could offer Biotinker the advertising exposure of having them mentioned inside her story."

"Uh," you say, as the imaginary literary tower in your head cracks from excessive height and falls over. Which level of reality was the base level again?

"Just to be extremely, extremely clear," says Biologist #2 of the pointed beard, looking over at you while still lying on the bed, "do not actually try this at home. Or at work. Or anywhere in the Solar System."

Dr. Altare frowns deeply. "Are you saying," he says, "that in real life, administering this treatment might somehow, in some way, create some slight degree of danger?"

"You included my research," says lab-coat girl. "Which means you included six hundred bases of random output from a generative adversarial RNN trained on a corpus that includes DNA from flesh-eating bacteria."

"Remind me again why we did that?" Dr. Altare says aside to Prof. Samara.

"Lysosomes," Prof. Samara says.

"Oh, right," says Dr. Altare. He turns back to the lab-coat girl. "Anyway, are you hinting that we should try it on grad students before trying it on humans?"

"I put in tweaks to nineteen different gene expression networks implicated in fourteen different hormone systems, in ways that seemed to me like a good idea at the time after reading Wikipedia pages," says Biologist #2. "And, let's be honest, I'm not totally sober right now."

"So what you're saying," Dr. Altare says, "is that possible side effects might include nausea or a light headache."

"No," says Biologist #2. "Side effects include melting into a pile of goop. That catches on fire. Your ashes will continue to experience pain and anyone who looks directly at them will get cancer. This won't just kill you, it will erase all paper and electronic records of your existence and unmake your immortal soul."

"Well, that's probably true," says Dr. Altare. "But it's better to leave in a few minor flaws in order to create room for follow-up papers."

You'd be lying if you claimed all this wasn't making you slightly nervous. Maybe you should find someone else who'd rather risk death than stay fat, and try this on them before you try it on Felice? Or should you just have faith in the Erogame? "Uh, but in-story," you say, "can you summarize what the cure is supposed to do?"

"Let me check my notes," says Dr. Altare. "Okay, let's see… throw white-fat adipose tissue into a permanent activation state that causes fat cells to immediately turn lipids into ketones, trigger the ketomation superhighway and manufacture additional lembas in the kidneys---"

As near as you can follow, the cure is supposed to cause immediate extremely rapid permanent weight-loss, provided the subject is resting in an ice bath to cool down and drinking half a glass of Powerthirst Mauve every three minutes for the next 24 hours, peeing equally frequently. That sounds fine to you so far. It's a pretty trivial cost to pay to lose weight.

You asked earlier about preserving the fat in breasts, but apparently a healthy breast is partially muscle, which you didn't know. And the type of fat that helps with producing breast milk and feeding babies is a slightly different type of adipose tissue, and it's no trouble to leave some of it there because cellular signaling biobabble.

Then there's the much more complicated biobabble that's associated with their attempts on age-related degeneration of health and vigor. As near as you could keep track, the virus will:

Crank up DNA repair.

Crank up the immune system, which is apparently also responsible for generally repairing a bunch of stuff in the body, and not just fighting off viruses and bacteria like they teach in high school.

Crank up the anti-cancer activity of the immune system because the immune system totally does that too.

Throw in some experimental hacks to dial down autoimmunity and allergy issues so the cranked-up immune system doesn't just kill you.

Assume all of this has in fact solved cancer, and junk the telomere limits on cell division.

Try to send out signals to tell the body it's okay for cells to be dividing faster now, in places where cells are supposed to do that at all.

Stimulate an initial surge of muscle growth, which means the subject should drink at least ten protein shakes per day for the first week.

Make muscle growth respond faster to exercise in the future.

Stimulate extremely fast initial growth and sloughing of the dermis in order to get rid of wrinkles and tighten up the skin over where fat used to be---meaning once you're out of the ice bath you'll be tearing off a thick layer of dead skin everywhere and coming out from underneath it with fresh clear skin, like a molting snake.

Add an experimental antibiotic into the other antibiotics that skin grows naturally, in order to get rid of acne and possibly make people less smelly in various places.

Do a bunch of stuff you didn't understand about mitochondria and little garbage collecting thingies.

Increase the levels of a bunch of hormones that usually get dialed down with age.

You heard that this included sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen---apparently both sexes have both hormones, which you didn't know---so you asked Biologist #2 to make double sure that nothing he was doing could somehow accidentally turn people into sex-crazed lunatics. (Or, as Dr. Crowly pointed out was also a possible issue, start a zombie apocalypse with super-strong regenerating sex-crazed rape zombies.) Though after some inner ethical agonizing, you did ask Biologist #2 to set the female sex drive to be "above average," because online reading has given you the impression that average female LST is too low to get along well with boyfriends.

Non-doctor Laura then insisted that to be "fair," any male oxytocin responses that are below high-average should be brought up to that level. Not in a way that would make men behave like they're permanently high on Ecstasy. Just, any male whose brain chemistry would otherwise make them unable to experience deep romance will have a chance if he meets the right person. At least insofar as messing with brain chemistry can actually do that in real life.

The treatment will also immunize people against HIV, HPV, both strains of herpes, and hepatitis. It's not total immunity from STDs, but it's immunity from the incurable permanent STDs. The immune system boosts should go some ways against lesser STDs too.

The cure is optionally transmissible, sexually or by deep kissing, if the subject takes Vitamin B7 megadoses for a week and then suddenly stops. This would make the virus highly contagious for a few days after that because of a herpes signaling cascady thing that Dr. Reya madly repurposed, and entangled with way-higher-than-natural biotin levels as a trigger.

Also there's an anti-Alzheimer's peptide in there to scour away evil brain tangles, and an anti-Parkinson's protein, and something that's supposed to help flush arterial plaque, and magic spells to ward off osteoporosis, and a stimulator for regrowth of damaged tendons and cartilage, and a hundred other experimental peptides the scientists found online that "sure would be great if they panned out."

It's not true bioimmortality. Nobody's going to live a thousand years on this, maybe not even two hundred years. If you give it to somebody when they're eighty, their body will have already accumulated a bunch of subtle damage that nobody at the orgy thought of fixing during the last hour and a half. Sure, they won't look awful and wrinkled and bent-over anymore. They'll be able to run in footraces, though not win them. But they'll still visibly be mothers or grandmothers even if they're anime-style sexy versions of them, they won't be as vigorous and bouncy as teenagers, and eventually one day their bodies will give out anyway.

It's just… the ERO 5 version of Erogamer's Body, more or less.

You're scared.

It's, you can't put it into words, your Mom gave you this stupid quest and now, if the Erogame is okay with doing this, it means there's no reason it couldn't have immediately helped everyone in the world the way it helped you.

It's like asking a priest why God created suffering, and the priest comes up with a long story about free will and original sin and human beings needing to help themselves and tempering of the soul. Then you pray to God to get rid of world hunger, and God is like "Sure thing, just give me a second." What does that say about God?

Professor Samara stands up from her chair at the room's lone desk and stretches, and that unspoken cue passes through the room like a decision of departure. The remaining biologists put on discarded clothes. They hug each other farewell or shake hands. They compliment you and Tammi on what a lovely experience tonight was with both the sex and the mad science, and thank you and the Norville U Natural Sexuality club. Except for Dr. Reya, who seems to be in some type of ambulatory coma.

Everyone walks out of the bedroom and into a giant penthouse living-room that now seems empty.

There isn't much trash visible. Some of the biologists earlier insisted on cleaning up after themselves, even though this is a hotel room and cleaning service was included, and they swept up the discarded cups and condom wrappers. But the slight disorder that remains is still enough to dent the room's sense of grandeur and opulence: a half-open bottle of wine on a polished wooden tabletop, a sloppily folded towel at the bottom of the beautiful wallpaper with giant flowers made of smaller flowers.

The grandfather clock standing against one wall of the living room begins to toll out the sound of bells. Calm low-pitched unobtrusive bells that wouldn't wake up anyone sleeping in a bedroom, but bells nonetheless. It's midnight.

The biologists walk over to the front door together, still talking in low tones---

Before they even finish leaving, Tammi grabs you by the arm and hustles you off away from them, to one side of the living room. She's not currently wearing the jacket of her dangerous-looking black suit, leaving her in a black shirt that isn't much less dangerous. She's also no longer wearing her spiked black boots, leaving her feet exposed.

"Did I do this?" Tammi Arcadia whispers to you very quietly. She's blinking rapidly.

"What?" you whisper back.

"T-two trillion to one is what that one guy said were the odds of someone like me and Danni sharing more than 75% of our genes," Tammi says, her voice still a whisper. "Do I---does my family---something to do with DNA, with probability, I don't know---is that why you brought me here, did you, did you set it up for me to make this happen?"

Tammi's face looks like it's trying to express too many emotions for you to identify any one of them. Well, there's wonder, you're pretty sure there's wonder.

There's the sound of a penthouse door closing.

You start to say, "Uh---"

"Excuse me," says Professor Turk's voice, and both of you startle and shriek and spin around.

Having turned, you behold Sonia Turk, who's put on her professor-clothes with vest from earlier in the night. She's staring at you and Tammi in a way that makes you feel much more naked for still wearing only your garterbelt and heels.

A glance around shows that everyone else did leave the penthouse. It's just the three of you now.

You know what Professor Turk is going to say before she says it.

And even with that knowledge, you don't know what you're going to say back.

"The cure is real," says Sonia Turk. "Isn't it?"

Tammi glances swiftly over at you, and then back at Professor Turk. "That's a pretty crazy thing to say," Tammi says, making a valiant try at sounding taken aback.

Professor Turk gives a slight shake of her head. "Don't bother," she says. "Starry, what are you doing with a biologist?" Her voice has gone lower in a not-very-good imitation of Charles. "You're doing what? Oh my gosh." A higher pitch, imitating Tammi. "I wasn't going to publish anything before giving you a chance to talk me out of it," and that's her version of you. "I thought then about what that sounded like. But of course that was silly, so it had to be something else. And then I listened while two dozen of my colleagues just happened to be working on pieces of a biological puzzle that fit together far too perfectly." Sonia Turk looks almost entirely calm. Only her neck is visibly trembling. "I certainly appreciate what you're trying to do. It sounds like a good thing for us, extremely good, I can't begin to estimate how much it would improve life on Earth. You made sure the virus was transmissible, and also kept transmission optional. That sounds like you're an ethical as well as altruistic version of whatever is you are, and I do appreciate that very much. But what are you, what is Charles, and why does Charles want to stop you?"

[ ] Write-in brainstorm session: Approved suggestions will be accumulated here before voting starts.

(Voting opens on Tuesday at PDT 12PM / EDT 3PM / UTC 7PM.)

(Sorry for the added voting delay, but I'd rather not try to open in exactly 24 hours. You are brainstorming how to reply to both Sonia Turk and Tammi Arcadia.)

(Voting is now open slightly early for RL reasons.)

There appears to be consensus on:

Telling Sonia that Charles is a concerned human worried about the effect of your powers on Earth.

Telling Sonia she's under consideration as a harem candidate (once she de-ages) or counselor.

Ranked vote for what to tell Sonia Turk. 1-9, [1] is most preferred and [9] is least preferred.

[ ] Tell Sonia about the Erogame.
[ ] Tell Sonia about the Erogame, including how you fooled Charles. Just spill everything.
[ ] Try to convey to Sonia the true magnitude and direction of what's happening. You are caught up in an Earth-shattering alien power you don't control, and it's interested in sex.
[ ] You're a girl who stumbled into weird sexy superpowers of unknown origin, and tonight you were trying to use them for good.
[ ] Charles is worried because he thinks I'm an alien. I kind of might be, sort of?
[ ] The Inverse Suzumiya Plan: Charles thinks you're an alien and Tammi thinks you're psychic, so try to convince Sonia you're a time-traveler or at least time-anomalous.

Unranked vote: Does Tammi get to listen to this? (Use [X].)

[ ][Listen] Let Tammi hear whatever you tell Turk, even if it's about the Erogame.
[ ][Listen] Let Tammi hear whatever you tell Turk.
[ ][Listen] Ask Tammi to leave before you talk to Turk.

(Votes for letting Tammi listen "even if it's about the Erogame" are implicitly votes for letting Tammi listen if a different option wins.)

("Let Tammi hear whatever you tell Turk" is negated if the option for saying how you fooled Charles wins, unless one of the voices in Cindy's head comes up with a strong argument for trusting Tammi that much. "Let Tammi hear" is also negated if you try to convince Sonia you're a time-traveler.)

Unranked vote: And what are you telling Tammi in response to her own question? (Use [X].)

[ ][Tammi] The power isn't in you, but meeting you was what gave me the inspiration to try this. (Lie.)
[ ][Tammi] The power isn't in you---you're someone who's caught up in it. (Truth.)
[ ][Tammi] It's a difficult, weird story and I'd rather say nothing than give you false ideas. (Evade.)
[ ][Tammi] Actually, yes, you're totally right. You've got DNA-probability powers, and it runs in your family. (???)

5.11.3 [ST,TA,CA]: Inverse Sliding

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 10 (33,900 / 40,000)

Stats:

DOM: 221/430
SUB: 283/480

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 24
FUK: 19
PRV: 26
ERO: 29

Stat Points: 34
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8934

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Blake Layton, Biologists #1-15, Mystic Eyes of Dick Perception (I), Reagent of Mundane Biology (II)
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: On

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 115 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 3434-3511]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
: Also just plain it being a terrible idea in any case.
: It being extremely out of character for Cindy, for a start.
: Tammi likely getting a better grasp of our powers, as well.
Charles is worried because he thinks I'm an alien. I kind of might be, sort of?
Tell Sonia about the Erogame, including how you fooled Charles. Just spill everything.
Tell Sonia about the Erogame.
The Inverse Suzumiya Plan: Charles thinks you're an alien and Tammi thinks you're psychic, so try to convince Sonia you're a time-traveler or at least time-anomalous.
Try to convey to Sonia the true magnitude and direction of what's happening. You are caught up in an Earth-shattering alien power you don't control, and it's interested in sex.
You're a girl who stumbled into weird sexy superpowers of unknown origin, and tonight you were trying to use them for good.

Winner: You're a girl who stumbled into weird sexy superpowers of unknown origin, and tonight you were trying to use them for good.
[1] askldjflkajskje
[1] BastetsChosen
[1] Blackshard
[1] CTCatapult
[1] Ephemeral
[1] Mitale
[1] Prime 2.0
[1] Pseudonym
[1] Sirrocco
[1] Theli
[1] theonebutcher
[1] Thrice.Great
[1] zup
[2] Aedenvuur
[2] batrax
[2] ChaoticWhimsy
[2] Dreikanter
[2] End of Line
[2] fictionfan
[2] General Lewdendorf
[2] january1may
[2] jsnider3
[2] MrBTXz
[2] zachol
[3] Cutesquid
[3] Edifier
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Gavinfoxx
[3] GGS109
[3] Gingganz
[3] Guile
[3] Kandagger
[3] kimagurena65536
[3] matacusa
[3] SoulofaGremlin
[4] Jirachi
[4] The_Wanderer
[4] wasprider
[5] Aoinfinity
[-] redfog

First Runner Up: Try to convey to Sonia the true magnitude and direction of what's happening. You are caught up in an Earth-shattering alien power you don't control, and it's interested in sex.
[1] batrax
[1] matacusa
[1] MrBTXz
[1] The_Wanderer
[1] zachol
[2] BastetsChosen
[2] Blackshard
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] Gavinfoxx
[2] GGS109
[2] Kandagger
[2] Mitale
[2] Prime 2.0
[2] Pseudonym
[2] SoulofaGremlin
[2] Theli
[2] theonebutcher
[3] CTCatapult
[3] Ephemeral
[3] Jirachi
[3] jsnider3
[3] Sirrocco
[3] Thrice.Great
[3] zup
[4] Aedenvuur
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] Dreikanter
[4] Edifier
[4] End of Line
[4] General Lewdendorf
[4] Gingganz
[4] Guile
[4] january1may
[5] wasprider
[6] askldjflkajskje
[7] ChaoticWhimsy
[7] Cutesquid
[8] kimagurena65536
[-] fictionfan
[-] redfog

Second Runner Up: The Inverse Suzumiya Plan: Charles thinks you're an alien and Tammi thinks you're psychic, so try to convince Sonia you're a time-traveler or at least time-anomalous.
[1] Aedenvuur
[1] End of Line
[1] fictionfan
[1] General Lewdendorf
[1] GGS109
[1] Guile
[1] jsnider3
[1] kimagurena65536
[1] redfog
[1] wasprider
[2] Edifier
[2] matacusa
[2] The_Wanderer
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] Dreikanter
[3] january1may
[4] batrax
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] Ephemeral
[4] Gavinfoxx
[4] zachol
[5] ChaoticWhimsy
[5] Theli
[6] Cutesquid
[6] Gingganz
[6] Jirachi
[6] Kandagger
[6] SoulofaGremlin
[6] Thrice.Great
[7] BastetsChosen
[7] Blackshard
[7] CTCatapult
[7] theonebutcher
[9] askldjflkajskje
[9] Mitale
[9] MrBTXz
[9] Pseudonym
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Sirrocco
[-] zup

Third Runner Up: Charles is worried because he thinks I'm an alien. I kind of might be, sort of?
[1] ChaoticWhimsy
[1] Dreikanter
[1] Edifier
[1] january1may
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Guile
[2] kimagurena65536
[2] Sirrocco
[2] wasprider
[2] zup
[3] Aedenvuur
[3] batrax
[3] Blackshard
[3] End of Line
[3] General Lewdendorf
[3] The_Wanderer
[3] theonebutcher
[4] askldjflkajskje
[4] GGS109
[4] jsnider3
[4] matacusa
[5] Gingganz
[5] Jirachi
[5] Kandagger
[5] SoulofaGremlin
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] BastetsChosen
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] Gavinfoxx
[6] Theli
[6] zachol
[7] Mitale
[7] Pseudonym
[7] Thrice.Great
[8] CTCatapult
[8] MrBTXz
[9] Cutesquid
[-] fictionfan
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] redfog

Honorable Mention: Tell Sonia about the Erogame.
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] Gavinfoxx
[1] Gingganz
[1] Kandagger
[1] SoulofaGremlin
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Cutesquid
[2] Jirachi
[2] Thrice.Great
[3] Mitale
[3] Prime 2.0
[3] Pseudonym
[3] redfog
[3] wasprider
[4] MrBTXz
[5] askldjflkajskje
[5] Edifier
[5] General Lewdendorf
[5] GGS109
[5] Guile
[5] jsnider3
[5] zachol
[7] batrax
[7] Dreikanter
[7] january1may
[7] kimagurena65536
[8] Aedenvuur
[8] BastetsChosen
[8] Blackshard
[8] ChaoticWhimsy
[8] End of Line
[8] The_Wanderer
[8] Theli
[8] theonebutcher
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] matacusa
[-] Sirrocco
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Tell Sonia about the Erogame, including how you fooled Charles. Just spill everything.
[1] Aoinfinity
[1] Cutesquid
[1] Jirachi
[2] Gingganz
[2] redfog
[3] askldjflkajskje
[3] MrBTXz
[3] zachol
[4] Kandagger
[4] SoulofaGremlin
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] Gavinfoxx
[5] Mitale
[5] Prime 2.0
[5] Pseudonym
[6] batrax
[6] Edifier
[6] GGS109
[6] Guile
[6] jsnider3
[6] wasprider
[7] General Lewdendorf
[9] Aedenvuur
[9] BastetsChosen
[9] Blackshard
[9] ChaoticWhimsy
[9] CTCatapult
[9] Dreikanter
[9] End of Line
[9] january1may
[9] kimagurena65536
[9] The_Wanderer
[9] Theli
[9] theonebutcher
[9] Thrice.Great
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] matacusa
[-] Sirrocco
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: : It being extremely out of character for Cindy, for a start.
[1] matacusa
[-] Aedenvuur
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] batrax
[-] Blackshard
[-] ChaoticWhimsy
[-] CTCatapult
[-] Cutesquid
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Edifier
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] End of Line
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gavinfoxx
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] GGS109
[-] Gingganz
[-] Guile
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] jsnider3
[-] Kandagger
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Mitale
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Pseudonym
[-] redfog
[-] Sirrocco
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] The_Wanderer
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] wasprider
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: : Tammi likely getting a better grasp of our powers, as well.
[2] matacusa
[-] Aedenvuur
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] batrax
[-] Blackshard
[-] ChaoticWhimsy
[-] CTCatapult
[-] Cutesquid
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Edifier
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] End of Line
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gavinfoxx
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] GGS109
[-] Gingganz
[-] Guile
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] jsnider3
[-] Kandagger
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Mitale
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Pseudonym
[-] redfog
[-] Sirrocco
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] The_Wanderer
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] wasprider
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: : Also just plain it being a terrible idea in any case.
[3] matacusa
[-] Aedenvuur
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] batrax
[-] Blackshard
[-] ChaoticWhimsy
[-] CTCatapult
[-] Cutesquid
[-] Dreikanter
[-] Edifier
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] End of Line
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gavinfoxx
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] GGS109
[-] Gingganz
[-] Guile
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] jsnider3
[-] Kandagger
[-] kimagurena65536
[-] Mitale
[-] MrBTXz
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Pseudonym
[-] redfog
[-] Sirrocco
[-] SoulofaGremlin
[-] The_Wanderer
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] wasprider
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Total No. of Voters: 40

-[X] Spend some of your stat points.
No. of Votes: 1
Cutesquid

Task: Listen

[X][Listen] Let Tammi hear whatever you tell Turk.
No. of Votes: 24
Elitist Oars
Aoinfinity
askldjflkajskje
BastetsChosen
batrax
Blackshard
CTCatapult
Dreikanter
Gavinfoxx
General Lewdendorf
Guile
january1may
jsnider3
kimagurena65536
matacusa
Mitale
Sirrocco
The_Wanderer
Theli
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
wasprider
zachol
zup

[x][Listen] Ask Tammi to leave before you talk to Turk.
No. of Votes: 8
End of Line
Aedenvuur
Edifier
Ephemeral
GGS109
MrBTXz
Pseudonym
redfog

[X][Listen] Let Tammi hear whatever you tell Turk, even if it's about the Erogame.
No. of Votes: 6
Gingganz
ChaoticWhimsy
Cutesquid
Jirachi
Kandagger
SoulofaGremlin

-[X][Listen] Of course, if you're trying for the Inverse Suzumiya Plan, leave Tammi out.
No. of Votes: 2
january1may
Dreikanter

-[X][Listen] If you need an excuse, say that you'd prefer time to think before you tell anyone any secrets; that "low probability of someone else finding out" doesn't mean much around a probability-warper; and that Tammi can be tickled into breaking. Use the excuses in that order, if necessary.
No. of Votes: 2
Pseudonym
MrBTXz

Task: Tammi

[x][Tammi] The power isn't in you---you're someone who's caught up in it. (Truth.)
No. of Votes: 23
End of Line
Aedenvuur
askldjflkajskje
ChaoticWhimsy
CTCatapult
Dreikanter
Elitist Oars
Gavinfoxx
january1may
jsnider3
Kandagger
kimagurena65536
matacusa
Mitale
MrBTXz
Pseudonym
Sirrocco
SoulofaGremlin
The_Wanderer
Theli
Thrice.Great
zachol
zup

[X][Tammi] Actually, yes, you're totally right. You've got DNA-probability powers, and it runs in your family. (???)
No. of Votes: 6
Cutesquid
Edifier
General Lewdendorf
redfog
The_Wanderer
wasprider

-[X][Tammi] But you *were* awfully helpful in making this particular awesome thing happen, by being your normal Highly Competent Professional Escort self.
No. of Votes: 6
ChaoticWhimsy
CTCatapult
matacusa
Sirrocco
zachol
zup

[X][Tammi] It's a difficult, weird story and I'd rather say nothing than give you false ideas. (Evade.)
No. of Votes: 5
GGS109
Aoinfinity
batrax
Blackshard
Ephemeral

-[X][Tammi] But you did make the evening a lot more successful than it would have been if I'd had to run it without your help.
No. of Votes: 4
ChaoticWhimsy
Mitale
Pseudonym
Theli

-[X][Tammi] Tammi hug till Starry develops a care-focused hug skill.
No. of Votes: 2
Pseudonym
Mitale

[X][Tammi] The power isn't in you, but meeting you was what gave me the inspiration to try this. (Lie.)
No. of Votes: 1
Gingganz

[X][Tammi] I have no fucking idea. I can only perceive two thirds of your powers and those are about fuckmothering tickling.
No. of Votes: 1
theonebutcher

-[X][Tammi] Tammi hug
No. of Votes: 1
Theli

[X][Tammi] I dunno, maybe you were crucial and maybe you weren't. I just follow my gut about stuff like this, and it said 'Tammy would be helpful.' (???)
No. of Votes: 1
Guile

Total No. of Voters: 38

You keep looking at Professor Sonia Turk's upright head and slightly trembling neck, and the neutral expression on her face. She's scared, check. Your mind flashes back to Charles in his silver-colored car the first time you met him, continuing to drive calmly and speak calmly while his shirt soaked through with sweat.

When Tammi realized you were an anomaly, she was more eager and wondering than scared. Maybe because she already had an impossibility in her family history, so that she'd already always believed there was a stranger world out there she couldn't see? And Tammi's also waiting on an answer.

Too many words go through your mind, even as you know Tammi and Turk are both waiting, and might get more scared or less trusting the longer they wait. And you're out of Slack, too.

The part of you that's scared and frightened beyond your Mom's ability to address wants to fling yourself at Professor Turk's feet and just confess everything to the reasonable authority figure, Erogame included. The part of you that's cute and mischievous wants to tell Tammi that why yes she does have DNA-improbability powers, and see where the Erogame goes with that. Maybe Tammi could hook up with Turk and they could make all the inventions and you wouldn't have to be bothered by people hurting that only you could save…

Or since Charles already thinks you're an alien and Tammi thinks you're psychic, logic would say that you ought to convince Professor Turk that you're a time-traveler and complete an Inverse Suzumiya Formation, which would then be stable.

But the thing with Charles went too far off the deep end for you to be comfortable doing that again on purpose.

And although you wish you could reassure Professor Turk, who looks like she needs a hug, the whole truth is way more scary than anything she knows about.

You swallow and turn to Tammi first, because she asked first. "I'm pretty sure the power isn't in you," you tell her. "I mean I don't want to minimize how much you helped tonight and I could not have done this nearly as well without you running things and maybe not pulled it off at all---but---but the improbability isn't a power that you have. Your family got caught up in it, that's all."

You don't wait to see how Tammi reacts, in case it's bad, and instead you turn back to the calm-appearing, only slightly trembling Professor Turk. "Charles is my totally normal human boyfriend," you say. "He's---he's basically concerned that---" You don't know how to do his eloquence justice. You can't repeat his words about his grandfather Marcus from memory. "I mean, he's basically concerned for all the obvious reasons you'd be concerned if some girl got superpowers letting her pull the type of shit I pulled tonight. Which is what I am, I mean, one day I got weird sex-related superpowers, who knows why. I---I felt like I ought to be doing more to help people. Or I felt guilty for not helping them. But Charles is concerned about, you know, unleashing mysterious powers of unknown origin on the Earth, even if I'm trying to help? And, like, damaging humanity's normal cultural progression so that we never get to build our little sand castle on the beach the way it would've happened without outside interference, like the Prime Directive on Star Trek. Or just breaking everything by changing things up, because the town that is our planet has all these quiet arrangements right now and who knows what happens if you start scrambling where everyone lives. God damn it, Charles is a lot better at explaining this than I am."

"So…" Professor Turk says. Her eyes dart to Tammi, and back to you. "So there isn't---there isn't a known story that causes everything to make sense again in a larger picture."

"Nope," you say.

Professor Turk nods. The trembling in her neck increases. "And it's not that you're breaking some organization's rules. There is no organization. There's nobody whose job it is to handle this."

"Yep," you say.

Professor Turk looks like she needs a hug. But not a hug from you, a hug from the Men In Black reassuring her that the Men In Black exist and are taking care of things.

You want to tell her that she's being considered for a position in your future harem slash advisory council, but you don't know how to broach the subject. Still, as of tonight, she is the oldest and certainly the best-educated person who has any inkling about what's going on. "Do you want to sit down?" you say instead.

"Please," Professor Turk whispers.

Shortly after, an older woman of vaguely Indian cast, with a deliberate-looking streak of white through her black hair, is being escorted through the penthouse living room over to a soft red sofa. Sonia takes off her tweed vest before she sits down, leaving her in a long-sleeved gray shirt and long black pants. So far as you know, she's still wearing starry galaxy panties underneath that. She hasn't put on her shoes, and that leaves her feet in black dress socks which Tammi occasionally eyes in a casually lustful way. The hints of sensuality in the situation make you feel more in control.

You and Tammi both simultaneously try to sit down at the other end of the sofa facing Professor Turk, and after a brief friendly power struggle, Tammi ends up sitting in your lap and not the other way around. You know what happens to people who sit in Tammi's lap. It involves hands and ribs and… you are not thinking about this right now.

"Do you really have no idea what's happening?" says Professor Turk. "There---there has to be more you know."

"One day a girl suddenly got sexy superpowers," you say. "Now that you know that, you know almost as much as I do."

"What were you doing when you got your superpowers?" she says.

"Sitting in my bedroom not having any mysterious dreams, or encountering any aliens, or doing favors to any fairies, or messing around with old artifacts I got out of a cave, or reciting a spell I found online, or making a wish out loud, or befriending any talking animals, or going through a traumatic experience. We are talking completely spontaneous superpowers here."

"Fully developed or gradual onset?"

You think of the sudden appearance of pink-violet text. "The way I think you mean that, fully developed the instant it started."

Sonia Turk gives a shaky nod. "That… corresponds to a broad class of scenarios in which your powers have an external source."

You nod. You are pretty fucking sure your powers have an external source, barring broad classes of existentially disturbing scenarios.

Sonia Turk draws in a shaky breath. "What kind of---what do you know about---do you know anything about the source?"

"Not really. Except that it seems to be very interested in sex. Or romance and relationships more generally. My powers… everything sort of works better if… it's not a coincidence I set up an orgy to do this."

Sonia Turk runs shaky hands through her hair, which would probably also be shaky if it was animated like yours. "That… makes a disturbing amount of sense. I don't suppose you've ever read The Selfish Gene? The universe is populated by stable things and by patterns that replicate themselves. If we're dealing with something that has its origins in an unknown life form, and we had to take one guess as to what might interest that life form, reproduction would rank first on the list."

You nod again. You already thought of something like that, though not as precisely as Professor Turk is phrasing it, back when you were trying to excuse to Charles why the alien had a mating improbability field. The logic seems reasonable so far as it goes, but it doesn't cut down the possibilities much. It means that just about anything could be obsessed with eroge. It could be sex-obsessed aliens, sex-obsessed time-travelers, existentially disturbing variations on you doing it to yourself, or weird metaphysical entities on a higher level of reality that are masturbating to you.

Sonia's eyes shift slightly---they could be shaky too, it's hard to tell---and focus on what you know is Tammi's face, though you can only see the back of Tammi's head from where you hold her in your lap. "What happened to you?" she says to Tammi. "To your family, that got caught up in the power?"

Tammi hesitates in front of you, or at least you don't hear her say anything. Then, in simple words, Tammi's voice sketches out how she has an identical twin sister that's actually her identical second cousin. She doesn't mention that they are fucking.

"That… also fits with what I saw tonight," says Sonia Turk. Her shivering has slowed a little. "With what seems to be your superpower."

You are going to be genuinely impressed if Professor Turk's super science skills let her come up with some type of reasonable explanation on the spot. "You already have a theory?" you say.

"Not… really. More of a striking observation. At tonight's gathering I recognized very few of these people who've supposedly been working in my field for decades. They didn't seem to much recognize each other either. Protein biology is a large field but it's not that large. Some of them didn't recognize the journals that other people were finding papers in. I've never heard of a Journal of Reproducible Results either. What it looked like was… it's vastly premature to come up with any theories but, but what I saw was, it looked like you were an inverse slider."

"An inverse slider?" you say.

"I don't know what that is either," says Tammi.

Sonia nods, a little more firmly. "Starry doesn't go to parallel worlds, her power brings parallel worlds to her. The orgy tonight was overlapping a dozen different worlds, parallel Earths, other parts of the quantum wavefunction, sideways in time. The treatment they built was too advanced to be assembled in a single world. It had to draw from discoveries scattered across a dozen parallel versions of our conference, and the corresponding parallel Earths and their scientific communities."

"Wow," breathes Tammi.

"Only," says Sonia, "it can't actually be that, for the same reason it can't be aliens. If it were possible to go faster than light, there'd be aliens all over the place. The Earth would have been used up as a resource before life could evolve on it. If there were any possible way to go sideways in time, there'd be even more travelers all over the place, replicating across parallel dimensions and exploiting worlds for their resources… I'll have to think about it. This is all terribly premature, I just couldn't stop trying to invent theories once I realized what it looked like…" The older woman's hands are trembling in her lap again, though her voice is steady. "On the face of it, my theory implies that Starry's treatment is something that could be distributed across thousands or millions of parallel Earths. That there's quadrillions of lives at stake and not just billions. But that can't be something that can happen so easily. It would have happened already, long ago. If worlds could communicate then almost no worlds would invent their own technology, just like almost no individual people invent their own technology."

Your gaze drops to the scarlet sofa cushions as you try to think about this yourself. Her notion of inverse sliding feels like… like part of it rings true, and part of it doesn't. Like Professor Turk is looking at the key facts but not drawing the right conclusions from them.

Professor Turk can't see the Erogame. What she's seeing is being forced into the shape of a story, an eroge, a plot that obscures the metaplot. One day, Sonia Turk met an inverse slider who invited her to a pan-world orgy…

"But," Tammi says. "But, um, Starry isn't…" Her voice trails off.

"You've seen evidence that falsifies the theory I just made up?" says Sonia Turk. "Because that would not be at all surprising."

"Um, Starry," says Tammi. She turns her head towards you, enough that you can see one side of her face. "Is it okay for me to mention what happened this morning?"

The thought occurs to you that this whole inverse slider thing, like, if the Erogame starts making that real because it would make a nice eroge, you could get millions of other Earths in trouble and not just this one. The Erogame might go and create millions of other Earths. Which sounds kind of huge even for the Erogame but you don't know it can't.

"Y-yeah," you say, your voice wobbling a bit. "Please do tell Professor Turk what falsifies her theory."

"Um," says Tammi. "Starry's psychic. Definitely a sexual empath and relationship empath, and this morning she accidentally broadcast an orgasm she was having. I don't see how that fits with your idea that she's an inverse slider?"

Sonia Turk's gaze slides sideways, like she's staring at nothing in particular. "Maybe some parallel Earths have developed telepathy, and she called the ability to herself from there? Tiny nanomachines synchronizing brains? Alternatively, perhaps Starry has some higher power, or an external power source since it appeared fully developed, that makes her a sexual telepath and a sexual inverse slider…"

The impressed look on your face---she basically just deduced the Erogame---must have come across to Professor Turk like confusion. Maybe your eyes got wider. In any case, Professor Turk seems to think you need an explanation.

"Depending on exactly what's going on," Sonia says to you, "the principle of parsimony might or might not apply… I'm sorry, that wasn't helpful, was it? I'll try to hedge less. My brain is worried that you might reject my paper." Sonia inhales again. "There's no rhyme or reason why Superman has both heat vision and super-strength, because there's no logic to Superman besides 'The comic-book writer said so.' But in reality things should be more logical and rhyme more often. We might be dealing with a single interdimensional lifeform which has bonded itself to you as part of its reproductive process, and granted you both inverse sliding and psychic abilities. There could be no relation between those two powers except that one life form happened to evolve both of them. But if there's something more fundamental going on, we should look more for a single law that explains many things, like electricity and magnetism being aspects of the same field. The notion that you summoned telepathy-implementing nanomachines from a more advanced parallel world struck me as stupid as soon as I was done saying it, but…"

"But it wouldn't be surprising if I only had one metapower," you say, "and inverse sliding and being psychic were just two of the things that it did."

"Exactly," says Sonia. "Suppose that the telepathy-nanomachines theory were correct, and that you started doing telepathy before you discovered your inverse sliding. You might at first think that you were psychic and that your inverse sliding was just one more secondary power you discovered later, but really inverse sliding would have been your one true power all along. If a science-fiction author were trying to write scientific superpowers, that's the kind of plot twist they might put in, having learned from the history of science? That what you think is your primary power isn't your primary power at all, but just one more thing your single true power summoned to you across alternate dimensions." Then her shoulders slump. "This is all probably going to sound terribly stupid once we know more. In real life the scientist character doesn't show up and solve everything on the spot. Maybe I'm speculating too much and ought to shut up until I have more data."

"Where do I fit into this?" says Tammi. "Why do Danni and I look like twins? You said that also fit with what you saw at the orgy."

"Ah, yes," says Sonia. "Well, if my primary theory is mostly correct---there was some parallel Earth in which four twins all married one another. They had children, their children had children, and inevitably there was one quantum world where you and Danni all received the same chromosomes. I'm not quite sure why Starry's power called you here, but here you are."

"I---" Tammi said. "I don't understand. Why was I born?"

"From your perspective," says Sonia Turk, "there is no answer to that. From your perspective it is all a massive coincidence, one so vastly unlikely and unexplained that I wouldn't blame you if you didn't believe me. From Starry's perspective, somebody like you must exist somewhere, and you were summoned out of the greater wavefunction and woven into her world…" Sonia's voice slows. "I'm sorry. That probably wasn't what you wanted to hear, was it."

Tammi is tensed up in your lap. You don't blame her.

"So we've been kidnapped from our worlds?" Tammi says. "Do we get to go back ever?"

"That's what doesn't fit!" says Sonia. "I---when I checked my email earlier this evening, I had an email from my university about---my credit card still worked even after meeting Starry---I would guess that if you called your sister, you would find that you could call her and everyone else you knew on your phone---and tonight, people were still able to search the Internets from their own worlds to bring the pieces together---" Sonia's hands clench into fists between her crossed thighs. "That's the part that seems like Starry's power is creating two-way interactions and weaving parallel worlds together, and if we take that at face value, Starry ought to be able to send her treatment into a billion parallel worlds without any trouble. And that's what can't be true because there'd be travelers all over the place. How does that even work? Is Sonia Turk missing from her original conference right now? Because I haven't gotten any emails asking where I am! My theory makes no sense!"

"Bullshit metaphysics," you say.

"What?" says Sonia.

"My own theory is that it's bullshit metaphysics," you say. She doesn't even know about the Conceptual Hair. "You know, like the bullshit metaphysics in quantum physics only more so. The cat isn't just alive and dead simultaneously, it's at all the conferences and in all the hotel rooms."

Professor Turk looks as outright flabbergasted as you've ever seen any college professor. "You---you're saying---what does that even mean?"

You shrug helplessly. "I don't know. Nobody being missing from their own world's conference while they're still exchanging emails with their original world sounds like bullshit. But quantum physics sounds like bullshit too. And the business with the-cat-is-both-alive-and-dead, we're-in-a-bazillion-different-hotel-rooms sounds like the same type of bullshit that my power runs on."

"Like two different stories written by the hand of one Author…" Sonia whispers. She leans her head against the sofa's back to her side. "This is, this is beyond me. You don't just need a physicist, you need the next Erwin Schrödinger."

"That's fine," Tammi says. Another nervous shiver goes through her body in your arms. "Starry can just summon him over. Do you want to get the door or should I?"

"I don't think I can actually do that," you say. "Not on purpose, anyway. And if I could, I'd probably get a sexy Schrödinger who's into threesomes and wants his own harem."

Sonia lets out a choked half-laugh. "That was true about the original Schrödinger, actually."

You decide not to mention the Erogame's retroactive reality-editing powers for a while.

"You said before that you wanted more data," says Tammi. "What does that mean? Are you thinking of tests to run on Starry? Take her to a laboratory?"

Tammi, in your arms, is tensed again as if ready to do violence on your behalf.

"I, I don't know where to start…" Sonia says. Her slightly age-wrinkled face screws up and wrinkles more. "I don't know who to trust! Not with this! Do you realize how insanely valuable your ability is? What you've done in just one night? If---I don't even know how to quantify the value---if there were only a hundred treatments available, the hundred wealthiest people in the world would pay at least a billion dollars apiece---everyone in the world would pay, would pay at least a tenth of their annual earnings, which, if I'm remembering my figures right for gross world product, would put the value you produced tonight above ten trillion dollars."

Your mind has gone completely blank. "Uh, but how do I actually collect the money?" your mouth says.

"You're asking me?" says Sonia. "What were you originally planning to do with the cure once you had it?"

"I… I hadn't really planned any further than helping a couple of friends of mine and then a bunch of question marks would happen in step two. You think I should find a billionaire and sell them a syringe for a billion dollars? But why would they believe me?" You don't think Follow the Fucking Rabbit will work for this.

"I have an idea!" says Tammi. "How about if we slip Oprah Winfrey the cure without her knowing it? A day later she looks young again. Everyone's sure that an anti-aging treatment exists somewhere and that Oprah is just lying when she says she has no idea what happened to her. Then some other billionaire will be ready to let us show off the treatment on a test subject, and pay us a billion dollars for a second syringe afterwards."

Sonia puts her hand to her forehead and wipes sweat from her eyebrows. "I---I want to protest the ethics of that, but I suppose I'd understand if you appealed to utilitarian principles and the drastic importance of informing society quickly---no! Oprah will die if she doesn't spend her first 24 hours in an ice bath, drinking electrolyte-balanced water. You can't administer this to people unawares!"

"I have a feeling…" you say slowly. "I have a feeling that trying to make a billion dollars off this won't work, and will just get me in trouble."

A billion dollars seems high for the payoff on a Lvl 10 quest. The Fold in the Wolf quest with Volkov offers $200,000. Honestly you're having trouble imagining any more money than that, although you're aware that Mad Inventing might involve a lot of expensive parts.

On the other hand, you getting screwed out of a billion dollars, being kidnapped into an evil laboratory that's trying to experiment on your "sexy superpowers," and you being screwed a whole lot more until you escape after many sex scenes, totally sounds like a Lvl 10 quest. One you're not ready for.

"I want to say that you ought to just give the cure to the world and ask everyone in wealthy countries to chip in ten dollars apiece as a thank-you," says Sonia. "But I have no idea how we can inform society in a believable way, or obtain sufficient protection for you, or apply for regulatory approval or---I understand you want to get paid, God knows you deserve ten trillion dollars, but you do realize there's protected intellectual property in the virus? Some of the peptides are under patent---or maybe that's only true in other worlds and not in this one---but, but somebody is going to claim their patent covers this, make sure that nobody gets your treatment until they get paid a million dollars a pop, and only a small fraction of humanity will be able to afford what everyone could just as easily have---that's a disaster we have to prevent at all costs---" Sonia puts her head in her hands. "I have no idea how to do this," she whispers. "No, no I shouldn't despair, it's too early. But I need to think."

"Uh, so long as you're thinking," you say, "I should probably mention at some point that, uh, I am considering you as a possible candidate for my harem after you de-age. Assuming we get on okay, I mean. Like, I'm not attracted to you now, but when I try it out in my imagination, I think you'll be super-ultra-hot if you're acting all dommy and smart while also looking like a girl my age."

"Thank you very much," Sonia says with the visible distraction of somebody who has more important issues than sex on her mind, like the welfare of billions of people or whatever. "I will think about that too when I get a chance."

"Do you want a glass of water while you think?" Tammi says, sounding kinder now that Professor Turk has disclaimed any intentions of imminent kidnapping. "Or you, Starry?"

"Yes," Sonia says hoarsely.

You shake your own head.

Tammi slips off your lap and pads over to the kitchen, where she opens one cabinet after another until she finds a tall glass, which she takes over to the kitchen sink. In the background, the grandfather clock begins to chime the quarter-hour tone, marking it as 12:15am.

You and Sonia look at each other.

The awful truth is, you're not really into this.

You want to have more wonderful nights of pleasure. You want to go on exercising until you can sustain High-Heeled Roofhopping. You want a million dollars, maybe not a billion just yet. You don't want this responsibility, not even the relatively small responsibility of using a relatively small amount of Erogame power to introduce a relatively small massive upheaval in human society. You do not want your life to be about this type of thing. Even though you also don't want Felice and everyone else cursed by fat to go on trudging past you, while you look at them, knowing exactly how much they're hurting and how easy it would be to help.

You don't want people like the old Cindy to fade out of existence in a higher-ERO world, you want everyone like you were on Saturday to be healed.

But you don't want to spend the whole next week worrying about that either.

You're an awful person for feeling this way, you know. You know that very well. But you wish the whole thing was somebody else's problem. You have levels to raise, powers to acquire, and dubiously consensual orgasms to have. You don't want the world hanging on your next quest. You don't want Charles furious at you for messing with Earth. You know it makes you an awful person, but you wish that you could just take the cure back to Mom and Felice, and be done, and then some time later have somebody send you a $10,000,000,000,000 royalty check in the mail.

"Any brilliant ideas yet?" Tammi says, as she brings the waterglass to Sonia.

"No," says Sonia, and then she drinks deeply.

"I was joking," Tammi says.

Sonia finishes draining half the waterglass, then carefully sets it down on the carpeted floor below. "Society wasn't set up to handle this possibility," Sonia says, sounding despairing. "All the procedures were made without events like this one in mind."

That reminds you, you still have to call up Charles and---and let him yell at you for building technology humanity isn't ready to handle, you guess? No, Charles does not yell at you except when you're endangering yourself, like when you're edging on a rooftop while the police are chasing you. He's not that bad a dom, he's not that bad a boyfriend, even though your brain keeps imagining horrible things he could say to you that the real Charles never actually says. Besides, it's not like Charles is guiltless in Professor Turk realizing that something was up…

You think about this for a second.

Then you push Tammi forward so you can swing your own legs over the sofa, and pad off to the hotel safe in which your cellphone is locked.

Tammi and Sonia are both looking at you hopefully as you return, like of course your magic is going to have the solution to everything.

It makes you feel awful for what you're about to do, but then you already know you're that awful type of person.

"I'm calling Charles," you tell them both. "I promised him I would."

Sonia Turk inhales sharply. "I---surely you don't think that you were wrong to do this---if he persuaded you to withhold the cure, the harm would be far greater than any genocide in history---"

You hold up a finger to her. "Hold that thought," you say.

Sonia quiets, though she still looks… very, very concerned.

You tap the call button, and then the speaker button.

The phone rings twice, audible in the penthouse room, before Charles picks up.

"Hey, it's Starry," you say, before Charles can speak your true name. "You're on speakerphone again."

"What's up?" comes Charles's cautious voice from the phone.

"Well," you say, "as it happens, a bunch of biologists had an orgy in Penthouse D of the Norville Arms-Marriott, and they had a wacky brainstorming session and put together a joke cure for obesity and a bunch of aging-related problems. Like, they were using real DNA sequences, but the combination was the type of thing that would never ever work in real life. Just another sexy shenanigan, right? But a certain boyfriend made a big deal about that, earlier this morning, and he acted all alarmed about it while he was on speakerphone and one of the biologists was listening. Well guess what, the biologist kind of noticed that, and later in the evening, she figured out what was really happening. And she has her own copy of the recipe for the cure. And she's sitting on the sofa next to me."

"I… see…" Charles's voice comes from the phone.

"This situation is your own fault, Mr. Charles Adan. I wouldn't have done anything without calling you first. You dropped enough hints that somebody figured things out. And I'm not going to use violence or do that thing I did with the motel manager to stop her, which I'm sure you appreciate, Charles."

Then you hand your phone over to the person who seems smarter than you, more altruistic than you, better-educated than you, and certainly way more responsible than you.

"So I'm leaving it all up to her," you say to the phone Sonia Turk is now holding. "The Earth-shaking decision now rests in the hands of the ordinary human being with no superpowers. She gets to decide what she does with the cure she has. You can try to talk her into keeping it a secret, if you like. I'll accept whatever choice she makes. Does that sound fair, Charles?"

Sonia Turk is looking at you with a complicated expression, like she is simultaneously having several different feelings about you and what you just did.

The phone is silent.

"Charles?" you say.

"Have I mentioned that you learn way too fucking fast?"

(What will Sonia Turk decide to do after hearing Charles's arguments?)

[ ][DO] Test the treatment right away. Post the recipe to the Internet. Start trying to arrange immediate public demonstrations. People are dying now.
[ ][DO] Sonia will at least take another week to think about this before doing anything irrevocable.
[ ][DO] Maybe unleashing massive powers of unknown origin on the Earth is actually not such a good idea until the larger situation is better understood.

[ ][TEST] Sonia will test the Ero Treatment on herself.
[ ][TEST] Surely this ought to be tried on a terminal patient first, or someone equally desperate.
[ ][TEST] So far as Sonia is concerned, this treatment ought not to be tested on anyone without more extensive study.

(The DO option for "post the recipe to the Internet" is incompatible with the TEST option "ought not to be tried on anyone", and if both win, whichever option received more total votes will override the other.)

(Sonia's choices do not prevent Cindy from using the Ero Cure on Felice or her mother.)

Spoiler: Author's note

I know that "convey the true magnitude" didn't win, but after I started to write Sonia Turk's part, I realized that she'd kind of seen enough already to convey that quite a lot was at stake. So Sonia Turk is still not exactly taking this in stride, even though Starry hasn't gone out of her way to make the real magnitudes plain.

It's possible this will be the last fast update for a bit. I'm not sure.

5.11.4 [ST,CA,TA]: The Debate in the Beginning

This might not have been one of your better ideas.

Charles keeps his composure. Charles stays calm. He has to. He's not the one in charge. You left that decision up to Sonia Turk, so Charles has to be the persuasive one, the salesman.

Sonia Turk is a lot more passionate. She knows off the top of her head, without having to look it up, how many people die every day of age-related causes.

Sonia says into the phone that she doesn't actually see a moral distinction between Charles telling her to let those people die and Charles personally putting a gun to their heads and pulling a trigger.

You step in at that point and say that you're pretty sure that Charles's intentions are every bit as good as Sonia's. Also, Sonia may end up in the same harem as Charles at some point and you want your harem to maintain good internal relations.

Charles gently, persuasively reminds Sonia that people who want to massively revise all of society do not have a perfect historical track record of making the right decisions, especially when they make them in an enthusiastic rush and without a lot of careful consideration.

Sonia, speaking more calmly now, tells Charles that she thinks the researchers and doctors who run around curing people actually have a pretty good track record compared to the would-be rulers and lawmakers. She says the bad track record belongs to people who try to restrain the flow of knowledge in order to preserve the status quo and its power structures.

Charles gently, persuasively mentions that nobody in this conversation knows what the hell is going on in the big picture. He asks if Sonia really thinks it's a good idea to unleash huge powers of unknown origin on the entire planet without further investigation.

Sonia says that whatever force is at work here, it seems reasonably benevolent, or at least directed at non-malicious goals such as responding to Starry. It doesn't have the type of horrific bad record that actual human oligarchies have in real life. She's far more terrified of the Cure being kept from the public or made too expensive for poor people. Human beings are known to be malevolent like that.

You hesitantly speak up and say that if the forces in play were malicious, hypothetically speaking, they wouldn't actually have to wait for anyone's permission to fuck things up. You don't say aloud anything about the ERO 75 perks list or what they imply about the Erogame's true power level being enough to easily destroy the world.

Sonia says into the phone that she can imagine bad outcomes coming from this situation and they don't stem from curing too many people of Alzheimer's. They stem from the Cure falling into the hands of a powerful faction that doles it out to cooperative oligarchs. Sonia says that it would be horrifically easy to go into the DNA specification and disable the trigger that makes the Cure transmissible if somebody takes a megadose of vitamin B7. She says that she's considering posting the Cure to the Internet immediately just to make sure that never happens.

Charles's voice hitches only slightly as he wonders if it would be such a terrible idea to institute a one-week cooldown period before making massive changes to human society using biotechnology from a poorly-understood source.

Sonia says that Charles does not need to explain to her the concept of deliberation or its use. But she knows herself well enough to be certain that at the end of a week she'd decide to go ahead anyway. That being the case, killing another 700,000 people by waiting one extra week is, in fact, a terrible idea.

Charles notes that there are 7,000,000,000 people on the planet who might pay the costs if this contagious virus turns out to do something unannounced, which is 10,000 times more than 700,000 if he's counting the zeroes right. Charles says that under other circumstances he would advocate in favor of decreasing the regulatory expense of new medical treatments and shortening FDA approval times, but this is really, seriously taking things too far.

Sonia says that she can't conceive of any test regime that would let them trust this virus in the scenario where it actually contains a hidden payload, put there by hypothetical powers that could obviously destroy the world directly without waiting on FDA approval. She says that the decision still comes down to go or no go and this is obviously a go.

Charles says that he finds this to be an interesting reply. Charles says that an argument about how difficult it would be to detect any hidden gotchas should maybe not weigh in favor of immediate action.

Sonia says that her point is that this comes down to an issue of trust, in a case where there's no obvious way to increase trust, and that she might as well go ahead. She says that people can decide for themselves whether to be first in line to try the Cure, or to wait on longer-term reports or more extensive trials.

Charles says that Starry can attest to him having also said something along those lines, about the importance of consent. Charles says however that while people being able to decide for themselves is important, it isn't enough to absolve you from all consequences. In real life, the competition for jobs, and also in this case the competition for mates, can make a mockery of consent.

Sonia says that she agrees this is a subtle issue. Sonia observes that the non-hypothetical problems the Cure is targeting are not subtle. Sonia says that a significant fraction of the seven billion people Charles mentioned are frail and sick right now, and that this is known to be unpleasant. She wonders if Charles would have a different perspective on all these complicated subtle issues if he knew what it was like to be old.

You speak up, because Charles is still being very polite, because he has to be. You tell Sonia that your common sense is pretty certain that many old people would be backing up Charles here, including Charles's very intelligent and well-educated and historically literate beloved dead grandfather, and that Charles is too polite to say this.

Charles says it's fine. He's doing fine.

You think but don't say that you wish you'd had more foresight about arranging the circumstances under which Charles and Sonia meet. This isn't a good way to have your harem members meet. It isn't symmetrical or fair.

Sonia says that more generally, she is worried that Charles is one of society's winners rather than one of society's losers and that people like him or herself have no right to defend the status quo.

Charles says that he isn't going to argue anything about the status quo ossifying if old people live forever and keep all their wealth and power---

Sonia says he'd better not, because that hasn't actually happened, it's not like the status quo doesn't have all sorts of static power structures anyway, and it is debatable whether this is worth murdering people by withholding medicine. Also, she bets that making people more vigorous, adding a lot of expected future lifespan, and setting all the hormone levels back to their average levels at age 25, will change everyone's concept of what it means to be 60.

Charles says that he agrees, which is why he wasn't going to make that argument. Charles says that her prediction sounds entirely reasonable to him, and he'd make the same prediction himself. Charles says that he does not put infinite trust in his own sense of reasonableness and his own predictions.

Sonia says that every time somebody deploys new technology, somebody claims it's going to destroy society, and they call for a cooldown period for careful thinking, or back in the old days, for a Luddite revolution. She says that her experience as a scientist is that in practice this only produces useless verbal masturbation defending the status quo, and that all the progress humanity has ever achieved has come from the people who went ahead anyway.

Charles says that blindly preserving the status quo isn't what he's about. He knows that everything changes, and that everything that's common practice now was once an unproven innovation. If the human species had invented the Cure for itself, he would be cheering that humanity had become a wise, mature, powerful race that was about to gain longer-lived elders. This isn't that situation. This isn't like humanity's past history. This event is being forced out of its proper time by an inhuman force intervening to give humanity what humanity could not have created for itself.

Sonia asks who is setting this schedule that has a proper time for particular technological developments. She says that every human being on the planet including him is spending all day long using technologies they couldn't have personally invented.

Charles says he agrees, but he still thinks that this case is noticeably different from usual in ways that could potentially have worse outcomes than usual. Charles says that he doesn't think God sets technology development schedules, but he can't help but think about how if this development had happened later, it might have happened after humanity had developed fusion power and Mars colonies and it would be less of a burden on the ecology.

Sonia tells Charles he did not just go there. Sonia tells him that people aren't burdens.

Charles says that he didn't say people are burdens, he was observing that they do in fact put burdens on the ecology, and that humanity is sort of barely managing to handle that right now. If he was an alien trying to sabotage a young species, one possible tactic would be handing it extremely attractive population-increasing technology they couldn't bring themselves to resist, at this exact stage in its development.

Sonia says that death is not an acceptable solution to overpopulation. Sonia says that maybe some of the huge quantities of intellectual labor freed up from fighting cancer can get to work on fusion power instead. Sonia observes that wealthy countries tend to have lower reproductive rates. Sonia notes that the Cure does not cause women to generate more ova after they reach age 40.

Charles says he shouldn't have brought up the subject, and that he mostly agrees with Sonia on this point. Charles says he also wants humanity to end up with Star Trek levels of technology. He's just concerned about how to get there, and making sure that nothing derails the train of human progress onto weirder tracks, like, say, hypersexualized alien-inspired supertechnology.

You lean into Tammi, who's sitting beside you on the sofa, and Tammi hugs you when she feels you shudder. You are pretty certain that ship is going to sail. Sail off into much, much weirder and sexier seas than Charles is afraid of. Nothing can stop that except killing you, and you don't know if even that would work. You don't know if the Erogame ends when you die. You don't know if it's possible for you to die within the Erogame or if that just sends you to a save screen. And you don't have it in you to die, not now when you're finally alive. You don't know how to say it, you don't know how to tell him, but Charles is valiantly fighting a battle that was lost the instant you saw pink-violet text. Maybe the Earth still has good futures, but it doesn't have normal ones anymore.

Sonia says that so far as human progress goes, this is the cure for obesity and Alzheimer's and cancer and Parkinson's and heart disease and osteoporosis and frailty. There's versions of this choice that would be seriously debatable by good people, but this isn't one of them.

Charles says that he's not asking for the Cure to never be released. He's suggesting taking more than 20 minutes in which to think through the consequences.

Sonia says that people have been thinking through the consequences of life extension for quite a while, thank you, and she doubts that conversation is going to get any further than it has already.

Charles says that these particular precise circumstances with the inscrutable sexualized superpowers and this exact virus have not been thought through for more than 20 minutes. He wonders if it would be a good idea to open up a text editor and start listing some of the points they've been going through, so that it's possible to consider them all in one place and notice if any considerations seem to be missing.

Sonia says that she knows perfectly well what maneuver Charles is trying to pull here. Sonia asks Charles if he'd be willing to literally shoot one old person every second as the price of the two of them taking longer to talk about this. Sonia says that the only reason she's still on this phone is because the startup she's ordering from isn't going to start work until tomorrow morning anyway.

Charles says that he sees Sonia's point, but he really doesn't think that's the right way to look at this. He could equally argue that one death balances against a zero point zero zero zero zero zero some more zeroes and something percent reduction in the risk to the other seven billion people on Earth---but he doesn't think that's the right way to look at things either. Charles thinks that it makes more sense to look at the historical track record of great events that have actually had good outcomes, and observe that a lot of them did involve careful and precise deliberation. He mentions Marcus Adan's favorite example of the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. Charles thinks that the lesson of history shows that the balance of the people with the most urgent and awful plights, versus the risk to everyone else, isn't always well-struck at undertaking massive social changes enthusiastically rather than deliberately. Charles wonders if more changes are going to be unleashed after this, to save yet other people in trouble, and how many times in a row it will be possible to rush ahead before at least one change goes horrifically wrong. Charles says that it seems to him that somebody could decide on waiting another week to learn more about the bizarre alien powers they're unleashing on Earth, without that making them a bad person.

Sonia Turk is striding around the room with the phone she's holding, like she can't sit down anymore. She's speaking in a voice that isn't sharp, that deliberately isn't sharp, a voice that sounds controlled.

Tammi is clutching at you where she's sitting beside you on the sofa.

"Are you okay?" you whisper to her.

"I---I don't, I can't think like either of them are thinking," Tammi whispers back. "I can't imagine trying to argue with either of them. It's scary just overhearing it! It's like being back at the beginning of time, listening to God debating Lucifer before he fell, and not knowing which of them is which."

"I'm pretty sure Charles maps onto God and Professor Turk maps onto Lucifer," you whisper to Tammi.

"That's not what I meant," Tammi whispers back.

(The phone discussion is continuing in-story and the previous vote on its outcome is still open! Since one of the leading plans is very near another and the options fall along a continuous-ish spectrum, my current intent is to go with the median vote on that spectrum in order to not incentivize strategic voting. That is, there should be no "splitting the vote" issue to worry about, and voters do not need to coordinate jumping ship in order to achieve a plurality.)

5.11.5 [ST,CA,TA]: Final Decision

Spoiler: Tally Results

Author's note: As these votes fell on a spectrum and there was no majority, I went with the median vote.

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 118 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 3513-3696]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

-[X] She'll rope Charles in to help with the "how to do it right" part. He seems reasonably sensible, he already knows, and it's useful to have another person to discuss such things with.
No. of Votes: 13
Sirrocco
Blackshard
Chulup
CTCatapult
Diraniola
Gavinfoxx
Gingganz
Greckle
january1may
MrBTXz
Skelm
tilkau
wille179

Task: DO

[X][DO] Test the treatment right away. Post the recipe to the Internet. Start trying to arrange immediate public demonstrations. People are dying now.
No. of Votes: 23
ZenithOfLust
askldjflkajskje
BFldyq
Derpmind
Edifier
Eler0
Elitist Oars
End of Line
Ephemeral
fictionfan
Flashbunny
Hyperion042
insignia33
jsnider3
masterax2000
napkintooth
Octopice
P90Techie
Quentin
ScrewFate
Theminimanx
Void Between Comments
zup

[X][DO] Sonia is *going* to release this to the public, as long as the test works out okay, but Charles convinces her to take a bit of time to try to figure out how to do it right, rather than just throwing it out there on the internet and letting a lot of people kill themselves because they were desperate and didn't have ice baths ready.
No. of Votes: 21
Sirrocco
anon101
batrax
Blackshard
Chulup
CTCatapult
Diraniola
Gavinfoxx
Gingganz
Greckle
january1may
Le_nerd
matacusa
MrBTXz
Prime 2.0
Skelm
The_Wanderer
Thrice.Great
tilkau
wille179
zachol

[X][DO] Sonia will at least take another week to think about this before doing anything irrevocable.
No. of Votes: 11
Proxima
General Lewdendorf
Jirachi
Myardius
Nyx
pepperjack
Raucanum
Spectral Waltz
Theli
wasprider
Xenia

[X][DO] Safety testing will take months, perhaps even years. This needs to be started quickly, but not so quickly that we make a mistake. Patents may need to be bought out, or agreements come to. People will die that this treatment could have saved - but that is true of every cure ever created, and this cure is itself dangerous. This kludged together miracle could have downsides no one expects, it would be irresponsible in the extreme to simply post it online and trust the public to perform it correctly. Perhaps a safer, longer procedure could be developed.
No. of Votes: 1
Guile

[ X][DO] Maybe unleashing massive powers of unknown origin on the Earth is actually not such a good idea until the larger situation is better understood.
No. of Votes: 1
Malthkind

Task: TEST

[X][TEST] Sonia will test the Ero Treatment on herself.
No. of Votes: 32
ZenithOfLust
Alkaiser009
batrax
CTCatapult
Edifier
Eler0
Elitist Oars
End of Line
General Lewdendorf
Hyperion042
insignia33
Jirachi
jsnider3
Lavida
Le_nerd
Myardius
Nyx
P90Techie
Proxima
Quentin
Raucanum
ScrewFate
Spectral Waltz
The_Wanderer
Theli
Theminimanx
tilkau
Void Between Comments
wasprider
Xenia
zachol
zup

[X][TEST] Sonia will test the Ero Treatment on herself, after making sure she's as prepared as she can be.
No. of Votes: 12
Sirrocco
Blackshard
Chulup
Diraniola
Gavinfoxx
Gingganz
Greckle
january1may
MrBTXz
Skelm
Thrice.Great
wille179

[X][TEST] Surely this ought to be tried on a terminal patient first, or someone equally desperate.
No. of Votes: 7
Ephemeral
askldjflkajskje
Derpmind
masterax2000
napkintooth
Octopice
Prime 2.0

[X][TEST] So far as Sonia is concerned, this treatment ought not to be tested on anyone without more extensive study.
No. of Votes: 1
Guile

[X][TEST] The treatment was developed for two specific people, we ought to test it on those first and get as much data as we can from those two, before we test it on anyone with less guarantees. Then Turk should test on people with less body fat to remove and work her way through hasty mock clinical trials. Our Mom is the best first test subject, especially if we get True Love Conquers All.
No. of Votes: 1
theonebutcher

Task: ADMINISTER

[X][ADMINISTER] Have the cure administered by people in sexy nurse outfits. Always.
No. of Votes: 1
DarthSquidious

Total No. of Voters: 61

…it goes better than you expected, in the end.

Charles is shocked, and even you're surprised, when Charles asks Sonia if she's confident enough in these unknown forces to be the first human test subject. Sonia says of course she's going to try it on herself first. You were wondering if you had enough faith to test the Ero Virus on Mom, whom you love, or Felice, whom you don't love enough to bring her back from the dead if something goes wrong. You were imagining inverse-sliding to somebody hugely overweight who was just about to commit suicide when you walked in the door… but no, Sonia seems gung-ho to be first. She says somebody has to go first, and if not her then who.

But Sonia starts speaking a lot more hesitantly after Charles starts quizzing her on exactly how people are going to end up believing in this cure, how to ensure everyone knows about the required ice bath, what happens if somebody activates contagiousness and kisses somebody and the store is out of Powerthirst Mauve. Charles asks what she's doing to prevent the Cure from being traced back to Starry.

Sonia glances over at you, where you're watching. Maybe she's starting to understand that this world-wrenching upheaval isn't a one-time deal.

Charles asks Sonia how she's going to credit the contributors to the Cure, if it shouldn't be directly traceable. He asks if the contributors gave their permission to publish their work. This produces a surprisingly long hesitation on Sonia's end, before she says weakly that lots of lives are at stake but she sees Charles's point and she'll try to think of something. You guess that academic types have stronger scruples about some things than others.

Charles puts it to Sonia that even if she wants to avoid any unnecessary delays, this is the type of thing that requires planning in order to not straight-up kill somebody who has an allergy to one of the Cure's components or who just doesn't know about the ice bath. Sonia says she agrees. Charles says thoughtfully that maybe there isn't much point in debating whether to rush straight ahead, if there isn't a plan in place and it's not known what's being rushed.

Sonia says that the next step is to get the virus synthesized and for her to test it on herself, and for her to install dead-woman switches on posting the Cure specification all over the Internet in case somehow Homeland Security manages to bust in the door before morning. She doesn't know yet how to do that, but she can probably figure it out if she stays awake for a few more hours.

You notice that she's no longer talking about immediately publishing the Cure outright.

Sonia's voice slows a bit as she thinks out loud about how to arrange for an ice bath, and for two or three spotters who can last 24 hours. She thinks out loud about getting a new hotel room near Norville's largest hospital in case something goes wrong.

Sonia wonders out loud whether taking old-fashioned non-digital photographs with the negatives available would help refute people saying that everything was photoshopped. She wonders whether any of the nearby shops sell non-digital cameras. You think that old people sure are old.

Sonia admits she hasn't come up with a concrete plan for how to introduce the Cure to the world. She glances at you again, and you wonder if she's just now realizing that it might be prudent for her to stay on Starry's boyfriend's good side. Sonia says she wouldn't mind talking to Charles more once she has a plan. She says she's sorry if she spoke sharply, she just cares a lot about some things, and that she appreciates that Charles is trying to protect humanity the same as her. She would rather have coffee with someone like Charles than with someone who didn't care one way or the other.

Charles says he doesn't want oligarchs controlling this technology either. He says that it sounds like it takes some exotic tech to synthesize the cure, tech that governments might be able to easily control. He worries that the number of initial carriers who can spread the cure by kissing might be limited by Powerthirst Mauve supply, especially if she tries anything within a local geographic area. Sonia says it doesn't literally have to be Powerthirst and that there are other compounded electrolyte additives that should work too. Charles says he's thinking about how to make sure, if this does happen, nobody can get a monopoly, and Sonia nods though Charles can't see her. She says she's happy to talk about that more with Charles later.

Sonia switches off the phone. The older woman turns to look at your sofa, where you're huddled into Tammi and Tammi is huddled into you.

You guess… you guess that didn't literally go as badly as possible from Charles's perspective, but your mind is still imagining him breaking up with you.

"Are you doing all right?" says Professor Sonia Turk, her voice gentler than when she was talking on the phone.

"N-n-not really," you say.

"I'm sorry," Sonia said. "I'm just realizing---you didn't ask for any of this. You didn't ask for the great power, or for the great responsibility either. I had to work up all my courage just to stay in the penthouse instead of running home before midnight, when I realized what was going on. I thought then that you… I thought you were more in control of the situation than you were. But now I understand what the metaphor was really about, during our earlier conversation about Cinderella and the fairy godmother. You just wanted to go to the ball."

"Yeah," you whisper, but loudly enough for her to hear.

Sonia brings her hands together and bows to you, what looks like a formal gesture of devotion in some religion you haven't heard of. "On behalf of every human being alive and many more yet to be born, thank you for also taking the time to wish to your fairy godmother for cures to all major diseases," she says.

"You're welcome," you whisper.

You don't feel as good about that as you probably should.

The Professor gives you a serious look. "If you're going to change your mind and try to stop me, this is your final decision point," she says. "I plan to read up on dead-woman automatic Internet postings very soon after I leave."

You shake your head. "It's fine," you whisper.

Sonia places your cellphone back into your hands, like she's handing you a relic. She then goes over to the professorial tweed vest resting on a chair, and takes her own cellphone from a pocket. She thumbs in commands, and then looks up at you again. "I sent your starry-starr address a very important email just now," she says. "It contains the correct DNA sequence. I'm sorry, I didn't know if I could trust you. I didn't know what you were."

"Oh," Tammi breathes beside you. She bonks herself in the forehead with a fist. "Tickle my titties till Tuesday, I should not have missed that."

"I don't get it," you say in a weak voice.

"The professor doesn't have a DNA-correcting algorithm," Tammi says. "She just saved the original email she got from Professor Samara, made thirty-two random changes, and emailed the results back. So that she could keep the real cure out of our hands if we turned out to be bad guys. It's like a moral to the story: if we hadn't respected her choices and tried to stop her instead, we might have died."

You think about this for a second. Then you snort, and shake your head. It's not nice, but remembering the little bit more you know than anyone else here is making you feel better. "Thank you for trusting me, Professor Turk," you say. "But be sure to send Biotinker the version I got first, not the version you just sent me."

"What?" says Sonia.

"There really were thirty-two errors and you corrected them," you say. You look at her poleaxed face, and suppress a smile. "It's like a moral to the story: If you'd tried to keep the cure to yourself, you'd have died."

"But I was just inserting bases at random!" the Professor says, swaying slightly on her feet. "And then I grabbed random swathes of DNA and deleted them!"

"Which I'm sure you did perfectly, so thank you for your contribution to the science orgy," you say. You shrug. "That's kind of how my power works."

Sonia looks down at the cellphone in her hand. "This does make me slightly more worried about testing this on myself," she says.

"Well now you know how Charles feels about testing it on Earth."

Professor Sonia Turk shakes her head. "I said slightly," she says. "The same reasoning still applies. Somebody has to be first, and this is too finely tailored to humans for an animal model to be informative…" She hesitates. "Are you certain my randomly modified version is correct?"

You frown. Actually, on a literary level, either of the morals could be valid. "I guess… is there some way you can look at the changes you made and see if they made sense, like, the new version specifies valid amino acids and the old one doesn't?"

"If we're going to start distrusting any of the steps in the process…" Sonia says. Then she shakes her head. "No," she says, "I shall send Biotinker my corrected version at once, and then I'll check whether my random changes did produce valid-looking DNA. If they did, I'll consider the process as a whole to have been validated. If not, I'll halt the order."

You nod. "That makes sense," you say. "It's the sort of thing Charles might advise us to do, since he's not big on charging blindly ahead."

"Yes, point taken," Sonia says. She sighs softly. "I'm going to call Biotinker tonight on the off-chance they have somebody burning the midnight oil, to get the order in as soon as possible. I'll be requesting rush delivery at a different Norville hotel, not this one. And I won't use my real name." She drums her fingers on her thighs. "I doubt that fifty doses would cost much more than five doses, and that would leave us more room for maneuver if we have to flee the state carrying the most valuable cargo in the world. But it does raise the question of pricing. Why are you sure it's possible to negotiate the job down to two thousand dollars? Taking into account rush delivery and the complexity of the work, I'd expect at least ten thousand dollars, even if Biotinker is from a parallel Earth with better tooling."

You frown. "It's more that two thousand dollars was my budget…" Oh, wait, you think you see how this is playing out. Let's see, Tammi sent you the reimbursement money for the penthouse room, but maybe that outcome wasn't certain, or the money might take time to get from Paypal to your bank account. So if you needed $2000 in the bank to start the quest, some of which was spent on the penthouse… "Uh, just send me one thousand dollars' worth of however many doses you buy. Like, if you buy fifty doses for ten thousand dollars, send me five of them."

Professor Turk's eyebrows rise. "I really wouldn't have thought to charge you for this, given your other contributions."

"No," Tammi says before you can start to agonize about this (not because you're reluctant to have more money, but because of the Erogame implications of you not needing to spend money and whether that implies you've gone off-rails for the quest by inducting Sonia). "Clear ownership is important, it shouldn't be just sharing. I also need… eighteen doses for Danni's and my family. And I'll pay for them too." She thinks another moment. "In cash. Cash seems smart."

"You do know you can spread the Cure by kissing, right?" you say. "Well, that and a vitamin B7 megadose that you take for a week and then stop. If you want to save money, you can dose just yourself and then kiss your family members."

Both Sonia and Tammi give you strange looks, as if they thought this was an odd time to be concerned about saving thousands of dollars.

There follows some more discussion as Tammi says that she and Danni have seen worse things than somebody pissing into a bathtub, and they can act as spotters for Professor Turk. Tammi says she'll take on responsibility for buying Powerthirst Mauve at Costco, and Sonia Turk says she'll try to calculate how much fluid should be required as a factor of excess fat mass and senescent cell clearance, and then multiply by 10 (since running out is fatal). You say you also need enough Powerthirst Mauve for two people, around 150 pounds and 50 pounds overweight. Right, that's also part of the total quest expense. Sonia remembers out loud that protein shakes are required too, especially since she doesn't have 70kg of fat cells to cannibalize, and maybe collagen should be in the mix if her dermis is going to grow that fast.

When it's all been said, Sonia looks at you hesitantly. "Ah…" she says, "it's late, and I still need to call Biotinker before I sleep. And then check the DNA corrections before I sleep, in case I need to suspend the order before morning. I have so many more questions, but… it's not as if I won't see you again. Right? You're not going to slide away, your portal isn't going to close and leave me in my own universe?"

She sounds like she's trying to convince herself.

"Don't worry," you say, and smile back at her. It's a wobbly smile, but you mean it. "Our story can't be over yet. We haven't had a sex scene."

Sonia chuckles uncertainly, like she also doesn't know whether you're joking. "I don't want to bother you, or become a bother, which I know I could easily be," she says. "But please do call me if there's any reason you want me around. Any time of day or night. Now or in the future. You can talk to me while I'm in the ice bath, if I'm lucid then and you feel like talking. It seems evident that you are the most important person in the world, and that the events that happen around you are the most important events in the world."

You look down at your hands, in your lap. You're afraid of thinking that way. It doesn't seem healthy.

"I am reluctant to say this," the Professor says. "But in all honesty, I can't say I think much of your boyfriend in certain regards. Or maybe I just don't understand him. If Charles cares about you or humanity, it seems like he should be here right now, not trying to do this over a phone."

You stare down at your hands some more. "Normality matters," you say. Normality is a precious, limited resource that's rapidly burning away. "He has a job. Throwing away everything in your life immediately---things don't necessarily work out better if you do that. Charles and I both understand that."

You sound like you're trying to convince yourself.

"Oh, right," Sonia murmurs. "I suppose I am throwing my old life away, aren't I. At least until rejuvenation becomes an accepted fact. Tomorrow I had better convert as many of my assets as possible into more, ah, accessible forms, in case changing my appearance hinders my access to conventional bank accounts. As much cash as they'll let me withdraw, and I suppose cryptocurrency if I can figure out how to set that up. I don't suppose either of you happen to know where I can purchase a fake version of my real driver's license that falsifies my birthdate and will have my newly updated photo?"

"I'll look into it," Tammi says. She looks over at you. "It's about time I checked on my hotel room," she says, and smiles slightly. "I bet all the batteries are dead by now. Thanks for everything, Starry."

Sonia leaves, and Tammi leaves with her, and you're left alone in a slightly used penthouse.

5.11.6 [CA]: Pave the Way

You wander around the slightly used penthouse for a time, pointlessly tidying minor messes that are going to be hotel-cleaned anyway. The cuddle-room bed isn't dirty, if you want to sleep in the penthouse tonight for the short hours that remain until you need to wake up and make an uncomfortable decision.

You know that you're procrastinating. There's something else you need to do before you sleep, and you know it. It's just… painful.

Your boyfriend doesn't usually say things as terrible as what your badbrains imagine he'll say. Right?

This, this scenario wasn't actually such a clever way of avoiding Charles blaming you. Fine, he made a mistake earlier today. From his viewpoint, you're still the person who went ahead and built the super-advanced technology. He heard you put the decision in the hands of Sonia Turk, and then you didn't take Charles's side during their debate.

Eventually you muster the strength to pick up your phone again, and dial a contact. He'll have just pulled up to whatever motel he's staying at overnight, or… anyway, he'll have time to talk to you.

"Charles," you say to your phone once it picks up. Your mouth feels dry. "This is Cindy. I'm alone now."

"Give me a second. I'm almost inside my apartment."

There's a sound of a door being unlocked. Your brain pauses to accept that Charles does in fact have an apartment, that he isn't always on the road going from one motel to another. You wonder what the inside of his house looks like. If you had Ero-Travel you could commute there whenever he's home. Assuming Charles ever wants to see you again.

Charles's voice comes from the phone again.

"W-well," he says, "I guess I didn't---pass that test."

He sounds like he's holding back tears, or maybe like he's trying not to throw up.

"Charles, no," you say, your voice wobbling as your mind catches up to his actual perspective. From his perspective, you told him things were his fault and then handed him an impossible task with the whole Earth at stake. You gave him that responsibility, and then, as he sees it, he failed. He p-probably doesn't feel very good about that.

"I, I'd be lying if I said I was fine with this. It sounded to me like any chance of Earth taking things slowly and carefully just went poof. As soon as she has a plan she's just going to do it. I couldn't even convince her to wait a week to double-check her own thinking. Am I, am I wrong in thinking that's plain insane? Why couldn't I get her to see that?"

No, you think, no, Charles, don't blame yourself, it was my fault, but you can't say it, he'll break up with you if he believes you. Nothing you can think of saying sounds like it'd get Charles to stop blaming himself without making him blame you. It's obvious that you are only other person who---

"Ch-charles," you say into the phone, "don't blame yourself, it's, I mean, my improbability field---it did it, not you."

You're a lying coward.

And then you realize, with a lurching shock, that---

"You mean," says the phone, "your mating field forced this to happen."

"Yeah," you say.

You realize you're not lying.

"That---that doesn't sound good. That doesn't sound good at all."

"Charles," you say to the phone, "I have a mother now, a human mother with wrinkles. Cinderella Sheen has an overweight friend. I was just going to help them, that was all I started out trying to do, and then---and then I improbably put you on speakerphone in front of a biologist and you improbably made a big deal about that. It wasn't your fault."

"You… didn't sound like you disagreed with the biologist, though."

You stare at the phone, your mind racing as you try to figure out how to keep Charles as your boyfriend. You shouldn't be thinking like this, you need to start being honest with him, you're a sick person and an awful human being but you can't lose one of your only sources of support in this, you're the most important person in the world and the whole world could be worse off if you lose Charles so it must be okay to lie---

"Charles," you say, with an unsteady voice. "Charles, my improbability field---it doesn't believe in taking things slowly. It's been---good to me, so far, a lot of the time my mating field seems willing to go in a direction I want. But that's while I've been going along with it. I don't know what happens if I start trying to fight it instead." Well, actually you do know, you'd instantly lose. There wouldn't be a fight. Eroges would continue happening to you, they'd just be different eroges. "I, I realized," just now, in fact, "but I didn't know how to say it on the phone before," that being the lie, "that all this might be an outcome my improbability field set up. That it wanted something like this to happen. I was afraid," as of one minute ago, but it's only a white lie to pretend you thought of this earlier, right, "that if it was my mating field, if we'd improbably ended up with a biologist so bent on acting immediately that not even Charles could talk her into waiting a week---if I tried to fight that---I was afraid that all the fat, old, unsexy people---would instead---just go away."

There's a shocked intake of breath from the phone. "Your improbability field wants to kill everyone who isn't a potential mate?"

"I---I don't think so," you say. "More like, my improbability field wants a sexy ambiance for the world in which I'm dating. Homosexual men might still exist, even if they don't want to mate with me, because yaoi is hot. And, and my field wouldn't kill unsexy people. They'd just… not be there anymore. Like losing sight of somebody in a crowd, and not being able to find them again. Other people wouldn't remember that they'd existed. Or there'd be people there with the same names, but they wouldn't remember being fat, they wouldn't remember a time when being old meant being wrinkly---"

"That's equivalent to killing everyone! It's erasing everyone's minds and starting over!"

"Maybe, or---or maybe it's like the universe turning its head and looking in a different direction. I don't know. But if that's what my mating field wants, it would be better if the world got sexier through the cure instead, right? That way the world is still made of mostly sexy people like my field wants, but, they're people who were cured and had nice things happen to them, like I wanted. It'd be a new sexy world that grows out of this world, after advanced technology cures obesity and old age and the least convenient venereal diseases. And not, not that the world we knew just isn't there one day."

"FUCKING CHRIST!"

Now you know what it takes to scare Charles. You're scared, too, now that you've realized what was really happening tonight. "I did think about committing suicide," you say into the phone with a sick feeling in your stomach. "But I can't bring myself to, and, I'm not sure it would work if I did. And besides, this is a good thing for fat people and old people and a lot of sick people, isn't it? My improbability field did listen to me. It didn't make all the unsexy people just disappear. I, I don't want to make my mating field sound worse than it is, it hasn't done anything that awful yet. But there's something huge that wants---sex, romance---and I'm not sure it disappears if I die. If I can even die. Charles, you can't keep humanity's future on track. Earth may still have good futures, I think there's hope for that, but it doesn't have normal futures. That battle was lost the moment---it was lost on Sunday afternoon."

You realize that you're crying, and not because of what Charles is hearing, but because of what you're saying to him. It doesn't even feel like you're crying for the right thing. It feels like you're mourning the wrong dead, shedding the right tears for the wrong reasons, because you don't understand the bullshit metaphysics of the real tragedy---and, and still something was lost.

"Is there any way you can get your improbability field under control?" Charles's voice says hoarsely.

"I, I don't know how!"

"I thought---I thought you said it would be a month before you got powerful again, and that was if you did the correct ritual to lose your virginity."

"I… guess I underestimated how fast…"

You've never heard Charles sound like this. It sounds like he's frightened, and despairing, and he's realizing now that the world can't be unended.

Charles didn't ask for this any more than you did. He didn't ask to have Starry land in his lap. He's older than you but not much older. And you've been---you've been dumping your burdens onto his shoulders as fast as you can, because you thought he was infinitely stronger than you.

"I did this, didn't I," the phone says. Charles's voice is nauseous with dawning horror. "I sealed the alien part of your consciousness and destroyed the only knowledge that could have saved us. This is all my fault."

"Charles, no! I was having trouble with my improbability field before you did anything, you saw that! You---what you did gave it a limiter, a leash, I can turn it down to---"

No other words come from the cellphone.

And you know that this isn't working.

This long-distance relationship isn't working, and neither are the lies.

"Charles," you say, you weren't going to say this, but you feel like the words are being torn out of you, "what are you doing in Nevada? Why aren't you here with me? The world is ending. You should be in California."

A despairing half-laugh comes from the cellphone. "That sounds like the slogan of a San Francisco real estate company that rents office space to AI startups."

You don't say anything, waiting out the silence. How little affection have you earned from your boyfriend that he doesn't want to move in with you and get blowjobs every morning, not even in the face of Armageddon?

"I---I don't know. You could be right. It---it's not so much that I think my job is more important than this. I thought it would be good if we had a more normal courtship. I didn't think it was wise to press the eject button on my entire life but---but maybe I should, if things are happening this quickly."

"C-can I try to summon you? Just---arrange for your company to send you here, when I need you? Do I have your permission?"

"Yeah."

Do it, Erogame. Please. That should be part of the in-story logic as Charles experiences it, right? He knows I have a mating field and that he's my mate.

"And I just got an email. A nearby company we do business with got a sudden rush order while all their couriers were already scheduled, and they're paying to borrow me. I should get into Norville tomorrow in the late afternoon." Charles pauses. "Where should I meet you afterwards?"

You give him your home address. "That's Cindy's house. Fair warning, Mom wants to have dinner with my new boyfriend," you say. "And she doesn't know about sexy rooftop police chases."

"Under other circumstances I might prioritize being nervous about that." Another pause. "You've been keeping your mating field off my back this entire time, haven't you? Thanks for doing that. I honestly appreciate it. I---I'm sorry, but I have a long schedule tomorrow, and it's going to take me a while to get to sleep tonight after all this. I should stop talking and go get ready for bed. See you tomorrow, Cindy."

"See you soon, Charles," you say past the lump in your throat.

"Bye."

"Bye."

Charles hangs up the phone.

You stare at the cellphone in your hand, feeling sickened again.

The prospect of telling Charles about the Erogame, about what really happened on Monday, that you lied to him and led him on and lured him to commit rape---you don't know if you can make yourself do it. You'd certainly break up with you over that, if you weren't the most important person in the world.

But, but this isn't going well. Charles doesn't know what's really happening. And you need somebody who knows. Someone who isn't your mother, whom you're comfortable talking to about all the sticky details, and who can hug you in a non-motherly way.

Maybe you'll scrape up the courage to try telling Charles about the Erogame, and the Erogame won't let him understand what you're saying. Like the Mad Scientist pseudo-Cindy, whose colleagues couldn't study the Erogame itself. There won't be enough Power of True Love between you and him, or whatever it was that let you tell Mom.

And then later on, when the two of you do love each other enough, you'll be able to tell Charles that it was literally impossible for him to hear the truth earlier. And you'll just leave out the part where you didn't even think of trying.

If deep down that's the outcome you want, does that make it your fault if it happens?

You look up from the phone, at the empty air in front of you. You haven't checked your unread messages yet, but you already know what to expect.

"Status," you whisper to the air.

The number comes as no surprise when you see it. You already knew.

The real meaning of the quest that sets in motion the changing of the world.

It's what happens to pave the way for ERO 30.

Σnd 0f β00k 2​

6.a (BOOK 3): A Tidal Wave of Casual Sex

Daniella Cullough, The New Yorker, March issue.

A Tidal Wave of Casual Sex is Approaching the US

The device I'm holding is the lightweight version, 500 grams instead of 800, and 20,000 yen cheaper than its heavier counterpart. It's about the length of my hand, as wide as my wrist in one dimension and half that width in another, a cylinder flattened into an ovaloid. The red color scheme makes me think of a can of Coke, half-flattened along its length. My hand feels like it's carrying a third of a laptop.

I stick my finger into the hole on top, and the pain only lasts an instant.

The needle has never been used before. It's crushed, by the device itself, as soon as it's used---for safety reasons, they claim, and it does sound reassuring to know the needles can't be recycled. At $3 a needle, the manufacturer isn't even pretending not to rip us off. But $3 a night isn't much, is it?

A minute after the pinprick, the built-in display begins scrolling.

fertility: safe
HIV: negative
HSV-2: negative
HSV-1: positive, inactive
syphilis: negative
gonorrhea: negative
chlamydia: negative
scabies: negative
hepatitis B: negative

My face feels hot, even though it's just a false positive. I don't have herpes.

"You probably do," says my friend who's showing me their new toy. "A lot of people say that the first time they use a Seifuse. More than half the population has HSV-1 by the time they're in their 40s, and most of the time there's no visible outbreak. That's why the Seifuse checks whether you're shedding the virus, not just whether you have the antibodies."

I have herpes.

Here's how I'm told the flattened Coke can works: When you have HIV, or when you're actively shedding the HSV-1 virus, your cells react and the signs show up in your blood. Gene expression, it's called. So much effort has gone into the technologies around DNA and RNA that checking for RNA fragments in your blood is now faster than a hospital lab waiting for antibodies to bind to viral proteins. The gene expression changes aren't the same for everyone, but when you dump all the data into the latest algorithms it doesn't matter.

The test can be done in a device the size of a flattened Coke can. It can tell whether you have bacterial infections, not just viral ones. The flattened Coke can isn't looking for particles of the disease, it's looking for how your body responds.

The flattened Coke can is called a Seifuse, theoretically pronounced Say-Foo-Seh, actually pronounced Say-fuse. It's been on the market in Japan for 3 months and everyone there is using it. Everyone.

"The Seifuse corporation is now worth more on the private stock markets than Uber," says my friend.

The United States and Europe haven't even begun to consider this device for regulatory approval. People are importing it from Japan anyway, shipping it in packages to friends. Ordering devices off the Internet that turn out to be fakes. Learning how to use websites with scary names like "Tor" and "Silk Road 4."

"I know a guy who flew to Japan, bought a Seifuse, and flew back," my friend says. "It was worth it to him."

I have herpes. But that's okay. My partners will know that I'm not shedding the virus. I just need to pay $1558 to the Seifuse corporation, plus another $3 each time I have sex, for the rest of my life.

All by itself this device would cause a sexual revolution, and it's only half the story.

The other half of the story is a tiny pink-violet pill, like a colored Claritin. The violet pill costs $10 and you need to order it from sketchy-looking Internet suppliers, because it's not approved for manufacture in any country. It's safe, though. The Phase II safety trials have already completed without issue. In three years when the Phase III trials complete, the violet pill will be legal in the US.

The illegal manufacturers are scaling up their shady Internet operations. Scaling them up and up. The price of the knockoff version is expected to drop to $4 per pill in a month, then $1.

What's in the violet pill? The improved version of Addyi. Viagra for girls, version 2. Phemelanotide, the leading drug candidate in a new generation of female libido enhancers.

The violet pill takes half an hour to kick in, instead of the month required for Addyi. Also, unlike Addyi, it works.

I admit it, I tried a prescription for Addyi when it first came out. I watched myself with hawklike vigilance for any signs that men were looking more attractive to me, that I was checking out their bodies, that I was more aware of my own body. That I was becoming interested again in my then-husband. I spent two months agonizing over whether or not I believed the pill was doing anything. My sex life didn't get any worse than it already was after I dropped the prescription, followed not long after by dropping my husband.

I swallow the tiny violet pill in the afternoon, after my latest man of five months gets home from work. He doesn't know.

A timer starts counting up on my cellphone.

The timer says 27:52 when I notice the thought of sex seems interesting.

My partner has always been the one to initiate sex between us. He doesn't say anything, but I can see how surprised he is when I awkwardly turn on flirting skills I haven't used in a decade. I can see how much more surprised he is by how I act in bed. I haven't turned into a porn star, I'm not an actress in an HBO show, I'm not a wild animal. I'm just… there. Participating.

When it's over my partner stares off into the air. You'd have to know him to know that he looks sad. I ask him what's wrong. He says it's nothing. I keep pushing it, interrogating him like the journalistic harpy I am. He admits that he's wondering if I'm having an affair. He's heard that women's sex drives go up when they're having affairs.

Is it that unlikely she'd climb on top during sex, this person I've become? Maybe it is.

I don't tell him about the violet pill. I'm too ashamed that this isn't the real me. That I solved my problems with a pill, instead of working out whatever body issues or shame issues are preventing me from enjoying sex naturally.

Besides. If he knows, he might want me to take the violet pill every time.

The next day arrives, and I still have trouble thinking about anything else. It's not sex I'm obsessing about, it's the violet pill. Is it wrong to take a pill in order to have sex with my partner more often? He'd probably be ecstatic. I'd enjoy it too, because that's what the pill does. What needs to be scary about the coming of the pill? What's wrong with people having more sex? Wouldn't we all be happier? Sex is fun.

I remember that the phemelanotide is still in my bloodstream. The half-life is 24 hours.

I already know that this pill is just the easy way out. Sometime during my childhood I was exposed to the thought that girls who enjoy sex are sluts, that promiscuous men are virile and promiscuous women are easy. I got it from the girls around me in school, from the TV I was watching and the magazines I was reading. I should be working that out with my therapist, not taking a pill.

But the pill is faster and cheaper than trying to understand myself in a therapist's office, and probably more reliable too.

This is the posthuman future we were all warned about. It's finally here, riding in on a little violet pill, protected by a flattened Coke can.

I still don't know what I'll decide. But I'm certain of this much: there will be a lot of women who try taking this violet pill. 16-year-old high school girls who think they're not sexual enough. Girlfriends pressured into it by their boyfriends. Wives whose husbands never say a word.

If I had to guess how many of those women are going to take a second pill after the first one wears off, I'd guess more than half.

They won't be desperate sluts who want sex with any man they see, though God knows there'll be men who think that's how phemelanotide works. Instead they'll be sitting in bars all across the US, all over the world. Reading books in the lounge of the college dorm. Hanging out in malls after high school.

Thinking that sex tonight would be a nice way to end the day.

And the flattened Coke can will keep them safe while they have it.

There's a tidal wave of casual sex headed for the United States, and everywhere else in the world that can afford expensive pills and expensive needles. It's going to change our culture, and which businesses stay open at night, and the way that all of us think about men and women.

I can't imagine the moral panic that's coming. I don't want to think about it.

In another three days the phemelanotide will be completely out of my system. If I still feel the same way then as now, I'll probably order more violet pills.

I'll do it despite every movie telling me that I'm participating in a drugged dystopia. I'll do it, ignoring everyone who says that I'm doing this for the patriarchy and not for myself. I'll do it, even though my not wanting to have sex with a man has been medicalized into a curable disease.

I've had a taste of sex being easy and fun.

And I keep thinking: life is too short not to take the cheating way out.

We were warned that was how the posthuman future would sneak up on us. Well, they were right.

I could spend years with my therapist, working out every one of my issues with sex. I could also knit my clothing out of home-spun cotton, but I don't. This is how the world ends, I suppose: not with a bang but with a guilty, halfhearted shrug.

I know that I could fix my love life without violet pills.

It just doesn't seem worth the time.

6.2.1 [FW]: A Dark and Quiet Morning

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (13,900 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 221/430
SUB: 272/480

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 24
FUK: 19
PRV: 26
ERO: 30

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8934

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Reagent of Mundane Biology (II), Biologists #7, #9, #14
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: On

You wake with gently swelling music in your ears, a peaceful classic tune that you set your new burner phone to play at gradually increasing volume to wake you up. The room is dark as night, the sun unrisen, with no moonlight falling on the windows and not much street-light either.

You don't shut off your phone's alarm. The music it's playing is peaceful, not "alarming" at all, and it feels good to lie motionless and listen to the music, even if you're no longer tired. You set the alarm for 4:15am, meaning you've had somewhere around three hours of sleep. But it feels like you've slept for nine hours and gotten a full night's sleep, which is what you were betting on. The Erogame shouldn't ever want you to feel like you have to get to bed on time, no matter how early you need to get up the next day. Why, you might turn down sex at that rate.

Though you did utterly crash as soon as you got off the phone with Charles and had no more plot-relevant things to do that night, which you guess is fair. You barely managed to stagger into the bed before you fell over, or set an alarm before you passed out. In lieu of showering you invoked Fluid Unformed and a half-finished thought about eroge characters not getting icky if it's not important to the plot.

You're feeling better now, mostly due to the sleep. You still have ERO 30 and that's still going to have unguessable bizarre consequences. But you're no longer in a spiral of mutual fear as you try to avoid your frightened boyfriend blaming you for… you should maybe not try to think about that right now. Your brain needs a rest. You woke up early today so that there wouldn't be any rush.

The choir-voiced aria of Sheep May Safely Graze hovers half-in your awareness. It almost feels like you can understand the words, know that the singers are singing of a cheerful princess ruling over a happy kingdom, even though you don't speak German. Hitsuji wa anzen ni houboku shimasu…

You let the song play out to its end a few minutes later, and fumblingly shut off the phone only as the alarm begins to repeat. You sit up in the room, in the dark bed, and yawn. You're not so much tired as morning-drowsy.

Thursday was a very long day. Like, over half a year long. You hope Friday doesn't take more than a couple of months.

You pad over to the bedroom's attached bathroom, and wince as you flip on the wrong light and the bathroom's ceiling makes a huge roaring sound. The second try illuminates just the sink in soft white light, which is good enough for you to take the shower you're allowing yourself.

And you let the warm water rush over you for a time. You don't try hard to scrub everywhere, you have less surface area now and fewer crevices. And besides, you're an erogame character, so any shower scene should be enough to clean you up as long as you strike a few poses. Mostly you want to go on not thinking about things yet.

Letting the water fall around your pussy for a few seconds doesn't produce a sudden surge of pleasure or wrench your mind onto a lustful track. It's reassuring about LST 22 not being near dangerous territory, not that it should be.

It's 4:35am when you get out of the shower, clad now in just your Naked Towel and attractively damp hair, plus the high heels you totally forgot you're wearing. With the flowing water stopped, the room is silent except for small gurgling and dripping sounds.

You're reluctant to check your Erogame messages just yet. You collapsed last night before you got to them, and you're worried there might be some shock in there that dispels the peace of this silent night-morning. Instead, you turn on your burner phone's flashlight so you can find your older phone with the cracked screen, Cinderella Sheen's phone. You rarely get personal email and you're not in the habit of checking it obsessively like some people you know. But remembering yesterday's purpose and its fulfillment, the thought has occurred to you that maybe…

Turns out you do have an email from Felice. She sent it at 2am this night, just a couple of hours ago. Huh, you don't remember Felice being that much of a night owl.

From: Felice Williamson
To: Cinderella Sheen
Subject: Re: Not in class today

hey c. i noticed you weren't in class thurs. the girl who took notes on tues wasn't there. i'd have taken extra notes for you, but you said not to worry.

i called your mom and asked her why you weren't in class. she said you were home with the flu. she didn't say anything about you being out of town due to family issues like in your email. you should probly check in with her and coordinate cover stories.

you said you wished you could talk to me, and that you might have some good news? any update on that? tbh i could use some good news sometime soon.

i know there's srsly weird shit going on in your life. you don't have to dance around that.

i'm worried about if you're handling things ok. don't take this wrong but you're not as suspicious/sneaky as i am.

also the girl in tues class was careless and gave away the secret.

plz include some personal info in your reply again so i know it's you. like what happened with the bacne.

f.​

You squeeze your eyes shut. In a fashion some might call melodramatic, you collapse back over onto the bed. You have a long, long road ahead of you before The Sheen watching you in the fictional-character afterlife stops giggling at you.

Okay, so… what does Felice actually know here? Felice saw the new girl in class repeatedly looking over at her, in the reflection of her glossy laptop screen. Felice knows you and Mom didn't give the same cover story for your absence. Felice can guess these two facts are related. It's a pretty huge stretch from that to "Cindy transformed into the pretty girl!" so Felice shouldn't have jumped to that theory… right? She has to have come to some wrong conclusion instead. Or she's trying to bluff the answers out of you by pretending to know them already.

But "srsly weird shit", yeah, Felice knows that there is shit going on and she knows that it is srsly weird.

It's… hopefully a moot point. You thumb in a brief reply.

From: Cinderella Sheen
To: Felice Williamson
Subject: Re: Not in class today

Hi, Fel! I've been working hard on making my good news shareable with you. I'm hoping to get back to you very soon on that and will email you when I know for sure. I don't want to make any promises and disappoint you if something goes wrong.

I'm sorry for worrying you. The srsly weird shit is mostly​

You pause and back up the thought. You can't claim to know that the srsly weird shit is mostly good, and saying it's been "mostly good so far" could be correctly construed as ominous.

I'm sorry for worrying you and for vagueing around the fact that srsly weird shit is happening. Not to dance around it, yes there is seriously weird shit going on in my life. I think you'll like some of it though.

I'll tell the girl from Tuesday to be more careful in the future.

I'd prefer never to speak of the bacne again, but "student medical center" should say enough.​

You look over the message again, and then hit Send.

You slowly exhale, sitting up on the pillow-soft bed in a penthouse hotel room lit only by the ghostly luminescence of the dim, cracked screen on your old cellphone. In the distance, there's the sound of a single car going by far below, some poor soul who has to commute to work at mad hours… like you, you guess, at least today.

Your Mom told you not to do the Refuse the Giftsex quest without her. You're not quite sure what she means by that, actually. You're sure as hell not taking her into any dark alleyways. But whatever she meant, if you decide to do this quest, you figure that you should wake Mom up no later than 5:15am so that you can get to Luther and 4th at 6:15am. And if you're definitely not going to do this, you should decide before 5:15am, so you don't wake Mom up for nothing.

It's 4:40am now, which is plenty of time to run home at 22mph, but… for some reason you feel like walking today, rather than running. You'll have to pick up the pace before the end, if you want to avoid using Slack to get home in time. Part of the reason you woke up this early was to avoid using Slack.

But right now, in this peace, you feel like walking.

6.2.2: The Most Meta Story

A blast of freezing air shivers over your skin as you walk out of the Norville Arms-Marriott, and you convulsively yank off your shirt. Apparently you cannot go about dressed in merely sexy-modest clothing in this weather.

The freezing air isn't any less freezing, but it's far more tolerable, as soon as your breasts come into visibility. Sometimes you forget that you don't have superpowers, like cold resistance, you have eroge-character characteristics, like being inappropriately dressed. There's a difference.

You sigh amid the Norvile Arms-Marriott parking lot, the streetlights making your hardening nipples evident if anyone were to look. You don't actually want to go home looking like this. Someday you'll walk through town naked, in the day with lots of people looking, but you're not in the mood to walk around topless right now. If you were turned on and horny and looking for adventure it'd be one thing, but you're not. You also don't feel like changing into one of the more openly sexual outfits you bought at Goodwill yesterday morning.

After a moment's thought, you roll up the waist of your skirt until your skirt is resting high enough on your thighs to flash the bottom of your panties. There, now you're indecent.

The cold doesn't freeze your skin off when you pull your shirt back on, so you guess the shortened skirt is good enough for Ero Environmental Resistance.

You flip your glorious hair about you, and head off toward the end of the parking lot and the eerily silent, night-dark lamp-lit streets beyond...

Okay, yeah, those streets are pretty dark. Ugly fat girl or not, you wouldn't previously have wanted to be out alone at this time of night. But now you can just zip off at 22mph if anyone tries to chase you---

And now you've actually went and thought that.

You get to the edge of the parking lot, and turn your head to look at the direction that takes you home. The Norville Arms-Marriott is in a relatively busy part of your small city, but at this time of night the street before you looks completely deserted. All the shops and restaurants have unlighted windows, and the streetlights are spaced far enough apart to leave puddles of darkness between the puddles of light. Here and there some alley-mouth or parking-lot gapes like a dark hole in the street, leading off to unknown contents.

Everything is quiet.

Um. Walking home at this time of morning was probably not a genre-savvy decision no matter how peaceful the morning seemed.

You can't just turn back and try calling a Lyft either. The girl who thinks about how a street looks ominous and turns away from it is absolutely going to run into trouble three paragraphs later.

Well, but now you've at least thought out loud about how it would be blindingly obvious as a plot development if somebody tried to jump you. Plus that would trash the emotional meaning of your upcoming agonizing choice about the Refuse the Giftsex plotline. And the foreshadowing of you thinking about "eerily silent night-dark" streets was hopefully just discharged by that event giving you an excuse to think these deconstructively self-aware thoughts, which are rich in humor and literary artifice. So with luck you're not that badly off.

And… you're not sure how to phrase this, but…

You inhale in the cold morning air, as you turn right and traipse down the sidewalk through puddles of light and darkness. Far in the distance there are car sounds, now and again. The shop you're walking past has a dimmed sign reading Taco Park that can be barely seen by the street-lighting. Nothing visible is moving except you.

…but genre-savviness or not, the thought of being unable to take this walk felt sad in a way you don't associate with the Erogame.

The Erogame's pattern so far doesn't match you not being allowed to have nice things. It doesn't match you getting punished, if you get up while it's still dark and think that it would be quiet and peaceful to walk the city streets in the early morning before dawn. Maybe the tenth time you try this, something ero will happen to you, but not today. You think.

A left turn takes you onto the trafficless avenue of 3rd Street, continuing along a path that will lead, through other turns and other ways, to your home. You're still a little afraid of the darkened streets, but the literary meaning of that, let's be clear, is about you having internal conflicts and not about somebody stalking you. You're a little afraid of the darkened streets, but not so afraid that you'll let yourself run away from them.

Especially knowing that giving into your fear, and breaking into a run or trying to order a Lyft, would change the literary meaning of this plot from something quiet and reflective to something much more ominous.

You sigh aloud in the still morning air. If you do decide to "fail" the Refuse the Giftsex quest, it's increasingly seeming to you that by far the best reason to do it is to stop being afraid of dark streets. Get it over with. Go through the the eroge-character rite of passage and move on. You just wish you could know it would be as, uh, not-bad, as it being a Lvl 1 quest about "giftsex" sounds like.

Does the quest text say anything that you can understand better at Lvl 11 than at Lvl 1? "Info, quests, refuse the giftsex."

Info // Quests // Refuse the giftsex

Vulnerable young girls shouldn't walk in the alleys near the mall, between 4th St and 7th St up to Luther Ave. It shouldn't be hard to stay away. Just don't go there. Simple.

Updated: The police are closing in on the Mall Rapist and will arrest him within the next 24 hours. Soon the streets will be safe for you again!

Success: You continue to lead a boring life.
Failure: +20,000 XP, bonus perk point, increased relations with the Norville Redcaps faction.

It… reads pretty much the same as it did the first time, except for understanding how valuable a perk point is. And knowing that this quest would immediately take a Lvl 1 character up to around Lvl 6 or 7. And understanding that ERO 11, when you first saw the quest, isn't that against common sense, and that the "increased relations" are with the rescuers, not the rapist.

You dismiss the pink-violet text, and turn right at the red light on the next street corner. There's no walk sign so you don't try to jaywalk to the other side of the street, even though it's a major street that you need to cross eventually to get home. There's no cars audible, but there could be a black-painted electric vehicle with no headlights zipping quietly along, if you try to cross against the light. You could be hit by something you never saw coming. You'll need to cross this street sooner or later, but not right now.

For now you're just walking down this side of the street to the next intersection, where if the next cross-light still looks red, you'll need to make this choice again. And again. Again and again until you take the risk of jaywalking or you see a light that looks green.

You could also press the pedestrian walk button that turns the cross-light green. Just reach out and flick your finger against the button. But you know you're not going to do that. That seems like a much worse idea than just staying on this side of the street for another dozen blocks. Okay, this part of the metaphor doesn't map well onto raising your stats.

And then on a sudden impulse you halt in the middle of the sidewalk, look both ways for cars, and quickly skip over the street to the other side.

It feels just like you thought it would. Making a big deal out of crossing the street turned it into a psychological burden. Skipping to the other side felt nice because you didn't have to worry about it anymore.

On the other hand, you did not actually get run over by a black-painted electric car. This is a key fact about why you felt better afterward. If you'd been run over by a car just then, you'd probably have taken a lot of Lyfts going forwards and maybe ended up with a permanent fear of street-crossings.

You want to believe the Erogame wouldn't do that, but, the thing is, the thought keeps occurring to you, the female eroge character who lives in constant horror of being raped and gets raped a lot, that's also a thing.

But you've accomplished what you set out to do, namely, turned walking the darkened street into enough of a literary metaphor that nothing else should need to happen to you in order to fire an unfired Chekhov's Gun. You're not safe, of course, you're certainly not thinking "I'm safe now" or anything like that, but you're in no more danger than usual. And besides, if somebody did jump out of a dark alleyway or tase you before you could speed up to run away, it would be way too obvious. Only a bad hack author would try pulling that now.

And you don't have total faith that you're not being written by a hack author, so being attacked now would still be too obvious even after you've thought about how it would be too obvious.

Got that, author?

Nobody replies in the quiet night. Up ahead, there's an occasional light buzz and one of the streetlights flickers, but not in an ominous way.

You start walking again. Half a minute later, maybe, there's an approaching car sound, making you tense up, and then in another minute…

…a police SUV drives past you, slowly, with no flashing lights. There's no prisoner in the back seat. As the car drives past, one of the uniformed officers looks out the window at you. Then she goes back to studying the road ahead. A peaceful night patrol on a peaceful road.

It could be a total coincidence.

Or the Erogame could be giving you a friendly nod, trying to reassure you.

It could also be trying to reassure you in order to trick you into letting your guard down and then somebody jumps out of an alley.

It could be trying to reassure you so that you decide to go get yourself raped, which experience will also prove to be fine.

It could be luring you into deciding to get the rape over with, but really the rape is mind-shatteringly awful and turns you into the eroge character who…

But if the Erogame doesn't like you and wants to screw you over, it's powerful enough to do whatever the fuck it wants to you. It doesn't need to wait on your permission.

And now you're back into the worn track of thoughts you've already thought a whole bunch over the last five days. What is the Erogame, why is it here, what does it want. And is it trying to be nice to you, or just running a fair game, or (gulp) running a tricky game with gotchas and lures…

"The fundamental question," you murmur into the quiet air as you walk along, "is, what is the Erogame. It seems like there's no way of knowing, right? But our lovely protagonist will now consider this question, and at the end, she will come to an amazing conclusion that will amaze you. I know, it sounds like clickbait, but you've got to trust the author. What happens next is not what you're expecting."

Your high heels click down the concrete sidewalk, the streetlights casting shadows in many directions from your presence.

"What is the Erogame," you say quietly into the silent night. You wish you could bring yourself to talk louder, but raising your voice just feels too embarrassing. "Let us divide the possibilities into five cases. Yes, that's right, five. Remember this number, it will be important later." You draw in another inhalation, remembering one week earlier when you couldn't have walked and talked at the same time without running short of breath. "Case number one, the first possibility, is that this all started with something that had the innate structure of a game. Like, some type of malfunctioning cosmic videogame left over from Lovecraftian horrors playing it in the Basement Before Time. The Game Thing showed up on Sunday afternoon. It bonded to me for some reason, and adapted itself to me, like translating itself into English. Maybe the Game Thing started out as a porn game and thought I'd be a good player, or maybe I was a random choice and the Game Thing adopted this form because I'd played a lot of eroge before. The point is, things like stats, skills, and perks are intrinsic to its nature. The Erogame's most important feature is that it's a game."

You exhale, and in your breath form slight traces of fog, only visible because you're passing directly beneath a streetlight. "The second case," you lecture the empty sidewalk in low tones, "is that there is some huge metaphysical whatsit spread out over parallel universes. It wants sex, or reproduction, or its equivalent of romance, and its reproductive cycle involves it bonding to somebody like me. The Horny Alien got here and looked around to find somebody who had unsatisfied desires sympathetic to its own. It manifested to that girl in a structure inspired by the erogames she played, because that's a structure the girl would understand. But no matter who the alien manifested to, and what it manifested as, it would have been all about mating. The Erogame's most important feature is that it's ero."

You stop, and look up at the sky overhead. It's cloudy this morning, not overcast, but wispy enough that you can't see any stars. For all you know right now, the stars aren't there when you're not looking at them. For all you know, nothing outside Norville really exists anymore, except when Charles needs to drive there.

"The third case," you say to the absent stars, "is that if some brave person crawls into my vagina, and pushes their way through to the end of the endless moist tunnels beneath my flesh, what they find there at the center of everything… is also Cindy. That's right, dawg, we heard you like Cindy and you know what we did then. The third possibility is that I'm doing all of this to myself. It is a brilliant literary innovation which has never been tried before, especially not in movies starring Brad Pitt. On this theory, either I'm dead, or I'm Suzumiya Haruhi. My power or my afterlife is taking this shape because I liked playing eroge and because I… well, it's doing this for all the obvious reasons." Saying it aloud is still too painful. "And the fourth case is that I can't even ask the right questions or imagine the answers, until I get the hang of bullshit metaphysics. Which may or may not be understandable to the smartest human people alive."

You look back down at the sidewalk and begin walking again. "The big practical question," you say to the unfolding road ahead of you, "is whether the Erogame is being nice, or out to get me, or playing strictly by the rules. If it's out to get me, I'm screwed. Uh, I mean I'm fucked… I mean there's nothing I can do. So let's not consider that part. Instead, let's ask, does the Erogame play strictly by the rules."

"In the first possible case," you say to the empty air, holding up a single finger, "if the Erogame is above all a game by its fundamental nature, the rules will be very strong and the Game Thing will just shrug if I get run over by a rape train. The Game Thing doesn't care about me, it just wants somebody to play it. If the game seems to be nice sometimes, it's because the Game Thing was designed to not be too frustrating to players. If it sometimes seems like I can break the rules, it's because I have a hidden Ability To Defy The Game stat that's leveling up."

You raise a second finger. "In the second case, a weird alien could be very rules-abiding, maybe it's part AI or something, and that's why it took on a rigid game structure. But the Horny Alien still wants me to do something, something having to do with its reproductive process. The alien cares about that and not just about the game rules. The alien could be willing to give me nice things earlier, if it thinks that throwing me a bone will get me to cooperate more. The alien could also punish me if I look like I'm forsaking its purpose. In the third case," you raise a third finger. "In the third case, the Deeper Cindy… wants… well, she wants the stuff she obviously wanted. She could be hiding her powers from herself because I'm not ready to deal with them, which, to be fair, I'm totally not. And in the fourth case, there could be rules because bullshit metaphysics works better when there are rules." You remember to lift your fourth finger. "Come to think, if I believe my stat screens, the highest power I have is the Distinction Between Self and Other. It's not a skill, not even a Reality Skill like Erogamer's World, it's a truth. If that truth trumps everything else, then maybe when there's something that's intrinsic to my own me, the Erogamer's World gives way. Not because the game is designed to work that way, but because it's true. Because bullshit metaphysics is like that."

You think about this further, as your high heels keep tapping down the concrete, and freezing air whistles over your cheerfully exposed thighs. "I could get through to Mom when I really needed to," you say in soft puffs of nearly invisible mist. "So the eldritch videogame has a hidden Getting Through to Mom stat, or an emergency override button I managed to press. Or the alien is being nice to me in exchange for the cooperation I offered. Or it's my true power shining through. Or metaphysical bullshit had to yield in the face of the unbreakable logic that my being able to talk to Mom is part of the definition of Cinderella Sheen." You draw another few breaths, thinking. "If I'm honest, it most sounds like… it most sounds like me doing this to myself. But that's also the hardest theory to understand, because why? Why can Cinderella Sheen do these things? My life was shit before now. That doesn't square up with me being secretly omnipotent. Why do my powers activate suddenly, one Sunday afternoon like any other? Me dying and going to the afterlife is the obvious thing that could've changed, and God knows I wasn't happy. But I don't remember having suicidal ideation that weekend, I really don't. I remember what happened just before I saw violet text. I was sitting on my bed trying to mentally organize my remaining homework. If I died and buried the memory, there should be a gap." You think about this for another second. "If I died and was being clever about hiding it from myself, the gap could've been on Saturday. The deeper me just made my afterlife seem ordinary until Sunday afternoon. If so, I might not be able to find the earlier memory gap, not now. Or maybe something just killed me really fast while I was sitting on my bed. Is there some type of brain-bursting stroke that does that? It's not impossible, either way. But…"

You stop walking, and look at your dim reflection in the polished glass window of an unlit coffeeshop. You can't see your face from here, but you can see your body. You're pretty now, and not in pain. It still warms your heart and makes you feel floaty to think about. And yes, that's just the sort of thing that Deeper-Cindy would try to do for herself in her afterlife. Except…

"Except," you say softly to your dim reflection, "if I died, and this is my afterlife, then the people around me aren't real. Charles isn't real. The Mom that I hugged, the Mom that told me about what her uncle did, the Mom that I gave seven hundred dollars, isn't my real Mom. My real Mom is crying at my funeral. And when I found that out eventually, it would…" You swallow. It would break you, maybe not forever, but, it would be a long long time before you trusted anything again. "I wouldn't do that to me, right?" you ask your vague reflection. "I'd just let me go on being sad about how I couldn't seem to talk to Mom anymore. Faking myself out like that, it's too cruel. Anything that's doing this because it cares about me wouldn't have done that."

You turn from your shadowy reflection and proceed back along the dim streets, always moving closer to your house. "And if I didn't die and this isn't my afterlife," you say in the direction of your faraway home, "if everything that I see around me now isn't my last dream, but the whole real Earth, full of real people with my real Mom at my real house… then there's a huge gap in the Lone Cindy theory, which is, how the fuck am I doing this?" Professor Turk would know how to say this better than you do. But, like, there's all these other people in the world, and if you're not dead and they're not illusions, then you can make the Ero Cure and they can't. "For Cinderella Sheen to do all this without a helpful alien, she'd have to be special. And sure, maybe I have eldritch blood inherited from my great-great-grandmother. But it would have to be one fuckton of extreme eldritchitude. And… and then why didn't my eldritch great-great-grandmother change up the world? You can say Cinderella Sheen randomly happens to be God for no reason whatsoever, or rather, I randomly happened to be God starting from Sunday afternoon. But that version of the Lone Cindy theory also has a problem, which is that it is stupid."

You would fling your arms wide dramatically, but you're too embarrassed to do that in the empty street. "I conclude," you say quietly yet dramatically, "that this is bullshit. Yes, that's right, you heard me, bullshit. Everything that's been happening since Sunday afternoon, every last bit of it is senseless bullshit that makes no sense. It's impossible to understand until somebody way smarter than me develops a theory of advanced bullshitology. Which, when it comes to predicting how bad Refuse the Giftsex will actually be, leaves me one hundred percent up clueless creek without a clue."

"Unless," you say, and inhale. "Unless there's a helpful message I get when I reach ERO 30 that sheds light on things. Unless I am about to see an Erogame message that is, like, super enlightening. If the messages I see now are totally ordinary instead, that is a huge failure of all the foreshadowing the audience heard earlier about me coming to an amazing conclusion that will amaze them. The player of this eroge is going to feel cheated and sad and they'll be all disappointed in whatever is writing it. So if now the eroge just says that Cindy doesn't see anything and goes home disappointed, it is going to suck as literature, right? Me monologuing this out loud means you're definitely seeing this, not just the scene cutting to me having run home. Oh, and you've been wondering this whole time what the missing fifth case is, so my answer is, the fifth possibility is metafictional bullshit. I was able to reach my Mom because it was a heartwarming moment." You stop, turn to your right, and wave at the USPS mail-drop box that happens to be standing there. "Hi everyone behind the fourth wall! You hopefully care about my character by now, so, please tell the author you're not buying any more of their eroge unless I get to live happily ever after. And now, pay close attention to the protagonist as she and you find out something super important!" You turn and start walking forwards again. "Busy mode off, show unread messages!"

Tears of Milk has increased by 1.

Driving a victim to near his breaking point with agonizingly aborted orgasms causes your FUK to go up by 1!

You giggle before you can stop yourself as you remember that part. Oh, god, you shouldn't be laughing, you teased that guy so hard he safeworded and that's not funny. Except that it was in fact funny. Are you starting to go evil at PRV 26? No wait you need to stay focused on your metafictional blackmail attempt.

Okay, you are not going to do step-by-step commentary anymore, not even in your thoughts if possible. That risks losing the audience's focus. You are going to scroll right through the upcoming messages, until you get to something enlightening, and then you'll say "Aha!" out loud.

Convincing Sonia Turk that you possess powers beyond that of the mundane creates the potential for your ERO to increase by 1!

Quest begun: Beyond the Possible

You must prove your readiness before you can finish advancing the ERO stat to 30!

Strongly convince somebody, using only the sub-ERO-30 powers already available to you, that some event has occurred that is impossible within the world they knew.

Success: ERO 30, +5,000 XP
Failure: Continues until completed.

Quest completed: Beyond the Possible

You have proven yourself ready for ERO 30 by utterly convincing Charles Adan, Tammi Arcadia, Danni Arcadia, and Sonia Turk that completely impossible events have occurred.

Hidden goal #1: Complete this quest before it begins. +5,000 XP.
Hidden goal #2: Complete this quest at ERO <25. +5,000 XP.
Hidden goal #3: Complete this quest at ERO <20 and knock it out of the park. +5,000 XP, ????

+20,000 XP

Your ERO has reached 30!

Your level has increased by 1!

Your amazing SSS-rank performance on this stat advancement quest has created a special perk related to its accomplishment! You have received: Friends With Benefits.

Quest updated: Better Than That Ponce

A cooperative biologist has taken over the work of ordering and testing the Ero Virus. Soon you should obtain several doses of Ero Virus, making it possible for you to finish the immediate task you set out to accomplish... and yet, the larger way ahead remains unclear to you and your companions.

And that's the end of the messages.

You don't curse out loud. That could be funny. You are severely disappointed in the author, and this section of the story does not deserve a laugh.

Or, wait, you specified that the message would appear when you reached 30 ERO. So then maybe…

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At ERO 30, you are living an eroge set in a world that has begun to be, just a little, impossible. The people around you still act in their own interests and according to their own psychologies, but sometimes they have a strange little talent or their minds and behaviors seem a bit eroge-like. Events and outcomes around you are no longer strictly constrained by realism.

Your local surroundings have just begun to embark on the path of major sociocultural improbability. The larger world is just beginning to embark on the path of minor sociocultural improbability.

As you continue to push the bounds of realism, the social impossibilities will become more blatant, the first signs of physical unrealism will continue to develop, and your influence will sink deeper and farther into your domain.

Nope. Also, yikes. Pretty much the exact scary news you expected, still yikes nonetheless. But mostly nope.

…maybe it's just not that type of fiction. If you're inside a story, it's made of actual people making their own decisions, and that is not how fiction as you know it works. The Author Thing doesn't have to share your concepts of literary merit. At some point the Author Thing becomes inscrutable enough, and its work resembling human fiction little enough, that you might as well merge it into the weird alien theory. Or an Author Thing could be writing (or rather simulating or creating or imagining in perfect detail) a science fiction story about Cindy and a Horny Alien. And if you're in inhumanly, perfectly accurate science fiction, you'd never be able to see the difference between that and there just being a Horny Alien.

Before giving up completely, you read more carefully through the lines of pink messages, in case you missed something subtle.

Okay, so, worth noting for future reference, there's such a thing as stat advancement quests. And if you accidentally get Conceptual Hair at Lvl 4, it is possible to blow away the ERO 30 advancement quest so hard you get a special skill shit that's not a special skill that's a perk your mind jumps frantically to perks like No Stops on the Rape Train and yet at the same time you're hopeful as well as frightened because perks are crazy powerful and some are crazy dangerous and some alter the entire fucking world what does it do what does it do---

"Info perks friends with---with benefits!"

Info // Perks // Friends With Benefits

Your friends, companions, and allies have an easier time keeping up with your rapidly growing power as they follow you down many strange paths---if that's what you want, anyway.

This special perk unlocks the Share the Fun subskill of the Bestow#*&(#@$)#wer Sapient skill tree.

(Don't worry! This perk does not interfere with Marshmallow Tests because you did not choose it.)

You let out the breath you were holding. That doesn't sound too bad.

In fact, it sounds really good. Possibly.

"Info, skills, Empower Sapient!" you say more cheerfully.

Info // Skills // Reality Skills // Bestow#*&(#@$)#$wer Sapient

Empower Sapient: Lvl ? (??). Active. ? / use.

The subskills @(#*&$@#-(#*&@%-)%#%# enable you to mimic the effects of bestowing up to && of % on other sapient minds, as seen from your own #, with a corresponding increase in apparent channels of @#%@ interaction and internal development. Consistent future $#-# permitting, this may actually transfer % and correlate #.

Your level in the Empower Sapient skill is added to the level of all such subskills.

Share the Fun: Lvl 1 (0%). Active. Special.

This subskill helps potentially compatible *#%* follow you down strange paths by letting them share in your capabilities. (Increasing the capabilities of your enemies will be automatically handled by the game.)

To activate Share the Fun, you may enact an in-story plot which causes the target to believe that they are acquiring the bestowed capability. For example, if you have become a vampire, you could enact a blood-sharing ritual to convince a friend that they have become your ghoul servant. Or if a friend has noticed a sudden BOD-related transformation, you could try to convince her that it was due to an incredible advancement in biotechnology, then hand her a sugar pill. While some such plots might have been valid even without this skill, Share the Fun ensures that an avenue exists if you can convince others it is plausible.

You can use this skill to share capabilities derived from your stats, skills, spells, traits, blessings, curses, alchemy, meditation, enlightenment, familiars, cultivation, mysterious artifacts, mad technology, unknown energy sources, dimensional anomalies, bound entities, tainted blood, blasphemous rituals, devoured life forces, fantasy genetics, real genetics, college courses, years of painstaking practice, or your original mental and physical talents. Reality Skills are not directly bestowable by this subskill, but their secondary effects might be; for example, some particular hairstyles may be bestowable, but not Conceptual Hair. Bestowed talents may grow and diversify from their origins.

The total strength of all talents thus bestowed on a potential *#%* is temporarily capped by #@)(*$-@#)#%(-#)$*@%&@#@(*$# and by the ^*^ of your relationship with the recipient. This threshold is determined by combined formidability, rather than by an arithmetical budget over skill points bestowed; conferring a lesser talent early on will not much detract from your ability to bestow greater talents later.

At Lvl ?+1, this skill enables you to bestow a small handful of minor talents upon potential *#%* with whom you are deepening your ^*^.​

Your eyes skim rapidly over the preamble text for Empower Sapient, yada yada, sure, it empowers sapients, you kinda guessed that from the title. You start reading through Share the Fun.

Oh.

Wow.

This---this is really---nice. You really appreciate this, everything else aside.

This is promising that you can give Mom and Felice their own superpowers at some point and, and gosh, you and Charles can go real-roofhopping together. You'll need to level more and enact convincing subplots but this is---this is extremely reassuring when it comes to you not facing down all the weirdness alone. You feel 20 pounds lighter than you already were. If the Erogame is trying to apologize for not being able to give you any hints about what's going on, it's one hell of an apology.

Though, other parts of this text sure are implying an interesting life ahead of you at ERO over 30, but… you're sort of okay with that. It beats an uninteresting life.

But there's still nothing here that seems to be a hint. Unless the author just threw some important surprise to the audience that blew right past you because it relied on information from outside your own character perspective, in which case, fuck you, author.

You read through the skill description again, more carefully this time, in case you accidentally read "skill" for "perk" again or something similar.

No. No, wait. Wait, wait, wait.

Is this saying---is this saying that you could have just convinced Felice an Ero Virus existed, like by showing her your own transformation, and then given her a sugar pill? Meaning the whole Better Than That Ponce quest was pointless? Well, not totally pointless, it did help every other human being on Earth and maybe stop them from fading away and being replaced by ero versions of themselves. But still, doing the Ponce quest pushed you to ERO 30, and it was apparently inevitable that as soon as ERO 30 happened, you'd retroactively complete this advancement quest and automatically get Friends With Benefits. Which makes the Ponce quest ironically, comically misguided in its original purpose.

Do you have confirmation here that the Erogame is tricky? Or that it's a comedy story that is about elaborate, extensive setups to troll you? Oh god is that the hint? That is not good, not good---

Then you take a deep breath and calm down. No, that's not the literary logic here. You got a perk related to the specific way you advanced to ERO 30. You were trying to help Felice and Mom, so you got Friends With Benefits. If you hadn't gone on a quest to help them, you wouldn't have gotten this particular perk. You (accidentally) crushed a quest and now you got an extra reward that is super nice. This is ordinary game logic.

Maybe that's the hint, pointing at the Game Thing.

But if the Erogame is a malfuctioning eldritch videogame, then it doesn't have a metafictional audience to care about your attempted literary blackmail.

So maybe the hint implies that you have an Author Thing that is writing/composing/simulating the equivalent of a science fiction story about you and a Game Thing?

But if you can deduce that from the hint, does that mean you actually have a Meta-Author Thing that's creating a metafictional story about an Author Thing that's simulating a science fiction story about you and a Game Thing?

Or something is writing a story about that. And then something else is writing a story about that. Your author obviously isn't human, which means you could be inside a work of postmodernist metafiction that's more complicated than anything your tiny brain can imagine.

Maybe there's actually an infinite series of Author Things writing about other Author Things and on top of the whole series is a Super Author Thing writing the whole chain and then another Author Thing writing it and so on through another series topped by a Double Super Author Thing and this process goes on forever through every possible type of complicated nesting and then above that whole deal is the Most Meta Author writing about that, and then the Most Meta Author is by definition the most meta kind of author that can be conceived, so, by definition, nobody else can possibly be writing about it.

God help you if the audience is just as confused as you are at this point. Yeah, wow, that's a depressing thought. It implies your story is designed to seem delightfully mysterious to beings on the same transmetaphysical level as the Most Meta Author. If that's true, you sure as fuck don't stand a chance of figuring it out.

…are you getting smarter? Maybe you really are smarter. You don't want to jump to conclusions and disappoint yourself, but you think you wouldn't have been able to keep track of all that in your head without a pencil and paper one week earlier. Maybe you're just flattering yourself and everything you thought is gibberish, well, more like you're sure it's all gibberish, but you would not have been able to keep that much gibberish straight inside your head before.

Maybe that's the hint.

"Okay," you say out loud, "you know what, trying to talk to the audience and interpret things as being hints from my author was actually a terrible idea. Like, I bet this is literally how people go psychotic. So I'm going to stop breaking the fourth wall now. This is Cindy signing off."

You turn your head away from the pink-violet text, looking in the direction of your house. You probably shouldn't wait more than a couple more minutes to start running, if you want to reach home before 5:15am without using Slack. You just don't feel like breaking into a run right this second.

The darkened storefronts move past you again. You pay attention to your surroundings, turning your head now and then to look around, but not too often. Trying to thread the gap between the Oblivious Girl At Night and the Visibly Frightened Girl At Night. There's no point in tempting literary fate that much.

There's… definitely a part of you that's tired of being scared, just like there's definitely a part of you that's scared. Something much worse than this happened to your Mom under much worse circumstances and it didn't break her. Even if that's exactly what your Mom didn't want you to take away from her confession, there's still that thought in your mind

You exhale and look for mist in your breath. But you're not beneath a streetlight this time, and you don't see it, or maybe the air has warmed.

Either of LST 30 or PRV 30 would be protective enough to handle the perk No Stops on the Rape Train, which has to be a step up from just one rape. You're at LST 22, which is within an 8-point tier of LST 30. You're at PRV 26, which is half a tier from the protective PRV 30. You've had sex with enough people that one rape wouldn't be a huge part of your total sexual experience. And most of all, this is a Lvl 1 quest with a rapist who wears a business suit. If the Erogame isn't set up to SURPRISE! throw you into a swimming pool full of broken glass, you should be… okay. No, you really should be okay. If you're wrong, there are perks you can take in emergencies. You have stat points to prevent total psychological breakdowns. God damn it, you need to stop scaring yourself, this is probably way less bad than you're imagining.

Is it really okay for you to be this frightened of whether somebody is about to jump out of that dark alley, taze you before you can run, rip off your skirt, and thrust into you until he comes and then leave you lying there? You can't get pregnant, you can't get diseased. Why couldn't you just get up afterwards, brush yourself off, and walk away?

But, but you truly don't want rape to mean that little to you. You don't want your mind to just stop caring.

Then… then when you get raped it can be meaningful. It can have a literary context, it could be humiliating or it could be a betrayal or it could be a rite of passage or you could cry afterwards because it wasn't fun. The point is, is it okay for you to be that scared of it.

Are you talking yourself into something stupid here? Maybe it's perfectly fine for you to be that scared. You've been an eroge character for what, five days? Why rush this?

What you stand to gain from rushing is a perk point before it disappears, and… and just running across the rape street and being done with wondering when to cross it. If you don't get run over by the black-painted electric rape car. And if you do get run over by the rape car then you can just press the rape walk sign button, even if that comes with a cost.

On the other hand.

On the other hand is all the obvious stuff that is on the other hand.

Maybe you're being seduced by the hard choices into thinking that this choice is hard. Maybe there's nothing wrong with the answer "Hey, how about you not deliberately get raped, you idiot, what the hell are you thinking."

Maybe this Lvl 1 quest is designed to be horrible enough, at whatever level it's taken, to teach the player not to be a dumb munchkin who falls for sucker-bait and tries to do every single quest.

Or maybe this quest is a fundamental choice about what overall style of Erogame you want to play in, offered at Lvl 1. Now that you think about it, that seems close to a worst-case scenario.

Or maybe the Erogame is just going to rape you anyway the next time you fail a metaphysical die roll, and you might as well do this under controlled circumstances and get a perk out of it.

Or maybe you're acting too scared of a caring Thing that hasn't done anything awful yet, a Thing that will in fact leave you alone until you're totally okay with going further.

Or… or maybe this is going to end up being tons of fun for you. Maybe you're that type of girl and don't know it yet. Right now that feels like a very bad outcome rather than a good outcome, but, but maybe that's the wrong way to look at it.

That's all you can think of to think, so you just need to decide if that all adds up to… you don't know. You just need to decide. And you need to start running.

You lean forward, preparing to take off at High-Heeled speeds---

"Oh, uh, one last thing," you say, straightening up and turning to your right. "If my next decision actually consists of you pressing a round rectangle on a screen, then, please press, uh, whichever button leads to the good ending, okay? The button that leads to me not being traumatized, or the button that leads to me not being scared and having one more perk when I need it. I, I don't know what to ask you to press---which I guess just means you haven't already pressed a button, if I'm thinking about this right---I'm just asking, please don't make me choose the wrong thing. Or, I mean, if you're not using a walkthrough and you can't guess which choice leads to what ending, but you want to get off on my---you know---then if you do that, please tell the publisher you're going to stop playing me and not buy any more eroge from them if my experience turns out horribly traumatic."

You turn and lean over to start running again, and then stop again in mid-sprint-beginning.

"Uh," you say, turning your head to the right again, "let me rephrase something. I don't want a good ending. It would suck for my story to, to stop just as I finally solved all my problems and was ready to live happily ever after. Instead, if you enjoyed watching me, please make sure my story just keeps being created forever, with me and my friends being mostly happy. That's a thing you can do, right, if my life entertains you enough? Please? Thanks."

Decision time!

Voting is open. Just this once, you may send me a vote by private message if you don't want it to appear publicly, or if you want to secretly enter a different vote than appears publicly. On this occasion votes will be counted but not enumerated.

6.3.1 [WS]: Protect You

(Some readers said that the chapters starting at 6.3.1 were too intense. They contain very heavy trigger warnings for rape; more of a whole gun warning, really. If at any point you find yourself not having fun, I would very strongly advise that you stop reading, and instead read through the Spoiler Summary of 6.3.1-6, which contains descriptions of events and key quotes with light trigger warnings only. Trigger warnings are reduced to "light" starting at 6.3.7.)

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (13,900 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 221/430
SUB: 272/480

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 24
FUK: 19
PRV: 26
ERO: 30

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8934

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Reagent of Mundane Biology (II), Biologists #7, #9, #14
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: Off

Spoiler: Tally Results

Votes have been adjusted to include private messages. (They did not change the winner.)
Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 128 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 3820-4210]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Rape
No. of Votes: 67

[X] No Rape.
No. of Votes: 57

-[X] Go to the alley anyway and break the rapist of his bad habits
No. of Votes: 5

-[X] Bring a thermos of tea, in case everything goes well and you end up having a heart-to-heart on a rooftop while the sun rises.
No. of Votes: 4

[x] Rape! Since it's something witch prepares her for a possible outcome
No. of Votes: 1

-[X] If it turns out you don't like it, use Hair to subdue him and show him how it's to be done in the new ERO 30 reality (for a certain definition of reality).
No. of Votes: 1

-[X] And no turnabout. Struggle and squirm and scream, but it's happening.
No. of Votes: 1

-[X] And Cindy, you're cute and kind and fun. So, please make sure her story just keeps being created forever, with her and her friends being mostly happy. That's a thing we can do, right, since her life entertains us enough. You're welcome, Cindy.
No. of Votes: 1

- [X] But maybe go to the police station later and see if there's any impromptu-sex-therapy to do.
No. of Votes: 1

[x] Dwarf TheRapist
No. of Votes: 1

-[X] I'm going to stop playing Cindy and not buy any more eroge from you if her experience turns out horribly traumatic.
No. of Votes: 1

--[X] This may be the time to spend a few stat points to help ensure it's not so traumatic. Maybe boost LST from 22 to 26? And/or PRV from 26 to 28?
No. of Votes: 1

-[X] Munchkin your way into getting the xp and perk points without getting raped. Be "thankful" to the cops, or the Redcaps, to sate the Erogame.
No. of Votes: 1

[X] Go to the location (the quest just wants you to go there, not necessarily get raped)
No. of Votes: 1

[X] Try to get the "success" outcome on Refuse the Giftsex to change to something less terrible.
No. of Votes: 1

-[X] If it works, then No Rape.
No. of Votes: 1

-[X] If not, then Rape.
No. of Votes: 1

Total No. of Voters: 125

Your house is very dark in the unlit morning before dawn. Dark and not the least bit scary, because it's extremely familiar. This, of all places in existence, you could navigate blind. If the Erogame won't let you put Blessings of Slaanesh here, it's unlikely to put in a rapist without it being extremely central to the plot, and maybe not at all… it's just a guess, but it feels firmer than some of your other guesses. Games have home bases.

Up the stairs, you knock upon the door of Mom's bedroom. Gently, softly, just a little. You can't remember the last time you had to wake up Mom while she was sleeping, it's more the other way around. You want to awaken her as ununpleasantly as you can.

After there's no response, you knock again, still gently.

The third time you slightly increase the force.

After your fifth knock, Mom's voice comes muzzily from the other side. "Whaaa? Cindy? What is---"

Mom's voice cuts out.

You expect she just… remembered.

The next thing Mom says is barely audible through the door, but you know from extreme familiarity that she just said, "I'll be out in a minute."

Light pours out from the cracks of the door. It's not the main overhead light, just the yellow light from the lamp on Mom's nightstand.

The door opens and Mom stands there in the nightgown she just threw on, silhouetted by the light behind her.

She looks at you.

You look at her.

She looks at you.

You look at her.

"What did you decide?" your mother says in a thin voice.

"I---wouldn't have woken you if---"

Mom doesn't nod, but it's obvious that she understands, and understood before she opened the door.

"Do you want me to make breakfast?" you say. "I can put on my maid outfit and make anything we have the ingredients for, before you get downstairs. So long as it's less than forty minutes of timey-wimey time, say." You have a lot more Maid Time than Slack.

At any other time, you're pretty sure your Mom would have gone after this like hot pancakes, but today she just shakes your head. "Not this morning," she says almost inaudibly. "All the other ones, but not this one."

"You---you can eat almost anything you want, actually," you say, as a further realization occurs to you. Mom doesn't know what happened last night. "Yesterday I finished the quest you gave me to find a cure for obesity and aging. I might have cured them a little too well, actually. But in a day or two you should be able to get, like, BOD 15 and Erogamer's Body Lite."

A sigh comes from Mom. "You need to learn how to time good news better," your Mom says, but she follows you downstairs without any more staring contests in her doorway.

When the two of you get to the kitchen, Mom puts a mug of water in the microwave to start heating, and then goes to the kitchen cabinet to get the Nestle's instant hot chocolate that she saves for emergency emotional medication. It's---it's probably also that she needs it, and not only that she just went off her last diet forever.

"Just so you know, dear, I believed in you all along," says Mom as she withdraws a spoon from the silverware drawer. "Now, what do you mean you cured obesity and aging too well?"

"I…" you say. "I think maybe I should save that piece of good news for later."

"I'd prefer a short version right away," says your mother. "Otherwise I may fret."

"I really do think later," you say. "It's not… bad, per se, but I hit ERO 30 last night, and I think the Erogame is setting things up for the world to be full of sexier people." You think Mom will probably approve that you ended up curing all major diseases for everybody on Earth. But your Mom has a point, that good news is best saved for literally any other time than now.

Mom takes her mug from the microwave, sitting down at the kitchen table to begin stirring instant hot chocolate into the water.

And you can look straight at the hot chocolate now, and be okay. Being able to invent the Ero Virus that easily was reassuring. Sure, the Cure is technically a venereal disease and so won't work on you, and you're probably no longer made of conventional matter anyway. But the Erogame making you be the only person left on the planet who can get fat and unsexy through eating the wrong things, you… you truly don't believe the Erogame would do that. If you see Felice eating cookies like normal people can, and she's still staying thin and pretty after a month, you think you could believe in that, you really could.

One day you're impulsively going to take a gulp of hot chocolate and be perfectly fine.

Just not today.

In the light of the kitchen, you can see how very, very not sexy Mom is in her nightgown, her wrinkles and the splotch of lighter skin around the top of her forehead, the flab around her arms and stomach. You wouldn't have let yourself think about it fully a few days earlier. Mom's… sick, she has Not Sexy Syndrome and she needs emergency ero. In theory you still think Sonia Turk was being unreasonable not to agree with Charles about a week-long cooldown period, but, but you can see Sonia's viewpoint too. You can't see it as being okay to decide that withholding the cure is the wisely cautious course of action for human people in general, but that when it comes to your particular Mom, or Felice, or you, all of you need higher BOD right away. All Sonia was doing was acting like everyone else was her Mom. That's more or less what Sonia said was the point, and it's what she accused Charles of not seeing. But Charles said it was insane to massively change the Earth without taking a week to think first, and you can see that viewpoint too.

It's weird to think of yourself as the center point of the harem and the main character who ultimately has to decide. Some of your potential haremettes seem much more decisive than you, which you guess is what being the center of a harem plot is all about.

"What's your plan?" Mom says, speaking almost inaudibly, and looking down at her hot chocolate rather than you.

You were somehow expecting Mom to have the plan, first because she said not to do this without her, and second because she's the Mom. "Uh," you say, thinking out loud, "if I was planning it myself, I'd take a Lyft to Luther and 4th, find an alley, walk into it, and… get raped, I guess. Though I'm not sure what to wear. It has to be inappropriate for ERO Environmental Resistance to work and I'll be cold otherwise, but I don't feel like dressing sexy for this and I didn't get any jackets at Goodwill."

Mom stirs her hot chocolate another couple of times.

"That's it?" she says.

"It… doesn't seem like a complicated quest."

"Should you take with pepper spray?" Mom says. "I bought some yesterday afternoon in case you needed it."

Your mouth falls open and you stare at Mom in sudden horror. "Have you been thinking about this all day yesterday---"

And then you stop, because you've asked a stupid fucking question. You told Mom you might get raped the next morning, what the fuck else would she have been thinking about all day. While you were sexing up Blake and having a nice orgy, Mom was thinking about what you would need and going out and buying pepper spray and---and---

"You mean you weren't thinking about it all day yesterday?" Mom says, sounding wry.

"I---I had a lot to do, the game kept me busy, and I thought my stats might go up, which they did, so it made more sense to think about it after my stats went up…" And, and you were in control of your future choice and you knew you could say no. Unlike the way that Mom was spending all day thinking about it while not being in control.

"M-mom, you shouldn't---if that's what's going to happen, you shouldn't know about things," you say.

"That thought had occurred to me," Mom says, looking down into her chocolate, the angle putting a shadow on her face. "I don't think I was thinking rationally. I can decide what shouldn't be a big deal in my own life, but when it comes to my daughter, I'm…" Mom trails off. "On the positive side, there's pepper spray if you need it."

You shake your head. "I don't think that's the point of this quest. I mean, if I was an ordinary girl about to get raped, maybe that'd be the right thing to do, but… I don't think I'm supposed to win this. Winning isn't what the perk point is for. Any weapon I take with me probably levels the antagonist stronger. And, and I don't want the Erogame to become about me fighting villains. I haven't taken any martial arts lessons. I, I mean, I guess I could get the skill fast. But I don't want to take the Erogame there."

"But you do think it's wise to take the Erogame to the other place," your Mom says quietly. She still has her head bowed over her hot chocolate, and hasn't drunk any yet.

"I---I'm level 11 now, Mom. ERO is at 30. I have to be ready for this. The way erogames work, it could be literally any quest where somebody tears off my panties. It's just something that happens. I, I'd rather it happen for the first time when I know to expect it and I can mentally brace myself. And then I'll be a full-fledged erogame character who knows she can handle level 11 quests, and I won't flinch away from every quest prompt wondering if it's the one that's---you know. If I'm not going to use my stat points, I need to do this."

Mom looks up from her hot chocolate. You're not surprised to see that there's water gathering in the corners of her eyes. "I shouldn't have said anything to you," your Mom says hoarsely. "I really really shouldn't have."

"I---" you say. "I think I would have come to the same decision either way." For a fleeting second you think about the possibility that a Player Thing pressed a button to make your decision, either out of alien-calculated concern that you'd need an extra perk point for a later plotline, or because they think teenage girls getting raped are hot. But you're not thinking that way or you'll go crazy.

(Though your scrabbling clumsy grasp on bullshit metaphysics wonders if there are just different Cindys in different hotel rooms, some of them fading out or the universe looking away from them, and each Cindy who goes on being real is one who had her own reasons to make the decision the Player Thing selects---)

You're not thinking this way. Not right now.

"There's---there's something wrong about this," your Mom says to her hot chocolate. "I should, I should have forbidden you to do this, like you were expecting. I know that the actual result would be that you'd have to freeze me out of Erogame decisions I couldn't consider rationally, but, but this shouldn't be happening. You can't take your daughter to an alley and send her out to where a masked man is going to rape her. It doesn't matter what else is happening. You must have made a very deep and terrible mistake somewhere in your thinking, for you to be sitting in your kitchen knowing that's what you plan to do next."

"Because that's not something good mothers do, even if it's for their daughter's own benefit?" you venture hesitantly.

Mom shakes her head. "I don't think I can explain it to you," she says. "It's a motherly viewpoint, not a daughterly viewpoint. I absolutely should not have told you that I would do this in your place, or that---I was---you know."

"You absolutely should have told me that," you say, wishing you could make your voice sound stronger. "I, all the things I haven't told Charles, it's a wall… but we shouldn't talk about this now."

Your Mom nods, and falls into the study of her hot chocolate again. "Are you---are you thinking you can't tell me that you might enjoy it?" your Mom says quietly. "It's okay if the answer is yes. I know that's a thing. I think I would feel relieved."

"It's---it depends. My guess is that if I leave my ERO at 30, I might---I might end up being turned on just because that's how Erogame Logic works, or the rapist will be more likely to be carrying a vibrator to try to force me into an orgasm. And if I put my ERO to 15, it'll be more like rape in Reality Classic. I'm---I'm leaning more toward ERO 15. It's hard to explain. Partly, I don't want---I don't want to feel like I'm in danger of the plot going off-rails if I don't enjoy the rape. Partly, I want to confront the version of my fear that I'm actually afraid of, so afterwards I don't feel like the real thing is still lurking to jump on me later." You manage a chuckle through the tension. "Though this quest did show up at level 1, and ERO 15 isn't exactly normality. It would be ironic irony if this rape is so completely tame that all I get out of this is a perk point and---and knowing that I have the courage to confront my fears."

"What does a completely tame rape look like?" your mother says. "I haven't played enough eroge to know."

She sounds serious, so you answer back equally seriously. "It's just like regular sex, but without the option of saying no," you say.

"I---I had thought that was in fact the definition of rape?" says your mother.

You roll your eyes. "Oh come on, Mom, you know what I mean. You don't get hit or threatened with violence, they still do foreplay and make sure you're wet before penetration occurs, they're attractive and you find them sexy. You're just being blackmailed into it or whatever."

Your mother stares at you, and then drinks a gulp of her hot chocolate. She makes a face afterwards (you're guessing it was too hot) and puts the mug down with a clink. "And that would be so mundane you wouldn't get much out of it besides the perk point," your Mom says, looking contemplative.

"Uh---at this point, yeah," you say. Probably not the best time to mention your night with the Arcadias and that you've already been past that level of nonconsent. Come to think, you've technically raped Danni twice, though you still firmly believe that shouldn't count. "I'm, uh, given my present stats and sexual experience, I'm confident I'd be okay. Not saying I'd just brush myself off and walk away, I would have feelings to process afterwards and they wouldn't be the same feelings as regular sex. But it for-sure wouldn't break me."

Mom shakes her head, and takes another, smaller sip of hot chocolate. "I suppose I do feel very very slightly better," she says.

You're not sure why. "This quest can't be that tame," you say hesitantly. You don't want to make your Mom feel worse, but you're worried that she's getting some unknown wrong idea. "The Mall Rapist will have a gun or a knife, and he'll be threatening me to keep me quiet. Even if all he does is hold a knife three feet away from me and never touches me with it, that's very different from… from a girl tied up in a school gym after hours, being molested by the hot professor who has photos of her having sex with her boyfriend's sister. Those are very different erogames and I'm a lot readier to live inside one than the other."

Mom exhales a long breath, looking back into her hot chocolate. "Right," she says. "Sorry, just a touch of culture shock. I'm still getting used to erogame thinking."

"I mean," you say, "I know that being blackmailed by a sexy teacher wouldn't be okay for everyone, I haven't forgotten how Reality Classic works. It would've been bad if I'd been molested on day one before I could raise my stats at all." The thought is disorienting, as you realize how much less ready you'd have been for a hot teacher to blackmail you into sex at PRV 12 and LST 6. Sometime you need to sit down and think about what's changed.

"It's fine, dear, I understand." Mom smiles, and it seems to be genuine. "I think with higher Lust I could also come to enjoy being tied up and molested by a hot professor. I know Frank would enjoy watching it."

TMI. TMI. TMI. "Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, that's not the type of erogame event that's been scaring me."

Then you curse your over-loose mouth as the smile slides off your mother's face. "I understand," she says quietly. Mom pauses, then adds, "It's all right to say out loud what exactly you're afraid of, if you think that will help. I can handle it."

You shake your head. That would just be gratuitously hurting your mother.

"You're thinking it would be cruel to me," says your mother. "I'd rather you did it anyway. It's---this is my---I don't have a word. Not job. Not duty. This is my love, to protect you, even if it's the only way I can."

Your throat chokes. "I don't think talking about it would help me," you say, your lips spilling the words before you can even consider whether they're true. You can't describe in front of your mother all the things that you are worried will make your rape unpleasant. You can't do that, not even if it's her love for you. There are limits to what you can handle. "You---you said I wasn't allowed to do this without you. What did you actually mean by that? Because you can't come with. You can't go anywhere near those alleys with your total lack of Erogamer's Body."

"I hardly think he'll be interested in raping me, dear," your mother says wryly.

"You don't know that. He could have a mom fetish. Don't say it's unlikely, probability isn't something that exists for us anymore. No, why am I even talking about that, he could shoot you. He could pull out a gun and shoot you. I have plot armor, a rapist won't present me with a lethal threat and no alternative, one of my perk texts said so. You don't have any emergency perks you can take, you don't have stat points you can use, you're not immune to venereal diseases, you don't have plot armor, and you're not going." You deliver these words in a tone of iron authority, even as you realize---

"You couldn't actually stop me," your mother observes. "I do know where the quest takes place."

You choke, and shake your head. "No. Don't do this. We're---we're not doing this. I'll stay home, if you start talking like that. I'll just stay home and not get a perk. We're not doing this."

Silence falls again, and Mom takes some more sips from her hot chocolate. "I suppose that's rational," your Mom says softly. "It's a cruel thing to say to a mother, but it being rational is part of its cruelty. How about if I stayed just outside the rape zone and came to you as soon as it was over?"

You gulp and nod. "That---that's fine. Just, just don't put a foot in there. Don't stick in one finger until it's over."

"Yes, Mom," says your Mom, rolling her eyes and sounding uncannily like you.

"And don't do that either."

Mom chuckles, and then sighs. "I don't suppose there's a game skill you can use to give me plot armor for just a couple of hours," she says.

And before you can stop yourself, you stop moving.

Slowly, Mom tilts her head. "There is a skill you can use to give me plot armor?" she says.

You'd just lie---except that maybe Mom should have plot armor anyway, even if she's staying outside the rape zone---but but but but then she might try to follow you inside and…

Does Share The Fun even work on Mom, if she knows about the Erogame? Or maybe that makes it really simple, because all you have to do is tell Mom there's a skill, and why wouldn't she believe you especially since it's true. But maybe it's not allowed to be that simple, and then telling Mom about Share The Fun makes it impossible for Share The Fun to ever work on her because then Mom knows the empowerment subplots are fakes…

"Is there such a skill, yes or no," your Mom says, sounding sterner now.

"Theoretically there's something I can try that might possibly work but it's very new and I'm not sure how it works and the effects would be permanent and they'd come out---out of a limited budget---Mom, I think this is a bad idea. If I could give you plot armor right now, it'd come out as, uh, minor plot armor. Not enough to trust that you can't get shot." Did you just sabotage yourself by saying that? But the skill did say that it could only share "minor talents" at its current level.

…the Erogame is not necessarily a Game Thing first and foremost.

…you've broken the apparent rules with Mom before.

Maybe you can just give her full fucking plot armor. And---and everything from Erogamer's Body that isn't covered by the Ero Virus. Just draw on your true love, Disney-style, and make it happen.

There's a number of chills running over your body right now. You haven't decided if they're chills of excitement, incredulity at your own audacity, or just plain THIS IS A BAD IDEA dismay.

"What---what would you do with plot armor?" you say.

Mom looks away from you, her eyes studying the kitchen wall. "Stand right outside the alley in case you need help," she says, in tones that indicate she knows her words are stupid.

"Mom, that's way too much. It's too much for you and knowing you're listening would be too much for me."

"I know," your Mom says quietly. "Just---my gut believes that's what I'm supposed to do, to protect you."

"Well, your gut's being wrong. This is not Reality Classic. My life is not in danger, I have a perk I can take to protect myself if something goes bad. What you're describing is torturing yourself. It's worse than what I'd be going through."

"What were you considering before?" says Mom. "Before you asked me what I'd do with plot armor."

You shake your head. "It was a dumb idea and I don't think I should talk about it."

Mom is looking at you with concern, somehow she seems more present in the room. "Leaving other issues aside," Mom says, "I think you need to not-talk about fewer things, for your own sake."

She has a point. "I---I'm not supposed to be able to give you full plot armor at this point in the game. But we're also not supposed to be able to have this conversation. I think I broke the game rules to make this possible. Maybe just because I have a hidden stat for Ability To Break Game Rules Using Disney-Style True Love, but still. I was wondering if I could break the game rules again and give you full plot armor."

"That sounds dangerous," Mom says. "Dangerous and rather disturbing. You didn't mention this before."

"I---I guess I didn't. I think the back of my mind thought you must already know, because, like, you were there when it happened."

Your Mom turns her mug of chocolate one way, then the other, inside her hands. "We're out of our depth, aren't we," she says softly. "I've been thinking that for a while, but this brings it home. I wonder if anything we're doing makes sense at all. This morning feels unreal to me. Maybe we're in the wrong place, doing the wrong things, thinking the wrong thoughts."

"I---I think trying to break the game rules is something that Charles would tell me to take a week to think about first. Or something that ought to be saved for emergencies. This situation isn't anything like that desperate."

Mom exhales, blowing her breath over the surface of her hot chocolate, and then she drinks the rest of it down in one gulp. "It helps, hearing you say that," she says. "That you don't think this is a desperate situation."

"Uh, no," you say, realizing the words are true, and that's comforting. "This isn't a desperate situation. Just a scary one."

It's a courage check in progress. That's all. Right?

So in the end, here are the two of you outside your house, waiting for a Lyft to take the two of you to just outside the rape zone. You have your burner phone with you, and $100 of Mom's emergency cash in case the rapist wants money, and nothing else because it could get broken.

You're dressed in normal-sexy with the skirt rolled up so you won't get cold. You'll roll it down before you walk into an actual alleyway. Mom doesn't often take her law-firm-clerk work home with her, but she stated authoritatively that dressing like a possible sex worker does not help police take rape seriously. You need to look like you were wearing relatively modest clothing when the rape started.

(Really? Really?)

Mom told you that you should take off the earrings you're wearing, in case the rapist wants to rip them off, which was the first point at which you remembered that you were still wearing the faux-gold earrings from Goodwill. They looked so natural on your erogame character that you just stopped seeing them, like when you wore high heels into the shower this morning. You told Mom the earrings were clip-ons, and Mom said it wasn't a good idea to get the rapist expecting blood and then disappoint him. So now you're not wearing earrings anymore.

Your hair is long, falling to your waist, and an earthy greyish-brown. Mom expressed concern about your hair getting ripped out if you didn't roll it up into something less tempting. You told Mom you'd try to explain later about why you started giggling nervously. Though you're not sure you can convey why it's funny to imagine the rapist trying to walk away with a handful of the concept of hair.

Mom had you install a locator app on your burner phone, and you gave Mom's phone access. Mom will watch you moving through the rape zone, and when your dot stays still for a while she'll know it's started. If you don't text her before the dot starts moving again, she'll call police because that means you're being kidnapped.

Then Mom started to say something else, and you told her that she needed to stop doing this. She doesn't have to arrange this and manage it and make sure it goes well. That's not her job. Love doesn't require that of her. It's enough that she's nearby.

You glance over at where Mom is staring at her cellphone. The Lyft is almost here.

You're, you're worried that this is not healthy for Mom and you should have made her stay home, but it's too late for that now.

On impulse, you bow your head as if in prayer. Maybe it is prayer.

Game Thing, if there's a stat I have for True Love, let it designate Mom as part of my home, my home base that game events shouldn't touch. Horny Alien, I don't know what your reproductive process requires, but if you're trying to bribe me into it, then please keep Mom safe and let things go well for her. Deeper Cindy, I shouldn't have to explain this to you, right? Bullshit metaphysics, this is part of the definition of who I am, and logic itself says it's impossible for you to hurt her, that is a Truth, so there. And whatever is playing this eroge, tell the publisher you'll never buy one again if they hurt Mom. Please let things go well for her, including emotionally.

--++​

There's no answer, unless the car slowing to a stop in front of you is an answer. It's an Accord according to the Lyft app, its white paint looking blue-gray in the gathering dawn of the cloudy day.

You and Mom climb into the car's spacious back seat, with you going around to the other side to sit behind the driver.

"Winifred?" says the driver.

"I'm Winifred," says Mom.

"Heading to the intersection of 3rd Street and Luther Avenue?" says the driver, as if the game is making absolutely sure you know where you're going, and never intended from the beginning to trick you into it accidentally.

"Yes," you reply, when Mom doesn't respond.

"Cold weather this morning, huh," says the driver.

Neither of you reply.

In silence the car drives off.

You keep your head turned to look out the window, at the passing houses and then the passing shops. If you turn around and see Mom looking at you, it will be uncomfortable. Sure is faster than taking the bus, huh, you think but don't say, because you don't want to start a conversation. Oh, and Mom, you can take Lyft everywhere from now on. One of my currently available quests is a bit iffy but the reward is $200,000. We should be seriously rich soon. Any day now.

And Mom, even when you're not being chaffeured around, you won't have to carry all that weight on your legs for much longer. You'll be able to run like I do.

You see, Mom? The Erogame isn't that bad. When I want something, it offers me a quest to get that thing using sex. Maybe the Erogame has its own reasons for that, but the upshot is that I get a heck of a lot of things I want. It's not---the Erogame hasn't been evil, so far. It hasn't seemed to be out to get me.

I'll be fine.

6.3.2: Here and Present

The Lyft drives away, leaving you and Mom standing at the corner of Luther and 3rd Street.

Around you is an urban neighborhood politely describable as "struggling." Fallout from the nuclear detonation of Zero Aerospace, once the third-largest employer in Norville. Deserted buildings that started to harbor dangers, people preferring to go elsewhere, shopkeepers not renewing their leases… and then the city council launched a drive to prevent the area from falling apart completely. It worked, sort of, but the survivors clustered. There's stretches of empty shops and parking lots overgrown with weeds pushing up from cracked concrete, but they're block-sized instead of the whole area being a walled-off wasteland in the middle of downtown. It might have been wiser to burn it all flat and let healthy city grow back in from the edges, but that would have involved rich people losing money.

Your Mom has her cellphone out, and is looking at the dot representing the location of your burner phone. GPS in Norville isn't always perfect, but your phone seems to be doing a fine job of locating itself down to the nearest doorway.

Mom seems to be trying to manage a smile. "I want to be clear that if at any point you turn around and walk right back, I will not be upset about being woken up early for no reason," Mom says.

"Yeah, I---I figured. Who knows, I still might." Then you shut your mouth. You shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have given Mom false hope even if it's true.

Mom starts to speak several times, and then finally says, "Would I be making too much of a big deal out of this if I gave you a hug? It's not a goodbye hug, and---and don't think that because I'm making a big deal out of this, you have to make it a big deal too."

Water starts at the corner of your eyes. Somewhere you made a mistake in letting things get to this point, with Mom in a place she shouldn't be, thinking thoughts she shouldn't think. You have to avoid this happening in the future.

You hug your Mom not-goodbye, and start walking down Luther toward 4th Street.

In bits and pieces, reality starts to crash into you. You thought it'd already crashed into you, but no not really.

What are you doing?

Where are you going?

Your mind starts to envision the start of the rape. You'll cross 4th street, go into the first alleyway you see, and even though you're expecting it you still won't see it coming. You'll still scream when you suddenly feel a hand go over your mouth and---

Why---why were you doing this again? You should turn around and walk back to Mom and, like, not get raped. You can't be here for a perk point. That would be dumb. Why are you doing this?

Because it will happen to you anyway? The Erogame hasn't done anything that bad to you as yet. Why believe it ever will?

Maybe the point of this quest is that Deeper Cindy is trying to tell you that not every quest has to be taken. Or she's trying to teach you the value of… of turning back and going home and not upsetting Mom so much.

Just before 4th Street, there's a large poster attached to a lamppost, warning anyone who reads it that there have been assaults on young women in this area. The street light above the lamp post is flickering in the early dawn, calling attention to itself. Yeah, the Erogame isn't trying to trick anyone in here by accident.

You stop next to the poster, before crossing the last street. You---you claimed the point of this was to prepare yourself, to brace yourself. You should do that. You don't feel prepared right now.

So, so, look at it objectively. Somebody grabs you and puts a hand over your mouth. That hurts. The barrel of a gun goes against your head. That's scary. He---he doesn't pull the trigger without giving you another option, and if you can't handle the other option then you immediately take Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder. He twists your arm up behind your back. That hurts. He rips off your clothes and you stop feeling cold because Ero Environmental Resistance switched on. He unzips himself and puts it in you and… and you should have brought with the lube that's in your bedroom, to use on yourself beforehand, to make sure that the entry doesn't hurt. But you know for certain you don't have lube with you, so it's too late to use Check Luggage. So, the entry hurts too, if Erogame Logic doesn't cover that. But Erogamer's Body makes everything better tomorrow. Maybe the Masked Rapist spits on you and shoves your face into the pavement. Maybe he has a knife and uses it to cut you. It hurts, but everything is better tomorrow. Maybe he'll grope you and finger you and try to turn you on. You honestly can't imagine being turned on by that, but maybe at LST 22 you're the female analogue of a teenage boy who can't stop himself from getting an erection. If so---if so you'll deal with the fact that he made your body respond. It doesn't seem like that would be so hard to handle.

You just need to… to go passive. Let it happen and not resist and put your mind into a state where you're watching events happen without being traumatized by them. If there's a gun next to your head and he's saying to give him a blowjob, you'll try doing that on autopilot, and if you can't do that you'll take Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder. Just let the rape flow through you, and then it's done. You'll be a grownup erogame character who knows she can handle rapes.

That---

That wasn't what you wished for.

You can see that now. This isn't what you wished for. The character with the empty eyes who stays numb through the rape---you don't want to become that character. When you spent those six months playing eroge, pressed up against a transparent wall you couldn't pass through, this wasn't the world you were drawn to.

Your PRV isn't high enough to enjoy this. You should go home.

Why---why does that feel so much like a mistake? You've set yourself a stupid goal. The only way to be smart is to fail. That's what the quest description is trying to say.

You start to turn on your high heel, to go back.

You make yourself halt. You're panicking. You should wait a minute to see everything feels different in another minute.

You force your lungs to breathe evenly, despite your rapid pulse. Your eyes slide around the half-abandoned area.

On the blank gray siding of a former paint store, in the direction that you started to turn, an expanse of graffiti catches your attention. It's the silhouette of a woman in a tie-up shirt and tight shorts, leaning from a stripper pole. Her hair is long streaks of black and red painted over and through each other, and she's wearing a crown of pure silvery metal set with countless fragments of blue-white gemstones, all of them cracked.

That's… that's you at the strip club, when you took the stage name Princess.

The graffiti is old. It's obviously been here for years. Despite your previous Erogame experience, it's still a shock to see reality reflect you in ways it shouldn't.

Next to the stylized drawing of Stripper-Starry, some other graffiti artist has drawn words in light, careless streaks of white spraypaint.

IF YOU ARE HERE
YOU SHOULD BE PRESENT​

Is that---is that a message to you? You don't see anything else the drawing of Stripper-Starry could be calling attention to.

You walk over toward the graffitied wall, and touch the bottom of the final T with a hand that trembles. This---this is an awful message. It's awful that you understand it so quickly. It's awful that its truth resonates so easily within your mind.

You mostly fast-forwarded through the sex scenes in eroge and you didn't play eroge that focused on rape. But you've seen enough, in pieces here and there.

Erogame characters don't dissociate from their rapes.

A healthy erogame character can be present through her rape, and deal with it. She doesn't run away from what she's feeling. The screen shows her crying, and then the next day she's plotting her revenge. The characters with the vacant, pupilless eyes are the ones who've broken.

If you can't be present. You shouldn't be here.

That's normal, sane advice. The awful part---the awful part is the wordless realization that followed along with the understanding.

You've never gotten off to a rape scene. But you can guess that for players with high enough PRV to get off on it, a realistic rape scene with the victim freezing up and going quiet wouldn't be as interesting. Eroge characters shed tears when they're raped, their faces express emotion, they struggle, they make noises.

There's, there's a truth touched by that, even if the artists stumbled over that truth by chance. The artists invented scenes of seeming cruelty, but they were kinder than they knew. Anyone who watched you in class last Friday wouldn't have heard any screams, even though you were hurting. Reality Classic is full of people freezing up and going quiet.

That's the part of what you were imagining that sickened you to the point where you nearly ran away.

It's, it's not that the rest seemed like a cheery stroll in a cheerful park, but---

It's hard to put it into words. Your mind goes back to Volkov's aged voice and the comparison it drew between a fish in a tank of empty water with occasional fish food flakes floating down, and a sea that's full of mates and predators and food that runs away. It's not---it's not that the fish looks forward to having to flee from sharks. It's just that, once the fish sees a living ocean, even through a glass screen, it doesn't have any choice but to go there.

You knew perfectly well that thinking that would cause your ERO to go up by 1!

Sometime soon, now that you're not near any major ERO thresholds, you need to sit down and think through very carefully why you were drawn to the world of eroge. Though it feels like that epiphany is mostly done already, and what remains is just putting feelings into words.

You look back at 4th Street, the border of the rape zone.

The thought of doing this and trying to be present through your rape feels---it doesn't feel sexy. Your PRV and LST aren't that high.

But it doesn't feel wrong.

It doesn't feel like the rejection you felt before, when you imagined trying to detach yourself from the rape: This isn't what I wished for, this isn't the world I wanted to be in.

That's the truth that's awful.

It's---it's not that you wished for this, but---the fish that's desperate to escape the dead water needs to be able to handle the living water's predators. The Erogame put up warning signs and gave you vitally important advice. You're less afraid now of the Erogame playing gotcha, of it throwing you into a much worse rape than you can handle. The rapist isn't going to shoot you. The rape isn't going to be as bad as possible. This isn't a trap. It's an early quest that was put in the Erogame for sensible game-design reasons, letting a courageous player cross this road at a time of their choosing.

You close your eyes a last time, running through the list of everything you're afraid of, imagining staying present for it.

You---you think you can handle that. You can be the erogame character, not the reality-classic girl, who walks through this alley and gets erogame-raped.

And if not, your first contingency plan isn't emergency perks or stat points, it's shifting your hair and taking the Erogame Logic up a notch. Maybe ERO 31 means the rapist will try to make your body respond. That's okay. You're not terrified anymore that he might succeed. It's okay. It's something that happens to erogame characters. There are worse realities to inhabit.

You roll down your skirt from around your waist and JESUS SHIT THAT'S FREEZING so you reach up to your shirt, murmur "Destructible Outfit," rip and now your nipple is exposed through your torn shirt. The police will assume the rapist did it. You're putting enough on your plate right now, you're not also dealing with the freezing fucking cold.

Then you walk forward, off the edge of the sidewalk, onto asphalt grey with dawn.

You cross the street.

You tell yourself that this will probably be much less bad than you're imagining.

Beneath your skirt, your legs are trembling. That's, that's okay, you can stay present for that, you can own that. The erogame character walking into the rape zone is allowed to be afraid. The artist's drawing of her shows her fear.

Spoiler: Apprehension

6.3.3*: Perfect Victim

Trigger warning.
More of an entire gun warning, really. Remember that you can stop reading and use the Spoiler Summary at any time.

You reach the end of the shops that look like they might open eventually, graffiti on the walls or not. You start walking past shops that aren't open at all. This is one of the bad stretches.

It---it probably won't be long.

You keep telling yourself that this won't be as bad as you're imagining. You suppress an impulse to look over your shoulder, and then remember that you don't have to suppress it. Right now it's okay for you to look like the Frightened Girl that you actually are.

You cast a frightened look over your shoulder.

Nobody is following you yet.

Maybe---maybe you also have to go north as well as west, towards the mall? Maybe you're not in the rape zone while you're still directly on Luther.

Staying on Luther, you look right at the crossroads for 5th Street. You see a stretch of shops with every window boarded over, on both sides of the street. There's less graffiti there, like even the graffiti artists aren't bothering with trying to decorate this stretch.

You decide not to turn right. You keep walking west towards 6th Street. You don't see why the rapist would be on 5th. Why would any young girls be bothering to go there?

You get to 6th Street. It looks worse than 5th. But if you don't turn here you'll just end up continuing to Seventh at the end of the rape zone. So you turn right.

You have acquired the "Rapebait (I)" status effect.

You jump and almost scream as the pink-violet text appears.

"Info, status effects, r-rapebait."

Info // Status effects // Rapebait (I)

Rapebait (I): At Lvl 11, wandering alone through a disreputable part of town wearing torn clothing and looking visibly frightened is giving you 2,089 experience points per hour and a 36.5% chance per hour of being sexually assaulted by an antagonist capable of overcoming your defenses. Any such assaults may be time-laced to avoid disrupting the progression of timed quests, or merged with those quests where appropriate.

Oh fu-fuck you Erogame. At least it doesn't sound like you're likely to get raped before you get raped, because if you're going to get raped before you get raped you'll just get raped instead.

The shops on 6th Street don't have boarded windows, just broken glass. You cast another frightened glance over your shoulders and there's still nobody following you. You keep waiting for a hand to go over your mouth and it never does.

You cross a street called Martin Avenue. 6th on the other side of Martin is a little better. Back to boarded windows instead of shattered glass. You---you hope the game isn't going to make you go all over the dead area waiting for the rapist to attack you because that would suck.

You remember then that the quest said to stay out of the alleys. Why did you forget that? You're so stupid.

You stop at the next alley you come to, and look into it. Weeds are growing up from the edges where the concrete of the alleyway has cracked. The back ends of the shops all look alike, blocky bare sides of bare block buildings, interrupted by the occasional loading dock.

This---this is it, probably. Unless the game is going to make you explore the whole area waiting to get raped, and that doesn't seem reasonable. You probably won't get attacked literally as soon as you put one foot in the alley. That would be too obvious even considering that it would be too obvious. Maybe the game is set to wait until you get to almost the end of the alley and start to relax.

You remind yourself that there's worse things than erogame rape. You put one foot into the alley.

You withdraw the foot.

God damn---no, god damn it, you're not this cowardly. You're not this indecisive.

You close your eyes and breathe deeply. This is not going to be as bad as you're imagining. It's a Lvl 1 fucking quest.

The antagonist is probably leveled, though.

Yeah, he's probably leveled, so fucking what, you have emergency ERO, plot armor, emergency perks, emergency stat points, and this is not rape in real life it is rape in erogames. And you need to be able to handle this if you're not just going to hide scared in your bedroom and wait for the rapists to come to you, which they will, if that's the only way for the Erogame to make sure you have sex while you're hiding frightened in your bedroom.

Also you are wasting time. You've been wasting time this whole time. You're wasting so much time that you now need to invoke Slack just to ensure that you get to the rapist before the police do. You should walk into the alley now if you don't want to waste any more.

There's two light impacts on your chest below your breasts, two simultaneous stingy pokes, like somebody prodded you with two sharp fingernails.

You open your eyes.

There's a gloved man in a black business suit and white cloth pulled over his head, holding a not-gun. He's taller than you, a lot of men are, but he's taller than you. You can't see how muscled he is through the suit.

"Do not try to scream or run," says the voice behind the mask. It's a low voice, rough with age, calm and casual and terrifying. "This is a taser. Any noise, any sudden movements, and I'll pull the trigger. Nod if you understand."

The adrenaline flooding into you is making you feel dizzy, but you don't faint. If you faint and fall over he might think you're running and pull the trigger. You manage to nod.

There are two wires trailing into your shirt. You were so busy considering knives and guns and hands over your mouth that you didn't think of other possibilities.

There are pink-violet letters in the air, and not reassuring ones.

Slack has increased by 1.

Quest updated: Refuse the giftsex

So close and yet so far! Minutes from when they would have encountered the Masked Rapist, the searching police unit has been called away to a false sighting.

"I'm going to walk, slowly, and you're going to move in the same direction," the Masked Rapist says in his rough voice. "Nod."

You manage to nod again.

The black-suited, white-masked figure takes a step. He waits. You realize what he's waiting for and take your own step in the same direction.

Step by step the two of you move further into the alley.

The man steps to the side, waits for you to turn to face him, steps to the side again, and then leads you walking crab-wise into a gap in the blank white backside of a blocky building, an open delivery door.

The space into which the two of you enter is an empty concrete shell of a large storage room, dimly lit by a single overhead fluorescent tube, the other sources of light shattered or removed or just not functioning. There's a duffel bag in one corner, a bank of switches on the wall, an area of darker gray over part of the floor, a single door on the opposite wall from where you entered.

Once you're fully inside, the man backs up a few spaces further and hits a button. A slatted garage-door barrier rumbles down and seals off the outside and the sunlight.

"You can make noise now," the rough voice says from beneath the blank white cloth. It's neither kind nor cruel, just waiting.

You---you should say something. Freezing up and going silent is what real people do, it's a sensible thing to do when faced with a rapist, but this is not Reality Classic and an erogame character would be expressing indignation.

Thinking of something to say seems difficult. You're not dissociating, you're present within the ruined storage room but you're having trouble words.

You need to say something. You remember thinking that it would be bad if you just froze up and went quiet. That could start a broken-girl plot instead of an indignant-girl plot.

"Nothing to say?" There's a hint of anger in the rough voice. "I take it you're fine with this, then."

He wants you to protest. He gets off on his victims protesting.

The Erogame made sure to send you a rapist who wouldn't let you freeze up and go quiet.

He's using a taser instead of a knife or blows from a fist. So you won't get injured if he has to reprimand you.

This is a rape tutorial mode.

All that comes to your lips is pure cliche. "W-what," your voice cracks at first, your heart is still beating too fast, the darkened, ruined storage area around you seems unreal, there's still two wires penetrating your shirt, "What are you going to do to me?"

"The plan is to rape you." Now the rough voice beneath the white mask sounds amused. "That means you have to tell me this isn't allowed. No is a simple word. I'm sure you can say it. N-O, no."

It's---it's probably the wrong time to talk about affirmative consent. "No," you manage to say.

"No what?"

"No, you can't do this." Your body feels blurry, like if you looked down you'd see a haze above your skin.

"See? That wasn't hard. I'm sure a girl as pretty as you has practice turning down men." The rough voice sharpens. "Without moving your hands toward the wires, take off your panties. Leave the skirt on."

Your hands are shaking, why, why are you so afraid, he hasn't touched you yet let alone caused you pain or injury, that's a taser he's holding not a gun, it's not like he's threatening to make you fat again. You manage to move your hands to your thighs, reach up under your skirt.

"Stop."

You freeze.

"Ask me not to make you do this." The rough voice sounds angrier this time. "Or tell me I'm disgusting. I know you're thinking it, now say it out loud."

You---you actually weren't. "Please don't make me do this."

"Now, take off your panties. Do it without lifting your skirt. You're not a slut, are you?"

He wants to see you acting modest and trying not to show him anything. Like the eroge character of an innocent girl…

No. There's a specific fantasy he's acting out in his head. Like a serial killer.

There's a specific girl he's imagining you as, and you're not acting like her, like he imagines she would act. You don't know if it's SED 24 telling you that, or a flash of your own insight, or if there's even a difference.

"G-god, please," you say in a hoarse voice without moving your hands, you don't know if you're trying to be that girl in hopes he gets less angry, or just expressing your own natural scaredness, "please don't make me do this---"

"Shut up. Take off your panties." The rough voice sounds less angry, though.

Your hands go to your side again, and you try to put them through the waist of your skirt from the top, instead of lifting the sides of the skirt, and you push down your panties with your hands underneath your skirt. It's easier than you thought it would be. You still haven't adjusted to the fact that your waist and hips aren't huge.

You don't kick aside the panties when they fall around your heels. The girl in his imagination wouldn't.

"Put these on," the man says, and tosses you a pair of open handcuffs. You almost fumble the catch.

No, please, I'm scared---you are scared but the girl in his imagining isn't scared, she's thinking he's disgusting---

"Scared of me?" you say, your voice cracking.

No---no you shouldn't have said that---it's too risky, what if you're wrong---

Whatever's hidden beneath the white cloth moves, an unseeable change of facial expression. "Put on the fucking handcuffs or I'll tase you until you fucking pee yourself." His voice is harsh, and---and pleased.

You do your best to glare at the white cloth, or at least look at it without flinching, while one hand clicks the handcuff around one wrist. Then, though it takes some fumbling, you manage to close the cuff over your other wrist. It clicks shut solidly.

Conceptual Hair is still a thing. Your full ERO is over 30, like The Sheen said to make sure was true before you used your hair to pick locks. You can shift to ERO 31 and use your hair to pick the handcuff locks if you have to. So---so long as there's a sex scene that happened first.

"Go stand on the mat," the rough voice says. The black-gloved hand points to a section of the floor where you can now see a darker square amid the rough concrete, a dark-gray foam-rubber gym mat. "In the center."

You shouldn't quietly obey. It's not what he wants. "Damn you," you manage to say out loud, because you're not sure if his girl says "fuck" or not, as you go to stand on the gym mat.

He walks over to you now, and even as you flinch away, reaches out to pull one taser barb out from your shirt, and another. The barbs come loose with a brief stinging, pulling sensation.

The man sets his taser aside.

Then the black hands push you, hard, and you trip over your heels and go sprawling back on the smooth rubber mat. Your head thuds against the mat, but it's not painful.

This---this mat is probably something the man thinks he's doing to spare his own knees, or the pant knees of his suit, when he rapes you, but---there's going to be rubber foam underneath you when you're raped for the first time, instead of a hard concrete floor. The symbolism isn't lost on you, and the sledgehammer beat of your heart begins to slow down, some of the buzzing sensation going away. The Erogame isn't throwing you into the pit of broken glass. It's okay, the game is saying, it's okay.

Your first attempt to sit up fails, your arms unthinkingly trying to lift you and being halted. Before you can try again, there's a click and cold metal goes around your ankle. Then a glove grabs your right wrist, and your arm and leg are shoved into position and another cuff goes around your hand. Click.

Your right hand is now handcuffed to your right ankle. Your leg is up and it's pushing your skirt up and showing the rapist everything.

You know what's coming next. Despite a weak struggle, your left leg is yanked into the same awful revealing position. There's another click and you're lying there almost hogtied.

The white-clothed head bends over you, and the black-gloved hands push a key into a lock. Now your hands are no longer cuffed to each other, just to your ankles. It will be easy to push your legs apart like this, and very hard for you to fight back.

With some of the edge of the fear starting to fade, the shock wearing off, you find that there's an actual sense of indignation in you at the position your limbs have been put into. It seems---it seems very counterintuitive to express yourself about that. You should hide your mind where the rapist can't see your thoughts and get upset. But, but that is maybe not mentally healthy compared to expressing yourself more openly. This isn't consensual sex in real life, it's rape in an erogame. If you don't like what's happening to you during a sexual encounter, you need to say something out loud.

"B-bastard," you manage to say. There's some real anger in your voice, some genuine embarrassment at having your hands cuffed to your ankles and your skirt hiked up with no panties. "You bastard, where do you think you're looking?"

Protesting like a proper erogame rape victim, finally beginning to fulfill Joseph's long-sought fantasy, causes your SED to go up by 1!

W-what. No, what? What.

There's heavier breathing coming from under the white cloth now, as the concealed face looks between your thighs and the hiked-up skirt.

You---you think you feel a tinge of disgust for that perverted breathing. "You a-animal," you force yourself to say out loud. It's easier the more you do it.

The white cloth leans over you, more of the black business suit coming into view, and you realize for the first time what that reminds you of. Right, if he was taller and thinner and had longer arms, he'd basically be Slenderman. This is in some odd way reassuring. Slenderman isn't part of Reality Classic.

Then the white head rises up and moves out of your field of vision. From the sound of his footsteps, he's walking to what you remember as being the duffel bag in the corner. A resurgence of terror fights against the emotions you were starting to feel, as your mind begins to speculate on what could be in there.

With a rocking motion, you manage to sit up. It spreads your raised thighs wider and you're not hiding anything, but you manage to sit up.

The man is carrying toward you an anomalous red ovaloid, like a flattened Coke can with a tiny display screen.

It hardly takes any effort at all to put the fear into your voice. "What the hell is that thing?"

"Oh, really," the rough voice says in an amused tone, "you don't already know? Did I score the only innocent girl in Norville? It's a Say-fyooz. It'll tell me whether you're diseased. Any smart rapist ought to carry one."

It---it what?

The black glove roughly grabs your index finger and shoves it into a hole in the side of the flattened Coke can, and there's a stinging pain you weren't expecting that causes you to yelp and yank your hand back.

He still isn't hitting you for the crime of displaying emotions or reluctance. Maybe even at ERO 16 that's just flatly allowed for ero rape victims. You're starting to believe that.

The white cloth is studying the side of the flattened Coke can that has the display. "Well, well. It looks like I won't be using a condom. Would you like to see my own readout?"

"Sure," you say without thinking because you are curious.

"Too bad." The black-gloved hand tosses the Coke can back toward the duffel bag, landing on top of it with a fuff. "You'll just have to wonder what sort of presents I have for you. There's at least one. Better hope it's not AIDS."

Your eyes narrow into a real glare. You're immune, but---if he's pulled this routine on other victims, who would be scared out of their fucking minds---

This is not a nice rapist. You are angry about that. Emotions are allowed and you are having a genuine emotion right now and that emotion is anger.

"You're going down," you say softly. "Once you've had your fun, you're going down hard enough to leave an impact crater."

"Going down? Interesting idea." A gloved hand toys with the corner of the white cloth. "You're not worried about what extra gifts I might leave with my mouth? Or if I bite?"

Despite everything you knew in theory about how rape works in eroges, the idea of him performing oral sex on you still catches you off guard. Your eyes widen.

"Hm, yes," the rough voice says. "I think I'd like a taste." The gloved hand pulls up the corner of the white cloth, revealing an aged-looking mouth over a roughly shaven and muscular neck, with a salt-and-pepper thin mustache.

You get pushed onto your back again, your thighs pulled apart, and then a tongue dips between your legs and takes a long, slow lick that parts your labial lips and enters between, before passing over your clit too roughly. You don't stop yourself from shuddering in real revulsion. "Get that tongue out of me! You couldn't get a girl off with that slimy thing if your life depended on it!"

Wait. You didn't just say that.

"Nice," the rough voice says, now with real amusement. "I like the way you shiver when I do this." Another long, slow lick between your labia. "Do you think my mouth might have cold sores? A pretty slut like you, it must have taken a lot of effort to keep yourself clean of disease." Another long, slow lick.

Your skin is sensitive despite everything, just like you were afraid of and told yourself would be fine. The sliding tongue along your labia comes with a very minor sexual frisson, but you're now certain you're not going to be seduced by it, which makes it not scary. You're also starting to feel real anger and injured pride at the thought that he might be able to get your body aroused and taste you. Your nectar is not for the likes of him… well, that's not a resolution you're going to successfully keep for the rest of your life, let's be realistic here.

The fear of some unknown scarier thing is diminishing, as your gut starts to accept that this is tutorial mode. Eroge Rape Victiming 101, How To Express Your Feelings. "You know," you say, not trying to control yourself anymore, just letting the hate flow through you and into your words, "I once read a theory on the psychology of serial killers. There's two kinds of men who commit the same crime again and again, one who really likes how it went last time, and one who feels like he just can't get it right. Well, guess what? I'm not her. Whoever you're imagining me as, I'm not her, and you're going to prison to rot where you're never going to have her OW!"

That fucker just bit your clit!

He pulls his mask down and rises up from between your thighs. When he talks, his voice still sounds amused. "Well, aren't you the intelligent one? She was the girlfriend of my brother, who was a year older than me and twice as handsome. I thought she was the most beautiful girl there'd ever been, and she never saw me as anything but his little brother. I got to hear her making slut noises with him in the bedroom next to mine, back when I was fat and couldn't get a date no matter what I tried. Yes, I wanted to rape her."

You flinch. You---you hope this isn't some type of game-designed parable about him having been as lonely as you, and less lucky---

"But by the time I was back from Vietnam and confident enough to do it," the rough voice continues, "the pretty girl I wanted to rape didn't exist anymore. Some fat housewife had taken her place. So now I keep looking. And you, girl? You're doing wonderfully. She was intelligent too, and spirited. Figuring out what was happening and trying to ruin my fun---that would've been just like her."

His breathing is coming more heavily again, and you can see the tent in his pants.

You're also picking up on the trend in this story. Whatever you end up doing, it's going to exactly resemble his ideal victim, isn't it. Rape-victim tutorial mode, you can't even say the wrong thing to him on purpose, never mind accidentally. It's annoying, because you don't want to give him satisfaction, but you don't see how you can do something other than whatever you end up doing.

"Charming," you say coldly. This is going to go the same way no matter what choices you make, so you might as well be whatever erogame character you most feel like. Right now you're feeling very Ice Queen. "Such a wonderful personality, it's amazing you didn't have girls falling all over themselves to date you. So what happens when you find your perfect victim?"

"Guess." The white mask moves aside to the duffel bag, rummages.

He---isn't implying that he kills you? No, that can't happen, you haven't been presented with a clear alternative to your death and this is a Lvl 1 quest, this is rape-victim tutorial mode. "My guess is that you realize your life is complete and you'll never again be as happy as you were at that moment, so you sign over a check for all of your money and kill yourself."

A snorted laugh from beneath the mask. The man rises, returns with a bottle of lubricant in one black-gloved hand, which he pours over the fingers of the other hand. He kneels down beside you, and the lubed fingers go inside you with a squelch, causing you to inhale sharply.

"Enjoy that?" the rough voice says.

You glare at him, which feels very natural. "I'm getting bored," your new Ice Queen voice announces icily. "How about you go ahead and stick your tiny limp dick in me so I can get this over with and go home."

A guttural noise comes from the masked man's throat. "Yes," he breathes, "yes, just like her."

You sigh inwardly.

Also, as the man's pants come down and his penis comes out, you're pretty sure you're going to be okay.

He's not actually tiny. You didn't think he would be. You---you wonder how this is going to feel, whether your body is going to react despite your disgust. You're now pretty sure you can handle that too.

He leans over you and sticks his hands up your shirt, a strong, painful grab at your breasts. "Ow!" you say in real surprise, and then "OW!" again as he puts his full weight on his hands, using your chest to support himself. The ache in your breasts is stronger than the sensation of his penis going into your lubricated vagina as his hips begin to thrust. Not to the point that you don't notice the entry, but it's still a distraction.

"You fucker!" You instinctively try to press your thighs together to keep out his thrusts, the only movement afforded you with your ankles and wrist cuffs. In the back of your mind you're aware that you're struggling like his fantasy rape victim and he's getting off on that, but, you know what, being concerned about that is not your main job. Your first priority is your own sanity and that means not suppressing your reactions. "Get OFF of me! Mother-fucker!"

There's a penis pounding in and out of you, pumping hard and steadily, and at LST 22 you can't completely ignore that. The crushing of your breasts is painful and it mixes with the sensations below, the flickers of sexual warmth despite everything. You wrench your waist, trying to get away, and he follows the movement. "Get---OFF---of---me!"

This is in fact way easier to handle than you were afraid of, exactly like you told yourself fifteen bajillion times would be the case.

The rape goes on, on on like a metronome. The penis continues thrusting in and out of you, his hips go on smacking into you on the downthrust and knocking on your clit.

The stat info for LST 22 implies you have the overall arousal level, if not the exact parameters, of a teenage boy. You're not climbing toward orgasm but you really can't ignore what's happening below your waist, once the fear and horror have mostly subsided out of your mind. One time you get distracted enough that an audible moan-gasp-grunt escapes your lips and the evil motherfucking bastard on top of you gives an evil satisfied laugh.

You---you'd animate your hair and strangle him, if your hair were that strong, which it's not. But, the thought occurs to you, you're an eroge character. You're gonna get raped, it's a thing. The part where it can also feel good and not just unpleasant, even if you honestly hate the guy, might also be important to your future sanity. Allowing yourself to respond sexually to people you despise might be a key part of what this tutorial is designed to teach.

[ ] Let yourself respond. There's no reason to make your life less pleasant.
[ ] Keep trying to hold back. If a rapist wants your orgasm he'll have to take it from you.

6.3.4*: Haughty

(Continued heavy trigger warnings for rape.)

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (13,900 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 221/440
SUB: 480/480

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 25
FUK: 19
PRV: 26
ERO: 31 (16)

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8934

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Reagent of Mundane Biology (II), Biologists #7, #9, #14
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Busy Mode: Off

Spoiler: Tally Results

I am treating this result as lying within "Cindy is haughty about rapists she feels unworthy, and is annoyed if they succeed in pleasuring her" and near the border of "Cindy demands to be conquered and does not stop being reluctant."
Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 157 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 4708-4872]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Cindy can readily enjoy nonconsensual sex.
No. of Votes: 27

Spoiler: Voters

MrBTXz
adara
Aoinfinity
Budda002
DarkDaemon
DragonGodxxx
End of Line
Ephemeral
General Lewdendorf
Gingganz
Jirachi
Legume
Malbutorius
Mei Mei
Mitale
Moriwen
pepperjack
PlasticSoldier
Proxima
Pseudonym
Quentin
redfog
SAndD
ScrewFate
Strelok
Theli
unidentified_individual

[x] Cindy is defiant and doesn't yield her sexuality without a fight, even when she's scared and even when that means taking risks.
No. of Votes: 22

Spoiler: Voters

lurkymclurkerton
1234567890
Acae
AfroSpic
batrax
Derpmind
Edifier
Elitist Oars
Grael Case
Hyperion042
Jirachi
Kappa
madness
masterax2000
Prime 2.0
rchalle
Skelm
The_Wanderer
Thrice.Great
Uvigz
wichajster

as

[x] Cindy is haughty about rapists she feels unworthy, and is annoyed if they succeed in pleasuring her.
No. of Votes: 21

Spoiler: Voters

Sirrocco
askldjflkajskje
Beholder_of_Words
Diraniola
edale
Gavinfoxx
Greckle
Guile
january1may
Jaso
modrony
Nemonowan
Olivebirdy
QazdaMorquil
raisins
Sarkavonsy
SkyJack121
SkySkimmer
theonebutcher
wasprider
zachol

[X] Cindy demands to be conquered and does not stop being reluctant.
No. of Votes: 18

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
AltTab
anon101
Blackshard
ChaoticWhimsy
D.Rockstar
Flashbunny
Halbling
Lunahaile
napkintooth
OriginalName
sharps
slicedtoad
Spectral Waltz
sunspark
Theminimanx
Valmit
zerofarad

[X] Cindy is haughty, and has an urge but not compulsion to fight back.
No. of Votes: 7

Spoiler: Voters

Dragonheart91
Balewood
Chulup
CTCatapult
Eler0
Sixteen
Soul Shocker

[X] Cindy is defiant and doesn't yield her sexuality without a fight, even when she's scared and even when that means taking risk.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Le_nerd

Total No. of Voters: 95

The vile bastard lying on top of you goes on crushing your breasts in his hands and using them to support his weight, and his hips go on thrusting at you fast and hard.

Slowly and softly, your mind tentatively tries to reinterpret this situation as "I am in an eroge scenario" and not "I am trapped in a dimly lighted room with a violent criminal."

You're still viscerally afraid of the man lying on top of you, but, but this is a tutorial aimed at brave novice erogamers and you're willing to trust to that? He's not about to pull out a knife and cut your throat, no matter how easy it would be for him to do that, because that is not what happens next in this eroge plot. No, seriously, you think you are starting to believe that, now that the first shock is past.

If you don't want to spend significant portions of the rest of your life not having fun, maybe you should actually try to derive sexual pleasure from this…?

You try tentatively to lift your hips to meet the penis thrusting in and out of you.

Your body stops. Your mind refuses. You can't do it.

In the dimiminishing fear, your brain has found a new, increasingly strong feeling about what's happening to you.

This scum is not good enough to pleasure you.

This type of pride is an unfamiliar mode of thinking to you. You have very recent memories of when you might have been glad of the implied compliment, if somebody thought your body was worth raping. If they treated you as a sexual entity at all. And now, no sooner do you become pretty than you're suddenly lifting your Ice Queen head and sniffing? It's just, it's just that you do seem to feel that way.

Haughty. That's what you're feeling, that's what this emotion is. Apparently once you have an available quest to Become a Princess, you start feeling haughty. You'd---you'd never want to feel like this about some innocent fat boy who was enjoying looking at you. That would not be okay. But it's okay to feel disgusted by this scumbag (you refuse to think his name, you don't want to personalize him enough to allow any chance that he's a recurring character) (Joseph) (okay you can't actually stop yourself from thinking of things). And once you let yourself feel disgusted by a man, you start feeling haughty.

This man is a mere tutorial villain, not, not---you don't know exactly what your future-princessly self is demanding here. Definitely not Kim Jong-un, so it's not just about ruling a country. Vladimir Putin… uh, maybe? Putin doesn't look bad with his shirt off. You have a fuzzy sense of being a fantasy warrioress who demands to be taken only by a man who can defeat her in battle, except the dirtbag lying on top of you could defeat you in 0.3 seconds so that's clearly not what counts. Requiring "a respectable villain with class" isn't an easy ask, since trying to rape a woman automatically demotes somebody out of the class of respectable villains. But surely it's reasonable to ask that you be violated only by nice, handsome men who are raping you in order to save the world? Okay, Charles totally spoiled you here.

It's a funny thing, but, but your inner voices felt this way about the scumbag blackmailer at the strip club too. So apparently this is just who you are inside. You wish you weren't thinking this, it's tempting fate way too much, but the Erogame can certainly read your mind and it's already too late not to think the words.

You need worthy rapists.

-+​

Being honest with yourself about the conditions under which you want to be taken against your will causes your PRV to go up by 1!

The unworthy scumbag lying on top of you and thrusting between your legs is starting to breathe more heavily, it sounds like he's approaching orgasm, and, and no? No. If you're allowed to have emotions and be the haughty princess character, then no, he does not get to come inside you he is not worthy.

The thought occurs to you that Tears of Milk is a thing. And that victims in eroge rape stories don't immediately get shot as soon as they try to do anything to their attackers, especially if they are magical girls and the rapist is not.

It---it isn't going to make the Masked Rapist violent, is it, if he finds he can't come? But he's old, his voice sounds old and his chin beneath the mask looked old. He fought in Vietnam which was ages ago. He shouldn't think to blame you if he suddenly has a sexual dysfunction.

Tears of Milk, your lips shape the words.

Then a worm of fear creeps back up your back. That didn't make sense. You should have thought longer before casting that spell. You should have let him come and let this be over, you shouldn't have extended this plotline and you absolutely shouldn't have risked making him angry---

The masked man's breathing reaches a peak. His hands crush your breasts harder, to the point that a pained uh escapes your lips that the bastard is probably telling himself is your pleasure.

The Tears of Milk skill informs you that this is the exact time you should stop stimulation.

He goes on thrusting into you.

Loud moans of satisfaction come from beneath the mask, pleasure tinged with malice.

Uh. Uh, right. The skill doesn't work like that. Tears of Milk informs you of the moment to stop stimulating a victim, it doesn't allow you to just keep going at full speed and have the victim not come anyway. You need to think about that more logically next time.

With a final push that extracts one more twinge of pain from your breasts, the black-business-suited man rises off from you, and begins to pull up his pants. Standing high above you, the white-cloth head looks down with what is probably a satisfied expression underneath the mask.

The Ice Queen inside you is now really annoyed. There is unworthy semen in your vagina.

Having the unworthy man succeed in raping the Ice Queen and injuring her pride is also an erogame trope, now that you think about it. Being the Ice Queen isn't going to protect you. It's just going to make you feel annoyed every time.

But you no longer feel like this is a choice of role-play. This is the eroge character that you are.

The white head above the tall black business suit has turned from you and is rummaging in the duffel bag again. You think of scathingly hurtful things to say about how he didn't last long enough to make you come. You manage to keep your inner Ice Queen quiet.

The nervousness in you is rising again. Shouldn't this be over?

You---you kind of want out of these handcuffs now. This position is not comfortable and you feel like you've completed this tutorial.

The black-business-suited man straightens up from the duffel bag, carrying an enormous vibrator the length of your arm to the elbow. It's the same vibrator that Tammi brought to use on non-doctor Laura, the one Tammi called the cordless Hitachi Magic Wand.

"Really?" escapes your inner Ice Queen's lips. "What is wrong with you?"

You're not sure if you're talking to him or the Erogame. You can see why the tutorial would make sure the novice rape victim can have sexual satisfaction inflicted on her, if she doesn't come from the intercourse itself. But doesn't the Erogame realize you've already demonstrated that? You came with Charles. Can't the tutorial just let you go?

A black-gloved finger presses a button on the enormous vibrator, and a blue LED lights up along with an ominous hummmmm.

Then the black-gloved finger presses another button three times. Another three blue LEDs light up as the ominous hummmmm gets louder and higher, like a lightsaber that can be turned up to even more dangerous settings.

Eep.

"I'm going to make you come so hard you piss yourself," a harsh male voice pronounces.

Your head thuds back to the gym mat beneath you. "I wish to file a complaint," you say to nobody in particular.

It is at this point that your inexperience with vibrators starts working not in your favor. If you had more experience, more online reading, or had otherwise known more about how to correctly use vibrators on women, you would have been able to realize in advance what was about to go wrong.

As it is, you just lie back in annoyance as the Masked Rapist unstoppably parts your thighs, pulls back the fold from your clit, and directly applies the full-power Hitachi Magic Wand to---

"EEEEEEEtoosensitivetoosensitivetoosensitiveturnitdownturnitdownturnitdown!"

He doesn't turn it down.

You're not sure how much time passes, it feels like minutes but was probably more like thirty seconds, before the HORRIBLE THING is removed from your clit and you lie on the floor, panting, your body still twitching occasionally.

The fucking fucker of a fuckfucker is laughing.

Then the dipshit switches the vibrator to level one, and applies it again, and your body jerks occasionally but accepts the input. Warm pleasure begins to spread out from your freshly tormented clit.

This---this asshole. This demonspawn. You wouldn't be surprised to find that he actually does have tainted blood. You are out of words to describe how done you are with this impudent scum. You are the future crown princess of Denmark, or wherever it is you conquer for Mom! How dare he try to wrest an orgasm from you---

Uh. Wow. Being haughty is kind of, uh, addictive. You had better be careful never to get so arrogant you're no longer willing to blow random Lyft drivers. You don't want to become that type of princess.

The dipshit rapist shifts the vibrator up to level two.

The buzzing at your groin is more urgent, pangs of unwanted pleasure starting to go through you.

God damn it.

The vibrator shifts up to level three.

You clench your teeth together to prevent a moan from escaping you. Yep. Being haughty is clearly not going to protect your princessly self from being forced into a humiliating, unwanted orgasm.

Helplessly, instinctively, you try to relax your body and not hold your breath the way you do when you're about to come, trying to fight the pleasure that's threatening to overwhelm you. Even though your rational mind knows it's not going to work and will just make the eventual orgasm stronger. You're honestly not doing that on purpose, you just can't help being that type of eroge character.

Your body is starting to tense up despite your best efforts when the rapist shifts up the vibrator to level four. The sensation is overwhelming, harsh, your pussy barely able to take it and overly sensitive even so. But it's quickly shoving you to the cliff you're trying to shy away from. You shut your eyes and can't stop the ragged moan that escapes your throat.

The overwhelming buzzing on your oversensitive clit goes away.

Your eyes fly open in shock and dawning horror.

More sounds burst unescapably from your throat. "You've got to be fucking joking!"

"Aw," the masked man's taunting voice says, holding the bulbous vibrator head a few inches from your face so you can see your own juices on it, "did you want this? Just ask prettily and I'll let you have it."

"Die in a fire twice!"

The vibrator is turned to level one and pressed against your clit again.

"If I pointed out," you say through gritted teeth, "that this not how rape works and you are being a completely unrealistic rapist, is there any part of you that would realize something strange was going on?"

The black-gloved hand turns up the vibrator to level two.

You know exactly what's happening, of course. You thought, out loud inside your head where the Erogame could hear, that you didn't want this unworthy scum to give you an orgasm.

And the Erogame is saying back, "Huh. Are you sure?"

The vibrator is turned up to level 3, despite your best efforts your limbs visibly tense up and your breath stops, the vibrator goes up to level 4, you shut your eyes without being able to help yourself, your thighs try desperately to squeeze together, the vibrator is turned off but kept tauntingly against your clit.

On the plus side, you are now recognizing this situation on a gut level as an eroge plot, since this course of events has occurred in Reality Classic maybe four times total over Earth's history.

The vibrator is turned on to level 1.

"Just ask to come and it'll all be done," the low, harsh voice says tauntingly. "Unless you feel like staying around for longer."

The vibrator is turned up to level 2.

You have a suspicion that if you begged to come, and came, this tutorial would be at an end.

There are parts of you that are looking questioningly at your newfound womanly pride and asking it to be reasonable.

Your newfound womanly pride is saying back, with a reddened haughty face and a breathless icy voice, that it just got here and would be ashamed to pack its bags again this quickly.

The vibrator is turned up to level 3.

The vibrator is turned up to level 4.

The vibrator is turned off.

FUCK THE EROGAME.

bzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ off

bzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ off

bzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ off

bzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ off

You have acquired the status "Teased."

bzzZZZZZZZ off

bzzZZZZZ off

bzzZZZZZZ off

bzzZZZZ off

You and your newfound haughtiness are trying very hard to keep an impassive, disdainful impression even as your hips quiver and wetness drips between them.

"Last chance to come before you go, Jane," says the taunting voice from behind the mask. There's a new undertone in it that you don't consciously notice on account of being distracted.

"Oh, it's over then?" you say haughtily. "Good, because I'm sick of you, sick of this place, and my name isn't Jane and you're never seeing her again." It might not be the most calculated thing you could have said, but you've started to genuinely believe that it's safe to say what's on your mind during rapes.

The vibrator is tossed aside. "I suppose you're right," says the low, age-harshened voice of the Masked Rapist. "You're as much like her as I'll ever find, but you're not her."

A sudden chill goes down your sweaty spine, and you repeat in your head, over and over, Level 1 tutorial, Level 1 tutorial, even as the rapist goes back to his duffel bag for what you hope to God is the key to your handcuffs.

Then he turns around and he's holding a gun.

6.3.5: Gun

The words burst out of your throat before you've even made a conscious decision. "Info perks let's not turn this rape into a murder!"

[ ] Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder:

Although the Erogame would not in any case present you with a crippling threat and no alternative, this perk guarantees up front that no sexual assault or sexually motivated kidnapping will result in any damage your Erogamer's Body cannot heal. Think carefully before taking this perk: once you take it you can never again experience the crushing, absolute submission that comes from knowing your very life depends on pleasing your captor.

You cannot take this perk during an ongoing nonconsensual encounter.

A remote part of your mind nods at how very very logical this is, and how much you should have seen this coming. Why, otherwise just the fact of this perk being available in emergencies would imply that you could never experience the crushing, absolute submission of knowing that your life depends on pleasing your captor.

The rest of you is just screaming, as your blood turns to ice and fills up with all of the adrenaline.

"P-please make me come," you say. "Please, sir, pretty please? I'd like an orgasm. I'm begging for one."

"You were also right about this being a good time to kill myself," says the rough voice behind the mask. "I'm killing you too, of course. Goodbye, Jane."

"Wait---" you say, wait wouldn't you like a blowjob first wait I can offer you unimaginable pleasures wait how about you make me come first wait I'd rather not die right now when I'm finally happy wait please wait, too many thoughts crowding behind your lips simultaneously so that at the worst possible time nothing comes out.

Then he's pointing the gun at you before you can think about it and a thrown half-brick smashes into his masked head before you can think about it and the gun discharges before you can think about it and there's a slight stinging sensation in your left ankle but that's all.

Your eyes go to your left ankle without thinking about it but all your limbs are still there, there's no blood. Just a cracked chipping on the floor nearby. That must be where the bullet hit.

Then you look at the rapist who's sprawled on the floor. You keep on looking at him, but he's not moving, so you look at him some more in case he does.

Your ears are still ringing with the huge noise that you were too busy to consciously process.

By the time you think to wonder where the brick came from, there's a whitish form in your peripheral vision picking up the gun from where it's fallen. There's the gun-readying sound of the gun-ratchet-y thingy being slid back and forth.

You look at the person and their loose white dress and their red cap. You form a brief impression of not having an impression of their gender. Then your eyes go back to the rapist who's still not moving, because he is dangerous and needs watching. Your eyes jump to the Redcap to see if they're pointing the gun at you, but they're not, they're sighting down their arm pointing the gun at the rapist. So your eyes go back to looking at the much more dangerous rapist again.

"Are you okay?" says a medium-high-pitched voice. "Were you hit? I don't see blood."

Your mouth works, swallows, you manage to say, "Not hit," and then you go back to processing.

"Where's the key to your handcuffs?" the voice says.

Your finger, moving on its own, manages to point towards the duffel bag.

"Where---" says the voice, but then in your peripheral vision you see them moving with a sideways crablike motion towards the duffel bag. They bend over to pick something up from the floor nearby.

Your brain seems to think that the most important thing it can do right now is yell at you and call you an idiot for not realizing earlier that the perk might not work.

And then completely forgetting to shift your ERO to 31 and make the rape less realistic before the gun could fire and kill you.

A tentative calming voice suggests that you were never actually in any danger whatsoever, because gun or no gun, the plot did not call for you to be shot. That's probably the last lesson in the rape-victim tutorial. It's okay, don't be frightened out of your wits if the rapist is pointing a gun at you. It doesn't really mean he could shoot you at any time. Not shoot at you and hit you. He's not allowed to kill you so long as you play along with the plot.

This in turn is causing other parts of you to waste time screaming and yelling at the Erogame and internally bursting into tears, though your exterior eyes remain dry.

"Here," the voice says, "take this," and you look over to see the Redcap's hand holding a tiny key. They're not looking at you, they're still sighting down the gun at the rapist. "We need your handcuffs so we can cuff him before he wakes up," their voice explains patiently. "Can you take off your handcuffs?"

Your right hand takes the key. You bring your legs together and so your right hand can insert the key into the left handcuff.

"You have to turn the key counterclockwise first, then turn the key clockwise and hold it while you remove the cuffs," the voice says.

This is an absurdly complicated instruction, but you manage. Your left hand comes loose from your left leg, which immediately stretches out and away. Then it's your left hand's turn to undo the right hand's cuff.

"Do you know how to use a gun?"

"N-no."

"I need you to put the handcuffs on him," the voice says. "I'm sorry to make you be the one to do it, but I ought to keep holding the gun on him. Can you---I'm sorry, can you just do it, please? I know a little about guns. This is taking all of my concentration."

This is eminently sensible, so you don't argue with it. You're too angry and scared right now to be scared. You undo the cuffs on your legs, stand up in the empty concrete storage room, and move over to where the rapist is lying on the ground. There's blood staining the white mask now, and spreading. The fact that he's still bleeding means his heart is still beating, or at least you'd think so.

You handcuff his right hand to his right leg and his left hand to his left leg. So there.

You move away from the rapist.

The Redcap is still aiming the gun at him, but their stance is more casual now.

"I'm Rose," they say.

"S-starry," you manage to blurt out. "Thank, thank you. Uh---pronouns?"

Rose shoots you a quick, appreciative look. "Anything except he or she," they say. "And you're welcome, comrade."

You take a closer look at Rose now that your brain is less completely occupied with other things. They look to be in the late teenage stage of the human lifeform, filling out the loose white dress in a generally doughy way that doesn't cross the line into Fat. Their red full lips are sparkling with sparkling red lipstick. There's a red flower (not a rose) tucked into the back of their titular red cap. The general sense is of somebody who might have started out femme some time earlier, before they decided gender was too difficult and gave up.

The red cap has a yellow hammer and sickle on the front.

You blink. "Uh," you say rather stupidly, "Norville Redcaps… the red caps symbolize that you're… communists?"

"That's right, comrade!" the Redcap says proudly. "We're the largest agender communist street gang in Central California."

There was a time when you would have expressed surprise about a street gang like this existing in Norville and you having never heard about the fact. There was a time when you would have asked what was the second-largest agender communist street gang in Central California.

You should text Mom and tell her you're okay. You should do that next. You should do that right away. Mom must be worried about the rape taking so long. She doesn't know that you were never in any real danger.

Where---where's your phone? You're certain you had your burner phone before. Where is it? You don't remember the rapist seizing it from you. Where were you carrying your phone when it wasn't in your hand? You don't have a purse. Your skirt has no pockets. You put your phone away without thinking about it and you don't remember where.

You take a shallow breath, hold it, wait until the lack of breath is consuming your attention, distract your brain more by remembering how incredibly scared you just were, and let your hands reflexively perform the motion of taking out your phone.

You are now holding your phone.

"Calling the police?" Rose says.

"Uh," you say stupidly. That's probably also a good idea. "After I text my Mom to let her know I'm okay."

"I shouldn't be here when the police arrive," Rose says quietly. "And you're the one who hit the Masked Rapist with that brick when he looked away for a second. Is that okay?"

You nod without thinking.

Then you do think about it. The guy could be dying. But even if the plot says that happens which you doubt, come on, it's the Masked Rapist and the law can't be that unreasonable. Your Erogamer's World skill suggests a certain amount of immunity to police. And Rose did save your life and you're not about to throw them under the bus after that.

"I'm, I'm Starry," you say. "I, uh, I owe you one, comrade. I---I do amazing sexy things, just, just not right now. You can reach me at starry starr, two Rs in both words, at G-M-X dot com."

Rose shoots you a sympathetic look. "It's seriously okay," they say.

"It's seriously okay right back at you," you reply. You think you're recovering, sort of. "I am fundamentally okay with living in a continuum where I am grateful to heroic rescuers."

"I won't argue," says Rose. "If you want to contact me later, look up the Norville Redcaps Facebook page and ask to be put in touch with Rose."

Then Rose shows you how to point a gun at somebody, how to pull the trigger, and mimes the motion that will load another bullet and pull back the hammer. Here's the safety. Put the safety on when the police get here and before you point the gun at anything that's not the rapist. Keep the gun pointed at the rapist until the police get here.

You text Mom. Rose tells you the address of the warehouse you're in. You text Mom the address. You ask Mom if she can please take care of calling the police and telling them the Masked Rapist has been caught and handcuffed. After a while Mom texts back and says that she's already on her way, and that she called the police while she was walking and now they're on their way.

Rose spits on the gun handle and wipes it with their dress, you suppose for whatever that's worth in terms of fingerprints.

Then Rose gives the gun to you, and they slip back out the same opened door from which they came.

6.3.6 [WS]: Denouement Scene

"Cindy?" comes a distant and very welcome voice.

"Over here!" you call back. More of your self-possession is returning to you, because you don't want your Mom to find you looking shell-shocked. It would make her overestimate how bad things were and that would worry her unnecessarily.

You're standing four meters from the rapist and pointing a gun at him, far enough that he can't reach you in a single lunge while cuffed like that, and close enough that you really shouldn't miss if you aim for his chest.

"Cindy," says Mom.

"I'm mostly okay," you say. "I'll be glad when the police get here though. Uh, please don't enter my line of fire and I'm supposed to keep looking at him."

You glance at your Mom anyway. She's sweating and still breathing in huge gasps, like she ran here at top speed. She looks pale and you hope that's just the lone remaining light in the warehouse.

You quickly look back at the handcuffed rapist, like you should. "I'm really mostly okay," you repeat. "Just hold off on the hugs for another minute."

There's police sirens in the distance, rapidly growing in volume.

"This," your Mom says, "was a truly fundamentally stupid idea."

"I---Mom, I---most of this wasn't as bad as you'd think from how this looks at the end. It was basically a tutorial on how to be an erogame rape victim and---and I'll admit it was scary, but, the reason it was scary was that I was frightened of things that, that I shouldn't have let scare me. Eroge rape doesn't work like rape in the real world. Even when the rapist has a gun, it doesn't mean you're in danger of being shot." You notice that the gun is trembling in your hand, and try to calm your shaking muscles. "He used a vibrator on me, if you want some idea of how unrealistic it was. Mom, it's not a good idea to act like this is a big deal, remember?"

It's---it's something of a low blow, you're aware. But you don't want Mom worrying unnecessarily and you can't think of what else to say to calm her down.

The sound of deep breaths, careful inhalations and exhalations, comes from next to you.

"Oh, uh," you say, "uh, don't say anything about Norville Redcaps to the police. Rose said they couldn't be here when the police got here, and they asked me to say that I was the one who hit the rapist on the head with the brick while he was distracted."

"So the police blame you instead?" your Mom says, sounding incredulous.

"I think the actual victim of a rape in progress is in a better legal position than a gang member, even before taking into account that Erogamer's World gives me some amount of latitude with police. Uh, I think it does."

"You do not look like Cinderella Sheen is supposed to look like," your Mom says. "What name are we giving them?"

"I bet the Erogame takes care of it," you say distantly. "You thought that my sudden weight loss made perfect sense, before I---took you backstage."

"What---what were we supposed to be doing in this part of town at this time of day?" Mom says. "I should have thought of this much earlier, we need an excuse---"

There's a storm of footsteps. Your Mom goes quiet.

Four police officers are in the room. Somebody carefully, respectfully takes the gun from your hand, turns you and Mom around, and brings you both through the door in the wall and then another door into a much smaller room. Somebody runs in with a folding chair and you sit down on it. A female police officer puts a pre-warmed heavy blanket around you, you did not realize those were a thing. You make a mental note to offer her oral sex if you meet under more socially favorable conditions.

You tell the female police officer that you're not injured and don't need medical attention, but you'd like to be alone with Mom with nobody else for a while before you try to talk about anything with the police.

And then, almost instantly, there's nobody else in the room.

"I… I wouldn't have expected that to work," Mom says in a low murmur. She has her hands tightly clasped in her lap, sitting next to you on her own folding chair, in a bare concrete room lit only by shafts of light shining through broken windows high above. The blanket is around both of you, now, so that you can lean into Mom.

"Either the Erogame just cut me a fucking break," you say back, also quietly, "or the Norville Police Department has a socioculturally improbable degree of compassion and understanding about how to handle rape victims." Though for all you know it's standard procedure in Reality Classic too.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Mom says. "You don't have to. You really don't have to. Do not feel obligated to talk about it to reassure me."

"I… I honestly believe it was less traumatic than what you went through with your uncle."

Mom gives you an incredulous look, before she gets her face under control. "My uncle didn't have a gun," she says, her voice low and intense. "A gun that fired. I smelled the gunpowder when I came in."

You swallow. "I---I mean I suppose that having a gun fired at you would be scary, if you didn't know that the bullet wouldn't hit you because plot armor---"

"You weren't sure," Mom says. She's almost hissing, trying to keep her voice low so the police don't hear, while the intensity almost overloads her throat. "It frightened you. I can tell, dear."

You don't remind her not to make a big deal of it. It would shut her up, but---but it's the wrong thing to do.

You look up at the high window, through which a shaft of dirty sunlight is shining, the only illumination in the dead concrete room. There's---there's a thing Mom ought to know, that it might help her to know.

"Mom," you say softly, "the Erogame knows---it knows the secret of how to not be traumatized by rape. Or it knows a secret. That worked for me. Maybe it wouldn't work for anyone else. And it's a secret that only works for an eroge rape and not a Reality Classic one. I---if I hadn't known that secret, then somebody holding me down and putting a penis in me, might have been---bad. Damaging. Because I would have damaged myself. With the secret, even with a gun being shot at me, I'll be okay. I'll be okay once I've had some time to recover."

"What's the secret?" Mom says, because it's obvious you want her to ask.

"I almost turned around and went the other way, before I saw that the Erogame had left me a message, as graffiti…"

You try to explain. How eroge rapes are depicted with the victims reacting, saying what they're thinking, instead of dissociating or going passive. You discovered that your own nature as an eroge rape victim is near the border between Ice Queen and Haughty Princess, which isn't going to make life easy for you. But in an eroge rape you could be your icy, haughty self out loud, and be disdainful at the rapist and refuse to beg for an orgasm. It follows logically that uh something or other about inner mental integrity and not being twisted up inside during the rape. Therefore you're sure you'll be okay once you've had a chance to process.

You feel like some type of cultist trying to pass on the supposed wisdom of a cult leader.

Mom listens.

"And you're wondering if knowing this might help me," your Mom says quietly, when you're done.

You exhale softly. "I---I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's only the answer for me. I---I just---you said you wanted to be an erogame character too. I don't want to even think about you having to do your own tutorial. I just want to keep you safe inside some type of giant pillow fortress. But I know I wouldn't want to be kept in a pillow fortress. And I am sure you can't safely be in eroge plots if you---if you try to handle trouble the way you handled your first rape."

There's a long silence in the concrete room. Even the occasional shuffling footsteps outside and barking police voices seem muted, distant, like this bubble of reality has withdrawn from them to shelter you.

"I feel like I'm too old to change that much," Mom says, softly and without regret. "Maybe I'll feel differently once I look at myself in the mirror and see somebody younger. But right now I feel like there was a wound that healed over a long time ago. And maybe it scarred, but it still healed. I believe there's an integrity in the person I became. It's---it's hard to imagine that it would be a good idea to rip off the scar tissue and open the wound again and let it heal differently, even if it could have healed slightly better. Am I making sense?"

"Sort of," you say. "The Erogame---I don't think we should underestimate how well it might psychiatrist. It is kind of all-powerful."

"I'm also suspicious," Mom says, "that you're raising this topic in part to distract me from asking other questions. I'm not saying you have to answer those questions, especially not right now. But you're not fooling me."

Was it a distraction? Maybe. "I thought for a second I was going to die," you say. A shiver passes through you. "It wasn't for very long, so, so I don't think I could have been traumatized that much, but for a second I really thought I was going to die." There is still a very loud voice in you that you're trying to force down, a part of you that still believes in physical causality and doesn't believe in narrative causality. A part that believes you came within inches of death today and keeps trying to yell that yes you should be permanently traumatized about guns. It's hard to believe with all your heart that voice is wrong. "I tried to take the perk Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder, but it turns out you can't take it if a rape is already in progress. I---I kind of want to take that perk right now. But I know you'd tell me to wait and not do it right away, in case I can get to Lvl 15 first and get another marshmallow perk."

"I… I'm not sure I would in fact advise you to wait, honey," says Mom.

"The thought of learning martial arts seems more attractive than it did yesterday. It turns out I don't enjoy being helpless when the person who has me handcuffed is a dirtbag. I don't want to just be a helpless lump the next time somebody points a taser at me. But---but other people don't have plot armor. Bullets can hit them. If I start making the Erogame violent around me, maybe I'll survive but some dashing heroic rescuer will die a dramatic tragic death in my arms. I'm not sure I could live with that. And based on other things the Erogame has said, it sounds like if I buy a gun, the rapists start wearing bulletproof vests. If that's how it's going to work, then I'd rather my life be less bystander-endangering before I end up defeated anyway. Either way, I'm not doing any more ERO 16 rapes. I don't regret facing my fears, once, but the less realism the better from now on."

Your Mom's arms are around you, and she's hugging you tightly. "I'm sorry," she says softly.

"But I did get to confront a lot of my fears and I---I honestly think that I'll be way better off going forwards, if somebody shoves me up against the wall and rips off my panties. I mean, it wouldn't be a good idea for it to happen right this minute. But, once I've had some time to settle, it will be much less scary in the future. It won't be this unknowably horrible thing that's never happened to me before. I'll know that when I'm eroge-raped I go icy and disdainful. I won't be afraid that I'll curl up and dissociate and end up numbing myself to the meaning of sex forever by repeating to myself that it's just a penis in my vagina---"

You cut yourself off and look at Mom.

Mom's smiling, like she's completely at peace with what you're saying.

You don't really want to talk more about this, not right now.

"Speaking of distractions," you say, "last night I held an orgy at a biology conference and they invented an incredible miracle cure that can restore youthful skin and cause total weight loss in just 24 hours."

Mom snickers.

"And fix Alzheimer's Disease, and clear out arteries, and give immunity to HIV and herpes and---and I forget what else, it was a long list. Basically all of the major diseases that anyone thought of over the course of ninety minutes. Oh, right, cancer. Fixing cancer was the key, actually, it's what lets you amp up cell replication all over the body without dying of cancer. That's why you can grow more muscle and regenerate all your skin, which is how you end up looking young again."

Mom is very rigid where you're leaning against her.

"I think what was really going on," you add, "is that starting at ERO 30, the Erogame wants the world to be full of sexy people. Like, it wasn't just my quest to cure you and Felice. The Erogame wants this to happen everywhere because old and fat aren't sexy. But you and Felice should have your cures pretty soon. The cure includes a boost to LST. And I think sooner or later I can fill in the gaps in your version of Erogamer's Body and give you proper superpowers and enough plot armor so you can go out and do things."

"That's---" Mom seems to be having trouble talking.

"Uh… that's not a bad thing, right?" you say anxiously. "I realize that curing all major diseases is potentially controversial but I did---I did think you'd be proud of me."

"Proud is when your daughter writes a beautiful poem and you pin it up with a refrigerator magnet," Mom says. "Not when they award her the last Nobel Prize in Medicine and then abolish it. I try not to swear around you, honey, it's just, it's just, it's just---I can't figure out where I should be using the word 'fucking' right now. But I'm sure I'll be proud of you later. Do you---you said---do you actually think everyone will be able to afford this treatment, eventually?"

"Yep!" you say with vigorous nodding, as you decide not to go into the part about transmissibility via kiss just now. That sort of freaked out Charles the first time he heard.

"How long will this take to develop?"

"One of the biologists at the orgy volunteered to be a test subject, so she's starting the treatment tonight. If it works on her with no problems, we can start on you, uh, Saturday night or Sunday morning I guess?"

"Are---are you serious, honey? Or were you just joking this whole time?"

You don't know why Mom is sounding skeptical. Shock you can understand, but not skepticism. "Mom, this is just biology. The Erogame can break the laws of metaphysics as we know it. I mean, you've seen my hair, right? Or not seen my hair, more like experienced my hair concept in a visual medium, but you know what I mean."

"How---how is the cure being---is there a startup? Who's paying for the first treatments?"

"Sonia Turk is handling putting the cure together. Uh, she's the one who's using herself as a test subject."

"Are you saying this person is paying to assemble the treatment protocol by herself? She must be incredibly rich."

"She sure is," you say, thinking of how Sonia talked about spending ten thousand dollars on the first fifty doses like that was nothing.

"And---she'll treat me and Felice too? For free?"

"I'm paying a thousand dollars for your treatments," you say, not without pain.

"Tell her I said thank you," Mom whispers.

It's obvious you're missing something here, and you're pretty sure there's been a communications breakdown. But it looks like you've accomplished the basic task of breaking Mom out of her state of shock and cheering her up some, which was the most important priority after your rape.

"I think I'm okay to talk to the police now," you say. "I'd like to be done with this and go home."

It's not as noisy as you thought it would be, when you exit the room. A police officer passing through spots the two of you almost immediately. You say you're ready to talk.

You sit down in a police van with benches lining the sides of the interior, and recount what you remember, the physical events rather than the psychology. There's---it seems like there's less to remember than there should be. In your version, you were in the living part of Norville rather than the dead part when you felt the taser darts impact on your chest, and the rapist walked you two blocks to reach this warehouse.

Near the end, Mom interrupts and claims that she tracked down your cellphone signal, and that she's the one who snuck in and threw the half-brick at the rapist's head.

You give Mom the most unobtrusive glare you can manage.

The police officer asks what you were doing in that part of town in the early morning.

You take a deep breath, look her in the eyes, and say, "I was on an Erogame quest."

"Makes sense," the police officer says, and scribbles something down in her notebook.

You wish you could lean over and see if the notebook now says "Erogame quest" or something saner. But either way, it worked.

When you're done with the physical events, you try to describe serial rapist psychology. Envious of his older brother's girlfriend. She'd turned into a fat housewife by the time he got back from Vietnam. He was trying to rape girls who resembled her.

He said you reminded him of Jane, more than anyone else probably ever would. But he realized now that you weren't her. And he was going to kill you before he killed himself.

Your mother begins shaking.

"Mom, it's all right," you say as gently as you can. "He did not, in fact, kill me."

"W-where," Mom begins, and clears her throat. "Where is this masked rapist, right now, if I may ask?"

The Masked Rapist is outside in a police ambulance but he hasn't been moved to a hospital yet because of blah blah reasons.

"Probability doesn't exist for us," Mom whispers. "He called you---"

Mom jumps up and darts out of the van, moving much faster than a woman her age should.

You and the police officer trade shocked glances, and then both of you are running after her. Is---is your Mom going to try to kill him? That wouldn't make sense! Your Mom is saner than---

Your mother is inside the police ambulance, shoving aside the hands of police officers who are trying to pull her away and be gentle about it.

But she's not doing anything to the man in the business suit. She's just staring at him.

You reach her side.

Mom is staring at the face that was underneath the mask, the bloodied bandaged face of an old man with a rough-shaven neck and a salt-and-pepper mustache.

Oh.

Right.

That's---that's very literarily dramatic, yes.

The tutorial is all about confronting your fears. It features a Masked Rapist. If there's somebody you've always been terrified of rape-wise, that's who the Masked Rapist will turn out to be under the mask, at the end of the tutorial. Isn't that neat? Very cathartic, you get to see that your personal nightmare has been defeated.

Apparently the effect can transfer to somebody else standing nearby, if there's nobody special that the protagonist is afraid of.

"This man's name is Joseph Walter Greenwood," your mother says. "He's my uncle. He raped me when I was thirteen years old."

You're having trouble not throwing up.

"Well, that's convenient," a man says, and a female police officer gives him one of the most killing glares you've seen. "I mean for the prosecutor. It demonstrates he's been a danger for decades and proves this isn't recent insanity. Are you willing to press charges?"

"What?" your Mom says. There's a stillness about her.

"Are you willing to press charges?" repeats the man.

"I---" your mother says. "But---statute of limitations?"

"You didn't hear?" says the man. "As of two months ago, SB-84 removes the statute of limitations for sexual assault on minors, exactly for this type of reason. We can also charge him for a crime committed outside of California so long as the victim is currently a California resident."

You're still trying to control the churning nausea in your own stomach. You've been raped by your grand-uncle and even if you don't know him it's still ew ew ew ew EW.

"You don't have to," says the same female police officer who brought you the blanket. "We've got enough DNA evidence that he's not leaving prison for the rest of his natural life, either way. You don't need to have it dragged up in court if you don't want." Now the man is glaring at her, and she ignores it.

"In, in court," Mom says. There's water in her eyes. Starting to slide down her cheeks. "In public. Where everyone knows what happened. Everyone knows the truth. Justice---"

Mom turns to look at the man who spoke, like the female police officer isn't there.

"What do you need from me?" Mom says to him.

"You give testimony to a police officer today, so the prosecutor knows what to expect, and then you repeat it in court later," the man says. He glances at you. "Though, with your daughter having been assaulted, the defense will argue… is there any way to prove that you didn't make up this allegation just now? Somebody else you told back then?"

Mom ignores the glare of the female police officer just like he does. There's a stillness about her like the center of a hurricane. She's standing up straight, very straight, maybe she's standing up straight for the first time since before you were born. Her voice does not shake. It comes out as clipped and precise as a police captain barking orders.

"Once you have the DNA evidence," Mom says, "you will call John Frederick Greenwood in Montana. You will inform him that his brother, Joseph, was caught in the act of rape and proven guilty by DNA evidence from multiple victims. You will inform John Greenwood that he will be subpoenaed and required to testify in court that his daughter, Winifred Greenwood, told him on October 12th of 1991 that her uncle had raped her the previous day. It is not necessary that he be asked how he acted in response, but if he is asked in court, and he gives any other answer than that he slapped her and told her to stop lying, Winifred will testify as may be required in order to convict him of perjury. Make sure he knows that."

"Christ," somebody whispers.

"Perfect," says the man, and smiles at her.

Mom smiles back.

"And tell him I said," she says, "that it is, in fact, too late to apologize, and that's the last thing there will ever be to say."

6.3.7 [WS]: Good News

(Heavy trigger warnings have ended. Light triggers for mentions of rape continue, and will not be explicitly warned here or in future chapters.)

The police station wagon drives away, and leaves you and Mom standing alone in front of your house. There was an unreasonably technologically advanced tiny rape kit that took two seconds to emit a beep after the thin probe was put inside your vagina. The police officers seemed cheerful about the idea that you wouldn't need to appear in court, since the DNA evidence was proof enough of what happened. You have no idea if that's realistic but you suspect it's not.

Mom is going back to the police station to give her testimony, after she's had something more to eat and a chance to catch her breath. You reminded Mom that she was "going out of town for that medical thing" starting Sunday morning. The police officers all thought that was fine, so long as Mom stayed in touch via phone. She can't "come back" until youth reversion is publicly known to be a thing, but the court date should be much later than that.

The two of you go inside the house, and Mom goes into the kitchen and starts frying all of the bacon in the freezer, which she used to consider an indulgence.

"I---I'm having trouble believing it," Mom says. "Now that I've thought about it, I don't---I don't see how this could be the true story. My uncle raped me because he was fixated on my mother serial-killer style? It's too unlikely. I don't see how this could really be him, rather than a character the Erogame made up to replace my true uncle, who I suppose doesn't exist anymore. Not that he didn't deserve that, but it also means my uncle isn't being convicted in court."

"There was another professor at the orgy last night who had a theory," you say. The bacon smells good. Really good. "He said that according to quantum physics, there were many possible versions of the hotel room we were in. From his perspective, he was standing in many different hotel rooms with different versions of me, and from my perspective, I was standing in different rooms with different versions of him. If Professor Volkov was right, there's no true version of your uncle, just different uncles. Some of them did it because they were fixated on your mother, some of those went on to be serial rapists, and one of those moved to Norville. I---I'm pretty sure my grasp of bullshit Erogame metaphysics is wrong in important ways, but that's the way I've started thinking of it."

Mom turns over a bacon strip in the frying pan. "Did the Erogame do this to try to cure my supposed trauma?" she says. "To put me in a better mental place for sex that doesn't include the option of saying no?"

"Uh, possibly," you say. "Did it work?"

Mom doesn't answer. Maybe she doesn't know either.

"Uh, the other possibility is that the Erogame was being nice. Or pretending to be nice. It does that sometimes."

Mom flips another piece of bacon.

"That reminds me," you say. "This version of Joseph seemed to have fixated on an interesting version of Jane. He called her intelligent and spirited and things like that. Did you---I'm sorry to ask, but---did you ever try telling your mother?"

Mom's face is turned away from you, as she takes her time about peering at the bacon. "I knew that if my father hadn't believed me, there was no way my mother would," she says. "Jane Greenwood never took me seriously. She only ever really listened to her husband. The chance that she would have believed me over John was zero."

You take a deep breath.

You hope to God you're right about this.

"But she didn't actually slap you and tell you to stop lying when you told her you'd been raped," you say. "Maybe she---maybe she was just inexperienced at being a mother. Maybe she knows better now. There's---there's some versions of your mother with a backstory that would make it possible for you to forgive her and have your own Mom again. There's a version of your mother that's going to divorce John when she hears about the news. There's a version that will break into tears and want to apologize to you for being such a terrible mother that you never thought of going to her, and she wants to explain the real reason that happened, even if was just her own stupidity that she's repented of since then. But she doesn't know your phone number."

Mom's shoulders are shaking. "It's too much," she says. "It's too much. This, on top of that, on top of being young again and pretty, on top of Frank returning to us. It's too much. It's too much. It's just far too much. I feel like someone is, is---"

You've been there.

"Trying to buy your soul," you say, "and paying way too much for it."

"Yes," says Mom.

"And it's worrying that you have no idea why they actually want your soul. But they kind of are being extremely nice to you and ridiculously overpaying for it, to the point where it makes you feel bad about asking."

"Yes," says Mom.

"It's like dealing with a Mafia godfather who is incredibly good at finding people's hidden levers and pulling them, and he needs to bribe you into something. So he has you hustled into his office and on his desk he lays out all the keys to your very being, one by one in neat folders. But when you ask the Mafia godfather what in God's name he wants, he's like, meh, tell you later, right now you have an all-expenses-paid Carribean vacation to get to, I'm throwing that in too, and he sends you off with a bouquet of flowers."

Mom finishes ladling a huge heap of bacon onto a plate, and brings it over to the table where she's already laid out silverware.

"It's like being on a date with the Galactic Emperor who rules over millions of technologically advanced planets, any one of which could buy all of Earth out of pocket change, and the emperor has taken a fancy to this cute primitive girl and he's trying to woo her into bed. So he gives her a makeover that involves completely replacing her body, and takes her out for dinner at Earth's fanciest restaurant. He looks up at the sky and remarks that this romantic night would look even more romantic if Earth had more moons, would I like him to add some? Then over appetizers he mentions he's giving everybody on Earth free ultra-advanced health care to improve the general ambiance for dates around here. Which is nice of him, I suppose, but since he has the power and the authority to help everyone on Earth and didn't bother doing that earlier, it implies he doesn't actually give two shits about anyone on my planet. It's easy to guess that the emperor can instantly teleport me into his bed in chains if it looks like I'm going to refuse him. And I don't have any idea what sex for his species is like, and whether that involves him consuming my brain afterwards or maybe even the other way around. But to be fair to him, it's not like Earth ever had any claim on his attention to begin with, and he hasn't teleported me into his bedroom in chains, and everybody on my planet is getting super-advanced health care and he's being really nice to my mother too and, and it leaves one feeling sort of confused and nervous but not in an entirely unreceptive mood."

Mom finishes chewing bacon and swallows. "I think," she says, "the part that is making me nervous is, the Erogame must have some reason for not telling you what it wants."

"Yeah," you say. "Either the Erogame doesn't want me to know because what it wants is something I value more than my soul, or---or else the Erogame does care about me, and the truth about what's happening would upset me more than my nervousness about not knowing. Though again, to be fair, it's only scary when I think about it, and I'm usually having too much fun to think about it, so maybe the truth wouldn't have to be that bad? After all of the awful things I imagined during the first few days never happened, I started to feel better."

Mom has the look she does when she has thought of something to say, and she's not saying it.

"Yes, Mom," you say, "I know you're thinking that's premature, but, seriously, I thought of a ton of terrible things, so I got a ton of experience with them not happening." You pause, thinking. "But yeah, it's still disturbing to think about what it could be that the Erogame doesn't want me to know or that I'm that not ready to hear. If the truth is that I'm God, then I'll admit it, I am not ready to know. If my life is an eroge and I'm being played by a supermetaphysical whatsit more real than I am, I think I'd prefer to never find out. An obvious shocking revelation is the one where I'm dead, and I'm not ready to face how I committed suicide. But I honestly don't see myself not already being ready. It just wouldn't be that shocking, you know?"

Mom pauses her chewing. "You were shuishidal?" she says with her mouth full.

"Not---not actively, not that I remember. Not consciously. Just, I think if I'd stepped into the street at the wrong time and seen a truck barreling down at me---I think my last thought would have been relief that it was over." You stop, and swallow the lump in your throat.

It's getting easier to say.

"Well," your mother says. "Well, I'm glad that's over, then." Her voice sounds too high. "It---it is over? You can tell me if---"

"Hell. Fuck. Yes. It's. Over. Uh, that reminds me, speaking of things that are over, I have a quest available with a $200,000 reward so apparently that's what things are like at Lvl 11. It's not really truly certain yet, but I won't object if you go ahead and quit work now."

"Is there any other good news I should know about?" your Mom says. Her eyes look a little wild.

You pause. "Well," you say, "I'm not sure you're ready to hear my final piece of good news, Mom. It might come as too much of a shock especially on top of everything else, but---are you sure you're ready to hear this? You might want to brace yourself."

Mom is staring at you. She's not breathing.

"Charles is coming by for dinner," you say.

Your Mom has headed off to the police station. Whether she quits her job today is a moot point. It's Friday anyways, and the police gave her the signed note that her workplace requires before she can be excused from work on account of raped daughter.

She's taking Lyft there instead of the bus.

There haven't been any notices yet about Refuse the Giftsex completing or updating. Probably Busy Mode switched on automatically, at some earlier point when the Erogame decided it wasn't a good time to distract you.

"Busy Mode off, show unread messages, no horrible passive skills please," you say.

A skill has been created by a special action! Being missed by a bullet at point-blank range has created the skill Projectile Privilege.

Projectile Privilege: Lvl MAX. Passive.

Multi-use ranged attacks (including crossbows, guns, blasters, spells you can use more than once, etcetera) cannot significantly damage a target unless the target is significantly less significant than the attacker. This effect applies to all sides on all battles which are significant to you.

Naturally, obvious common-sense modifiers apply, including:

People fighting on your side gain significance compared to those who don't.

People fighting to avenge a just-fallen loved one, or to defend an incapacitated loved one, gain significant significance so long as their significant other is not completely insignificant.

Verbally acknowledging this effect nullifies it for 10 seconds, for example "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." If precisely interpreting the words implies a major vulnerability, that vulnerability extends through the whole battle. As many people remarked afterwards, General John Sedgwick was not an elephant.

Fighting under the effects of this Passive skill is an art. Here's some hints to get you started!

If confronting a major foe, consider arming your companions with swords, or readying a ranged attack which has only a single use.

Bullets can easily hit things that cannot be harmed by bullets. Wearing bulletproof armor into combat will create annoying bangs on the armored surfaces, wearing lingerie into combat will not.

A combatant known to have only one bullet remaining becomes far more dangerous. You can ensure your enemies don't run out of ammunition by leaving small boxes of ammo in random places around your fortress.

You look at this for a while, then decide you're just not dealing with it right now.

A skill has been created by a special action! Having your phone with you while lacking any visible place to put it has created the skill No Purse No Pockets.

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 1 D | S / use.

Carrying a purse doesn't always look as sexy as possible, nor do clothes with pockets. This shouldn't prevent a female eroge character from appearing on screen with her phone in her hand whenever the plot requires it. At Lvl 1 this skill enables you to carry only your phone, keys, and wallet, and only after you have put them away somewhere without thinking about it too hard. You cannot use this skill while completely naked, or when you are restrained in a way that would ordinarily prevent you from accessing your pockets. Similarly, body searches will still find items carried in this way.

Is this an ERO 30 thing that isn't suppressed by your hairstyle, or could you have always done this if you'd been exactly the right kind of absent-minded? There's something frustrating about carefully taking your purse or backpack everywhere, only to find that the real secret was being less careful.

Your relations with the Norville Redcaps faction have increased.

Quest failed: Refuse the Giftsex.

You tried, you really did, but you just couldn't avoid going into the worst part of the city, walking around in a torn shirt, and getting raped by your#@)(*$#@)$#your mother's worst nightmare. At least now you know you can handle yourself when you're being handled.

+20,000XP, +1 perk point.

Successfully confronting one of your terrors causes your %##-+-+%# to increase by !

That makes 4 perk points total you have now. So 2 perk points you could spend today, if you kept one perk point for emergencies, and gave up on More Marshmallows in favor of taking Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder right fucking now.

And then... there's that status effect, the one that you're still aware of, in the back of your mind and not very far in back.

Info // Status Effects // Teased:

You have undergone 1 point of erotic teasing, with no relief for 0.1 days. Sexual stimuli of any kind impact you as if your LST were 1 higher, you can be aroused 40% faster, and once aroused you are disinhibited as if your PRV were 1 higher. Decreased inhibition only applies up to perversions within the range of your PRV + 8, and further extremes are no more endurable for all your desperation. While under the effect of the Teased status, any wet dreams you have will end in further frustration, providing no relief. This includes any fantasies you enter using the perk What Dreams May Come.

Whatever else you do today, it might be smart to get rid of that Teased status effect early on, before it snowballs. You have a feeling that status effect might have a hidden mechanic that bends probability toward making itself worse.

And no, her royal highness will not masturbate in her bedroom like a common peasant, thank you very much.

Just---you don't feel like having sex. Not now. Just yet.

It's sort of nauseating to think about forcing yourself to do it when you don't want to.

It'll come back to you soon, you're sure. You are an erogame character.

You start to rise from the table, and then stop, looking at the three slices of bacon left on Mom's plate. Mom didn't finish them all, but when she left she looked bloated and... happy.

You reach over and pick up a slice of bacon.

You bite off a piece and chew. It's thoroughly cooled, which makes it taste more greasy than savory.

You swallow it anyway.

What are you doing today before Charles arrives?

(Ranked vote, [1] is most preferred and [9] is least preferred.)

[ ] Set up a meeting with Felice, now that you can promise Felice a cure.
[ ] Talk to Karinna about handling that Nathaniel Miroa drink-spiker guy.
[ ] Go find Volkov and see about getting started on that dubious but ultimately acceptable $$$200,000$$$.
[ ] Read in the campus library. (Triggers encounter with the Buffy fans from the arcade.)
[ ] Take the perk Let's Not Turn This Rape Into a Murder, and then, since you might as well, Mad Inventor.
[ ] Go shopping for expensive pretty clothing and jewelry, in hopes of increasing Charles BOD.
[ ] Just relax and recover. (Timeskip to Charles's arrival.)

(I regret to tell you that it looks like work might start catching up with me again soon, so there may end up being longer pauses after this vote---but I did finish this arc first.)

6.4* [KC]: Other Options

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (33,900 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 210/440
SUB: 469/490

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 25
FUK: 19
PRV: 27
ERO: 31 (16)

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8934

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: Reagent of Mundane Biology (II), Biologists #7, #14
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Busy Mode: Off

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 163 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 4886-5130]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
Go find Volkov and see about getting started on that dubious but ultimately acceptable $$$200,000$$$.
Go shopping for expensive pretty clothing and jewelry, in hopes of increasing Charles BOD.
Just relax and recover. (Timeskip to Charles's arrival.)
Read in the campus library. (Triggers encounter with the Buffy fans from the arcade.)
Set up a meeting with Felice, now that you can promise Felice a cure.
Take the perk Let's Not Turn This Rape Into a Murder, and then, since you might as well, Mad Inventor.
Talk to Karinna about handling that Nathaniel Miroa drink-spiker guy.

Winner: Read in the campus library. (Triggers encounter with the Buffy fans from the arcade.)

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Chamocha
[1] Derpmind
[1] Diraniola
[1] Dreikanter
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] End of Line
[1] GGS109
[1] Guile
[1] january1may
[1] Jirachi
[1] MaggieoftheOwls
[1] Mitale
[1] modrony
[1] napkintooth
[1] OriginalName
[1] pepperjack
[1] PlasticSoldier
[1] Prime 2.0
[1] Pseudonym
[1] Quentin
[1] Relheun
[1] Skelm
[1] SkyJack121
[1] Theli
[1] theonebutcher
[1] tilkau
[1] wasprider
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] Archimedes
[2] ChaoticWhimsy
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Edifier
[2] Eler0
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Fake Namington
[2] Gingganz
[2] Halbling
[2] Hyperion042
[2] Kappa
[2] Lavida
[2] Mei Mei
[2] Proxima
[2] Runestereye
[2] ShaperV
[2] The_Wanderer
[3] Andelevion
[3] carnistir
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] Grael Case
[3] Greckle
[3] Nemonowan
[3] Sirrocco
[3] Theminimanx
[3] Thrice.Great
[3] Tulip
[3] Valmit
[4] AltTab
[4] Kandagger
[4] ScrewFate
[5] askldjflkajskje
[5] Blackshard
[5] Flashbunny
[5] General Lewdendorf
[5] Moriwen
[5] zachol
[7] AramilOniasha
[7] redfog
[7] Xenia
[7] zup
[-] madness
[-] zerofarad

First Runner Up: Set up a meeting with Felice, now that you can promise Felice a cure.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Aoinfinity
[1] carnistir
[1] ChaoticWhimsy
[1] CTCatapult
[1] DarthSquidious
[1] Kappa
[1] madness
[1] Mei Mei
[1] Proxima
[1] ScrewFate
[1] ShaperV
[1] Theminimanx
[1] zerofarad
[2] Chamocha
[2] Flashbunny
[2] Grael Case
[2] january1may
[2] MaggieoftheOwls
[2] Mitale
[2] modrony
[2] Nemonowan
[2] pepperjack
[2] PlasticSoldier
[2] Pseudonym
[2] Sirrocco
[2] Skelm
[2] SkyJack121
[2] Theli
[2] Thrice.Great
[2] tilkau
[2] Tulip
[2] Valmit
[2] wasprider
[2] zup
[3] Blackshard
[3] Diraniola
[3] Guile
[3] Lavida
[3] Prime 2.0
[3] Relheun
[3] Runestereye
[3] The_Wanderer
[4] Andelevion
[4] AramilOniasha
[4] Archimedes
[4] Dreikanter
[4] Edifier
[4] General Lewdendorf
[4] Gingganz
[4] Hyperion042
[4] Jirachi
[4] Moriwen
[4] OriginalName
[4] Xenia
[5] Derpmind
[5] Eler0
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] Ephemeral
[5] Kandagger
[5] napkintooth
[6] End of Line
[6] GGS109
[6] Halbling
[6] zachol
[7] Fake Namington
[7] Greckle
[8] Quentin
[8] redfog
[9] AltTab
[9] askldjflkajskje
[-] theonebutcher

Second Runner Up: Talk to Karinna about handling that Nathaniel Miroa drink-spiker guy.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Eler0
[1] Ephemeral
[1] Fake Namington
[1] Gingganz
[1] Grael Case
[1] Lavida
[1] Nemonowan
[1] Runestereye
[1] Sirrocco
[1] The_Wanderer
[1] Thrice.Great
[1] Tulip
[1] Valmit
[1] zachol
[2] Andelevion
[2] askldjflkajskje
[2] carnistir
[2] Dreikanter
[2] Kandagger
[2] madness
[2] Moriwen
[2] Theminimanx
[3] AltTab
[3] AramilOniasha
[3] ChaoticWhimsy
[3] CTCatapult
[3] Edifier
[3] Flashbunny
[3] Hyperion042
[3] Mei Mei
[3] Mitale
[3] PlasticSoldier
[3] redfog
[3] ScrewFate
[3] SkyJack121
[3] tilkau
[3] zup
[4] Blackshard
[4] DarthSquidious
[4] Derpmind
[4] Diraniola
[4] Kappa
[4] Prime 2.0
[4] Pseudonym
[5] Aoinfinity
[5] Archimedes
[5] End of Line
[5] GGS109
[5] Greckle
[5] january1may
[5] OriginalName
[5] Relheun
[5] Xenia
[6] Chamocha
[6] modrony
[6] pepperjack
[6] Quentin
[6] Theli
[6] wasprider
[7] Halbling
[7] Jirachi
[7] MaggieoftheOwls
[7] Proxima
[8] Elitist Oars
[8] General Lewdendorf
[8] napkintooth
[9] Guile
[9] ShaperV
[9] Skelm
[-] theonebutcher
[-] zerofarad

Third Runner Up: Go shopping for expensive pretty clothing and jewelry, in hopes of increasing Charles BOD.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Flashbunny
[1] Hyperion042
[1] Kandagger
[1] redfog
[2] DarthSquidious
[2] Derpmind
[2] End of Line
[2] General Lewdendorf
[2] OriginalName
[2] Relheun
[2] ScrewFate
[2] zachol
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] Archimedes
[3] askldjflkajskje
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Halbling
[3] Jirachi
[3] Kappa
[3] ShaperV
[3] Xenia
[4] Chamocha
[4] CTCatapult
[4] Eler0
[4] Ephemeral
[4] GGS109
[4] Mei Mei
[4] napkintooth
[4] pepperjack
[4] Skelm
[4] Theli
[4] Tulip
[4] wasprider
[5] AltTab
[5] Andelevion
[5] carnistir
[5] Diraniola
[5] Dreikanter
[5] Edifier
[5] Gingganz
[5] Lavida
[5] Proxima
[5] Pseudonym
[5] Quentin
[5] SkyJack121
[5] The_Wanderer
[5] Thrice.Great
[5] Valmit
[6] Fake Namington
[6] Grael Case
[6] Guile
[6] Moriwen
[6] Nemonowan
[6] Prime 2.0
[6] Sirrocco
[6] tilkau
[7] Blackshard
[7] january1may
[7] Theminimanx
[8] AramilOniasha
[8] ChaoticWhimsy
[8] Greckle
[8] MaggieoftheOwls
[8] Mitale
[8] modrony
[8] Runestereye
[8] zup
[-] madness
[-] PlasticSoldier
[-] theonebutcher
[-] zerofarad

Honorable Mention: Just relax and recover. (Timeskip to Charles's arrival.)

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AltTab
[1] Archimedes
[1] General Lewdendorf
[1] Greckle
[1] Halbling
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] napkintooth
[2] Xenia
[3] Chamocha
[3] Derpmind
[3] GGS109
[3] january1may
[3] modrony
[3] Moriwen
[3] OriginalName
[3] pepperjack
[3] Pseudonym
[3] Theli
[3] wasprider
[3] zachol
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] carnistir
[4] Proxima
[4] Relheun
[4] ShaperV
[4] Thrice.Great
[4] tilkau
[4] zup
[5] CTCatapult
[5] Fake Namington
[5] Hyperion042
[5] Jirachi
[5] Kappa
[5] Skelm
[6] Andelevion
[6] Blackshard
[6] Dreikanter
[6] Flashbunny
[6] Gingganz
[6] Mitale
[6] SkyJack121
[6] Valmit
[7] askldjflkajskje
[7] Diraniola
[7] Eler0
[7] End of Line
[7] Grael Case
[7] Guile
[7] Nemonowan
[7] Prime 2.0
[7] Quentin
[7] Runestereye
[7] Sirrocco
[7] Tulip
[8] Mei Mei
[8] ScrewFate
[8] Theminimanx
[9] AramilOniasha
[9] ChaoticWhimsy
[9] DarthSquidious
[9] Edifier
[9] Kandagger
[9] madness
[9] MaggieoftheOwls
[9] redfog
[9] The_Wanderer
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Lavida
[-] PlasticSoldier
[-] theonebutcher
[-] zerofarad

Honorable Mention: Go find Volkov and see about getting started on that dubious but ultimately acceptable $$$200,000$$$.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Andelevion
[1] askldjflkajskje
[1] Blackshard
[1] Edifier
[1] Moriwen
[1] zup
[2] AramilOniasha
[2] Greckle
[2] Quentin
[2] redfog
[3] Dreikanter
[3] Eler0
[3] Fake Namington
[3] General Lewdendorf
[3] Kandagger
[3] MaggieoftheOwls
[3] Skelm
[4] Flashbunny
[4] Runestereye
[4] The_Wanderer
[4] Valmit
[4] zachol
[5] Chamocha
[5] pepperjack
[5] Theli
[5] Theminimanx
[5] wasprider
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] ChaoticWhimsy
[6] Diraniola
[6] Hyperion042
[6] january1may
[6] Jirachi
[6] Kappa
[6] OriginalName
[6] Proxima
[6] Pseudonym
[6] Tulip
[6] Xenia
[7] CTCatapult
[7] DarthSquidious
[7] Mei Mei
[7] modrony
[7] ScrewFate
[7] Thrice.Great
[7] tilkau
[8] AltTab
[8] carnistir
[8] Grael Case
[8] Guile
[8] Halbling
[8] Nemonowan
[8] Prime 2.0
[8] Relheun
[8] ShaperV
[8] Sirrocco
[9] Archimedes
[9] Derpmind
[9] Elitist Oars
[9] End of Line
[9] GGS109
[9] Gingganz
[9] Mitale
[9] napkintooth
[9] SkyJack121
[-] Ephemeral
[-] Lavida
[-] madness
[-] PlasticSoldier
[-] theonebutcher
[-] zerofarad

Honorable Mention: Take the perk Let's Not Turn This Rape Into a Murder, and then, since you might as well, Mad Inventor.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AramilOniasha
[1] Xenia
[2] AltTab
[2] Blackshard
[2] Diraniola
[2] GGS109
[2] Guile
[2] Jirachi
[3] Ephemeral
[3] Gingganz
[3] Proxima
[4] Fake Namington
[4] Lavida
[4] MaggieoftheOwls
[4] redfog
[4] SkyJack121
[5] ShaperV
[5] Tulip
[6] CTCatapult
[6] Derpmind
[6] Eler0
[6] Skelm
[7] Andelevion
[7] Archimedes
[7] Chamocha
[7] ChaoticWhimsy
[7] Dreikanter
[7] Elitist Oars
[7] Flashbunny
[7] Hyperion042
[7] Kappa
[7] Mitale
[7] Moriwen
[7] napkintooth
[7] pepperjack
[7] Theli
[7] zachol
[8] DarthSquidious
[8] Edifier
[8] End of Line
[8] Kandagger
[8] The_Wanderer
[9] Aoinfinity
[9] askldjflkajskje
[9] carnistir
[9] General Lewdendorf
[9] Grael Case
[9] Greckle
[9] Halbling
[9] january1may
[9] Mei Mei
[9] modrony
[9] Nemonowan
[9] OriginalName
[9] Prime 2.0
[9] Pseudonym
[9] Quentin
[9] Relheun
[9] Runestereye
[9] ScrewFate
[9] Sirrocco
[9] Theminimanx
[9] Thrice.Great
[9] tilkau
[9] Valmit
[9] wasprider
[9] zup
[-] madness
[-] PlasticSoldier
[-] theonebutcher
[-] zerofarad

Total No. of Voters: 71

-[X] Spend the time getting ready to be honest with Charles and making sure Winifred knows you intend to do that.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

-[X] Remember to propitiate her by sacrificing a scumbag blackmailer. Karinna can probably think of many ways to extract money for medical bills while ruining the man - a class action suit from the strippers is the obvious way, and if Brian hasn't asked about other incidents, we can set Karinna to seizing control of his club instead of working with him to change the industry.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

Total No. of Voters: 1

The clouds are still overhead, casting everything in a peaceful grey without the harsh contrast of sun and shadow, as you walk through the Norville U campus. High-Heeled Running increased by 1 on your way over, another pleasant note for the tally of a day that has seen significant mood swings.

You're wearing a short-skirted suit and glasses, the form of a girl who needs to be wooed and her plotline developed before she'll do anything ero with the protagonist.

Thinking back, you wonder if you've been skewing your life toward… hentai? Wearing sluttier forms than this, in a deeper sense than clothes?

It wasn't necessarily a bad decision. You have a lot of sexual exploring left to do. Still, some eroge do have extended romantic plots, and relationships that are about more than getting to the sex scenes. There are well-written eroges with long sequences of interesting events that take days to get to any sex at all. What if you tried steering your life toward entering one of those subplots, just to check out what other possibilities there are in Erogame life?

It's a scary thought because of when you are thinking it, and you have to remind yourself that the Erogame does not offer the option of a sexless life. You were not permanently traumatized by this morning. You have stat points for LST and PRV if it turns out you were. The Erogame will not let you hide in your bedroom forever if you fail a courage check. It is safe to feel curious about what the Erogame has in the way of eroge subplots that are mostly not about sex, even if you're wondering that immediately after your first rape.

You don't have to question your current wants and needs. If, after this morning, your brain feels like it prefers to go to the library and read and not do anything sexy, you can just do that. If your brain starts wondering about eroge plots with less hentai, it's safe to think about that.

No really it is safe you will be fine. If you've learned anything from this morning, shouldn't it be that?

The paving stones roll past swiftly underfoot. You're not trying to run, but you're used to exerting great force with your legs to move at all. It's so easy to move fast when you're in heels. If you don't consciously slow down, the trees make imaginary whooshing sounds as they whoosh by.

There's more pretty people attending Norville U than there used to be. More girls wearing micro-miniskirts. More muscular boys with sleeveless shirts to display their bulging arms.

But the fat people haven't gone away.

They're still visible.

Still existing.

There's a boy trudging along slower than your stride. He looks pregnant with a horrible bulge underneath his shirt, a shirt obviously not designed to fit his shape. Nobody aspires to be the designer who makes clothes for fat boys, and no store wants to be the store that carries those clothes and attracts fat boys to shop there.

You smile at him.

The fat boy doesn't look hopeful at your smile, just confused. He has no idea why a pretty girl would be smiling at him.

"Don't worry," you say as you move past him. "It won't be long."

The campus library building is wider than it used to be, and looks taller.

Which makes sense, you guess. The campus needs to be larger to accomodate the recent retroactive influx of sexier students, if the Erogame is accomodating your request and not erasing the unsexy students to make room.

It's completely logical. It only feels terrifying because you know the building that used to be here, and some deep mappy part of your brain is protesting that reality has gone unstable. (It's not wrong.)

You head on in.

The biology books are now on the ninth floor of this building, which has ten floors instead of eight. You're not really in the mood for biology per se. But you want to give the bio textbooks a try before the Reagent of Mundane Biology (II) wears off in an hour or two, in case the ongoing effect of the nectar makes you able to learn super quickly.

The ninth floor seems oddly organized, when you get there. Individual stacks of bookcases still use ascending Dewey Decimal numbers, but adjacent stacks are no longer consecutive in the system, and for some reason your brain is hiccuping in trying to understand the new layout. The floor is wider and divided into multiple areas, requiring you to explore around to find---

Ah, yes. That's why the floor layout is more complicated. Go figure, huh.

Spoiler: m/m version

You've rounded a corner within the stacks and are now gazing at a side view of a freshman-ish short boy with his jeans and underpants puddled around his feet. He has his head thrown back and his eyes shut and his fists clenched. A small, low sound escapes his throat.

Kneeling before him is another boy the same age, fully dressed but with a clearly visible hard-on poking his jeans. His own attention seems to be entirely on the smooth, rhythmic motion of his lips sliding over the other boy's hard penis.

You just sort of look at this.

"Stop," the receiving boy says in a low moan, "don't, oh, stop, someone will hear, someone will see us…"

"Don't worry," you say entirely without thinking, "this place is pretty isolated, you're fine."

The receiving boy's eyes fly open and he looks at you and then he frantically grabs his underpants and jeans and tries to yank both of them up at the same time, but the clothes get caught on his knees or each other, leading to much further scrambling and shaking of his still-bare ass. The other boy jerked his head back reflexively and ended up falling all over himself, and he also scrambles to make it to his own feet.

They look at your stern, glasses-wearing, serious-academic-girl form.

You look at them.

They look at you.

You look at them.

The boy who was giving the blowjob, his face smeared with his own saliva, says in a tiny, frightened whisper, "Please don't tell anyone."

The boy who was being fellated looks even more frightened. "Please, don't tell anyone, nobody, my parents don't know…"

You can't help the skeptical look that's forming on your face.

The two boys naturally misinterpret this skeptical look as being directed at them, rather than at the Erogame. "We'll---we'll do anything," the blowjob-giver says. "Please…"

"Anything?" you say.

They both nod frantically.

You point to the blowjob-giver. "You. Kneel."

He doesn't argue even slightly, just falls to his knees with the frightened look still on his face.

"Stay there," you say. You turn to the other boy. "You. Pants off. Underpants too."

He obeys, standing there bottomless with his legs trembling. His hands almost go to his crotch to cover up his still-present erection, before he forces his hands back to his sides.

You reach out and touch the bottomless boy's ass, cupping it from behind.

You use your grip to steer him, making him turn and walk until his erection is poking back at the face of the kneeling boy, who reflexively opens his mouth and lets it slide in. The motion fills you with the strange, non-sexual satisfaction of making things fit into things.

"Carry on," you say as you walk on by. You have biology textbooks to get to, and you weren't in the mood for more, but somehow that wasn't unpleasant.

Spoiler: f/f version

You've rounded a corner within the stacks and are now gazing at a side view of a freshwoman-ish short girl with her jeans and panties puddled around her feet. She has her head thrown back and her eyes shut and her fists clenched. A small, low sound escapes her throat.

Kneeling before her is another girl the same age, fully dressed but with her erect nipples clearly poking against her shirt. Her own attention seems to be entirely on the gentle suckling she's doing of the other girl's clit.

You just sort of look at this.

"Stop," the receiving girl says in a low moan, "don't, oh, stop, someone will hear, someone will see us…"

"Don't worry," you say entirely without thinking, "this place is pretty isolated, you're fine."

The receiving girl's eyes fly open and she looks at you and then she frantically grabs her panties and jeans and tries to yank both of them up at the same time, but the clothes get caught on her knees or each other or something, leading to much further scrambling and shaking of her still-bare ass. The other girl jerked her head back reflexively and ended up falling all over herself, and she also scrambles to make it to her own feet.

They look at your stern, glasses-wearing, serious-academic-girl form.

You look at them.

They look at you.

You look at them.

The girl who was giving cunnilingus, her face smeared with girl-juices, says in a tiny, frightened whisper, "Please don't tell anyone."

The girl who was being licked looks even more frightened. "Please, don't tell anyone, nobody, my parents don't know…"

You can't help the skeptical look that's forming on your face.

The two girls naturally misinterpret this skeptical look as being directed at them, rather than at the Erogame. "We'll---we'll do anything," the licker says. "Please…"

"Anything?" you say.

They both nod frantically.

You point to the cunnilingus-giver. "You. Kneel."

She doesn't argue even slightly, just falls to her knees with the frightened look still on her face.

"Stay there," you say. You turn to the other girl. "You. Pants off. Panties too."

She obeys, standing there bottomless with her legs trembling. Her hands almost go to her crotch to cover it up, before she forces her hands back to her sides.

You reach out and touch the bottomless girl's ass, cupping it from behind.

You use your grip to steer her, making her turn and walk until her pussy is pressing back into the kneeling girl's face.

"Carry on," you say as you walk on by. You have biology textbooks to get to, and you weren't in the mood for more, but somehow that wasn't unpleasant.

The rest of your search is uneventful, and soon you find the stack that holds the biology books you were using before.

As it turns out, aside from the effects of Good Student, you can't discern any visible power of the Reagent of Mundane Biology over your own learning. Maybe the Reagent only acts when you try to solve a real problem, or do something active enough to count as a "roll" on mundane biology? It seems plausible, but you don't feel like rushing over to the campus bio lab to try it.

You're not that surprised. You'd already noticed how the Erogame seems reluctant to dump entire professions into your head, even if it seems cheerful about instant pole-dancing. You don't know why, but the Erogame seems to want you to study things to know them, at least when it comes to biology or math instead of Dance Dance Revolution.

Maybe you shouldn't get greedy? The way Good Student lets you stay focused is plenty miraculous already.

You rise from your desk and walk away to return the biology book to its shelf. History seems more appealing right now.

One the way out, you note with slight disappointment that the two

Spoiler: m/m version

boys

Spoiler: f/f version

girls

are no longer putting on a show for you, and are instead browsing the stacks standing next to one another while looking away from each other and blushing heavily.

When you get to the History floor, you don't enter the stack where The Guns of August can be found. War and violence, however dispassionately described, are not what you want to hear about right now.

The thought occurs to you that instead you could look up books on the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. It might bring you closer to Charles, possibly maybe.

There's a full shelf of books on the Philadelphia Convention. Somehow it wouldn't surprise you if these are exactly the same books that were on Marcus Adan's library shelf when he was alive.

You pick out one of the books and find a secluded desk. Then you pause, and move on to a non-secluded desk, to make shenanigans less likely.

You don't go into Good Student trance. This isn't homework, and if your brain decides to feel distracted and process other things in the background, that's part of the point.

Some time later, you push away the book in front of you and sigh, feeling more like an exceptionally illiterate teenage gorilla than before. It's cliche, you know, but studying history is just making you aware of how much more history you don't know. There's a vertigo in contemplating that there's thousands of years of history across hundreds of countries on one version of Earth.

Also, this is a different view of the Constitution than you got in civics class. The author of this book frames the Constitution as a collection of well-meant ideas, most of which ultimately failed. The people at the convention were afraid of kings trying to amass personal glory through war, because war was the main way of getting your name written in history back then and it had happened over and over. So they tried their best to insure that the President would never be allowed to go off and attack other countries without a vote in Congress, specifically to prevent the President from winning glory that way. The electoral college was forbidden to include anyone who'd held any other government office, in an attempt to make the Presidency operate in a way that didn't overlap with any other elections, and prevent the President from ending up beholden to any political parties. The delegates from the Southern states were worried about the North trying to crush them.

The chapters jump forward and backward through history. Events in ancient Greece or then-recent Europe that the conventioneers would have heard about. How the conventioneers debated safeguards meant to prevent recurrences of the problems they knew about. Later times when the safeguards failed in ways they didn't think about. The author takes pains to argue how the people at the convention couldn't have reasonably done better, knowing only what they did. The author emphasizes that some of their attempted safeguards did last for a while to good effect, before cracking and failing and falling apart as all human works do in time.

You have a suspicion that the book you randomly picked out happened to be Marcus Adan's favorite.

Maybe it'll count for something in terms of relating to Charles. But in terms of acquiring useful knowledge for future princessing, this is not making you feel like you have what it takes to rule a country. If somebody tried to hand you the reins of power in North Korea right now, you'd hand the power over to Charles and then run away at High-Heeled speeds.

If your brain processed anything in the background, it was the absurdity of trying to take anything seriously at your age and the importance of having fun instead. You are clearly going to fuck up anything you try to do on a planetary scale (unless the Erogame itself wants it to happen) so you might as well run around on rooftops having sex. This is probably not what Marcus Adan would tell you ought to be taken away. But the main lesson you got from the book is that bossing people around in a non-sexual way sounds like a terrifying and unpleasant responsibility, and you hope to God your romantic future isn't about arbitrating disputes between Charles and Sonia about how to run the Earth.

You're not feeling inclined to move on to the next history book. You've had a space to not think about things and not do anything ero. And you still don't want to do anything ero, or think about things either.

But you also don't want to just keep reading until Charles gets here. That would feel like trying to timeskip over your own existence. What you're reaching for isn't peace, right now, it's… you don't know.

Maybe you don't need to know what you need? Maybe the Erogame can provide it anyway? It's hard to figure out, from the inside, to what extent the Erogame deliberately plays psychiatrist. Did the Erogame show you the shy couple in the library so you could have the reassuring experience of seeing something ero and not flinching from it? Or was that just a preset encounter or random dice roll? Was the event manifesting the concern of a benevolent deity? Or is your own mind trying to pretend chaos into order, the way that lots of people talk themselves into believing that God is arranging their lives even though they never see any pink-violet text?

Well, you won't get any more enlightened by sitting here.

A few minutes later, you've headed out of the library with no destination in mind except strolling around campus, thinking at the Erogame, please don't throw any ero at me if that's okay. You hope that's a type of prayer the Erogame will hear if you're playing along at other times, like when you felt like walking home in a peaceful night-morning and requested not to be raped until later.

When you leave the library, occasional droplets of rain are falling out of the sky, sometimes landing on your exposed legs or your forehead. Fewer students are outside, scurrying about with more hurried motions. The drizzle itself feels not unpleasant. The little bits of water accumulating on your meganekko glasses, on the other hand, are obscuring your view. You want to just take off the glasses, but the no-purse-no-pockets skill at Lvl 1 won't let you store them...

Hmm. Now there's an idea.

"Info, skills, no purse no pockets," you murmur, just to check.

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 1 (20%). Active. 1 D|S / use.

Carrying a purse doesn't always look as sexy as possible, nor do clothes with pockets. This shouldn't prevent a female eroge character from appearing on screen with her phone in her hand whenever the plot requires it. At Lvl 1 this skill enables you to carry only your phone, keys, and wallet, and only after you have put them away somewhere without thinking about it too hard. You cannot use this skill while completely naked, or when you are restrained in a way that would ordinarily prevent you from accessing your pockets. Similarly, body searches will still find items carried in this way.

The 20% skill xp is from... taking out your phone once when you first explicitly received the skill, then putting your phone away once in the wherever-it-went. 10% skill increase per use, if that's right. And the skill costs almost nothing.

It takes several tries, and if anybody is watching your Serious Girl form, they're seeing the Serious Girl hopping on one foot in order to distract herself until she finally manages to take her phone out.

Then she hops on her other high-heeled foot until she manages to put her phone away again.

She does it again, and again, whispering words like "five" or "six."

When you get to eight, as expected---

No Purse No Pockets has increased by 1.

"Info, skills, no purse no pockets."

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 2 (0%). Active. 1 D|S / use.

Carrying a purse doesn't always look as sexy as possible, nor do clothes with pockets. This shouldn't prevent a female eroge character from appearing on screen with her phone in her hand whenever the plot requires it. At Lvl 2 this skill enables you to carry only your phone, keys, wallet, or small papers such as movie tickets; and only after you have put them away somewhere without thinking about it too hard. You cannot use this skill while completely naked, or when you are restrained in a way that would ordinarily prevent you from accessing your pockets. Similarly, body searches will still find items carried in this way.

You grump at the violet text for not immediately giving you what you want. Then you start putting away and taking out your phone again. It does seem to be getting easier with practice, as your brain learns to put things away without putting them anywhere in particular.

You count from zero to twenty before it happens again.

No Purse No Pockets has increased by 1.

So you should now have 0% experience in the new skill level.

You take your phone back out again, one more use, so as to be able to estimate how much skill-xp you get each time.

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 3 (3%). Active. 1 D|S / use.

Carrying a purse doesn't always look as sexy as possible, nor do clothes with pockets. This shouldn't prevent a female eroge character from appearing on screen with her phone in her hand whenever the plot requires it. At Lvl 3 this skill enables you to carry only your phone, keys, wallet, or folded papers; and only after you have put them away somewhere without thinking about it too hard. You cannot use this skill while completely naked, or when you are restrained in a way that would ordinarily prevent you from accessing your pockets. Body searches will still find items carried in this way.

Phone goes in. Phone goes out. Phone goes in. Phone goes out. Thirty-two, thirty-three.

No Purse No Pockets has increased by 1.

Phone goes in.

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 4 (2%). Active. 1 D|S / use.

Carrying a purse doesn't always look as sexy as possible, nor do clothes with pockets. This shouldn't prevent a female eroge character from appearing on screen with her phone in her hand whenever the plot requires it. At Lvl 4 this skill enables you to carry only your phone, keys, wallet, folded papers, or similarly sized objects; and only after you have put them away somewhere without thinking about it too hard. You cannot use this skill while completely naked, or when you are restrained in a way that would ordinarily prevent you from accessing your pockets. Body searches will still find items carried in this way.

After several tentative attempts to put away your meganekko glasses, you… think they're not going Away because you can't put your glasses Away yet, rather than because you're too self-conscious to avoid thinking about where they are.

But you've got SUB to spare, what with having been recently raped, so you just keep doing it. It only takes a few seconds now to withdraw your phone and put it away again. You don't bother counting. You just do it.

No Purse No Pockets has increased by 1.

And then, immediately, without thinking about it, you put your glasses away too.

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 5 (1%). Active. 1 D|S / use.

Carrying a purse doesn't always look as sexy as possible, nor do clothes with pockets. This shouldn't prevent a female eroge character from appearing on screen with her phone in her hand whenever the plot requires it. At Lvl 5 this skill enables you to carry only your phone, keys, wallet, folded papers, jewelry, or similarly sized objects; and only after you have put them away somewhere without thinking about it too hard. You cannot use this skill while completely naked, or when you are restrained in a way that would ordinarily prevent you from accessing your pockets. Body searches will still find items carried in this way.

You grin like a motherfucking shark, and stroll off to view other parts of campus with your vision unobstructed by the light drizzling mist.

Walking a short distance from the library, and paying closer attention, suggests to you that one or two other buildings have also grown taller. What's inside of them now, especially if you changed up your hairstyle, is an interesting question… that you're not going to investigate right now because of temporarily low ero tolerance. But with all the time you've spent here, and your unbound ERO at 31 and just past the border of physical possibility, Norville U should be starting its transformation into an Academy of Adventure any day now.

The wall of one campus building seems to have evolved by passive administrative acquiescence into a student bulletin board. Your step quickens, and you hurry closer. It's an obvious suspicion that…

Yeah, wow. Norville U sure seems to have more student groups than it used to, advertising themselves more vigorously. There's the Anime Appreciation Club, the Swimming Club, the Fencing Club, the Massage Club, the Special Anime Appreciation Club, the British Culture Research Club, the People's Club of Judea, the Judean People's Club, the Seamstresses' Club, the Junior Sex Workers' Club, the Extra-Special Anime Appreciation Club, and the… Underground Archaeological Exploration Club? Advertising an expedition into Norville U's steam tunnels? What the hell are those, and why would a university even have them for students to explore? Isn't ERO 31 only supposed to be a little impossible? This sounds like Norville U might be developing a full-blown underground dungeon system. You're not going anywhere near it until you're higher-leveled, that's for sure.

An extra-large poster for the Natural Sexuality Movement advertises a big student rally that's happening next Wednesday, far enough in the future that you doubt whether your personal version of time ever gets there.

You still haven't gotten any violet-text quest popups, which surprises you. Maybe that's because you'd be getting too many? You try reaching out your finger and tapping on a postcard-sized ad for a guest lecturer visiting a special-interest student meetup this afternoon.

Quest available: Discipline of the Master

Shibari master Kusoyaro Gaki is passing through Norville on his journey of enlightenment. He's never found anyone worthy of receiving his special techniques, and holds little hope for the student meeting he'll be visiting.

Success: Learn a new technique in Shibari.
Failure: -$20.
Accept? Y/N

You hesitate, take a deep breath, reach out a finger, and flick the pink N.

When you look at the bulletin board again, the postcard ad for the shibari class isn't there anymore.

Yeah. That felt… reassuring.

You don't regret taking the Giftsex quest, not exactly. But you're going to be way more willing to hit "N" on quests going forward, without worrying quite as much about what you might miss out on.

Besides, it's not like the Erogame is going to run out of quests. This isn't a human-made video game with 30 hours of playtime and another 50 hours of replay value. Trying to complete all the quests would be like trying to complete the Earth... no, like trying to complete who-knows-how-many parallel Earths.

Yep. Being reminded there are infinite Erogame quests that can open before you, and you will often be allowed to say Yes to the quests you want and say No to the quests you don't want, is definitely some of what you needed to hear today.

You reach out another finger, and tap a pinned-up paper note that looks handwritten.

If anybody has any idea where to find Lady Sally, or anyone she trained in her more special skills, please contact stonbnder@gmail.com.

Quest unavailable: Soulbender

Come on, you're the Erogamer. The Erogamer. You should be able to handle anything that could have been done by this so-called Lady Sally, right?

Your stats are too low for this quest. Minimum FUK: 85

FUK 85? Jesus Christ. What does that mean, you can just pose erotically and make somebody come so hard their vagina catches on fire?

Actually, no, if this quest's hints are correct, FUK 85 means your sexual skills start interacting with people's souls. Whatever those are. Jesus. And who the heck is this Lady Sally character?

Even as you think the question, more pink-violet text appears.

Long-term quest available: Shadows of Lost Harmony

Hints and rumors tell of someone known as Lady Sally with unbelievable bedroom talents. Where on Earth could she have acquired them? Find the courtesans she once trained, and the people who truly knew her.

Success: +600,000,000XP; you learn the true meaning of friendship; ?????
Failure: Your home is invaded by cockroaches.
Time limit: 2.82 years to accept and complete.

Accept? Y/N

Uh.

You think you're a little underleveled for this one. It's reading as being theoretically available, but over two years to complete?

Wait a minute.

Oh my god.

Lost Harmony… true meaning of friendship…

Is this a My Little Pony quest?

Even the name "Lady Sally" sounds like the name of a pony, now that you think about it. A cockroach invasion sounds like the MLP version of an unhappy ending, too. Holy shit, it is MLP, the Erogame is offering you clopfic. Maybe a genre change to clopfic, judging by the size of the quest.

Yeah, uh, with no offense intended to all the MLP fans of the world including a certain prepubescent girl who existed seven years earlier, nope nope NOPE nope enope.

You reach out and tap the pink "N" hovering in midair, and both quest prompts vanish. Some childhood memories are better left undisturbed.

Your eyes go on scanning the bulletin board, as you wonder what other types of new experiences your new life might have on offer.

One printed flyer advertises Microsoft Office lessons, with none of the email-address-bearing paper strips at bottom having been torn away yet. You tentatively reach toward one of the paper strips, wondering if a new Erogame plot starts if you take an action this mundane, or if it just leads into Microsoft Office lessons.

"Whoever put that up could use marketing lessons," says a toweringly tall bald girl who now seems to be standing next to you. "Tearing away three-quarters of the strips before tacking it up would have made the lessons look more popular."

A tiny yip escapes your mouth.

A skill has been created by a special action! Going unrecognized after you changed your hairstyle and took off your glasses has created the skill Mild-Mannered Reporter.

"Don't worry," says Karinna Coral, smiling in the cheerful fashion of somebody who's never met you before but knows she's been recognized. She's wearing a cream-colored dress that clings so tightly around her body that you would have once called it obscene, making it clear that she wears no bra or panties beneath. "The innocent have nothing to fear from me. And if, like most people, you're only moderately guilty, I doubt I'll ever get that far down my list." The tall girl turns and starts scanning the papers on the bulletin board herself, frowning as if looking for something, and frowns more deeply when she finds it. She turns and walks away afterwards without saying anything more.

You look where Karinna was looking.

$500 or 1 major favor owed to anyone who knows how I can get in contact with "Starry" (the other naked girl in the Natural Sexuality protest march, with stunning red-and-black hair), or who tells Starry to get in contact with me.
--- Karinna Coral, Leader, NSM-NU.

Below are three paper strips bearing the email address kscoral@csub.edu, and nine torn-off stubs next to them.

Yeah, that's---that's also not today.

Did a benevolent Erogame materialize Karinna to warn you off Microsoft Office lessons, because they would turn out to be fucking boring? Or was it something more mundane, like a Player Thing in a higher dimension selecting a brief Karinna event? You don't know. Maybe you'd better stop trying to think in those terms before you go deranged.

"Info, skills, Mild-Mannered Reporter," you murmur.

Mild-Mannered Reporter: Lvl MAX. Passive.

You can prevent people from spontaneously recognizing you by putting on glasses, or making other moderate changes to your appearance. This skill may be considered as inducing a form of specialized prosopagnosia, which does not match the power of Fake ID and will not hold against explicit clues. You are advised to avoid displaying any unmistakable hairstyles, clothing, jewelry, unique items, or personality traits, and to use a different name.

That's what you thought it did.

You're almost ready to turn away from the wall of papers, and go wandering elsewhere in search of you-don't-know-what, when a final poster catches your eye.

Amazing Hairstyle Appreciation Club!

Have you recently had an interesting experience involving an awesome hairstyle, so incredible it seems hard to believe? Want to share your story with others of similar interests? The first meeting of the Amazing Hairstyle Appreciation Club will be in the basement of the Karaoke Komplex, Friday at 3:30pm precisely.

You touch your finger to the poster, but nothing happens. That's… odd. You find it hard to believe this isn't some type of quest.

It's 3:25pm right now, and your phone's map shows the Karaoke Komplex is about 5 minutes away on the edge of campus.

Yeah. Maybe you ought to check this out. From the sound of it, this club's real business could be…

It could be about Conceptual Hair.

Spoiler: Author's note

No promises about when the next subchapter might go up, sorry.

6.5.1 [SCO]: Amazing Hairstyle Appreciation Club

Karaoke Komplex seems dead at this time of day. From outside, it looks like there's nobody sitting at the bar or the restaurant tables in the front area. There's one bartender behind the counter, sitting on a high seat and staring into his smartphone. Now that the sky's assault of tiny drizzle-droplets is being deflected by the store's outside canopy over your head, you reach for your Meganekko glasses and manage to stop thinking about where your hand is on the third try.

The door jingles as you push your way in, and the bartender points to a back door without looking up at you. "Amazing Hair's that way, first door on the right," he says. "ID if you want a drink, restaurant doesn't open again until 4, use the room tablet if you want to order snacks."

Beyond the back door and down a flight of ugly-carpeted stairs, you reach another door, open it, and step into a bedroom-sized area that you guess is a karaoke booth. (You've never been in one before, karaoke requires friends.) There's a cute small stage at the end of the room, with a stand-up microphone and multicolored lights shining down. There's a long narrow table in front of that stage, with cushioned benches on both sides for seating, dimly lit by yellow lights overhead.

Four people are sitting to either side of the table. On your left, at the back, a boy who looks of age for late high school or early college. He looks less than half... more than a quarter... call it one-third Asian? It goes interestingly with his red hair. He's wearing a RWBY T-Shirt showing Remnant's shattered moon.

Also on the left, in front of the boy, a black-haired girl who looks around the same age, but not related to him. Her T-Shirt shows Agent Scully from X-Files, and a caption reading "I want to possess justified true belief."

On the right-side bench are another two people, though they don't look like a couple. The guy at back seems a couple of years older than Charles, wearing a sports jacket that covers his arms but suggests muscle beneath. He looks vaguely familiar, and you can't pin down why. The brunette at right-front looks like she's a half-decade older than him, and wears glasses of her own, along with professional-looking businesswear.

Nobody in the room looks visibly ero. You feel relieved about that, followed by a part of your brain worrying that you felt relieved, followed by another part of your brain berating that part for worrying too much.

"Ten seconds left," says the mid-twenties guy in the sports jacket. "You cut that pretty sharp." He doesn't sound disapproving, just stating a fact.

"Have a seat," says the younger boy with the RWBY T-Shirt. "And close the door behind you, if nobody's following."

You close the door as requested, and slide into the bench on the kid's side, keeping an arm's-length distance from the girl next to you. No offense to her, of course, it's just that you don't want her getting handsy or footsy. Not now anyway.

"Okay, I call this meeting to order," says the boy. "Just to check, everyone here is here because they responded to the following ad, right?" He reaches into the backpack at his side on the bench, and pulls out a copy of the Amazing Hairstyle meetup advertisement.

Have you recently had an interesting experience involving an awesome hairstyle, so incredible it seems hard to believe? Want to share your story with others of similar interests? The first meeting of the Amazing Hairstyle Appreciation Club will be in the basement of the Karaoke Komplex, Friday at 3:30pm precisely.

You nod, as do the lady and oddly familiar guy on the other side of the table.

"And also to make sure we're on the same page," says the boy, "we put up those posters, and the three of you responded, because we've all had an unusual experience involving a certain woman with a striking red-and-black hairstyle. Check?"

The guy and lady on the opposite side of the table nod, and after a frozen second so do you.

Oh.

Then, even as you finish the nod, pink-violet text materializes.

Quest begun: The Friend We Made Along The Way

A motley group of paranormal investigators has come together to investigate the unusual events in Norville, especially the mysterious woman with amazing hair who seems to be at their center.

You're---you're not sure how to react to this. Well, one possibility would be banging your head against the wall. But you're being hunted by paranormal investigators who might find that act suspicious.

"As I was saying earlier," the boy says, looking in your direction, "I think that at least for now we ought not to be using our real names. So," the boy clears his throat slightly, "since our investigative activities resemble that of a certain Scooby Gang, I'll be going by Lavelle for now, in honor of Alexander Lavelle Harris of whose proper name I am not worthy. The lady next to me will be going by Cordy."

"Willow," says the girl wearing the Agent Scully T-Shirt. "Lavelle? We talked about this."

"Yeah," says the boy who identified himself as Lavelle, "we did, and you were very dominant and sarcastic about it, Cordelia. Not to mention? Some of us wanted to be Jonathan."

You can't see from the way her head is turned, but from the girl's sharp tones it sure sounds like she's giving Lavelle a searing look. "And I said that I refused to associate myself with a persona based on a two-bit antivillain whose existence is a stereotype-perpetuating insult to all of geekdom."

"And there's one character in the Buffyverse who talks like that and her name isn't Willow, Cordy," says the boy.

"Can we get on with this?" says the older guy on the opposite side of the table.

The girl on your side, now apparently named "Cordy," subsides with a glare.

"Anyway," says the guy on the opposite side of the table. "I'll be going by Dennis, and I'm here because I saw a girl run a parkour course in high heels and then bounce off a trampoline in a way that didn't look gravitational."

That's where you've seen Dennis before. He's the guy with the clock T-shirt who called buuuulllshiiiit on your explanation to Mahn what's-his-name, Berberg.

"I was visiting the Purring Kittens strip club," says the late-twenties brunette sitting next to him. "A new girl with ridiculously impressive hair auditioned some pole dance moves that struck me as, well, 'not gravitational' is a good term. I didn't think of it that way at the time, of course, I just applauded and whistled with everyone else. Later… I'm not sure how to describe this part? The lady came back out as a waitress instead of a dancer. There was a sudden rush at lunch, and she was the only waitress. The lady didn't seem to be moving quickly, but there was way too little time between when she started taking everyone's orders and when she finished."

"Wait, you're saying the mystery lady has time powers?" says Dennis. "I'm frankly having trouble believing that. I mean, time manipulation is far more overpowered bullshit than just about anything---"

"Questions later," says Cordy.

"I'm not claiming to know anything, just reporting my experience," says the brunette. "I'd chalked it up to a worrying brain hiccup, and it stayed in my mind because I didn't know what kind of brain hiccup it was. But when I saw this poster, I wondered if maybe it wasn't just me. And if we're adopting names from the Scooby Gang, I'll be going by Velma."

Lavelle frowns. "I don't remember a character named Velma in the Buffyverse," he says.

"She's the OG," says Velma, rolling her eyes behind her glasses. "Look it up. And thank you for making me feel very, very old." The brunette turns, and gives you an expectant look.

"Uh," you say, "uh, uh," shit what could you have seen yourself do that doesn't give away too much, "I saw a girl trying to convince another girl to stay away from a possible date rapist who spikes drinks with GHB. She didn't have much luck on the persuading thing until, uh, the girl with amazing hair stepped in and said she needed to stay away, and to make sure she believed her, she made her hair start glowing."

Cordy scrunches up her face. "I'm just going to assume all those pronouns meant what I think they mean so I can get on with my life."

"Her hair started glowing?" says Dennis. "Huh. The girl I saw seemed to be trying to keep a lower profile than that."

"What Cordy and I witnessed was also more subtle," says Lavelle. He pulls a laptop out of his backpack, opens it, rapidly types in a password, and puts the laptop down on the table where everyone can see.

It's---it's a cellphone picture of you on the Dance Dance Revolution machine with oh god your skirt is hiked almost all the way up your thighs you can't believe you did that. The you in the picture is bending over, and if your hair wasn't in the way you'd be flashing everything at the camera. A crowd of onlookers staring at you clearly appreciates this fact.

"This is from Monday night at the Lightning Arcade," says Lavelle. "As you can see, the unknown entity is playing Dance Dance Revolution and---it seems at first---having a wardrobe malfunction. What initially gave me 'the wiggins,' to use the technical term, was later on when the entity offered to dance-duel a goth kid, betting a night of unearthly pleasures against his soul---"

"Seriously?" says Dennis.

"---and was promptly dragged off the DDR stage by a guy in his early twenties who gave a strong impression of being a Watcher, or something like it."

"He called himself Charles," Cordy says, and Dennis nods to this. "For those unfamiliar with Lavelle's pointlessly opaque references, what he means is, it looked like Charles knew what was going on and considered it his job to make sure the entity didn't eat any souls. We didn't get any pictures of him, but Charles looked around Dennis's age or up to three years younger. Clean-shaven with a hint of afternoon shadow. Short hair but not a buzzcut. Dressed in business-casual. Educated Southern accent. He's the type of guy I'd expect as a competent low-level officer in a quasi-military government section like the Initiative or Bureau 13, where Bureau 13 is the Men In Black but for magic instead of aliens."

Subquest begun: The Man in the Know

The mysterious woman is sometimes accompanied by a man going by the alias of "Charles," who has yet to display any paranormal abilities of his own, but seems to know all about her and to have power or responsibility over her. Who is "Charles," and is he acting alone, or on behalf of a larger organization? Could this be another path to track her down?

Ffffuuuuuuuu---

"Charles called the entity 'Starry,' by the way," says Lavelle. "Which is all kinds of suggestive."

"It could just be a porn-star name," you mutter, causing Cordy to roll her eyes, Dennis to snort, and Velma to look indifferent. Lavelle smiles at you, as if to communicate that he likes the way you think.

"So my friend here was amused at how Buffyverse the whole thing sounded," says Cordy, "and made a remark about researching entities that delivered nights of unearthly pleasure. And if it had been up to him, it would have ended there as a dumb joke. I thought back and realized how unlikely it was that every time the girl almost flashed us, her hair was coincidentally in the way to block the important bits, as seen from my own angle. I started asking among the other witnesses. Everyone I asked thought that the girl's hair had been blocking the view, from their perspective, each time she bent over."

"This is a cellphone picture from one of the witnesses," Lavelle says, and gestures toward the laptop screen. "Look at the distance her hair is from her ass. That's not close enough to block the good bits from every angle of visibility. We also managed to get copies of a couple of other pictures." He presses a button on the laptop, and it shows you at the start of the dance, while your dress was still low. Then another slide, showing you looking sweatier and more disheveled. His fingers click across the buttons, showing you before, after, before, after. "Notice anything?"

"She's getting prettier," Velma says, causing Dennis to stare more closely at the laptop with his eyes widening. "By a quarter of a cup size, among other qualities. She was even bustier when I saw her on Wednesday."

"We think 'Starry' is a memetic entity," says Lavelle. "She's feeding on the desires of the people looking at her. They're watching her being sexy, wanting to see more, and she's getting sexier. There's no material version of her whose hair could be blocking the view from every angle. The obvious conclusion is that 'Starry' must be, in some sense, made of ideas---though still solid enough to play DDR."

Lavelle smiles, as if to say ta-da.

There's an awkward pause, as nobody around the table says anything more.

Dennis looks at Velma. Velma looks back at him, and then looks at you. You stare back at her blankly because you have no idea what you're supposed to say right now.

"You know," Velma says, "this isn't what I was hoping to find. Earlier I thought I had a brain hiccup. I came here on the remote chance I'd hear a good explanation. This is, it's just a random collection of, the woman ran a parkour course in high heels, she made her hair glow, her body didn't have a consistent material form. And now I---I just don't know what to do with this?" The older brunette glances around the table with a pleading expression. "I thought there was a chance I'd hear surprising but sensible answers for what I saw happen. Or much more likely, the flyer would be a coincidence that had nothing to do with Purring Kittens. Instead I'm hearing about glowing hair, and seeing before-and-after pictures that aren't compatible with reality as I know it. And I ought to decide this is nonsense and go home. But it also seems obvious that none of you are lying any more than I am. Which means everything I thought I knew about the universe is a lie. But I can't just decide that. We don't have enough observations here, or solid-enough observations, to, to flip the whole table on science. And on the other hand, I'd just be playing the oblivious scientist character in denial if I pretended this wasn't happening. It all seems so unreal. Am I---am I making sense here?"

"Totally," says Dennis.

"Or to put it in literary terms," says Lavelle, "Starry turned into a cat."

Cordy groans and covers her face in both her hands.

"I---" you say. "I mean, she did what?" You feel strangely insulted, like an international master thief accused of stealing a jewel she's never heard of. You didn't violate that law of reality.

"I'm speaking metaphorically," says Lavelle. "It stands in for the idea that a sufficiently definite observation of sufficiently weird magic means that we have to discard our old beliefs and start the scientific project over again. A girl made of ideas who can mess with time," nodding to Velma, "is something that doesn't fit inside the universe we thought we knew. So our old model of the world is just plain false, and anything could be possible until we figure out the new rules. Uh, the literary example I was referring to is Minerva McGonagall from Harry Potter turning into her cat Animagus form, which doesn't just violate Conservation of Energy, but also raises the question of how McGonagall is thinking using a cat-sized brain."

"Oh, that fanfic," says Velma. The brunette is now scowling at the young boy sitting diagonally across from her. "You know the physics in that is wrong, right?"

"Oh," says Lavelle, giving her a hostile look back, "did an online review tell you so? Did you even read the story?"

"My graduate courses in physics told me so," says Velma. "Look, I read the first two chapters of that, but I stopped after the cat thing because violating Conservation of Energy does not imply faster-than-light signaling. Any subsystem of a quantum system can be viewed as having a time-dependent Hamiltonian, and that doesn't allow it to---"

"For the love of God, stop," says Cordy, still with her face between her hands. "Just stop. Stop."

"Cordy is allergic to people arguing about Methods of Rationality," says Lavelle.

"Either read it or don't read it, like it or don't like it, but for God's sake don't---can we just go on?"

"Seconded," says Dennis.

"Anyway," says Lavelle. "Before I go on to the next slide, I was wondering if anyone had any better ideas than 'memetic entity' for what could have happened at the Lightning Arcade. Like our resident physicist, say."

"Not… really," Velma says. She's now looking back at the laptop screen and frowning at it instead of Lavelle. "I'm not a physicist either, more of an overeducated dilettante. You're right that alternative hypotheses are important, but off the top of my head, I can't come up with anything that isn't a fancier way of saying 'memetic entity.' A bundle of telepathic energy projecting images into your minds, deriving sustenance from desires, and using telekinesis to depress the DDR arrows… isn't much different from saying there's an idea solid enough to dance."

"Starry's hair could be made of ideas and the rest of her could be solid," you venture. "I mean, I'm not saying she's made of matter as we know it, but her body doesn't have to be just an idea like her hair."

"That's more plausible than you might realize," says Lavelle. "Ah, sorry if I'm forgetting, but you didn't give an alias?"

Your mind is blank. You can't think of anything that sounds clever. "Uh, just pick something appropriate?" you say.

Lavelle gives you scrutiny, then shrugs. "Winifred," he says.

"No, that's my Mom's name," you say.

The four of them look at you.

You look down at your lap, feeling your cheeks heat up. "I'm not used to this sneaky stuff," you mutter. "Who's Winifred? I never watched Buffy and don't know much about it except that Willow is gay and Buffy is in love with some vampire. Named Spike, I think."

Cordy puts a hand over Lavelle's mouth before he can say anything. "Fred is a shy physicist girl who gets stuck in a cave in another dimension for a while. She's later possessed by Illyria."

You mentally repeat the syllables il-ly-ri-a. It's one of the nicer-sounding names you've run across, way better than anything you're likely to come up with. "Illyria sounds pretty," you say. "I'll go with that."

"But Illyria is---" begins Lavelle.

"A valid Scooby name," says Cordy. "At least if we count Angel Investigators, which you did by saying Winifred. Pleased to meet you, Illyria."

Velma leans forward and taps a finger on the table to attract attention. "What did you mean, it's plausible that only the entity's hair is made of ideas?" says Velma. "Her body changed too."

"Well, this is where it starts to get weird," says Lavelle.

"Starts?" says Dennis.

You sigh under your breath. The sad thing is, he's not wrong.

"I didn't think I was going to have much luck," Lavelle says, "but it's what the real Xander would have done, so… I went to the Cross-Cultural Mythology Wikia and started trying to look up any old legends that matched what I saw."

"Starting with succubi," Cordy interjects. "Anybody want to take bets on whether he had his door closed at the time?"

"Yes, well, I also looked into entities that fed on people's desires, or got prettier over time, or had unnaturally beautiful hair. It was on that last search that I found this." Lavelle taps his laptop again, and the screen changes to show a screenshot of a Wikia page, with ads but no other pictures. "According to the wiki page, there's a Native American legend dating back at least to the 10th century about a seductress archetype named Yoal-yohuali. She didn't like how long her hair took to dry when she bathed herself, so she took a fragment of the ideas that existed before the beginning of things, and wove it into threads about her head. There are six things she never knew, and when she remembers all seven, ideas and things will become one." Lavelle taps the keyboard again, the screen shifts to another Wikia page, also with no pictures. "So I kept looking into hair mythology. Djinda-djinang, Australian Aboriginal culture. An unaging woman who feeds on the desire of men and women alike, whose dreams are the boundary between hair and reality---"

"You mean her hair is the boundary between dreams and reality?" says Dennis.

"No," says Lavelle. "Djinda-djinang's dreams are the boundary between hair and reality, that's definitely what the wiki page said. She is searching for six spells, and if she finds all seven, her dream will end and hair will enter the world." Lavelle taps the keyboard again. "Bararu-balasu, ancient Mesopotamia." Taps again. "Elin-Elenath." He taps the keyboard again, and again, showing different wiki pages each time. "If you combine the common threads of the stories, there's a seemingly young girl who never gets any older, whose sustenance derives from desire or sex or both. She is searching for six spells or six insights that will, uh, merge our world with her hair, more or less, after she finds all seven."

This is weirder than you thought your day was going to be.

Lavelle turns from his laptop screen, and gives the table a dramatic look. "These findings…" he says solemnly. "Admit of only one possible interpretation."

"The entity has Internet access," says Dennis.

"Or her hair has Internet access," you say with a slight shiver.

"Or Charles edited the wiki, or somebody in his organization, or someone else in the know," says Velma.

Cordy nods to everyone. "That's what we thought too," she says.

Lavelle nods along with her. "I'm enough of a nerd that I know about the parallels between Japanese and European vampires, even though they're not very parallel. If there'd been such an incredibly specific match between legends in Akkadian, Aboriginal, and Eskimo culture, every nerd on the planet would already know about it. Not to mention every anthropologist."

"Of course, neither of us are anthropologists," says Cordy.

"That said," says Lavelle, "we know the information entered into the Mythology Wiki was accurate in at least some respects. We have to take seriously the theory that it is accurate in all respects. And if that theory is true, our planet, and possibly all of reality, are in danger of becoming one with hair. A hypothetical event we've decided to label…"

Lavelle taps a button on his laptop again, flipping to a slide which shows a burst of black-and-red hair erupting out of a galaxy.

"The hair disaster," says Lavelle.

"How long did he spend making these slides?" says Dennis.

"You don't want to know," says Cordy.

"Not nearly long enough," says Lavelle, "considering that this may be the most important Powerpoint presentation in all of human history. Maybe in the entire history of the multiverse. Reality itself could be at stake!"

You stare at the laptop screen showing your hair erupting from the middle of the galaxy, feeling a prickle where the fine hairs on your skin would have been, if you still had any hair in places other than your head.

Sure, your hair wouldn't do that, but---

It's so easy to imagine. Way too easy to imagine. Cindy vanishes and a burst of hair spreads out faster than a nuclear fireball, wiping away people who don't even have a chance to see it coming and scream. One instant they're there, the next instant gone.

Although of course that's not really a problem. Your hair wouldn't do that.

Your mind goes to Sonia's theories about the Erogame extending sideways in time. Would the hair disaster be limited to only one Earth? Or would the same infection erupt from any copy anywhen of the hairstyle you happened to be wearing at the time of the disaster? It would be bad enough if you'd been wearing Coal's Relighted at the time. What if your hair had been waist-length earthy-brown hair like you're wearing now? Would there be any human beings left, anywhen at all?

But it's okay, your hair wouldn't do that either. It's not part of your concept of erogame hair that it destroys large sections of the multiverse.

Velma is raising her eyebrows at the image. "I strongly doubt that a hair disaster could propagate faster than c," she says. "It's like the reasoning for why the Large Hadron Collider couldn't destroy the world, only more so. If sufficiently bad hair days propagated instantaneously and destroyed all of reality, we'd already be gone."

"Well, maybe," Lavelle says, still looking solemn. "But what if that reasoning is wrong? Considering the magnitude of the stakes, if there's even a tiny probability of hair destroying all of reality, we have to take that much more seriously than losing a handful of superclusters. Have a sense of proportion, please."

"I don't think you understand how a sense of proportion works," says Velma. "Saying that something could be worse doesn't make it less catastrophically bad. I was thinking at first that a hair disaster propagating at c would be self-limiting when it approached the Schwarzschild limit for a black hole with the density of hair, but on second thought I'm not sure even of that---the gravity on the inside might not have time to catch up to the front? My point is, an apocalypse that destroys all of Earth is already as bad as anything gets on a pragmatic level. Even if the apocalypse also wipes out millions of galaxies full of innocent aliens, it's not like we can try any harder."

"Well, I agree that a hair disaster spreading at c would also be pretty bad," says Lavelle. He leans forward, his voice growing intense and dire. "Traveling at the speed of light, it would reach Los Angeles within minutes. New York within hours. Japan itself within days. Every place located within reality as we know it would be wiped out, and very few survivors would make it to a cryptocurrency conference in time."

Do they---do they even hear what they're saying? Do they understand the words leaving their mouths? Your mind pictures alien civilizations you know you can't imagine, strange minds around other stars going about their business. With no warning to feel fear, or even despair, as all the space nearby fills up with a wall of black-scarlet hair---because the hair is approaching too fast, too fast to be seen---they don't even know that their families and friends in their colony worlds are already dead---and then they're just gone---

"Hey."

You startle hard enough to bang your head against the wall behind you. The painful impact is reassuring, because it means that your head still exists and so do walls.

"Are you okay?" says the black-haired girl touching your shoulder.

The laptop screen is showing black right now, an empty void even more disturbing than the picture of your hair erupting from the middle of a galaxy.

"I," you say, as you inwardly cringe, you don't know what just came over you but you can guess, "I'm, I'm sorry, I, I recently had the type of morning that involved somebody now in police custody pointing a gun at me and pulling the trigger. I thought I was going to die just like that, and---and the thought of everybody's lives being blown out like a snuffed candle might have been upsetting? Sorry. I didn't mean to---sorry."

There's an uncomfortable silence around the table. Either your imagination or SED 25 fills in that this silence is made of the remorse of innocent bystanders who've stepped on somebody else's emotional landmine in a way they couldn't possibly have anticipated, mixed with resentment at your weakness censoring their conversation.

"Actually," says Cordy, "your feelings seem valid. In fact, you're the only one at this table who's reacting appropriately." The girl smiles at you in a way that looks forced. "If anything, you should be calling us out on not seeming to care."

You force your face to smile back. Why does your brain insist on being so frightened all the time? Why does it insist on finding new things to be scared of? Your hair wouldn't do that.

You realize your arms are wrapped around your abdomen, hugging yourself. You disengage, then clasp your hands tightly in your lap instead.

Velma is also looking at you with concern. "In real life, the world can't be that easy to destroy," she says in a reassuring tone. "It's a matter of statistics. If you have to prevent fifty apocalypses per year like in Marvel or DC, somebody screws up sooner or later. We're still around, so we don't live in a world that fragile."

It's perfectly logical reasoning. Except for the part where the world hasn't been like this for years. It's only been at ERO 30 for slightly over half a day. There could be any number of impending apocalypses starting up right now. Apocalypses are a thing in some eroge.

You---you don't want that.

-+​

You don't want your Erogame to be like that. You don't want to have to fight fifty apocalypses per year. And then one time you fail, and everything goes away, everyone dead, Mom dead Charles dead Felice dead Blake dead never running on rooftops again you really don't want that---

---+​

"Let's stop with the apocalypse talk," Dennis says firmly. "The woman I saw didn't act like she thought she had the power to fight her way out of a parkour meetup, never mind her ending the world."

"Yeah, I'm sorry," says Lavelle. "It was more Buffyverse thinking than a serious prediction that---I'm sorry."

You shakily nod to both of them, consciously regulating the breaths that were spiraling into hyperventilation. You put a hand down by your right side, where you hope the others can't see, and dig your fingernails into your thigh underneath your miniskirt. The pain is sharp, annoying, and centering. So you press harder, letting the ow ow ow ow OW focus your mind into reality again.

Maybe---maybe you were wrong about how okay you were after this morning. Maybe your mind was bruised in a way that has nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with believing your life was about to be snuffed out. Maybe you should have tried to take things easier, today. Except that being alone in your bedroom with your thoughts, and nothing else to do, would probably be worse for your mental health.

But the world-ending events you're imagining aren't going to happen, just like every other horrible thing you get scared of the Erogame doing never happens. If there's anything you've learned from this morning, shouldn't it be that?

The pain in your thigh is growing to the point where you're worried you're bleeding and it will show through your miniskirt. So you stop. There's a final sharp spike of pain when you take your hand away, and that also helps.

"If you don't mind my asking, though," says Velma, "before we pass on from the subject of made-up apocalypses, was there anything you were planning to do about that one?"

Lavelle turns up the palms of his hands, looking helpless. "Well, I was probably still thinking in Buffy mode, but---I couldn't come up with anything better than hunting down any clues in the mythology wiki and trying to find the six secrets ourselves. The idea being that we can destroy the records or the tracks for at least one of the spells, before Starry finds all seven."

"So, hunting haircruxes?" says Dennis.

"I mean," says Dennis, looking around as if in search of any sign of comprehension, "because they're, like, the key insights she needs to---about her hair---so it's like the crux of the…"

"Never mind," says Dennis.

"4 out of 10," says Lavelle.

Dennis scowls at the boy across the table, although his lips are turning up at the sides. "Fuck you."

"Careful, he might take you up on that," says Cordy.

Quest available: Hunting Haircruxes

Join with your fellow investigators and hunt down the six pivotal insights that are the key to Starry's ultimate mastery of her hair, before the entity can find all seven herself!

Success: Starry doesn't find her haircruxes before you do.
Failure: You don't find the haircruxes before Starry does.
Accept? Y/N/Hair

Is---is this thing broken, or is it just fucking with you? It's hard to tell with the Erogame.

"I'd like to point out," Velma says, "that we don't have any evidence the entity is hostile. Waitressing in a strip club isn't evil. Illyria," she nods in your direction, "says the entity broke her cover in order to keep a girl from going on a date with a possible rapist. The only bad behavior any of us reported is the part where she tried to challenge a goth kid to a dance duel for his soul, which…" Velma frowns. "Which I admit is disturbing."

Cordy nods to her. "She did protest she was only joking while Charles was dragging her away. Something like: 'I wouldn't have actually taken his soul! I told you, I'm not that kind of entity!'"

"And," says Lavelle, "we don't know 'Starry' would have mistreated his soul if she did take it. I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with owning a goth kid's soul, it depends on what you do with it. Maybe she was just planning to drag him off to her home dimension and subject him to an eternity of humiliating footjobs---"

There's a flurry of action on your side of the table. Lavelle blocks all of Cordy's incoming pokes successfully, but he has to stop talking to do so.

"My point is," Velma says, when the fighting has subsided, "we're not in a TV show where the supernatural forces have to be threatening something awful to maintain plot tension."

You've managed to recover enough to nod to this. "Y-yeah," you say. "You've---we've got no evidence they're bad people, either her or Charles."

"Another possibility," says Lavelle, the boy still watching Cordy with wariness, "is that Starry and Charles are harmless, but they're in Norville to hide from something that isn't harmless. This is just the first episode of our show, metaphorically speaking."

"If so," Dennis says, looking to one side and frowning in concentration, "going on a parkour run with Mahn Berberg is not what I'd call keeping a low profile. But the entity wore high heels and obviously regretted it, so maybe she's just… clueless about mundane existence? Or for that matter, stupid? Nothing says the supernaturals have to be smart."

"We're very aware of how little we know," Cordy says. "We don't know who the players are, or what they want, or why. But it's obvious that somebody is keeping the truth out of the media. We don't know who does that, or that their reasons for doing it are evil---"

"I'm not sure," Velma says somberly, "how much benefit of the doubt we should give to anyone that conceals information that important from the public. We're looking at God knows how much of human history being a lie. God knows what capabilities they're keeping to themselves."

"It could be justified," Lavelle says. "They could be worried about Necronomicon-style memetic hazards. Or easy spells that conjure antimatter. There could be information so dangerous that spreading it would inevitably lead to the end of---" Lavelle hesitates, looking in your direction.

"Yeah," says Cordy. "The point is, good reasons or bad reasons, it's clear somebody suppresses news of the supernatural from reaching people like us. Which is why we're all using false names, in case somebody here is from Bureau 13 and Bureau 13 isn't one hundred percent light-side."

There's a rapid exchange of glances around the table, people looking at one another. You do your best to cast your own suspicious glares, still feeling shaken.

"Her," says Dennis, pointing at Velma.

"Hey!" Velma protests. "Why me?"

"Because you're the oldest person here and shadowy secret organizations probably send mature, highly educated spies," Dennis says.

"I want to argue with that but I can't think of how," says the older brunette in her professional clothing, adjusting her glasses in a way that makes her look even more mature and educated.

"If anyone here knows more than they're telling, I'd guess Illyria," says Lavelle.

You startle before you can stop yourself. "W-why me?"

"Least skeptical, possibly traumatized by a mysterious backstory," Lavelle says. "Cordy, stop pinching me, I know it's not polite but this could be important. But if so, Illyria isn't from Bureau 13, more like she's been fighting the good fight on her own with no backup."

"Or you two could be casting fishing lines in a routine sweep for people who've seen too much," says Dennis. "And the way this bullshit is going, you could both be a lot older than you look."

"How rude!" Cordy says, putting her wrist to her cheek and tilting her head. "How dare you suggest that I am anything except an innocent young maiden! And I mark that it was you who began casting suspicions, good sir!"

"I'm not sure this is productive," says Velma, leaning back against the cushioned bench. "I don't care if that's something the spy would say, it's still true."

Lavelle looks at you, then turns to regard the general table. "I guess it's worth asking straight out," Lavelle says. "We shouldn't hold it against anyone if they lie for now, we hardly know each other. But if anyone wants to go ahead and admit they know more…" Lavelle's gaze sweeps back and forth. "Nobody here is going to be an asshole about it, right?"

"Right," says Dennis.

"Right," says Velma.

Everyone at the table is carefully not looking at you.

Voting opens in 48.5 hours from this posting. (That is, two days from now, plus half an hour to be on the hour mark.)

This is a brainstorming session to generate plans. In two days when voting opens, I'll post a temporary threadmark to collect the acceptable brainstormed options.

( ) The person you ran into this morning was the Mall Rapist, not anything supernatural, and they can check the local news if they don't believe you.
( ) You do know something, namely…
-( ) Write-in for what you claim to know.
( ) Take off your glasses.
-( ) Write-in for how much you tell them after that.

Voting is open. See the next threadmark for the brainstormed options.

6.5.2 [SCO]: Woman of Mystery

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (33,900 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 230/440
SUB: 347/490

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 25
FUK: 19
PRV: 27
ERO: 31 (16)

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8934

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: Biologists #7, #14
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Busy Mode: Off

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 184 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 5499-5618]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
Disclosure
Meh
Mild-Mannered Reporter
Seer
Unmasked
Woman of Mystery
Woobie-Scooby

Winner: Woman of Mystery

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Aoinfinity
[1] Archimedes
[1] askldjflkajskje
[1] Ben Bladesman
[1] BuryBone
[1] carnistir
[1] Diraniola
[1] edale
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] Gettys
[1] Gingganz
[1] Homilion
[1] Hyperion042
[1] january1may
[1] Kappa
[1] Kelardry
[1] Milpld
[1] modrony
[1] Olivebirdy
[1] Powergoat
[1] Questingdragon
[1] ScrewFate
[1] SoulofaGremlin
[1] Theli
[1] theonebutcher
[1] Tulip
[1] Valmit
[1] zachol
[2] Alkaiser009
[2] ChaoticWhimsy
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Derpmind
[2] Eler0
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Equanimitivity
[2] Gavinfoxx
[2] Greckle
[2] Guile
[2] Sirrocco
[2] Skelm
[3] Acae
[3] AramilOniasha
[3] DarkDaemon
[3] napkintooth
[3] pepperjack
[3] Prince Chrom
[3] Quentin
[3] Thrice.Great
[3] wasprider
[4] DarthSquidious
[4] Lisa
[4] Mitale
[4] QazdaMorquil
[4] redfog
[5] 514X0r
[5] End of Line
[6] zup
[7] DeAnno
[7] Xahn

First Runner Up: Seer

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AramilOniasha
[1] ChaoticWhimsy
[1] DarkDaemon
[1] DarthSquidious
[1] Eler0
[1] Equanimitivity
[1] Greckle
[1] Lisa
[1] Mitale
[1] Quentin
[1] redfog
[1] Sirrocco
[1] Skelm
[1] Thrice.Great
[1] wasprider
[1] Xahn
[2] DeAnno
[2] End of Line
[2] Milpld
[2] Olivebirdy
[2] pepperjack
[2] Powergoat
[2] SoulofaGremlin
[2] Tulip
[3] 514X0r
[3] Alkaiser009
[3] CTCatapult
[3] Derpmind
[3] edale
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Gingganz
[3] modrony
[3] QazdaMorquil
[3] ScrewFate
[3] Theli
[3] theonebutcher
[3] zachol
[4] Acae
[4] askldjflkajskje
[4] Homilion
[4] Hyperion042
[4] napkintooth
[4] Prince Chrom
[4] zup
[5] BuryBone
[5] Guile
[5] january1may
[5] Questingdragon
[6] Ben Bladesman
[6] Diraniola
[6] Valmit
[7] Aoinfinity
[7] Archimedes
[7] carnistir
[7] Ephemeral
[7] Gavinfoxx
[7] Kappa
[7] Kelardry
[-] Gettys

Second Runner Up: Mild-Mannered Reporter

Spoiler: Voters

[1] CTCatapult
[1] Derpmind
[1] QazdaMorquil
[2] AramilOniasha
[2] carnistir
[2] edale
[2] Homilion
[2] january1may
[2] Kappa
[2] modrony
[2] Prince Chrom
[2] Quentin
[2] redfog
[2] ScrewFate
[2] Theli
[2] wasprider
[2] zachol
[3] Archimedes
[3] askldjflkajskje
[3] Ben Bladesman
[3] BuryBone
[3] ChaoticWhimsy
[3] DeAnno
[3] Diraniola
[3] End of Line
[3] Kelardry
[3] Lisa
[3] Milpld
[3] Olivebirdy
[3] Powergoat
[3] SoulofaGremlin
[3] Tulip
[3] Valmit
[4] Eler0
[4] Ephemeral
[4] Equanimitivity
[4] Guile
[4] pepperjack
[4] Questingdragon
[4] theonebutcher
[4] Thrice.Great
[4] Xahn
[5] Acae
[5] Aoinfinity
[5] DarkDaemon
[5] Gavinfoxx
[5] Gingganz
[5] napkintooth
[5] Sirrocco
[6] DarthSquidious
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] Greckle
[6] Hyperion042
[6] Skelm
[7] 514X0r
[7] Alkaiser009
[7] Mitale
[7] zup
[-] Gettys

Third Runner Up: Unmasked

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Alkaiser009
[1] DeAnno
[1] Ephemeral
[1] Prince Chrom
[2] 514X0r
[2] Acae
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] Archimedes
[2] DarthSquidious
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] Gingganz
[2] napkintooth
[2] Questingdragon
[2] Thrice.Great
[2] Valmit
[3] Gavinfoxx
[3] Greckle
[3] Hyperion042
[3] Kappa
[3] Mitale
[3] Sirrocco
[3] Skelm
[3] zup
[4] AramilOniasha
[4] DarkDaemon
[4] Diraniola
[4] End of Line
[4] modrony
[5] carnistir
[5] Equanimitivity
[5] Lisa
[5] Milpld
[5] Powergoat
[5] SoulofaGremlin
[5] Tulip
[5] Xahn
[6] CTCatapult
[6] Derpmind
[6] Eler0
[6] Homilion
[6] january1may
[6] Kelardry
[6] Olivebirdy
[6] Quentin
[6] redfog
[6] ScrewFate
[6] Theli
[6] theonebutcher
[7] askldjflkajskje
[7] BuryBone
[7] ChaoticWhimsy
[7] Guile
[7] pepperjack
[7] zachol
[-] Ben Bladesman
[-] edale
[-] Gettys
[-] QazdaMorquil
[-] wasprider

Honorable Mention: Disclosure

Spoiler: Voters

[1] 514X0r
[1] Acae
[1] Gavinfoxx
[1] napkintooth
[1] zup
[2] BuryBone
[2] Hyperion042
[2] Kelardry
[2] Lisa
[2] Mitale
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] carnistir
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] Questingdragon
[4] Alkaiser009
[4] Archimedes
[4] Gingganz
[4] Greckle
[4] january1may
[4] Kappa
[4] ScrewFate
[4] Skelm
[4] Theli
[4] Valmit
[5] Ben Bladesman
[5] CTCatapult
[5] DeAnno
[5] edale
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] Ephemeral
[5] Olivebirdy
[5] Thrice.Great
[5] zachol
[6] askldjflkajskje
[6] ChaoticWhimsy
[6] DarkDaemon
[6] End of Line
[6] Guile
[6] Milpld
[6] pepperjack
[6] Prince Chrom
[6] Sirrocco
[6] SoulofaGremlin
[6] Xahn
[7] AramilOniasha
[7] Derpmind
[7] Diraniola
[7] Eler0
[7] Equanimitivity
[7] Homilion
[7] modrony
[7] Powergoat
[7] Quentin
[7] redfog
[7] theonebutcher
[7] Tulip
[-] Gettys
[-] QazdaMorquil
[-] wasprider

Honorable Mention: Woobie-Scooby

Spoiler: Voters

[1] End of Line
[1] Guile
[1] pepperjack
[2] askldjflkajskje
[2] DarkDaemon
[2] Diraniola
[2] QazdaMorquil
[2] theonebutcher
[2] Xahn
[3] Eler0
[3] Ephemeral
[3] Equanimitivity
[3] Homilion
[3] january1may
[3] redfog
[4] 514X0r
[4] Ben Bladesman
[4] edale
[4] Milpld
[4] Powergoat
[4] SoulofaGremlin
[4] Tulip
[4] wasprider
[4] zachol
[5] AramilOniasha
[5] ChaoticWhimsy
[5] Derpmind
[5] Kappa
[5] Kelardry
[5] Mitale
[5] modrony
[5] Prince Chrom
[5] Quentin
[5] ScrewFate
[5] Theli
[5] zup
[6] Alkaiser009
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] Archimedes
[6] BuryBone
[6] DeAnno
[6] Gavinfoxx
[6] Questingdragon
[7] Acae
[7] CTCatapult
[7] DarthSquidious
[7] Elitist Oars
[7] Gingganz
[7] Greckle
[7] Hyperion042
[7] Lisa
[7] napkintooth
[7] Olivebirdy
[7] Sirrocco
[7] Skelm
[7] Thrice.Great
[7] Valmit
[-] carnistir
[-] Gettys

Honorable Mention: Meh

Spoiler: Voters

[2] zup
[3] Xahn
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] BuryBone
[4] ChaoticWhimsy
[4] CTCatapult
[4] DeAnno
[4] Derpmind
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] Gavinfoxx
[4] Kelardry
[4] Olivebirdy
[4] Quentin
[4] Sirrocco
[5] Alkaiser009
[5] Archimedes
[5] askldjflkajskje
[5] DarthSquidious
[5] Diraniola
[5] Eler0
[5] Greckle
[5] Homilion
[5] Hyperion042
[5] pepperjack
[5] QazdaMorquil
[5] redfog
[5] Skelm
[5] theonebutcher
[5] Valmit
[5] wasprider
[6] 514X0r
[6] Acae
[6] AramilOniasha
[6] carnistir
[6] edale
[6] Ephemeral
[6] Equanimitivity
[6] Gingganz
[6] Kappa
[6] Lisa
[6] Mitale
[6] modrony
[6] napkintooth
[6] Powergoat
[6] Thrice.Great
[6] Tulip
[6] zachol
[7] Ben Bladesman
[7] DarkDaemon
[7] End of Line
[7] january1may
[7] Prince Chrom
[7] Questingdragon
[7] ScrewFate
[7] Theli
[-] Gettys
[-] Guile
[-] Milpld
[-] SoulofaGremlin

Total No. of Voters: 59

-[X] +Light-Shift
No. of Votes: 47

Spoiler: Voters

Xahn
514X0r
Acae
Alkaiser009
Aoinfinity
Archimedes
askldjflkajskje
Ben Bladesman
BuryBone
carnistir
ChaoticWhimsy
CTCatapult
DeAnno
Derpmind
Diraniola
edale
Eler0
Elitist Oars
End of Line
Ephemeral
Equanimitivity
Gavinfoxx
Gettys
Gingganz
Greckle
Hyperion042
january1may
Kappa
Kelardry
Lisa
Milpld
Mitale
modrony
napkintooth
Olivebirdy
pepperjack
Powergoat
Prince Chrom
Sirrocco
Skelm
SoulofaGremlin
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
Tulip
Valmit
wasprider
zachol

-[X] +Illyria
No. of Votes: 42

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
Acae
Aoinfinity
AramilOniasha
Ben Bladesman
carnistir
ChaoticWhimsy
CTCatapult
DarkDaemon
DarthSquidious
DeAnno
Derpmind
Diraniola
Eler0
Elitist Oars
End of Line
Ephemeral
Equanimitivity
Gingganz
Greckle
Guile
Homilion
Hyperion042
january1may
Kappa
Kelardry
Lisa
Milpld
Mitale
modrony
pepperjack
Powergoat
Prince Chrom
Quentin
Questingdragon
ScrewFate
Skelm
SoulofaGremlin
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
Tulip
Valmit

-[X] + Sex-Powered
No. of Votes: 31

Spoiler: Voters

Xahn
514X0r
Acae
Ben Bladesman
BuryBone
ChaoticWhimsy
CTCatapult
DarkDaemon
DeAnno
Diraniola
edale
Eler0
Elitist Oars
End of Line
Ephemeral
Equanimitivity
Greckle
Guile
Homilion
january1may
Kelardry
Lisa
Mitale
Olivebirdy
Prince Chrom
Questingdragon
redfog
ScrewFate
Skelm
Theli
Thrice.Great

-[X] +Sorta-Psychic
No. of Votes: 30

Spoiler: Voters

CTCatapult
514X0r
askldjflkajskje
ChaoticWhimsy
DarthSquidious
Derpmind
Diraniola
edale
Eler0
Elitist Oars
End of Line
Equanimitivity
Gavinfoxx
Gingganz
Hyperion042
january1may
Kelardry
Milpld
Olivebirdy
pepperjack
Powergoat
Prince Chrom
QazdaMorquil
Quentin
redfog
Sirrocco
SoulofaGremlin
theonebutcher
Tulip
wasprider

-[X] +Spellbook
No. of Votes: 29

Spoiler: Voters

CTCatapult
Acae
Archimedes
DarkDaemon
DarthSquidious
Derpmind
Diraniola
edale
Eler0
Elitist Oars
Ephemeral
Gavinfoxx
Gingganz
Greckle
Guile
Hyperion042
january1may
Kelardry
Lisa
Mitale
pepperjack
Powergoat
Quentin
Questingdragon
Skelm
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
Tulip
zachol

-[X] +Gwendolyn Post
No. of Votes: 24

Spoiler: Voters

Xahn
514X0r
Alkaiser009
AramilOniasha
BuryBone
DarkDaemon
edale
End of Line
Equanimitivity
Homilion
Hyperion042
Lisa
Mitale
napkintooth
Olivebirdy
Powergoat
Prince Chrom
Quentin
redfog
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
Tulip
wasprider
zachol

-[X] +Daddy Issues
No. of Votes: 16

Spoiler: Voters

Xahn
514X0r
DarkDaemon
Diraniola
Eler0
End of Line
Ephemeral
Equanimitivity
Gavinfoxx
Hyperion042
Kelardry
pepperjack
Prince Chrom
redfog
theonebutcher
wasprider

-[x] +Full Disclosure
No. of Votes: 12

Spoiler: Voters

DarkDaemon
514X0r
Aoinfinity
DarthSquidious
Gavinfoxx
Gingganz
Kappa
Milpld
Mitale
napkintooth
SoulofaGremlin
zup

-[X]This is kinda the same as the Unknown option, since the gang and erogame are already taking it this direction.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

askldjflkajskje

Task: THEME

[x][THEME] Mythological/folklore---fae, djinn, succubi.
No. of Votes: 26

Spoiler: Voters

DarkDaemon
Aoinfinity
AramilOniasha
askldjflkajskje
BuryBone
ChaoticWhimsy
Derpmind
Diraniola
Elitist Oars
End of Line
Equanimitivity
Greckle
Guile
Kelardry
Lisa
Mitale
modrony
Olivebirdy
Powergoat
Questingdragon
redfog
Sirrocco
Skelm
theonebutcher
Tulip
zachol

[X][THEME] Unknown---whatever the Erogame is plotting next, you're not offering suggestions.
No. of Votes: 15

Spoiler: Voters

Xahn
514X0r
Archimedes
BuryBone
End of Line
Gingganz
january1may
Kappa
napkintooth
pepperjack
QazdaMorquil
Quentin
ScrewFate
Theli
Thrice.Great

[X][THEME] Metafictional---stories are starting to come true, and their pop-culture knowledge could be vital.
No. of Votes: 15

Spoiler: Voters

Homilion
Aoinfinity
BuryBone
CTCatapult
DarkDaemon
DarthSquidious
Gavinfoxx
Guile
Hyperion042
january1may
Jirachi
Milpld
Sirrocco
Valmit
zachol

[x][THEME] Alien---roughly the same story Charles got.
No. of Votes: 10

Spoiler: Voters

DarkDaemon
Alkaiser009
DeAnno
End of Line
Ephemeral
redfog
Sirrocco
Skelm
SoulofaGremlin
wasprider

[X][THEME] You/Starry are a superpowered individual---perhaps the first of many?
No. of Votes: 3

Spoiler: Voters

Guile
edale
redfog

Task: HAIRCRUX

[X][HAIRCRUX] Press the "hair" button and see what happens.
No. of Votes: 31

Spoiler: Voters

Xahn
514X0r
AramilOniasha
Archimedes
BuryBone
ChaoticWhimsy
DarkDaemon
Derpmind
End of Line
Ephemeral
Equanimitivity
Gavinfoxx
Greckle
Homilion
Hyperion042
january1may
Jirachi
Kappa
Lisa
modrony
mrkun
napkintooth
Powergoat
Quentin
ScrewFate
Skelm
Theli
Theminimanx
Tulip
Valmit
zup

[X][HAIRCRUX] Take the quest. You're interested in hair powers.
No. of Votes: 20

Spoiler: Voters

CTCatapult
Alkaiser009
Aoinfinity
askldjflkajskje
Ben Bladesman
DarthSquidious
DeAnno
Diraniola
edale
Elitist Oars
Gingganz
Guile
Kelardry
Mitale
Olivebirdy
Questingdragon
redfog
theonebutcher
wasprider
zachol

[X][HAIRCRUX] Discourage investigation. You don't need any more eldritch horror in your life right now.
No. of Votes: 5

Spoiler: Voters

Guile
DeAnno
pepperjack
QazdaMorquil
Sirrocco

-[X][HAIRCRUX] But if you decide that's too dangerous, just take it normally.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

january1may

Total No. of Voters: 62

You close your eyes. You need to take time to think about this, and maybe you can invoke Slack if you can't see anyone else reacting to how long you're taking.

The first thing you feel, unsurprisingly, is an impulse to hide. One of the four Scoobies could be in league with T. C. Coil for all you know. Or working for Bureau 13, whatever that is, it sure sounds ominous. You should yell at them about it how it was a normal human who pointed the gun at you, and your skittishness has nothing to do with the supernatural.

Except that anyone could be with Bureau 13, if the Erogame decides to deliver that plot twist. You can't---you can't live like that. All you can do is pray that the Erogame isn't going to set you up for betrayals that mean you can't have friendships. It doesn't seem like---it really doesn't seem like the Erogame is set up to not let you have nice things.

Or, going to the opposite extreme, you could betray them. Go with them to look for haircruxes, wait until you've found the final one, suddenly shift your hair, laugh maniacally as you run away. Followed by wacky villain hijinks in Season Two.

There's a certain part of you that is pulled toward this vision like a vacuum-cleaner hose is sucking you there. Except---except you don't see that ending up without hurt feelings. Not in real life. You want to experience being somebody's villain, but not like that. The title of the quest, The Friend We Made Along The Way, suggests that these are potential friends and that the Erogame isn't setting you up to betray them. Sure, it might be fun. Being Starry for Charles was fun, that was the problem, you got swept along with the story but then came the morning after and the falsehood was still there.

You could just---tell them. Take off your glasses and tell them. If they want to investigate the paranormal with Starry on the team, they can do it without the twist. You could go further and tell the Scoobies you're an ordinary girl with recent superpowers, the same as you told Sonia and Tammi.

But that doesn't feel nice to the Erogame. That's not the eroge this quest is setting up. You've derailed enough plots already. This isn't an emergency and you should show more willingness to… no, it runs deeper than that, it's not just the Erogame, it would be wrong to derail this plot. These people have found an exciting clue to the paranormal, a call to adventure instead of whatever boring awful mundane existence they were leading up until this point. You're not the protagonist of this story. You're just Illyria, a part of this Scooby Gang, who will later turn out to be Starry. You're part of the erogame they're playing, what you once decided was a deeply meaningful public service. There's a meanness, a cruelty, to the thought of upending that and making yourself the center of things again. Even if you do it in the name of honesty.

You could tell the Scoobies that you get visions and hints about strange things. Go out with them to investigate places that you're curious about, or to help people where you know help is needed. Is that your role in this eroge?

Maybe. Maybe. But---but you really don't want to play the deceiver to people who seem nice. Not even by claiming to have visions you aren't having. They found their own clues before now. They might not need you to play quest-giver.

But what possibilities does that leave? What is Illyria doing in this story? What is she to the other Scoobies, if she's not pretending to be a rapist-traumatized ordinary girl?

Maybe you don't have to think of an answer right away. It's just the first episode of their story, like Lavelle said. Illyria doesn't have to explain everything in episode 1. Maybe Illyria just stays mysterious until the plot twist, never pretending to be anything she's not, and warning the others up front that she's hiding a lot from them.

That---that sits okay with you. Better than anything else has. At least for today, you don't feel like deceiving people. Trying to figure out what to do with Charles is an awful-enough thought already.

You open your eyes.

Lavelle, Cordy, Velma, and Dennis are no longer pretending not to look at you. You hope at least some Slack got woven in there so they weren't waiting that long.

You take a deep breath, fortifying yourself to be Illyria, as you look at each of the others in turn.

The black-haired girl sitting closest to you, with her Agent Scully "I want justified true belief" T-Shirt, looks determined and protective. Like Cordy isn't sure you can handle this pressure, but this is too important for her to back off, but she'll still protect you from the others if she has to. If you can really read that much into her expression at SED 25.

The red-haired one-third-Asian boy is wearing a studious look, like he's doing his homework two weeks out in advance. If you had to guess what Lavelle is thinking, it would be that he's finally living his own TV show and he's determined to get everything exactly right.

The guy in the sports coat still wears his skeptical look, but doesn't seem bored. Your guess is that Dennis is wondering if you're about to unload even more bullshit.

The professional-looking brunette in her professional-looking glasses has on a poker face, deliberately calm but still watching your every move. You don't feel like you can guess what Velma is thinking. Her poker face is effective.

"I do know more," you say. None of the four look surprised. "I do know more about things. But I, I don't know you well enough to say more. Even when I do know you well enough to say more, there's things about myself that I'll still be hiding. Important things." None of the four look like they'd ever dream of suggesting that you leave. Lavelle is smiling at you, as if to promise the skittish Illyria that of course it's fine, he knows there'll be plot twists but that's okay. "I'm---I'm not going to bother asking if you want me to leave," you say. "I know you wouldn't want your clue to get away from you. Just, just think carefully before you try to become friends with me. I don't want---I don't want you trying to become friends with me, unless you think you'll still want to be friends after it turns out I was hiding something huge."

"Got it," says Lavelle, as if you've said something that is totally, 100% instantly comprehensible in his personal universe. The red-haired boy is grinning widely.

Dennis gives you a slow nod, the older guy looking much more serious about it. "Thanks for the heads-up," he says. "I appreciate the frankness."

Velma seems to be staring at you harder, if that's not just an effect of the serious-grownup-woman glasses she's wearing. "I'm sorry to be blunt, but have you seriously hurt people who didn't hurt someone else first?" she says. "Don't be too hard on yourself about this, I'm not asking if you've screwed up accidentally, or if you were Dracula five hundred years ago. I'm asking if you murdered twelve people yesterday. That's what I'd want to know before giving you a hug and baking you a plate of caramel cookies."

You flinch at the mention of cookies before you can help yourself. Then you rapidly shake your head.

"I have a much more important question," Cordy says. The black-haired girl has twisted in her bench so she can look straight at you. "I'm sorry, but I have to ask. You freaked out about the hair disaster thing. Are we actually facing an apocalypse here?"

"No," you say. The emphasis leaks into your voice before you can stop it. "No, it's not that, I was---hair disasters aren't even a thing! Hair doesn't do that! I recently had a different traumatic experience. A traumatic experience that had nothing to do with hair in any way."

"Some other apocalypse?" Cordy says.

"Young lady," Velma says. She's talking to Cordy, those sharp eyes looking across the table instead of at you. "In real life, there can't be apocalypses all the time. There can, however, be magical disasters that erupt and destroy one apartment complex, and in real life, seeing fourteen people die is more than enough to fuck somebody up."

"…right," Cordy says. She looks down at her lap, suddenly seeming younger than before, more like a teenager and less like a teenage actress playing a paranormal investigator. "I'm sorry, Illyria, I'll shut up now."

"She did have to ask," Lavelle says, his voice also lower. He looks at you and lifts his eyebrows. "Without going into anything personal to you, only what would be general knowledge for people like you, uh… what the actual fuck is going on, if I can ask? I mean, what the fucking fuck?"

Cordy, Dennis, and Velma straighten up and look at you again.

Shit.

"I---I don't know the actual fuck," you say. "If you're looking for a," how did Sonia Turk put this, "if you're looking for a larger picture that causes everything to make sense again, I don't know it."

"Fair," says Lavelle, "but, come on, please think about how little we know. Can you give us the tee-el-dee-ar overview of the universe we actually live in? Are we dealing with aliens? Fae, djinni, and succubi? Vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness? All stories are true? Reality is a computer simulation so badly designed that the people inside are allowed to notice?"

It's a logical question and one you should have seen coming. You close your eyes and think again.

You have a worrying suspicion the Erogame is watching you. If you say it's about vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness, it will be about vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness. At least for the Scoobies, and maybe for everyone on Earth. You should not say it is about vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness.

Does that phrase sound familiar? Maybe it's just your imagination…-+No, that totally does sound familiar. Was it in a perk description? You'll try to remember to check that out later.

Anyway, you don't think you have strong feelings about which background story you want to be real. It's not like you've always wanted to live in a world with werewolves in particular.

But as you should've realized much earlier, when you decided to play along with the paranormal-investigator plot, this might not be safe for the Scoobies. They're probably significant enough to not get hit by bullets, but that doesn't mean they can't get eaten by werewolves.

That's---that's an increasingly awful prospect the longer you think about it. Not all stories are safe especially for people who aren't the protagonist and especially if the theme is paranormal investigation. Maybe you should've walked out of here immediately… only that feels too much like mistakes you've made before, jumping to conclusions about awful futures that don't materialize. But if somebody does get seriously hurt, you are taking off your glasses, telling them about Cindy, and shutting down this storyline.

Yeah. The main thing you feel strongly about is that you want to pick the answer that's safest for the Scoobies.

You invoke Slack to reduce the delay from the others' perspective, hoping again that's actually working, and open your eyes. "Uh---what you're dealing with is closest to fairies, I guess," you say, "except---"

"Right!" Dennis says suddenly. "Starry said that! She told Berberg that the alternative to her pulling a magician's trick was that she was a fairy."

"God damn, seriously---" Lavelle begins.

"Shut up the expert is talking." Wow, Velma sounds scathing right now.

There's silence around the table again. Everyone is leaning forwards and staring, you suspect some of the four aren't breathing. It's weird having people hanging on your every word like this. It gives you the nervous sense that somebody is about to leap out and correct you if you say something wrong, except they couldn't possibly know, and it's also possible you can't be wrong.

At least you sure hope the Erogame takes its cues from what you're about to say.

"Uh, closest to fairies and succubi," you say. "Except with more of an emphasis on the succubi parts. And, uh, supernatural creatures are usually not hostile. More like… extra-friendly, a lot of the time? If Starry is like most supernatural beings, she is way more likely to have sex with you than, uh, not have sex with you. If you start paranormally investigating, you're not likely to end up racing to save a schoolbus full of kidnapped children from monsters. More like, uh, helping supernatural entities out of wacky problems they got into by not understanding humans. Like supernatural social workers." You really really really hope you didn't just send them out, cheerful and unprepared, to meet things with teeth.

"Huh," says Dennis, looking surprised and rather uncertain, like he's not quite sure he should believe this good news.

"I can work with that…" says Lavelle, with the frowning concentration of somebody rapidly revising his plans.

"Do succubi take no for an answer?" says Cordy, though she sounds more concerned than frightened.

"I'm sorry to be saying this," Velma says carefully, her eyes still studying you behind her glasses, "but you don't come across as somebody who spent the last year solving wacky problems for harmless supernaturals."

A small tinge of anger manages to sit you up straighter in the bench, putting some iron in your spine. Does the idiot want to get eaten by werewolves? You glare at Velma, and snap out, "A human tried to shoot me."

"Ah," Velma says. "Right. It doesn't matter how peaceful the supernaturals are, if…" She slumps back against her cushion. "Damn."

"Humans gonna human," says Dennis.

Shit, now they're on a path to running into heavily armed succubus-enslavers. "No, god damn it," you say, "that's not it either, that asshole didn't even know about the supernatural, he was a rapist and…" You thunk your head back against the wall behind it. The thought has occurred to you that if you say it was the Mall Rapist who pointed a gun at you, that's too much information about yourself. It's not like they release the names of rape victims to the newspapers, you don't think. But if anyone here works for T. C. Coil, they probably have connections within the police department.

"And some supernatural entities are a little too sexy," Lavelle says. "I'm sorry. You don't have to say whether I'm right."

An important thought occurs to you. Your unmodified ERO stat is at 31 right now, and if you want to stay at 31 for longer than another hour---"Uh, I should also mention that Starry's being pretty blatant for a supernatural," you say. "Not everyone gets their stuff edited into the Mythology Wiki. If it's not Starry, it might be a while before you run into anything more magical than extra-sexy people with one weird talent they got from a succubus great-great-great-grandmother they don't know about."

"Fae can interbreed with humans?" says Dennis. "I did not think genetics worked like that."

You struggle to come up with an excuse for this, before you realize you don't have to. "Don't know," you say, and shrug. "That's just the way it is."

Velma has her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open, looking more shocked than Dennis did. "Finding out I live in a world with fantasy genetics is pretty high on the list of things that would make me give up and conclude we're in a simulation," says Velma. "And I don't even believe in those."

"I can imagine some ways that might work," says Lavelle.

"Really," says Velma.

Lavelle nods. "Yeah, my brain is already sketching out this whole theory about supernatural beings that developed meta-sexual reproduction with other species, in the same way and for the same reason that sexual reproduction developed within a species on Earth. Like, even if you only pass on half your genes in the short term, in the long run the successful lines of ancestry are the lineages that combined a lot of good mutations. It could be the same way within the larger picture that includes wherever succubi come from. The succubi are descended from the most successful lineages in the larger cosmos, and the most successful lineages in the cosmos are the ones that picked up lots of good traits by metasexually reproducing with other species---" Lavelle exhales and looks up at the ceiling. "Is what I'd like to say. It would explain why the fairy looked like a sexy human female for a reason that isn't the writers grubbing for higher viewership on our TV show. But my mind just keeps repeating, 'What about the superintelligences? Where are the superintelligences?'"

"Well maybe," Velma says, "that just goes to show there is in fact no such thing as---you know, we shouldn't be debating this, we should just be listening to Illyria."

"I'm not sure how much I should say," you say. You really, really aren't. "Maybe just one more question each, if there's something you really need an answer to."

"Yeah," says Cordy, the black-haired girl now wearing her serious look again. "I'm sorry to bother you, but this is really on the short list. How do we avoid running into the Censors? Who keeps the truth out of the newspapers, and how do we not end up dead or mindwiped?"

You definitely don't want to answer any Censors into existence, especially considering your own activities. "There---there don't need to be any," you say. You look at them solemnly while desperately hoping that what you're saying is true. "I mean, nobody's going to print the story about Starry being Yoal-yohuali. The reporter will just think you're crazy. Even if you post it to YouTube, it's one more special effects video. Humanity does most of the work of secret-keeping itself, just by laughing about how the truth sounds stupid."

"I'm…" Cordy says. "I'm not sure that makes sense? I don't see how that could be enough? I know our pictures of Starry won't be enough to convince any skeptics, but if enough people had seen something, they wouldn't be skeptics any more."

"Societies go from not knowing things to knowing about them," says Lavelle. "They used to laugh about meteorites too. There has to be something more in play."

You remember the description of the Urban Legend perk. You doubt you can talk yourself into a free perk, but maybe there's a weaker version that could be manifested more widely. Like the unbreakable Fake ID versus the breakable Mild-Mannered Reporter.

"I mean," you say, "there is a magical effect that helps the fae stay out of newspapers, but it doesn't work by erasing anyone's memories, it works by making people believe nobody else will believe them."

"God damn," says Dennis. Velma sits up straighter.

"That is fucking subtle," says Lavelle. "Even if six Nobel Laureates and the Pope all saw the same phenomenon together, they'd decide---no, they'd know nobody would listen."

Cordy nods, looking chagrined and respectful at the same time, like a mastermind who's just been outplayed by a better mastermind. "We just knew only other direct eyewitnesses would believe us. We knew there was no point in trying to share our story more widely, that even if the Men In Black didn't get us we'd just end up in a psychiatric hospital. I guess that's what real mind control feels like."

"It's probably not even wrong," says Lavelle. "I mean, I wouldn't have believed me. Which could make it easy for the magic to push that thought just a little further, making it a certainty."

"Wait," says Dennis. "Does that mean if we know about the effect, we can just take our story public and have that work? Because that sounds crazy even compared to all the other crazy stuff I've been hearing."

Lavelle, Velma, and Cordy all shake their heads.

"You can't unilaterally defy the skeptical equilibrium," says Lavelle. "Imagine a Nobel laureate getting up on stage and saying fairies are real. Normally you'd get a bit of a pause there, like with Linus Pauling and Vitamin C. Even the skeptics would feel unsure about whether the audience would back them if they started hurling rotten tomatoes at a Nobel laureate. But in this case the skeptics know the audience isn't going to believe in magic. They know the crowd has their back. So they start throwing tomatoes immediately. And anyone who does stop and wonder, doesn't say anything out loud, because they know their own friends will think they're nuts."

"And the spell also makes sure the witness knows that's exactly what's going to happen to them," says Velma. "So nobody tries going public in the first place. So there's no previous reports to back up the next eyewitness who runs into Yoal-yohuali."

"Yeah," says Lavelle. "And… we're not exactly Nobel laureates. Everyone really would think we're crazy. So long as the spell is in effect, everything it makes us believe is completely true. That's probably the key to how the magic works, even, it just helps people realize things that are true. Minimum force, maximum effect."

"I keep wondering if there's some way to convince somebody," says Cordy, looking down at the table and frowning. "Especially now that we know how the censorship works. It's just… the most reasonable person I know, if I could find some way to demonstrate magic in front of her, would very logically conclude that she'd gone crazy and check herself into a psychiatric hospital. It doesn't seem like a nice thing to do."

"We're probably unusual for not believing we're crazy," says Lavelle. "Considering what an extremely rational conclusion that is for anyone else to arrive at."

"Damn," says Velma. "Right. I should have thought of that. From a statistical perspective, the people in this room are experiencing a survivorship bias, and we can't assume our outcome is the average outcome. In other words, everyone here is somebody who didn't just check themselves into a psychiatric hospital."

"So to sum up," says Dennis, "if we don't want to cause a bunch of pointless trouble, we shouldn't try to tell anyone about the fae, unless they've already seen something and believed it on their own. Okay, that sounds like the correct answer."

"I was thinking that too," says Velma. "In almost those exact words, even."

"Same here," says Lavelle. "I'm a bit surprised at how much we're agreeing, actually. I guess that means… it's an overdetermined conclusion given the premises? Like the way that everyone who adds two and two gets four."

"Well," says Cordy, "I for one am glad this group can agree on something."

Everyone at the table except you nods.

Maybe you should've just gone with the Men In Black.

"That thoroughly answered my question," Cordy says. She looks around the table. "Who's next?"

"Um," says Dennis. He squirms in his position, shifting around inside his sports jacket, like he's adjusting to always being twisted around to look at you. "To be honest, I was wondering how much point there is to investigating this crap if we can't get famous for it and there aren't any buses full of kidnapped children to rescue. Some of us do have jobs."

"And somebody scheduled this meeting for three-thirty on a workday," says Velma.

"I'm sorry about that," says Lavelle. "We put flyers all over the place because that's what you do, but I think we still assumed in the back of our minds that anyone who actually showed up would also be in highschool. Too much Buffyverse thinking, I guess."

Dennis snorts, and then looks back at you. "So I'm sorry to be selfish here, but---if I go down this rabbit hole, is there any way for me to end up with my own superpowers? Doing jumps that defy gravity, enough dexterity to run a parkour course in high heels? I realize it's a selfish question, but it's---well, for me, that's what would make the game worth the candle."

You blink. That's an impressively smart question to ask that quickly, at least by your standards. "Yes," you say. "That's definitely possible. I can't say how right now, though."

Dennis nods to you. He's smiling about as widely as you've ever seen anyone smile. "I didn't think you'd hand me a potion right away."

Companion quest begun: Yeah, Fuck Humanity

For some people, being human is a badge of honor; for others, a fact they never question. For Alexander Robichaud, it's like being 120 pounds overweight. A practiced rejector of all things bullshit, he never thought until now that there might be a way out.

He is fascinated by your claim that non-humans like to have sex with humans, and plans to politely raise this subject as soon as he finds something to ask.

Um.

Then you give an internal shrug. If that's Dennis's thing, you're not going to argue.

"If we're allowed to ask selfish questions, I suppose I know mine," says Velma. "Is it---" She pauses, takes some breaths, unclenches her jaw, relaxes her face, starts again. "Is it possible to go back in time? Change the past?"

"I don't think that would be a good idea---" begins Lavelle. Then he shrinks back in his chair, as Velma turns a look on him that would slice him into seventeen pieces, if looks could trace the lines of death.

"Be. Quiet." Velma turns back to you. "Sorry," she says. "Is it possible?"

"I'mreallyreallysorrybutifyouchangethepastitchangesthepresentandthat'slikekillingeveryoneonEarthandreplacingthemwithdifferentpeople," Lavelle says.

"Kid's got a point," Dennis says. "This sounds like the start of a dark episode."

"I only need to change one day." Velma's expression hasn't altered. "It wasn't an important event, you've never heard about it, it didn't make any front pages, maybe the local anchor said twelve words on the news and then they forgot about it the next day. It won't change history." Her voice stays flat. "Sending back one piece of paper would be enough, or one thought. It was only a small mistake."

"Velmayouknowphysicsyouknowaboutchaoticsystems think about what you're saying."

Now Velma's jaw clenches, she looks like she's considering reaching into her purse, pulling out a gun and shooting Lavelle.

"Is there some other way you could fix the damage," says Lavelle. "Like if it was possible to cure spinal injuries, get somebody out of prison, or raise the dead, would that be enough?"

Velma slowly turns her head to look at Lavelle, and says, as if the words are being dragged out of her, "Good point." She turns back to you. "Time travel or resurrecting the dead. Is either one possible?"

A hush falls over the table.

You swallow hard.

You close your eyes and think some more.

The Time Control skill says the true past can't be altered, only records of it, but now that you think about, maybe that's just Time Control and not the whole Erogame? The Transsexual perk seemed to talk about moving sideways into a different history. But is that killing and replacing everyone like Lavelle is afraid of? Or just the universe looking in a different direction? You feel like there's a difference, but you don't know if you could explain the difference to Charles.

Alternatively, you do have the Erogame's word that resurrecting the dead is possible. But it's questionable whether Share The Fun would work on a srs bsns perk like True Love Conquers All.

Though now that you think about it... the Erogame doesn't say that it takes a big-deal perk to resurrect the dead. The perk text on True Love Conquers All didn't say anything about it being required to unlock a Raise Dead skill tree.

It's just that if you have the big-deal perk about never losing anyone you love for any reason, and a loved one happens to be dead, the Erogame automatically starts a particular game quest when you reach ERO 40.

Which, now that you think about it, whoa.

You invoke Slack or try to, open your eyes, and look at Velma again. Hopefully she hasn't been holding her breath for long. "I'm not sure what it would take," you tell her. "I know---I know resurrecting the dead is possible, I know it can happen. I don't want to get your hopes too high, but, but my guess is that it can be done? Especially if you truly loved whoever it was."

Velma closes her eyes. "I loved one of them," she says in a low voice. "That's more hope than I was expecting, though. Thank you. Thank you too, Lavelle, I---I might not have thought of that."

Companion quest begun: One Day

One day, Mori Wen made a mistake.

She forgot to set her watch for Daylight Savings Time.

When the day was over, she was still alive, though she didn't see much use in the fact. Her being alive didn't fix anything.

She didn't bother trying to build herself a new life. A new life happened to her anyway.

She moved on, because that's what human beings do. She learned to laugh again and smile. She attended to her needs and let other women seduce her into bed sometimes, though she told them never to kiss her.

Then, one day, she found hope, and she decided that moving on could go to hell.

Shit. You blink rapidly and hope the water in your eyes isn't visible.

There's another stretch of quiet around the table, broken by Lavelle's voice.

"Uh, actually," says Lavelle. "No Velma I don't mean there's another problem just the opposite. We all heard a piece of really, really piece of good news go past us just now. Though I should check---is there a time limit on resurrecting the dead?"

"Nope," you answer without thinking. Still, on second thought it also seems true. If the Erogame can reach back before Sunday afternoon to grab Dad, you expect it can go back whenever.

"Well, that's more or less the best news ever," says Lavelle. "If resurrection is possible in principle and can reach back over arbitrary time periods, that means everybody is coming back eventually. Once we get to the point of building an AI with vital spirit to execute one spell per microsecond. Or if superintelligence really is impossible and we end up going the Mars-colony route, civilization will eventually have the economic capacity to do a hundred billion major magical rituals. Like, well before the Dyson Sphere stage." Lavelle is grinning now, as broadly as Dennis did before. "So every single person who's ever died is coming back someday. Even if we can't do it right now, Velma, it's a matter of when, not if."

"I'm not sure---" you begin, and then fall silent, suddenly feeling nervous again, like all your hackles are rising back up. Illyria needs to hurry up and get used to these people so she can be less anxious all the time. Being Illyria isn't the most comfortable feeling in the world.

"Not sure of what?" says Lavelle, sounding challenging. He turns to shoot a glare at Velma, who's giving him another look, though one that's just exasperated instead of lethal. "I mean, uh, not to mansplain to Illyria, but I'm not sure how much to weigh all the things she knows that I don't know, versus my usually needing to explain Dyson Spheres to people."

"I'm not sure…" A chill runs through you, and it's getting stronger. "There's---there's a question of whether humanity's future can go like that?"

"Wait," says Lavelle. "Are you implying there's something that limits---oh god I should have thought of that. The Great Filter, it has something to do with magic, or the bigger picture that includes magic. Something that prevents a species from going outside its own star system."

You shake your head violently. You really shouldn't have said anything. You can't actually tell Lavelle about the Erogame, or that it has veto rights over everything. And you don't want to conjure up a lesser god by accident, like whatever filter-monster Lavelle is afraid of. "I think I've given you the wrong idea," you say.

Lavelle draws in a breath that hitches in the middle. "This is actually pretty important to me," he says. "If humanity doesn't have a galactic future, if on average nobody today can do more good than living their own life well---that's something that---it would change the way I look at stuff."

Living your own life well sounds like a pretty good idea to you anyway. "There's---" you say. You try to make Illyria's expression gentle. "There's things I can't answer right now."

"Not telling me there's nothing to worry about is kind of an answer," says Lavelle. He's not smiling any more. He looks like he might not be smiling for a while. "What about bringing back all the dead someday? Is that also off the table? Some special snowflakes get the revolving door to the afterlife, and for everyone else, dead is dead?"

You're about to tell him you don't know.

Then another set of chills go down your back.

You---think you've noticed a trend, by now.

The Erogame doesn't like it when you're nervous about quests.

The Erogame has ways of dealing with you when you start getting reluctant.

Nice ways.

Nice ways with no visible limit or sense of proportion whatsoever.

You don't think you could trick the Erogame into bribing you by pretending reluctance. You suspect that would not end well for you. But if you're not pretending, if you really are hesitant in a type of way that has nothing to do with expecting bribes... the galactic emperor doesn't seem to mind spending another penny's worth of his infinite power to keep the date running smoothly.

You were trying to shift the storyline lighter, to keep the Scoobies safe, so they wouldn't get killed. You were feeling nervous about going on future Erogame quests because you were thinking about innocent bystanders dying.

"I---I'm not sure if I---" you say to Lavelle. "But---but maybe I could---I'm going to step outside this room for a bit?" Your Illyria persona looks around the room anxiously, still shy around all these new people. "I'll be back in just a moment, promise, I'm not going to run away."

The others look worried, and it's obvious they don't totally believe you. But nobody rises to stop you, as you step out of your bench, open the room's door, and step into the darker basement corridor.

You close the door behind you, step to the side. You take out your phone, and click it on. Then you grimace at the clock display at upper right. You either need to put a piece of tape over there, or figure out some way to disable the clock that isn't keeping a finger over it all the time. It's a good thing you're already used to thumbing the keyboard one-handed.

It's taking you time to switch out of Illyria's nervous frame of mind, and into the frame of the mind of the Cindy who's about to start texting. Hazard of multiple lives, you guess. You make an effort to consciously remember the story of the person you're about to talk to, what's happening in another life that has nothing to do with Scoobies.

<< Hi, Mom! Got a second?​

It's not long before a message appears in reply.

> Hi, dear! How are you doing?​

<< Not bad, considering. I think I'm bruised a little on a mental level, mostly from the gun firing at me, but nothing got mentally broken. Pretty sure I'll be fine.​

<< Did police things go okay? It didn't take too long, did it?​

> The interview went by VERY QUICKLY.​

> It was unnerving. I'm not used to legal processes going that fast.​

<< I guess the plot would be boring if it was realistic about that.​

> Well, of course.​

> That's totally reasonable.​

> It's a wonder I didn't think of that myself, with how reasonable it is.​

> So what's up, honey? More mind-shatteringly good news?​

<< Maybe? I want you to try giving me a quest.​

> That's something I'm always happy to do, sweetie! <3 What deed shall I send you forth upon in my name today?​

Is that even grammatical? Never mind, not the most important thing right now.

<< I want you to try giving me a quest to bring back everybody who's ever died, not just Dad.​

<< Uh, obviously in good health and with their youth restored and stuff​

<< Not as zombies or anything​

<< Mom?​

Time stretches while you wait for the text back.

> fuck​

Time stretches again.

> fuck​

<< Mom, are you okay?​

> No, I dropped my phone and the case chipped.​

<< Oh gosh​

<< The screen didn't crack, did it?​

> I​

> I can't even​

> Yes dear the screen is fine​

<< Whew!​

> But my daughter is​

> I don't have words​

> I'm worried about her​

> I'd say "Sweetie, are you certain this is a good idea?" but I KNOW you don't know it is.​

> How is the economy going to handle billions of dead peasants with no modern job skills?​

<< Mom, I'm not going to run off and *do* the quest, I want to find out if it's *possible.*​

<< Charles would be rightly angry with me if I did it tomorrow.​

> You are in WAY OVER YOUR HEAD dear, and I am worried about that.​

> It is the type of thing a mother TENDS TO WORRY ABOUT.​

> WE ARE IN FURTHER OVER OUR HEADS THAN ANYBODY HAS EVER BEEN BEFORE IN ALL OF HISTORY​

You sigh to yourself within the dark hallway. Every time your Mom starts typing in capital letters, you can't help thinking she's over twice your age and shouldn't be doing that anymore.

<< Mom, I already made a cure for aging last night. We're not going to be in any *less* far over our heads depending on whether I know if it's possible to raise all the dead.​

<< Please just try giving me the quest?​

> FINE​

> GO RAISE ALL THE DEAD HONEY​

Quest: Hands Across Forever

Wielding or influencing whatever sources of power then exist, bring into being an operation that permits any person to be reunited with any other person they personally know well enough to miss---anyone they would feel sad about never seeing again, even if only a little. The closure of this operation applied recursively will be a set of people none of whom are mourning any other people.

Only begin this quest if your world's economy and society are sufficiently advanced to handle an abrupt population increase.

Your stats are too low for this quest. Minimum ERO: 95

Wow. That's… some pretty high minimum ERO, there. If you're remembering right, the only thing you've seen with a higher minimum ERO is Subspace Explorer at ERO 100.

<< I got a quest! But it requires ERO 95.​

> PLEASE DON'T RAISE YOUR ERO TO 95 HONEY.​

<< Mom! Calm down. I told you, I just wanted to know what it would take.​

<< I couldn't raise my ERO to 95 even if I wanted to. I won't have that many stat points for another five levels.​

<< Also the quest says Earth's economy and society need to be more advanced.​

<< I'm not sure if that means I have to upgrade Earth's economy first, or if we're supposed to hang around being sexy and immortal for a few centuries until it's time?​

<< I hope it's the second one to be honest. I'm not really into playing Civilization, even if it's Ero-Civilization.​

<< Mom are you okay?​

> I'M HAVING TROUBLE DEALING WITH THIS.​

> THIS IS NOT COVERED IN MOM SCHOOL.​

<< I'm sorry, Mom. I'll try not to drop any more good news on you for a while.​

> PLEASE don't get in any further over your head than you are already.​

> I mean that, dear. I really mean that.​

<< I understand, Mom.​

<< It's just super reassuring to know that even if I screw up, people can come back from the dead eventually.​

<< It means I don't have to be as scared about Erogame quests that look dangerous.​

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA​

<< Shit, I didn't mean that the way it sounded.​

> You'd better not have, Cinderella Sheen, and if I find out otherwise, I'll tell Charles to tie you up in a school gym and spank you into next week.​

This threat doesn't have precisely the impact on you that Mom might be hoping for.

Still, maybe you should stop digging yourself deeper.

<< I've got to go, Mom, there's some people waiting on an answer from me.​

> What? Who?​

<< Paranormal investigators.​

<< Wait forget I said that​

> WHAT​

<< It's okay, they don't know anything.​

<< Well one of them is a half-physicist or something, but two of them are in high school and none of them know anything about the supernatural.​

> NEITHER DO YOU HONEY​

<< Yeah but if I make something up it usually comes true.​

> WHAT​

<< It's fine, I just told them there are fairies and fairies are sexy.​

> WELL I'M SURE THAT'S NOT GOING TO AFFECT ANYTHING IMPORTANT​

> "FINE" IS EXACTLY THE WORD I'D USE TO DESCRIBE THIS SITUATION​

<< Mom I really should go we can talk about this later.​

> WAIT​

> DON'T MAKE UP ANYTHING ABOUT VAMPIRES I DON'T LIKE VAMPIRES​

<< Got it, Mom. No vampires. But I have to go now, bye!​

You quickly put away your cellphone to nowhere in particular. This doesn't stop you from feeling it vibrate, on no particular part of your anatomy, as Mom sends you more text messages you'll look at afterwards.

You open the door again and head back into the room, invoking Slack as you do.

It doesn't seem like much time has passed. The four Scoobies are sitting in the same positions at the table, the red-headed one-third-Asian boy, and the black-haired girl with the "I want justified true belief" Sculley T-Shirt, and the guy in the sports jacket, and the professional-looking lady with glasses, all staring at you.

It takes work not to grin relievedly in a way that's out of character for the skittish Illyria this early in her plotline. You're feeling tons less nervous about these four becoming paranormal investigators, now that you know any dramatic deaths plotted with exquisite literary beauty will not be taking place in a dead-is-dead story continuum.

You shut the door behind you and slide back into place, looking at Lavelle. "It, it," you say, you're not stuttering right, it's hard to recover Illyria's nervousness especially when you're feeling this relieved. "In principle---it's possible to resurrect everyone that anyone knows well enough to feel slightly sad about missing. And then you could resurrect all the people they'd be slightly sad about, and so on, until nobody is mourning anyone. But it'd take---a lot of magic. More magic than anyone has right now. It seems like the type of thing where somebody will do it someday, but not anytime soon? Oh, uh, also there's definitely no such thing as vampires."

The red-haired boy looks back at you. "Well," Lavelle says, his voice higher in pitch, "although today has had its little ups and downs, it has been, on the whole, a day." He swallows. "Why is it limited to only people that somebody liked well enough to mourn? Is there any way to go beyond that? That's an awful lot of people to let drop into the void, and they wouldn't all be bad people either."

You do have a vague intuition for why bullshit metaphysics might work out that way, though you're not sure you can convey it. The bonds between people aren't just affection, they're… an enormous tangled mess? There was a broad range of possibilities for who Mom's rapist uncle could have been inside, broad enough to include at least one obsessed serial rapist who moved to Norville. The possibilities were that wide, from Mom's perspective, because she didn't like her uncle and didn't want to know him any better. But now that the two of you have observed this Joseph Greenwood, the possibilities from Mom's perspective for her father John have been narrowed down to John Greenwoods that remember a Joseph Greenwood matching the one you saw. You're not even sure how to think this, never mind explaining it. But it feels sensible that you couldn't stretch out your hand to a soul that you didn't know, and didn't know anybody else who knew and so on. "It's one thing to open up Schrodinger's box and see the cat being alive instead of dead," you say. "If nobody even knows that what's inside is supposed to be a cat, you'd just be yanking random stuff into existence."

"What?" says a voice from Velma's side of the table.

"I---I probably shouldn't have said anything," you say, performing Illyria's nervous looking-away.

"No---" says Velma. "I mean---I don't mean to contradict you, but---but I don't know whether you know enough physics to, to know that quantum physics really doesn't work like that---"

"It's not quantum physics," you say. "It's bullshit. Not quantum bullshit, different bullshit. But sort of the same signature style as quantum bullshit---" You pause. Then Illyria looks away nervously. "I, I shouldn't be talking about this. Everyone got their one question."

"But physics," Velma says, as if, if she pronounces that word with enough emphasis, you will be persuaded to explain everything to her.

"We don't even know at this point whether the universe runs on math," says Lavelle. "I---I didn't actually mean for that to be my question, but I could see how if it would be unfair if I tried to ask a whole 'nother one. How about this… Is casting that spell something I could do? The one to resurrect all the dead, I mean."

Cordy's head snaps around to look at him, while Dennis's jaw drops.

"Didn't she just say that it would take more power than anyone has?" says Velma.

"Yeah," says Lavelle. "I'm asking whether it's possible for me to become the most powerful mage who's ever lived, powerful enough to cast the mass resurrection spell. I'll understand if the answer is no because I don't have recent fae ancestry."

"Oh, no," you say immediately. "No, that's---that's definitely not how it works. There's all sorts of magic that anyone can learn. Most of the best magic is like that, even." Like hell are you going to have all the good stuff be a special privilege for special privileged people. "You'd have as much of a chance as anyone of doing it, maybe better."

"Why better?" Lavelle says.

"Uh---I shouldn't say." Because he's hanging out with the main character, obviously.

"Is it because I'm good at programming and might be able to write a magical operating system a la Wiz Zumwalt?" says Lavelle.

"No," you say, more forcefully than you should've. As much as it's not the fault of computer programmers that they get paid insane amounts of money, they do not get to be the super-wizards too. Somebody else should get a turn. "Magic doesn't work like that. You can't program it or make an operating system out of it. Also? There is nothing in magic that requires calculus. Knowing calculus doesn't help at all." Maybe you can do it now, but way too many other people can't.

"That sounds like a suspiciously specific denial," says Dennis from across the table.

"It is not a suspiciously specific denial," you say, and then stop to get yourself back under control.

Lavelle doesn't say anything for a few breaths. Then he shrugs. "Guess I might as well take my shot, then. There's got to be an iota combinator in there somewhere."

Companion quest begun: Like No One Ever Was

Su Ziquan has decided to systematically learn, do science to, and munchkin together every magic and system of power he can find, with the goal of becoming a greater archmage than there has ever been---all to perform the ultimate spell that will undo Death itself. He needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and maybe this will do.

He's also going to keep an eye out for any magic he can use to become a girl. He's tired of agonizing over whether his attention is unwelcome every time he tries to decide whether to flirt with someone.

Being an adorable bouncy catgirl would be even better, if he can figure out how to get away with that. A catgirl being the most powerful archmage would be correct in ways he doesn't think he can explain.

Somehow, looking at this text also conveys the knowledge that Su is his family name, and that his personal name Ziquan is pronounced sorta like "zzz-chuan."

Well, that's an almost-complete set you have. You shift your gaze to the last piece.

"Uh, Cordy," you say. For some reason it feels weird to call her by that name---maybe because you now know everyone's real name except hers. "You, uh, asked a sensible question on your turn, and it didn't say what you wanted out of---this---so, I'm asking?"

Cordy gives a wry shrug. "I'm guessing I'll already have my hands full keeping these three idiots out of trouble," she says.

"I beg your pardon, young lady," says Velma, raising her brows beneath her glasses.

Cordy turns to look Velma straight in the eyes. "Granted, miss wannabe time traveler," Cordy says. "'Cause I expect you're gonna need it."

"Oh, burn," says Dennis, and holds a fist across the table, which Cordy fist-bumps.

Companion quest begun: The Dreams of Her Own

Maggie Strigi has never discovered within herself the larger life goals that other people claim they have. It does make her happy when she can help others achieve their own dreams, though. She doesn't see why that can't be enough. Maybe it is.

She doesn't dislike sex. It seems like it should be a way of making people she likes happy. That's made her happy too, on the few occasions it's worked correctly. Annoyingly, the people she likes tend to not be sexually satisfied by one-sided sex. She's wondering if she should give up and infuse herself with fae blood or something, even though the thought of becoming more sexual feels unpleasant.

You have no idea how you're going to handle this.

"If it's okay to ask---" the black-haired girl says, and you turn your eyes away from the violet text and back to the person it's about. "I'm curious about whether you have your own dream? I'll totally understand if the answer is no-comment."

Yeah, you should have seen that question coming too.

The first phrase that crosses your mind is I'm already living my dream but that's not Illyria's answer. It's not completely true, either. Once you have something, it isn't a dream anymore, and it's not like you have nothing left to desire.

You could just shake your head to Cordy's question, but…

But you can't. You can't do that. You can't bring yourself to do that. You can't just shake your head. It would be horrible writing. Only the worst of writers would make Illyria shake her head at this point in the first episode. She has to say something meaningful, or at least cryptic…

You look down at your lap. Illyria can't look the others in the eyes when she says this.

Illyria says softly, "Friends."

There's an awkward silence around the table, of which you are inwardly proud. God damn, you nailed that line of dialogue.

And it's something you don't have yet, or certainly not as much as you want.

"So…" says Dennis. "Now what?"

There's another awkward silence.

"I---" you say. You're starting to worry about how much damage you could be doing to their protagonistiness by answering their questions instead of making them hunt down the answers themselves. "I shouldn't say any more. I've told you way too much already. There's reasons I can't---you need to do your own looking. It's---it's not a good idea for you to get into the habit of asking me things, and believing my answers. I don't know nearly as much as you probably think I do."

"Wait, was any of what you said untrue?" says Velma.

You shake your head. "Not so far as I know, I wasn't making up lies, it's just---it's complicated. One of the things I said could be false and I wouldn't know it. There's reasons you need to look yourself and not just ask me."

"Fair," says Dennis. "I mean, I don't understand at all. But, sounds fair anyway."

"First theory that came to my mind is that Illyria is from an alternate timeline, which I sure hope still exists, and she isn't certain of the differences," says Lavelle.

You shrug.

"So…" says Dennis. "Does that mean we're ready to adjourn? I'm not in a rush, I'm just wondering how we know when the meeting is over."

"First we need to exchange contact information," says Lavelle. "If you haven't already set up a disposable email address, email AmazingHair at Gmail once you have, and I'll send everyone the results. Uh, Illyria, do you do email?"

You nod.

"Don't say anything in email you don't want the government reading later," says Velma. "They can't read everything right away, but they do keep copies. Illyria, is there some faster way we can contact you in emergencies?"

You pause, then, feeling a bit ashamed, shake your head. You don't want to be on call constantly, not like that. You hope like hell they don't run into anything with teeth that only you could have defeated, but---you just don't want to live like that. You'd rather promise yourself that you'll resurrect them eventually if something goes wrong.

"I can get you a burner phone," says Velma.

"I'm not---I'm not always around," you say. You remember that you wanted to not deceive them much. "And to be honest, I don't want anyone relying on me like that. I'm sorry. But I can send an email to AmazingHair and---and possibly show up for some meetings. Sometimes."

"That reminds me, are we doing the hair thing?" says Dennis. "I mean, trying to track down the secrets of Yoal-yohuali's hair? Or is that just not worth it?"

You glance out of the corner of your eye at the Hunting Haircruxes quest before you can stop yourself. It probably just looks like Illyria is darting her eyes around nervously.

Accept? Y/N/Hair

You have to admit you're really, really curious about what happens if you tap the final option. Somehow it doesn't seem as scary now.

But this isn't your story, and it's not your decision.

"I mean---" you say to the others looking at you again. "I mean, that's up to you? Starry probably doesn't need stopping, but if you find some things she wants, she might be very, very grateful."

"How certain are you she doesn't need stopping?" says Velma.

You think about Charles's perspective on things. "Not that certain, I guess," you say. "Just---most people going about their business don't need stopping! That's true about fairies and succubi, too." Please.

"How much do you know about Yoal-yohuali, exactly?" says Lavelle. "Old acquaintances, or…"

You shake your head. "I never heard about the Yoal-yohuali myth before today," you say.

"You already knew that only her hair was made of ideas, though," says Lavelle.

"I saw her hair," you snap back at him, then look away. "Or I experienced it in a visual medium, anyway."

Cordy lays a quelling hand on Lavelle's jeans, over his thigh. "Nobody is questioning you," Cordy says in a calming voice. "Right, Lavelle?"

"Realistically, I'm sure we all kind of are ouch dammit Cordy I'm trying to be honest here." Lavelle looks around the table. "If nobody objects, I'm going to go through the Mythology Wiki more carefully and see if I can find any clues pointing at where to start looking for a… haircrux, I guess? If there's one in Norville and we find it first, we can decide then whether to destroy it or trade it to Yoal-yohuali."

"Fine by me," says Dennis, and the others also nod.

You nod too, after a second, and then stretch your arms in a way that causes your finger to pass through a particular section of hair. Air. Your finger passes through a particular section of air.

Quest begun: Hunting Haircruxes

Curiosity and courage deserve reward, even if you have not truly begun to understand that sometimes "Yes" or "No" are simply two sides of the same coin with no real difference between them, the true answer being only hair. As with many other rewards, this one is manifested in the revelation of something that was always true, but not yet known to you: You have accumulated sufficient potential to create another Conceptual Hairstyle when the time is right.

Sweet.

An inner voice immediately suggests going for a hairstyle that makes you Supergirl, and you tell it to quiet down. Hairstyling doesn't work like that, obviously. Having bangs that go over your eyes is one thing, being able to see through them perfectly because Erogame Logic is one thing, but "make the customer be Supergirl" is not something a hairstylist can do when somebody walks into their hair salon. You'll think about it before you try anything.

"Come to think, we forgot to ask about Charles---" begins Cordy.

"You really need to stop asking me things," you say. "For your own---I think I should be going now." You start to rise from the bench.

"Actually, you can't leave," says Lavelle, leading you to stop and look back at him. "A greater power binds you here! Under Robert's Rules of Order, nobody has moved to adjourn the ouch."

"I don't want to keep you anywhere you don't want to be," says Cordy. The girl nearly your age is giving you a serious look. "But I was thinking we should stick together after this and find something else to do this afternoon, some type of group-bonding exercise. Ordering food in here now that the restaurant is open, and trying some karaoke, maybe. Whatever we do this afternoon, you're welcome to come along and hang out, even if it's under a condition like nobody asking you any more questions? I just want to make sure you know you're invited."

"I second the sentiment in principle," says Velma. "Both sentiments. But I absolutely have to run in," she shakes her wrist and her watch lights up, "negative fourteen minutes, if my watch is right." She takes a phone out of her professional-suit-jacket pocket, checks the screen on that too, and puts it away.

"I'd honestly feel kind of weird about hanging out with high school kids if Velma's not there," says Dennis. "No offense, it's just---well, no offense. I was also thinking about looking into Starry's tracks at Purring Kittens, and the three of you look too young to get in, unless Illyria has fake ID powers."

"I'd better be gone for that one," says Velma. "And don't mention I was the one who told you about Princess. I mean, you don't know my name, but still. Oh, Yoal-yohuali announced herself as Princess when she auditioned, and that happened on the morning shift on Wednesday."

"Lemme note that down," says Dennis, drawing his own phone from his sports jacket.

You think quietly to yourself, as other social things go on happening around you. One upside of Illyria's nervousness is that it doesn't feel as awkward when she stays quiet, people already expect that of her.

It's probably going to be a couple of hours yet before Charles gets into town. You could hang out with Lavelle and Cordy, or follow Dennis to Purring Kittens, or… what could you do with Velma? Maybe try to follow her silently from the rooftops, for practice, just in case she's a spy? If you're caught you can always claim you were following her to protect her… no, actually you can just say that you were worried about her being a spy.

Whatever you do, there is a certain important fact that needs to be considered. You noticed yourself reacting eroishly when Mom threatened to have Charles spank you. Apparently the last thing you needed to be reassured about, to finish processing the morning's events, was that you're not going to be horrifically traumatized by somebody like Rose getting shot trying to help you and dying forever in your arms. Now that you've been promised that, your mind isn't stuck grinding against itself, and it's finished chewing and swallowing the major bites of what-happened. You're not sure you're describing it right, but that's how it feels. You don't think you're still sex-shy.

If you are in fact recovered, the Erogame won't be putting shenanigans on hold anymore. Hanging out with a Scooby or two might not stay platonic. Does Illyria want to sleep with the Scoobies yet, or ever? You doubt anyone's going to be surprised if Illyria shyly confesses that she derives power from sex. On the other hand, maybe that's not the best recipe for friendship? So far sex has seemed to be helpful for becoming friends with people, but you haven't tested it both ways. There's going to be hentai in this story, that's for sure, but it doesn't need to be intra-Scooby hentai.

You don't need to do anything at all with the Scoobies, if your brain decides it would rather have a change of pace. You're getting the impression that, as part of your behind-the-scenes privilege, other people's plotlines tend to match your convenience when you decide to revisit them. You could hang out with Cordy and Lavelle some other time, and they'll be available then too.

Now that you think about it… you wouldn't mind seeing Charles soonerish? The mixed excitement and worry is getting to you. It's not the type of thing you'd want to overuse, but could you develop a Timeskip skill? It's another curious question, and today is as good a time as any to try.

(Ranked vote from [1] to [7]. [1] is most preferred. "Meh" is neutral preference; anything below it is signaling dislike of that option and not just other options being better.)

[ ] Hang out with Lavelle and Cordy and try to keep it in the friendzone.
[ ] Hang out with Lavelle and Cordy and don't try to keep it in the friendzone.
[ ] Follow Starry's tracks to the Purring Kittens club with Dennis.
[ ] Turn into Starry and intercept Dennis near Purring Kittens.
[ ] Try to stealth-follow Velma wherever she's going, just because.
[ ] Go home and give Mom a reassuring hug, and either successfully develop a Timeskip ability or rest a bit. (Skips to Charles's arrival in town.)
[ ] Meh.

6.5.c [MS,SZ,EP]: Demonstration

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (33,900 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 230/440
SUB: 347/490

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 25
FUK: 19
PRV: 27
ERO: 31 (16)

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8934

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: Biologists #7, #14
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Busy Mode: Off

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 190 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 5684-5888]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
Follow Starry's tracks to the Purring Kittens club with Dennis.
Go home and give Mom a reassuring hug, and either successfully develop a Timeskip ability or rest a bit. (Skips to Charles's arrival in town.)
Hang out with Lavelle and Cordy and don't try to keep it in the friendzone.
Hang out with Lavelle and Cordy and try to keep it in the friendzone.
Meh.
Try to stealth-follow Velma wherever she's going, just because.
Turn into Starry and intercept Dennis near Purring Kittens.

Winner: Hang out with Lavelle and Cordy and don't try to keep it in the friendzone.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AramilOniasha
[1] CTCatapult
[1] Eler0
[1] GeeJo
[1] GGS109
[1] Gingganz
[1] Hyperion042
[1] Jirachi
[1] Lisa
[1] Mitale
[1] Proxima
[1] Questingdragon
[1] TheGrumpiest
[1] Valmit
[1] zachol
[2] AltTab
[2] AndaisQ
[2] Charl
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] Ephemeral
[2] napkintooth
[2] Skala
[2] Skelm
[2] Spectral Waltz
[2] Theli
[2] Wulfenbach
[2] Xenia
[3] abyssmal_kismet
[3] Greckle
[3] kabs
[3] Quentin
[3] RedKnite
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] Blackshard
[4] Guile
[4] Kappa
[4] Moriwen
[4] pepperjack
[4] The_Wanderer
[5] 514X0r
[5] january1may
[5] Paimon001
[6] Andelevion
[6] Homilion
[6] Kelardry
[7] askldjflkajskje
[7] BuryBone
[7] DarthSquidious
[7] Derpmind
[7] SoulofaGremlin
[7] Theminimanx
[7] wasprider

First Runner Up: Turn into Starry and intercept Dennis near Purring Kittens.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] 514X0r
[1] AndaisQ
[1] Blackshard
[1] BuryBone
[1] Charl
[1] Derpmind
[1] Ephemeral
[1] Greckle
[1] january1may
[1] kabs
[1] napkintooth
[1] RedKnite
[1] SoulofaGremlin
[1] Spectral Waltz
[1] wasprider
[2] abyssmal_kismet
[2] GeeJo
[2] Gingganz
[2] Guile
[2] Paimon001
[2] Theminimanx
[3] Eler0
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] GGS109
[3] Jirachi
[3] Lisa
[3] Moriwen
[3] Questingdragon
[3] Skala
[3] TheGrumpiest
[3] Theli
[3] Wulfenbach
[3] zachol
[4] Quentin
[4] Skelm
[4] Xenia
[5] Andelevion
[5] Homilion
[6] AltTab
[6] AramilOniasha
[6] DarthSquidious
[6] Hyperion042
[6] Kappa
[6] Mitale
[6] Proxima
[6] Valmit
[7] Aoinfinity
[7] askldjflkajskje
[7] CTCatapult
[7] Kelardry
[7] pepperjack
[7] The_Wanderer

Second Runner Up: Hang out with Lavelle and Cordy and try to keep it in the friendzone.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Andelevion
[1] DarthSquidious
[1] Guile
[1] Kappa
[1] Kelardry
[1] Skelm
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] BuryBone
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Derpmind
[2] Eler0
[2] january1may
[2] Lisa
[2] Questingdragon
[2] RedKnite
[2] The_Wanderer
[2] TheGrumpiest
[2] wasprider
[2] zachol
[3] AltTab
[3] Blackshard
[3] Ephemeral
[3] Gingganz
[3] Homilion
[3] pepperjack
[3] Spectral Waltz
[3] Theminimanx
[3] Valmit
[4] Charl
[4] GGS109
[4] Greckle
[4] Paimon001
[4] Skala
[4] Wulfenbach
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] GeeJo
[5] Hyperion042
[5] kabs
[5] Mitale
[5] napkintooth
[5] Proxima
[5] Theli
[6] 514X0r
[6] AndaisQ
[6] Jirachi
[6] Quentin
[6] SoulofaGremlin
[7] AramilOniasha
[7] askldjflkajskje
[7] Moriwen
[7] Xenia
[-] abyssmal_kismet

Third Runner Up: Follow Starry's tracks to the Purring Kittens club with Dennis.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Elitist Oars
[1] Skala
[1] Wulfenbach
[2] Andelevion
[2] Blackshard
[2] DarthSquidious
[2] GGS109
[2] Greckle
[2] Homilion
[2] Jirachi
[2] Kelardry
[2] pepperjack
[2] Quentin
[2] SoulofaGremlin
[3] AndaisQ
[3] CTCatapult
[3] Derpmind
[3] GeeJo
[3] Paimon001
[3] wasprider
[4] 514X0r
[4] AramilOniasha
[4] Eler0
[4] Gingganz
[4] january1may
[4] Mitale
[4] napkintooth
[4] Questingdragon
[4] TheGrumpiest
[4] Theminimanx
[4] zachol
[5] abyssmal_kismet
[5] BuryBone
[5] Charl
[5] Ephemeral
[5] RedKnite
[5] Skelm
[5] Spectral Waltz
[5] The_Wanderer
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] Guile
[6] kabs
[6] Lisa
[6] Moriwen
[6] Theli
[6] Xenia
[7] AltTab
[7] askldjflkajskje
[7] Hyperion042
[7] Kappa
[7] Proxima
[7] Valmit

Honorable Mention: Try to stealth-follow Velma wherever she's going, just because.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] abyssmal_kismet
[1] Moriwen
[1] Paimon001
[1] pepperjack
[1] Quentin
[1] Theli
[2] 514X0r
[2] AramilOniasha
[2] Hyperion042
[2] kabs
[2] Kappa
[2] Proxima
[2] Valmit
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] Charl
[3] Guile
[3] january1may
[3] Skelm
[3] SoulofaGremlin
[3] The_Wanderer
[3] Xenia
[4] AndaisQ
[4] CTCatapult
[4] Ephemeral
[4] GeeJo
[4] Jirachi
[4] Kelardry
[4] Lisa
[4] RedKnite
[4] Spectral Waltz
[5] AltTab
[5] Blackshard
[5] DarthSquidious
[5] Eler0
[5] Skala
[5] TheGrumpiest
[5] Theminimanx
[5] Wulfenbach
[6] BuryBone
[6] Derpmind
[6] Gingganz
[6] Questingdragon
[6] wasprider
[6] zachol
[7] Andelevion
[7] askldjflkajskje
[7] Elitist Oars
[7] GGS109
[7] Greckle
[7] Homilion
[7] Mitale
[7] napkintooth

Honorable Mention: Go home and give Mom a reassuring hug, and either successfully develop a Timeskip ability or rest a bit. (Skips to Charles's arrival in town.)

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AltTab
[1] Aoinfinity
[1] askldjflkajskje
[1] Homilion
[1] The_Wanderer
[1] Theminimanx
[1] Xenia
[2] Mitale
[2] Moriwen
[3] 514X0r
[3] Andelevion
[3] AramilOniasha
[3] BuryBone
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] Hyperion042
[3] Kappa
[3] Kelardry
[3] napkintooth
[3] Proxima
[4] Derpmind
[4] SoulofaGremlin
[4] Theli
[4] Valmit
[4] wasprider
[5] CTCatapult
[5] GGS109
[5] Guile
[5] pepperjack
[5] Questingdragon
[6] Blackshard
[6] Charl
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] GeeJo
[6] Greckle
[6] Paimon001
[6] RedKnite
[6] Skala
[6] Skelm
[6] Spectral Waltz
[6] TheGrumpiest
[7] abyssmal_kismet
[7] AndaisQ
[7] Eler0
[7] Ephemeral
[7] Gingganz
[7] january1may
[7] Jirachi
[7] kabs
[7] Lisa
[7] Quentin
[7] Wulfenbach
[7] zachol

Honorable Mention: Meh.

Spoiler: Voters

[3] Mitale
[4] AltTab
[4] Andelevion
[4] askldjflkajskje
[4] BuryBone
[4] DarthSquidious
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] Homilion
[4] Hyperion042
[4] kabs
[4] Proxima
[5] AndaisQ
[5] Aoinfinity
[5] AramilOniasha
[5] Derpmind
[5] Gingganz
[5] Greckle
[5] Jirachi
[5] Kappa
[5] Kelardry
[5] Lisa
[5] Moriwen
[5] Quentin
[5] SoulofaGremlin
[5] Valmit
[5] wasprider
[5] Xenia
[5] zachol
[6] abyssmal_kismet
[6] CTCatapult
[6] Eler0
[6] Ephemeral
[6] GGS109
[6] january1may
[6] napkintooth
[6] pepperjack
[6] The_Wanderer
[6] Theminimanx
[6] Wulfenbach
[7] Blackshard
[7] Charl
[7] GeeJo
[7] Guile
[7] Paimon001
[7] Questingdragon
[7] Skala
[7] Skelm
[7] Spectral Waltz
[7] TheGrumpiest
[7] Theli
[-] 514X0r
[-] RedKnite

Total No. of Voters: 52

-[X] Starry's emotionally exhausted, so she's gonna go home and take a nice little nap. She dreams about Candles stretching to infinity.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

askldjflkajskje

Total No. of Voters: 1

Maggie Strigi, who was making a conscious effort to think of herself as Cordy so she wouldn't screw up in a moment of distraction, observed as Illyria sat quietly by herself. Was Illyria relieved about not being questioned anymore? Wistful about the easy way that Dennis and Ziquan Lavelle were trading insults about what a terrible terrible name "Amazing Hair Appreciation Club" was? Resentful that she wasn't participating?

Velma had rushed out already, but Dennis didn't seem to be in a hurry. Neither did Illyria. The mystery girl waited, watching the others present without speaking. Like she hadn't made any friends in this dimension yet, and had nowhere else to be.

Yes, Maggie Cordy was also watching without speaking, but that was totally different.

"Okay, you two can shut up now," Cordy said out loud, breaking the absence of intelligent conversation that was another form of silence. "You literally can't win this argument now that Velma's left, because Velma gets to be in the vote. We can decide what to name ourselves next time."

The older man in the sports jacket turned his head, as though to retort angrily at this. Then he didn't say anything, maybe because he'd realized that there was no possible rejoinder to the crushing logic which Maggie Cordy, his sarcastic fellow Scooby, had deployed.

"Yeah, fair," Dennis said after a second. "I guess I'll head out. My plan to get the info out of Purring Kittens is gonna take an hour of setup time, and I want to get there before the evening rush. At least I already know where I can find an embossed card printer and a used wallet."

"I'd like to note," said Ziquan Lavelle, "just in case anyone was under the impression we all missed it, that Velma goes to strip clubs. This makes her either a wealthy lesbian," Lavelle blocked a halfhearted chastisement strike, "or Velma has a boyfriend she didn't mention and an open-minded relationship. Or Velma had some other reason for being at Purring Kittens the same time Yoal-yohuali got there."

Dennis paused with his hand on the door. "You think it's still worth worrying she's a spy?"

Ziquan Lavelle gave one of his patented artful shrugs, the one with a wavelike shoulder movement. "It wouldn't have been polite to say it with her here," said Lavelle. "But if you ask about the probability of normal people screwing up in a way that gets multiple people killed, versus somebody in a military organization doing the same… it's one more piece of evidence."

"Fair," said Dennis. "No, wait. Bullshit. If Velma knew about magic already, she wouldn't have been shocked enough to bring up time travel and give herself away."

Ziquan Lavelle frowned. "True," he said. "Just, I don't know, I have this little tally in my head where I count up the clues and try to figure out what's going to be revealed in future episodes. Most women in their late twenties haven't made mistakes that get multiple people killed. Most people who go to strip clubs on the morning shift aren't women either. I mean, I'm sure plenty of women do, but… it's an extra reason to wonder if Velma had some other reason for being there?"

"Okay," Dennis said. "I'll keep an eye out."

Illyria had lost some of her distant look while that part of the conversation was happening, and her head tracked to watch Dennis go.

Then Illyria looked back at her and Lavelle. "I'll go," Illyria said abruptly.

"No, really, you can stay---" Lavelle began, before he halted to deal with an incoming elbow-rib chastisement.

Maggie Cordy hadn't taken her eyes off Illyria, dealing the correction without conscious thought. Cordy raised her eyebrows questioningly, not daring to say it.

"I mean," the mystery girl said, "I'll go with you. On a group bonding thing."

"Really?" said Lavelle. "Ow."

(Among his many other deficient qualities, Ziquan had no grasp of how to navigate conversations so as not to stab his own goals in the leg.)

"I'm sure he meant to say," Cordy said, "that he was glad to hear you say that." Cordy smiled at Illyria, hoping it looked genuine. It was genuine. There was just a lot of apprehension mixed in that she hoped wasn't showing. "Lavelle is glad you're coming, for what it's worth, he just doesn't know how to say so."

Illyria smiled back uncertainly. "Ah…" she said. "I'm not sure how to say it either, but---having friends sounds nice. If they're friends who don't mind later that I was keeping very big secrets and that I'm maybe not completely who I appear to be and---that type of thing. A lot of it."

"No problem!" said Lavelle. "I don't mind what type of half-demon or lost princess you are, or how many ancient evils you've got sealed inside you. Just so long as you're good-aligned or at least a friendly neutral."

Somehow Maggie got the impression that Ziquan wished more of his friends had Trigon hiding inside them.

As for her---Maggie had learned to take people seriously when they warned you about themselves. Sure, there was a class of worse people who wouldn't warn you at all. But the people who did warn you usually meant it.

So Cordy just nodded to her fellow Scooby. "I guess we'll see," she said. "It doesn't sound like a deal-breaker to me, but I don't know what you're hiding."

"Oh, uh," said Illyria. "Whatever we're doing, uh, I'd prefer it not involve eating. No restaurants, no cotton candy. Is that okay?"

Cordy and Lavelle looked at each other, not needing any words to exchange their common thought about fae, old myths, and neither of them accepting gifts of food from strangers ever again. "Sure," Cordy said out loud, as Lavelle nodded.

"I'm---I'm also going to try relaxing more around you," Illyria said. "If that's all right. I---we met in a situation that made me very nervous and I don't want to be all jumpy every time I'm around you. Is that okay?"

"No," said Lavelle. "Ow. Ah, warning for future occasions, I like to answer rhetorical questions incorrectly."

"Uh, do you have an idea for where we can go?" said Illyria, now addressing Cordy and ignoring Lavelle, as was often wise.

With restaurants and coffee shops prohibited, Maggie Cordy mentally ran through a list of possibilities that included window shopping, tea-tasting---no, that might count as food. Board games? Her taste in those tended picky, and they couldn't go to her house without revealing her identity. Three people didn't seem like enough for karaoke, especially considering that Lavelle couldn't sing but thought he could.

Hang around in a furniture store trying comfy chairs until they got kicked out?

There wasn't a lot to do in Norville.

"Would the Lightning Arcade be okay?" Cordy said. "I don't mean investigating Yoal-yohuali's visit there. I mean, go there to arcade."

Illyria seemed to think about this, and then nodded. "Fair warning," the mystery girl said, looking very grave and serious. "I don't see why Starry would go back to the Lightning Arcade, but if I sense that she's approaching, I'm disappearing before she shows up. I mean, I'll warn you first if I can, but then I'm running fast."

"Wait, is Starry dangerous?" Cordy said. She still had trouble believing the reassurances from earlier. "Should we be running too?"

"No! Powerful fae are powerful people. A guy on the street you see with huge muscles isn't about to come over and cream you, right, if you don't go up and punch him? You'll be fine. But Starry can't see me with you. Not until---it can't happen for a while." Illyria looked around uncertainly. "Should we head out?"

"We can't actually get off this bench until you get off first," said Lavelle. Cordy didn't poke him for it, because he was right.

The grey misty clouds over Norville had temporarily stopped their drizzling when the three of them lit out from Karaoke Komplex, as if in polite respect of their group-bonding exercise. Maggie Cordy slid her folding umbrella back into her purse, from where she'd been about to offer to share it with Illyria, if Illyria didn't have anti-rain magic. Had Illyria's glasses been rain-spotted before, when she'd first entered the karaoke room? Cordy couldn't remember.

Cordy set out walking, taking the lead as she often did. The other two followed at her side a quarter-pace behind, as people often did upon seeing somebody who seemed confident of where she was going.

She took the opportunity to look over Illyria again, once the girl was walking instead of sitting or standing. She thought again that Illyria didn't look homeless. That smooth, untangled, waist-length hair belonged to a girl who had access to showers and conditioner… or, Cordy supposed, to a girl with enough fae blood that she always looked pretty.

A downward glance reminded Cordy that Illyria was wearing heels, in sensible dark gray that went well with her sober outfit, but still three inches off the ground. Was it okay to ask Illyria to walk to the Lightning Arcade in those heels? But Illyria's walk seemed fluid, like the heels were to her as running shoes. She stepped lightly in them, her feet fell silent on the sidewalk. Maybe Illyria had some of the fae dexterity bonus that Dennis had attributed to Yoal-yohuali. Or maybe she'd just worn heels a lot.

Cordy really wished she knew where Illyria stood on the scale from "scared normal girl who found out about magic but can only use a little" to "half-blood princess of the fae." Illyria had said her mother's name was Winifred. That still left open the possibility her father's name was Oberon.

"Norville's sort of dead at this time of day," said Lavelle, as they passed closed restaurants still preparing to open for dinner. "Or this time of year. Or anytime, really. I'd offer a tour, if there was anything to tour? I don't know how long you've been here or how much you know about the place."

(Maggie wanted to snap at him to stop prying so obviously, but preventing Ziquan from being curious out loud would have taken more magic than anyone in the world currently had.)

"I'm not sure anyone really knows this place," Illyria said softly. "Not anymore." She glanced at Lavelle and Cordy. "So, um, how do people go about starting friendships? Uh---I know it's not something that has a canned answer. You might still know better than I do. I don't have a lot of practice."

It was a sad question, and a very deep and intelligent and difficult one. Cordy thus failed to reply fast enough to pre-empt Lavelle, who always had an answer for everything.

"I once read that people become friends by sharing secrets with each other," Lavelle said thoughtfully.

"Lavelle!" Cordy said in genuine shock. She'd almost used his real name.

"What?" said Lavelle. "Oh god wait I'm sorry Illyria I didn't mean that as---I wasn't trying to pump you for information, really. I'd have answered anyone else who asked that question the same way. I did read that somewhere. I can show you the fanfic if you like."

"Don't take him up on that," said Cordy.

Thankfully, Illyria seemed more amused than annoyed. "A secret-trading game, hm?" she said, with a mysterious and sly smile that made Cordy wonder again how much fae the other girl had in her. "I already gave you all a lot of secrets, didn't I? Shouldn't I get a few free picks…" Then Illyria's face fell, as she remembered some unknown sad thought.

They walked on in silence until Lavelle the Oblivious said, "That's definitely fair, I'm just having a hard time thinking of any secrets I have worth trading. That time when I was too young to understand about morality or game theory and I stole fifty dollars? Doesn't seem like it counts."

"No," said Illyria. She had a guilty look, pretending to look away but visibly watching their reflections in the nearby glass panes of the stores. "Now that I think about it---and I'm trying to be a little more, uh, so I should probably tell you---I did get some of your secrets. I'm sorry, I---I learn things about people, sometimes. It's not like reading your mind. More like I get shown a page in your biography. And the secrets I gave you aren't---I'm not owed anything, if I'm being honest."

"I forgive you," said Lavelle. He suddenly looked a bit nervous. "At least I think I do. What'd you get on us, exactly?"

Illyria started to answer, then checked herself. "Do either of you want me to say---in front of the other one, I mean?"

Maggie traded glances with Ziquan. She couldn't think of much she'd want to hide from her longtime friend, but heavens knew there were some things. Like her exact thoughts and regrets about an excruciatingly awkward blowjob. But what were the odds that was on the top page of her magical biography? "I think I'll be fine," she said.

"Uh, Illyria," said Lavelle, "I don't think you should ask us that, I think you should just take us away individually and whisper to us." He thought another moment. "Then, when we tell the other what you told us, you don't say if one of us or both of us are lying? It's not a strong cryptographic protocol but it seems good enough."

Sometimes the boy's over-organized mind was useful, she admitted.

Cordy watched as Illyria hustled Lavelle a few steps forward, and leaned her head over his shoulder to whisper a few words in his ear.

(It made for a surprisingly intimate posture, and in the back of her mind Maggie wondered what emotions Ziquan was feeling about a girl leaning into him like that. Illyria wasn't holding back from pressing her breasts against his upper arm, though her chest looked thickly shielded by the cute-girl-business-suit. If it had been her, she would have felt cuddled. Ziquan's feelings on the matter were likely to be more complicated.)

Lavelle didn't scream or anything, just looked surprised.

Then it was Cordy's turn to be leaned over, with a cuddling sensation against her arm as expected, and have words whispered in her ear that---

"You don't dislike sex," murmured Illyria. "It seems like it should be a way to bring happiness to the people you like. But the type of person you're attracted to tends to not be satisfied with one-sided sex. You don't know what to do, and you were wondering if you could infuse yourself with fae blood or something to become more sexual, but that thought feels unpleasant---I'm sorry. Are you okay? That's---that's most of what I got about you, essentially. And that you try to help other people achieve their dreams and don't have your own, but you think that's enough and maybe it is---I'm so sorry I'll shut up now."

Maggie got her expression under control. There was something wounding about having it put that plainly, with no sugar added. And having her secrets taken from her, given to someone she hadn't chosen. And that this was on the top page of her biography, the most important fact about her in magic's eyes. "Is any fae that looks at me going to know that?" she said.

"I---" said Illyria. "Maybe, maybe not. They might not be able to read an asexual at all. Especially if you don't want to be read." Illyria hesitated. "Starry will know it when she sees you. She's not an ordinary fae."

Meaning your powers aren't ordinary either. Maggie didn't say that out loud, or anything about the implied duality and Yoal-yohuali needing to not see Illyria. She felt better, having been given that much in exchange, a secret for a secret. It showed that Illyria understood this wasn't trivial.

"Are you okay?" Ziquan called from where he was standing a polite distance away. He sounded alarmed, and Maggie wondered what her face looked like.

Maggie stepped away from Illyria and said, "She knows I'm asexual. And that I---with you---that we didn't work out, because you need your partner to enjoy it."

"Oh," said Ziquan. He drew closer, lowered his voice. "She knew I'm sick of being male, and that I'm planning to, uh, as soon as I can figure out the magic for it, become a girl."

"You're trans?" said Maggie, too shocked to be polite. Oh god had she been, this entire time, she couldn't be blamed for using the wrong pronouns he'd never said one word to her about this, but she'd been gendering him hard as a man and chastising him her for being so stereotypically male half the time---

"No," said Ziquan.

Maggie stared at him her him them and said, "But---"

"I'm a man inside," said Ziquan. "I'm just fed up with it. Not in a trans way, I'd just rather be a girl. Ideally a catgirl, though I'm not sure society is ready."

She went on staring at him.

"It's---there's a lot of reasons," said Ziquan.

"Catgirls get to have more sex," said Maggie. Then, aware that Ziquan wasn't that shallow, she added, "And more hugs."

"I---I won't deny that's a consideration," said Ziquan. "But the reason that was at the top of my book, the one Illyria got, is that girls don't have to wonder if it's okay to flirt with somebody. It's always okay when a girl flirts with somebody, male or female. If she's cute enough, anyway. Even when somebody turns her down they won't be hurt by her having made the offer. I---I know that cute girls have it hard in some ways, but---but I'd take it. I realize saying that isn't very---"

Maggie stepped forward and did the best tackle-glomp she could manage that didn't threaten to actually knock Ziquan over onto the wet sidewalk, arms all the way around and constricting hard. "Did you really," she said, feeling her heart in her throat, "did you really, actually think I wouldn't understand? Did you think I'd call you out and say how dare you think that the pain of feeling unwelcome could compare to the pain of the glass ceiling? Really? I totally get it. It's fine."

"It's---it's not that big a secret," said Ziquan. His body felt stiff in her arms. "I'm not trans. I was just planning to magic myself into a girl."

Maggie kept her arms around him even as the pressure was tiring her muscles and the situation was turning awkward. She didn't kiss him. She knew what Ziquan had wanted from her, once, knew that kisses didn't mean the same thing to him as to her. It wasn't nice to tease.

Eventually she let him go, repeated the words Cordy and Lavelle in her head a few times, and turned to look at Illyria, who'd drawn closer.

"I hope that was the right thing to do," said Illyria. "As opposed to it---breaking the plot or something. I don't know." She sounded more relaxed, now that she'd unburdened herself of her stolen secrets.

Cordy nodded. "It was," she said. "If you had to know, I'd definitely rather know that you knew. Is there a way to turn Lavelle into a girl?"

"Yes," Illyria said immediately. "A cute girl, too. I'm very certain that's a type of thing magic is good at. But---" she hesitated.

"But I'd have to leave my old life behind," said Lavelle. "Because nobody, not even my own parents, would believe that girl was me. If I tried to prove it, they might check themselves into psychiatric hospitals over having hallucinated a replacement for their missing son---"

"It does not work like that," said Illyria. Her face twisted. "It just---doesn't. And if it does, I'll fix it. Somehow." She sounded like she felt personally to blame for introducing Lavelle to magic, for offering him that choice with that price. "That's not what I was thinking. What if there's more than one way to fix the flirting thing? Would you want to stay a boy?"

"Fix it how?" said Lavelle.

The three of them were passing through a busier section of downtown Norville on the way to the Arcade, where "busier" was as relative as any other positive quality applied to Norville. Some stores here were open. It was possible to look around and see a handful of other people walking.

Illyria looked around, her gaze flickering from one nearby person to another. "I---I think I can do this," she said. "It's a type of magic I got---recently, but---but I'm pretty sure this should work. It's just, I'm worried that if I fail it'll be awful for you, and I don't want you taken completely by surprise if that happens? But this shouldn't fail." Illyria pointed briefly to ahead of them, on a street corner where an impressively layered girl a few years older than them was texting into her phone. "The girl wearing high-heeled boots over there. Go ask her for her phone number."

"I---what?" said Lavelle. His body flinched away from Illyria. "No! Mind-controlling people into giving me their phone numbers is not what I wanted!"

"It's not mind control," said Illyria, sounding slightly annoyed and also slightly guilty, if Cordy was reading this right. "It's probability control."

"Loading the dice so she decides to give me her number is mind control!" said Lavelle. "Also holy shit outcome control is a thing, how is that not the most broken power ever."

"I'm not changing her," Illyria said, sounding exasperated. "I'm not doing anything that affects her at all! We just improbably happen to be walking past somebody who will give you her phone number if you---god damn it why is everybody so nervous about mind control? Cordy, how about you ask her instead?"

"Wait," Cordy said, as she tried to wrap her mind around this. "Wait, wait---I would understand if you knew we were walking past somebody who'd give Lavelle her phone number. But how does this work without changing anything if she'd give me her phone number?"

"This doesn't work like you think it does," Illyria said, sounding sympathetic of their confusion and also exasperated with it. "Fine, I'll show you myself, even if it makes less of a point that way---" She hesitated. "Huh. I think I'd feel bad if I---if I asked her phone number without planning to do anything with her? But my schedule has been busy lately---uh. Uh. I think I can do more, with this much power, if I try. A little more improbability shouldn't bend anything that isn't already bent."

Cordy began to open her mouth to say wait but by that time Illyria had skipped ahead with surprising swiftness, especially for a girl wearing heels. She and Lavelle traded nervous looks, and half-ran after.

By the time they reached the same street corner as Illyria, the mystery girl was already smiling cheerfully at the other girl standing there, who looked to be in around her senior year of college. From up close, Cordy could see that the other girl was wearing a copper pendant of a bird, nestling in the layered valley between her breasts, and that she had tiny caged-bird earrings that also looked like copper.

"Hi!" said Illyria. "Can I have your phone number in case I want to have sex with you sometime?"

A half-choked sound came from Lavelle's throat.

The girl so addressed nearly dropped her phone, looking around frantically, including at her and Lavelle, before turning back to Illyria and saying "W-w-what? I mean, what did you say?"

"I asked for your phone number in case I want to have sex with you later," said Illyria. She glanced over at her and Lavelle, seeming to take note of the incredulous look on Lavelle's face, or the shocked look Cordy knew she must be showing herself. Illyria grinned slightly, and turned back to the girl. "Although I'm pretty busy so I can't promise you'll get my personal attention. But maybe sometime I'll want to call you over to give a blowjob to a boy I like. Or eat out some random girl I just met."

Maggie felt her own throat closing. She really didn't see how this could be anything but mind control.

"Why in God's name would you ask me that?" the girl said, looking more confused than offended. The girl glanced around again, but there wasn't anyone except the four of them near the street corner.

"I'm fee~li~ing lucky," said Illyria, half-singing the words. She was standing straighter now, and her voice was lower, throatier, more confident. "I'm not reading your mind or anything, promise! But I bet you have secret fantasies about this type of thing all the time and you've never done anything about it. That's how lucky I am!"

"I---I---" The girl looked around desperately again, then turned to Illyria and lowered her voice. "How in God's name could you tell?"

Maggie took a step backward, a sensation like being dipped in cold water going through her.

"Oh, something about the caged-bird earrings, I suppose," said Illyria, giving the other girl a conspiratorial smile. "The way you dress, the way you hold yourself. But sorry, I've got to go right now, so just give me your number? You can always not come over when you're called, if you decide then that you don't want this for real."

The girl hesitated.

Illyria smiled at her. "I'm not forcing you to do a~ny~thing," she said in a sing-song. "But this is your big chance! The awful slutty adventure you've always fantasized about has come for you. You can make the real decision later, but not if you don't give me your phone number now."

"I, but, I," the girl said.

And then the girl recited a phone number.

Illyria started to reach as though for a phone, and then stopped herself and said, "Can you take that down, Lavelle?"

Lavelle took out his phone, looking somewhat robotic about the motions, and entered the phone number.

"Thanks," Illyria said. She tapped her fingers on her hip, looking thoughtful. "Oh, and I might not use the number myself, I might sell it to somebody else who calls you over to fuck your mouth for fifteen minutes and then kick you out. They'll be safe, of course, but aside from that, anyone you see on the street could have bought you."

"Why would you say that?" the girl said in a high, desperate whisper.

"To give you more fantasies to masturbate to tonight," said Illyria. "Mm, when you do masturbate, you're not allowed to come. Not until you're called. That's the rule for at least… three days, I expect I'll get to you before the end of Monday, or someone will. If not, you're free to look for somebody else who'll decide when you're allowed to come. Whoever gets your number will call you Copper Swallow on the phone. Understand?"

The girl's face was now completely flushed and she looked like she might be having trouble breathing.

"Nod if you understand," Illyria said.

The girl nodded.

Illyria glanced over at where her and Ziquan were still standing with what Maggie assumed to be identical looks of shell-shock. "Well, we're all done here, so let's go!" Illyria said. She looked more cheerful now, like the inconceivable interaction had vitalized her.

"You don't even know my name!" the girl said as the three of them walked or stumbled onwards.

"You didn't tell me your name," Illyria said, loud enough to be heard. "Just your phone number." She was grinning, and not looking backwards. "Because you wanted it that way."

Maggie was expecting Illyria to slump over afterwards and maybe burst into tears in embarrassment, as whatever magical state she'd called onto herself dissipated, but Illyria's strides were still quick after half a block of awkward unspeaking. Like going into Succubus Mode had strengthened Illyria, or like magic's drug wasn't that quick to wear off.

Also, Maggie was sure the bird pendant had been there the first time Illyria had pointed out the girl to Lavelle. At that distance Maggie hadn't seen the tiny caged-bird earrings, but Maggie suspected a camera would have shown the earrings already there. If that had been a sign of the girl's submissiveness, it had been there before Illyria had…

The three of them had walked another half-block after that before Lavelle said, "I I I I don't see how that could possibly work. What happened just now?"

"It's bullshit," Illyria said solemnly. "Anytime you don't see how something magical could possibly work, the answer is that magic is bullshit."

"That's not an answer!" said Lavelle.

"I know," said Illyria. "But it is bullshit, sorry."

"That---" said Maggie. She was full of feelings, awe was in there, and horror, and a sense of offense she was having trouble naming. "Illyria, what if something goes wrong, there's so many things that could go wrong with what you just did---"

"But they won't," Illyria said, grinning again. "All the awful things you're nervous about will just happen to not happen."

She barely stopped herself from shuddering visibly as the ice water showered over her once more. "I'm sorry," Maggie said, searching frantically for the words that could express her wordless revulsion. "That's not what I should have said, what could go wrong isn't even the point, that woman wasn't," a doll for you to demonstrate magic on, a toy for you to amuse yourself. "I don't think it's okay to just do that to people you find on street corners? I mean, she's a human being and all that?"

Illyria gave her a look that seemed to say what would you understand. "Right, she's a real human being with her own story. Her story is that she was unhappy for a long time, and then one day she met a strange girl who broke her out of being frozen up about her desires, and she started a new life full of adventure and excitement. The real lucky person there wasn't me, it was her. If there's something I feel guilty about, it's that I can't give everyone that type of luck."

"Yet, growth mindset," Lavelle said automatically.

"Lavelle," Maggie said, and then stopped, because from the impressed look on Ziquan's face, Ziquan clearly thought that he'd witnessed an amazing noble deed. Maybe he was right. Maybe it all made sense if you weren't asexual. She wished so much that magic had been about anything other than this.

"The thing I don't understand is what was supposed to happen if I talked to her," said Lavelle.

Illyria shrugged. "You'd have been able to get her phone number because she found you cute, but she wouldn't have been a closeted submissive."

"I really really don't see how that could work!" said Lavelle.

"I know, right?"

Lavelle's voice rose. "Illyria, I'm serious, this is desperately important, I'm not the kind of protagonist who gets transported to another world and never asks why the elves speak English! What I saw requires either reality-editing that includes editing people, magic that changes the past, or---or full-scale everything being made out of dreams! There are ethical consequences to all of these things!"

A sour look crossed Illyria's face just then, as her eyes looked away as though to some imperceptible familiar hovering nearby. "I guess I was pushing it after all, when you put it that way. Look, I don't know what's true, but I'm pretty sure nothing you said is right. I mentioned it before, didn't I? The least dumb explanation I've heard so far is that it's like Schrodinger's Cat."

"What?" said Lavelle.

"I mean---it's not the real answer, I don't know the real answer, but maybe it's like Schrodinger's cat-in-a-box. I opened the girl-box and found a submissive inside. If you'd opened her instead, you'd have found somebody else. Or all the possible girls are real and we were standing next to all of them at once, until I narrowed my viewpoint on reality. Though that doesn't sound right to me either."

"That's---" said Lavelle. "That's incredible. God, I probably sound like every naive science nerd ever when they find out about magic for the first time, it's just, the implications! The implications imply things!"

Maggie's own mind was equally boggling. If the girl had already been wearing that pendant and earrings before Illyria had "observed" her, then---then what? The earrings would have meant something else if Lavelle had asked instead? Free will was an illusion? Magic was above free choice and subsumed it? It didn't matter when you opened the box, because whatever happened when you opened it had already happened earlier, and probably wasn't "happening" at all?

Maggie sometimes spent her precious free time on reading classic philosophy papers for fun unironically (hence her T-Shirt), and wow would David Lewis and Latour have gotten into an epic rap battle over this one.

"Can you erase your memories of things you've already seen and then observe them again in a way you like better?" Lavelle was saying, the words spilling out in the too-fast voice Ziquan used when overexcited. "What if Cordy knows how much money is in her bank account and I don't, can I make her a millionaire? Can I de-observe my own body and re-observe myself as a catgirl?"

"Possibly?" said Illyria. "I mean, the important question is, would you still want to---"

"Schrödinger's Catgirl! How can I possibly pass up the chance to become---oh my god that's why Schrödinger is a catboy in Hellsing how could I have not realized this before."

"Lavelle---" Cordy said.

"I'm sorry but I have to ask why this magic doesn't make any user all-powerful," Lavelle said. "I mean, couldn't you just---"

"Open a random closet door that I'd never looked inside before, and find fifty thousand dollars inside?" said Illyria. "Because there has to be some quantum world where somebody left a stack of money there? I tried that. I found a dime. It only works on sex things, basically."

"That is literally the most bizarre fact I have ever heard," said Lavelle. "Could you open a closet door and find a tied-up naked girl and fifty thousand dollars?"

Illyria smiled widely before she got her face under control. "I'm pretty sure that won't work," she said primly, "though I'm totally trying it. But the thing I wanted to ask was---"

"Financial domination is a thing, isn't it? Can you have Jeff Bezos turn out to be into findom? No, I'm thinking much too small-scale. What if somebody hypnotizes you to find it hot when a guy discovers how to cure cancer? I know it can't be that simple, I realize somebody would have done it already. But why isn't it possible?"

"Gosh," Illyria said reflectively. "I have absolutely no idea how I'm supposed to answer that one."

"If you don't know any reason it wouldn't work," said Lavelle, "can we try it and see exactly what---"

"Lavelle," said Cordy. "Illyria is trying to talk to you. She says she has an important question."

"I bet curing cancer is more important but I'll shut up now," said Lavelle.

"My question is," said Illyria, "would you still want to be a girl if anytime you wanted to flirt with somebody, they just happened to not be somebody who'd dislike that? I---I'm not sure that the magic I did is something everyone can learn. But there's probably some other way to do it, if you go looking? Get a fae to enchant you, do some weird ritual? I don't know for sure, but it seems like the type of thing magic should be good at."

"I---" said Lavelle. "I don't know. Let me think about it."

They walked on without talking for a time, because the screwed-up look of Lavelle's facial muscles and the occasional way they changed indicated that he was engaged in heavy thought.

"No," said Lavelle, when the top floor of the arcade's home shopping complex was in sight. "No. It's, it's not just the flirtation thing. It's everything! You know? Maybe this is TMI, but---can I TMI?"

"Sure," said Illyria. "At worst I'll end up slightly more perverted."

"I had a girlfriend a few months back who---we didn't go all the way, but there was handwork. I tried to look on Amazon for side-tie underwear for men. You know, so she could pull a knot and unravel it and move my underpants away when she wanted to reach in. Every single pair of side-tie underwear for men had the word 'sissy' in the title."

"I, uh, it sounds like that was awful and I'm not questioning that, I'm sure it is in fact awful, but what's the particular way that it's awful?" said Illyria.

"Male sexuality is shit. It's worthless. My junk is priced at zero dollars. Nobody wants what's in my pants. The only person who'd ever be eager for faster access through my underwear is a gay man. And even then, I'd have to present as feminine!" There was as much bitterness in Ziquan's voice as Maggie had ever heard there, like something was bursting out after years of festering. "Fuck this shit, I'm out. I'm going to be a hot girl and have people flirt with me."

"Oh," said Illyria.

"Oh," Illyria said again, more quietly this time.

God. Why had Ziquan never told her that he felt that way? No, it was obvious why Ziquan hadn't told her. There was literally nothing she could have done. No amount of physical willingness for special cuddles could make her want what was in Ziquan's pants.

It just---hurt. It hurt that things made more sense now. It hurt that she understood better why Ziquan would have been---injured, inside, how it would have salted his wounds---when the girl who had no eagerness at all towards the weird soft appendage inside his underpants, offered to blow him if that was something he needed. In the same way (she'd told Ziquan in those very words) that she'd have offered to bake a friend cheering-up cookies, except that a blowjob took less time.

It hurt that it had taken mind-reading to get that much out in the open between them.

Maggie didn't know what she was going to do. There wasn't anything wrong with her to fix, she liked her own nature fine as it was, she just didn't fit inside the world the way it was. It felt like she'd been handed a lousy position in the possible universes, but she didn't want to change her position, all of her friends were here. And while that was true she didn't see how bullshit magic could help her, unless bullshit magic could blow past modal realism and go right to 0=1.

"Um," Illyria said hesitantly. "I can't do this myself, but---if Starry were here---and she wanted to be nice to you---she could probably have you walk around the corner and get kidnapped by three lesbian cheerleaders who'd decided to try boycock for the first time. Literally kidnapped, if you're into being wanted so much they don't ask permission. I can only bend probability. Starry can break it."

"What does it mean to break probability---no, wait, I get it! God, I was there! Her hair blocked her ass as seen from every angle!" said Lavelle. "Holy shit. She can make observers in the same world compare notes and find inconsistent states? Really?"

"The point being," Illyria carried on determinedly, "you could maybe get enough of a twist in your, uh, I don't have words, that you'd happen to run into beautiful women who'd rip the pants right off you. I don't know whether or not this is really possible, but, uh, maybe Yoal-yohuali could do that if she liked you enough?"

"I---I'll think about it," said Lavelle. He was blushing, faintly but visibly. "The thought has a certain attraction, but---I mean---I shouldn't use up a haircrux I can trade to an ancient fae power if turning into a girl would be simpler, right? There's too many males in the world anyway because of China's one-child policy, and anyone who turns female is helping."

Illyria looked oddly determined. "Maybe I shouldn't interfere," she said. "I can't turn you into a girl with my own magic. And I think it's probably---better, for you---if you go looking yourself for the power you'll need. But it would be a little sad to turn into a girl, if what you truly wished was to be a boy in a world where more girls wanted into your pants. Especially when---"

"When what?" said Lavelle.

Illyria shook her head.

Maggie was trying to respect Illyria's reticence and not pry, but some of the sentences she didn't finish were worrying.

The doors of the Lightning Arcade loomed up before them.

"Oh, right," Illyria said as they approached. "I was planning to say this earlier. Way earlier. It was sort of why I started the conversation. Lavelle? I'm not making any promises about whether it works, but if you decide to flirt with me, I'm not going to feel hurt about that."

"Thanks," Lavelle said in a whisper.

Maggie waited enough time to be decent, and then said, "What about me?"

"Huh?" Illyria said, giving her a quizzical look.

"What sort of thoughts are you having about my own problem?"

"Um," said Illyria. "I---I've got absolutely no idea, actually? When I got glimpses at everyone's pages, I was looking at yours and thinking 'Gosh I have no clue what to do here.' Uh, sorry, if that was too blunt."

It was reassuring, and at the same time, sigh.

"I shouldn't be interfering anyway," Illyria said somberly. "I think Lavelle needs to find his own magic, once he knows what he wants. I only showed him what I did because, uh, I wanted to check Lavelle wouldn't be filled with regrets if, uh… if, I mean, just to make up a wacky example, if society's view of gender and sexuality changed somehow and there were suddenly tons of hot girls chasing nerds."

"Thanks for checking," Maggie said back, and meant it. She was feeling a bit better about Illyria now.

Lavelle looked too absorbed in his own thoughts to nod.

Still walking a quarter-step in the lead, where she always seemed to end up whenever people walked together, Maggie pushed open the door of the Lightning Arcade so she could hold it open for the others.

"Oh, right," said Illyria as they stepped in. "Lavelle, do you want to keep that girl's phone number to use yourself? You totally can if that's your thing."

Maggie really was not sure this was 100% ethical. But she wasn't sure it wasn't, and she'd had bad experiences before with trying to intervene. So she kept her peace.

Ero Achievement: Erin Penna will masturbate herself into an unreleased frenzy tonight, and one way or another, she won't be returning to her old life. +500XP.

Sorry about this, but demonstrating a portion of the Erogame's power to Maggie and Ziquan, in such a way as to reveal not only its physical but metaphysical strangeness, pretty much has to cause your ERO to go up by 1!

Spoiler: Author's note

Hate this chapter, posting it anyways.

6.5.d [MS,SZ]: Representation

Maggie stepped into the Lightning Arcade, casting her gaze around to take the huge building's temperature. As usual, a brief line of waiting couples were queued up in front of the antiquated DDR-knockoff machine in its place of honor, a raised platform in the exact center of the Arcade. The DDR machine was currently occupied by a pair of jumping and stomping college-age boys dressed in tuxedos, who looked for all the world like they'd just gotten married. Elsewhere, the arrays of arcade games and light-gun games seemed almost full, but not to the point where there was no room remaining. About standard for an afternoon, plus some extra for it being Friday. The three of them would have to clear out before evening, when the place became so crowded that everyone left.

Illyria had stopped dead in her tracks after her first few steps, looking in apparent shock at the busy vista before them.

"Not what you expected in a city this dead?" Lavelle said, with the fond expression he wore when he got to spring a surprise on somebody. "The Lightning Arcade is the strongest concentration of life energy in Norville, not counting a few spots around Norville U that don't accept people our age. Like somebody chopped out a chunk of Los Angeles and plopped it down here, except the prices are way lower. My theory of how they stay in business is that it's a money-laundering scheme."

"Is this---" Illyria stopped. "Is this also how this place looked when Starry was here on Monday? I mean, did anything change since then?"

"Not that I can think of," said Maggie. "Are you okay?" The mystery girl looked like she'd seen a ghost.

"I'm fine," Illyria muttured. The direction of her vision seemed to be the DDR machine in the middle of the room, and the couples waiting in front of it, standing patiently in line.

"The owner first met her husband dancing on that machine," said Lavelle. "So it always stays there no matter what other renovations they do." Distaste flashed across his expression. "There's a local myth that any couple that dances on it together will have a happy relationship, supported by exactly the type of anecdotes you'd expect from luck and the placebo effect. Like, a couple that cares enough to try the remedy has a long heartfelt talk afterwards, both of them expecting the relationship to get better, and what do you know, it does."

"You can't rule that out anymore," Maggie said, unable to stop an evil grin as she realized how many of Ziquan's usual lines of patter had been invalidated. "Maybe Meredith and Dave were totally right all along, and you were totally wrong all along, and this is in fact the magic DDR machine that saved their relationship when nothing else could."

Lavelle screwed up half of his face, pursing one side of his mouth. "I suppose I have to be ready to accept that," Lavelle said. "I mean, I can't say it's impossible anymore. But I'm not actually accepting it until somebody does a blinded study where we take couples who aren't expecting anything and assign half of them to dance on a different DDR machine, then follow up on relationship outcomes six months later. Giving up on physics is one thing, giving up on epistemology is another. The null hypothesis says that the only effect this DDR machine has is that people believe it has an effect."

"Is there ultimately a difference?" Maggie said, solely to annoy Lavelle.

"Yes," said Lavelle.

And then Maggie didn't say anything more, because the thought was occurring to her for the first time that maybe there wasn't a difference. Psychology was real. Magic was real. Arguing whether the DDR machine worked through magic or through psychology might not have any more point than arguing whether it ran on batteries or wall power.

"Uh, Illyria," Lavelle said, now sounding more nervous, "why are you staring at the DDR machine like that?"

Illyria seemed to come back to herself. "Oh," she said softly. "I---I was just thinking that it was---nice to hear about, a machine like that, and Meredith and Dave. Whether the DDR machine is really magic or not."

The three of them walked over to the entrance counter. Lavelle asked for three tokens loaded with $20 apiece on his card. This was followed by an awkward back-and-forth between Illyria and Lavelle, as Illyria tried to take a $20 bill out of her inside suit pocket to give to Lavelle, and Lavelle said it was okay really, and Illyria said she was worried he thought she was poorer than she was, and Lavelle asked her straight out how much money she had, and Maggie hit him, and Illyria hesitated and said she could always use more money but, and Lavelle said he was fine paying then, and Illyria said what if it turned out Lavelle had less money than her, and Lavelle offered to show Illyria his current account balance so Illyria could say if she had more or less than that, and Maggie hit him again, and she would have told both of them to get over themselves except she was having way too much fun watching this.

There was an impatient cough from behind the counter.

And so Lavelle ended up paying for Illyria's card. Illyria looked moved, as Lavelle offered the card, and she took it with their fingers touching. Like a boy spending money on her was a big deal? Illyria was pretty enough that she should have experienced that before, if she'd wanted to, and if she'd spent her last few years in the human realm.

"What do you want to do first?" Maggie said to their guest.

Illyria looked around at all the options and the bustle of the Lightning Arcade, the rows of video machines. She once again wore an uncertain, nervous, intimidated expression. "Uh…" Illyria said. "Which of these games would be best for becoming friends?"

That's not exactly how it works---

But before Maggie could explain that Illyria could pick out whatever looked like fun and the friendship would come along in due time, Lavelle had already started talking.

"I'd guess that one," Lavelle said. He pointed at a giant machine decorated with scantily clad and heavily armed females, a game machine that Maggie thought she remembered as having three sides with a video screen on each side. The letters on top proclaimed it to be ISEKAI: Refugees of the Great Ruination. "They just added that machine a couple weeks ago, so I haven't tried playing it yet, but it's three-player and I think it has a co-op story mode. That means the three of us could fight on the same side, which I'd predict would be good for forming camaraderie and strengthening friendship."

Illyria looked thankful for this firm, confident guidance.

Maggie sighed to herself, and trudged along after the other two. She might need to make sure Illyria didn't spend too much time around Ziquan, if Illyria habitually went around feeling lost and in need of answers that Ziquan would always provide.

On a nearer approach, Maggie observed the college-aged woman and two younger girls… two younger boys in drag, on alternative sides of the game. The boys looked to be about high-school-sophomore age, but going on the length of their miniskirts and the fact that Maggie didn't recognize them, they'd probably dropped out of high school to make their way in Norville by other means.

"Uh," Lavelle said. "It looks like there might be a wait, so I'm going to run off to a place I hopefully won't be visiting many more times. Save our place?"

Maggie blinked as she processed this, but by the time she'd realized what Lavelle meant, he'd already turned and run off towards the men's room.

She looked at Illyria.

Illyria looked back.

Maggie could see the awful awkward silence bearing down, or at least as much silence as there could be in a noisy arcade, so she said out loud, "I declare this isn't an awkward silence."

"I agree," Illyria said immediately. "Definitely not an awkward silence."

"Nope," Maggie said. "It's neither awkward nor silent."

"I completely concur," said Illyria.

There followed a lull in the conversation, which they'd both thankfully agreed was not any type of awkward silence.

Maggie cast her eyes over at the new game machine---she hadn't gotten around to looking at it, it had only arrived a couple of weeks ago, although the gameplay definitely looked interesting. So far as it looked, the players stood around the machine and made weird gestures at it, like wiggling two raised fingers with their thumb sticking out---that was what the older female player was doing now. Motion-sensing technology, or so Maggie assumed. Motion-sensing that actually worked? Maggie had tried to play a motion-sensing game on an Xbox once, ages ago, and it hadn't been fun then, but technology did march on. The woman and the two others were both gesturing more vigorously, and more precisely insofar as Maggie could judge it, than Maggie remembered a Kinect being able to deal with.

Even standing this close to the machine, she still couldn't see anything of what was on the screens. The screens looked like grey blanks with faint moving static laid over them, and the whole screen had a glossy rainbow tint, a holographic sheen. Maggie assumed it was some type of new 3D display, but from this angle she had no idea what was actually showing. The gleaming nullity gave a surreal appearance to the three players vigorously gesticulating at it, like they were frantically casting spells into an indifferent void.

Then Maggie thought she heard an orgasmic moan coming from the video machine, in between tiny screams, gunshots, and thuds. It should have sounded louder, as close as she was to the machine. The sound was barely audible over the surrounding Arcade-noise. But Maggie was pretty sure she'd heard it. What exactly was going on within those staticky-sheened screens… oh, well, she'd find out soon enough.

Maggie looked back at Illyria, who seemingly hadn't turned away from watching Maggie.

Okay, maybe this was getting awkward.

"Whatcha thinking about?" Maggie ventured. "If it's okay to ask."

"Um," Illyria said. "I was actually thinking about the page of your magical biography that said you hadn't found any dreams of your own and… I was thinking confused not-getting-it thoughts like 'But does that mean Cordy wouldn't want to be a billionaire or have superpowers?' I know that means I'm being silly."

Maggie blinked, as she tried to wrap her own mind around the implied way that Illyria looked at the world. "I mean… I wouldn't turn down a billion dollars, that sounds very pleasant and useful too… but I don't think that's the same as having a dream? I'd enjoy a billion dollars, but I don't need a billion dollars to live. I mean, that's not literally the thing, I need oxygen to live and that doesn't make oxygen my dream, but…" Maggie waved her hand vaguely. "Shouldn't you be asking somebody who does have a dream what the difference is?" It felt wounding to put it that way, but it was true.

"Huh," Illyria said. "So, um, what are you thinking about?"

The distant sound of a female's battle cry came from the video machine, followed by a series of three explosions, and then another orgasmic moan. Maybe the unviewable-from-outside screens were a deliberate privacy feature.

"Uh…" Maggie said. Maggie considered whether she wanted to say this, and decided that she did. "I'm starting to worry about how much sexuality is intrinsic to magic. You said the fae were, how did you put it, extra-friendly. Yoal-yohuali, whatever she was really doing here, I think she made almost everyone in the Arcade horny except for me. Your reality-choosing power only works on sex things. I'm starting to worry that," this was surprisingly hard to say. Maggie forced herself to take a breath, to calm down, before she continued. "I… feel left out sometimes, you know? Not that I feel like I'm missing anything I ought to have. Just there's all these times when society doesn't seem to have an option for… when it's just assumed that… and now it sounds like magic is assuming it too."

There was a cycle of kiyep!-ohh!-kiyep!-ohh! cries from the machine's direction. The sound of a female fighter in a virtual game launching an attack, the sound of a woman getting a surprising but welcome sexual touch.

Not that there was anything wrong with those sounds. Not that Maggie needed to cover her ears. Not that she wouldn't be able to enjoy playing the game. But in the same way that another woman might have been disturbed by the implied sexism in the absence of a symmetrical arcade machine making male sounds of pleasure, Maggie felt that the world was lacking in some larger counterbalance, some other game machine that needed to stand opposite all the machines with orgasmic moans of any flavor. Sure, there were some arcade games that weren't about sex, but that wasn't the same as society acknowledging her existence.

It had hurt less when it was other people doing that, and not the laws of magic. That felt like the world's heart, and not just its outer form, was rejecting her.

"I wish I could say something reassuring but I really can't," said Illyria. "I'm… I'm sorry. I hope you don't end up…"

"Left behind?" said Maggie. There was a bitter, hot sensation in the back of her throat. "I won't be. You read it in my magical biography, right? If it comes to that, I'll---I'll just do a ritual to stop being asexual. If that's what it takes to be part of the magic club, that's what I'll do. I'm not that stubborn." Ziquan wasn't the Only Person in her life, she had other friends, not to mention a family. But if Ziquan was about to go down a path she couldn't follow and leave her behind, she wouldn't deny that it would hurt. Being left out of magical superpowers on top of that, in a world that hadn't fit her anyways---it wasn't worth resisting fate that much.

Illyria looked down, like she couldn't meet Maggie's eyes anymore. She looked ashamed, as if somehow it was her fault. "You shouldn't have to do that. Not like that, not for that reason."

"Thanks," Maggie said. There were all kinds of things people shouldn't have to do. People usually ended up doing them anyways.

The conversation seemed to have died again. Maggie cleared her throat. "What are you thinking now?"

"Uh…" said Illyria. "More silly confused thoughts. Like, if there's something you'd even sacrifice your asexuality to get, doesn't that mean there's something you do want that much? Is that still not a dream?"

"There's things I don't want to lose, I guess," Maggie said. "Maybe that just means I already have everything I need, in the world the way it is. Was." She was aware even as she spoke the words that they were false. Illyria looked like she knew it too.

If she was afraid of losing Ziquan to an intrinsically sexual magical world… did that suggest Ziquan was her heart's desire? Maggie couldn't see it. Her trying to choose Ziquan in that way felt like an obvious disaster for both of them, not like a dream.

She did spend more time around Ziquan than any other boy she knew. She would have wanted Ziquan to follow her home occasionally and cuddle her to sleep now and then, if that wouldn't have made Ziquan sad about not getting to have sex with her. (Not to mention the act being tremendously misinterpreted by everyone else in her family.) It was something, and maybe not something devoid of romantic feelings either. But it wasn't her wanting to marry Ziquan and live happily ever after with him. If there was a dream hidden inside that, Maggie hadn't figured it out.

"I hope it works out for you," Illyria said quietly. "Even if I don't know how it could."

"I'm not doing that badly," said Maggie.

At the game machine, one of the assigned-males-at-birth-wearing-a-skirt started swearing, and the other dropped their head down, looking defeated. (Maggie wasn't sure of pronouns, it looked more like transsexual-drag than transgender-passing but it was easy to be mistaken about that type of thing.) The video screen was now readable, and it showed a flat graphic in an old-fashioned 8-bit style, a blue JOURNEY OVER text block. Along with two torn-clothed female fighters lying defeated on a cobblestone road surrounded by 2D animated trees waving their branches, and a third female figure standing triumphantly over them.

"Oooh, bad luck," the college-aged female player said in mock sadness. "Oh, wait, no, you two just suck. Now let's see about that," the woman glanced over in Maggie's direction, seeming to take note of her and Illyria's watching gazes, "forfeit…"

That couldn't be what it sounded like, could it?

It was probably exactly what it sounded like. It felt like there'd been even more sexuality appearing in Maggie's perceived universe, ever since she'd watched the flame-haired girl's exuberant dance on the Arcade's DDR machine. She wanted to ask Illyria if that was the truth, if just gazing upon Yoal-yohuali could do that to a person, if the effect was permanent. But Maggie was genuinely afraid to ask.

"Sweet timing," Lavelle said, as he strode over.

Had Illyria arranged the sweet timing, exercised more of her terrifying reality-rearranging power that casually, because to her it wasn't frightening but only a familiar convenience? Again Maggie felt afraid to ask.

The most disturbing part of magic existing was having no idea anymore what wasn't true.

The victorious woman led the two boy/girls out of the arcade, both of them trudging along defeatedly after her like pets dragged on an invisible leash.

She and Lavelle and Illyria took up positions around the three opened spots at the game machine, and Maggie focused her attention on the video screen, now showing what again seemed like a retro 8-bit illustration, blocky with visible pixels. ISEKAI: REFUGEES OF THE GREAT RUINATION, it said, and showed the cobblestone road amid a forest of trees with animated waving branches, now with no defeated warriors lying there.

Maggie tapped her payment token against the NFC receiver on the side of the console, pressed the Start button among the controls, selected CO-OP STORY as the mode. A grid of 8-bit character portraits appeared before her, a fighter selection screen.

There didn't seem to be any male fighters on offer, or any unattractive female fighters either.

Tapping around the joystick showed even the more clothed women taking seductive postures once their character was selected. One of the available fighters was Bouncy: The Energetic, a thoroughly-boobed catgirl in a bikini posing with a double-bladed axe larger than herself, leaning from the axe-shaft like a stripper's pole. Maggie suspected she could guess Ziquan's upcoming choice of character… actually, she would have guessed that before today. Maybe she'd known on some level already, deep down, what Ziquan had truly wanted from life.

"Holy shit!" Illyria exclaimed out loud from her part of the game machine. "Uh, excuse me. I just, uh, I totally found the right character to play. Yeah. That's all that happened just then."

"Don't forget to look through all the other characters, you might find one even better," Lavelle said cheerfully. Because Lavelle, that was why.

After Maggie had gone through options from Aero: The Gamer to Zero: The Masked, she went back all the way to the beginning, and reselected the very first character she'd seen. The female form onscreen wore an outfit that resembled a red-and-white miko outfit with detached sleeves, meaning her skirt went well below her knees and her top didn't expose anything more exciting than armpits. The fighter was also taking a non-seductive pose, glaring at the player as if to indicate she'd had enough of this nonsense.

The fighter's title happened to be Ace: The Nullifier. There was a certain pleasure in picking the character called Ace, in this company, exactly because in different company she might have felt more reluctant to do so.

Maggie tapped the Start button again. The video screen blinked, cleared, and…

The anime-style drawn scene in front of her showed the Ace character, standing alone in what Maggie took at first for an infinite black void, though after that she noticed the black-stone-bricked wall in the background, the outline of a dim-dark room.

And the view was in 3D, a 3D so perfect that Maggie's brain felt like it wobbled. Maggie moved her head side to side, and the view responded perfectly, to the point where Maggie couldn't tell when her eyes were crossing a perspective boundary. It was the most incredible 3D display Maggie had ever seen, with or without 3D glasses involved.

The animation style was equally extraordinary. It didn't look like a rasterized 3D figure in an anime style, it looked like a three-dimensional view into a normal anime with bright colors and hand-drawn artistry, like Maggie had stuck her head into an anime episode and peered around inside.

She only realized she'd breathed out the word "Whoa!" after it already left her lips.

The avatar of a catgirl carrying an enormous axe materialized next to her own character, with a sign reading "P1: Bouncy" flashing a few times over its head.

"Holy shit that display tech," came a voice from the direction of Lavelle. "Holy shit that animation, how did they even…"

Then the final figurine materialized on the video screen in front of Maggie, titled "P3: Aero." The 3D anime character had hip-length glossy hair matching Illyria's… actually Aero's avatar was a good match for Illyria's figure in general, Maggie realized. Maggie had wondered if Illyria would make some revealing choice of character or title, like she and Ziquan had, but Aero: The Gamer looked to have been chosen just on the basis of physical resemblance. Oh well.

The Aero character was wearing… well, the Aero fighter wore Victoria's Not-So-Secret Lingerie, more or less. Mostly less.

(Maggie even worried, briefly, whether Illyria might be embarrassed at how her character had been drawn, before Maggie remembered what magic was mostly about. No, Illyria probably wasn't mortified at having her avatar show up onscreen wearing lingerie made of toilet paper, for all her usual shyness.)

"Wow," came a half-whisper from Illyria, after P3: Aero had materialized.

"I know, right?" said Lavelle's side of the machine.

The screen blinked again, and showed Aero, Bouncy, and Ace standing in the same postures against a solid green background, as above them 3D iconic words formed: GENERATING UNIVERSE: BOUNCY, ACE, AERO. An array of smaller notices flashed by below: Generating physics… generating world… generating landscape… generating species… generating social customs… generating NPCs… generating NPC goals… generating NPC backstories… generating NPC emotions… She wasn't buying this, but it was funny.

At that point Maggie noticed the tiny words in the upper corner, 18+ ACTIVE. She would have reported it to the arcade's management as a problem---except that it didn't feel like her place to do so. Maybe all the sexuals were fine with it, and she would just spoil it for everyone if she made a fuss. It was the little uncertainties like that…

The screen cleared again.

The 3D view now showed their three characters wearing sensible jeans and T-shirts, in what seemed to be the viewing deck of a skyscraper with an ordinary city spread out around and below. Lavelle's Bouncy no longer had cat-ears, Illyria's Aero had ordinary brunette hair in brief curls, and Maggie's own Ace character was standing much shorter than in the previous illustration.

Maggie looked around curiously at the screen. The Aero character seemed to be studying the side of a pair of viewing glasses on a stand, apparently reading the directions. The non-catgirl Bouncy character was absorbed in her cellphone. Her Ace character was looking about in curiosity.

The style had also changed, from anime to realism. It looked like actual human actors who'd been filmed, rather than CGI, though… Maggie moved her head to one side. It seemed like she could look at the 3D view from every angle. Was that possible when you were filming real actors?

The Ace character on screen was tilting her own head too.

Maggie leaned sideways.

So did the Ace character on screen.

She took a half-step around the game machine to look at Lavelle, who was, in fact, standing in the same posture as Bouncy thumbing his cellphone.

"Okay, yeah, this was a thing," Lavelle said, without looking up from his cellphone screen. "Huge deal at E3, lot of people talking about how augmented reality was finally ready for the big times, just as soon as a retinal laser array this good cost less than… thirty thousand dollars. Wow. Let's not spill a Coke onto this game machine, okay?"

"Lavelle, look at the screen!" Maggie said.

"What?" said Lavelle, and looked up at his screen. "Holy shit." He lifted his hand and waved.

Maggie ducked around to her own side of the screen, and saw Ace stepping back from Bouncy's side, just as Bouncy was waving to… to some random person in the crowd. Who waved back at Bouncy.

"Wow," came a nervous-sounding voice from Illyria's side, "who knew that video game technology had advanced this far, huh."

"I'm going to be reading about this all night, I can tell," Lavelle said, as Bouncy looked back at her phone. "No actually I'm going to be researching the fae. Apparently this game is a complete white elephant that cost one and a half billion dollars to develop. They managed to stitch together enough expensive technology to get it running, but it's completely unrealistic in a commercial sense. The graphics start out as computer-generated skeletons and then go through a deepnet, cycle-G-A-Ns if you know what those are. So the game can only run on custom game machines that need sixteen GPUs each of which costs two thousand dollars. Then another thirty thousand dollars for the retinal laser array and five thousand for the motion detection and gaze tracking. Not going to hit home consoles for a while. Oh, hey, try leaning forward as if you're about to walk, the game's supposed to have Segway-style posture detection."

It took Maggie a couple of tries to lean-without-leaning before the Ace character onscreen started walking forwards. Maggie straightened up without meaning to, and the Ace avatar stopped and did the same.

"Jesus," Maggie said.

"It's got audio input that's supposed to work as well as Google Assistant, too. Once we get special attacks we can use them by calling out the names," said Lavelle. "Though the gestural system is supposed to be faster than voice input once you get experienced enough." Lavelle's voice paused. "Don't know when we get to the battle mechanics. There doesn't seem to be any fighting going on in the current scene. Maybe we're waiting on Truck-kun?"

"Truck-kun?" said Illyria's voice.

"Isekai is the genre about being transported into another world," said Lavelle in his Explaining Voice. "It often starts with the protagonist getting hit by a truck. It happens so often that we readers have started to suspect it's actually the same truck every time, and we've named it Truck-kun."

"I don't think we're going to get hit by a truck up here," said Maggie. "In the viewing deck of a skyscraper, I mean."

"Right," said Lavelle, "which would make it funny if it happened anyway. Less funny now that I've thought of it, I guess." The Bouncy avatar kept looking around, as if trying to find the next plot step.

"Maybe the starting tutorial is that we have to navigate down the elevator and step into the street to get hit?" said Illyria. On screen, the Aero character straightened up from examining the viewing glasses.

Maggie thought to herself that she really needed to warn Illyria about getting swept along by Ziquan's terrible ideas.

Then small floating letters in blue materialized on the bottom of the video screen:

Tutorial Quest: Locate Truck-kun.

Truck-kun doesn't live in the skyscraper!

"Uh," said Illyria's voice. The Aero character now looked nervous, the expression eerily resembling the real Illyria. "Did anyone else get, uh, a quest?"

"The tutorial quest?" said Maggie. Prickles were rising all over her skin. "Yes. I did. The game is listening to us talk. And it understands what we're saying."

"Yeah, I'm impressed," said Lavelle. "Either they did enough playtesting that some Japanese players said the same thing we just did, or they hired the Nethack dev team to think of everything." On screen, Bouncy took two hesitant steps in Ace's direction, turned, began walking faster. As the Bouncy avatar went past Ace's point of view, it seemed to leap out of the screen, she could have sworn she saw the image extending past the side of the game machine. Maggie had to suppress a thought that if she looked over her own shoulder she would see Bouncy walking away into the arcade.

After some false starts of her own, Maggie managed to start-to-turn-without-turning, half-express the movement in her real body, in a way that made Ace turn on-screen. The viewpoint swiveled smoothly around with the avatar's motion. Even after that, it still took Maggie multiple tries to get Ace walking towards the elevator. This probably would have been easier if she'd ever used a Segway.

A little girl in pigtails ran through Ace's pathway, and Maggie's instinctive flinch and aborted half-step back was translated into an actual step backwards by the Ace avatar.

Then when Maggie relaxed, Ace started walking again. She must have leaned forward without realizing it.

Maggie was getting a worried feeling. This video game technology was unnaturally good. Too much of a leap relative to any gameplay she'd ever heard of. Ziquan seemed to think there was a plausible explanation, that this machine could be assembled if you put existing technology together the right way… but it didn't feel unmagical. It gave off an impression of there being sixteen blood-drawn pentagrams next to the sixteen GPUs.

Sure, she remembered this game machine being here since before Yoal-yohuali's visit. But magic could choose the past. Logically, that had to include her own past as well.

On screen, the Ace avatar had stopped walking and turned to look over her shoulder, the view smoothly turning to follow the character's gaze to the skyscraper windows outside. The character avatar looked worried. So the game machine had read that off Maggie too, by monitoring her facial expression… or…

"I have a bad feeling about this," Maggie said.

Blazing white light burst outside the skyscraper windows on screen. The characters crowded around the viewing deck screamed in small voices and threw up their hands to protect themselves, even as their clothes began to smolder and flame. There was a crack like a sonic boom that made Maggie jump, and all the glass in the skyscraper windows burst inwards, embedding bloody shards into the blackening skin of everyone in sight. Maggie's stomach barely had time to lurch, she barely had time to see the searing sun-sphere born in the sky beyond the shattered windows, before Ace's bloody figure was charred and blasted away.

The screen went black.

Blue letters materialized.

EVERYTHING RUINED

GAME RESTART? Y/N​

"Uh, well then," Lavelle said. "I guess we've just learned not to invoke Murphy's Law where the game can hear us, because the Nethack devs made that literally start a nuclear war. Or that was our Truck-kun and we're supposed to select No to isekai---"

Maggie hssted at him, their shut-up signal, and stepped around the side of the game to offer Illyria a hand. The girl was sprawled back on the floor.

Illyria grasped Maggie's hand, hard enough that Maggie winced, and used that to pull herself up.

"Deep breaths," Maggie said.

Illyria's hyperventilation cut off, she didn't breathe at all, and then the girl began deep, slow inhalations followed by fast exhalations. She was visibly shaking. If not for the Fae food thing, Maggie would have offered to sit her down and get her water.

"I'm really, really sorry," Maggie said to her guest. "I had no idea the game was going to do that. We'll find something else to---"

"No," Illyria said, with an angry face, the first time Maggie had seen the other girl with an expression that forceful. The girl reached down to straighten out her suit-miniskirt, which had somehow come down far enough to expose brief black panties over the curve of Illyria's hip. Then she began straightening out her suit jacket above that. "This is stupid. I've never seen anyone burn to death, I don't have PTSD, it was one fucking gunshot that I'm not going to let ruin my life! We keep playing."

"Are you sure that's---" Maggie began.

"Select no," Illyria said, to the video game machine. Epic music began playing, though Maggie couldn't see the screen from here because of the privacy effect.

Feeling helpless and worried, but not knowing nearly enough of Illyria's hidden backstory to argue with Illyria's choices, Maggie went back around to view her own video screen.

A game-intro screen was playing, full of sliding solid banners. A 2D picture of Bouncy: The Energetic in her catgirl form slid across the screen, framed by the head of her double-bladed axe, subtitled by two lines of text:

a world where i'm needed
a world where i'm loved​

Then Ace: The Nullifier in her taller form, with twin silver shields on either arm.

while you hold this hand of mine
i'll never let you fall​

And finally Illyria… no, Aero: The Gamer with her hip-length hair, and tissue-paper "clothing" if you could call it that.

not knowing what's happening
find courage to reach for happiness​

And then, as the screen began to fade out,

ISEKAI

--already lost everything------------
-------all that was left-------
------------a different world--​

The anime forms of Aero, Bouncy, and Ace were standing in the dim-dark room from earlier, with night-black bricks visible in the background.

"What the hell just happened?" said the Bouncy character on-screen, with a purring undertone. (Thankfully Bouncy did not sound like a catgirl version of Ziquan's voice, Maggie was not sure she could have handled that.) "Where are we?"

"I think we're dead," said the Aero figure, and thankfully it didn't sound like Illyria's voice. "Also, you're purring… my body feels strange."

"Guys," said the Ace avatar, and thank God it did not sound exactly like Maggie's own voice sounded to herself inside her own head, "I hate to say this, but I don't think heaven would be this dark."

"Wait," said the Bouncy avatar. "Listen. I think I hear something."

The characters all hushed and Maggie realized that she was holding her own breath, which she immediately stopped doing. There was a sound coming from the game machine, but it was so soft under the background noises of the Lightning Arcade that she had no idea of the content.

Then the sound got louder, and it sounded like a generic medieval battle with clanging swords, battle cries and animal roars. Except that all of the battle cries sounded female.

A heavy thud came from behind Maggie, and she spun around to look before she could help herself. The thud came again, now from the direction of the screen, and Maggie sheepishly turned back to look at where the Ace figure had also spun around. All three avatars were now looking at the dim outline of a heavy wooden door, which then shuddered with an even heavier THUD. Would Ziquan say that of course it was possible to project sound behind the player, with sufficiently advanced speaker technology…?

Maggie realized that she'd tensed up when the Ace avatar moved to standing in a generic-looking martial arts stance with her fists raised. Bouncy was now holding her axe. Aero was poised as if to leap.

"Oh, hey, I have an axe!" said the Bouncy avatar.

"Oh my god I'm wearing high heels and I'm not falling over," said the Aero avatar.

The door burst open with a CRACK that made Maggie flinch away from the screen. Then into the room poured a pair of twin feminine figures that even Maggie had to admire as eye candy. The feminine figures' legs were long and slim, their boobs were uplifted and emphasized by their exoskeletons, and the sharp blades at the end of their green, hinged, serrated arms looked positively stylish.

Spoiler: Praying mantisgirl

"Monstergirls!" came a panicked cry from Illyria's side of the game machine, loud enough that Maggie saw a couple of people in the arcade turn to look in their direction.

Illyria hadn't… fought those things in real life, had she? Maggie had no idea anymore what wasn't true.

On screen, Aero was already moving, leaping backwards. Illyria yelled "High-heeled jump!" and the Aero avatar seemed to crouch on the wall, then Illyria said "High-heeled kick!" and Aero's form spun through the air and smashed into the mantis-girl's head. The monster was driven back, and floating rotating whirls began to circle around its head, confusion signs.

"That's my cue!" yelled Lavelle. Bouncy moved forward two steps. "God damn it, how do I - Illyria, how did you find out the skill name? Oh I see - Boing-boing Slicer!"

Bouncy's avatar leaped into the air, creating harmonic chest movements as advertised, and slammed down her axe.

Directly down through the stunned mantis-girl, who separated into two halves and fell over in opposing directions, accompanied by an awful lot of green blood.

Are you sure that was an enemy---

She didn't say it aloud. It was just a video-game. Besides, if the monstergirls weren't enemies before, they sure were now.

Maggie turned her head… no, turned Ace's head to face the remaining monstergirl, who had raised both serrated limbs in order to ward off another kick by Aero.

"Ha!" said a voice from Illyria's direction, sounding happier than Maggie could remember hearing from her ever before. "Ha ha ha! First martial arts skill, GET! High-heeled kick!"

The mantis-girl blocked Aero again, though not with the same motion as last time. Then the insectile female wheeled and lashed out a serrated limb at Aero, while Aero was still in the air recovering from her kick.

Completely without thinking, Maggie stretched out her own hand as if to block it.

And the serrated limb clashed off the silver shield that had materialized on Ace's arm.

On the lower screen flashed the words: Ace Ability: Touch-Me-Not

"That's doing it, Ma---ma'am!" came a shout from Lavelle's direction. "You block, I'll hit!"

He'd almost used her real name, hadn't he. "Sure thing, you id---Lavelle," Maggie said dryly.

"And I'll distract!" said Illyria.

On screen, Aero suddenly struck a pose and began shimmying like a stripper, her boobs and ass beneath the tissue-paper lingerie moving in obscenely smooth arcs, causing the mantis girl to turn its faceted bug-eyes to stare at her.

"Huh," said Illyria. "That wasn't the form of distraction I had in mind, but I can work with this. Strip Tease. Lavelle?"

Bouncy didn't move, also staring at Aero, who'd begun to tease the tiny straps of what she was wearing instead of a bra.

"Lavelle," said Maggie.

Bouncy managed to turn her head and whack the axe sideways at the mantisgirl, sending her head flying in an unrelated direction.

The small text at the bottom of her screen now said Ace Ability: Get On With It

Then Bouncy turned to look back at Aero again.

"Illyria," said Maggie. "I think you're distracting Bouncy too."

"I'm not sure how to stop doing this," said Illyria. "Uh, Strip Tease stop? Cancel Strip Tease? Uh, it doesn't seem to be working."

Aero was running her fingers over her breasts beneath the thin cups of her not-really-a-bra, teasing away the fabric, though her anime-drawn fingers weren't yet touching nipple.

Maggie took a deep breath, feeling a weird suspicion. "Stop doing that, Aero," she said at the game machine.

Aero halted, and then her hands dropped to her side as if embarrassed.

Ace Ability: Not Right Here Please

"I," said Maggie,

"I," said Maggie,

"I think my character has ace powers," said Maggie.

She was having confused feelings about this. There was Represent! and then there was, there was, she didn't even have words for what this was. Okay, the video game had a place for asexuals but but but but she wasn't sure about this place.

"Ooh, awesome," Lavelle's voice was saying. "Especially since we're fighting monstergirls. All right, we're the isekai protagonists, let's get out there and win whatever battle is going on!" Bouncy was already striding forward through the remains of the door.

"I'm scout, I guess," said Illyria. "High-heeled running!"

Maggie only realized she'd unconsciously leaned forward when Ace started running after Bouncy and Aero.

Her game avatar ran through the doors, and emerged into a ruined peasant village with monstrous half-women everywhere.

Ace's head swiveled faster than Maggie's head turned, smoothly amplifying Maggie's own head motions, giving her the ability to scan across directions without turning away from the video screen. Almost at once Maggie spotted a pool of slime with cheerful female figures bubbling up from it, looming over a terrified preschool-aged little girl in a one-piece peasant dress.

Spoiler: Slime

"Over there!" Maggie yelled, pointing, without having thought about at all about whether that would work; but the Ace figure matched her pointing motion and then began running there, even as Bouncy turned to look.

"Look, A Distraction!" said Illyria, and the fem-slime halted, then began oozing towards Aero, who was posing and smiling. "Hit it, Lavelle!"

"Shit, pheromones!" said Lavelle. "God damn it, my vision has a pink border full of floating hearts and my character is walking towards a giant sexy Venus Flytrap. Illyria, try to lead the slime away from the girl, Cordy, I need some help here!"

A slight turn of Maggie's head sent her vision scanning toward Bouncy, and then she looked where the Bouncy avatar was staring.

Spoiler: Plantgirl

She flung out her hands pointed at the plant-being on screen as if casting a spell, and said, really much too loudly, "Asexual nullification!"

"Still tranced," said Lavelle.

What had she done. What had she said. What had she done.

"I'm guessing you've got to hit it to nullify the magic?" said Illyria.

Maggie took a deep breath, then thought better of it and let out the deep breath, even as her character started to rush forwards. She threw a punch at where the plant girl's head seemed to be rushing up in front of her, and said, "Null!"

The plant girl's head rocked back, looking like she'd been punched. Then Maggie's view flashed red around the edges and her Ace avatar went flying, a huge snapping mouth withdrawing from the strike that had landed.

"Still tranced!" Lavelle said, his voice going up.

"Cordy, try hitting Lavelle!" said Illyria. Her own voice was going up. "I'm distracting more and more monsters here!"

"Be gentle?" Lavelle said.

Maggie's avatar got up, shaking her head and shaking Maggie's vision, and then Maggie sent the avatar running toward Bouncy and tried slapping her. "Ace nullification," Maggie said, though more calmly this time. She mimed another slap, what had that skill been called? "Ace ability: Snap out of it!"

The Bouncy character was still walking forwards.

"Maybe try kissing him?" said Illyria. "Oh shit please forget I said that."

Maggie took a deep breath, she'd work out the feelings later. Then she leaned forward into the image, and mimed kissing Bouncy. On the cheek.

Bouncy stopped trudging forwards. Then she let out a sensual high-pitched battle cry, her cat-ears pointing more sharply outwards as if in anger, and began wildly swinging the axe and chopping off flytrap-heads from the plant creature.

"That worked," Lavelle's voice said unnecessarily. Was Maggie imagining the wobble in his tone?

Ace Ability: Platonic Kiss

"It seems I have an ability called Platonic Kiss," Maggie said out loud, really not sure how she was feeling about this. She needed to stop and write a social-justicey Tumblr post, and then delete it, so she could figure out how she should react---

A shocking thought came to her.

"Illyria… um," Maggie said, as she sent Ace running off to back up Aero. It was hard to say aloud, to let out the words. "Um, would anything like this work for me in real life? Like if some fae cast a lust spell on Lavelle?"

"Oh, wow," said Illyria. "I didn't think of that at all. Uh, I don't know for sure but I'm guessing you could learn to do that?"

A dangerous-looking tangle of pink magic was being thrown at Aero, by a sexy rotting skeleton lurking at the corner of the battlefield, and Maggie experimentally stepped forwards. The spell splashed around Ace and sunk into her form, after which nothing happened so far as Maggie could see.

"Okay, how about, I mean, if," said Maggie, "can I no-sell any sexuality-based magic that I step into? Right now, even?"

"Uh," said Illyria, "I don't actually know much but it's got to be a better idea for it to hit you than Lavelle? Though both of you dodging sounds like an even better idea."

Maggie noticed that her hands were sweating. "Were the people who made the videogame in the know?" said Maggie. She tried to keep the emotions out of her voice. "Are combat aces actually a thing? Is this game based on a true story?"

"I really don't know as much as you think," said Illyria's voice. "Bouncy, axe plz! Cordy, I can't begin to guess if this video game was based on somebody's life in what passes for reality these days. I mean, I do know there's stuff in eroge that's… wait, I shouldn't say that."

"WHAT," said a voice from Lavelle's direction.

She still needed to think about this… or so Maggie would have believed about herself. But Ace already seemed to be grinning like a lunatic as she danced around the battlefield, whacking monstergirls on the head with her shield, stepping into bundles of energy that dissipated without effect, and sometimes skipping over to kiss Bouncy or Aero on the cheek.

Although it then developed that Ace, while immune to a great deal, was not immune to vaginal acid.

The other two characters perished shortly after losing Ace's protection.

Maggie took the point to heart. Right, in real life, she'd go on dodging until she knew what could and couldn't hurt her.

JOURNEY OVER​

6.5.e [MS,SZ]: Haircrux

The question they all had to ask themselves afterwards, as Lavelle had observed, was not "Was that fun?" but "Was that $39 worth of fun?" Playing for 13 minutes had drained each of their Arcade tokens for $13, which explained why there wasn't a longer line for the machine. Given the incredible game experience, and that the game machine had cost at least $70,000 from what Lavelle said, and above all given what she'd realized from playing, Maggie wasn't feeling ripped off. But none of the three of them had seemed to feel like playing again.

Some ice had been broken, though. Ziquan's ideas weren't always wrong. The three of them had yelled commands and pleas at each other, talked rapidly with no time for social hesitation, and saved each other's game-butts a few times. It seemed to have made a difference.

Or at least Illyria was looking a lot more relaxed, as the strange girl and Lavelle took a place at the end of the line awaiting the DDR machine. The usual DDR queue had looked short when they finished playing Isekai, and Lavelle had suggested trying to dance on the machine themselves, just in case it contained some type of Clue that Yoal-yohuali had been seeking.

Maggie took the chance for her own quick trip to the woman's restroom. She was worried about leaving Ziquan alone with Illyria, and also worried about leaving Illyria alone with Ziquan, but having her bladder burst open in the middle of the Arcade wasn't a better option.

By the time she got back, Illyria and Lavelle were engrossed in their own tiny world, neither of them seeming to notice her approach.

"…just change back, though?" Lavelle was saying.

Illyria rapidly shook her head. "Maybe if you'd only been a girl for one day---one episode, if you see what I'm saying---you could change back to a boy and restore the status quo. But if you've lived as a girl long enough to start getting used to it, it'd be super hard to change you back into a boy and have it stick. Like, changing your girl-self into a boy would make your magical nature be a type of person who often gets sex-changed, not make you just a normal boy again."

"And that's not symmetrically the same for a girl turning into a boy," said Lavelle.

"If a girl turns into a boy often enough, magic will start to see her as a sex-changer," said Illyria. "But she'd have to do it more often. Magical girlness is stickier, if you see what I'm saying."

"Huh. I agree that sounds like femininity is an attractor in magical phenomena," said Lavelle. "Is it a particular girl? Do people who use more and more feminine-transformative magic all start to approach a single archetypal woman?"

"Uh, more the opposite?" said Illyria. "Magic tends to produce distinguishable girls. If you run into a girl with naturally weird-colored hair, or they have two eyes each a different color, that's a possible sign they've been involved in magical things, so now they look more distinct from every other magical girl… am I making sense here?"

"I think so," said Lavelle. "Though I'm still having trouble grasping that turning into a girl is so easy that it can happen by accident the first time a novice tries to use magic. In terms of the science I knew, I'd have thought it took more magic than raising the dead. Raising the dead just needs the ability to look into the past and take pictures. Swapping sex, it's like, where does the other X chromosome come from, and you've got to shift around all this anatomy, and that implies rewiring the brain to talk to the nerves correctly. It makes you wonder what exactly is reading the neurons and deciding how to shift them around."

Illyria shrugged helplessly. "You'd probably have better guesses than I do? All I know is that cute girls and sexy women are, uh, actually calling that an attractor in magical phenomena sounds way smarter than any phrasing I can come up with. Your idea about interdimensional succubi and metasexual reproduction is the best explanation I've ever heard for why that might be, too. I'm honestly impressed, I can totally see you becoming the greatest archmage ever."

Was Illyria flirting with Ziquan? Because if so, she was doing it right.

"So you were serious," said Lavelle, who might or might not pick up on Illyria's intentions before Illyria started physically removing his clothing. "Just to be clear. You were totally serious and not trolling me at all when you said that, never mind transforming me, it would be possible to make a battleship be a cute girl."

"Wait, what?" Maggie said from where she'd snuck up next to them in the line for the DDR machine. Illyria startled, Lavelle didn't. "What does it mean to make a battleship be a cute girl?"

"It means you now have a cute girl who is a battleship," Illyria said, in the tones of somebody who understood why this answer might provoke incredulity, but who didn't know what else she could say. "Uh, but we're not talking an average day for an average fae here. That's power and weirdness on the level of Yoal-yohuali exchanging her hair for a concept. Even she doesn't do that type of thing every day, I sure hope."

"Right, if it was easy, there'd be no such thing as naval warfare," Lavelle said. He looked distant, which was how Ziquan looked when he was shell-shocked. "You'd just wave your magic wand and transform all the enemy ships into cute girls."

"Uh, uh, actually, that wouldn't be such a great idea," said Illyria. "Transforming a battleship into a cute girl would usually make her a more powerful battleship."

"Okay," said Lavelle. "I am accepting this. I am accepting reality because that is what a good scientist does. I just want to be clear on the general picture you are depicting, which is that if I unleash a huge amount of magic on a fighter jet and something goes wrong, the magic is liable to go down the path of least resistance and turn the fighter jet into a girl. Who is then a more powerful fighter jet."

"I mean, we're getting way outside my personal experience here, but from the stories I've heard that is broadly how it works?" said Illyria.

"No," Lavelle said in a monotone. "That's not true. That's impossible."

"You didn't break him," Maggie said, because Illyria was looking worried. "He's not broken if he's still quoting Star Wars."

"Actually? Luke Skywalker had nothing on this. Some random bastard turned out to be his dad, boo hoo, at least Luke didn't fire his proton torpedoes and miss and accidentally turn the Death Star into a girl. Impossible? Darth Vader being your father is impossible? You cheapen the word, Luke Skywalker. You've never known true pain."

The queue moved up again, putting Lavelle and Illyria next in line for the machine, and it was only then that Maggie realized what that implied. "Um," Maggie said. "If this DDR machine is actually magical for couples, does that mean that if you and Illyria dance on it…"

"Oh shit!" said Lavelle, looking genuinely shocked. "Illyria, I'm so, so sorry, I did not mean to magically force you into a relationship with me. Even leaving aside that I don't believe in the magic DDR machine."

"Why is everyone always so twitchy about---" began Illyria, and then she sighed. "Does that mean you should go on it with Cordy instead oh shit forget I said that too."

"Um," said Maggie, as she looked at Lavelle, who seemed to suddenly be looking down at his feet instead of at her, and then looked at the DDR machine. "Um, wouldn't I break it?"

"I---don't think so," said Illyria. "You're not an aro ace, right? Romance and relationships are just as central to magic as sex. I mean, sex isn't weak, but love is even more powerful, you know? So, um, if this DDR machine is for helping relationships… oh god I should stop talking."

Maggie realized with horrified awareness that her cheeks felt warm. Ziquan looked up from his feet to glance at her and their eyes met and Ziquan just as quickly looked down again.

Why. Why was this happening to them now. Their relationship-or-whatever had comfortably stagnated for months, why did the two of them suddenly have to decide---she didn't even know what they were deciding---before the end of a stupid dance song?

"Uh," said Ziquan in a high-pitched voice, "I don't suppose that Cordy and Illyria is obviously the best solution somehow?"

Illyria gave her a quizzical look, and Maggie shook her head before she could really think about it. Then a few seconds later Maggie realized what she'd done and said "No offense!" in a voice that was also higher-pitched than usual.

"Well, you've just got to choose between us then," Illyria said, now with an evil grin. "Welcome to the first day of your life as a harem protagonist."

Ziquan looked up at Illyria, then looked at Maggie, then looked at Illyria again, with one of the more interesting expressions she'd seen on a man. "You know," Ziquan said, his voice still high, "this doesn't seem fair given that it's probably not even magic."

What she ought to have done was tell Ziquan to just go dance with Illyria but somehow, somehow she didn't seem to be saying it.

Illyria deliberately glanced at the DDR machine. "I think you've got around sixty seconds left to decide," Illyria said.

"Uh, uh, uh, Illyria!" said Ziquan.

Maggie felt a wobble in her heart. Even though she would have hesitated to jump on the possibly-magic DDR machine with Ziquan, she would have liked to have been asked and… she needed to go home soon and think over a lot of things.

"Wait," said Illyria, looking surprised. "You're actually taking the sexy new girl you met just this episode over the childhood friend?"

"I can talk about it with Cordy later and come back anytime if we decide to do it," Ziquan said rapidly. "It's not like the DDR machine is going to disappear tomorrow."

The wobble in her heart disappeared. So very, very Ziquan of an answer.

"I see," Illyria said, still with her evil grin, "of course you'd be that type of harem protagonist."

"What, the sensible type who does dungeon bypasses around artificially forced choices?" said Ziquan, folding his arms and giving Illyria what was trying to be a quelling look.

"I mean," said Illyria, "you just tried to answer that you want both of us. I'm going to let you get away with it because I'm that type of convenient harem fodder, but what about Cordy's feelings?"

"It's, I mean, even if we, it's not as if I'd stop Ziquan from---" Maggie began, and then stopped, first in horror that she'd used his True Name, and second because---

"Don't worry, Zzzschwuan, I knew both of your names anyway," said Illyria. "Uh, I do know how your name sounds in your head, even if I can't say it right. Your initials are SZ, hers are MS. Sorry but it's not exactly on the last page of your magical biography."

Maggie felt a twinge of chagrin, but mostly her mind seemed to be occupied with envisioning herself living with Ziquan in some anime-style inn containing other girls and maybe boys, who Ziquan was having complicated relationships with, and him having sex with them, and therefore him not feeling sad about not having sex with her, but the two of them being together anyway in his harem. This was a possibility she had never ever imagined before, maybe because Ziquan hadn't exactly been radiating "I will end up with a harem" signals.

Did she get multiple partners in this scenario? Logically she ought to, since she wouldn't have all of Ziquan's time to herself. Actually, now that Maggie thought about it from this new angle… what if the right amount of Ziquan for her life was "Ziquan is my boyfriend on Tuesdays and Fridays" which was sort of what they'd settled into in fact, what if that was why she'd kept wavering back and forth, her heart unable to truly accept "Ziquan should never be with me" or "Ziquan and I should be together" because both of those had been the wrong answer---

She needed to think about this.

The lovey-dovey couple ahead finished out their progress bar, and stepped down from the DDR machine, still holding hands.

Ziquan and Illyria stepped up.

And Ziquan selected SOLO mode on the machine.

"Hold on, what?" said Illyria, looking wounded and sad and rejected.

"First of all," said Ziquan, "I met you just this episode, second, I'm not using mind magic or fate magic on myself until I understand a whole lot of things a whole lot better, and third, Yoal-yohuali was playing in Solo mode so that's where any clues would be."

"Oh… right." Illyria said. Her mouth twisted up. "Lavelle, you're a pretty sensible boy deep down, you know that?"

"I'm aware," Ziquan said, scrolling through songs, even as Maggie let out a sigh, and the other people in line looked puzzled. "Illyria, help me out here? I don't know how to recognize a Clue just from looking at the song titles… oh, wait, here's one. Does 'my hair always looks like this' sound clueish to you?"

Illyria's head whipped around to stare at the game screen so fast that it should have made a whooshing sound, and then she seemed to force herself to relax. "Uh," Illyria said, "yeah, that could be a clue. Let's try that one."

"I should finish checking the others first," Ziquan said. "There could be something even hairier-sounding than that."

"Right," Illyria said, crowding onto Ziquan's side of the platform so she could look too, even as an ungruntled grumble came from the couple standing next in line, and people further back looked puzzled.

It developed that none of the other titles gave Illyria the same shocked look (which Maggie had privately noted down as further evidence that Illyria and Yoal-yohuali had both come to Norville for reasons a bit more related than Illyria was letting on). So Ziquan selected the song My Hair Always Looks Like This, and the song began.

It began with a series of thudding drum sounds, but no melody. The video was completely black, without any half-translucent shapes playing in the background.

No directional dance arrows showed on the screen.

The thudding sounds continued. Still no melody, still no dance arrows, even as the progress bar slowly crept across the top of the screen.

"Do you think we need to do something to trigger it?" Ziquan said sotto voce to Illyria, softly enough that Maggie almost couldn't hear despite her standing next to the machine. "I don't think we're getting the Clue."

Bones began to fade into existence on the black background, white skeletons. Skulls in particular seemed prominent. Some of the skulls were connected to thin white filaments, small gleaming threads, leading from the skulls to nowhere.

It would have been less creepy if Maggie hadn't been trying to make sense of it as meaningful. She wouldn't have given the display another glance if it had been part of an ordinary music video, rather than a Magically Significant Clue. Since it was a Clue, the skulls and filaments were fucking creepy.

There was still no melody. No dance arrows.

The drum beats went on, the thuds slowing and softening as time went on, and the thought came to Maggie that the slower drum sounded like a heartbeat. Blood and bone and nothingness and elsewhere, her mind ventured a translation of the Clue, and she shivered even in the people-heated warmth of the arcade.

Ziquan and Illyria stood on the platform, watching the screens, not dancing for lack of arrows, as the progress bar slowly crept across the screen. Ziquan looked embarrassed to be standing there in front of everyone, literally on the spot. Illyria looked… worried, like she was watching a disturbing magical phenomenon be disturbing at her.

The drum-heartbeat died away, as the non-song continued. The skulls faded out. The last part of the non-song was a black screen, and silence so far as Maggie could hear. The progress bar crept on anyway.

The non-song ended.

Ziquan and Illyria stepped off the platform.

"Good… luck with that relationship," said a man from one of the couples in line, looking honestly sorry for them.

The three of them had moved away from the DDR machine, and formed a small huddle in a relatively uncrowded corner of the increasingly crowded arcade.

Ziquan spoke first. "Meaning no offense by this," Ziquan said in a low voice, "I hope that is not a magic DDR machine because that is not what I am looking for in my dating life."

Illyria looked even more unnerved. "Golly," she said, "that wasn't the least bit non-ominous."

"Do you know what it was about?" said Maggie.

Illyria shook her head. "I've got absolutely no idea," Illyria said. "Though it was even more ominous than it looked for… reasons I can't explain right now… that's probably not very helpful, is it."

"No, it's informative," said Ziquan. "Even if you don't tell me why something is ominous, if I know that you believe it's ominous, I also have to believe it's ominous, because of the ominous agreement theorem."

Illyria paused, and then very wisely decided to ignore whatever the hell Ziquan had just said. "I don't suppose you've got some clever theory of what the hair song meant?"

"Uh… not yet," Ziquan said. "To review the facts: there's a DDR machine that's supposed to bless relationships, which, back in the good old days, I would have been certain had no effect except through people believing it had an effect. An ancient and powerful fae, searching for the secrets of hair, came to Norville California and danced on that DDR machine. The machine has a song about hair that always looks some unknown way. To us the song appeared, uh, I guess you could call it Unsong but I hope that's just a coincidence because Unsong would be extremely scary to actually be in. The visuals showed emptiness, skeletons, and skulls. Skulls attached to strands that looked like they represented links to… something."

"The drums sounded like a heartbeat," Maggie said. "And then the heartbeat faded out. I was thinking blood, bone, nothingness, elsewhere."

"But what does it mean?" said Illyria, who didn't look reassured by any of this.

"On reflection, my clever theory is that we entered the wrong input for proceeding through the clue and we got an error message," said Ziquan. "That's why we didn't see Yoal-yohuali standing quietly for three minutes when she danced."

"I hope you're right," said Maggie. She felt the chills running over her skin again. "But all we actually know is that we don't remember Yoal-yohuali standing quietly for three minutes."

Illyria didn't say anything.

"And the moral of today's episode is," Ziquan said, and mimed spinning an invisible vertical wheel with one hand. "Moral number seven: Do not mess with hair."

Maggie was starting to think she'd had all she could take for the day. Also, even their huddle at the side of the room was starting to be overtaken by the rising ambient noise and an increasing number of people walking past them. "Speaking of the end of the episode," Maggie began, "I think the Arcade's starting to get crowded---"

Right as she said that, a young boy dashing past ran into a tall man holding a plastic bottle of soda, which fell out of his hands and spilled onto the ground, even as the tall man startled and jumped to one side and bumped into a Hispanic-ish kid Maggie dimly remembered being in the grade below them, possibly named Rito, who in turn slipped in the puddle of soda and went flailing backwards with his hand reaching out for what turned out to be Illyria's suit jacket, causing Illyria to pitch sideways with a ripping sound as her own heel slid out from under her in the soda puddle. He and Illyria wheeled around at separate angles and fell to the ground together in a tangled heap, accompanied by yet another fabric-ripping noise.

It happened faster than Maggie could mentally process the event, let alone stop it. Instead she just ended up standing there and staring at the end result: Illyria's shirt and suit jacket had been ripped open to expose a braless breast, her miniskirt had been ripped clean down the middle to expose flimsy black panties, and the boy was lying on top of Illyria with his face directly between her thighs and his hand clutching Illyria's exposed breast.

Illyria didn't scream. She just lay there with an indecipherable expression while the boy frantically tried to push himself up, followed by his feet slipping again, his face planting into Illyria's breast this time, and his hand going directly down Illyria's panties.

After that the boy managed to roll out of the danger zone, get to his feet, and begin frantically babbling apologies.

"Don't mention it," Illyria said, still lying on her back on the floor.

Ziquan bent down and offered Illyria his hand, carefully, and Illyria took it with equal care and climbed back to her feet.

Illyria pulled her torn shirt back over her breast. She shrugged off her now soda-sodden suit jacket, and dropped it on the floor, next to where her torn miniskirt had fallen. This left Illyria in a torn shirt, some rather scanty black panties, and apparently no bra.

"Are you---" Ziquan began.

"No worries, I'm fine," Illyria said. She didn't sound sarcastic, she sounded like she actually meant that. Illyria wasn't trying to cover herself either, as she bent over to pick up her destroyed suit, wadded it up, and pitched it into a nearby garbage can.

"Does that happen to magic-users a lot?" Maggie said. She was increasingly wondering if being an asexual nullifier was getting the nicer end of the magical stick.

"It depends on the magic," Illyria said. She looked at Ziquan. "If you're thinking that you wouldn't mind having that happen to you, it's okay to say that. I get it."

"Yeah, you got me," said Ziquan. "That's what I was thinking, all right."

Maggie thought a wordless thought that was somewhere between Really? and Of course.

Illyria gave Ziquan a serious look. "I think Cordy was right, it's time for me to go. Last chance to decide, do you want to be the one who uses Copper Swallow's phone number? I---I'm not trying to judge or anything, but you might need it more than I do."

Ziquan glanced sidelong at her. "Cordy, in real life you'd get completely creeped out if I did that, right?"

"Honestly, yeah," Maggie understated.

"Maybe next time, then," said Ziquan. "Thanks a lot for the offer, Illyria, it---it matters."

"Maybe next time," Illyria echoed, smiling. "I'm sorry that I can't do something that would mean even more to you."

"Like what?" Ziquan said, sounding innocently curious.

Maggie managed not to facepalm… wait, was that Ziquan flirting?

"You don't want to leave it as a mystery for next time?" said Illyria.

"I think you'll have plenty of mysteries left," said Ziquan in a lower voice… yeah, that was him flirting, all right.

Illyria stepped closer to Ziquan. Somehow her body in the torn shirt and brief panties looked more curved. "Are you sure," Illyria said, her own voice lower and breathier, "that you want to spend all that time looking forwards to it?"

Ziquan took his own step forwards, and breathed, "It beats spending the same amount of time obsessing about whether I'm overshooting or undershooting my expectations."

Illyria smiled, unbelievably enough.

And then Illyria gave Maggie a sideways glance, as if asking permission for something.

Maggie gave a slight nod back.

And then felt very odd about whatever had just happened.

Illyria stepped all the way into Ziquan's space, pressed herself up against him, and whispered something with her lips touching directly on his ear.

Ziquan's breath stopped. And didn't start again, as far as Maggie could tell from watching him, even after Illyria stepped back.

"Now I'm curious," said Maggie. She'd have thought Ziquan would be harder to shock, after a handful of girlfriends and one boyfriend and ninety-eight tons of pornography.

"Oh, well, in that case, you'll have to get the information out of him somehow," Illyria said, smiling again. Then her smile faded, as she turned back to Ziquan. "I---I'm sorry I can't do it now, Lavelle. I hope that's okay? I feel bad about making you wait, it's just---I have somewhere to go. I mean, the timing might conveniently work out no matter when I leave here, but it feels like it's time, and… I have a choice of my own to make that's, that's not super comfortable. Wait, that sounded too scary, didn't it? It's nothing that could hurt the Scooby Gang, honest."

"It's fine," Ziquan managed to say.

Maggie nodded. "Besides, I think Lavelle and I need to go off and talk about a few things."

"I didn't mess anything up, did I?" said Illyria. For a second she sounded very vulnerable.

Maggie looked at Ziquan.

Ziquan looked at Maggie.

Ziquan offered a very tentative smile.

Maggie had smiled back before she realized what she was doing.

"No," Maggie said, turning back to Illyria, "I don't think you did."

A skill has been created by a special action! Finding an avatar of yourself inside an arcade game has created the skill The Gamer.

The Gamer: Lvl 2 (83%). Passive.

The ability to play a game as if it is your life: You can wield your real-life Erogame powers inside any computer games in which those powers would have natural interpretations. This will cause corresponding changes to the game's plot. You may be able to gain in some Erogame characteristics this way, but most such gains will be greatly discounted. Don't get your hopes too high at Lvl 2.

A skill has been created by a special action! Kicking a monstergirl while wearing high heels, inside a video game, has created the skill High-Heeled Kicking.

High-Heeled Kicking: Lvl 1 (12%). Active. 4 D|S / kick.

Add your High Heels and High-Heeled Kicking skill to the attack power of any martial technique whose impact is concentrated in your heel or heels.

High Heels has increased by 1.

A skill has been created by a special action! Doing a seductive pose to distract a monstergirl has created the skill Look, A Distraction.

Look, A Distraction: Lvl 1 (6%). Active. 5 D|S.

Saying "Look, a distraction!" decreases the chance that your target will realize that you are trying to distract them. This distraction must be erotic in nature.

My Hair Always Looks Like This has increased by 1.

My Hair Always Looks Like This has increased by 1.

My Hair Always Looks Like This has increased by 1.

Conceptual Hair has increased by 1.

6.5.f [MS,SZ]: Harem Fantasy

"I'm---" said Ziquan. "I'm surprised you'd go for that."

Maggie knew that Ziquan, at this point, had to have noticed how red her cheeks were, and that she wasn't looking him in the eyes, and also that she was curled up and hiding her head inside her arms. Somehow the prospect of things working out was enabling a type of embarrassment and hesitation she'd never felt before.

"I'm surprised too," Maggie said in a voice high enough to be a squeak. "Though, though I'm not actually sure of anything, it's just, when I imagined it in my mind, I---I didn't hate imagining it."

"I'd need a harem," Ziquan said thoughtfully. "Well, that's probably tons easier if I'm a sexy girl and I was planning on that anyways. And you're planning on cuddling them too, huh. I guess we could work together on picking them out. Boys or girls or both?"

"Both," she said in a tiny voice. "Oh god I'm an enormous ace slut, aren't I."

"What," said Ziquan in what sounded like genuine surprise, "just because you want a harem? You realize that once I turn into a pretty girl I'm going to walk into an exercise gym and announce that everyone there gets to fuck me, right? I don't think you're a slut just because you think you might enjoy being an all-anti-powerful nullifying ace," a whimper escaped Maggie's throat as she tried to bury herself further inside her hands, "with a harem full of attractive men and women who never ask you for sex," oh god why had she told Ziquan this, "who will dress up in scanty yet comfortable pajamas every night and cuddle you to sleep two at a time---"

She hadn't even said that but he was correct now that she thought about it and wow Ziquan sure did know her well in some ways, huh, and how could he be saying all this so normally like it didn't make her a, a, whatever she was? She peeked out from between her hands and Ziquan was giving her this dreadful look like everything was perfectly fine and she wasn't a bad person, the fucking pervert. He needed to be embarrassed. "So what did Illyria whisper in your ear?" Maggie said in her currently high-pitched voice.

There was a promisingly long pause. "She said," Ziquan said, and she looked up to see him looking away, unable to meet her eyes in a very gratifying fashion. "She said that she could sometimes temporarily copy a bit of somebody else's abilities by, by swallowing their, uh, their come. From the source. She has to do the extraction personally."

"Uh huh," said Maggie, in closer to her usual voice. She was so glad she didn't need to go down that path to be someone who mattered in a magical world.

"And---and she said she was curious about whether my come did something interesting, and next time she saw me she'd pay me seven dollars to find out."

Maggie raised her eyebrows. "Wow, seven whole dollars. Don't boy-hos usually get paid more?"

Ziquan's face tightened, then relaxed. Even as Maggie realized what she'd said, realized what Illyria had understood, had grasped so much more readily than she had, why Illyria had said what she'd said to Ziquan.

"More than zero dollars?" Ziquan said. "No, we usually don't."

Charles has been routed through Norville tonight, and will no doubt arrive as soon as you're ready for him. He'll also be having dinner with you and Mom.

(This is a regular choice.)

[ ][EROGAME] Do not tell Charles about the Erogame.
[ ][EROGAME] Try to tell Charles about the Erogame.

(These options are on a spectrum, and the median vote wins. This means you should vote for only one option in the set.)

[ ][BDSM] Be a relatively vanilla girl for Charles tonight, though still a girl who's hot for him. You both need that.
[ ][BDSM] Dress in that flimsy white dress to push Charles's buttons. Do what he says in bed. You both need that.
[ ][BDSM] You need to be possessed by the person you chose, this time. Be taken by him. You both need that.

I want to offer more reader input than this, but I'm not sure I can write all of the options that come to mind. Further reader input and subvotes are welcome, and will be considered as possible input, but are not binding.

Spoiler: Author's subtext

The subtext here is that I want to be more cautious going forward, about being sure I can write things, before offering them as votes. Writing the Scooby date was really hard---I think because the Scoobies naturally want to be about the Fae and magic, but Illyria's hair is at ERO 16 and can't be shifted up. In retrospect I shouldn't have offered a vote for Scooby dates, or should have said "Sorry" and gone back on trying to write it. It cost a crazy amount of writer's block.

The collision with Rito was from the 24 I rolled for an Ero encounter during the date. (An encounter occurs, ERO 16 strength, it is slightly negative-flavored.)

6.6: More Disturbing

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 205 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 6142-6331]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Task: EROGAME

[X][EROGAME] Try to tell Charles about the Erogame.
No. of Votes: 52

Spoiler: Voters

WarGamesHyp
1234567890
Andelevion
anon101
App E
AramilOniasha
Archimedes
BuryBone
coolerthancats
CTCatapult
DarthSquidious
Derpmind
Diraniola
Elitist Oars
eraserman
fortyCakes
Gavinfoxx
Gettys
GGS109
Grael Case
GulibleLeprecon
Gvkuku
ianthe
Jaso
Kappa
MaggieoftheOwls
masterax2000
Mitale
modrony
MrBTXz
mrkun
mrpylon
napkintooth
Pedro
Proxima
sacha
ShadowStepper1300
sharps
Sirrocco
Skelm
Smyter
Soul Shocker
SoulofaGremlin
Syn A
Thamerlin
TheGrumpiest
Thrice.Great
Transreal Clouden
Tulip
Valmit
Xenia
zerofarad

[x][EROGAME] Do not tell Charles about the Erogame
No. of Votes: 35

Spoiler: Voters

fictionfan
514X0r
Aule
BastetsChosen
Blackshard
DeAnno
Eler0
End of Line
Ephemeral
Firedon
Gamerlord
GeeJo
Greckle
Guile
Homilion
Lisa
LonelyWolf
ltmauve
Name
Nemesis of suicide
Orz
pepperjack
Prince Chrom
Qtesseract
Quentin
Questingdragon
raisins
Spectral Waltz
Tetrikitty
theonebutcher
tilkau
Uvigz
wasprider
Wulfenbach
zup

-[X][EROGAME] Talk with Mom about whether to tell Charles about the Erogame.
No. of Votes: 5

Spoiler: Voters

napkintooth
Aoinfinity
january1may
Prime 2.0
Theli

Task: BDSM

[X][BDSM] Be a relatively vanilla girl for Charles tonight, though still a girl who's hot for him. You both need that.
No. of Votes: 48

Spoiler: Voters

WarGamesHyp
Andelevion
anon101
Aoinfinity
AramilOniasha
Archimedes
Aule
BastetsChosen
BuryBone
CTCatapult
DarthSquidious
DeAnno
Diraniola
Eler0
Elitist Oars
eraserman
fortyCakes
Gavinfoxx
Gettys
Grael Case
GulibleLeprecon
Gvkuku
january1may
Jaso
Kappa
Lisa
ltmauve
MaggieoftheOwls
Mitale
MrBTXz
mrkun
mrpylon
Name
Pedro
pepperjack
Prince Chrom
ShadowStepper1300
Sirrocco
Skelm
Smyter
SoulofaGremlin
Spectral Waltz
Syn A
TheGrumpiest
Thrice.Great
tilkau
wasprider
zerofarad

[X][BDSM] You need to be possessed by the person you chose, this time. Be taken by him. You both need that
No. of Votes: 15

Spoiler: Voters

Xenia
App E
coolerthancats
Gamerlord
GeeJo
General Lewdendorf
Greckle
Homilion
LonelyWolf
napkintooth
Quentin
Questingdragon
Theli
Wulfenbach
zup

[x][BDSM] Dress in that flimsy white dress to push Charles's buttons. Do what he says in bed. You both need that.
No. of Votes: 14

Spoiler: Voters

End of Line
514X0r
Blackshard
Ephemeral
GGS109
modrony
Proxima
raisins
sacha
sharps
Soul Shocker
Thamerlin
Tulip
Valmit

[X][BDSM] Play a game with Charles. If he wins, (by dominating you and forcing you to give in,) he stays the same. If he looses, you're going to give him superhuman endurance.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Homilion

Total No. of Voters: 92

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (34,400 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 250/440
SUB: 262/490

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 25
FUK: 19
PRV: 27
ERO: 32

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8934

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: Biologists #7, #14
Hairstyle: Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: Off

Nerdy boys are cute, in your newly informed opinion. Or at least Lavelle is cute. You do have a vast and unknown power steering you toward specimens you'll find attractive, so you can't conclude anything about nerdy boys more broadly. Maybe somebody like Lavelle seems more attractive if your life just turned truly weird, and his particular type of nerdery seems like it might help? Or maybe, as a female erogame character, you naturally feel drawn to boys who have an ambiguous relationship with a childhood friend they're not boinking?

Facing it squarely, your life is now so odd that you can never again draw broader conclusions from literally anything that happens to you.

But you do like Lavelle, and you would totally stalk him as Starry trying to seduce him for the foreboding unknown purposes of the fae.

Your self-made wind whistles in your ears, as you race across Norville towards home. You're pushing yourself harder, on this trip, encouraged by your High Heels skill having gone up to 4. You need to exercise your muscles, not just raise your Erogame skills, so that you can take another shot at roofhopping.

It's drizzling harder now, but shifting your hair up to ERO 32 helped diminish the annoyance of the water droplets misting the air. Also, since you're now inappropriately dressed, you picked up a skill called Risque Rain Resistance which is basically Cute Cold Resistance with a different element, plus a skill called Wet Look which is making your torn white shirt even more transparent. Both of the skill texts said essentially what you'd expect.

Your mind is still replaying the very last thing you said to Lavelle, wondering if it was okay to offer only seven dollars. You'd remembered how Tammi had paid you seven thousand dollars, how that made you feel even apart from the money itself, and you'd wanted to pass on the favor even if you couldn't afford to be that extravagant. Seventy dollars had seemed like too much---before you'd looked up prices online, that was more than you'd have expected an experienced prostitute to charge for an hour of sex. So you'd gone with seven dollars, the cost of a lunch not made at home, or forty minutes of salary for a restaurant server---that had made sense to you as how much a brief sexual encounter with a relatively unskilled boy ought to cost. But maybe if Lavelle has a life as a computer programmer ahead of him, or richer parents, $7 seems like less? You can already feel yourself starting to feel like $7 wouldn't be enough to buy sex with you, now that you have almost $9000 in your Erogame bank account.

And you still don't get how the world ended up like this. If there are all these smart boys around with high future earning potential, ready to spread their legs at the first hint of aggressive female sexuality, shouldn't some girls be collecting them into harems? Though maybe there aren't many girls who've started thinking about harems while they're still in high school, and the nerd spots fill up fast because more than 2 or 3 Lavelles in a harem would be too many…

Okay, you need to be honest with yourself about this. You're just thinking about that to avoid thinking about… that haircrux. Right. That's what you're not thinking about.

Well, you saw a creepy video full of skulls, set to drumbeats where there should have been music, fading into black silence, and while you were watching that your skill in My Hair Always Looks Like This went up to 4 and then your central Conceptual Hair went up to 2.

There isn't really much to not think about, there. Like, it was weird but you don't have anywhere else to not go with that.

How about not thinking about the question of exactly which Norville you're running through now, and what relation it bears to the Norville you remember?

A light ahead of you has turned red, and you slow your churning feet down to a halt. A nearby movie theatre you don't remember seeing before is showing posters for movies you've never heard of. Rustblood III, a metallic silvery-white girl surrounded by lightning carrying a huge wrench. Colin Ford starring opposite Elijah Wood in The Games We Play, what looks like a bromantic comedy. Some critic-bait indie film called Addicted to the Knife that is "Groundbreaking!" and "Certain to inspire a new genre!" An R-rated The Sins of Cinnamon produced by Q-Dragon Entertainment, showing an obvious prostitute with hair that looks interesting even by your new standards. A Pound of Cure starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Jean Dulac. All of those posters look normal, if unfamiliar, but another poster shows Vin Diesel wearing red armor and wielding a black sword and a white sword in either hand. The poster's title and subtext proclaims this movie to be The Swordboner: He is the Bone of His Sword.

That doesn't sound like a movie from Reality Classic.

If you walk into a movie theater at ERO 32, are you liable to find movies from the ERO-32 Earth from which the ERO-32 Norville hails? If so, does the Other Earth have movies with gay sex scenes between Vin Diesel and Benedict Cumberbatch? Because that would make up for a lot of existential disquiet.

…you're not actually finding this disturbing to think about.

Well, but even more unnervingly, your new skill The Gamer claims to let you use Erogame skills inside of computer games with corresponding changes to the plot. You've never played Final Fantasy VII, but if you did, would you be able to get a hentai scene with Aerith and find the Good End where she lives? You kind of want to go over to Lavelle's house and play old computer games with him watching, just to see how long and how loudly he keeps on screaming. Though your ERO probably has to be pretty high already, for you to do that without gaining tons of ERO.

Okay, you need to be honest with yourself here. You're just thinking about this to avoid thinking about…

Cordy and Lavelle remember a Lightning Arcade with a single DDR machine in the exact center, with a clear space around it. That's not what the Arcade looked like when you and Charles were there.

But Cordy and Lavelle remember seeing you and Charles there. They have pictures.

You're starting to suspect that this isn't because of the Erogame straight-up editing their memories. It's not that the Cordy and Lavelle you talked to saw the same thing you did, and then had their brains rewritten afterwards.

The possibility that comes to mind is that there were multiple Starrys spread across multiple Norvilles. There was the original Lightning Arcade you were in with Charles, and then you went sideways into this Norville where Cordy and Lavelle saw a different Starry do almost exactly the same dance… and the Starry from here went into some other Norville and she's with some other Cordy and Lavelle… and some other Starry slid into the Lightning Arcade you remember and met its Cordy and Lavelle---

Is there a true, original ERO-0 Norville still out there somewhere? Is its Cindy missing? If the first Cindy got duplicated instead of shifting sideways, is there a Cindy at the end of the chain who poofs into nonexistence?

You know you're not going to figure this out. You know the true answer is going to be "None of the above" and "Bullshit metaphysics." It still gets more unsettling the longer you think about it.

But no, you need to be honest with yourself. The real thing you're not thinking about, the even more disturbing thing, is…

Another traffic light ahead of you changes to yellow, and then goes red before you can get there, even at a sprint. You have to grab on to a lamppost to halt yourself before you plunge into the traffic. Maybe the next time you manage to grab a suitable costume, you'll try roofhopping again to see if you're ready now. All this stopping-and-starting seems like an increasingly pointless annoyance.

There's a covered bus-stop by this corner, containing a homeless-appearing old man in a heavy torn coat. Though the old man seems to be looking in the direction of approaching traffic, like he really is waiting for the bus, and not just staying out of the drizzle.

You need to be honest with yourself. What you've mainly been not thinking about this whole time isn't haircruxes, or alternate-universe video games, or whether Cordy and Lavelle saw you or some different Starry.

What you're really trying to distract yourself from thinking about is Charles.

About whether to tell Charles the truth.

You know you have to decide this soon. But, but if you actually decide now, Charles isn't here yet, so you won't be able to talk to him right away, and you don't want to spend time waiting and dreading that conversation before it happens. Sure, Charles will be here the literal instant you're ready for him, but… but you still have to go home and take a quick eroge-character shower and put on some untorn clothes. Isn't it okay for you to not think about the upcoming conversation before then? You could really use some help not thinking about this. None of these other disturbances are disturbing enough to distract you into trying not to think about them instead. You---you almost want the homeless man at the bus-stop to try to grab you, so you could run home trying to not remember that. Wait, shit, you didn't just think---

Your head snaps around to look at the homeless man waiting at the bus-stop, even as you take a step away from him.

The old man in the torn coat doesn't seem to notice. He's singing to himself, softly under his breath, just the type of simple catchy tune that can get stuck in your head for hours.

"Do you know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
Do you know the muffin man who lives outside of time?
You don't know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
You forgot the muffin man outside of space and time.
The day is dead, the sky is black,
The sun is never coming back,
All that's left is the muffin man who lives outside your mind."

The light changes to green, and you accelerate the hell away from that bus-stop. You've got to remember to be more careful what you wish for.

6.7.a [HRM]: Rules of Order

The hotel receptionist put down his phone. "She's expecting you, head on in. I've unlocked the penthouse floor in the elevator."

"Thanks," said Charles Adan, and turned to head off towards the hotel elevator, keeping a careful eye out for any bumps, cracks, or level changes in the linoleum floor. Not that the Blithesome Tower Norville was in bad maintenance, for all its visible cheapness. And the cargo in the hand-luggage rolling beside him hadn't been marked as that fragile. But there was no reason to jostle the contents if he didn't have to… maybe he was just looking for something else to be nervous about right now.

The occasional butterfly fluttered in his stomach as the small, antiquated elevator slowly ground up to the highest floor. This job ought to be over quickly, since as a borrowed courier it wasn't Charles's duty to explain the delivery or sell more of it. After this, he'd head over to the motel he'd picked---at random, since he'd figured that would get him the best choice from the mating field's perspective. Just a cheap $37 spot that had coincidentally turned out to be 0.6 miles from Cinderella Sheen's home address. He'd check in, freshen up with a quick shower and change his clothes… and after that, Starry.

Okay, it wasn't just his stomach that was experiencing the occasional butterfly.

He remembered other images of Starry, to be sure. Romantic memories of Starry walking beside him through town. Scarier memories of Starry learning Dance Dance Revolution in less than a minute. But, go figure, the most vivid images in his mind involved Starry's naked, sweating body and her eagerness to put everything she could reach into her mouth… and then what came after that, memories that were too powerful, too wrong.

Charles wasn't sure how he was supposed to act around Starry now, in whatever bizarre phase their relationship now occupied. They were past first base, second base, third base, a stolen run through home plate, and onto some seventh-dimensional base unknown to all normal baseball that you reached after you finished apologizing for raping someone, turned down their initial request to join their harem, and had BDSM phone sex for a few days. He would need to play it by ear, he supposed.

Charles knocked on the door to room P2. Even the door to the penthouse suite looked small and plastic, in this small plastic hotel.

Nearly right away, as though someone had been impatiently waiting on his arrival, the hotel door flew open.

Behind was a lady in late fifties or early sixties of ambiguously brown descent, with a white streak through her black and possibly dyed hair. She was wearing dark blue tweed pants and a button-down dark blue blouse, beneath an open black sweater that hung down to below her hips. The combined effect was that of a dignified, scholarly appearance. It dispelled most of the slight anxiety in the back of Charles's mind---never completely absent, on the rare occasions he carried cargo he wasn't allowed to know about---that he was being used as a drug mule.

"I have a rush refrigerated shipment from Biotinker," Charles said out loud. "Can I have your name, please?"

"Andi Quinn," said the older woman. Her eyes flickered to the luggage at his side, back to his face, back at the luggage again. "Step in, please."

Her voice and her British-ish accent tickled a sense of familiarity, though Charles didn't think he'd seen this woman before. Was Andi Quinn a celebrity, had he heard her on the radio or a podcast while driving…? No, he was asking the wrong question. Had something mating-field-improbable happened?

Charles stepped through the weak plastic-looking door, into the most luxurious suite at the top of the Blithesome Tower. Not very luxurious, in this case. The central room was a living room slash dining room slash kitchenette, with two attached bedrooms. Unthemed eighties-kitsch paintings decorated the wall, the floor was done in ordinary gray-white carpet. The Norville Arms-Marriott this was not.

The older woman stepped past him, and carefully shut the door.

"I'll need to examine the shipment," she said. "If you could put it down on the table there, instead? Carefully, please, and with the top side up."

(Charles always reminded himself, every time he ran into customersplaining, that not every customer had good experiences with previous deliveries. Sure, Charles had been doing this for a while. Sure, he knew to be careful and which end was up. But she didn't know he knew.)

Charles lifted the luggage in his hand, since the floor here was carpeted, and stepped over to the low rectangular table in front of the living-room sofa. He unzipped the luggage, and (carefully) took out the portable medical cooler inside. Set it on the table (carefully) with the up side up.

Ms. Quinn's eyes never left the cooler once it was out.

The older woman stepped forward, turned the cooler so he couldn't see, and opened the lid to check whatever was inside… okay, now Charles was again slightly nervous about whether he'd been carrying legal goods. Though today of all days, it wasn't likely that anything would happen that got in the way of his mating with Starry later. "Everything okay?" he said aloud.

"All the items seem to be present and the cooler is set to the correct temperature," the lady said. "Do you have the manifest?"

Charles silently handed her an unmarked legal-size envelope, and the old lady drew out a thick sheaf of papers---angled so he couldn't see---and began flipping through them. "Any difficulties or unusual happenings on the trip?" she said. "Please do mention anything whatsoever that comes to mind, even if it doesn't seem significant to you."

"Can't think of anything, ma'am," Charles said. Something about her tone, her turns of phrase, was again tickling at his memory. Had he run into her on his last sales/delivery in Norville, or maybe the one before that?

The lady looked up at him, frowning. "Have we met, by any chance?" she said. "Your voice seems familiar."

Charles shrugged, and reached into the luggage for the signature papers. "Might've bumped into you last time I went through Norville," he said.

"No, I don't think that would be it," the lady said. "What's your name?"

They were interrupted by the sound of a hotel card entering the door, and then the door swung open and a gorgeous freckled redhead stepped into the room, her curves obvious through the neck-to-toe coverage of her black blouse, black pants, black boots, and black suede gloves. She was carrying brown-paper grocery bags, three in each hand.

Charles remembered that face. He'd seen it repeated twice over, in an elevator, on a certain night he'd never forget.

Yeah, this was a mating-field improbability, all right.

The redhead's eyes flickered over him without recognition. That probably made her Danni Arcadia, the one who'd been drunk out of her mind Monday night. Danni might still recognize his voice, if he spoke. She'd heard enough of it over the phone, back when he was trying to monitor Starry's safety while she was being tickled.

Charles finshed drawing the clipboard from his luggage, and presented it to Ms. Quinn to sign. His mind was thinking very fast. He couldn't win a fight against Starry's mating field, it operated on interstellar scales. Whatever was meant to happen here, would happen. But the mating field shouldn't want to delay him while he was already on his way to Starry to mate with her… right? Maybe Danni Arcadia had just been placed here to deliver some tips to him on how to pleasure Starry. That would be the optimistic version of this story.

Charles wasn't going along with the pessimistic version without a fight. He wasn't into being nonconsensually tickled. Something buried and violent inside him was even less happy with that thought, and he didn't feel like poking it inside its den.

"Here you go," said Ms. Quinn, handing the clipboard back to him. "And, I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

Charles glanced from her to Danni Arcadia, measuring his options. He could give a fake name, but trying to resist Starry's mating field might not make his own life any easier. "Charles," he said, making eye contact with Danni as he did. "You'd be Danni?"

"Charles," Danni said, taking a step backwards and looking openly shocked. On her it looked both cute, and dangerous. "What the hell are you doing here? Now?"

"Charles?" said…

Right. That was where he knew that voice. It had sounded different over the phone.

Charles turned to look at Sonia Turk. She did not look at all like he'd imagined, in the back of his mind the previous night. His mind had pictured a younger and more reckless biology professor, wearing much less staid clothing befitting of her mad scientist status.

Then Charles looked at the table, now bearing the weight of the most powerful and terrifying material in the entire Earth short of Starry herself.

"What are you doing here?" Sonia Turk said, her voice tight and dangerous like a crossbow's string stretching backward in preparation to fire. "Where's the real courier? Danni, close the door."

Charles raised his hands. "Coincidence," Charles said mildly. "Well, not coincidence, improbability. It's an aspect of Starry's power. I had no idea what I was carrying until I got here."

"How the hell could that happen!" said Sonia. The older woman looked like she wanted to step back from him, but didn't dare move any further from the cooler on the table.

Charles shrugged. "I happen to be a delivery guy and Biotinker happens to be the company next door and they happened to be out of couriers last night. Odds couldn't be much worse than a million to one."

"You happen to already be a delivery guy working next door to the only company that could synthesize the Cure this fast?" said Sonia Turk. "From specifications we created last night? That's just who Starry's boyfriend already was?"

"I---" Charles said, then shut his mouth in disorientation as the question caught up with him. Yes, Biotinker had been the company next door ever since the day he'd started work at Precision Mechanical Goods… which was over a year before the alien had come to Earth last Sunday. The fuck? How could Starry's mating field have arranged this coincidence?

"Did you tamper with the shipment?" Sonia said sternly, in the voice of a schoolteacher asking a boy if he'd cheated on his homework. "Because if you did, it could easily kill me. By melting me into a pile of goo. That catches on fire."

"Why would he do that?" Danni said, sounding shocked. "Charles seemed like a nice guy when he was, uh, talking on the phone with me and Tammi that one time." The pretty redhead cast a nervous glance in his direction.

"I tried to talk Sonia into taking a week to think things over more carefully before trying to release alien biotechnology to the general public," Charles said, keeping his voice neutral. "Sonia considers this to be morally equivalent to murder."

"Seven hundred thousand murders to be precise," the older lady said. Now she sounded tired. "But we need not continue that argument, if you're not planning to murder me in the name of preserving the Earth's default future. Or whatever it is that you believe is worth hundreds of millions of other deaths besides my own."

"Our future can't be preserved, apparently," Charles said, hearing the exhaustion in his own voice. "Starry told me so afterwards. Whatever future humanity would have made for itself---is already gone." And an even more terrifying truth, that if he'd succeeded in talking Sonia out of her mad act, all the insufficiently sexy people on Earth might have faded out of existence instead… except that it had been impossible in the first place to change this course, with all the cosmic power of Starry's mating field driving it.

"Neither of us knew that future in the first place," Sonia said in clipped tones. "If you're so interested in the wisdom of eighteenth-century politicians, ask what they would have imagined the twenty-first century to be like. Whatever they imagined, here we are instead. And nothing of value was lost. The future is a phantom, a hobgoblin, imagined but unseeable. All that truly exists are the sick to be healed and the lives to be saved. Once you've done your best at that, whatever results is the future---"

"Hey," Danni said nervously. The woman was swiveling her head back and forth between Sonia and himself, looking anxious. "Hey, uh, we should all get along, right? I mean---we have a friend in common."

Sonia looked at the pretty redhead, as did Charles.

"We should, uh," Danni said. "We should maybe take this chance to talk? Get to know each other in a friendly way? That seems like a nice idea?"

Charles and Sonia looked back at each other again.

Sonia tilted her head, seeming to study him in a new light. "Hum. Starry did imply she had designs on a relationship with all of us together." Half of her face scrunched up in a skeptical expression. "I suppose if I was young again, I'd do him."

"What?" Charles blurted out.

"Put this by the wall where I can plug it in?" Sonia said, gesturing to the cooler. "I'll sign the delivery papers."

With the world's scariest medical cooler safely plugged in and recharging, Charles was now sitting on a chair he'd carried over, after declining the sofa. He'd told Sonia that it wasn't about her, it was because he didn't want to sit within arm's reach of Danni. Danni had shot him a look, and Charles had shot her a look right back, and Sonia had accepted all this with a quizzical expression.

Sonia said she was avoiding alcohol for fear of unknown interactions, so Danni poured three measures of Powerthirst Mauve into cups taken from a kitchen cabinet. Each of them took one, a clear cylindrical glass filled with a pale purple liquid.

"Now," said Sonia, "although Starry is absent, as is Tammi, I believe the three of us together constitute a quorum." Sonia tapped her glass on the living-room table, knocking it like a gavel. "I call this meeting of Starry's harem to order. Cheers."

The three of them dutifully clinked their glasses together, and drank from them, though Charles only took a sip. He didn't trust 100% that the serial tickler hadn't spiked it with something. Powerthirst Mauve tasted… like purple-flavored electrolytes, pretty much. Not terrible, but meh didn't seem like a strong enough word unless you repeated it half a dozen times.

"Are we voting on something?" said Danni, after she'd swallowed down her own dose of purple. "Because we can wait until Tammi gets here with the ice, and Charles has Starry's phone number if we need to call her."

"There's no need for that," said Sonia. "We already constitute a quorum of the harem, and inviting anyone else to our meeting would just dilute our own voting power."

"Wait," Danni said. "You mean, while Tammi's not here, we can vote to say that she always has to… uh, be on the bottom?"

"That's exactly what I mean to say," Sonia said, smiling. "You catch on quickly. It would be a shame to waste this opportunity for the three of us to lay down some ground rules."

Charles raised skeptical eyebrows at the other two. "Not sure I'm going along with this," he said mildly.

"Too bad for you, then," Sonia said primly. "We only need a majority of the quorum once it's convened. Two votes and it's law."

"Oh, nice," said Danni, who was now giving Charles a more predatory look.

Charles forced down the part of himself that wanted to… quash… that look. "I can leave at any time, and you won't have a quorum," he said, still mildly.

"The meeting has been called to order and continues until it votes to adjourn," Sonia said. "You'll still be part of the quorum, you just won't be here."

Charles rolled his eyes. "Also, I wouldn't bet money on us still being a majority of Starry's mates. Didn't Starry say something earlier, on the phone Thursday afternoon, about her standing next to a Mormon kid? You think he's still a virgin?"

"Oh, that boy," said the lady professor, reclining back on the sofa and crossing her dark-blue-tweed-clad legs in a way that made her look surprisingly urbane when wearing a black open sweater and holding a glass of purple liquid. "I remember him. Blake, I think it was. He was cute, but surely that's not the same as Starry having long-term plans for him? As best I can recall looking back, he didn't seem to know her nature."

"Starry told me Tuesday night that she'd had her nipples pinched by an attractive girl she had complicated feelings about," said Charles. "That puts me on Monday, that girl on Tuesday, the Arcadias on Wednesday, and you on Thursday. Now it's Friday, and we have no idea what she's been doing all day long."

"I move to designate Charles as out of order and have his statement stricken from the minutes," said Sonia. "Danni, say 'I second the motion.'"

"I second the motion," Danni promptly said.

"I vote yes," said Sonia.

"I vote yes," Danni echoed.

"Motion passes," said Sonia. She lifted her head in a regal posture, and sipped another draught from her delicately held glass of Powerthirst Mauve. "The gentleman's statement has been stricken from the minutes and this meeting remains a quorum of Starry's harem."

"Point of order," Charles said. He knew he was playing the straight man against the other two, but he couldn't help himself, they were being silly. "Have we, in fact, decided that our special club runs on Robert's Rules of Order?"

"I can imagine worse ways to organize harems," Sonia said. "Many of which I have no intention of trying out personally. Besides, composing the bylaws for Starry's harem is more than a one-day job, considering our potential influence on the multiverse. We'll need some rules to follow while we think about a permanent constitution."

Charles was aware that his mouth had dropped open.

"Scuse me," Danni said. "Can somebody tee-ehl-dee-ahr what Robert's Rules of Order are? I mean, I've heard the phrase before but that's about all I know."

"They're---" Charles began.

"I'll keep it brief," said Sonia. She straightened out her expression, and her voice took on a lecturing, professorial tone. "In the early seventeenth century, a Benedictine monk named Robert Greenshire began producing what he hoped would be a comprehensive list of rules for how Christian scholars should conduct debates. He spent nearly five decades writing out hundreds of rules per day, and by his death had produced eight hundred and sixteen thousand handwritten pages. Due to a clerical error the books were officially adopted as the rules of debate by the first Parliament of Great Britain after the unification of 1707, and then nobody could find any instructions in the text for how to change them back. Eventually, a five-year effort by hundreds of clerks produced an abridged and secularized summary that we today call Robert's Rules of Order. Since no living soul has read the summary either, the de facto practice is that meetings are governed by whatever somebody claims is in Robert's Rules. If somebody else doesn't like that supposed rule, they can challenge it. If the originator doesn't back down, they engage in a trial of endurance where both parties pretend to try to look up support for their position. If neither party concedes after ten minutes, the matter is referred to a self-appointed parliamentarian, who tells the first two people they're both wrong and makes up a third version of the rule."

"Wow," said Danni with her eyes wide in amazement. "That sounded so reasonable, I believed it without checking Wikipedia."

"That's how events went in my parallel Earth," said Sonia, tilting her head to give Danni an august look. "Don't blame me if your Earth has a different history."

Parallel Earth? thought Charles, not sure whether Sonia had misinterpreted something Starry had done or if, God help them all, Sonia Turk was from a parallel Earth. Charles made a mental note to ask Starry about that later---he didn't want to ask now and risk giving away more information than Starry had intended.

Charles took another sip of purple meh from his glass, wishing it actually contained alcohol. "You know," Charles said, "my father was a very serious man. And then there was my mother, who thought all the things Dad took so seriously were a big joke. I have no idea how those two ended up married. Anyways, when I was a kid, Mom always used to tell me that I was violating Robert's Rules of Order any time I tried to argue with her. If I protested, she pointed at this enormous book on one of Dad's bookshelves and told me to go read it myself if I didn't believe her. Well, little Charlie tried more than once to read it, but the book was above his reading level and so dull that he never made it past page ten. It took me until I was eleven years old to realize Mom was just making up rules on the spot. I confronted Mom about it. I was pretty angry, actually. I yelled at her for lying. Mom laughed, and said that since she'd never read the book herself, she had no way of knowing that all her rules weren't in it. I went to Dad after that. I was crying. Dad told me that he'd explain to Mom why what she'd done was wrong, but that I'd learned a valuable lesson myself about why it was important to know Robert's Rules of Order."

"Shit," Danni said. "And I thought I had a traumatic childhood."

Sonia was smiling. "Your mother sounds like an interesting fellow," she said. "Is she someone I might enjoy seducing after she and I have rejuvenated?"

Charles put his glass down on the table. It was literally the most horrifying idea he'd ever heard spoken out loud in the last sixteen hours. "Danni," he said, "you grab a pad of paper, I'll get a pen. We're going to start the official list of Things Sonia Turk Is Not Allowed To Do, and vote it into harem law."

"On it," Danni said, rising from the sofa and going over to a desk up against one wall to grab a hotel paper pad, even as Sonia seemed to be trying to formulate some type of protest, and Charles went over to his luggage and got the pen meant for delivery signatures.

6.7.b [HRM]: Without Ceremony

The bathtub of water they were all standing in front of was warm, body temperature, though in the back of Charles's mind he'd somehow imagined that the bathtub would be full of ice water from the start. Of course that made no sense, as he'd realized once he'd thought. There was no reason for the patient to go through that. The patient would lower herself into comfortable water at first. The twin attendants would monitor her body temperature, and add cold water, and then ice, as her temperature rose.

Are you really going to do this? Charles thought.

He hadn't planned to stay here long enough to witness the start of Sonia's mad-science experiment on herself, but it hadn't been that long. Tammi had walked in the door carrying bags of ice and Sonia had stopped talking in mid-sentence, not bothering to say that she moved to adjourn. Danni and Charles had gone downstairs to Sonia's car to pick up the remaining bags of ice, and Sonia had started drawing water into the master bedroom's bathtub. That simple.

Sonia Turk was taking off her scholarly dark-blue clothing, and dropping it on the floor without fuss. She'd made no effort to ask Charles to leave, or to conceal her body from him.

It felt like a funeral. Like watching her die. In twenty-four hours this old lady wouldn't exist any more.

The same mind inside, Charles understood that part. He hadn't failed out of Futurism 101. But somehow the transformation from 61-year-old professor to a girl looking much younger felt like… like something was being left behind. Like it couldn't not be left behind. Something would be lost, a fragment of identity.

Are you really going to do this? Charles thought, but didn't say. He'd had to swallow, more than once, past the lump in his throat.

Sonia Turk was naked. Charles thought, but didn't say, that he didn't think her body was so terrible as to need to be thrown away.

He didn't say it because he could imagine all the things that Sonia might snap back at him. Whether Charles thought her body was as lovely as Starry's body. Whether he'd have gone home with her in a bar, if she'd tried to pick him up like this. He didn't say it because maybe Sonia looked at herself in the mirror every day and saw a young girl trapped in a prison shell of old woman. Charles wasn't so lacking in empathy that he couldn't see that point of view. He understood the way of thinking which said that it was Sonia's own prerogative to see whatever she saw in her own mirror, and comport her attire and her flesh as she pleased, and to hell with whether he thought she looked fine as a dignified old lady. Charles thought that he understood that viewpoint. He thought that he believed that viewpoint, if contagious alien biotechnology wasn't involved. It still felt like he was attending a dignified old lady's funeral, keeping his mouth shut because arguments at a funeral were out of place.

Sonia sat down in the bathtub, the water sloshing around her aged skin.

This was the way the Earth was going. This had been ordained, if not by God, then by something else that mortals couldn't win against.

From the living room came the sound of the medical cooler opening, and then closing again.

Are you really going to do this? Charles thought for the last time.

Sonia Turk didn't answer his silent thought in words, but she was looking at him as if reading his mind or just his expression. She held her eyes on his, and her back straight, an answer in its own way, as she held her left arm still and let Tammi Arcadia press down the plunger of the hypodermic needle.

And that was that.

That was done.

The world had ended.

There should have been more ceremony for it.

"I guess I'll go," Charles said, when nobody seemed to be saying anything. "Good luck with your transformation, Sonia. I honestly mean that."

The naked old lady in the bathtub smiled at him. "I honestly believe you," she said. "Good luck of your own, so long as nobody dies for it."

"Same to you," Charles said, and turned away and walked out the penthouse door.

That was that.

Then Charles realized he'd left his hand luggage behind, along with the signed delivery papers, and he had to knock on the door and ask to be let back in.

Maybe they'd all lie about this afterward and make up something appropriate to put in the history books, retell the story the way it should have happened.

The Blithesome Tower Norville faded away in his Vic's rearview mirror, the blocky brutalist structure growing smaller and less visible as Charles drove on toward his next destination. Then he turned left at a stop sign, and it was gone.

6.8.1 [CA]: Almost As Bad

You look at yourself in the mirror of your bedroom. This is the most flattering of the "normal" outfits you bought at Goodwill, simple but nice. You're smiling despite yourself to see it. You're still not used to looking good in anything.

Spoiler: Pretty

Though now that you think about it, this dress was probably meant to go with pants? Well, you don't think it's anything a normal human girlfriend wouldn't wear to a date in Reality Classic. ERO 5 at the most.

Should you be wearing panties underneath? No, that's going too far. Even if you decide to have a… serious discussion… you don't want to come across as that much of a not slut.

Your smile fades.

It's time. You have a choice to make that you can't put off any longer.

You already tried thinking that maybe on second thought you couldn't do this right now because dinner would probably be ready soon and there wouldn't be enough time so it would have to wait for after dinner instead.

Then your phone vibrated, wherever it was, and it was Mom. It was Mom texting you to say that while shopping for dinner ingredients she miraculously ran into an old college friend she hadn't seen for twenty years, and they were going to Starbucks to catch up. The next texts said that she knew perfectly well why that was happening, and for you to have fun with Charles, since apparently you just couldn't manage to wait for dinner, honey.

So now you don't have any excuses left.

You have to decide.

Ever since Thursday night, you've known---not that you're going to do this, but that not doing it is going to get worse and worse. Thursday night, after you told Charles about your "mating field" wanting Earth to be a nicer place for romance, and Charles thought that it was all his fault, because he'd sealed the alien part of your consciousness and destroyed the only knowledge that could have saved the Earth.

You'd lied to Charles about why you hadn't taken his side against Sonia. You said that you'd done it to make sure the unsexy people didn't just go away, which you only thought of afterwards. You'd told yourself that you needed Charles's emotional support, and since you were a very important person like Sonia said, that must make it okay to lie---

You know that's not healthy. You know that's not healthy. You're not stupid, you know that's dysfunctional and a terrible warning sign and very very bad.

Every other relationship you have is healthier than your relationship with Charles. Not more fun, but healthier. Tammi and Danni think you're psychic, fine, that's part of the truth, at least they don't mistakenly think they raped you much harder than they actually raped you. Professor Turk thinks you're connecting parallel Earths, fine, that's her own theory and maybe not a totally wrong view into metaphysical bullshit, at least you didn't tell her you were an alien. You told the Scoobies right up front that you were hiding things. You did all that because you learned your lesson from what happened with Charles. But when you were with Charles you hadn't learned that lesson yet, and you made… a mistake. You made a mistake and you want to travel back in time and do it over except you're not wishing for that you're definitely not wishing for that you don't want to erase the most magical night of your life from existence. You have to fix your mistakes afterwards, like normal people do, and not try to edit them out of reality. It would undo this version of Charles too.

But every time you try to imagine telling Charles the truth---that you never were an alien, that you were hoping from the beginning that he'd take you without asking, that his awful choice didn't really seal your power---that you lied to him and led him on and lured him to commit rape, for no better reason than that you were having so much selfish fun you didn't stop to think about his feelings---you can't imagine it. Your thought process stops there and refuses to look at what comes afterwards.

It feels like literally the only hope you have that Charles won't just dump you, literally the only reason that the truth coming out might not end the Charles Adan route, is because the Erogame wouldn't have steered you to somebody who'd hate you forever after learning.

You---you don't think you'd even consider telling Charles the truth, if not for that hope. You're not that good of a person. You're not that nice, that wise, or that brave.

And you're not sure that telling Charles about the Erogame counts as part of the Erogame. That's the awful fear stil clutching at you. Any inevitable in-game revelation you'd expect to work out okay. Trying to take Charles backstage, like you took Mom backstage, that might involve something above the normal Erogame that the normal Erogame doesn't account for.

This could actually go wrong.

And if some of your guesses about what happened with Mom are true, or even if you just have a hidden game stat for Ability To Use Love To Defy The Rules… you probably have to want Charles to know about the Erogame for you to be able to tell him. Otherwise Charles will get a glazed look in his eyes, like that motel manager, or like Mom the first time she saw you thinner.

And then you'll have a wonderful excuse to use later, when you love Charles more. I'm so sorry, Charles, the Erogame wouldn't let me tell you the truth before, I tried, really I did.

It's a terribly tempting thought. Only that outcome won't fix your relationship. Not today. It's the cheap way out of the next hour, not the road that leads to you and Charles living happily ever after.

Convincing yourself that you don't want the cheap way out is hard. You feel like around 40.2% of you wants to just not tell Charles at all. Is 59.8% wanting to tell him enough to satisfy the Erogame, or whatever is above it, to let Charles come backstage?

You stare at your short blue dress and recently sexy body in the mirror, and breathe deeply. You're trembling. You're scared. You don't want to do this.

It's almost as bad as when you willingly walked into your rape this morning.

Almost as bad.

Not as bad.

Not worse.

You survived this morning and, even though it's a cliche, you now have more confidence in… surviving, you guess.

In the worst-case scenario, Charles tells you what he thinks of you now, you don't need to think of the exact words, you don't need to think about that part it would be cruel to yourself, but the worst case is, Charles breaks up with you.

And you meet somebody else and fall in love and live happily ever after with them instead.

It's horrible even to think about. But that's the worst that can happen. And it's not that much worse than having stabs of guilt go through you each time you think about Charles.

You could handle it if Charles breaks up with you. You didn't meet him that long ago. You aren't that dependent on him. You aren't that much in love, not yet. And you would probably be very very very very smart to get your horrible confession done before things get that far.

Things probably won't go that badly. They didn't go that badly this morning.

Except that you might be about to shatter whatever rails the Erogame uses to make sure romantic routes don't go that badly---

No. No, it isn't only the Erogame that makes things not go as badly as they possibly can. There's also Charles, who can make his own decisions, and who wasn't put on Earth to make your own life as horrible as possible. Realistically, he won't dump you on the spot, he'll…

It's easier to imagine Charles just dumping you, and you just walking away. If Charles doesn't dump you, you'll have to stay in the room. You'll have to go on being there. You'll have to watch his reaction to your confession and hear what he'll say back. You… you honestly can't imagine what Charles will say, if he doesn't dump you. You'd dump you.

But… but you wouldn't dump Charles if he'd done something equally bad. He'd be in for a lot of glaring and restitution, but you wouldn't dump him. Maybe he feels the same way about you.

This has to be done someday. You weren't planning to live happily forever after with Charles while still living a lie. Fuck your life, it's going to fall apart as soon as he hears about you wearing a different hairstyle, if the Erogame doesn't actively prevent that. So the sooner you get it over with…

You can't do this.

Except you can.

Feeling like you're making an appointment to see the firing squad, you turn away from the mirror, take your phone out from wherever, and open up the messenger app to text Charles.

<< Hi, Charles.​

Zero seconds later, Charles's side shows that he's started typing.

> Hi, Cindy.
> Nice timing as usual.
> I just got out of the shower, dried myself off, and picked up my phone wondering if you were about to text me to say when dinner was happening.
> I figured you might say 10 minutes, since that's how long it would take me to get dressed and go over to your house from here.
> Or I figured you might say dinner was in a couple of hours, if you wanted to come here and catch up on things first, maybe mate a bit.
> Did I guess right? Which one is it?​

He knows you and your improbability field so well, doesn't he.

<< Second one. Uh, but not mating right away, if that's okay. I've got something I want to talk about.

> Sounds ominous. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much is the world ending this time?

<< It's more of a relationship thing.

> I realize I'm being a stereotypical guy here, but that's only slightly less ominous.​

You take a deep breath. Your fingers are actually shaking as you text.

<< I'm not upset with you or anything.
<< I'm going to try​

Your fingers stop typing.

You have to have faith. You have to have faith that there'll be some way to apologize, some penance that will satisfy Charles, some way to get through this, it probably won't be nearly as bad as you're imagining just like the rape wasn't as bad as you imagined.

Or, alternatively, faith that you can survive him dumping you. Not "because the Erogame said so" but because Cinderella Sheen is stronger now.

<< I'm going to try revealing the truth to you, and pray to God or God's boss that your mind is allowed to understand.

> Oh.
> Okay.
> Glad it's nothing awful.
> I mean, I genuinely felt relieved to hear you weren't upset with me and it's just some terrifying cosmic revelation.
> Come on over then. It's the Valentine Motel on 1888 Redwood Ave, room 7 on the far left.​

1888 Redwood… that's six blocks from your house. You know there isn't a motel there, but whatever.

<< That's conveniently close by!
<< I should get there fast, even if I don't bend time.​

You're heading down the stairs, out the door, down the street. The drizzle is much lighter now, just a mist.

The phone shows that Charles is still typing, so you don't put it away to nowhere just yet. He's a heck of a fast typer compared to you, even using a laptop.

> Yeah, the Valentine Motel is a nice place. I randomly clicked on an online offer, figuring that would get me the best option from your mating field's standpoint.
> So far the Valentine Motel seems unusually upscale for an 8-room setup on the slow side of town.
> My room isn't that large and the kitchenette isn't much, but it's got a king-size bed, and the bathroom has that jacuzzi I was regretting missing last time.
> Literally an exact copy of that jacuzzi, so far as I can tell.
> I think it's a niche spot for high-end sex workers, judging by the dress code of the other renters.
> The management said they'd honor the online price of $37 even if it was missing a digit, and bug the online aggregator to make them whole, since the computer problem wasn't on their end.
> And the whole place happens to be 0.6 miles away from the address you gave me for your house.
> The house where Cinderella Sheen has been living with her mother since well before the alien got to Earth, unless I'm misunderstanding something.
> Kind of hard to see how your mating field could arrange that particular improbability.
> I did ask the motel folks if they'd happened to set up their place since Sunday, or install any new jacuzzis recently.
> Mr. Gabe Valentine gave me a startled look and said no, he'd been there for fourteen years.
> By the way, for as long as I've been working at my current job, there's been a startup named Biotinker a couple of doors down the street from us.
> Seems it's also the only company anywhere that can synthesize large protein shells containing long strands of DNA, and do the whole job in six hours.
> Guess what my rush Norville delivery turned out to be!
> Are you surprised? I was surprised.
> Not as surprised as Sonia was when I showed up at her hotel room, but still.
> She and Tammi and Danni all send you their regards.
> Is Sonia actually from a different parallel Earth than the Arcadias? Or did one of them just misunderstand something? I didn't want to ask them questions in case I gave something away.
> More importantly, how in the name of the living fuck did your mating field arrange for me to have been working next to Biotinker since more than a year earlier?
> I'm sorry, that sounded like I was angry with you, and I'm not, it's just incredibly disturbing.
> That seems less like improbability, and more like rearranging history like it's made out of lego blocks.
> You know, never mind, I shouldn't be texting you all this if you're about to come over anyways. You don't have to text back.
> Just, if I get input into your choice of cosmic revelations, I'd like one that causes that particular part to make sense?​

You walk faster. Somehow you can't bring yourself to run. You'll use Slack so Charles doesn't end up waiting.

6.8.b [CA]: Confession

The Valentine Motel could… plausibly have been on Redwood Street without you noticing on the couple of occasions you've walked past. The entrance is unobtrusive and looks much like any other small apartment complex. Of course that's not what happened, and there's no point in pretending otherwise.

The man manning the front desk of the motel gives you a once-over as you walk past, nodding as if recognizing you, though you don't see why he would. Maybe your blue minidress makes you look like a proper upscale sex worker? Two men, one buff man in a thin shirt, and a weedier man in an expensive suit, are visible before the counter. Neither glances at you as you walk by, and you're reminded that upscale gay prostitutes are also a thing.

Nobody stops you as you hurry over to Room 7 on the far left. Your hair is set to Earth's Tones once more, because Charles doesn't know you can still do Coals Relighted… so long as he doesn't look up your brief TV appearance on Youtube, so long as Sonia and the Arcadias didn't mention your hairstyle in front of him… this situation is not stable, it's not stable, you want Charles to know the truth. You really do want that. Got that, Erogame? That's what you want, for there to be a confession and some unimaginable reaction from Charles and…

You don't know if you can do this. This is going to be awful and it's just that you want even less for things to go on the way they have. You have to keep reminding yourself of that, that you want the alternative even less. Charles's feelings will be hurt, rightly so, but there'll be some way to make up for it that will satisfy him and ease your own guilt, and then things will be great again and you won't feel terrible anymore and your relationship will be wonderful and fun forever afterwards. So you actually do want to tell him about the Erogame. That's what you want.

You lift up your hand towards the door to Room 7.

You don't pray to the Erogame for Charles to not hate you. The Erogame might listen, and that would be wrong. This was your sin, and it's Charles's job to decide what the consequences are.

You take a deep breath, then another deep breath, and another, glad that the outdoor mist gives you an excuse for your forehead to be wet with somethig other than sweat.

You remember to invoke Slack to arrive when Charles is ready for you. Just as Charles is looking towards the door wondering if you're about to knock.

You knock on the door.

The door opens instantly, like he was waiting right there for you to knock. And there he is, Charles Adan, wearing that slight smile of his and a dark blue dress shirt over navy slacks and black leather shoes. He dressed up for you this time. But right now all you can focus on are those dark brown eyes, and his appreciative expression as he looks you up and down.

You manage to keep control for long enough to step in and let Charles shut the door, before you collapse onto his shoulder and---and manage not to start crying. You can feel the arm muscles through his shirt, and the chest muscles, more prominent in your senses with your eyes closed. You can tell that he used a dash of cologne.

You needed this, being in Charles's arms. You needed this and you should have had it much earlier, even if that meant buying a plane ticket and flying to Nevada just to be in his arms for a day. It's only been since Monday night, but it feels like a year and two months and one day.

"Are you okay?" says Charles's voice, almost in your ear, low and manly and slightly Southern, sounding different than it does over the phone.

You shouldn't have left.

The words are clear in your mind and it takes work not to say them out loud. That's not fair to him, and it's not what you came here to say.

"I'm---I'm sorry," Charles says, after you still haven't said anything. "I'm starting to think I shouldn't have left."

You force yourself to unwrap your arms from Charles, and take a step back so you can look him in the face. Charles looks concerned.

"Charles, I," it's hard to force out these words, very hard, harder still to keep wanting this to work, "Charles, I, I need to tell you about the,"

You close your eyes and remember Charles sounding horrified and nauseated because he thought he destroyed your alien knowledge, Charles saying that it was all his fault.

"Er-erogame," you force yourself to say, and open your eyes.

Charles is giving you a puzzled look, and you feel your heart start to sink along with an awful relief. No, no it's not that, you just said an inscrutable word with no other explanation, of course Charles looks puzzled.

Your voice sounds like a robot, a stressed-out robot, as you force yourself to keep on talking. "Charles, I, what happened on Sunday afternoon was, I was just a human being who saw a screen of pink-violet text showing my status, and it had six attributes, BOD, LST, SED, FUK, PRV, and ERO. Do you understand?"

"No…" Charles says. His expression looks confused, and like he wants to apologize for not understanding.

And you still don't know if he doesn't understand because you're talking gibberish or because he's hearing gibberish. This isn't coming out right. You're too stressed to make sense.

You consciously relax your hands on Charles's shoulders, you don't want to hurt him. You stare into his eyes, will him to understand, please Erogame, you need the real Charles standing beside the real you, not just for the Charles route to continue.

"I'm inside a game," you force your throat and lips to say. "That's what happened to me. The Erogame. I don't know where it comes from, but it makes me be inside a game, like Skyrim or a million other computer games or---that's what actually happened to me on Sunday afternoon. I have experience points. I get levels. Charles is any of this making it through to you, not whether it makes sense I know it sounds ridiculous I need to know if my words are reaching you at all!" Your voice is wobbling.

Stay calm, an overly calm paternal voice repeated in the back of Charles's mind, so habitual by now that he hardly heard it consciously. Framed by a recently-shut red-painted door, a pretty girl in a skimpy blue dress was looking at him with tight lips and trembling shoulders. Starry was obviously forcing herself to do something she found very hard both physically and emotionally.

Charles really, really wished he could have told her that he understood.

"I… feel like I heard all the words, but I didn't understand the actual sentences?" Charles said.

"What did you hear me say?" Starry said desperately. "Did you get anything?"

"I heard…" Charles said. He wasn't sure how much he was supposed to understand, if there was some cosmic revelation he was supposed to have gotten from listening to Starry's voice. "It's not like I couldn't hear you when you said the word 'levels', I just don't… if there's a cosmic secret here I'm not getting it?"

"That's okay!" Starry said. Her hands' grip on his arms was starting to bunch up the shirt's fabric again. "I know it's hard to understand, I don't understand either, but, you know how characters in computer games get experience and level up? That happens to me. Especially when I have sex. Charles, do you understand that one thing I just said, just now? What did you hear me say, in your own words?"

"Uh," Charles said, it sounded straightforward but it didn't sound like a cosmic secret either, which was making him question whether he was really hearing what Starry was really saying. "It sounded to me like you said that you get more powerful when you have sex, the same way characters in computer games get more powerful when they kill monsters or whatever…?"

"That---" Starry said. "That's right, only, no, that's not enough, that could be true about Starry too, not just Cindy! Charles, I get stronger exactly like---"

Charles listened as carefully as he could, while Starry said… well, it sounded to him like the same thing she said before, with some added details.

"You're saying you get more lustful, more perverted, prettier, better at having sex, the more practice you get," Charles said. "And you can quantify that, put numbers on it."

Starry's face was starting to screw up, "crumple" was the word that came to mind. Charles felt bad, he seemed to be making his girl cry which he deeply knew was a no-no, but he didn't know what other option he had. "Starry, I---" Charles said. "Starry, am I supposed to be hearing something different, is there a cosmic secret in what you're saying, should I be trying to interpret it metaphorically---"

"I'm not saying it right!" Starry said. Her voice was going up in desperation. "You're not taking it literally enough! This is the truth about what happened to me on Sunday afternoon! It's not an alien from space, or, I mean, maybe it is an alien from space, I don't know where it came from, it's something that made my life be like an erogame!"

"Your mating field makes your life resemble the plot of the erotic visual novels you used to read," Charles said. He could understand that part, or he thought he did.

"No! Not resembles! I mean literally!" Starry looked like she was nearing tears.

"I…" Charles said helplessly. "I don't understand what you mean by literally."

"I mean literally literally!"

"I'm," Charles said. He felt a lump in his throat. What he had to say was very clearly not what the desperate, vulnerable girl wanted to hear. "Starry, I feel like I'm looking at a math formula where I can read all the symbols but I don't know what f, or x, or y are talking about. You---you might need to go way back and start over and explain the Cosmic Secrets for Dummies version."

"Is that because what I'm saying makes sense but sounds ridiculous or is it because I'm not getting through at all?" Moisture was gathering at the corners of Starry's eyes.

"I," said Charles, "I don't think I understood what you meant well enough to call it ridiculous so I think it's probably the second---Starry, I'm so sorry, if there's something I should be doing differently---"

"There isn't," Starry said in a wavering tone. "This is on me. I didn't want enough for you to know the truth---no, I'll give it one last try---"

Starry took a deep breath, and said, "Literally, not metaphorically, my life is an erogame. I have a status screen that I can see when I say 'Status.' Did that---did that---"

Charles, feeling increasingly awful, shook his head. "Even if you tell me to take that literally, I don't know what it literally means," Charles said. "I'm really sorry."

"I---I still can't tell if I'm just---on Sunday when I got my superpowers, I saw a screen with pink-violet letters. What was the color of the letters that I saw?"

"Ah..." Charles said. He felt like he'd been asked the color of the truth, right after being told the color of the truth and failing to hear it, and he had to remind himself again that this failure really wasn't down to him. "Should I try to guess the answer in case I understood without knowing that I understood?"

Starry nodded, staring at him with what seemed to be her last shreds of hope.

"White?" Charles said. He knew, even as he said it, that it wasn't the right answer.

Starry didn't cry, as Charles was halfway expecting. She went over to the motel's bed and flung herself down on it and didn't say another word.

Charles went over and sat down beside her, thinking down boy, not the time at the part of himself reacting to what that flinging motion had just done to the bottom of Starry's very short dress and Starry's very pert unclad ass beneath it.

He was feeling worse than he should have felt, considering he was reasonably sure that nothing happening right now was his fault.

Well, unless it had something to do with his having raped her, destroying most of her power and knowledge.

It probably did.

"Please don't feel bad," came Starry's strained voice, from where she lay on the bed, head down where he couldn't see her face. "It's very wrong if I'm making you feel bad right now."

"Well, I apologize to you for feeling bad, then," Charles said. He didn't know if joking was the right thing to do, but he felt like he had to say something. "My Dad always told me that if I was ever tempted to think 'I'm only human' that meant I was about to do something wrong, but I think this might be a special case."

"It's not impossible for humans to understand! The Erogame isn't letting you understand!"

Charles blinked a couple of times, as he tried to parse this---it felt like the sentence structure was too complicated for how few words Starry had just said. Like it was an illusion that he was really hearing English. Apparently he couldn't understand why he couldn't understand either. "I…" Charles said, "I don't suppose it would make any sense to me, if I asked what the consequences are now. To our relationship, I guess, if it was important that I understand this but I couldn't."

Starry pushed herself up from the bed, sitting up, but seemed to have trouble looking him in the eyes. "I was going to---confess," Starry said. "And part of me is glad I can't, that now I have this wonderful excuse for not confessing---and, and that's probably why I couldn't tell you. It was the most mature, the most grownup fucking thing I've ever tried to do in my life, and I just wasn't grown up enough to pull it off." Starry's voice was going bitter.

Charles did think he'd understood that. "Confess," Charles repeated slowly, feeling the start of a sinking sensation. No, she'd said the world wasn't in trouble. "You did something… bad? That I literally can't understand?"

Starry just nodded, once, shortly. She was staring at the wall to one side, instead of looking at his face.

"Is anyone going to die?" Charles said. "Or get transformed without permission, or---"

Starry shook her head. "It's not that type of thing," she said, her voice low.

"I…" Charles said. "I want to say in a comforting voice that it's not that bad, then. Only I'm very aware that I'm in an even worse position for saying that than boyfriends usually are." There were so many other forms of damage she could have wreaked that his mind didn't want to go there. "I assume you've already thought through whether there's some way to give me the Cliff Notes metaphorical version for mortals, and it just doesn't work without the cosmic secret?"

Starry tensed up all over, like he'd threatened to hit her. "Shit," she said. "God. Shit. No, I didn't---I didn't think of that. I---I suppose there's a version of the confession that might make sense without breaking the fourth wall." Starry looked like somebody with a gun to her head, being told that she needed to kill her own puppy. Or maybe kill herself. "Shit," she whispered.

It's okay, you don't have to tell me, Charles didn't say. A very loud part of him---somehow including his personal sadistic demon---wanted to make Starry's emotional stress just go away, make everything better for her right now, no matter what it cost him or the Earth. But anything that could freak out Starry this much was not something it was safe to ignore.

Starry took her time before she started talking, even as Charles felt sweat forming on his back beneath his shirt. She looked both like she was gathering her courage and like she was trying to plan a complicated conversation.

Charles was tempted to make a sign of the cross, to say, May God, who has enlightened every heart, help you to know your sins and trust in his mercy, as he'd seen once in a movie confession scene that had stuck in his mind. It might have helped Starry to remember that she wasn't the only person who'd ever had something to confess. Charles didn't say it, though, partially because he didn't know what Starry thought of religion, and partially because she could be confessing something worse than anybody had ever confessed before.

"I," Starry said, "I keep thinking of excuses, and I know that's not right, only there really are ways to make this sound even worse than it was and I don't want that either---Charles, would you be shocked if I said that the idea of an alien from the night sky was not exactly literally what happened? Only it might have been an alien, just---not like---"

"It wouldn't surprise me terribly to find that the alien was not literally floating out in space somewhere, no," Charles said. "It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the alien wasn't occupying any type of space as I know it."

"R-right," Starry said. "What if I said that your understanding of the way that the alien and Cinderella Sheen… fit together… might be, might be…"

"Less than totally and completely accurate?" offered Charles. "No, that wouldn't shock me either." The thought had not been lost on Charles that his date on Monday night could have been reflective of some far weirder truth, projected into concepts that his own mind could understand---like an eleven-dimensional object projecting a flat shadow onto a cave wall for his caveman mind to grunt at. It wasn't a helpful thought, but it had occurred to him.

"What if I said that you misunderstood something on Monday and I didn't correct you?"

"That's… potentially more or less okay depending on what exactly was the mistaken assumption," Charles said, feeling a sinking pit in his stomach again. There were a lot of very bad things that could potentially… he should wait for Starry to talk.

"Yeah," Starry said, her voice falling into a whisper. "I just… I wasn't expecting you to believe, and then I didn't know how to… I didn't plan it, it just…" Starry swallowed. "No. No excuses. I'm pretending to be a grownup. Charles, Cinderella Sheen… something happened to her, and she got, not just power, but weird bullshit and it was like she was looking at reality from another angle, an angle I can't describe to you… and… and her abilities made her better at playing other characters, though she didn't realize it then… and stories had power over her. But not so much power that it wasn't her fault. It was still her decision, when she was so impressed at the courage and the enormous brass balls of the man who'd ask an alien on a date, that she decided not to try and correct his mistake, to go see what this incredibly impressive guy did with that. She was selfish and only thinking about how perfect and right everything was for her, and not thinking about what it must have been like for him---and it was only when she---after her hair changed, and she looked at her new hairstyle that the two of them had made together, and it embodied what Charles Adan had been thinking and feeling and how frightened he'd been and what he'd forced himself to do. Her hairstyle said that Charles Adan might even have saved her from turning into what he thought she was, stopped the trouble before it started. So he did end up protecting her and giving her a shield, and she felt so guilty and so grateful and she wanted to do everything for him, give him a dozen blowjobs or a hundred blowjobs until the guilty feeling went away, but she still lied---"

Charles was starting to get seriously scared. Not so much that he'd yell at her when she was having trouble already, but scared. "Starry, what did you do? What did you lie about?"

Starry looked him in the eyes, like she was staring at an unshielded welding arc. "Cinderella Sheen always knew who she was," she said. "She never thought she was the alien. She just hitched a ride to Goodwill with you, and talked about a really weird fucking morning she'd just had, and she wasn't expecting you to believe her, so she played along with the questions she thought you were asking to play along with her, she didn't lie but she knew what she was saying sounded like she was an alien who'd just come to Earth. Then she turned around and saw how much you were sweating, and she didn't know how to say anything different in a way that would---that would sound convincing under the circumstances. So she just kept going with it. She tried to tell the guy giving her a ride that it all wasn't as bad as it sounded. She didn't want to lie outright and say that she wasn't planning to use her new powers to be a mad inventor and maybe hold the UN hostage sometime, but---but she always knew that she was Cinderella Sheen." Starry's voice had grown very small. "I always knew that I was Cindy. I was never an alien at all, there's obviously something alien around me but it doesn't, it didn't change my own me so far as I know. And I want to beg you---not to hate me, not to leave me---but I'll understand if you do. I'll, I'll make up for it if you let me. I can't do it right away, but if you wanted, I'd promise to conquer a small country and make you the king at some point later. I know that probably isn't what you want and it wouldn't really make up for lying either, I'm just trying to say that I'm willing to---to try to make up for it. Charles, please, talk to me, you've just been looking at me like, like you're thinking something you don't want to say to me---"

He'd been warned about this, but now Charles had no idea what to do about it.

Don't be sad. I'm just a girl with superpowers who made up a story about being an alien. That's all that ever happened. By this time tomorrow I'll probably believe it too.

He couldn't remember the exact words of the warning, but he really should have asked Starry what to do after that happened. Even if he'd had a lot of other things on his mind, at the time.

"I won't leave you over this," Charles said, trying to sound as serious as he would if he'd believed her awful confession. It was damned impressive, a proof of Starry's strength of character, that she'd confessed her dreadful story after she'd started believing it. "I'm… trying to decide what to do about it, but I won't leave you, and I don't think I'll hate you either."

Would he be a terrible person if he told her that owing him a hundred blowjobs would work fine to make up for it? It wasn't a thought Charles would ordinarily have considered, but it seemed better than letting Starry feel guilty over her imaginary sin forever.

"You haven't heard the whole confession," Starry whispered. She was looking down at her lap, and Charles got a sinking feeling. "Cindy---I wanted to be---I told you afterwards, didn't I? Cindy would have thought it was terribly romantic to have her virginity stolen from her by a good man, a man she liked? That's---who I was, from the beginning. I didn't make you rape me. I could have steered it there, my power offered me the pathway to do that, but I didn't take that pathway. I just decided to let the night go wherever you took it. When it seemed like you might be trying to figure out how to depower me, I dropped hints. It---it was what I wanted from the beginning, Charles. To be taken by someone I liked, without being asked or me having to say yes to it. I just---my badbrains just wanted that one weird thing, the one time I lost my virginity---and I didn't think until afterwards about your perspective on that."

"I need to think about this for a second," Charles said, his mouth on autopilot while his brain tried to figure this out. Starry had said that Cindy would have been crying from happiness, not sadness. Starry had said that right after she lost her power, not a day later. That very night Starry had said (Charles couldn't remember the exact words) that the human Cindy would have thought it was romantic to have her virginity stolen by a man she liked, and then cuddle up to him afterwards and call him a bastard. That the human Cindy would have been crying because her first time had been what she'd wanted.

So now Starry didn't remember having ever been anyone but Cindy. Her belief that she'd planned it all along was another aspect of her altered memory, the lost truth.

Right?

The sinking sensation was growing in Charles's stomach. The same sense he'd felt when he'd seen Cindy's phone message from her mother, when the pieces had fit together and he'd realized where the alien had acquired its knowledge of humanity. The alien-hybrid Starry had contained a lot of Cindy inside itself, herself, even before the rape, they'd both only realized afterwards how much.

There was a part of Charles, now, that seemed to understand exactly why a girl might need to be taken. If part of him had thought that it would have spoiled everything for her to say yes out loud, she could feel the same way. Her mating field had ensured their respective insanities would be complementary, after all.

"How much of that night was real?" Charles said. It came out sounding more disturbed than he'd wanted, but he didn't retract or soften the question. What did human-Cindy's altered memories now believe had happened? He needed that information… right?

"It---it was almost all real---that's the thing I don't want to make sound worse than it is---Charles I was in a bad place before I got my powers, nearly suicidal. Passively suicidal, I would have felt glad if someone else had killed me without pain and I hadn't needed to feel guilty about doing it myself. When I talked about how the alien wasn't really alive before Sunday afternoon, I was talking about myself. About Cindy. I wasn't faking any of that, what I said was how I felt. When you told me the pictures in our bedroom were full of human things, that wasn't---that was real, I don't know where that came from, and even if I wasn't an alien it was still---a message from I don't know where. What happened was almost all real! The feelings were real, I wasn't making up any of those! Just---I was an unalive human instead of an unalive alien, and I was hoping from the beginning that you'd take me without my saying yes. I---I know that's still lying and very bad and that I scared you even worse than you should have been scared by my weird powers and I let you believe you had to do something you thought was evil, but, but it was all real except for that, it wasn't a game to me, please believe me!" There was water in Starry's eyes, she was bowing her head as though waiting for his axe to fall on her neck.

Charles's thoughts were disarrayed. An obvious thought was that Starry was memory-wiped about having ever been the true alien, but could still be telling the truth about silently hoping to be raped. But his feelings were wobbling, held in abeyance by uncertainty, by the fear of rushing to conclusions and blaming Starry for something she'd never done in reality.

There was also that lurking thing inside of him that was rolling its eyes: It was fine for the prey to want to be eaten, and if she'd needed to lie to get it done, that was his fault for being obstinate.

"So you wanted to be depowered from the beginning?" Charles said. The human-Cindy-part had secretly wanted to lose her virginity in a way she'd thought romantic, so her mating field had steered her into it, even though that had depowered the alien… that made sense. The full-alien-hybrid Starry plotting to depower herself, that made less sense. That sounded more like an altered memory. Though it was still possible…

"Right…" Starry whispered, as though to herself. "Right. I didn't say it---I forgot to---that was the last lie that---it wasn't completely unreal, a lot of it was real, but---" Starry raised a hand to gesture at her long earthy-grey hair. "When my hair is like this---the mating field is damped down. At least directly around me, I'm not sure what happens around the rest of the Earth or even if that question makes sense. This hairstyle is real. We made it together. Your feelings are part of it. It's a sanctuary for me now, someplace I can go where I need it. It---it also represents a promise from me to you that I won't ever turn into the monster you thought I was, that I'll go on being part of humanity. Do you know what this color is, Charles? It's the average hair color of everyone on Earth. I---I'm saying all that, because I don't want you to think it was all a lie, that what you did was for nothing, that the moment when my hair changed was just an illusion. But you didn't destroy my power, Charles."

So she'd forgotten that she'd ever held more power than this… or…

Charles's stomach felt like it was dropping further, to somewhere around his ankles.

"You didn't destroy anything at all," Starry whispered, and closed her eyes.

And Charles looked upon her and saw the truth, the reality, the end of the lie, shifting black and scarlet like the flickering of glowing coals hidden beneath other coals still black.

Spoiler: The Coals Relighted

You are now CHARLES ADAN.

How do you react to this?

(3-day brainstorm. If there's more than one option I'd feel good writing, I'll create a temporary threadmark to offer a vote.)

6.8.c [CA]: Walkout

It was strange, how Charles knew what Starry was feeling before he knew what he himself was feeling. Her thoughts and emotions seemed plain upon her face, the girl standing before the valentine-red door with her hair blazing around her in returned glory. She was afraid, it had taken her courage and determination to do this, she was afraid of him, she felt shame and guilt and sadness about what she'd done. The water at the edges of her eyes were a hint, if nothing else. She kept looking down, looking away, then looking back at him---she needed to know his reaction, and at the same time she couldn't bear to watch. His understanding of Starry's feelings felt straightforward. Charles didn't know what he was feeling himself.

Stay calm, said a voice in the back of Charles's mind. Like he'd been punched, but there hadn't been time to hurt. Impact first, feeling later. It'd happened to him before when he heard bad news.

He took a deep breath. Another.

"Anything else I should know about?" said his voice. It sounded more robotic than he usually did.

"I think that's it," Starry whispered.

"I---" said Charles. "I don't know what's real anymore. Is the Earth still in trouble like you said last night, or is it not that kind of movie like you said on Monday, or---I don't know anymore what was true."

"Earth is changing," Starry said, and it was like Charles felt the ground tilt beneath him as he understood the words. "Or my viewpoint is changing. Weird shit is going to be a thing. I can try to direct the shifts, and I've been trying to choose the shift that's safer for other people, but I can't---I don't think 'no' is on the list of options."

"Who are you? What are you?" Charles swallowed. "Could you please reintroduce yourself, from the beginning, I don't know anymore what was true."

"My name is Cinderella Sheen. Last Sunday afternoon I got superpowers I don't understand. My power wants me to have sex… and romance, and love, all of it, but definitely not leaving out the sex scenes. It---it thinks the entire Earth is just a setting for that. I think if I didn't care about people then my powers wouldn't care at all. Who I was before---Charles, remember when I said the fat girl and the homeless man weren't human, and I told you about the fat girl's life, how she couldn't lose weight and was always hungry and there was no candy in her house and she never got chocolate cake even on her birthday---that wasn't her. I wasn't reading her mind. It, it was, that girl was me. And then one day something saved me. Blessed me. Just me and not any of the billion people who had it worse or deserved it more. I don't know why. And now I'm pretty and I can do calculus and I have powers I don't understand and my hair is a concept and the Earth is changing around me. That's who I am. I'm sorry I---I'm sorry I didn't just say that from the beginning."

"Jesus," Charles whispered. For the first time in a long while, maybe since he'd been a child, he felt like the word was actually a plea to someone, a call for help. It felt like his brain had skipped over some phrases of what Starry had just said, maybe the parts describing what type of alien had melded itself to her. But he was getting a picture of what it had been like to live through that as Cindy knowing she was Cindy.

"Charles, what---what are you thinking? Please, talk to me."

Stay calm. Don't raise your voice. Don't hurt her. It felt like the only thing he still knew was true. He didn't know if he wanted to yell at Starry, or if he would want to hurt her once the impact sank in. He did know that it was something he must not do.

"I---" said Charles. He was drawing blank cards for how to react, and he'd had only one thought resembling a sensible image of what to do next. "I think---I think I need to go on a walk and clear my head, but I don't want to make you wait while I---can you give me time? Slip me between the seconds? So you're not waiting here while I think?"

Starry was silent for a breath. "I can try," she said. "Or maybe I can skip over time myself. But---I mean---if you want to go on a walk, then, then that's what you should do. Charles, I'm worried about what happens if you keep trying to think about my perspective at a time like this and keep your cool and not---not feel the things you should be feeling. I'd rather you did---whatever you wanted to do to me. I'll be better the next day."

"That is a terrible, terrible idea," Charles said. He grabbed his jacket out of his luggage, and an umbrella in case it started raining. "I don't even know if I can describe all the reasons that is a terrible idea but close to the top of the list is that it wouldn't solve anything including my feelings."

Starry flinched, and Charles knew he'd just raised his voice and hurt her.

He needed to not be standing next to her while this was going on inside his head. Charles was more afraid of himself than he'd used to be.

Charles opened the door and walked out into the mists of Norville. He looked back, once, and saw Starry watching after him as he left.

6.8.d [CA]: One-Sided Conversation

It felt like it only took seconds for Charles to reach the street from the Valentine Motel. Was time moving faster for him? No, that was a dumb thought, it didn't make sense, he shouldn't be able to tell from the inside if time was moving faster for him.

Charles hoped that Starry had managed to give him his own time. He could imagine how awful it would be for her, if she had to silently wait a quarter-hour to find out how he reacted... no, Starry was right. He needed to not be doing… whatever stupid selfless thing his brain was trying to do right now. Needed to stop playing a Worried Boyfriend long enough to attend to his own wounds.

Was he wounded?

His breaths were short, fast. His jaw seemed to be clenched. He was probably angry. He was definitely hurt.

What was he thinking? What was his mind thinking? Where was he walking? He knew he'd been hurt but he didn't know what hurt.

Was is that Starry had lied to him?

Maybe it was that Starry had lied to him, and that his father had warned that if a girl lied to him he ought to just dump her no matter how pretty she was.

The thought felt hollow.

His stride to nowhere was overtaking a couple of white boys ahead of him along the sidewalk, college age but not dressed to impress.

"Seriously, man," one of the boys was saying to the other, the taller of the two, "I think your father gave you a lot of terrible advice. You know that, man."

Charles almost stumbled, but managed to slow down instead, coming up to within a couple of meters without overtaking them.

And he understood then that whether or not he was standing in front of Starry, her improbability field was all around him, invisible as the air against his skin, pressing down on Norville like a blanket, immersing the whole Earth in a weightless ocean.

"Yeah, well, to be fair," said the other boy in a Southern dialect just like Charles's own, "not everything Dad says is always wrong, and 'Don't stick your dick in crazy' seems high on the list of right."

(And young Charles back then had nodded, and said that sounded right to him. Of all the things William Adan had said, that one at least sounded reasonable.)

"I mean, not to put too fine a point on it," said the first boy, the taller one, "from what you've said, your mother told a few lies too. Your father seemed to think it was fine to stick his dick in liar."

Charles's fists tightened before he realized, and then he relaxed his hands and told himself not to be an idiot. The two kids in front of him could not possibly have the tiniest idea that they were being used to insult his mother.

Besides. It wasn't like the taller boy was wrong.

Still, that didn't mean---

"So Dad didn't live up to his own advice," the Southern boy snapped back. "Doesn't mean it was bad advice."

"I don't think it is good advice, is the thing," said the taller boy. "Fine, Sandy lied to you. Then she told you about it, on her own, and said she was sorry and offered to make up for it. There's a hell of a lot of girls who aren't that honest. Why is that so terrible?"

"I thought she was more honest," the Southern boy said, bitterness now leavening his tones.

There'd been some level on which Charles had believed in Starry more than he'd believed in any previous girlfriend, even on such short acquaintance. The alien hybrid had seemed to have more dignity… sort of. More power, more truthfulness. With everything she'd had going for her, she shouldn't have needed to lie.

"Fine, you built this picture of her being perfect and the picture was wrong," said the taller boy. "Look, I can't make this decision for you, it's something you have to figure out yourself. All I'm doing is stating the obvious when I say that the two of you were good for each other in a lot of ways. I mean, if Sandy doesn't qualify as your girlfriend, how perfect does the lady have to be exactly?"

"I know Sandy is out of my fucking league," the Southern boy snapped back. "I know I'll never find anyone else like her. That's why it hurts so much, knowing that what I should do is walk away and find someone else."

Charles's breath was coming in short bursts, that he was trying to keep quiet so the kids walking in front of him wouldn't hear.

Hearing the boy say so openly that Starry was out of his league, that he had zero chance of finding anyone better---he'd known that in the back of his mind. Hearing the Charles-figure just blurt it out like that, and knowing what he was hearing was his own hidden thoughts ripped out and served to him raw… it was hard.

The three of them crossed a street, one after two. The walk sign was conveniently lit, to prevent the kids from turning around to see who was stalking behind them, walking as quietly as he could.

"Let me ask again," said the taller boy. "Sandy lied to you, then she fessed up. Why is that absolutely terrible?"

"Because you should be able to trust your girlfriend," said the Southern boy. "That's how healthy relationships need to be. Either you're trustworthy, or you're not, and if you're not trustworthy---"

"Are you under the impression you're a trustworthy boyfriend?" said the taller boy. "Wasn't it less than a week ago that you logged into Sandy's laptop without her permission?"

Charles felt like he'd been punched. Somehow he kept on walking.

"It turned out she was fine with it," the Southern boy said weakly.

"Yeah, but you didn't know that. So you're not a trustworthy boyfriend and no good woman should ever be with you."

One punch after another driven into his solar plexus.

"T-there were reasons I had to---" said the Southern boy.

"Yeah, and maybe Sandy had reasons for lying to you. Good reasons, bad reasons, people usually have reasons for what they do. It's just that you know your own reasons but not the other guy's, see what I'm saying?"

"It was her fault I had to---"

"Jesus, man, listen to yourself. You said it yourself, either you're trustworthy or you're not. Well, turns out you're not perfect either. Does that mean you can never be in a healthy relationship?"

"Yes," said the Southern boy in a trembling voice. "Any woman who knows what I'm like inside shouldn't go anywhere near me."

The taller boy gave a snorting chuckle. "You know on some level that's just your badbrains talking. But, taking your badbrains at face value, doesn't that mean you might as well stay with Sandy? Since she's almost as horrible of a person as you."

Charles stopped walking, and went to lean against a nearby lamppost. He couldn't take this. It was too much, too fast.

He still heard the next sentences of the conversation as they walked away.

"Well," said the taller boy's voice, "I'm sure Sandy can find another man who'll be good for her. Bad for her. Whatever. And you shouldn't write off your own chance of finding another girl, either. It wouldn't be much of a relationship, if you didn't like Sandy and only stayed around her for… uh, the obvious reasons. I'm just saying---is leaving Sandy what you want? Never mind what your Dad said you should do, leave aside what you should do at all. What do you want?"

"Leaving aside all the shoulds doesn't sound like a good idea," said the Southern boy. "Shoulds are there for reasons."

"Fine, well, do those shoulds outweigh everything you could have with Sandy? I mean, maybe they do. Only you can decide that. But not knowing what you want for yourself doesn't seem like a great idea either, generally speaking. Wants are there for reasons too."

Neither boy said anything else that Charles heard, as the two of them walked on.

It took time for Charles to slow down his breathing, and some of that was just him trying to---absorb. To process.

He felt like he'd been subjected to inhumanly high-speed psychotherapy that wasn't meant for mortals, like his soul didn't have enough structural integrity to handle that much overclocked self-revelation. It should have taken half an hour of therapy to get that far, not half a minute.

And what---what had Starry's mating field meant, that Charles could find another girl? Was it hinting at the presence of other alien hybrids?

"No," a woman said into her cellphone as she walked past him. "It's just that neither of you need to feel stuck in the relationship, you know? There are other options for both of you."

Charles shuddered without being able to stop himself. Part of his mind wondered if this, having a conversation with the world, was exactly what schizophrenics thought was happening to them.

"Actually, no," the woman said into her cellphone as she walked away. "The experience is different… sure, I can see why you wouldn't just trust me on that, but come on, you know what's really happening."

Was it---talking to him? Could Starry's mating field talk on its own, think on its own? Why are you doing all this, what are you planning to do to Earth? Charles thought at the retreating woman.

"Butter?" the woman's receding voice said into her cellphone. "It's not butter. Why would you think it was butter? It's amazing the things people do for money… no, your mother is the one wearing a Pokemon suit."

He'd eventually started walking again. Charles didn't know how long it had been, he couldn't look at his phone because he might see the time, and that would break Starry's timestop if he was under one. Though he couldn't imagine how that could possibly work… hell, he couldn't imagine how Starry's timestop could work in the first place. Nothing looked stopped.

Charles had turned left on the corner of Second Street, intending to turn left again soon and circle around in his walk, so as to not get too far from the Valentine Motel. But crossing the next street after the turn had brought Charles out of the residential area, to a busier and more commercial place that Second Street had become.

A streetwalker was loitering on the sidewalk as he passed, with a supermodel-level perfect body unconcealed by a filmy microdress. Violet pen-writing on her cheeks said $50, with arrows pointing to her lips. More violet pen-writing on her thighs said $100 with arrows pointing upward and to her center. Charles wondered how on Earth she'd come to be walking the streets of a small town at such a low price point, instead of doing high-end escorting in Los Angeles, and why that getup hadn't gotten her arrested.

What… did he want, shoulds aside?

Charles wanted… well, he wanted the Earth to be all right. He didn't want to leave Starry with the Tickle Twins and the Mad Scientist as her only sources of advice. But it was an obvious thought that Starry's mating field wouldn't let him get away with only that. That if he didn't like Starry for herself, he wouldn't be destined to stay with her for long.

"It's not exactly self-care either," said the woman who'd passed him before, still talking on her cellphone as she waited by a bus stop that Charles was walking past. "Even if you don't always give in to your selfish wants, you should at least know what it is that you're deciding not to have. You'll hollow yourself out, if you don't act for your own sake some times. And this is one of those times."

Charles kept walking.

Fine. Staying Starry's boyfriend to keep her contained, to keep her sane, for the sake of Earth, wasn't an option. Anything that felt hollow probably wasn't an option, not with Starry's mating field on watch against it.

What did he want? Charles felt more inhibited than usual, trying to contemplate the question. There were obvious things it was acceptable to want, like humanity being allowed to create its own future, or Starry's heated sexuality, yes fine she had a wonderful body and she was hot for him. They'd had fun on their first date…

He had a sense that none of this was the answer the Mating Field had in mind.

Charles had walked almost to the end of the block, before he said, out loud, "Fine, I'm asking. What's supposed to be in it for me?"

On the next block ahead was a streetside preacher, a man with half-greying hair and a short grey beard dressed in long brown robes, perched atop a wooden box. A crowd of a dozen people, almost all men, had gathered around and were gazing up at the robed man's elevated form. The street preacher seemed to be speaking in excited tones, but wasn't shouting or using a megaphone.

A sign above the preacher bore the image of… a giant greyscale clipart image of a man's head smoking a pipe?

Charles raised his eyebrows, and kept on walking towards the crowd.

"…praise the name of Bob and gain super luck powers that no financial setback can hinder!" the preacher was saying. "Seduce beautiful women by the hundreds! Step into an elevator and watch it fill up with models in lingerie! Other religions offer snake oil, only the Church of the Subgenius will give you the entire snake! We'll give you two snakes! 50% off, two snakes for the price of one! Bob's favor will bring you power, wealth, adventure, immortality, frequent flyer miles! Are you searching for true love? Buy a full membership in the next 24 hours and we'll throw in the sextuple true love harem special! You want the moon? Bob has the moon! Bob has all of the moons! Bob has enough moons! Take as many moons as you want! Bob has more moons!"

"Okay," Charles said out loud, "maybe that was a dumb question."

"Old and busted religions promise eternal happiness, the Church of the Subgenius promises eternal happiness and a pony! Suck on that, Pascal! That's right, Pascal will spend eternity sucking on a pony while you get laid so much your bed gets pregnant! Show us any other religion's coupon and we'll match it! Bob will not be outbid by God! Bob has more money than God! You got it, the Church of the Subgenius is the wealthiest religion in the world and you can become its certified Pope for just forty dollars! Jesus will grant you salvation when all seems lost! Bob will grant you salvation after everything actually is lost! Ron Paul will make anime real but if you vote for Bob he'll make Western animation real too! Elsa and Jasmine in your bed wearing nothing but strawberry frosting! Wake up every morning to a different Disney princess giving you head! Always interest free and zero money down!"

"Excuse me, Reverend!" Charles called. He'd drawn close enough to see that a sign on top of the wooden box read The Exceptionally Reverend Stan Ivang.

The preacher turned on his wooden box to face him, a wide smile above his short grey beard. "Yes, mister gentleman sir!"

"I think I need to say at this point that I'd always thought Disney movies were, uh, just movies," Charles said. He genuinely was not sure if he was meant to take this as an offer, and boy was that a sad commentary on his life.

"Anything you can imagine exists somewhere in Shadow," the preacher said, pointing a finger at Charles. "And you can go there, once you discover you're a scion of Amber and walk the Pattern! Everything is possible through the will of Bob!"

"Okay, so," Charles said. He'd never previously asked himself which was his favorite Disney princess, but it wasn't hard to decide. "If I wanted to go on a date with Tiana, just to see if we actually hit it off, what would be step one?"

"I'd say step one would be…" the preacher said.

Charles waited with his eyebrows raised.

"…to talk to your girlfriend!" the preacher proclaimed. "You've got to learn to use phenomenal cosmic powers responsibly, and be careful not to hurt your loved one's feelings. Not everyone is okay with their significant other screwing around with Disney princesses."

"Uh huh," Charles said. "And if my girlfriend is okay with it, then what?"

"Well…" said the preacher. "If your girlfriend says yes, then I'd say the next step is…"

"Yeah?" said Charles.

"To tell her thank you and feel grateful for having such an awesome girlfriend! Women that amazing don't grow on trees, you know! Unless Bob wills it, and then they do!"

"You're so wise, Reverend Stan!" cried the one woman in the crowd. "Praise Bob!"

"Join the Church of the Subgenius and tear off all those warning labels, because this cape does enable user to fly!" The preacher had turned away from Charles now, and was once again addressing the rest of the crowd.

"I'm sorry, Reverend, but I have another question," Charles said.

"Yes, mister gentleman sir again!" said the preacher.

"In as much detail as my mortal mind can comprehend, what is Bob?"

The thought had occurred to Charles that maybe Starry's mating field could explain what Starry herself couldn't. Starry had seemed to think it was very important to their relationship, and even to understanding her confession.

"Ah, well, as to that…" the preacher said, and paused dramatically. "Bob is… this!"

The preacher pointed upwards.

Spoiler: Bob

"Okay," Charles said cautiously, "but what does that image represent exactly?"

"It's not a representation!" the preacher said. "Bob is literally this piece of low-resolution clipart! You can find out more by buying the Book of the Subgenius, on sale today for under seventeen dollars at Amazon.com."

Maybe this was one of those cosmic truths where you had to push some, and do your own thinking about the riddle. "Is Bob other things too?" Charles said.

"Like what?" said the preacher.

"Uh, say, could Bob be this sidewalk," said Charles. It was the first thing that had come to mind.

"Anything can be Bob if Bob wills it," the preacher said solemnly. "But I don't see why Bob would want people walking on him all day long."

"Does Bob sometimes will to be other people?" said Charles. "Could Bob be part of other people, or could somebody be Bob and not Bob in some way that's hard for mortals to understand?" Had the alien been-and-not-been Starry in some way that had been partially at fault for why she'd done what she'd done, even if Cinderella Sheen had also made the choice?

"Well, as to that…" the preacher said, and paused.

"As to that?" Charles said.

"As to that, I'd say your question is… total nonsense! Everyone is themselves. If you were someone else you'd be someone else instead of you, and then you wouldn't be you being someone else, you'd just be someone else being someone else! Bob could be talking to you through me without you knowing, but Bob couldn't be me with or without me knowing! The distinction between myself and you isn't that I'm up here and you're down there, it's that I'm what's up here and you're what's down there. Asking whether somebody is themselves or somebody else is like asking why this is Norville instead of Norway, or whether the Earth is upside down, or why it's today instead of yesterday, or how fast time is going right now, or whether you exist or don't exist, or if there's something rather than nothing. It's all about where the question is being asked, see? And what it is that's asking." The preacher turned away and began addressing the crowd once more. "Do you have questions in your heart? Bob has answers in his Pipe! That's right, Bob's holy Pipe contains all the answers! How many lesbians does it take to screw inside a lightbulb? Bob's Pipe contains the answer to that too! Bob put all the questions and all the answers into his Pipe and smoked it!"

"No, wait," Charles said, once his mind had caught up. "Wait, I understand why you can't ask how fast time is going without being outside of time, but how is my existing or not existing like that? That's an absolute if anything is an absolute! Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am!"

"Yeah?" said the preacher, turning his head again. "You, whoever you are, mister…"

"Charles," said Charles.

"Mister Charles, suppose I told you that you, right now, didn't exist. Say, you're only an animation in a Disney movie. How could you tell?"

"I… what?" said Charles. "If I know literally anything, I know that's false! I have to exist in order to ask whether or not I exist!"

"Aha!" said the grey-bearded preacher, holding up a finger. "But maybe you don't exist and therefore you're not asking whether you exist. How can you tell the difference? If you were an animated drawing, you'd be saying just the same thing."

"That… honestly sounds to me like nonsense," said Charles.

"Exactly, mister gentleman Charles sir! It is nonsense just as you say! Maybe somebody outside of existence thinks that we don't exist, but from the inside of reality we've got no way to know that and no reason to care. It's the same way with Disney princesses. You can say all you want that Snow White doesn't exist, but she can't hear you, so as far as she knows, she exists. She's got just as much proof of her own existence as you have."

"But…" Charles said. "But, accepting that for the sake of argument, how do we go from that to Snow White becoming real here?"

"Ah," said the preacher. "Well, that's where Bob comes in."

"Comes in and does what?"

"Friend," said the preacher, "it's not like I haven't enjoyed our conversation, but I fear it might not be entertaining the rest of my audience as much as it's entertaining us. You can find out more about Bob at subgenius.com, and remember, the Book of the Subgenius is on sale for seventeen dollars right now on Amazon!" The preacher turned away again. "Now, let me tell you all about X-Day! The ultimate prophecy of apocalypse that makes the Book of Revelations look like a rain of limp macaroni noodles! The time of tribulation when only believers who have paid-up memberships will be saved! The day when the land shakes, the sea boils, the sun turns purple, the moon explodes, real global economic production falls to twelve dollars, all copyrights are simultaneously violated and everything said on Twitter becomes true!"

"When's that?"

"July 5th, 1998," said the preacher without looking in his direction.

"That's… already happened, unless I've really lost track of the time," Charles said.

"It sure did! Over four hundred of us got together to watch the prophecy not come true. Friend, I'm worried you might be taking my words a little too much to heart. Our Church is supposed to be fun, you know?"

"I'm sorry," Charles said. "It's been a stressful week for me."

"Then I have great news for you, because my luck plane senses tell me that happiness and a wonderful destiny await you somewhere else that isn't here!"

"Yeah," said Charles. He was aware that he was flushing. "I'll go now."

"Go with the blessings of Bob, my friend whose reality or unreality is ultimately a nonsensical question!"

"Stan, you need to stop making hecklers doubt their own existence," said the woman from before. "It's not nice."

And the preacher kept on preaching, even as Charles went on his way.

"…socks that go missing from your washing machine, garbage bags that don't exactly fit garbage cans, that one patch of snow on your grass that doesn't melt until April---it's all part of the Conspiracy's plan! An ultimately cunning design with one single purpose---money! That's right, money! How does all that make money for the Conspiracy, you ask? Because time is money! Haven't you thought to ask, whenever you lose time, just who and what is gaining it? Do you think your spare time is just being wasted every time you fill out insurance forms? No! Time can be neither created nor destroyed, just like money itself…"

Charles was mostly trying not to think about the blatant bribery attempts. He knew that the offers had affected him. He did not need a mini-Charles to say it out loud for him to accept that. He was only human and not above the temptation of frequent flyer miles. But promises of frequent flyer miles didn't seem like a good foundation on which to build a lasting relationship, at least, not unless the other foundations of a good relationship were present. That seemed like the type of mistake you could end up regretting for a long time. The part about true love… would matter if it was true. He didn't know if Starry's mating field defined the term the same way he did.

The words that had hit Charles hardest had been about learning to use phenomenal cosmic powers responsibly and not hurting others' feelings.

The message had been phrased in just the right way for a warning to Charles Adan. Which had prompted Charles's mind to imagine how easy it would be for him to make a mistake and hurt somebody's feelings, if he got cosmic powers.

Starry had possessed her newly alien nature for all of one day, at the time.

The thread of anger in him was saying no, that still wasn't reasonable, he wouldn't have made that mistake in her shoes. Or if he had, it would have said unpleasant things about him.

The anger was closer to the surface, now, revealing its form.

Why did Starry have to lie to me about thinking she was the alien? What was the point? It scared the shit out of me. That's not accidentally hurting somebody's feelings, it's lying.

Ahead of him was a neighborhood park, with a wide path through it that looped behind a series of benches, some of which had people on them.

So Charles went into the park, down the path, which soon went around and behind one of the benches with people. Two people, a younger man in jeans and an older woman in business casual.

"Why did she do it?" said the younger man, his wounded feelings plain in his voice. "Why the hell did she have to lie to me like that? What was even the point?"

As the man spoke, Charles stepped off the path behind them, and onto the nearby lawn. He took out his cellphone and pretended to be studying the blank screen.

The older woman on the bench sighed audibly. "Why?" she said. "What, you think there's just one reason? Human beings are complicated. If you ever got a true glimpse into someone's mind, even for just ten seconds, it would take you days to sort out everything going on. Ella's real decision to lie to you probably looked like twenty-nine different inner voices voting to lie to you and seven different voices voting to tell you the truth. Whatever Ella believes she thought is more like an author making up a coherent story afterwards to justify her decision. That said… when people do stupid shit, it's more often because they're afraid of what they might lose than because they have anything to gain. Do you understand why Ella was scared of you learning the truth?"

"She wouldn't have needed to worry about my reaction if she hadn't lied," said the young man. "Fine, it was my mistake to start with, but she could have corrected me."

"No," said the older woman. "I mean she might have been afraid that you wouldn't respect her if you knew."

What? thought Charles. Seriously? Starry just has terrifying alien powers instead of being the terrifying alien, so I won't respect her? How does that make any type of sense?

"Seriously?" said the man sitting on the bench. "She didn't get funded by Sequoia so I won't respect her? She's still the CEO of her own startup at 22, but she didn't get venture funding so I won't respect her? What type of sense is that supposed to make?"

The older woman shook her head, the motion of her hair visible from where Charles stood behind her. "Kid, after you made your mistake, you talked to Ella all respectful-like. You listened carefully when she spoke, you hesitated before contradicting her. I wouldn't be surprised if that, all by itself, was a lot of why she fell for you. She liked the way you treated her, so of course she was scared of anything that might make you think of her any differently. And, by the way, if you do decide to go back, and you weigh her words any less than before, don't expect that to end well. You don't understand how a woman like her feels about respect."

"What, because I've never been a woman?" said the man.

"That too," said the older woman. "But mostly because you've never been an ugly woman."

Charles took a breath and stepped onto the path, walking on.

Letting another piece of pain bubble to the surface.

The next bench had two women his own age, sitting close enough to one another that they could have held hands. Charles stepped off the park path again, pretended again to be reading his phone's blank screen.

"You don't understand," one of the women whispered, the one on the left. She also spoke in a Southern accent. "That was not okay." She sounded like she was on the verge of tears. "What Indy did to me was really seriously not okay."

"Mm," said the other woman, sounding much calmer. "Well, clearly a number of people agree with you about that, since many legal systems define sex under false pretenses as rape-by-deception. It's not the same as rape in a dark alley, but it's not surprising that you feel at least a little raped."

"You sound like you think it's okay," the Southern woman said. "That Indy… rape-by-deceptioned me."

"I'm not the one who has to decide that," said the other woman, still sounding very calm. "It's fair to say I'm not personally upset, but I don't think you should take any cues from me. I'm worse than the BBC version of Sherlock Holmes so far as high-functioning sociopathy goes." She paused. "Indy might have trouble understanding exactly how you're hurting. At least in her head, she'd think it was a pretty tame rape-by-deception, one where you had fun and learned an important new fact about yourself. Though she'd be sorry she hurt you, too." The other woman paused again. "Part of you sees it Indy's way and thinks you're weak for getting upset, since you enjoyed yourself at the time."

"How do you know that?" whispered the Southern woman.

"You know my methods. Facial microexpressions, body language, and above all, knowing the most likely answers in advance. What you're feeling is a common aftermath of a certain type of event that people call by the word rape. There's a moral judgment in the word, which is something I don't participate in, and I understand its social function in making the law clear and validating the people who choose to object. I am nonetheless certain that it confuses people to call so many different phenomena all by the same terminology. You might be better off thinking of yourself as having been Indyized and deciding on your own reactions to that."

"Why---why couldn't Indy have told me the truth? Why couldn't she have passed me a fucking note with a safeword written on it, and done things the sane way from there?"

"Aside from her own fetishes? Indy believes that happiness and personal growth cover over a multitude of sins. She knows society holds consent as primary, she just thinks that other things can matter more. From her perspective, it's of tremendous importance that you had a powerful sexual experience and that you couldn't have learned your own nature any other way. In her heart, Indy doesn't understand why you're not grateful. She would be, in your position."

"Is she right?" the Southern woman said, all of her heartache naked in her voice.

The other woman shrugged her shoulders. "Don't ask me, I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Maybe you should talk to Indy, though? If you ask her what she's thinking, she'll probably tell you honestly, if not accurately."

"It's just---" the Southern woman said. "Everything I've ever read about abusive relationships says that it's going to happen to me again, if she did it once."

"Indy's a fast learner, by your standards if not by mine," the calm woman said.

"The books say that abusers always say they didn't mean it and claim they've learned better. Every time."

"So do people who actually didn't mean it and have in fact learned better, they just say it much less often. It's not like Indy started out with a ton of experience. Try asking Indy what she's already started doing differently in her other relationships."

"I hate this," the Southern woman said in a quieter voice. "I hate that I'm weak enough to be hurt this easily. People shouldn't be able to hurt me without even breaking my arm."

"Careful what you wish for. I'm not weak enough to be hurt, and I don't think you want to be me."

"People should be better than this. I shouldn't have to be afraid of being hurt. I wouldn't need to be afraid if people just stuck to the rules!"

The calm woman shrugged again. "From my perspective on human society, the only reason people can pretend to have all their rules is that they lack the self-awareness to even try to act consistently with them. If you obeyed all the principles you think you believe in, you'd be smothered under them, like a work-to-rule strike where the labourers start obeying all the regulations and production grinds to a standstill. You can only go on functioning because you rarely notice even when other people violate the supposed rules, never mind realizing every time you transgress your morals yourself."

"I'm not sure I believe that," said the Southern girl. "That sounds like civilization would just fall apart if it were true."

"Oh? Take this conversation as an example. You told me before that what I did with reading body language was an invasion of privacy. Now here you are, hearing all about Indy's feelings, and you didn't even notice what you were asking me because you wanted to know."

Charles shoved his blank cellphone convulsively into his pocket and almost ran the next steps along the path. He didn't stop at the next couple sitting on a bench, or the couple after that, and when he'd exited the park he kept going. He felt like something had been ripped out of his soul, torn out of his foundations.

He half-ran almost a half a block before he stopped at a traffic light, panting and half bent-over, only realizing then that he'd been fleeing in terror.

And that there wasn't any point in fleeing in terror.

There wasn't any place he could run.

No matter what plane ticket he bought, no matter where he went anywhere on Earth, there wasn't any place he could hide from Starry's mating field---

"There's no need to hide from us," a low male voice said from behind him. Charles barely managed not to shriek out loud.

The man who'd spoken walked past him, a bald guy in an expensive business suit with a dragon tattoo on one side of his face. He was wearing an earpiece in one ear, clearly not paying attention to Charles at all. "I believe you have the wrong idea about how we operate," the man said. "Just say the word and you won't be troubled any further. It's not my place to force a decision on you. Madam wouldn't like that. I'm just mentioning some truths relevant to your decision as to whether or not to form a relationship with us. A relationship that will be, of course, entirely voluntary and at your own discretion."

When Charles straightened up and looked around, he saw that the wall next to him held a red rectangular sign of white text beneath a Tudor Crown, saying KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. And next to that, red text in a black sign beneath an upside-down crown, saying, PANIC AND RUN AWAY.

Fuck you, Charles thought, but the message was clear. That choice, like all the choices, would be his own.

Charles knew already, he did not need it spelled out, that the last straw that had sent him fleeing was the prospect of a higher intelligence showing him how much he was transgressing his own rules all the time. Human beings weren't meant to face such things, to know them, he felt like he'd had his boundaries violated in some inarticulable fashion by having his hidden thoughts displayed to him. He wasn't allowed to learn his own mind's secrets, it was a self-invasion of his mental intraprivacy…

He couldn't muster any indignation at the thought. He already knew the lesson of the story, that in the end Charles Adan had only been shown the truth. He'd been shown a glimpse of himself from a higher place, and from that height Charles Adan had appeared small, and fragile, and silly in a very ordinary fashion, and tangled all up in himself in a humorous way, not the least of which was how Charles Adan had conceived of himself so differently from how he was.

After a time, Charles turned left and began walking again, beginning to close the circle, every step now moving closer towards the Valentine Motel.

He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take, but at least for the moment he wasn't panicking and running away. Just… walking very quickly.

6.8.e [CA]: Stalked

The traffic light ahead turned yellow, and Charles barely kept himself from breaking into a run, because he knew he wouldn't make it in time. It was tempting to try to run through the traffic before he could overhear any more of the conversation behind him. Worst-case scenario was that he got hit by a car.

Charles felt like he'd had the shit kicked out of him by a team of topnotch psychiatrists. Like he'd just gone through twenty years of psychotherapy in twenty minutes, and now he was no longer certain of anything, including "Cogito ergo sum" which he would have expected to be immune. He could have handled one revelation but it just kept going. The last shreds of his self-possession understood why he needed to hear all this. But this was like going to the dentist, finding out he needed seven root canals, and having them all done that same day.

"That was what the big fight between my parents was about? Dad committed adultery, Mom found out, and then Dad refused to apologize?" said a young Southern-accented male voice behind him. "I---I know Dad is a bastard in some ways but I did think he had principles."

"My son does have principles," said the Southern-accented voice of an older man, grandfather-aged. "Your mother had offended him in the recent past and the woman was pretty, so his principles said it was fine to do as he liked. Naturally, when your mother found out, he refused to apologize because his principles said he'd been in the right. I… should not have been as shocked as I was, when I heard. History does show that stern principles do little to keep the more hurtful sides of human nature in check. And that problem cannot be fixed by even sterner principles."

Charles kept facing forwards, standing rigidly with his neck muscles tense. He did not think he could keep his shit unflipped if he turned around and the people behind him were actually Grandpa Mark and 16-year-old Charles.

"What does it take for people to be good, then?" said his younger self.

"When designing a government? You assume people will not be good, and try to compensate with careful structures and balances of power. On a personal level? Kindness. In retrospect, I should have taught that lesson more, both to my son and to you. I wasn't the best at it myself, but I did know that I was lacking."

It was like being stalked by an epiphany monster through a very positive horror movie.

The traffic light changed and Charles sprinted the hell away from Dodge without looking back. He was only a few blocks away from the Valentine Motel and what he hoped to God was safety.

Ahead of Charles, at the last street crossing, less than a block away from his home plate in the residential area, a little girl was walking in his direction. Her hair was done in ribbons, and she dangled a bright orange backpack in one hand instead of wearing it.

Helpless to make any other decision, Charles slowed down so as not to present the little girl with a strange man running right at her. She could be a civilian and not another epiphany monster. Or rather, even if she was another mask of the epiphany monster, she was still a little girl too.

"Are you okay?" said the little girl in an appropriately high-pitched voice, slowing down herself as he approached. "You look like you're in trouble."

"Just, just going on a walk," Charles said, aware that his fast breathing and sweaty forehead might make this seem less than plausible even to a preschooler. "For exercise."

The little girl gave him a skeptical look, then reached inside her bright orange backpack and rummaged, drawing out a chocolate-chip cookie to hold out to Charles. "You look like you need a cookie," she stated.

Was he being rewarded for enduring through all that? "Thanks," Charles said, taking the cookie from her hands and biting in. It only occurred to him a second later, with the sugary chocolatey taste already filling his mouth, that he'd just taken candy from a child.

Charles didn't try to give it back. He'd already put his toothmarks on it, and frankly, he did need a cookie at this point.

"You look like you need a hug too," said the little girl, "but I'm not allowed to give hugs to strangers. That's why mommy gives me cookies to hand out."

"Your mother sounds very wise," Charles said around a mouthful of cookie.

The little girl darted forward and wrapped her hands around Charles legs, hugging them as hard as a child could. "Don't tell!" she said, and then ran away giggling.

Charles looked after her, wondering if the little lady was meant to represent a view on the human species and all its rules and rule-violations from a hundred kilometers up, or if she'd just been there to give him a hug and a cookie.

Also, he'd just talked with his mouth full, and then before that, he'd accepted candy from a stranger, and before that, he'd lied.

As Charles turned back to the last intersection, a black limo rolled to a halt right in front of him, blocking the crosswalk. The front windows were illegally tinted, preventing any glimpse of who or what was inside the car.

"Now this next song might seem like mood whiplash for those of you who've been listening in this whole time," said a radio DJ's voice, that might have been escaping from an open window on the other side of the car where Charles couldn't see. "But remember, not everyone's perspective is the same as your own. So please don't touch that dial, press that button, or walk away just yet."

A song began to play, a slow sad song about a lover begging for forgiveness.

Spoiler: Sad song

Charles took a breath, composing himself. Right. Time hadn't been running at the same rate for him and Starry. From Starry's perspective, Charles Adan had just walked out the door with an angry look on his face. Right after Starry had said that she'd rather Charles did whatever he wanted to do to her, and Charles Adan had sternly replied that this was a terrible terrible idea.

The song of desperation continued to its end, and then the black limo drove away.

Charles took his own time then to stop, to think, to come to a decision in the different light of everything.

Starry's mating field left him alone while he thought.

(AN: I think I have enough ideas to proceed, but thoughts on "Now what?" are still welcome.)

6.8.6 [CA]: Ways of Repairing Mistakes

"That is a terrible, terrible idea," Charles says. His face is as tight as his voice, sounding like he's trying to hold himself back from snapping at you even harder. A step takes him toward an open hand luggage, from which he grabs a rain jacket and a compact umbrella. "I don't even know if I can describe all the reasons that is a terrible idea but close to the top of the list is that it wouldn't solve anything including my feelings."

You flinch, more because you can also see it was a terrible idea than because Charles is angry at you. You could handle anger, but---but you also know that what you did wasn't something that could be resolved as easily as hitting you. You know you were trying to cheat your way out by suggesting it.

Charles doesn't say another word as he walks out the door. He glances back at you only once.

It's---it's still not as bad as the horrible images you drew in your mind. That was Charles being sad and disappointed and gently letting you know he was breaking up with you. At least he has to think about it.

You close the door behind him, squeeze your eyes shut, and think about how much you don't want to stand here hurting for however many minutes it takes for Charles to clear his head. There's, there's nothing plot-related you can do except wait for Charles to come back. So the scene skips ahead, because the audience will get bored if they have to just watch you fretting nervously for that whole time. Any well-written eroge would skip ahead at this point.

When you open your eyes there's pink-violet text floating obediently before you.

A skill has been created by a special action! Skipping over 28 minutes of waiting while nothing interesting happened from your own character perspective has created the skill Timeskip.

There's the sound of a keycard at the door, the lock clicks, the handle turns, and the door swings open.

Charles steps back into the room from outdoors. The sky behind him looks different than it did 28 minutes ago, still overcast but less darkly clouded.

Charles's white shirt looks half-wetted, whether from the mist outside or from sweat or both. There's a general air of dishevelment about him. He looks like he could use another shower.

He looks at you.

Your eyes drop down to your toes.

Charles closes the door behind himself, and goes to sit back down on the bed. It's like he stepped back out of the room and back in again, except for the change in his appearance.

It's---it's a hopeful sign that Charles was out there for 28 minutes, right? He wouldn't have needed to stay out that long if he was planning to just dump you. Unless he despises you now, and he was struggling to reconcile that with needing to keep you under control for the sake of Earth.

You're staring at the morning shadow on his neck. You can manage to look in his direction so long as you don't meet his eyes.

You're so scared right now.

Charles inhales, like he's about to speak, and then exhales, like he's thought better of what he's about to say.

"Uh, I, uh," says Charles. His voice sounds less confident than Charles usually does, even when he's worried.

Part of you wants to scream at him to just say whether or not he's breaking up with you.

Charles inhales again, and says, "Your life has been kind of surreal lately, hasn't it?" There's something odd in his voice. You would think it was respect, if that made any sense. "Just one thing after another. For the last five days."

You're not sure where he's going with this. "That part---is okay by me?" you say. "Compared to the way my life was a week ago, I'll take surreal."

The words seem to hit Charles hard, though you don't know why. He lets out a huge breath. "There's a part of me," Charles says slowly, "that wants to just tell you all is forgiven. God knows, I've made mistakes in my life too. More mistakes than I would've thought."

You tell the wild surge of relief in your heart to shut up. He didn't say you're forgiven. What Charles is saying implies that you're not being told all is forgiven. But, but still---that doesn't sound like the next words out of his mouth will be that you're being dumped.

"It's just---" Charles says. "I---I don't know how to say this. Maybe we could go on a walk together and somebody else would know how to say it? It's just, trying to act like nothing happened, like my feelings weren't hurt---um. So, the first girlfriend I ever had, I thought I was being nice to her by acting the way Dad trained me. I didn't realize I was getting it from Dad but that's where I got it from. I tried to be forgiving, when she did something I didn't like. Only she knew she was being given allowances, that she wasn't measuring up to my standards. Just like me and my Dad, if I hadn't been too stupid to see what I was doing. And after she broke up with me, she was---it took months for her mind to heal half the damage---why did she stay with me if I was hurting her that much? Why didn't she say something?" Charles's voice cracks, and there's a wild look in his eyes before he takes some breaths and calms down. "I tried telling Dad to stop it, and he didn't, but he could've, so why didn't she just tell me?"

You manage not to take a step back, but Charles sounds almost incoherent. Listening to that is scary, and, and painful. Sorrowful. You messed up Charles hard with what you did. You guess it's not surprising, you basically told him you'd been gaslighting him for days. It's no wonder that he's not all there, even after a calming 28-minute walk.

"I---I don't want to repeat that mistake," says Charles. "The one I made with my first girlfriend, I mean. Except I don't know how else forgiveness is supposed to work. And I also don't want to be---I don't want to be the lunatic wearing only ivy vines and a potted poinsettia on her head, yelling about how no human being deserves one moment of happiness anywhere in their lives, because we eat harmless plants who didn't attack us first, and if there's any god who helps us she hates them too. I don't want to put you into an emo street busker's even-creepier version of Oh My Darling Clementine, where if Clementine makes one mistake there's no use feeling sorry for her. There has to be a place for forgiveness. There are ways of repairing mistakes. Forgiveness, restitution, kindness, selfishness, I can see they're all necessary but I don't---I don't know how to put it all together. I don't know what to do, Starry. Cindy. I can see now that I have to avoid falling into the pattern of---of forgiving you. Trying to spank our way out of this problem would be a terrible idea, but a less terrible idea than that. I don't know what to do now. But I know I don't want to walk away, because you really are one of the nicest things that ever happened to me, surreal moments and all."

Your lips shape the word oh.

"I'm---I'm sorry," says Charles. He reaches up and wipes at his eyes, with a shirt-sleeve already damp to the point where you don't see it being useful. "That all made more sense in my head."

You want to reach up with the hem of your dress and wipe away his tears, but that would expose you to him, and you don't know if you're on sexy terms with Charles right now. So you step over to the side of his bed to take a tissue from a tissuebox, and touch it to the corners of Charles's eyes, as gently as you can, feeling like you're performing something sacred as you do it. That this means something, shows something, proves that you're the type of girlfriend who can also wipe the tears away.

You sit down at Charles's side on the bed, not touching him yet, hands clasped tightly in your lap. You want to hug him, but you don't know if that's okay. "I could---owe you a big one?" you say. "We both acknowledge that I owe you something extra-large, but you don't have to decide right away what that is?"

Charles hesitates. "I---I don't know if that's a good idea," he says. "But I admit, I can't think of anything better. It'll be bad if I try to ignore it, and I don't know how to not ignore it in a way that makes sense. All that's left is kicking the can down the road." A half-laughing sound comes from his throat. "Maybe we'll end up calling it a wash after I massively screw up sometime and hurt your own feelings."

You rather doubt that. "I don't think you'll ever be as thoughtless as---what I did," you say.

"Please don't think I'm that perfect, Cindy." You can see, from this close, that Charles's neck is trembling. Most of the rest of him is hidden by his shirt, but the wet fabric clings to his chest and you think that part is shivering too. "Part of why I felt so hurt was that I thought Starry was too perfect to lie---god, I shouldn't have said that, what was I thinking, I'm sorry."

You control your flinch, and even manage to half-smile after the irony catches up with you. "Where---where does that leave us?" you say, trying to keep your voice from being pleading. You want to beg, but begging would be emotional blackmail, and you don't have the right. You want to say Are we on hugging terms? but you can't say that either. In your imagination, when you say that, Charles smiles and hugs you, kindly forgiving you. You can see on some level why that's not the best idea, even if your soul is screaming for it.

The actual Charles takes some more deep breaths. "I---I think we should maybe start over," he says.

"No!" you blurt out before you can stop yourself, you didn't mean to contradict him, you meant to give Charles whatever he asked but that's too terrible. "Charles, no, please don't, don't press the reset button like that, almost everything you saw of me was real! I don't want to lose everything we had up until now! I don't want for Monday night to have unhappened!"

Charles is giving you a startled look. "I didn't mean---" he begins, and then pauses. "Does starting over mean---something much scarier than I thought it did? Like traveling back in time?"

You try to still your trembling hands. "I'm sorry," you say in a weak voice. "I guess I'm easily scared right now."

"I mean," Charles says. "What I'm trying to say is, I feel like---like I never met the real you, because in my head, you were always Starry even when you were being Cindy. I didn't try to learn the things about you that I would've asked any normal girl. I need to get to know the real you."

The words are awful in ways you can't describe, no you can describe them, SED will let you describe them, you can add more stat points if you have to, "Charles, no, I don't---I don't want to be---I'm not---I don't want to be that normal, I'm not that normal, the weird bullshit is the real me now, I'm not, I don't want to be, the true Cindy inside isn't just---"

"Hey," Charles says. He puts his palm over where your hands are wringing each other in your lap. "I didn't mean I was going to start treating you like you were, uh, as ordinary as I am. I can respect women with weird alien superpowers, not just aliens with weird alien superpowers. I mean, I like to think I can respect people without superpowers too. But I realize you're much more important than just the President of the United States or whoever… I'm sorry, I'm not saying this right. I should've kept walking longer."

Some of the terror subsides, even though you're still shaking. You're not just an ordinary girl wearing superpowers like a pretty dress, you're not, your hair is a pure idea, the rest of your body can't be made out of conventional matter either, you can make yourself more seductive by adding a stat point, the true you inside learned calculus, what you have isn't just a beautiful ball gown that can turn to rags when the clock strikes midnight, you couldn't wake up tomorrow and be back to BOD 4 and SED 2 or if you did the real Cinderella would've died anyways so killing what was left wouldn't change anything.

"All I mean," Charles says, "is that we didn't do some ordinary relationship-building things that new couples usually do. We skipped a lot, and we need to go back and redo some things."

"Okay," you say in a small voice. "So that means I can't---can't touch you, until we've been on more dates and you give permission? Should I make myself be a virgin again?"

Charles pauses. "Starry," he says, sounding stronger, more like the Charles you remember, "if I ever ask you for something that sounds terrible, please don't believe right away that what you heard is what I said. Or that what I said was what I meant to communicate."

You flush, even as some part of you feels good that "being scolded by Charles" isn't lost forever. Sure, it'd be bad if your relationship was always like that. But it would also be bad if it was never like that. "I'm sorry," you say. "I---I guess I'm kind of expecting awful consequences."

"I'm not singling you out here," Charles says. His lips turn up a bit, but his eyes remain serious. "I think I'd say the same thing to any other girlfriend who seemed to be paying too much attention to me, or any other submissive who'd just started experimenting with BDSM, or any other entity with phenomenal cosmic powers. Please double-check if it seems like I'm saying something that sounds insulting or terrible, or like I'm dominantly ordering you to do something that will be awful for you or harmful to our relationship, or like I'm wishing for something with huge implications. I'm afraid that one of these days I'm going to ask for the moon, and you'll give it to me and mess up all the tides."

You laugh without being able to help it, and more of the fear in you subsides. Charles is still treating you like a scary eldritch girl who might accidentally the moon. Even if objectively that isn't the best state for a relationship, it's better than the utter terror of Charles figuring out that you're just an ordinary stupid girl with powers she doesn't deserve.

Then you realize. "Wait," you say, "does that mean I am still allowed to touch you?"

"Right, I need to say it clearly," Charles says. "Yes, I'm---I'm okay with us still being together and still on touching terms, I get one large boon you wouldn't usually give me or forgiveness for one huge fuckup on my part, and aside from that, I want things to be okay between us."

A skill has been created by a special action! Hugging Charles hard enough to make him lose his balance and fall back onto the bed has created the skill Tackleglomp.

6.9.1* [CA]: Relationship-Building

Timeskip: Lvl 2 (20%). Active.

A simple utility skill for preventing boredom in yourself and any hypothetical audience that might be watching you. At Lvl 2, breathing or other simple repetitive muscle motions are the most you can do while not existing. Higher levels of this skill permit more complicated activities to have taken place during the timeskip. Any plot-relevant events that occur inside your own character viewpoint will automatically interrupt the timeskip and resume your existence.

This forward motion in your personal perspective occurs on a metaliterary level above any plots about time shenanigans. Using this skill does not exacerbate paradoxical tangles, accumulate temporal divergence, set off tachyon detectors, etcetera.

Tackleglomp: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. Special.

High-speed collisions and knockbacks can occur without injury, so long as you initiate the collision with intent to hug the other person. This skill can avert all damage from up to Lvl * Lvl * 1 meters/second of momentum within such a collision, at a cost of 1 SUB per 5 m/s (rounded up). This skill can also add up to Lvl² m/s of additional momentum for knockback purposes, even from a standing start, at a cost of 1 DOM per 5 m/s (rounded up).

For example, at level 7 of this skill, you could spend 8 SUB plus 9 DOM to tackleglomp your target from a standing start and knock them through a wall of a house as though from a 101 mph collision, while leaving both them and you feeling as if you'd run into them at 11 mph. Reducing the felt collision velocity below 11 mph would require spending an additional 1 SUB.

If you possess both Ero-Travel and Time Control, raising this skill to 20 will evolve it into the skill Tachyglomp.

You've managed to talk Charles out of his wet shirt, but he's still wearing pants, not to mention underpants. So you've just been lying next to him on this perfectly good bed, cuddling him. He hasn't taken off your dress, and you're afraid to do it for him. Your chest is covered where his back is bare, your legs are bare where his legs are covered. The most you can touch without clothing in the way is your arms touching his chest and your head resting on his bare shoulder and neck.

It's not that cuddling is bad. You can feel yourself soaking up the warmth through the contact, even at the places where there's clothes in the way. It's just less powerful cuddling than it could be, because of all the extra clothes, and you don't know how to ask for nudity, without that sounding like you're asking for sex, without that sounding like you're asking for not sex. The imaginary conversation in your head goes, "Can we get naked, only I don't mean to demand sex, only I'm not saying you couldn't fuck me anytime you wanted, only I…" and it seems better to stay quiet and cuddle inefficiently. You'd be very glad if Charles did turn around and start taking off your dress right now, but that feels less like urgent horniness and more like wanting to be reassured that you and Charles are still on fucking terms.

You're unsure how long the two of you have been lying here. Neither of you has looked at a clock, a more natural form of Slack. The cuddling will end when it ends, and then Mom will text you to let the two of you know it's time for dinner… does Mom know you're not eating much at dinner? Possibly not at all, depending on how scary the food is? Though you can't imagine anything scarier than bacon, and you already ate a bite of bacon… well, chocolate cake would be even scarier, but not even Mom would serve chocolate cake for dinner outright. You don't think.

You did just tell Mom that obesity was no longer going to be a thing.

This is not what you're supposed to be thinking about right now.

"Sometimes it's easier to imagine that you are an alien and that explains it," says Charles, a deep calm baritone that sounds rumbly when you're listening through his backside.

"Hmpfh," you hmpfh into his shoulder. "I'm just saying, there's a reason why it's usually not done that way, you know?"

"It's usually not done that way in video games," Charles says. "This is real life, and it is usually done this way in real life."

"My life isn't that real," you say. "My hair definitely isn't real. It seems smart for me to avoid doing things that erogame characters usually don't do."

"I think the parable of Chesterton's Fence implicitly assumes the fence was put up in reality and not just a video game," says Charles.

"Chesterton's Fence?" you say.

Charles briefly clears his throat, which sounds interesting when you're listening through his lungs. "It's from a parable by G. K. Chesterton. If you find a fence built in the middle of a road for no obvious reason, you shouldn't say, 'I don't see any reason for there to be a fence here, let's tear it down.' If you don't see any reason for a fence to be there, it means the builders had some reason you don't know about, which means you'd better keep the fence up. You should only tear down the fence if you're certain you do know why was built."

You mull this over. "Okay, but Charles, an eroge is like that. It embodies the wisdom of eroge-writers about what players enjoy enough to pay for. It's what boys choose when they're alone in the bedroom with the door closed and nobody watching them. What I learned from eroge isn't that boys only want sex. There were all kinds of things going on with the girl that weren't about her clothes coming off. Boys really do want to help out girls and go on adventures with them, not just go from one hentai scene to another. Eroge players really do want to learn the girl's tragic backstory, even if it's not sexy at all. But the player doesn't want to hear about where the girl went to elementary school, and what state her family came from, and then you have to memorize her birthday. Even if the erogame's text says that you take the girl to a fancy restaurant and have a conversation like that, it'll happen in one paragraph of narrative instead of going through all the details."

"Because the girl isn't real and doesn't actually have a birthday or a family," says Charles. "Those details are only interesting when they're about a real person."

"No," you say. "Because it isn't plot-relevant and doesn't reveal her character. The way you find out who she really is, is when mobsters burst into the restaurant in the middle of your conversation, and the two of you have to crawl out through a ventilation duct. That's when you find out the girl is the type of lunatic fucking tsundere who picks this exact moment to kick you in the face for the crime of seeing her underwear, and you decide that if you were a boy you would rather date the ventilation duct."

"Are you speaking from experience here?"

"Not experience of real life, if that's what you mean? I'm just saying, you being on the phone with me while I was running away from the police---that was real. That was us getting to know each other better. I don't know what the thing is where you ask about my favorite color, but I know that erogames don't make the player go through it."

"Sometimes people do have character-revealing reasons behind, say, their musical tastes," Charles says.

You snort into his shoulder. "That's dumb. Music is just music. You like whatever you like. You shouldn't make up pretentious reasons for it."

"See?" Charles says. "That's a character-revealing reason for your musical tastes right there! Also, if we turn out to like similar music, we can listen to it together. This is yet another reason to respect the traditional human dating rituals."

"Fiiiinnne," you sigh, and you talk about some of your favorite songs, since you don't really have favorite bands. Charles talks some about his own musical preferences, which aren't what you'd have guessed. It goes on for minutes. It's not tedious, not quite, not with Charles's warmth lying beside you. And it is nice to know there are plenty of songs you both like and could listen to together while cuddled up next to a warm fireplace. But it's still the type of thing where the text of an erogame would skim through it in a single paragraph that glossed all the specific details.

"I'm just saying," you say, after it seems like this particular Relationship Task has been Done, "if the goal is us getting to know each other better, it would go faster if… if the two of us went to a bar somewhere and tried to seduce a beautiful girl into a threesome, and it turned out she was carrying stolen codes for accessing the North Korean defense network."

"See," says Charles, "that's the type of statement that was easier to wave off when I thought you were an alien. It reveals a very different perspective on reality, which could also be the definition of insanity."

"Your relationship progress bar is not getting any closer to revealing my tragic backstory, mister."

"So I think to myself, if she's not an alien, did her power drive her insane? Did her power drive me insane? Here I am, asking myself whether or not it is true that we could try to seduce a woman into a threesome, have her turn out to be carrying North Korean defense codes, and this would work for faster relationship-building. Does the very fact that I am considering this question mean that I've already lost my own perspective on reality?"

You sigh into his shoulder, feeling your breath whisper into the warm skin. Maybe it's harder for someone to let go of Reality Classic if they never spent six months obsessively playing eroge when they were sixteen. "Erogame Logic," you say out loud. "That's the shape my mating field is taking. I didn't decide it on purpose, but there're worse forms an alien could have."

"I'm not sure I got that," Charles says.

It's okay. It's going to be okay. You'll crawl through some ventilation ducts with Charles, and then when your relationship is closer, you'll be able to tell him about the Erogame. The next time you try to tell Charles about the Erogame, it won't be packaged with a huge relationship-destroying revelation. You'll be able to form a pure, true desire to want Charles to know.

Unless the only reason you navigated this revelation successfully is that Charles is still inside the Erogame, and you're still on his character's route.

You close your eyes and snuggle into Charles harder. The Erogame doesn't change people, it chooses them, or at least it's looking that way. The Erogame wouldn't edit a major love interest like Charles after his route started. That would be a bad eroge, if there was no in-story reason for the change. Maybe Charles was chosen to be somebody who'd accept you after the truth came out. It doesn't make his acceptance less real.

You're---you're glad you didn't realize that before now, though. It would have made this all hollow, if you'd realized the implications of failing to tell Charles about the Erogame. That you were still inside his character route, destined for his happy ending.

Can you---can you really live like this?

Your erogame shouldn't be about you being sad that nobody you love can accompany you into the trailer behind the scenes. That is not the erogame character you want to be. That is not the eroge plot you want to live. The Erogame shouldn't be aiming for that either, right? It hasn't seemed like such a sorrowful Game so far.

There has to be something you can do within the game to make things be not sad. You just haven't figured out what.

Speaking of being not sad…

"Is it okay for us to discuss something more serious?" you say. "I mean, not so much do I have permission, I know you're going to say that it's allowed, but is it a good time? Otherwise it can wait."

"Sure," Charles says.

"Uh, there's this conversation I keep playing out in my head, where I want more skin-to-skin contact from cuddling, so I ask if I can take my dress and you can take off, uh, all of your clothes, only that doesn't mean I'm asking for sex, only I'm also not asking for not sex if you see what I'm saying, it's not that I'm asking you for sex and it's also not like I'm saying 'I'm not asking for sex right now' and it's also not like I'm neutral as opposed to being, uh, receptive, but only because I'm usually receptive, and you shouldn't take that as a demand to have sex with me right away."

"I think I got the gist of that," says Charles, you can hear a smile in his voice. "Should I go ahead and take my pants off?"

"Um," you say, "I think so long as we're relationship-building anyways, we might want to have a conversation about sexy rules in general first? Like, if cuddling up to your naked body turns out to be a turn-on, am I allowed to just start groping you anytime I like? Asking first feels---a little awkward, maybe even sad for reasons I might have trouble explaining. I mean, eroge characters usually don't ask first, if that came through. Can I just act like your body is mine and I can lick wherever I like, whenever I like? I mean, you seem like the type of boy who'd enjoy that, right?"

"Uhhhhh…" Charles says.

"If you need a while to think about it, I can skip through time until you're done," you say. "From the outside it'll look like I'm just staying still and breathing. I can't do anything more complicated than that while not existing, at least not yet."

"It shouldn't take me that long," Charles says. "Actually---let's start from the rule that it's okay for you to just, ah, act on impulse, any time we're in private. I can move your hand away if it's not a good time. We'll try that, and if it turns out I don't like that rule, we can make another one."

"Okay," you say. "As for me, uh, the rule I'd like to try is that I have my safeword and so long as I don't say Frankweed you can treat me like I'm an eroge character, which means, uh, you can just do whatever you want to me. I mean, you can ask first if that makes you feel better. Though eventually we need to talk about my need to, uh, not be asked sometimes. But I'm fine if you want to go on asking for now. I'm just saying, uh, at my current level of pervertedness and horniness, you don't have to ask before, uh, bending me over, even if we're on a public bus or whatever. I didn't wear panties tonight because, uh, even if it wasn't going to be a sexy confession, I didn't want to seem like I was putting up a barrier over my pussy. Though I'd enjoy wearing sexy panties for you sometimes, so long as that doesn't send you the wrong message. My mating field will make it easier for you to rip off my panties if you feel like doing that. Or any of my other clothes too. You can---you can do perverted things to me too, like putting a vibrator on me and forcing me to go around town with you while you play with the remote. Or, or making me walk through town naked on a leash. And---and then blindfolding me, and letting other people touch me, so I can't see who's doing what. Uh, I think the only people I wouldn't want seeing me like that are Mom, my Dad's family in Colorado, a couple of Norville high-school teachers I respect, and possibly a sorta-friend called Felice. Otherwise it's okay, even if we're on live television. I might get very embarrassed but I, uh, please remember that's fine too? Saying all this embarrassed me a lot but it also, um, you can reach over and feel underneath my dress if you want proof. But you don't have to, either. Though I---I still get a little shy sometimes about asking for sex outright, so it'll be nice if you don't make me say it, when I get horny. Unless you want to embarrass me on purpose."

You exhale, feeling a little lightheaded. Well, that was The Talk, eroge character edition.

Charles still isn't saying anything.

"That, uh, that is the silence of a boy who can't believe how lucky he is, right?" you say. "Boys like that type of thing, don't they? That's why it's in eroge."

"If I take off my pants now," Charles says, "and just hypothetically it turns out that you gave me an erection, what happens then?"

"Try it and see?"

Charles sits up in bed, and proceeds to pull off his shoes, his pants, his socks, and his underpants. He does, in fact, have a hypothetical erection.

You sit up in bed yourself, and lean over to inspect that temptingly hard penis in front of you, bringing your face close enough that he ought to feel your breath. "Well," you say, careful to direct the word's exhalation at the penis, "this is a problem, all right. It's hard to see how we could continue the relationship-building conversations with this going on. You'd be all distracted. Boys are easily distracted that way, or so I've heard."

"Uh huh," says Charles.

Without saying anything else, you ease Charles back onto the bed, in a position with him lying down on his back, broad shoulders and flat abdomen on full seductive display. You wanted to push him down, but despite the theoretical permission you have to just-do things, you're too nervous to just-do that. You don't know how his dominant side might react.

You reach to take off the short blue dress.

"Keep wearing the dress," Charles says. "I like it."

"Pervert."

"Excuse me?" says Charles.

"You heard me, pervert." As you speak, you're maneuvering yourself over him.

You slip the head of his very hard penis inside you, and sit down. You meant to go slowly, but for some reason you lose your balance and the hardness rams right into you, the wetness within you already at the point where the only resistance is from the cock pushing aside your flesh to make way. You don't suppress the embarrassing moan that comes out of you.

Then, sitting above Charles, still wearing your blue dress, you look down at his face, which has gone a little tense. "There," you say. "Problem solved. Next we were supposed to talk about our favorite books, right?"

There's a moment of quiet in your cozy little valentine's bedroom.

"Hold on, what?" says Charles.

"I got wet, you got an erection. Those were both problems." You gesture at where he's poking into you. "Now both problems are solved, and we can go on relationship-building."

"Your viewpoint on reality is not like my viewpoint on reality," says Charles.

"My favorite book as a kid was One for the Morning Glory by John Barnes," you say, "though I didn't understand it at all until I was much older. It's, uh, I guess you could call it a deconstruction of fairy tales, about what it would be like to live in a world that always ran on fairy-tale logic, only it's still told in the poetic style of a fairy tale. I guess I like it because… the characters knew they were living in a fairy tale, and that made them feel more real to me, somehow? Or, I mean, that's what I'd say if I needed a reason to like the books I like. How about you?"

Charles opens his mouth to reply, and you start gently rocking your hips so he won't be distracted.

Maybe not all is right with the world, but it's right enough for now.

6.9.b [CA,WS]: The In-Law

> Cindy
> honey
> sweetie
> dear
> you are now on 40-minute notice to come home
> and this is going to be a less elaborate dinner than I'd planned
> I know you haven't seen Charles in days
> I wanted to give you room
> but right now I can't even seem to get within one mile of our house
> WHAT WITH ALL OF THE DISTRACTIONS
> now, don't get me wrong, I appreciate that I ran into an old friend
> and that I'm now $300 richer and that I got a nice back massage and have a new faux-fur coat
> but you need to FINISH whatever unspeakable perversions are going on and COME HOME

<< I'm here, Mom!
<< sorry about all that
<< though not too sorry because it sounds like you had fun
<< I'm just about to climb into the Jacuzzi with Charles to clean up
<< it looks amazingly pleasant
<< (so does Charles)
<< we have to get one of those for our mansion or evil lair or sexy hive or whatever
<< the Jacuzzi I mean
<< well the Charles too
<< but you'll need your own Charles because this one is mine
<< though I don't mean grabbing your own Charles Adan out of a parallel Earth because that would be creepy
<< anyways, 40 minutes sounds about right for cleaning up
<< maybe some quick unspeakable perversion
<< and getting dressed again and driving over
<< I expect we'll be home when dinner's ready

> NO honey
> you need to be at home in 40 minutes WHETHER OR NOT dinner is ready
> otherwise you're just telling the Erogame to have burglars break into our house and steal the lasagna
> your date with Charles needs to FINISH IN 40 MINUTES
> there has to be NO WAY the Erogame can stretch it further
> even if my package of lasagna noodles gets bought right out of my hands by a man in desperate need of lasagna noodles offering me $300
> AGAIN

<< I understand
<< though I wonder how much the Erogame might offer to pay during the next noodle incident that happens to you
<< if I tried to keep the date going, I mean
<< what if you held out for $3000?

> are you sure the Erogame wouldn't decide that muggers are cheaper?

<< good point
<< oh I should let you know
<< I tried to tell Charles about the Erogame but it didn't work

> oh, sweetie, I'm sorry
> what happened?

<< he couldn't understand the words, pretty much
<< I'll try again another day
<< there was other stuff in the way
<< that might have stopped me from wanting it hard enough
<< and I got some of that other stuff out of the way
<< the point is
<< I'm trying to be more honest with Charles now
<< so you shouldn't pretend to be brainwashed or that you haven't noticed anything odd about me
<< I told Charles that I told you about my weird sexy superpowers of unearthly origin
<< he knows you know

> oh darn
> I was looking forwards to that
> nodding and saying "that's lovely" to everything
> so Charles thought it was all going over my head
> giving an even wider vague smile the more awful it was
> seemed like a good way to lure Charles into mentioning what you two have really been up to

<< MOM

> DAUGHTER

<< are all mothers like this or did I roll some type of critical failure during character generation​

The Crown Vic rolled to a halt, parked to pointlessly precise perfection on a residential street-side with more open parking than could be found anywhere within a ten-mile radius of Los Angeles.

Charles glanced over to the passenger seat, where Starry was still… pouting, was the only word he could think of. He'd never met somebody who could pout as clearly as Starry could.

"Okay, look," Charles said. "Even if you aren't wearing lipstick, I do not want to meet your mother with saliva stains visible on the front of my pants."

Starry pouted some more. She didn't say anything else, possibly because she'd already whined quite thoroughly about how she'd forgotten again to have him come in her mouth.

"Okay," Charles said, not quite believing that this was his life now, "how about this, Starry, I'll let you blow me when we get back to the love motel. Okay?"

Starry folded her arms under her dress in a way that elevated her breasts, and gave Charles a look that would ordinarily mean he owed a girlfriend flowers. "You'll let me blow you while you're driving," she stated.

"Wait," Charles said. "You were serious?"

"Charles, I told you that I need to blow you while you're driving for reasons that your mind can't comprehend."

Charles looked at her.

"God damn it, I know how it sounds, but I was serious. Look, I'll try telling you, okay? I need to give orgasms to drivers, while they're driving, because I got a game quest for that."

Charles was aware that his face had scrunched up, but he couldn't help it. A powerful illusion whispered that Starry was speaking ordinary English and her sentence would make perfect sense if he could just see it from the right angle. "What's the purpose of blowing me while I'm driving?" said Charles. "Can I at least understand that?"

"I'll be able to, uh, sort-of teleport between Norville and wherever you live in Nevada? Though, uh, getting to that point might take me a while."

"And this requires you to suck me off while I am in the middle of driving a car," Charles said.

"Yes."

"All right," Charles said, with a feeling like he was giving up, because he was giving up, "I'll let you blow me while I'm driving back to the motel. Happy?"

"Yeah, I'll be happy. After I swallow."

Charles unbuckled his seat belt, got out, and strode around the car to graciously open the door for Starry, who swung one leg over the edge of her seat in preparation for getting out of the car. Still in that very short blue dress.

Charles didn't bother looking away this time.

"Where are you looking, pervert?" Starry said, somehow managing to glare at him like she was actually offended.

"Up your dress, exhibitionist." Apparently he'd just gone and said that.

Starry was looking away, like she couldn't meet his eyes, but she still hadn't closed her legs.

He was only able to actually get Starry out of the car after she'd confessed to being a slutty exhibitionist who deserved to be punished for being such a tease, and he'd pointed out that they needed to go have dinner with her mother, and Starry had said that she could bend time if he wanted to bend her over the hood of his car first, and Charles had said he didn't want those stains on his pants either, and Starry had said she could probably make the stains go away, and Charles had said that "probably" wasn't good enough, and Starry had suggested taking his pants off completely, and Charles had asked what happened if Mrs. Sheen happened to look out of her front door just then, and Starry had started to answer before developing a thoughtful expression and then stepping out of the car without further objection.

Charles would have complained out loud that it was like trying to wrangle some type of obstinate small mammal, except that he was not actually failing to enjoy this.

What could he say? It turned out that being around a pretty girl who was constantly pleading for his cock was not nearly as bad as it sounded.

They stepped up to the porch of the house where all of this had begun, one Sunday afternoon like any other (if Starry was telling the truth this time). Charles cast a glance or two around, looking for any oddity that might help explain it, but there was no visible pentagram drawn on the sidewalk with a crack breaking one side. To all appearances, this was an ordinary residential neighborhood in an ordinary wounded-but-not-dying small city of Central California.

Starry took a key out of her dress's total absence of any pockets and inserted it into the lock of the front door.

"Tadaima!" Starry called as she stepped in, and Charles wondered for a startled moment if "Winifred Sheen" was actually Japanese.

"Okayree!" came back the mangled reply, and Charles stopped wondering.

The house was a standard three-bedroom architecture, a two-story with stairs leading up from next to the front door, and a hallway pointing straight to the kitchen. What was the name of that style of house again? Charles had learned it at one point but now he couldn't remember.

Charles noticed he was feeling more anxious than usual, his nerves sending his attention off in all directions. It wasn't the first time he'd Met the Parents, but it was certainly his first time meeting the parents while he and the girl were… he didn't have words to describe what the hell he and Starry were doing. What did Mrs. Sheen think of everything going on in her daughter's life? He should've thought to have asked Starry that earlier while they'd been talking about families, but Starry had kept bouncing on his penis in a distracting fashion.

Maybe while the girl was around her mother, Charles would get a chance to see what Cindy Sheen was like when she wasn't being quite so, well, Starry. That sounded nice.

Charles entered into the mother's kitchen, following the daughter.

Mrs. Sheen was… wearing the same apron that the house-husband had been wearing in the hotel painting, To Thine Own Thee Be True. Yep. That was a thing that was the case.

Leaving aside those particular chills, Mrs. Sheen looked like an ordinary mother, sprinkling grated parmesan cheese over the steaming surface of a lasagna-in-progress. Her face showed some wrinkles, her hair had grey in it but only a little. Beneath her apron, the woman was wearing a black floor-length dress on the higher end of inexpensive casualwear, with sleeves. Body-concealing clothing. It was still obvious she was carrying an extra fifty to eighty pounds. If she also carried the X-Gene, you couldn't see it by looking at her.

"Mom, this is my first and most senior harem member, Charles Adan. Charles, this is she who spawned me."

So much for that theory.

"Winifred Sheen," the woman said, glancing up from where she was finishing the parmesan cheese operation. Another two shakes, and she set down the cheese canister, turning to face him with raised eyebrows. "Are we already on hugging terms, Mr. Adan? Yes and no are both acceptable."

"I can manage a hug, Mrs. Sheen," Charles said, privately adding, thanks to my resolute foresight in not getting daughter all over my pants.

He stepped forwards for a brief but sincere-seeming embrace with the puffy woman.

"My daughter has told me so much about you," Winifred said. "Not. So how old are you, where do you live, and what do you do for a living?"

"Twenty-three," Charles said. "Anderstown off the west coast of Las Vegas. I'm a sales and delivery guy, I drive places."

Winifred nodded, and turned back to begin cutting the steaming lasagna into squares with a sharp spatula. "I take it that means you're a drug mule?" she said.

"Mom!" Starry said.

"Nah, actually Precision Mechanical does rush-order deliveries for custom-made spare parts that you can't find anywhere else and that can't be 3D printed," Charles said. "But yeah, my usual line about me being in some vague delivery and sales business is meant to make people think I'm into something shady. Gets me better service at some motels. I tell the truth if they ask, of course."

Winifred chuckled. "My daughter didn't ask, I'm guessing," she said. "She probably liked the thought."

"No, Mom," Starry said. "It honestly didn't even occur to me that he could be into anything shady. He's Charles."

The atmosphere still felt awkward to him, as Winifred brought out the lasagna in oven mitts to the dining room. The table there was solid, wooden, the surface polished and repolished over many scratches, and long enough that it could have sat eight.

Winifred sat at the kitchenward right side of the table, leaving two places at the left for Starry and Charles, with Winifred's place between them. Mrs. Sheen took Charles's plate without being asked, and delivered a scoop of lasagna for him. Then she reached for Starry's plate---

Which Starry promptly withdrew. "I'll, uh, serve myself," Starry said. "I want… only a little."

It was at that point that Charles remembered. "You don't like eating," he said out loud. "That part was, uh," he didn't know how to ask it with the mother present. That part was true, unlike some other parts?

"I had a bite of bacon this morning," Starry said. "Literally, just one bite. It was… the first thing I'd eaten since Sunday afternoon."

Huh. Starry's horror about food hadn't been feigned? Charles would not have guessed that. She hadn't been kidding when she'd claimed that almost all of her alien act had been real.

Winifred was looking at her daughter with her eyes wide, even as the older woman served herself lasagna. "You have a game skill for not eating?" she said.

"Mom, please don't talk about the Erogame in front of Charles, it doesn't seem polite to say things he isn't allowed to understand. And no, I didn't get a skill for it, not that I noticed. I just… don't feel hungry."

"Sweetie," Winifred said, "I hesitate to say this, but it's not any better if you end up anorexic---"

"Mom. It's fine. Plenty of eroge never show the girl eating anything, and she doesn't starve. I figure it's just assumed I've been fed off-screen."

"Are you sure that---sweetie, why aren't you eating?"

"Just the obvious reason where I have been very, very, very thoroughly traumatized, day after day after day. Because thoughts about food are pain. Because I despised myself and wanted to die every time I broke down and ate something that didn't taste like crap. Because I hate hate hate that food is a thing on this planet and I wish the very concept of it would stop existing." Starry stood up from her chair so that she could reach over the table and use the spatula to cut a lasagna square into four sub-squares, and then served herself half of a sub-square onto her own plate. She sat down again, and began to cut that tiny food item further, into a small piece that she put on her fork. "You don't need to say anything about facing my fears or getting over my badbrains, Mom. I figured that out on my own. Just this morning, in fact." She picked up her fork and looked at it, staring down the bit of noodles, sauce, and cheese.

Charles and Winifred exchanged worried looks.

"Are you on top of this?" Winifred said, now addressing Charles.

Charles shook his head. "There's a lot I didn't know and still don't know about your daughter, ma'am."

"I am on top of this," Starry said. She deliberately bit the lasagna off the end of her fork, with a look in her eyes like she was taking a bite of Hitler, because fuck Hitler.

"Dear, you know it wouldn't be a good thing if everyone forgot the concept of food," Winifred said, sounding more serious than before.

"Yeah," Charles said. "People would start feeling hungry and they wouldn't know what the feeling was or how to fix it. That would get very bad, very fast."

"No, that's not, um," Starry waved her hands, having set down the fork in bitter triumph. "I don't mean erasing people's memory of food, I mean subtracting the concept itself from reality. Food was never a thing. There are other shops where the restaurants used to be. Bathrooms don't have toilets, just showers."

Charles's fragile sanity shattered. How would---but---but but---what would---all of world history---wars fought over---and the time when farming had been the most common---and what would've happened instead of the agricultural revolution---how would Homo sapiens have evolved, if hunting weaponry hadn't been---could Darwinism even work without Malthus---

"Well, I'm ordering you not to do that, dear," Winifred said, somehow not sounding absolutely terrified by all this. "There'll be no dessert for you if you do."

"I'm not going to do it. But I don't want to hear any complaints about my having eliminated the concept of tropt. Nobody needed that shit, and the whole house feels roomier with all the tropters gone."

"She's bluffing, right?" Charles said.

"Yes, she is," Winifred said.

"We're sure she's bluffing, right?"

Winifred gave him a reassuring smile. "I know you haven't known her that long," she said. "But I have. Cindy jokes a lot, but she isn't really like that."

Charles nodded, and turned his eyes to his own plate, though he couldn't spare much attention for the layers of sauce and cheese. He wanted to ask, or rather demand, to be told that Starry couldn't do that. That she'd been joking about her power and not just her intentions. The idea that reality was---made of concepts---and you could just reach in and take out the food concept---then you turned around and the restaurants weren't there, had never been---

It had to be a joke. Even the Bible didn't talk about God doing that type of thing. If he was recalling correctly, Summa Theologica specifically excluded changing the past from the definition of God's omnipotence.

Charles ate a piece of lasagna, chewing on it automatically, his mind prodding at the memories saying that Biotinker had always been the startup two doors down from Precision Mechanical. That their employees had lined up next to Precision's employees at the food carts parked outside for lunch. He knew some of their names, or so Charles's memories now insisted. He'd forgotten to ask Starry about that part, what with various distractions. Dinner with Mrs. Sheen didn't seem to be the right time.

"Is Starry… ah, is Cindy also bluffing about conquering North Korea?" Charles said instead, when he was finished swallowing.

Winifred made a face. "Sweetie, I said I don't want---"

"I'm not going to make you queen of that country, Mom. I was thinking something north-European for you. It's just, somebody ought to conquer North Korea, things are pretty bad down there. Though Sonia would be better at ruling it than me."

Charles started coughing as some lasagna went down the wrong way.

"Sonia?" said Winifred.

"Sonia Turk. She got the Ero Virus synthesized, remember?"

"Oh!" Winifred said in a tone of enlightenment. "That makes sense. Yes, honey, you should leave ruling North Korea to people like Sonia. It's a country that's going to need a lot of work. Ah, don't northern European countries get very dark in wintertime?"

"Um, right," Starry said. "I forgot about that. Well, once I reach a high enough, um, I mean, once I'm powerful enough, I can probably---"

"The next words out of your mouth had better not be 'adjust the Earth's tilt,' young lady."

"Fiiiiine, Mom. All I was going to say was that I'd move the continent. It's not like anyone would notice if I did!"

"Are you on top of this?" Charles said to Mrs. Sheen, trying to keep the suppressed horror out of his voice.

"Absolutely," Mrs. Sheen said firmly.

As the dinner went on, Charles did find himself relaxing somewhat. He and Mrs. Sheen were turning out to have a fair amount in common, like, say, their common desire not to see Starry infect the North Korean military with a contagious virus that turned men into hermaphroditic little girls. Even if Starry had listed that as a specific example of what she had too much common sense to ever do, that raised more questions than it answered.

In time Winifred said apologetically that she'd bought a decadent dessert that, she now realized, Cindy probably didn't want to eat or even hear about. And Winifred asked apologetically if Cindy wanted to go on a stroll around the block while the two of them ate dessert.

Starry said that she knew perfectly well that Mom was just trying to get Charles alone and interrogate him, but sure, she'd step out of the house and timeskip until they were done.

The dessert was as decadent as promised, three brownies so heavy with chocolate that they were viscuous, with four different flavors of frosting layered above. Charles only cut himself half of a brownie, helplessly unable to take more even if Starry could protect him from the consequences. He couldn't override the instincts saying loudly that the food in front of him was dangerous and needed to be taken in small doses. It gave him some extra sympathy for Cindy's viewpoint, if to her all food was like that.

Winifred cheerfully allocated herself the remaining two-and-a-half brownies.

Charles took a forkful of his brownie, and frowned at the small gob of chocolate that drooled off it and fell back onto his plate.

Winifred took a much larger forkful of brownie, and chowed down on it without hesitation.

Charles wasn't sure whether he was feeling scandalized by the woman's indulgence, or impressed by how fast she'd adapted to the new realities of her life. That tree had grown up pretty far from the apple, apparently.

The brownie tasted just like it looked.

"Interrogation, huh," Charles said, after he'd savored and swallowed, and Winifred had done the same.

"She knows her mother so well," Winifred said. "What are your intentions toward my daughter?"

Blunt ran in the family, it seemed. "I suppose I've been taking it one day at a time," Charles said aloud. "Your daughter seems quite eager to, ah, recruit me for her harem. And, ah, I am not oblivious to, ah, the fact that, ah," this was oddly hard for him to say out loud, "well, that she's obviously the nicest thing that ever has happened or ever will happen to me. But this is only my second date with her, and, well, we're still getting to know each other? I've been trying not to rush into things."

Possibly he'd been trying too hard not to rush, in retrospect. On his Walk of Epiphanies Charles had staggered past a white-haired old man talking to another old man about the woman he regretted not marrying in his youth. The old man had said that he'd realized only too late that imagining yourself to be taking things very safely and slowly could be a guise of fear and not just sensible caution. And the other old man had said it didn't even take fear, it was just that taking things slowly was easy to fall into, felt normal while you were doing it, and didn't come with clear warning signs until you ran out of time. It was a fair point, but then he couldn't exactly trust Starry's mating field about everything, either.

Charles took another dose of brownie, carefully measuring out a smaller portion, so no other drips of chocolate would escape his fork.

Winifred took another huge forkful, carefully making sure to get all four flavors of frosting along with the base brownie, and opening her mouth wide to maneuver it in.

The thought came to Charles, with the sense of a startling insight, that maybe the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree. What he was seeing now could be similar in its own way to Cindy's attitude towards sex.

"You come across as a very sensible person," Winifred said, after another round of savoring and swallowing. "A very grounded, stable young man with plenty of common sense, working hard at an ordinary job. Just what I might think my daughter needs, at this troubling time of her life."

Charles raised his eyebrows. "I sense a but coming," he said.

"But we both know you're not normal," Winifred said.

The words didn't sink at first, and then Charles's fork froze halfway up from the plate. "What do you mean?" he said, trying to keep out of his voice how hard the words had hit him.

"I mean that you're not as normal as you try to look," Winifred said somberly. Her eyes were very serious, now. "Are you, Mr. Adan?"

Charles slowly lowered his fork back to his plate. "How could you tell just by having dinner with me?" he said. He felt like he'd been kicked in his stomach. Had he been giving her daughter predatory looks without realizing it? Or did he just have the Mark of Cain branded on his fucking forehead?

Winifred gave him a small, sorrowful smile. "She's my daughter. I can guess what type of person her powers might have found for her. Whether she's worked that out herself, or not."

Oh.

"I," Charles said, and swallowed heavily. "I see."

"Is she likely to get hurt hanging around you, Mr. Adan?"

It was another hard kick in the stomach. "I, I will literally die before I let that happen," Charles said, and meant it.

"Mm. Try not to die, she'd find that very traumatizing. Does Cindy already know the truth about you?" The mother's gaze upon him was stern, now.

Charles managed to nod.

Her expression didn't change. "If I were to ask Cindy that, would she tell me the same thing?"

"Yes," Charles said. "She knows. She---I think she knew before I did."

Winifred's gaze did soften, then. "Oh my," she said. "That must have been hard on you."

"No… kidding," Charles said.

Winifred took another huge forkful of brownie, her appetite seemingly unchanged by the heavy conversation. She looked more cheerful now, and smiled again while chewing.

Charles took another smaller bite of his own half-brownie, still struggling to contain his shock. So now she was all right with it? Just like that? All Winifred had been worried about was whether a monster was stalking Cindy unwitting, and his inner predator's desire to rape her and hurt her was fine so long as Cindy knew? Winifred felt that way about her own daughter?

Maybe this all wasn't as socially unacceptable as Charles had thought.

Or maybe Cindy's particular brand of personal insanity ran in the family.

Charles would have said the brownie tasted like ashes in his mouth, but it didn't, it tasted like viscuous chocolate with multiple flavors of frosting. There were limits to what level of brownie could be defeated by mere despair.

"Well," said Winifred after she'd eaten two more huge spoonfuls of her own dessert, "if at some point you want advice about your troubles, or to talk to an older adult, feel free to contact me. I wouldn't call myself an expert on your particular situation, but I can lend a mature ear, at least, and I'm not easily shocked. Is anything troubling you at the moment?"

"Just," Charles said, and swallowed his mouthful. "Just the obvious, I suppose."

"And what is the obvious?" Winifred said.

She couldn't possibly expect him to go into details. Not with the mother. "I guess---I guess I was raised to believe that it's unacceptable to do certain things to a woman, even if she says she would enjoy---or maybe I'd be all right with it if it was just a regular BDSM thing, I'm a millennial after all. But if you go outside the careful BDSM setups, my brain thinks it's---I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that there's something inside me that wants anything that---extreme."

Winifred had set down her own fork and seemed to be staring at him with a rather odd expression. "So your abnormality is that, as my daughter made you realize, you have some extreme sexual impulses that you were raised to believe aren't acceptable. That's it?"

Charles's brain seemed slow to catch up. "What?" he said.

"Are you sure your father isn't a mob boss too?" Winifred said.

"What?" Charles said.

"I had no idea, really," Winifred said. "I just suspected that my daughter's, ah, mating field, wasn't likely to set her up with anyone completely normal. I'm sorry for tricking you, but Cindy wasn't telling me and I was honestly concerned. So what class of extreme sexual impulses are we talking about here? Because you are not allowed to cut my daughter into seventeen pieces until we are absolutely sure that she is immortal."

6.9.c** [CA]: Charles's Very Long Day, Cont'd

Charles walked back out of the front door of the Sheen home. He didn't stagger, but he felt like he wanted to stagger in a visible way that would earn him sympathy in the watching eyes of God, who had better appreciate everything he'd been through.

"How'd it go?" Starry said.

"Dinner's over, we're leaving," Charles said.

Starry didn't object to this, just nodded in sympathy. Charles hadn't thought he would need to explain. God help her, she'd grown up with that for a mother.

Needless to say, as Charles buckled himself into the car and drove away from the curb, he'd completely forgotten about---

Well, anyway, he managed not to drive into a tree as Starry reached out and undid his zipper.

"Hey!" Starry said. "Stay focused, Mr. Adan. You'd better learn to drive safely while you're being blown, because believe me, that's going to happen to you a lot." Her busy fingers were extracting his soft cock from the fly of his underwear, and then she undid her seatbelt, squirmed around until she was kneeling wih her knees on the passenger seat, and a hot, wet, sucking, tongue-squirming mouth engulfed the head of his penis.

His life needed a pause button and his girlfriend needed an off switch.

Although Charles did have to admit that Starry's head in his lap was not as unpleasant as he might have feared.

Charles looked to the side, at where Starry's ass had made its way out from under her short little blue dress and was wiggling in apparent contentment. And then he had to conscientiously turn his eyes back to the road, instead of going on looking. Another brief glance at the lovely sight, almost as stimulating as the warm wet feelings moving lower on his rapidly rising shaft. Another effort of will to turn his eyes back to the road.

All right, Charles thought, he would concede that this was in fact a nice thing to have happen to him after the tension and worry of dinner.

"Starry I'm serious where the HELL are we?"

"Shhh. Noisy boys get teased." The half-naked girl occupying his lap like a conquered country put her head back down again.

"Are we even still in the United States? If it wasn't cloudy, I'd be worried that I'd look in my rear-view mirror and see the Earth behind me---Starry I can't drive WHILE you DO that---"

Starry didn't respond to this, seeming focused on however the hell she was flicking her tongue against the sweet spot of his shaft at just the right frequency to keep the pulses of pleasure, almost but not quite orgasm, going through him again and again while he sweated and gasped and tried not to crash into oncoming traffic on a street that seemed unreasonably busy for this late at night and the whole drive should have been through a residential area and over in two minutes but no he'd made a left turn instead of a right turn while being distracted, and all the streets had unfamiliar names now, and his GPS had malfunctioned and was showing an unrelated set of unfamiliar streets, and, and, Charles couldn't think Starry was doing the thing where she slowly sped up her tongue and then stopped and he could feel an agonizing surge of pleasure, feel the semen going up the shaft and then stopping with an agonizing, aching, just a little coming out, Charles was having trouble thinking in words and then just as the ache began to subside she started moving her tongue again.

"This is literally a nightmare," Charles said.

Starry made an offended sound with her mouth full and started bobbing her head faster.

If it wasn't for the wet mouth surrounding his cock and that he was still too LUUUUCID for this to be a dream, he'd be sure this was a nightmare. Traveling for a living as he did, an embarrassing number of his dreams were about driving his car. His nightmares correspondingly tended toward unrecognizable street names and a GPS showing nonsense inforMAAAAtion. He wouldn't be surprised if in the future those nightmares also started involving an incredibly naughty girl, which would admittedly be an imPROOVEment.

The trouble was, he didn't know how to MAkE it stop. He couldn't, he wasn't willing to do anything to Starry that would succeed in punishing her into compliance instead of just egging her on like a nipple pinch almost CEEERtainly would. If there'd been a bed he could've thrown her down and fucked her, but there was no bed here, and Starry had made it clear earlier that he NEEEded to come in her mouth with the car not stopped while he DID, and, and, Charles's mind went blank as he started to come, bucked his hips trying to come more, a few more agonizing drops of semen leaked out---

(Time passed.)​

---okay, this was utter bullshit. Charles had just tried circling around a block, planning to make four right turns in succession, and the last turn hadn't been there. So he'd made a U-turn, intending to see how far it was possible to retrace his steps. He'd at once found himself facing a road lined with the cookie-cutter-duplicated houses of a suburban subdivision, bearing no resemblance to any road he'd driven through previously. He'd thought about telling Starry to stop, but he was afraid to interrupt the blowjob just in case that left them stranded wherever the hell they were.

Charles had an awful suspicion he knew the only way out of this maze. There was a usual way Charles had of getting out of a driving-nightmare, on the occasions he went half-lucid.

It was just, that way out wasn't appropriate to real life, to put it extremely mildly.

What Charles did to escape a driving-nightmare was close his eyes within the dream and floor the accelerator. And keep it floored, while the motor's hum rose and dream-car rumbled and the acceleration pressed him back into the seat, until either he woke up or he found himself somewhere else.

In real life that was, risky wasn't the word.

Though… Starry's mating field wouldn't let her mate get hurt, not while they were in the middle of mating. Right? It was obviously controlling his environment already.

Charles made a right turn, and saw a road ahead of him that still looked residential, but was long, straight, and empty of cars or stoplights or stop-signs so far as his eye could see. Was that a sign from the genius of this place?

Charles tentatively closed his eyes, tentatively started to press his foot down.

Charles opened his eyes and raised his foot before his car moved more than a meter. No, hell no, hell no he wasn't doing that, not in real life, it was too dangerous, he just couldn't do it, he had a lifetime's worth of conditioning telling him not to do it.

Starry's wet mouth was pulsating more urgently again. She'd let his cock calm down for a while, though she'd kept on licking lightly, but now the other part of this endlessly looping nightmare was starting up again. Admittedly the more pleasant part.

Then Charles saw the metaphor. Floor the accelerator, it's safe inside the dream…

The car rolled on another block while he worked up his resolve and shoved down his doubts.

Charles took one hand off the steering wheel, flexed his fingers.

Then Charles grabbed Starry's head by her hair, and started pushing her head up and down, fucking her mouth.

Starry made a startled sound, and Charles let himself pay a little less attention to his driving, focus on the new sensation. He'd half-expected it to not work, for his cock to bump into the roof of her mouth or for Starry to be unable to control her teeth. But somehow this was working fine, warmth and slickness and he could still feel her tongue pulsating against him, even as Charles drove faster and more calmly, no longer trying to read the street signs or the GPS, just making random turns. The tension rose and rose between his thighs and Starry tried to withdraw her head, tried to push herself up from his lap, it sounded like she was trying to say something but Charles locked down all of the parts of him that were screaming at him not to hurt her, grabbed her hair harder, and kept slamming her mouth down on his crotch as the fire rose up in him and Starry tried again to get away, the fantasy that she was truly unwilling and that he was seriously forcing himself on her, punishing the tease, flashed through his mind and Charles came and came and CAME and turned left into the entrance of the Valentine Motel, gliding not-quite-smoothly into his assigned parking space.

With the self-possession that sometimes returned to a guy after he'd had his orgasm, Charles realized what he'd just done… no. It would be fine. It would be fine. She'd---she'd been pretty clear about what she wanted. And that she didn't want a safe sane normal BDSM relationship where he couldn't do what he'd done unless they'd had the traditional conversation about non-verbal safewords first. Starry had her mating field, her body wasn't an ordinary human body, she would be fine with it.

Charles also realized that he was still forcing Starry's head down into his lap, not mouthfucking her any more, just mindlessly holding her mouth's warmth over his cock in the afterglow.

Gently, not wanting to show the bottom any trace of alarm, Charles pulled her off his cock and let go of her hair.

Starry coughed a few times, and pushed herself up off the seat, rising upright in the car and trying, futilely, to straighten out her newly stained dress. She had a glazed look to her, and not just in the sense that her face was glazed with saliva and traces of white.

"That was---okay, right?" Charles said tentatively.

Starry swallowed, coughed again, and nodded.

Charles let out the breath he'd been holding. "So how'd I taste?" he said, after a few more breaths of recovery. She'd made that out to be some type of weirdly big deal.

"Kind of... salty, stringy, a little bitter, smells sort of bleachy, with a thick squidgey texture... but somehow that isn't bad?"

Charles stared at her. "That's how semen is supposed to taste," he said, though not from personal experience.

"Really? Info, skills, the nectar, Charles Adan... huh, you're right. You taste like 'Fine traditional semen. There's nothing wrong with this semen. It doesn't need to taste like anything else.'"

Charles tilted his head and gave Starry one of his more skeptical looks.

"And I get +3 WIS for the next 12 hours," Starry said, with a gleam in her eyes like a cat who'd just eaten an unusually tasty canary. "Uh, I realize you probably didn't get that but, who could have guessed, your come is super good for me. I should have it once in the morning and again in the evening, every day, like a doctor's prescription."

With his blood cooling now, Charles thought again about the dreamlike shifting streets he'd been driving. About Biotinker having always been next door to Precision Mechanical. About nobody noticing a moving continent.

"We need to talk about what just happened," Charles said.

"Charles, I'm fine---"

"No," Charles said. "We need to talk about where my car went."

"I think it's over here," Starry said, pointing at the dashboard. "It was right in front of us the whole time! See, I'm wiser already."

Quest completed: A Family-Friendly Harem.
+100 XP

Edge Other has increased by 1.

Tears of Milk has increased by 1.

Driving your boyfriend almost out of his mind while he drives his car almost out of reality causes your FUK to go up by 1!

Edging has increased by 1.

6.9.d [CA]: Holding Hands

It wasn't dramatic, but as Charles entered the Valentine's motel room with Starry, he excused himself and went off to use the washroom, as mortals sometimes had to do.

Inevitably the act gave him time to think, which might not have been good for him.

Now that Charles was no longer in the middle of (1) driving (2) a blowjob, he had the time to be increasingly disturbed by the question of where the hell his car had been. Or, to the extent his car had been right next to him all along, where the hell the rest of the universe had been. It would have been nice to write off the whole thing as a hallucination, or Starry's mating field constructing a holodeck for him to drive around in. But Charles had a feeling that wasn't going to be Starry's explanation. Charles had a feeling Starry wasn't going to say they'd just been teleporting around, either. It wasn't that he didn't think her mating field couldn't do that, it was that…

Well, it was that, so far as he could remember, he'd always worked a couple of doors down from Biotinker.

Combine that with the Walk of Epiphanies and the Drive of Blowjobs, and it painted a picture of a world that was shifting, changing, mutable. And a power acting on it that wasn't force or energy, that didn't operate by moving matter or altering its chemistry. Power beyond even bending time or focusing probability. Power that treated reality as being made of pieces that could be taken apart and fit together again.

Okay, he was starting to freak himself out here. He should just ask Starry what type of power her mating field really had. He might still freak out at the answer, but at least he'd be freaking out at the correct answer.

Charles emerged from the bathroom.

He took off everything except his socks and underpants, because Starry had made it clear earlier in the day that she thought if they were talking anyway, they might as well be cuddling, and that she preferred more skin-to-skin contact to less.

Starry took off her dress, and left on her heels.

They laid down together on a rumpled bed that was inexplicably devoid of wetness and fluids. They faced one another. Embraced one another, two upper arms laid over two shoulders, two hands clasped between them on the bed.

Charles asked.

And Starry talked.

Bullshit metaphysics, she called it.

Starry seemed to be doing a good job of talking around things his mind couldn't understand, she seemed to recognize the look in his eyes when it happened. Which meant that his remaining incomprehension was of the more ordinary and mortal type.

It's not that people poof out of existence, it's that we're looking in a different direction where we can't see them anymore…

Part of him wanted to call bullshit. Part of him wanted to say it was just an obvious excuse. You couldn't just go rewriting all of Earth, and say that there were incomprehensible metaphysical reasons why you weren't really changing people's minds and bodies without their permission.

The rest of him, feeling cold all over, remembered what the street preacher had said.

"Our universe can't make Snow White be unreal," Charles said. "Snow White has no way of knowing we think she's not real. Inside her story, Snow White says 'Cogito ergo sum,' and she has no way of knowing somebody outside her story thinks she's not real. Our own universe can just---look in her direction, or not."

"That…" Starry said. "That sounds wrong but sort of right? I don't know how to put it. I feel like it's not the capital-T Truth, it's not how bullshit metaphysics really works. But it's righter than saying that Snow White doesn't exist at all."

And Starry kept talking.

From my perspective, if I don't know whether or not you work next to Biotinker, it's like I'm standing next to all the versions of someone that could exist, and then my power observes into existence the Charles who works for Precision Mechanical, who was retrospectively there the whole time all along. Schrodinger's Charles. Yeah, I know that's not how Schrodinger's Cat works according to quantum physics, everybody who knows physics always says that to me. This isn't quantum bullshit, it's different bullshit.

"I don't---I don't see how that could work," Charles said. "If you're standing next to many versions of me, then many versions of me are standing next to you. What happens to all the Charleses who didn't work at Precision Mechanical? If you don't see them anymore, they shouldn't be seeing you anymore. If they're not blinking out of existence, does the Starry they're looking at suddenly vanish from their own perspectives? They panic and look all over for her, but none of them can ever find you again? I know it sounds like I'm asking a stupid question here, but what's the answer?"

"I don't know," Starry said quietly. He could look her in the eyes now, lying side by side on the bed, and Starry's eyes looked worried. "I don't understand bullshit metaphysics very well. I realize it's kind of an important question if you're a Charles."

"It's not much less important if you're the Starry!" Charles said. His heart was starting to pound. "So Snow White is real, that means all stories are real, the story of a Charles who doesn't work at Precision Mechanical is also real, that's why he doesn't poof out of existence when the universe stops looking at him. Okay, but then the story of a Starry who observes that Charles instead of observing me is real too. We're just throwing up our hands and saying that everything happens. Do you see the problem here?"

"Uh… possibly sort of? Maybe those other people are part of a story but not the story? I honestly don't understand this that well. There's a reason I named it bullshit metaphysics."

There was a creeping horror crawling up Charles's back, a terror more direct and personal than his fear of an alien wrecking the Earth's sand castle. "Starry, it's not a good thing if everything happens. We could tell a story about a Charles who doesn't work for Precision Mechanical, and we could tell a story about Starry's hair coming to life like a snake and biting that Charles while he lies in bed, then his feet turn into puddles and the walls start changing color and when he looks at his fingers they're made of spiders. That Charles doesn't know he's not real. Inside his story, he says 'cogito ergo sum' just like we do. So if---if you don't know where I went to college---and your power decides that it wants a Charles who went to Yale---then the Charles who didn't go to Yale isn't in the story anymore. Just in a story. Which for all I know means that he goes on existing after your power kicks him out of the universe, but now he's in a place where no story is more true than any other story, where everything shifts and changes like streets with unrecognizable names---" The words were sticking in Charles's throat. He didn't know if he could convey to her the terror of living in a universe that could cast him out like that.

Charles knew how to handle the fear of his car crashing. He could handle a world where his alien girlfriend could vaporize him at any time. He could imagine how to react if Great Old Ones sometimes ate people in a deliberately uncaring fashion so as to demonstrate how indifferent the universe was to humanity. But he didn't know how to handle this, and now he was experiencing true cosmic terror for the first time in his life or in his imagination. He didn't understand what made the universe look away from people. For all he knew, it could happen to this Charles Adan in the next minute, if he embodied the wrong answer to any of Starry's needs. And he didn't know what happened to him after that. He should've run away from the reality warper before she deliberately or accidentally kicked him out of the universe, but that very act itself might lead to him flinging open the motel door and seeing that beyond it lay chaos. Because his running away wasn't part of the story, just a story, and anything could happen once you were in a story. It was like being told that Hell was real, and then not being able to find a Bible anywhere to learn what counted as a sin.

Starry put a hand on his shoulder. "Charles," she whispered, "please don't be so scared. I've noticed by now that when I start getting really scared of… of stuff… it's almost never as bad as what I'm imagining. I'm guessing my power chose right from the start to steer me toward a delivery guy working next to Biotinker, because my power already knew what would happen on Thursday night… no, that doesn't sound right either. This isn't like a supercomputer making a prediction. I think most acts of bullshit metaphysics happen before… before happening. The only changes we see are changes that my power wants us to see. Anytime the universe looks different to us between Monday and Friday, it's because bullshit metaphysics wanted the shift to happen at a time, for a reason, where we could see it. Mostly we never see the bullshit happen because it doesn't happen, it just is."

Charles drew in a breath, trying not to shudder. "So nobody changes after you see them," Charles said. "Once you observe somebody, he's fixed."

Starry was quiet, and then, reluctantly, she shook her head. "No," she said, sounding ashamed of it. "The Norville Arms-Marriott has a different number of floors now than when we were there. And Tammi and Danni didn't say anything about having noticed the hotel changing. So my guess is that the Tammi and Danni we met in the elevator are… not exactly the same Tammi and Danni we know now… Charles, we hardly knew the first two Arcadias just from bumping into them in the elevator. We hadn't observed them much. We didn't like them yet. We didn't know who they were inside, and they didn't know us. We weren't tangled up in the tangled mess---I don't know how to say this. But I wouldn't expect the Arcadias to change again."

Charles was feeling literal pain in his chest. If he hadn't known better where his heart was located, he might have worried he was having a heart attack. The nightmare was getting more real, second by second. "The first Arcadias we saw in the elevator don't deserve to end up in hell, Starry!"

"I… think I have an intuitive sense that's not how it works?"

Charles had to gulp air several times before he could speak. It was hard to go on talking. His personal concept of Charles Adan didn't go well with what he was feeling, or with what he was about to say.

"Starry," he whispered, looking into her eyes, "I'm terrified. I don't want the universe to look away from my direction. I---I was thinking about whether my boon would cover you trying to restore the future humanity was supposed to have, but if I was going to use the boon on something personal, I'd ask for you to make it so reality doesn't look away from me. Don't let the Charles in front of you fall into the void between stories so that you can be with a Charles who grew up with Europe in a different place. Even if this me doesn't just vanish, I don't know what happens to me after that. I know I should be trying to protect other people. Even so I'm tempted to use your boon just to protect myself. I'm contemplating suicide for the first time in my life just so I could die in a way I understand before your mating field decides I'm not exactly the Charles it wants! But I'm too scared to try even that, in case it's not part of the story!"

Starry exhaled, closed her eyes, opened them again. "I see your point," she said, her voice lower and her expression calmer, like she'd stolen the time to think about what he was saying for minutes between when her eyes shut and when they opened again. "Charles, please believe me, I'm being honest here, I really do have a weird intuition from nowhere saying that this issue mostly isn't as bad as you think."

"Oh, that's okay then," said Charles.

"I can see where you're coming from, but---um. Even if that intuition is wrong, I have an idea for how to handle this. Charles, can you tell me what it's like when you hear me say something you can't understand?"

Charles forced down the sickness in his stomach, and tried to describe the sensation of hearing words that carried a strong illusion of being ordinary, colloquial English, but that you couldn't actually understand.

Starry nodded. "I think there's things I'm not allowed to hear about bullshit metaphysics," she said. "Maybe the reason it's censored is that I can't understand this shit until I've experienced it for myself in small doses. God knows, there's no way I could have understood any of this if I'd been hit with it on Sunday afternoon. I would have imagined up a bunch of scary existential horrors and run off screaming in all possible directions simultaneously. Anyways, let me see if I'm remembering this right."

The girl looked away from him for what seemed like just a few seconds of time, maybe only an instant.

"Info, Perks, Transsexual."

"Info, Perks, You Didn't Hear That."

"Info, Perks, True Love Potion."

"Info, Skills, Empower Sapient."

"Info, Skills, Share the Fun."

Starry looked back at him with a determined expression that had changed too much over too little time.

"Okay," Starry said. "I think… I think there's a type of person who the universe can't slide past. When the universe looks in a different direction, that person stays true to their own self and remembers the change. Their minds can't be rewritten, not even by the most powerful force of reality alteration I know. It doesn't work even if you take enough power to shift the entire Earth, and focus it down to only that one person. Like, literally not even a perk point. I think that's what you want, to be… to have… I don't know what to call it."

Charles didn't remember where he'd read it, but he could remember the name of a superpower that sounded very much like the superpower he desperately wanted. "Reality anchoring," Charles said.

"Yeah! And if I empower the right person in the right way and for the right reasons, it anchors their reality as a side effect. Though I'm pretty sure, uh, I have a weird feeling that this isn't something I can do for billions of people. Ever."

"But you could do it for just me," Charles said, feeling hollow. "If I used up my boon on it."

Starry giggled, like he'd just said something much funnier than he knew. "I'm just going on weird feelings here, but I don't think your boon is enough to pay for that. We're not talking about a small favor like making you Emperor of Canada. But you can't spend your boon on it anyways, because the boon is supposed to be something I wouldn't do for you otherwise."

A warm feeling was spreading through Charles's chest, along with a wash of shame. A voice inside him wanted to object because he didn't want to be that much in debt to his girlfriend, and a much louder scream of terror was yelling at that part to shut up before the walls started to bleed. "Okay," Charles managed to say. "What do I have to do?"

Starry tightened her arms around him, drawing him closer.

"Nothing right now," she breathed. Her voice was soft, gentle, reassuring. "It's late, you're tired. We'll talk about it more in the morning. I think you should sleep, Charles. Sleep next to me, and we'll talk about it more in the morning. Don't be afraid, you're not going anywhere. I know who you are. I'd miss you if you were gone. My hand is already holding yours across eternity, and I won't let go if you don't. You're safe. Sleep well."

"How the hell am I supposed to sleep while thinking about… sorry. I'll try."

"It might be easier than you think," Starry said, smiling at him again. "But if you want something else to think about… pick out one of your favorite sexual fantasies. Something you come to when you masturbate. A fantasy that you'd want to have happen in real life. Tomorrow, it will happen."

Charles took a moment to digest this. She certainly had a way with distractions. "I don't think I can actually do that," Charles said. "I'm supposed to start driving back to Nevada no later than---"

Charles's phone made an incoming-text sound.

"Never mind," said Charles. "Um. Thanks, Starry."

"It's not just for fun," Starry said. "I've been thinking about what you said before, that we need to do the relationship things we skipped over, and I think if I'd been wiser… what I should have said to you in the beginning… well, you'll see. Just decide on your favorite sexual fantasy that you want to have actually happen. We'll go on that adventure tomorrow morning, and then go on from there."

"I'd---" Charles said. "I'd rather get my reality anchored first."

Starry shook her head. "You have a very serious decision to make, and you shouldn't make it out of fear," she said solemnly. "I'm trying to give you a more positive reason for wanting superpowers."

"My soul could randomly drop into the void at any time. I'm fucking terrified. There's no way I won't be doing this out of fear."

"I'll make sure you're safe even if you say no and walk out of my life," Starry said. "I have an idea for that too. I'm serious about this, Charles. This is a huge decision that needs to be made for the right reasons. Like, deciding for yourself to follow the weird sexy girl because you want the adventure to continue. That type of reason. I'll protect you one way or the other, and for now I'm already holding your hand."

"And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take," murmured Charles, the words taking on a terrible weight he'd never felt in them before.

"If you die before you wake, I will grab your soul before the Lord can get anywhere near it. I will bitchslap the entire universe if it so much as doesn't look at you sideways. Sleep easy."

"Okay," Charles said. He knew his body was shaking, but maybe she knew something he didn't about how fast he'd fall asleep. "I'll trust you. I'll believe in you. Even though I'm not stupid, and I know perfectly well that you're trying to reassure me by acting more confident than you are."

Starry smiled wryly. "Thank the Erogame for giving me SED 25 and +3 WIS, there is no fucking way I could have made it through this conversation otherwise," she said, her voice gentle and soothing once more. "It's actually the Erogame that has the cosmic power and you're completely fucking right that I have no fucking idea what the fuck I'm doing, but I've done everything I can to make sure this eroge would be poorly written if my promises turned out to be meaningless and you vanished before dawn."

"I…" Charles said. The words didn't make sense, but he could tell that they were spoken with caring for him. "I know it's not romantic, but I can't go to sleep right this minute. I have to brush my teeth and so on."

"Don't worry about leaving me hanging," Starry said. "I'll just timeskip until you get back."

Charles brushed his teeth. He took a quick shower, since that also wouldn't make Starry wait any longer. He checked his email, with an odd feeling of guilt for the absence of guilt. He changed into his pajamas, then realized his mistake and took his pajamas off again.

Charles snuggled into bed with Starry, who was lying in exactly the same position as before. He wasn't sure what to do to bring Starry out of her stasis, if he needed to touch her or speak to her. But Starry smiled at him even as he laid down beside her.

Charles asked if it was okay for him to roll over the other way so she could spoon him from behind, and Starry nodded, so he did. She was warmer than a blanket, nourishing some deep mammalian quality within him. It had been a while since he'd gone to sleep beside another human being. His last girlfriend had been a restless sleeper, and not into nighttime company.

"Thanks," Charles whispered, from where he lay in bed staring at the wall, feeling the warmth behind him. He'd had some time to calm down, time to take a breath, time to remember to look at things from a different perspective. "I'm sorry I… panicked, I guess. I know it must have cost you some stress and emotional labor to talk me down." In his defense, what he'd been panicking about was his eternal damnation at any random time in the next ten seconds, but still.

"No problem," Starry murmured into his ear. "I've put you under some stress too, now and then, here and there."

"Fair," Charles said.

"Oh, and congratulations on making it through your first total existential freakout. I'm guessing that's going to be a big relationship milestone for harem candidates."

"Thanks," Charles said. "All right, good night. I'm going to try to sleep now."

"There's one last thing I want to say first," Starry whispered. "It's something I realized I forgot to say earlier in the day, and it's been bugging me, so I want to get it off my chest and out of my mind so I can sleep."

"What is it?" said Charles, not without trepidation.

"If I somehow get stuck halfway through a wall, you can do whatever you want to my lower half while I'm helpless to stop you. Or you could take down my skirt and panties and write on my thighs that it costs a dollar to use me, then go around to the other side of the wall so you can watch the faces I make while other people---"

"Go to sleep, Starry."

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Charles Adan | Fine traditional semen. There's nothing wrong with this semen. It doesn't need to taste like anything else. | ? | The imbiber believes themselves to have +3 WIS, and tries to act accordingly, but really the wisdom was inside them all along. (12 hours) | ???

You are still CHARLES ADAN.

What is your long-held sexual fantasy for tomorrow's adventure?

[ ] Write-in.

Voting is currently closed, and will open in 2 days from this posting.

Voting is now open. See the next threadmark for options.

There is now a 2-day brainstorm in effect for Charles's sexual fantasy.

Keep in mind that Charles did not previously think of himself as a "sexually violent" person, and would not have felt comfortable fantasizing about serious overt consent violations before, nor actually doing them now.

(EDIT 1: While it's true that there's a lot of kinks that aren't for everyone and more kinks that don't seem right for Charles, remember you're going to actually read this. Focus more on your own desires? Try to imagine something that you think is hot and that you'd want to read? I can probably fit some square pegs into round holes within limits if I try, though I'll try not to bite off more than I can chew.)

You are limited to ERO 32, though this can be pushed. For example, you can find a woman named Elsa, who looks like Elsa, who is dressed like Elsa, but she can't have ice powers and she will not believe she comes from Arendelle.

I will create a temporary threadmark listing acceptable options when voting opens. Because of how NetTally works, any [X] vote that appears before then will not be counted unless repeated after the temporary threadmark. It'll probably be a ranked vote anyways.

Something I forgot to add to the last update, but have now put in: Edge Other, Edging, and FUK all increased by 1 during the blowjob-drive, and the quest Family-Friendly Harem completed.

7.~ [HRM]

And Charles dreamed.

In his dream he was sitting at a table with Starry and Sonia Turk, trying to play a tabletop RPG for the fifth time in his life. An incomprehensibly complicated mess of tangled forms with the face of Grandpa Mark was sitting anext the table, with a placard in front of it reading "Committee of Public Safety." Tammi and Danni were both tied to a nearby bed, and a perky naked girl was tickling both of them simultaneously, one foot each. Since he hadn't met Karinna or the Scoobies or Felice yet, none of them were present.

In the tabletop campaign, Charles and Starry and Sonia would travel across dimensions to another world to face the Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok. In the course of traveling across the interdimensional medium the three of them would gain sorceries, power over any two elements they thought of during their brief travel.

Charles had first chosen the concept of Motion, which ought to be good for heat in the form of molecular motion, quick escapes, and projectiles. For his second sorcery, he'd decided to double down on travel and take the Element of Being Somewhere Else, so they could leave the Fimbulwinter and go somewhere warmer. Starry had taken Sexuality, so the campaign wouldn't be boring, and Interdimensional Summoning, on the theory that interdimensional summoning was clearly a thing in this universe and apparently a useful one. That way she could summon more people who'd gain their own elements, if their starting elements proved to not be enough.

Charles was surprised that whatever was hiding behind the Dungeon Master's screen was letting them get away with this.

Even so, in Charles's opinion, Sonia was trying too hard to optimize her build. For her first element she'd taken Flesh, to be the party's healer and general transhumanist. Sonia was still trying to explain exactly what her second element was, and it was delaying the whole campaign from getting started.

"Stephen Hawking," said Sonia, "~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~. '~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~, ~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~.'" In the dream Sonia looked younger, but she was still taking her usual tone of a sixtysomething professor. "'~~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~? ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~.' ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~, ~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~. ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~, ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~ 'quintessence' ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~---~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~. That's my second Element."

"You can't do that!" said Starry. "The whole premise behind my character is that ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ and that's why she can ~~~~~~ ~~! You can't introduce an Element into the campaign that ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~. That means ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~'~ ~~ ~~~~!"

Sonia sighed. "Can't your character just ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~, ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~?"

"My character doesn't want that much responsibility," Starry said.

"I don't think it makes sense either," said Charles within the dream. "How could ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~? ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~ Snow White's universe ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~, ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ Snow White ~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~."

"Hm," said Sonia. "I suppose that's a fair point. Well then, let us suppose instead that ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~---~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~, ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~---~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~."

"Bullshit," Charles said.

"I suppose we could call it that," said Sonia.

"No, I mean the whole idea is bullshit," Charles said. "~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ a metaphysics George Orwell would invent ~~ ~ ~~~~~~. ‘~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~, ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~.’ How could they tell?"

"~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ Snow White ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~," said Sonia. "~~~~ ~~~ ~~~'~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~? ~~~ ~~ ~ ~~~~ chocolate ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~, ~~~~~~~ ~~ Snow White? ~~~~~ ~~ ~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~, ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~~~. ~~~ ~~~ ~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ chocolate ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~. ~~~~~~~, ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ chocolate ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~, ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ Snow White. ~~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~, ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~. ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~-~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~, Snow White ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~, ~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~, ~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~. ~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ Snow White ~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~. ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ chocolate ~~~~~~~~. ~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~, ~~~~~ ~~~ chocolate ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ Snow White. ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~, ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~, ~~ ~~~~, ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~ God."

"Or bullshit," Charles said.

"I suppose that term is as good as any other," Sonia said. "~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~, ~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~, ~~~~, ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~. ~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~. ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ bullshit, ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~, ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~, more bullshit. ~~ ~~~~~~, ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~, ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ calling bullshit. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ total bullshit ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~. ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ bullshit, ~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~. ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~ about bullshit ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~. ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~, ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~, ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ pure bullshit---~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~. ~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~, ~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ bullshit must be falsifiable ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~. ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~-~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ variations in bullshit ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~. ~~~~~~, ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ bullshit ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~. ~~~~~~ every universe with conscious life, ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~, ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~, ~~~~ render everything into bullshit, ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~."

"Can you simplify that?" said Charles.

"No, but I'll do it anyways," said Sonia. "~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~, ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ bullshit by definition. ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ bullshit ~~, ~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~'~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~, ~~ ~~~'~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~. ~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~~~'~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~, ~~'~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~. ~~ bullshit ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~---~~ ~~~~, ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~, ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~'~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~. '~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~, ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~, ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~, ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~.' ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~, it's all just bullshit."

"Can you simplify that some more?" said Charles. He felt ashamed, but he wasn't at his mental best while asleep.

"~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~, ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~, ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~," said Sonia. "That's what I'm taking as my character's second Element, if the DM lets me get away with that."

"Then what the hell is a reality anchor?" Charles said. "The whole reason I'm having this dream is that I'm nervous about being turned into one of those while I have no idea what it fundamentally is."

"A reality anchor is ~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~, ~~ ~~~~~~ ~~, a whole lot of bullshit," said Sonia. "~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~, ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ bullshit ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~. ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~, ~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~, ~~ enormous amount of bullshit, ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ all of the bullshit ~~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~'~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~. ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~, ~~~~~ ~~ ~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~."

"But what does that feel like?" Charles said.

"It feels like being the Charles who ~~~~ ~~~~~~~-~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~," said Sonia. "~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~. To use a literary metaphor, ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~ told from your viewpoint ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~. ~~~~, ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ acquire superpowers."

"Yeah, I'm not buying this," said Charles. "Not. At. All."

"Well, it happens to be true anyways," said Sonia. "Not just here, but in any other universe you'll ever ~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~. It's not a law you can ever escape. ~~~~~~ ~~~~ enough bullshit ~~~~~~~ bullshit powers, ~~~ ~~~ more bullshit ~~~~ ~~~, ~~~ more bullshit ~~~~ ~~~."

"For reasons of public safety, I agree," said the squiggle in Grandpa Mark's voice. It took out a fifty-dollar bill and passed it to whatever lay behind the Dungeon Master's screen.

There was no answer from behind the screen, but the fifty-dollar bill vanished.

"And that's why sorcery over bullshit is the best possible element to pick in a game set in the Daniel Black universe," Sonia finished.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," screamed Tammi and Danni, who were the Tammi and Danni he'd met in the elevator, and not exactly the Tammi and Danni he knew now.

And Starry had gotten bored, and had crawled under the table, and was undoing his zipper…

7.a* [CA]: Morning Head

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (34,500 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 34/450
SUB: 211/490

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 25
FUK: 20
PRV: 27
ERO: 32

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8934

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Charles Adan
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: Off

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 229 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 6865-6971]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
A bound artist in a museum exhibit which requires her to be fucked
A damsel must be teased and frustrated into insanity in order to rescue her from distress, for some very important and totally sensible reason
AU expy of a character is trying to seduce one of Charles's deliveries away from him
Coming across a girl masturbating in a public place
Defeating a muscular Amazon and claiming her as a reward
Makes a delivery to a hot older tsundere CEO
Man of the house
Neutral preference
Sex-positive education

Winner: Makes a delivery to a hot older tsundere CEO

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AltTab
[1] ChaosMagic
[1] CTCatapult
[1] DarthSquidious
[1] Derpmind
[1] farsan
[1] Qtesseract
[1] Theli
[1] Thrice.Great
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] Diraniola
[2] Valmit
[2] wasprider
[3] BastetsChosen
[3] Grael Case
[3] Homilion
[3] Indophenol
[3] Migratory
[3] pepperjack
[3] Pseudonym
[3] theonebutcher
[4] Asswer
[4] david
[4] iii
[4] january1may
[4] Kappa
[4] MissileTeatime
[4] Quentin
[5] Grollo
[5] napkintooth
[5] Tulip
[6] 514X0r
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] End of Line
[6] Mitale
[-] DeAnno
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] Guile
[-] queseraseri
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] TheEyes

First Runner Up: Sex-positive education

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Elitist Oars
[1] End of Line
[1] Grollo
[1] Guile
[1] Pseudonym
[1] queseraseri
[2] BastetsChosen
[2] CTCatapult
[2] farsan
[2] Grael Case
[2] january1may
[2] pepperjack
[2] Qtesseract
[2] TheEyes
[2] Thrice.Great
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] General Lewdendorf
[3] Sirrocco
[3] Theli
[4] Diraniola
[4] Ephemeral
[4] Indophenol
[4] Tulip
[5] 514X0r
[5] Homilion
[5] iii
[6] AltTab
[6] Kappa
[6] Migratory
[6] Valmit
[7] Asswer
[7] ChaosMagic
[7] Mitale
[8] MissileTeatime
[8] Quentin
[8] wasprider
[9] napkintooth
[9] theonebutcher
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] fictionfan
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Soul Shocker

Second Runner Up: Coming across a girl masturbating in a public place

Spoiler: Voters

[1] BastetsChosen
[1] Diraniola
[1] Migratory
[1] ScrewFate
[1] theonebutcher
[1] Tulip
[2] DeAnno
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] Ephemeral
[2] iii
[2] napkintooth
[2] queseraseri
[3] AltTab
[3] End of Line
[3] Grollo
[3] Soul Shocker
[4] ChaosMagic
[4] farsan
[4] Quentin
[4] Valmit
[5] Asswer
[5] DarthSquidious
[5] Grael Case
[5] Indophenol
[5] Kappa
[5] pepperjack
[5] Theli
[5] Thrice.Great
[6] Homilion
[6] january1may
[6] MissileTeatime
[6] wasprider
[7] Aoinfinity
[7] CTCatapult
[8] 514X0r
[8] Mitale
[8] Qtesseract
[9] Pseudonym
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] fictionfan
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] Guile
[-] Sirrocco
[-] TheEyes

Third Runner Up: A bound artist in a museum exhibit which requires her to be fucked

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Ephemeral
[1] january1may
[1] napkintooth
[1] TheEyes
[2] ChaosMagic
[2] End of Line
[2] General Lewdendorf
[2] Indophenol
[2] Migratory
[2] Sirrocco
[2] Soul Shocker
[2] Theli
[2] theonebutcher
[2] Tulip
[3] Asswer
[3] Elitist Oars
[4] Grollo
[4] Mitale
[4] Qtesseract
[5] AltTab
[5] Aoinfinity
[5] CTCatapult
[5] Pseudonym
[5] Valmit
[6] BastetsChosen
[6] Diraniola
[6] farsan
[6] Grael Case
[6] MissileTeatime
[6] pepperjack
[6] Thrice.Great
[7] 514X0r
[7] DarthSquidious
[7] Quentin
[8] Kappa
[9] Homilion
[9] iii
[9] wasprider
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] fictionfan
[-] Guile
[-] queseraseri
[-] ScrewFate

Honorable Mention: AU expy of a character is trying to seduce one of Charles's deliveries away from him

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Asswer
[1] DeAnno
[1] Grael Case
[1] Kappa
[1] pepperjack
[1] Quentin
[1] wasprider
[2] 514X0r
[2] AltTab
[2] Mitale
[3] CTCatapult
[3] Ephemeral
[3] farsan
[3] MissileTeatime
[3] Qtesseract
[3] TheEyes
[3] Thrice.Great
[3] Valmit
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] General Lewdendorf
[4] Homilion
[4] napkintooth
[4] theonebutcher
[5] january1may
[5] queseraseri
[6] Indophenol
[6] Pseudonym
[6] Tulip
[7] Theli
[8] Aoinfinity
[8] ChaosMagic
[8] DarthSquidious
[8] Grollo
[8] iii
[9] BastetsChosen
[9] Diraniola
[9] End of Line
[9] Migratory
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] fictionfan
[-] Guile
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker

Honorable Mention: Defeating a muscular Amazon and claiming her as a reward

Spoiler: Voters

[1] 514X0r
[1] fictionfan
[1] iii
[1] Indophenol
[1] Valmit
[2] david
[2] Grollo
[2] Homilion
[2] MissileTeatime
[2] Pseudonym
[3] Diraniola
[3] january1may
[3] Mitale
[3] Quentin
[3] wasprider
[4] DarthSquidious
[4] Theli
[4] Thrice.Great
[5] ChaosMagic
[5] theonebutcher
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] Asswer
[6] CTCatapult
[6] napkintooth
[7] BastetsChosen
[7] Grael Case
[7] Kappa
[7] Migratory
[7] pepperjack
[7] Qtesseract
[7] Tulip
[8] AltTab
[8] End of Line
[8] farsan
[9] Elitist Oars
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Ephemeral
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] Guile
[-] queseraseri
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] TheEyes

Honorable Mention: A damsel must be teased and frustrated into insanity in order to rescue her from distress, for some very important and totally sensible reason

Spoiler: Voters

[1] General Lewdendorf
[1] MissileTeatime
[1] Soul Shocker
[2] Asswer
[2] Kappa
[3] ChaosMagic
[3] queseraseri
[3] Tulip
[4] 514X0r
[4] AltTab
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] End of Line
[4] Grael Case
[4] Migratory
[4] pepperjack
[4] wasprider
[5] BastetsChosen
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] Mitale
[6] Qtesseract
[6] Quentin
[6] Theli
[6] theonebutcher
[7] farsan
[7] iii
[7] Indophenol
[7] january1may
[7] napkintooth
[7] Pseudonym
[8] Diraniola
[8] Homilion
[9] CTCatapult
[9] DarthSquidious
[9] Grollo
[9] Thrice.Great
[9] Valmit
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] Guile
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] TheEyes

Honorable Mention: Man of the house

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Aoinfinity
[1] david
[1] Homilion
[1] Mitale
[1] Sirrocco
[2] DarthSquidious
[3] 514X0r
[3] iii
[3] napkintooth
[4] BastetsChosen
[4] CTCatapult
[4] Pseudonym
[5] Diraniola
[5] End of Line
[5] Ephemeral
[5] farsan
[5] General Lewdendorf
[5] Migratory
[7] Grollo
[7] Thrice.Great
[7] wasprider
[8] Elitist Oars
[8] Theli
[8] theonebutcher
[8] Valmit
[9] AltTab
[9] Asswer
[9] ChaosMagic
[9] Grael Case
[9] Indophenol
[9] january1may
[9] Kappa
[9] MissileTeatime
[9] pepperjack
[9] Qtesseract
[9] Quentin
[9] Tulip
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] fictionfan
[-] Guile
[-] queseraseri
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] TheEyes

Honorable Mention: Neutral preference

Spoiler: Voters

[3] david
[3] DeAnno
[3] Kappa
[5] Qtesseract
[5] Quentin
[5] wasprider
[6] ChaosMagic
[6] DarthSquidious
[6] Grollo
[6] iii
[7] AltTab
[7] Diraniola
[7] Elitist Oars
[7] End of Line
[7] Homilion
[7] theonebutcher
[7] Valmit
[8] Asswer
[8] BastetsChosen
[8] CTCatapult
[8] Grael Case
[8] Indophenol
[8] january1may
[8] Migratory
[8] napkintooth
[8] pepperjack
[8] Pseudonym
[8] Tulip
[9] 514X0r
[9] farsan
[9] Mitale
[9] Theli
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Derpmind
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] General Lewdendorf
[-] Guile
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] queseraseri
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Soul Shocker
[-] TheEyes
[-] Thrice.Great

Total No. of Voters: 45

-[X] See above.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

queseraseri

[X] Makes a delivery to a hot older tsundere CEO
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Sirrocco

[X] Write in: This vote format is entirely too complicated to bother.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

zup

Task: CHAR

-[X][CHAR] Faith (BtVS)
No. of Votes: 13

Spoiler: Voters

pepperjack
CTCatapult
DeAnno
Elitist Oars
Ephemeral
Grael Case
Kappa
Mitale
Qtesseract
queseraseri
TheEyes
Tulip
wasprider

-[X][CHAR] Lady Jessica (Dune)
No. of Votes: 8

Spoiler: Voters

Indophenol
514X0r
CTCatapult
january1may
Pseudonym
Thrice.Great
Valmit
wasprider

-[X][CHAR] Friday, from the Heinlein novel Friday
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

wasprider
514X0r
Kappa
Quentin

Task: CEO

-[X][CEO] Screws her while she's on a conference call
No. of Votes: 21

Spoiler: Voters

pepperjack
AltTab
Asswer
BastetsChosen
CTCatapult
End of Line
farsan
Grael Case
Homilion
iii
Indophenol
Kappa
Migratory
MissileTeatime
Mitale
Pseudonym
Qtesseract
Theli
Thrice.Great
Valmit
wasprider

-[X][CEO] Does not screw her while she's on a conference call
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

wasprider
ChaosMagic
DarthSquidious
Grollo

--[X][CEO] Specifically, a call to another hot older executive who is also being screwed while trying to sound professional
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

-[X][CEO] The executive is a Susan Calvin expy who works for some kind of robotics firm
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

-- [X][CEO] But they do get walked in on, resulting in Charles eating her out under her desk as her assistant pops in to ask a quick question
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

DarthSquidious

Task: AMZN

-[X][AMZN] At Scrabble
No. of Votes: 15

Spoiler: Voters

pepperjack
Aoinfinity
ChaosMagic
CTCatapult
DarthSquidious
Grael Case
Grollo
iii
Indophenol
MissileTeatime
Mitale
Pseudonym
Thrice.Great
Tulip
wasprider

-[X][AMZN] She is not quite submissive
No. of Votes: 11

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
514X0r
Asswer
DarthSquidious
david
Grollo
Kappa
Mitale
Pseudonym
Valmit
wasprider

-[X][AMZN] Not at Scrabble
No. of Votes: 7

Spoiler: Voters

Valmit
david
Homilion
january1may
napkintooth
Quentin
wasprider

-[X][AMZN] She is actually quite submissive
No. of Votes: 6

Spoiler: Voters

Indophenol
Homilion
iii
january1may
MissileTeatime
Thrice.Great

--[X][AMZN] Instead, she suggests and is enthusiastic about having sex with him, but is highly competitive about that, too.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

-[X][AMZN] I XOR "at scrabble" and "she is quite submissive"
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

MissileTeatime

--[X][AMZN] She is competitive though, and a switch fight ensues
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

DarthSquidious

Task: EDU

-[X][EDU] With Charles as educator and Starry as assistant
No. of Votes: 15

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
Aoinfinity
CTCatapult
Elitist Oars
Ephemeral
Grollo
Guile
Indophenol
Kappa
Pseudonym
queseraseri
Sirrocco
Thrice.Great
Valmit
wasprider

-[X][EDU] Redhead with blue eyes and glasses gives him a titty fuck
No. of Votes: 13

Spoiler: Voters

End of Line
514X0r
BastetsChosen
CTCatapult
DarthSquidious
Grollo
Homilion
Indophenol
Pseudonym
Qtesseract
Theli
Thrice.Great
wasprider

-[X][EDU] Redhead without blue eyes and glasses does not give him a titty fuck
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

Tulip
Guile
Sirrocco
Valmit

-[X][EDU] Without Charles as educator and Starry as assistant
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

Homilion
Asswer
DarthSquidious
Guile

--[X][EDU] Redhead is either a busty teen who's hot for teacher in the sex-ed session, or else someone trying to seduce a teacher/professor whose wiles must be resisted until after the scene ends.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

--[X][EDU] Redhead is the educator, Charles is a very good student
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

DarthSquidious

Task: PARK

-[X][PARK] Starry doesn't act like she's offended
No. of Votes: 18

Spoiler: Voters

End of Line
Aoinfinity
Asswer
BastetsChosen
ChaosMagic
DarthSquidious
DeAnno
Ephemeral
Grollo
Indophenol
january1may
Kappa
MissileTeatime
Pseudonym
Quentin
Thrice.Great
Valmit
wasprider

-[X][PARK] Starry acts like she's offended, the girl talks her into staying
No. of Votes: 7

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
AltTab
Homilion
Migratory
napkintooth
Tulip
wasprider

-[X][PARK] Flip it! Starry and Charles put on a show for a cute & horny voyeur who thinks they don't know she's watching. Maybe in a theater? Maybe Starry seduces her into participating?
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

queseraseri

Task: HOUSE

-[X][HOUSE] Screws his wife from behind while she tries to cook
No. of Votes: 16

Spoiler: Voters

End of Line
514X0r
Aoinfinity
BastetsChosen
CTCatapult
david
Homilion
iii
MissileTeatime
Mitale
napkintooth
Pseudonym
Sirrocco
Theli
Thrice.Great
wasprider

-[X][HOUSE] Finds his wife messing around with another girl (Starry)
No. of Votes: 9

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
CTCatapult
DarthSquidious
Ephemeral
iii
Mitale
Thrice.Great
Valmit
wasprider

-[X][HOUSE] Does not arrive home with the baby already sleeping
No. of Votes: 8

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
AltTab
BastetsChosen
iii
Kappa
Pseudonym
Sirrocco
wasprider

-[X][HOUSE] Does not find his wife messing around with another girl (Starry)
No. of Votes: 5

Spoiler: Voters

Aoinfinity
Homilion
january1may
napkintooth
Sirrocco

-[X][HOUSE] Arrives home with the baby already sleeping
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

Valmit
january1may
Mitale
napkintooth

-[X][HOUSE] Does not screw his wife from behind while she tries to cook
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Valmit
wasprider

--[X][HOUSE] The wife in question is not Starry, but instead someone Charles knows or used to know. Hooray for food sex that doesn't freak Cindy out!
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

-[X][HOUSE] IN fact no procedurally generated baby is present at any moment
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

iii

Task: FETISH

-[X][FETISH] Bondage
No. of Votes: 9

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
514X0r
Asswer
ChaosMagic
Ephemeral
General Lewdendorf
Indophenol
napkintooth
Tulip

-[X][FETISH] A victim must keep her composure while being stimulated
No. of Votes: 9

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
BastetsChosen
Diraniola
Ephemeral
Mitale
Qtesseract
Soul Shocker
Thrice.Great
wasprider

-[X][FETISH] Exhibitionism
No. of Votes: 8

Spoiler: Voters

End of Line
DarthSquidious
Homilion
Sartek
Soul Shocker
Tulip
Valmit
wasprider

-[X][FETISH] Sex in public
No. of Votes: 8

Spoiler: Voters

End of Line
BastetsChosen
Diraniola
Grollo
Indophenol
Mitale
Qtesseract
wasprider

-[X][FETISH] All the women are wearing remote vibrators and Charles has the remote, there is no in-fantasy explanation for this
No. of Votes: 8

Spoiler: Voters

farsan
Ephemeral
General Lewdendorf
Indophenol
Sartek
Thrice.Great
Tulip
wasprider

-[X][FETISH] Obscene uniforms
No. of Votes: 7

Spoiler: Voters

End of Line
ChaosMagic
Ephemeral
Migratory
Sartek
Soul Shocker
Theli

-[X][FETISH] Alpha sub (woman submissive to him, giving orders to others)
No. of Votes: 7

Spoiler: Voters

Homilion
514X0r
ChaosMagic
DarthSquidious
General Lewdendorf
iii
Migratory

-[X][FETISH] An additional slavegirl is present, serving unremarked on the side
No. of Votes: 6

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
514X0r
ChaosMagic
MissileTeatime
napkintooth
Thrice.Great

-[X][FETISH] Hypnosis
No. of Votes: 6

Spoiler: Voters

Indophenol
DarthSquidious
Diraniola
january1may
napkintooth
Soul Shocker

-[X][FETISH] Lingerie
No. of Votes: 6

Spoiler: Voters

Homilion
BastetsChosen
ChaosMagic
Kappa
MissileTeatime
Sartek

-[X][FETISH] Femme fatale
No. of Votes: 6

Spoiler: Voters

CTCatapult
Asswer
ChaosMagic
DarthSquidious
DeAnno
Diraniola

-[X][FETISH] Shyness
No. of Votes: 5

Spoiler: Voters

Valmit
Aoinfinity
david
january1may
Kappa

-[X][FETISH] Inexperienced
No. of Votes: 5

Spoiler: Voters

Valmit
AltTab
Migratory
Mitale
Sirrocco

-[X][FETISH] Harem (add multiple partners)
No. of Votes: 5

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym
514X0r
Homilion
Kappa
Thrice.Great

-[X][FETISH] Paizuri (tittyfucking)
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

End of Line
BastetsChosen
CTCatapult
Grollo

-[X][FETISH] A victim doesn't come at the end and is left whining and frustrated
No. of Votes: 3

Spoiler: Voters

Tulip
Asswer
ChaosMagic

-[X][FETISH] Nudity
No. of Votes: 3

Spoiler: Voters

Elitist Oars
Grollo
Sirrocco

-[X][FETISH] Tsundere
No. of Votes: 3

Spoiler: Voters

Aoinfinity
AltTab
DeAnno

-[X][FETISH] Footjob
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Valmit
CTCatapult

-[X][FETISH] Older woman
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

CTCatapult
ChaosMagic

-[X][FETISH] Mild netorare
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Mitale

Task: NOPE

-[X][NOPE] Hypnosis
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

AltTab
Asswer
Grollo
MissileTeatime

-[X][NOPE] All the women are wearing remote vibrators and Charles has the remote, there is no in-fantasy explanation for this
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Elitist Oars
january1may

-[X][NOPE] Mild netorare
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Aoinfinity
Sirrocco

-[X][NOPE] A victim doesn't come at the end and is left whining and frustrated
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym
DeAnno

-[X][NOPE] Obscene uniforms
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Elitist Oars

-[X][NOPE] Shyness
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

-[X][NOPE] Bondage
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

-[X][NOPE] Footjob
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

january1may

-[X][NOPE] Paizuri (tittyfucking)
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Sirrocco

-[X][NOPE] Older woman
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

DeAnno

-[X][NOPE] Obscene school uniforms
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

napkintooth

Task: ART

-[X][ART] Artist is Charlie's ex
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

TheEyes

-[X][ART] Artist is Erin Penna (Copper Swallow)
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

TheEyes

-[X][ART] Charles is the restrained, blind exhibit and must seize and fuck people he can reach
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

Task: VIBRATORS

--[X][VIBRATORS] I would have actually liked that if it didn't have the "no in-fantasy explanation" clause
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

january1may

Total No. of Voters: 43

…And Starry had gotten bored, and had crawled under the table, and was undoing his zipper. Her fingers were gentle, like she was trying not to wake him up. It felt like he wasn't wearing any pants at all, like his pants had conveniently vanished and somehow he was already lying down, as her mouth slowly lipped over the soft head of his penis and introduced it to a familiar warm sensation that kept moving up and down, moving up and down, moving up and down as the muzziness slowly began to depart the corners of his mind.

"Good morning," Starry said cheerfully, raising her head with a pop. She then darted back down to resume his promised morning head from his first Disney princess, if Cinderella counted as one of those. She was certainly a princess, at least… no, that didn't make sense, why had he thought that? He also had the odd feeling that this was the second time Starry had said good morning, but that the previous time those words had been incomprehensible to him.

Most of the dream had already blown away and vanished into wherever dream-memories went when they passed on, by the time Charles realized that some of what he'd dreamed might have been important.

"Damn it!" he said out loud.

"Mm?" mmed Starry, whose mouth was full.

"I just had a weird dream that---damn it." His laptop was too far away and would take time to boot up. Probably his best bet was to say out loud anything he could still remember, where Starry and his own brain could hear it, before it all vanished. "You and I and Sonia Turk were playing this tabletop RPG, and we all had to pick elements. Sonia picked the Element of Bullshit, only it was the bullshit from bullshit metaphysics. She was saying what her element really was. And now all I remember is my dream-self thinking it was funny how she was explaining something so profound-sounding while saying the word 'bullshit' over and over again."

Starry raised her head again. "You think it was a true dream?" she said, keeping one of her hands busy on his cock.

"I---I remember feeling her explanation was deeper than I'd expected. It didn't sound like, I don't know, a convenient fictional backstory for superpowers. I think my dream-self would only feel that way if I was hearing something actually interesting inside the dream. Though that sounds less convincing now that I'm saying it out loud. And I remember that the reason I was dreaming was so I could know on some level what it meant to get my reality anchored… and, ah, I think it didn't sound too scary? My dream-self was thinking that what Sonia was describing was weird, but not bad in any obvious way. Or at least, it didn't sound any more weird and worrying than all the other stuff going on in my life. And there was this rapidly-changing squiggly-thing with the face of Marcus Adan, from the Committee of Public Safety, who slipped the hidden Dungeon Master fifty dollars. Either that was a glimpse of a truth of the cosmos so great and huge that my mind was failing to get it at all, or it was just dream logic."

"Mmm," Starry mmmed, sounding interested.

"But that's---that's all I remember. Except that Tammi and Danni were there, only they were the Tammi and Danni we first met in the elevator and not the Tammi and Danni I met yesterday. They were naked and tied to a bed, and a third naked girl I didn't recognize was tickling them both at once."

"Beth Cordova," Starry said, raising her head again.

"Who?" Charles said.

"Ask them later! You're right, though, it wasn't just a dream." Her head went back down.

Charles lay back and did his best to relax again, feeling gentle waves of pleasure rolling through him as Starry took her time. He knew darned well that Starry was trying to seduce him into thinking how nice it would be to wake up every morning like this, and darned if it wasn't working just as she'd planned.

(Cindy Sheen is a human girl, scared and facing something huge, and you're the reliable-seeming guy she's trying desperately to get to stay with her.)

The thought made Charles tense up. It didn't ruin the blowjob, not quite, but he had to remind himself hard that Starry gave every appearance of enjoying sex. This was not something she hated and was enduring because she needed him. Charles had always felt private anxieties about that, not because of past mistakes that he'd ever found out about, just because it was something a lot of ethical guys in the twenty-first century felt generically anxious about. Maybe there was something in Starry's bag of tricks for knowing with certainty when you were in a situation of unambiguously positive consent. That would be nice. He'd take that over morning head from Disney princesses, if it was on offer.

Meanwhile, it was Starry that was blowing him, and he shouldn't be silly.

(It had been easier to trust her when he'd thought she was an alien.)

Charles sometimes found his mind wandering to weird places during a blowjob, if he was just lying there relaxed and receiving it. He'd always wondered if that was the type of thing that was secretly true of 95% of men and nobody talked about it, or if it was just him.

Charles refocused his mind on the wet mouth and soft tongue, and made a conscious effort to focus on… well, a lot of his usual sexual fantasies had been topped by the heat of Monday night. And then again on Wednesday night, where he'd been treated to the sounds of Starry screaming in laughter over the telephone, along with wet sounds and the Arcadias moaning along with each other, or Starry whining as the sisters edged her, and… there it went, the tension in his cock was rising.

"I'd enjoy just coming," Charles said out loud. "It's a peaceful morning and I'd rather not have to grab your head and fuck your mouth, if that's all right with you."

Starry made a disgruntled hmmmph-ing sound, which Charles was not sure he was meant to take seriously. She kept on moving her head, up and down in a slow inexorable rhythm.

The coming orgasm he could feel built smoothly, slowly, to the point where Charles found his hands grabbing the sheets of the bed.

He let the male grunts of pleasure escape as he came, so Starry could know that he was enjoying this.

There followed a tongue-bath cleaning mixed with occasional sucks, like she didn't want to let any trace of semen escape her. Afterwards Starry lay back down beside him again, and snuggled him in the bed. In the opposite posture of how they'd gone to bed, so that he was spooning her. Charles was about to shift his posture to avoid getting her messy, when he realized that somehow, at some point, he'd become no longer messy. Which was… convenient, he guessed.

"Do you want me to do anything to you?" Charles murmured towards the back of Starry's head.

"I'm fine," she said softly, lowly, seductively. "Although remember, you can do anything you feel like doing to me. Any time you want. Always, unless I say Frankweed."

In the slow pace of the sleepy morning, Charles had the space to notice he felt moved by her reply. And that he felt guilty about having enjoyed it, getting a blowjob without giving anything back. Not just the blowjob itself, it had specifically felt good that she'd asked nothing in return. It felt good, to part of him, because… it proved her service? Was it a BDSM thing? Charles didn't know. He just knew that he felt good about not needing to reciprocate the oral sex, and he was ashamed of feeling good about that, because it wasn't how proper men were supposed to behave in bed.

Well, his semen was "super good" for Starry, supposedly. And he would not, of his own accord, have offered to reciprocate oral sex every morning. So it was on Starry if she wanted to demand her daily doses. Could he talk himself into not feeling guilty that way?

Apparently he couldn't.

"It felt really good waking up next to you," Starry said softly.

(I needed it, his mind filled in Cindy Sheen's possible unspoken words. I needed it sooner. Please stay tomorrow too. I'll blow you again if you do. Don't leave me to face this alone.)

"I liked the way I woke up too," Charles said. He realized only too late that the words could be taken as an implicit agreement he hadn't meant to make, rather than the simple truth it was.

"It's okay," Starry said gently. "I didn't take that as a promise. Uh, I'm just guessing you were thinking that, not reading your mind."

"I didn't think you were," Charles said, also gently.

Starry shouldn't be feeling trapped. She had other options. A random woman talking into her cellphone had promised him so. If Starry was laying beside him, it was because Starry wanted to be here and not because Cindy had nowhere else she could go.

They lay in silence for a while longer. The quiet wasn't awkward. It was still a sleepy morning, with light filtering in around drawn red curtains into a small but high-class motel room.

"I guess we'd better start our day," Charles said out loud, after the lying-in-bed-on-Saturday feeling had worn down to where it wasn't worth bothering. "I can eat breakfast by myself, but, ah, then what happens?"

"Have you thought about favorite sexual fantasies?" Starry said.

Charles had, some. Though he'd fallen asleep faster than he would have expected. "This isn't the only sex fantasy I ever get, right?" Charles said.

"Not if you decide for the adventure to continue," Starry said. She wriggled her bottom against him, which Charles was pretty sure was in fact a promise.

"Okay, then, ah, until we both know a bit more about how things work, I think I'll skip some of the more, ah, maybe wait a while on my teenage fantasies about naked co-ed sex education classes," Charles said. "Or anything else that would get lots of people in trouble if something went wrong." Why was this next part so embarrassing to say out loud. "Or, ah, or Faith Lehane. Faith the vampire slayer. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That Faith. Or Friday, from the Robert Heinlein book. Both of them would need super-strength to count as the fantasy, and that… raises issues. So… maybe just the hot older CEO getting a delivery from me. Ah, I know that probably sounds too tame to you." Timid was the name that came to mind, if you were a man offered the realization of any sexual fantasy he could imagine. "But…"

Starry's hand reached back and squeezed his. "It's okay," she murmured. "So you like strong, powerful girls, huh? Vampire slayers and CEOs."

Charles had never thought of it that way. It was true the female boss who'd stuck in his imagination, after that one delivery, had possessed a powerful no-nonsense atmosphere about her. He'd had muscular-Amazon fantasies too. But it was hard to claim feminist credit when… "Well," he said. "I guess I do like the thought of a strong, powerful woman…"

"Moaning on your fingers, sucking on your cock, and taking it hard from behind," Starry completed correctly.

"Mrph," Charles mrphed.

"I mean," Starry said, "I know I'm going to get more powerful than I am now. And I'm sure I'll still want to be, uh… from behind and so on, and being made to… so… it figures that's what you'd like."

The two of them lay on the bed in the peculiar mutual embarrassment of sexually compatible people who both know what huge perverts they are.

"How do we actually do this?" said Charles. "I don't have any other scheduled deliveries to make before I head back to Nevada, to hot CEOs or otherwise. And I'd… like to know nobody is being mind-controlled or pressured into anything they didn't want. I want things to happen, uh, normally…" He wasn't saying this right. "Yesterday was a long day. I would like to avoid running into any questions that sensible delivery boys leading sensible lives do not usually need to consider when the hot CEO pulls down their pants. I'd also like to walk out of her office with the same picture of myself and reality that I had when I walked in. Without learning any new truths about myself, not even one---" Charles stopped himself in mid-sentence, aware that he was coming on too strong.

Starry sat up in bed, one hand drawing up the bedsheet not-so-modestly around herself. The red cloth just barely covered her nipples, revealing all of the aureoles above that point, and was drawn tautly over her breasts. Her other hand rubbed his shoulder reassuringly. "I've been there," she said. "It's fine if you want a rest and some normal fun after your latest existential crisis. I think my mating field will go along with that."

"Ah," Charles said. "Thanks, but… now that I'm thinking about it…" Human beings usually don't notice when they violate their rules, the mating field had told him, and the preacher had warned him to be careful with phenomenal cosmic powers. Charles felt chilled as he realized how close he'd come to… "Ah, there's some not-usual questions that get raised if a guy aided by an alien's mating field walks into a hot CEO's office and she suddenly decides to fuck him. Even if some improbable events happened earlier in the day to make her horny, that doesn't---if you imagine telling the CEO the whole truth about exactly what happened, she might feel she'd been used---"

"Don't worry, the quest I got looks fine," Starry said incomprehensibly. "I mean, you shouldn't expect life around my mating field to always be that, uh, unproblematic. But at least for this, my improbability field seems willing to play it your way." Her eyes darted to the side, back to him. "Um… do you want to know the backstory before you go in? Or would you rather trust me, so you can just live out your fantasy?"

"I…" said Charles. "I wish I could say trust you. But, I mean, there's all these things neither of us know and… I think there's no way I can relax and enjoy myself if I don't know the details in advance. I'm sorry."

"That's totally okay," Starry said, and explained the hidden truth behind what Charles was about to do.

7.2.a* [CA]: Sexy Delivery Boy

Charles stepped into the too-new building, an automatic glass door opening for him and then shutting behind him. The room within was done up in simple gray paneling that looked new, not just clean. Unscratched. A single female security guard sat behind the empty marble top of a polished desk, guarding an elevator.

It seemed too high-class for Norville as he'd known it on his pass-throughs. A building like this one belonged in Los Angeles, or maybe the higher reaches of San Francisco.

Despite his nervousness, habit ensured that his next steps required almost no conscious thought. He strode up to the security guard carrying his briefcase of polished navy leather, identified himself and the delivery recipient, was told the elevator had been unlocked.

The elevator door slid open almost quietly, with only a soft hissing sound.

Within the elevator there was a mirror to his left and a mirror to his right, creating an endless corridor of reflections, within which stood an endless number of Charleses Adan. Yet one of those Charleses was more real than the others---indeed, more real than all the others combined. Common sense said that much was true, even if Charles couldn't possibly have explained what it meant.

Charles stepped out, and all the other Charleses vanished. He hoped they were doing okay, wherever they now were.

The corridor before him was also done in clean, new-looking, shiny gray paneling. When he came to office RB34, his destination, Charles stopped before he pressed the doorbell.

Charles hesitated.

He took some deep breaths.

He tried to put himself into the mental frame of an amorous delivery boy.

It wasn't easy. It went against his grain, even. Competent delivery guys didn't try to pick up their recipients, or give any indication of sexual interest that might be unwelcome. Now he was supposed to stride into this office and then somehow, after some unknown sequence of events, end up bending the CEO over her desk. Which meant he'd have to do something out of his usual character, something he didn't ordinarily do during deliveries, and Charles didn't know exactly what. It was making him nervous, and Staying Calm... didn't seem to be what this situation called for. Don't Worry, was what Starry had told him. That was harder.

It seemed unfair that Starry knew his next lines, and he didn't.

Charles understood why he hadn't been told how his fantasy would go. There was no point in turning his honest self-expression into a chore, reciting the required lines in a script. Not if all his choices would turn out to be correct anyways, which Starry had guaranteed they would be. "Tutorial mode," was the term she'd used.

Starry had told him that he could relax, no, really, he could relax.

It still felt like being shoved onto the middle of a stage where everyone else had seen the script and rehearsed their lines, and only he was ignorant. Instead he'd just been told that anything he said would be in the script.

Charles felt like wanted to have a serious conversation about free will, here. But nobody he'd walked past had seen fit to say anything about that into their cellphones.

It went without saying that none of this was anything a horny delivery boy usually needed to think about. He knew that wasn't really the mating field's fault so much as his own, but---still.

Porn. He needed to think pornographically. Be the porny delivery boy. He could yank open the door and say "Show me your tits," and that too would be the correct thing to do. Only that wasn't his fantasy, and Charles wasn't sure what was.

Charles didn't feel like being a horny porny delivery boy. It seemed undignified. Unpleasant. Maybe he could just do what he'd usually do on a delivery, and he'd end up inside his fantasy anyways.

Charles realized that he was stalling because he was scared, and that, at least, he knew how to handle.

Charles pressed the doorbell button on office RB34.

Then, when no bell sounded, Charles pressed it again harder.

At least something around here was in less than perfect working condition. Or maybe Starry's mating field had twitched this one doorbell out of service, in order to reassure Charles Adan that he wasn't too far out of reality as he knew it.

Charles sighed under his breath, and knocked hard upon the door.

There was no immediate response. Then, just as Charles was about to knock again, he heard steps approaching. The door was drawn open to reveal a well-preserved woman in her late thirties or early forties.

She wasn't the bombshell Charles had been half-expecting. Her face seemed plain. Her black hair was shoulder-length and unadorned. She wore a loose red shirt with a low neckline, though her breasts were small enough that there wasn't much cleavage. Her black skirt went down to her knees, and looked professional. She was wearing high heels but of a sensible sort, wedges rather than spikes, that put her boosted height only an inch below his own. Her body was taut, but not tanned, the appearance of somebody who would make time for weight machines but not tanning salons. She wore small earrings that looked tasteful on her, and expensive if those were real gems. There were no rings on her fingers and no marks where rings usually went. Her makeup was done, and had survived the slight sheen of sweat on her forehead.

It was comforting in a way. Orienting. No, this wasn't a porn star, and she wasn't magically his exact type either. She looked like a normal CEO who happened to be worthy of the ILF suffix, rather than a Sexy CEO. He was safe to speak his next lines normally.

"Dr. Kelvin?" Charles said. "I have a delivery for---"

"Come in," she said. She turned around without waiting for his answer, and strode away in long steps. Something about the movement seemed nervous, though.

Charles followed the woman through a medium-sized professional office that seemed deserted but for the two of them, full of glass windows into empty offices with turned-off computers. "You're the only one working on the weekend, huh," Charles said.

"That's right," she replied.

You're the only one working on the weekend, huh, he'd actually gone and said that. Lovely dialogue, not serial-killerish at all.

He needed to relax. He needed to not try so hard. In the end he'd have this woman, it was fated to be so.

He should've taken longer to wait outside the office. He hadn't needed to go right in like that, to show his courage. It would have been fine if he'd taken longer to compose himself.

Just as they were almost to a large corner office, Dr. Kelvin's phone made an unusually plaintive sound, like a small car alarm, and the CEO stopped in mid-stride. She pulled out the phone, and looked like she wanted to swear at it.

"I'm truly sorry," Dr. Kelvin said, "I genuinely have to take this call, can you wait? I'll have it done as quickly as possible."

Without actually waiting for his answer, she ducked into a nearby office, what looked like a meeting-room with a long table. The wall to that office was glass, but it seemed fairly soundproof once the door closed behind her. At least, Charles couldn't make out the words, except that Dr. Kelvin was speaking louder and in more confident tones than she'd used with him. She was standing taller, and striding around the room in a way that looked more commanding than nervous. It made her look... more attractive, yeah.

Charles took the chance to do some careful, regular breathing. He understood what was going on. Life was being convenient for him. He'd thought of how he should've taken more time, and suddenly Dr. Kelvin got an urgent phone call. Not because of mind control, if he was understanding this correctly, but because of coincidence. A coincidence that had already been in progress, fated to happen when he needed it.

Charles was starting to find that reassuring and not just terrifying. Maybe he was getting numb.

He didn't want to pull Dr. Kelvin's skirt down as soon as her phone call was done, but he could. If that was what he did, then that was already in the script. And no problems with consent either, or weird mind-manipulating coincidences that had happened to Dr. Kelvin earlier today. Starry had to know that if that part of what she'd said was a lie, it would crash their relationship permanently... actually, Charles was pretty sure Starry did know that.

He could, in fact, pull Dr. Kelvin's skirt down the moment she exited this room, and it would be fine.

He could tell her that she needed to take off her skirt before he made his delivery, just stand there bottomless while he opened the briefcase, and she'd do it.

He could specify that she wasn't wearing panties, and she wouldn't be. He could tell the silent pressure of the mating field all around him that he wanted a black rose tattooed on Dr. Kelvin's left ass-cheek. And it would be there, if only to reassure him.

Charles swallowed, as he watched Dr. Kelvin continue to stride back and forth and say strong, confident words into her phone. The idea that he could just take her at any time... suddenly seemed much more real. She probably wasn't wearing panties right now. He would like that, so it was probably true.

And there was, check, a stirring in his pants at that thought.

He could do this.

Only seconds after Charles thought that, Dr. Kelvin shut off her phone, and headed back out of the meeting room without pause. "I'm truly sorry about that," she said on emerging.

"No emergencies in progress, I hope?" said Charles, the way he would have if this was a real delivery that he needed to get done quickly so the CEO could get back to work.

Dr. Kelvin shook her head, smiling. "The opposite. Good news, but the type of good news where I had to sign off on next steps before I could get back to, ah---" She hesitated, then said crisply, "But that's none of your concern."

Yes, ma'am, Charles didn't say, the way he would've said a week ago.

Dr. Kelvin pushed open the door on a large corner office that had all the blinds drawn and overhead lights set to medium brightness. She sat down in a high office chair with her legs slightly spread, and leaned over an adjustable-height desk set to a sitting position. The surface of the desk bore a large laptop computer, two different stacks of stapled printouts, a clipboard of yellow lined paper and a cup of colored pencils. "All right," Dr. Kelvin said, now looking nervous again, "let's see what you've brought me."

Charles carefully set the briefcase down on the desk, lock facing her. "Order says you have the code," Charles said, just like this was a normal delivery.

Dr. Kelvin spent half a minute fiddling with the 6-digit combination lock set into the polished navy leather. Her fingers seemed to be trembling slightly.

The lock finally clicked open, and Dr. Kelvin lifted the briefcase open, the cover set at an angle where Charles couldn't see inside.

Her face froze.

"What the hell is this?" she said.

"Is there a problem?" Charles said.

Dr. Kelvin spun the briefcase around.

Inside was a folded velvety blanket, atop which lay four pairs of fur-lined handcuffs, a roll of bondage tape, a vibrator, and a complicatedly obscene black-vinyl harness. A card inside said For Dr. Slut Kelvin.

"Ma'am," Charles said on pure professional reflex, without the words connecting to any type of thought process, "it seems something has gone wrong somewhere and I'm extremely sorry about that---"

"Shut up," Dr. Kelvin snapped. "This briefcase should contain an integrated circuit board, three centimeters by two centimeters. That circuit board was important, and if you hand it over in the next thirty seconds, I will consider hearing out your apology for this idiotic fratboy prank."

Charles looked at her, and slowly tilted his head. On the one hand, it was obvious where this might be heading. The delivery boy pulls a stupid prank and has to apologize with his body. And on the other hand...

"I apologize for whatever went wrong, ma'am," Charles said. "But I haven't touched the contents of this briefcase."

Charles understood himself better, now. He knew where the resistance inside himself was coming from, why he didn't want to fall meekly to his knees and crawl underneath her desk to apologize, even if that led to fucking later.

"Hold still." Dr. Kelvin shoved herself up from her high seat, going around to where he stood.

And began to frisk him.

Closely.

Charles stood there with his eyebrows raised. "What are you doing?" he said mildly.

"I'm seeing if the circuit board is on your person," Dr. Kelvin said.

Her hands went over his arms, around his sides, down both of his pants legs. Dr. Kelvin seemed to hesitate, and then her hands also patted his behind. She didn't quite press down on his crotch.

Charles privately observed that he did, in fact, seem to have frozen up while being sexually assaulted, even if it was consensual on some level and he was managing to keep his eyebrows skeptically raised while it was happening. A taste of how the other half lived, he supposed.

Dr. Kelvin finished frisking him and stepped back. "Strip," she commanded.

"I beg your pardon," Charles said, again on automatic reflex.

"I'll pardon you when I've found the circuit board! Now either you start taking off your clothes for me to search by hand, or I call the police."

Charles couldn't help the skeptical look he was giving her. He wasn't sure how he'd react to this scenario in real life. It didn't seem too objectionable as a fantasy scene leading inevitably toward the two of them fucking. But...

"Fine, I'll do it myself," Dr. Kelvin said. She looked like she was screwing up her determination to do something. "Hold still." She stepped forward and started unbuttoning Charles's shirt.

She'd gotten as far as undoing half the shirt buttons when Charles knew where he felt like taking this. Though it still felt nerve-wracking, knowing that there existed a correct next line in his script, and not knowing what that line was until he chose it.

"Ma'am," Charles said aloud, "can I ask what was the name of the deliveryman you were expecting to meet today?"

Dr. Kelvin's fingers froze just as she'd undone his final shirt button. "What?"

"Well, ma'am," Charles said, in a calm voice, "while I was worried at first about what happened to your shipment, I realized that what was happening didn't make sense. I didn't have the code for this briefcase. Even if I'd substituted a different briefcase, I wouldn't have known how to program the code you just used on it."

"Oh," Dr. Kelvin said. She took a step back from him, allowing his undone shirt to fall open around his chest. "Oh, ah, I'm sorry, I'm very sorry, you're right, the problem must have been on the shipping end. I shouldn't have accused you, mister, ah..."

"Charles," Charles said, still regarding her with a look of great neutrality, just like he would have done if this had happened during an ordinary delivery.

Dr. Kelvin nodded quickly. "I'm sorry," she said, managing to sound more sincere about it, "I do apologize, I was just... upset, about that missing circuit board---how about a tip?"

"I suspect," Charles said gravely, delivering the next lines in his script, "that you were expecting a different delivery person to have been assigned this particular delivery, and that you expected to do something with him that involved the equipment in this suitcase. But I am afraid that Mr. Salvar accidentally gave himself an extra insulin shot and fainted, and this delivery was reassigned to someone nearby who happened to be available."

"I see," said Dr. Kelvin. She took another step back from him. "I... really wish very much to apologize for..."

"This?" Charles said, tapping his exposed chest underneath his undone shirt.

"Yes," Dr. Kelvin said, sounding rather nervous again. "Is there anything I can do to apologize for that?"

Charles again gave her a calm look, and then stepped around her to sit down at her desk. This left Dr. Kelvin on the other side, facing him with the expression usually called "deer in the headlights."

Charles tore a sheet of lined paper off the clipboard, took one of the pens out of the cup, and started to write.

When he was done, Charles got out of her chair and handed the note over to Dr. Kelvin. She took it, holding it gingerly.

I agree to the complete settlement of all disputes, claims and controversies arising from Dr. Kelvin's assault on my shirt, as well as full confidentiality regarding the same, in exchange for the valuable consideration of one dollar, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged.

"Got a dollar?" Charles said, when she still didn't seem to be saying anything.

It developed that she didn't have a dollar bill, as such. After rooting around in several of her desk drawers she managed to find three quarters, a dime, two nickels, and five pennies.

Charles watched this process, which did involve a fair amount of the CEO bending over her desk. She had nice legs.

When she was done, Charles accepted the coins, signed and dated the impromptu contract, and handed it over.

"Thank you," Dr. Kelvin said, still sounding nervous. She hesitated. "That was... I wasn't expecting... thank you?"

"Then I guess we're done here," Charles said. He turned towards the office's door, as if to leave.

Then after taking some steps, he stopped and turned back. "Mind if I ask you a personal question?" Charles said, deliberately putting more Southern drawl into it than usual. "Very personal. I won't mind if you say no."

"That seems like the least I can do," Dr. Kelvin said.

"Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, ma'am, but you seemed disappointed as well as grateful," Charles said. "Were you fantasizing about the delivery boy demanding an apology that was more, ah, demanding?"

Dr. Kelvin didn't reply, just looked at him with that deer-in-headlights expression again.

"I'd find that very understandable," Charles said, keeping his voice calm and his eyes straight on her. "You were expecting an exciting time today, got yourself all worked up in anticipation."

Dr. Kelvin's cheeks might have been pinking, though it wasn't easy to see through her makeup. "I did," she said. "Was it that obvious?"

Charles processed this alternative interpretation of a statement that he had not meant that particular way. Somehow he kept a steady expression, despite the massive direct hit on his libido. "If you're thinking about any overly personal requests," Charles said, "you have my permission to ask me. I won't count it as further sexual harassment."

Well. That had come out sounding dominant.

"Ask?" Dr. Kelvin said in a higher voice than before.

"That's right," Charles said. "If you want something from me, ask for it straight out. Saying that you would like to engage in a sexual activity plainly, honestly, and without any elaborate mind-games or deception is an important skill that more people should learn." Charles managed to stop there.

Dr. Kelvin seemed to be flushing more at this unearned lecture, rather than being puzzled or offended. "When a woman does that," she said, sounding defensive, "men think she's a slut."

Charles stepped over to the still-open leather briefcase and took out the card saying For Dr. Slut Kelvin, turning it over in his hands as though contemplating it. "Well," Charles said in a deliberate drawl, "I figure the remaining question is whether you're a slut who's capable of clear communication."

"W-well what about you?" Dr. Kelvin said. "Do you have something you want to ask me?"

Charles had to admit, he was finding this fun. "I'm curious what type of apology you were thinking about me demanding from you," Charles said.

"You know that's not what I meant," Dr. Kelvin said. She sounded firmer now, more like a proper CEO. "Is there something you want from me? Communicate."

Charles took a step towards her, and she gave him a look that was half-frightened and half-expectant, holding her ground. "I liked seeing you on the phone," Charles said. The words seemed to come out naturally. "You looked very strong, very confident, very powerful. I found it very attractive and wouldn't mind bending you over your desk."

"Y-y-you're just saying that," Dr. Kelvin said, sounding much more flustered than before.

"Why would I lie about that? So I could bend you over your desk?" Charles felt like reaching over to start unbuttoning her shirt, so he went ahead and started doing that.

"So I'll give you a larger tip," Dr. Kelvin said, though she didn't seem like she wanted to resist either his hands or his words.

"Oh, I think you'll be giving me a large tip anyways," Charles said, as he drew off her shirt and paused to appreciate the impractical bra underneath. "Now, I have a private bet with myself about whether I'm dealing with a kinky slut, here." He stepped closer to her, hugging distance, and reached his hands around her to unclasp her bra. "If I came to a decision about that based on whether you're wearing panties underneath that skirt, would I be coming to the right decision?"

Dr. Kelvin had her arms raised over her head while Charles was slowly drawing the bra straps over them, leaving her torso bare. He could see the increase in her trembling as he asked the question, along with the mortified look on her face.

"If I'm about to come to the right decision," Charles said firmly, "then nod. If not, shake your head."

Dr. Kelvin managed a quite small nod.

Charles stopped drawing off the bra, instead twisting the scrap of fabric with his hands until it was holding Dr. Kelvins wrists together. Handcuffs it was not, but it let him hold Dr. Kelvin's arms over her head with just his left hand. His right hand trailed down her face, over her neck, between her small breasts, passed over her belly button, and dipped under her skirt---then halted, with his fingers just touching her waist.

"I already know what I'll find," Charles murmured. Standing this close to her, they were almost kissing. He leaned forward, she parted her lips slightly to be kissed, and Charles brushed his own lips over hers without opening them. A half-kiss, a tease. He almost felt breathless himself. "When I touch you, I want to hear you say out loud what I'm finding."

His fingers moved lower. "What am I feeling?" Charles said. "Say it out loud. I'm not moving on until you do."

"You're feeling that I'm," Dr. Kelvin said. Her breathing was going up. "That I'm not wearing---any panties---"

Charles fingers moved lower.

If possible, Dr. Kelvin sounded even more embarrassed. "You're feeling that I'm shaved," Charles fingers moved again, "and now you're feeling that I'm---very, very---wet---"

Charles kept his fingers on the softness he'd found below, pressing into the wetness but not moving. "Is there something you want from me?" he said, looking straight into her eyes. His left hands kept her wrists above her head, held together by the twisted bra. "You have my permission to ask."

Her lips mouthed something that might have been you son of a bitch, and then she managed to say, "Touch me."

Charles didn't move.

"Touch me... please?" she said.

"I'm already touching you," Charles observed to her. "Did you want something else?"

Dr. Kelvin shut her eyes, and leaned into him, pressing her bare chest against his. "Please---move your fingers."

"Sure thing," Charles said. He gave her a long, slow rub, moving around the moisture he'd found. Then he stopped. "Alright, I moved my fingers. Hope you had a good time."

"Please---" Her voice was going up, sounding slightly whiny. "Please keep moving your fingers."

Charles started his fingers fluttering softly against her clitoris and labia, a gesture that ought to be teasing and nothing more. "There, I'm moving my fingers. Or is that still not what you wanted?"

"P-please rub me firmly... and don't stop..."

Charles dutifully moved his fingers upward and started firmly rubbing her pubis, being careful to miss her clit by at least a centimeter.

Dr. Kelvin was visibly trembling as he continued to hold up her arms with his other hand, exposing her shaking bare breasts. "Please rub your fingers firmly over my pussy and my clit and keep rubbing me. Pleasure me."

Then Dr. Kelvin gasped and half-collapsed into his chest.

Charles smiled in satisfaction and kept rubbing his fingers around in slippery wetness. "That's right," he murmured to Dr. Kelvin's head of hair, "sluts who communicate clearly get what they need. Do you want my fingers to move faster? Slower? Are they in just the right place?"

"A little up---a little to the left---a little firmer, but slower---faster than that---oh, just like that, just like that, please keep going---"

His dominant side didn't seem to mind the instructions and occasional corrections. They didn't feel like commands, more like Dr. Kelvin was exposing herself to him, showing him her needs. Soon Dr. Kelvin was tensing up in his arms, and Charles wondered with a startled thought if she was approaching orgasm already. It hadn't been long, but then she'd been playing with herself before... or he might have just been steered by Starry's mating field to the type of easy slut he'd enjoy.

Should he allow her to come that easily?

The developing picture he had of his own mind predicted that the predatory side of him would want to tease her for a long time, and maybe not let her come at all today.

His actual impulse---to which he was now paying more attention than he usually did, since it held the next lines of his script---seemed to be that he wanted to see her coming on his fingers. His worry was whether that meant the sex would be over already, if she was the type of woman who only needed to come once. Or if she'd feel less slutty after her orgasm, if it would dissipate most of her worked-up tension. Should he ask her what type of woman she was, in that regard? No, she would be the type of woman he wanted, if this was his fantasy...

Charles still couldn't quite believe that.

"Oh," Dr. Kelvin moaned. Her upper chest seemed to be flushing, right to the tops of her small breasts. Her hands struggled lightly in the bra twisting them together. "Oh, oh, oh---if you keep doing that I'm---I'm going to---"

Charles slowed down his rubbing. Not by much, just not moving his hand quite as vigorously as before. The position they were in, standing face-to-face with Charles having stuck his hand down her skirt, wasn't the best angle for rubbing her. His hand was getting tired, and slowing down some felt like a relief.

After a few more less vigorous rubs, Dr. Kelvin made a plaintive sound.

"Do you think you deserve an orgasm?" Charles murmured. He couldn't help it, he had to know this was okay and didn't mean the sex was over.

"Yes," Dr. Kelvin said, sounding beautifully embarrassed about it. "Yes, please, make me come, I want to come."

Charles kept on rubbing at the same less vigorous pace until her body was tensing up again.

Then he slowed down his fingers further.

Dr. Kelvin was glaring at him with a lovely expression that was half pleading, half anger.

"Don't worry, I'm going to make you come," Charles said to her in a reassuring tone. "Slowly."

Dr. Kelvin twisted her hands within the bra tying them up, tried to sway her chest closer to him. Charles gave her a few firm rubs that made her gasp, and then resumed rubbing her slowly. His arm and wrist muscles were really starting to ache, but he thought he could see this through.

"Please---" Dr. Kelvin said. "I want to be---touching you---with my body---while I come---"

Charles thought about this, while his fingers gave a few more slow, steady rubs. "Keep holding up your arms for a moment," he said, and then in quick movements used both hands to pull Dr. Kelvin's skirt down to puddle at her ankles. He stepped around to behind her, and let her bared back press into his bared chest. One hand went back to hold her wrists up, his right hand reached around her to rub her clit and labia from a less awkward angle.

He rubbed her firmly this time, not slowly. Even a brief pause would let a woman's heat cool down a lot, Charles knew.

He waited until Dr. Kelvin was trembling again, until she said oh---oh, oh---oh and then he slowed down properly. He wanted to see her orgasm, and he wanted it to be slow, torturing, agonizing.

Charles kept rubbing slowly. She leaned her trembling body back into him, she ground her naked hips against the pants he was still wearing, a level of stimulation that could only tease him. Or maybe Dr. Kelvin was just trying to get her hips away from those agonizingly slow rubs he was delivering. Wriggling her hips helplessly was all she could do, since her feet were now also constrained by her puddled skirt.

Rub. Rub. Rub.

She was trembling more than at any previous point, and moaning repeatedly.

Charles pulled back on the bound hands he was still holding up, pulled her into him, and murmured into her ear as he kept rubbing, "Noisy slut. Sexy slut. I like it."

She gave a long helpless moan, and then her whole body tensed up, Charles felt her legs try to spread as she forgot the skirt constraining them, only to be brought up short. He kept rubbing and she jerked against his chest, the motions halting, half-constrained, as she tried to keep her hips in place to not leave his fingers as she came. Charles kept rubbing, not changing at all the agonizingly slow pace of his fingers, as Dr. Kelvin kept making small jerky motions of her hips and finally doubled over, pulling her arms out of his hand.

The sight of her bent over in front of him like that with her wet, reddened pussy on such obvious display didn't cause him to snap, not quite. But he was damned if he wasn't putting his dick in that, right now. Charles calmly stepped over to the briefcase, pulled out the bondage tape, and used it to wrap her wrists together now that the bra had fallen from them. Dr. Kelvin stared at him with a half-wild, half-pleading expression. Charles didn't know if that face was meant to communicate that she was playing coy about being tied up, or if she needed cock inside her right now. Either way it would be fine.

There wasn't an obvious tie point on the desk, so Charles spun her desk-chair around and then bound Dr. Kelvin's wrists to the back support. He was almost about to check mutual knowledge of safewords when he remembered that not all sex had to be that heavy and serious in the first place. "Do you want a safeword," Charles said, his voice having descended into a half-growl, "or does 'no' mean no?"

"My no means no," Dr. Kelvin said in her breathy voice.

Charles didn't speak again as he pulled his pants down, pulled his underwear down, reminded himself that it had been established that condoms did not need to be a thing here, and lined up his angle of attack. His cock was hard enough to almost ache, from all that teasing her hips had done on his pants, about to get paid back and then some.

He closed his eyes tight, as though in pain, as he sank into that taunting wetness.

Dr. Kelvin made a sound that didn't sound completely like pleasure.

"You okay?" Charles said, managing to keep his voice in a low half-growl.

It seemed to take Dr. Kelvin a while to answer, and she sounded ashamed when she did. "It hurt and I want you to go slowly at first but---but I also want you to hurt me a little while we're having sex, just not that kind of pain---if that's acceptable to you?" She sounded very tentative about it.

Charles reminded himself that this was such an ordinary request, in the larger scheme of sex, that a week earlier he wouldn't have thought to be bothered. He moved his hands down to Dr. Kelvin's hips and gripped them, harder than he normally would have, letting his fingers and fingernails dig into her taut flesh hard enough that it should be painful.

Dr. Kelvin moaned, it sounded more like pleasure this time, and Charles's fingers dug into her harder as the sound seemed to travel directly down his spine. Slowly enough that it was agonizing for him, he moved his cock in and out, in and out, the sensation of his fingers digging into her hips feeling almost as sexual as the wet sensation on his cock.

"You can go deeper," she gasped after a while, and Charles's fingers tightened more as he let himself sink into her almost the way, producing another of those gasps that seemed to hit him right in his core. Deeper, deeper, she still didn't protest, Charles finally let himself ram all the way to the tight wetness like he was trying to push through it, feeling like the tip of his cock was running into something. That produced another half-pained sound, but it was also half pleasure. "Keep doing that," she said in a breathy voice.

He didn't know if it was the way she'd kept her ankles pressed together, or if she was naturally tight, but the resistance his cock was feeling was new to him. Maddening in the slick pleasure it produced when he pushed through. He rammed all the way into her again, and again, and then Dr. Kelvin let out a moan that was entirely pleasure. Charles felt like he was simmering, like the heat kept boiling and bubbling in his cock without going over. He'd have come ages ago if not for the blowjob he'd had this morning. "I'm going to start fucking you hard now," Charles said.

Dr. Kelvin made a sound of breathy agreement, and Charles began moving entirely on instinct. Somewhere in the back of his mind, something wanted to worry about whether Dr. Kelvin was okay, and it was told in a wordless half-thought that the improbability field around them seemed to be doing fine. Then the last trace of worry sank away, and Charles pounded into Dr. Kelvin's behind again and again, pressing harder with his fingernails on her hips whenever he wanted to hear that half-pain half-pleasure sound, or just reveling in the way she moaned every time he sped up his hips even more.

Finally, despite trying to hold back, Charles just couldn't take it any more, and he rammed into her with all his strength. A guttural moan came from his own throat as all the heat inside him poured out, in pulses so intense they were almost painful.

When it was over, Charles felt like he wanted to collapse onto the bed, but there didn't seem to be a bed around... ah, right. Charles undid the bondage tape around Dr. Kelvin's wrists. Then he spread out the velvety blanket from inside the briefcase over the office floor. There was enough clear space for it, though only barely.

The two of them lay down on it together, both naked, both sweaty, but at least together now. The floor was hard, but the velvety blanket was enough to make it bearable.

"I didn't come that time," Dr. Kelvin murmured, sounding ashamed of the fact.

"Lots of women can't come without clitoral stimulation," Charles said back, his voice low.

"And now I'm still horny, but I---also want to just lie here with you," Dr. Kelvin said, sounding ashamed about both of those facts too.

Charles turned her body over so that he was spooning her, and reached around---with his left hand, this time, his right hand needed rest---and began rubbing her pussy. Slowly, not to tease, but so that he could keep up the motion for a long time.

"Okay," Charles said into her ear. "I can do this while we lie together."

They lay together quietly for a while, except that Charles kept on rubbing her pussy softly while they spooned, and she sometimes wriggled her hips against him. It probably wouldn't be long until he was ready for round two, at this rate.

Somewhere in the middle of that, Charles remembered the complicated black strappy thing in the briefcase, and the vibrator next to it. He wanted to hit himself on the forehead, feeling like he had missed a line in his script. Charles would have liked it if Dr. Kelvin had come while being plowed, and with the vibrator strapped to her, she would have.

Sometime after that, Dr. Kelvin spoke. "I'm curious what you're thinking about," she murmured. "You don't have to say if you don't want to, or it isn't nice."

Isn't nice? Charles put the brief puzzlement on hold, and answered honestly. "I was thinking about the last time I had sex with someone and then undid their bondage immediately afterwards," he said. "And that it was nice that this time things weren't, ah, complicated." The way he'd dug his fingernails into Dr. Kelvin's hips... well, Charles was managing not to beat himself up for that. That wasn't a reason for mothers to warn their daughters away from him. If he couldn't manage to forgive himself that much, he was hopeless, and Charles didn't believe in being hopeless. "It's nice to sometimes have sex that's just nice."

"Oh, so you liked this sex better, then?" There was an odd undertone in Dr. Kelvin's voice.

Under other circumstances Charles might have tread carefully past this point. But he was by now starting to trust that he would in the end say his lines correctly, or improvise well. "That time was more... powerful, than this," Charles answered frankly. His mind searched for words to explain strange events and strange emotions. "I wondered, that time, if that was what sex was supposed to be like for me. This time wasn't as... deep. But I know it's what this kind of sex is supposed to be like for me, so far as it goes."

He felt Dr. Kelvin tense up. "Don't say things you don't mean," she said. Her voice sounded---closed, guarded.

Charles moved his hand up and pinched her nipple, once, enough to hurt only a little. He would have felt more offended, if he hadn't guessed that Dr. Kelvin was having complicated post-sex feelings. But Charles had still understood one or two things about himself, in the last twenty-four hours, and he wasn't about to ignore his own feeling of offense entirely. "Is there a reason you're questioning my honesty?" Charles said.

"Aren't we just playing a game in the first place?" Dr. Kelvin said. There was an undertone of bitterness in her voice. "I know I'm too old to be the woman that men chase after."

"Ah," Charles said. He could guess what this was about. "You think I'm lying about having had fun in hopes of getting a larger tip for this delivery."

"You're claiming otherwise?" The bitterness was plainer in her voice.

Funny how even your own mistakes tended to work out in your favor, when probability was on your side. "Well, ma'am," Charles said, "if I'd been playing to you the whole time, I would've thought to put that black strappy harness on you and attach the vibrator, before I bent you over the desk. What can I say? You were moaning like that and grinding your hips on my cock through my pants, and then you bent over and stuck that wet pussy out at me. I just forgot everything else and had to bend you over the desk right away."

"Or you simply forgot," she said. The bitterness in her voice was closer to the surface.

Charles pinched her nipple again. "Ma'am," he said, his voice low, "are you familiar with the concept of fuck-you money? Because if I wanted to throw over my self-respect and start lying for the sake of money, power, or just about anything else I can imagine, I know exactly which woman I'd have told yes already." He felt a tremble go through Dr. Kelvin in his arms.

"Really," she said. She sounded like she was trying to sound skeptical. Like she was trying to hold on to her skepticism, even though she didn't want to.

"Yeah," Charles said. How could he put this... "I don't have fuck-you money in my pocket just yet. But I've had my fuck-everyone-else offer. There'd be no point in selling my pride for less." It was a powerful thought, now that he considered it.

"I don't believe you," she murmured. "But it's a nice lie."

Charles decided not to be offended by this. It was plain that Dr. Kelvin's problem was with herself, and she didn't have any problems with him personally.

Dr. Kelvin moved his hand from his nipple back down to her wet center, and Charles let her do it. His own mind had moved onto the interesting question of what else he wanted to do with a sexy CEO, given that he could do anything he wanted.

7.2.b* [CA]: Sexy Skype Call

"No," said Dr. Kelvin, but her voice was weakening.

"You want it, and I know you want it," Charles whispered in her ear, trying to sound as much like the Devil as he could manage. His cock was hard again now, nestling between the hips of her rear where they were spooning together on the blanket. "You've fantasized about it before."

"And how would you know that?" she said.

Charles smiled, knowing she couldn't see. "You just seem like that type of slut," he said.

"I have trouble believing there's a type of woman corresponding to that precise fantasy," said Dr. Kelvin. "Especially a type that you can distinguish based on signs I've given you."

"Like the way your hips are moving and you're getting wetter?" Charles said.

"That's just because you're rubbing me---faster," Dr. Kelvin said. Her voice was going up.

"Am not," Charles said.

"Well, you keep on rubbing my clit! Of course I'm getting wetter!"

"You're getting wetter faster," Charles said.

"I refuse to believe you can distinguish small shifts in the first derivative of my lubrication," Dr. Kelvin said, and then let out a long breathy moan.

Charles kept on rubbing her clit. Eventually her will would weaken. It was fated to be so.

"Looook," Dr. Kelvin said in a half-moan, after he'd weakened her will a few dozen more times. "Look, it's not---it's not that I'm not turned on by the idea, but---bystander consent is a thing! Whoever I'm calling wouldn't have volunteered to, to be part of---" Then she let out a pure moan, because Charles was rubbing faster now.

Of course her objection was completely correct and irrefutable. Charles couldn't think of any way around it. "You're a smart slut," he said, deciding to kick the problem back to the improbability field. "I'm sure you can think of a way to deal with the bystander consent issue."

Dr. Kelvin didn't say anything.

Think of a number, Charles thought to himself, and decided on the number 28. He kept rubbing her clit, to help inspire her thoughts, as he mentally counted to twenty-eight. When he was done, he leaned his head closer to Dr. Kelvin's ear, and breathed, "You've just now thought of something."

"How the hell do you know that?" she moaned.

"Small shifts in the first derivative of your lubrication."

"That can't possibly be a thing! And... please, rub faster... ooooohhh..."

"I'll rub at whatever speed you want," Charles said, surprised at how sensuous his voice could sound when he tried. "But there's only one way for you to come now, and it's while you're on a video call."

Dr. Kelvin whined, and her hips shifted against his cock.

"Just rub me lightly," Dr. Kelvin said. "If I pull your hand away, stop at once. Are we clear?" Her naked bottom was seated in her desk chair, her legs spread wide in front of him, her hips scooted slightly forward to present her wet pussy like an offering.

"Yes, ma'am," Charles said. He could bide his time.

Dr. Kelvin's theory was that she would keep her composure successfully, and that just being stimulated while on a video call would be perversion enough for her, even if she didn't have an orgasm. If the person on the other end of the call genuinely couldn't tell, the issue of bystander consent wouldn't arise.

At some other point in his life, Charles might have objected to this logic. For now, he'd nodded along.

Adjustable desks were a wonderful thing from the standpoint of perverted delivery boys. He was sitting on the floor, beneath her desk, without having to bend his head at all. The motion didn't feel strained when he reached out and pressed his fingers, now rested, into Dr. Kelvin's clit.

From above there were the sounds of a Skype call initiating.

Charles began a slow, teasing massage of her pleasure button. This part wasn't incredibly exciting to Charles just yet, but... he was curious as to how Starry's mating field would play out the next steps.

There was the sound of a Skype call being picked up.

"Milton?" said Dr. Kelvin.

(The person on the other side of the call, according to Dr. Kelvin, was that person she found most attractive within the set of all people she had a plausible reason to call right now.)

"Hey," said a male voice. "Give me a second to set up video." Charles would have guessed it at upper twenties.

"I'll wait," said Dr. Kelvin.

Charles kept on rubbing her clit. Lightly, like she'd claimed she wanted.

"Okay," said the male voice, now coming through more clearly, "what's up?"

"The deal with Yaskawa is in final approval and Knapek told my COO in person that he thinks it's 'ninety-nine percent certain' to get signed by the parent corporation in the next two weeks," said Dr. Kelvin. "Now we all know that's a long way from solid, but if it does close I want to make sure you're ready on your end."

There followed some minutes of business talk that Charles was frankly not that into, although maybe the occasionally wriggling bottom in front of him was finding the continued stimulation exciting. From her perspective she was doing something quite perverted, maybe, but it didn't feel as exciting to him. He should have figured out how to have her toes resting on his cock while they did this, but it was too late to set that up now.

Come on, mating field...

"Be patient," Dr. Kelvin coincidentally happened to say to Milton just then.

Charles continued to massage the center of her unclad bottom.

"So how's your life aside from that?" said the male voice in time, after the business talk was winding down. His voice sounded warmer now.

"I see you're pretending to care as usual," said Dr. Kelvin, her own voice as businesslike as before.

Charles frowned, from where he lurked beneath the desk. He was as familiar with business talk as anyone, but pretending to care wasn't how he'd have put it himself.

"It's not difficult to pretend," the voice on the phone came back cheerfully. "So, spent any Saturdays not at the office recently?"

"This from a man I knew very well would be in his office on Saturday," Dr. Kelvin retorted. Her hips wriggled, as if in quiet pride at what she was really doing in her office.

"I'm hit! Parachuting out of my plane! Okay, but I at least went to a bar Friday night... of two weeks ago."

"Any luck?" Dr. Kelvin said.

"Tons! I think I almost scored!"

"I can't imagine what you're doing wrong," said Dr. Kelvin, sounding frank. "You don't look that terrible over a videophone."

"I figure it's not so much what I'm doing wrong, as other guys spending more time and effort doing it right," Milton's voice said back, not sounding much disturbed by this fact. "Tinder stats say twenty percent of the men get eighty percent of the fun, so good luck if you're just a twenty-first-percentiler like me. Couple of promotions, more money for a nicer suit, a few dozen hours polishing my game, and I'll get there. Though that'll take another two years at the rate I ever get around to visiting bars."

"I honestly don't understand the point of the bar scene," said Dr. Kelvin. "If I ever wanted to get laid that much, I'd give the bar scene one good night's try. Then after I failed and went home alone, I'd call up an escort agency and tell them to send over a hot delivery boy."

The male voice on the other end of the line laughed. "I don't see you going home alone," it said.

"Oh, really," Dr. Kelvin said, her voice dry.

"It's only difficult for men, you know?" said the voice. "You're a woman, you can just pick one of the guys who tries to hit on you. Whichever one you like best."

"Milton," Dr. Kelvin said, her voice sharpening. "Imagine being at the bar. You work up your courage and hit on a woman. Are you going to hit on the middle-aged plain-faced flat-chested woman? Now imagine what type of man does hit on her. It's the type who isn't very discriminating, and I'm a discriminating woman that way myself."

The voice on the other end was silent for a time. "I'm sorry," the voice said. "I guess I'm too used to thinking of you as, well, the Dr. Kelvin. It hadn't occurred to me that not all the men at the bar would be crowded around trying to network with you."

"Being fair," Dr. Kelvin said, "it hadn't occurred to me until very recently that I could walk over to a handsome young man myself, and offer to buy him a drink and a hotel room. I expect he'd just turn me down and go home with somebody prettier. But I never did try just communicating what I wanted."

"I'd genuinely expect that to work," said the voice.

"Oh, and would you leave the bar with me if I offered to buy you a drink and a hotel room?" Dr. Kelvin said sharply. "No? I didn't think so."

There was a pause as the voice on the other end didn't say anything, which Charles was morally certain was the sound of a man not knowing whether or how to say I would totally hit that.

"So," the voice said after the awkward pause, managing to sound as cheerful as before, "if you struck out at the bar scene, does that mean you called up an escort agency to send you a hot delivery boy?"

"What odds would you put on it?" said Dr. Kelvin.

"Two trillion to one," said the voice on the phone. "You've got too much pride to ever pay for sex. And I just can't see you with some buff jock wearing a posing pouch made of candy."

Charles stayed quiet and kept rubbing her clit beneath the desk.

"I don't imagine I'd much like a professional gigolo, no," said Dr. Kelvin. "But my office is in Norville, California. I'm sure there'd be some outfit here who could arrange for an actual real-life delivery boy to show up at my office, pre-vetted by Seifuse and in a cooperative frame of mind."

"Okay, then it's only fifty billion to one."

"Now I'm curious what you'd think of me if I actually went and did that," said Dr. Kelvin.

"I'd send you a congratulatory postcard," replied the voice.

There was an awkward silence, the silence of a woman who had no idea how to reply to that.

"Really?" said Dr. Kelvin. "Why?"

"This is getting kind of personal," the voice said hesitantly. "It's just... I don't think there's anything wrong with... not that you need to be more sexually active, or anything, but if you decided for yourself that you wanted to... damn it! What would I even be supposed to think instead of congratulating you? You know, forget I said anything, I got way too personal and I apologize."

"I think we both know I was the one who started making the phone call too personal," Dr. Kelvin said. "I'm sorry, and I won't---"

Charles fluttered his fingers on her clit, teasingly, instead of rubbing.

"Are you okay?" came a cautious voice from the other end of the phone.

"I---" said Dr. Kelvin.

Charles fluttered his fingers again. Communicate. Say what you need.

"Do you actually want me to stop being this personal?" said Dr. Kelvin.

Charles made a fist with his other hand and gave a fist-pump she couldn't see. He felt like he wanted to scream triumph at the sky and spike a football.

"I..." said the voice on the phone. "No, I'd rather keep going. I'm---I'm sort of honored that you've said this much to me, Dr. Kelvin. There's few enough people in the world that I'd want to be friends with. I'm not going to tell one of them to stop getting personal if she starts."

"All right," said Dr. Kelvin. "To be honest, I think my main qualm about having a delivery boy sent over is that I'd expect him to flatter me and tell me I was attractive, in hopes of a bigger tip. And I'd know he was lying, which wouldn't feel pleasant at all. Maybe he'd be subtle about it and say that he found my strength and confidence sexually attractive, instead of my face. But still."

"I---all right. Into the abyss we go. If this hypothetical delivery boy told you that you were---if he said that a man who saw your style could be sexually attracted to you, he might not be lying."

Dr. Kelvin's hips froze.

Charles made another silent fist-pump of triumph and fluttered his fingers teasingly on her clit. Then he kept rubbing, firmer this time. He knew where this was going.

"Thank you for that compliment," Dr. Kelvin said in an even tone.

"Dr. Kelvin---can I say something unprofessional here?"

"Go ahead."

"I don't have time for a serious relationship with you or anyone else either. But if you offered to buy me a drink and a hotel room next time I was in town, I'd say yes."

"I---" said Dr. Kelvin. "You'd---to be nice to me?"

"No," said the man on the phone.

Silence.

Charles was now rubbing her pussy in earnest, smiling in a fashion that he wanted to see in a mirror later to see if it qualified as "devilish." Her hips shifted, and her hand descended as if to swat his away, but then her hand hesitated.

"I actually did have a delivery boy sent over," said Dr. Kelvin, her voice ever so slightly uneven. "Does that change how you think of me?"

"Wow. I underestimated you. And, no, it doesn't change how I---or, I mean, it does, but in a positive way."

"Underestimated?" said Dr. Kelvin. "And why would it be a good thing?"

"Well, it means you know what you want and you can be up front about getting it," the voice said.

"You don't think now that I'm a---slut," Dr. Kelvin said, with her hips squirming slightly.

"That's a hell of a loaded word," said the voice. "I'm not touching any of the social issues there. All I can say is that I, personally, consider greater sexual adventurousness to be a plus."

"Are you sure?" said Dr. Kelvin. "I'll understand if from your perspective the whole point of scoring with Seven Kelvin was that I seemed like a frigid, uptight woman you would have the pleasure of personally thawing and unwinding. If you want to take back what you said about the hotel room---"

"I'd go with you to a hotel room either way. You're, uh, I don't know how to say this without it sounding corny. You're Susanne Kelvin to me, not an uptight woman or a loose woman or any other kind of standardized template woman. Somebody needs to kiss some sense into you, and that's the urgent part that makes me willing to head over on an overnight flight tonight to have sex with you tomorrow morning if you buy me the round-trip ticket. Otherwise I'd have said it could wait until the next time I'm out Los Angeles way."

Dr. Kelvin didn't say anything. Her breath sounded uneven, as if she'd been shaken to her core. Separately, her hips were squirming steadily.

"I'm serious," said the voice on the phone. "Susanne Kelvin, I find you sexually attractive. I would like to have sex with you. There, I've said it."

"The, ah," said Dr. Kelvin. "The delivery boy---told me that I looked very strong and confident when he saw me talking on a cellphone, and that made him want to bend me over a desk."

"And you didn't believe him because he was getting paid?" said the voice. "I suppose that makes sense. But he could also have been telling you the plain truth, if that's all he said."

"He might have been telling the truth," Dr. Kelvin said, not quite steadily. Her hips jerked. "He seemed offended when I questioned him on it. Said that his integrity wasn't for sale."

"If you have an email address for him, I'll buy him a drink the next time I'm in town."

"You're not---jealous of him?" Dr. Kelvin's voice went up on the second phrase, nearly squeaking, and her hips jerked again.

"Uh, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think I'm going to be in a place to think about committed relationships during the next five years. So as far as I'm concerned, this guy is just a man who helped me get a one-night stand with someone I like. Hell, if you have any interesting pictures from the event I wouldn't mind looking at them together with you... if that's not too much information about my own, ah, interests."

Dr. Kelvin's lower half was squirming delightfully. Charles was now rubbing at full make-her-come speed.

"Actually---" said the voice. "Did the delivery boy express any interest in being with you again if he wasn't being paid? I think that would be the test of whether he was being truthful and how many drinks I'd buy him."

"I---" said Dr. Kelvin. "I don't think that would be a---ah---fair thing to ask someone. You can't ask somebody to do things for free that they---ah---agreed to on the basis of being paid."

"But he's not a pro, right?" said the voice. "Just a real delivery boy who went on one paid date with you, and claimed he found you attractive? If he's not a pro, men don't usually turn down free sex from women they liked having sex with last time. If you got his number, see what he says about a booty call sometime. I'm not sure what he'll say, now that I think about it from that angle. But if you want to know if he was telling the truth, that's what to ask."

"I don't think it'd be right for me to ask," said Dr. Kelvin. "I don't think you ask a sex worker for---ah---unpaid dates afterwards, even a temporary sex worker. I think that's simply not---ah---done."

"Yeah, that's fair," said the voice.

Charles fluttered his fingers of his left hand on her thigh, he certainly wasn't going to stop what his right hand was doing. Communicate. Ask for what you want.

"But it's... I mean, I'd certainly want to...?"

Charles put his unoccupied hand out from underneath the desk, where she could see, and made a thumb's-up gesture. Yes.

"And now that I think about it he did---ah---say something like that---" Dr. Kelvin was definitely choking up now, and her hips were rocking back and forth while her upper body stayed almost steady.

"Okay, then the guy was being honest about finding you attractive, plain and simple." The voice sounded cheerful about this. "But it sounds like you didn't believe him, so I'd still fly over express air if you need proof... wait a minute. Why'd you look downward just then?"

Dr. Kelvin's hips froze in place.

Charles kept rubbing firmly.

"There's a delivery boy underneath your desk right now," said the voice on the phone.

"No there isn't," said Dr. Kelvin.

"I thought that camera seemed to be pointed higher up than usual. There's a delivery boy underneath your desk and he's eating you out."

"I am not currently being eaten out by a delivery boy," Dr. Kelvin said. Her hips seemed to be trying desperately to stay still.

"Then there's a delivery boy underneath your desk and he's fingering you. Finger harder, delivery boy!"

Charles rolled his eyes, but did as requested.

"Yeah," said the voice, "thanks, that's definitely showing on her expression. Good job, man. Good job on multiple counts. As much as you can drink, that's how much I'm buying."

Charles started thrusting in and out of pussy with the fingers of his left hand, slow and hard, pressing up and trying to aim for her g-spot, while his right hand went on rubbing her clit. It was an awkward angle, but Charles didn't think he'd have to do it for long.

Dr. Kelvin seemed to be trying to sit very still and quiet.

"Oh, wow, are you about to come?" said the voice. "Susanne, just so you know, I would find it sexy if you let yourself move around and make sounds."

Dr. Kelvin stiffened up more, and then her legs jerked open wide. Charles saw her upper body flex, as if she was thrusting her chest up, or throwing her head back. The moan that came from her throat sounded like embarrassment and ecstasy, sweet humiliating pleasure.

When her trembling had ceased, there was silence in the room, from the Skype connection, and underneath the desk.

The voice spoke first. "You look you need to get off the call and let your delivery boy give you a hug."

"That's right," said Dr. Kelvin. "I'll get you that plane ticket. See you tomorrow?"

"You bet," said the voice. "Shall I hang up now?"

"Go ahead."

There was the sound of a Skype connection closing down, and then before Charles could crawl out from underneath the desk, a bottomless woman had also crawled underneath it. It meant for a crowded and awkward position, but Charles managed to get his arms around her anyway and give her an embrace, if not quite a hug.

Dr. Kelvin wasn't crying, and her eyes seemed no more moist than usual. Somehow her expression seemed extremely vulnerable anyway. "Thank you," she said. "I think I'll be able to communicate on my own, after this. I can take it from here."

Charles kept holding her. To be honest, he was feeling goddamned good about himself right now. Maybe after the improbability field was taken into account, it was more of an assist on his side than a slam dunk. He was feeling goddamned good about himself anyways.

"Thanks to you too," Charles said. He knew he'd asked to go through his fantasy without any epiphanies, but he'd needed this one. "You helped me realize something too."

"Like what?" she said.

"That what I am isn't all... it's going to take me a while to figure out how to phrase it," Charles said.

They crawled out from underneath the desk.

Dr. Kelvin cast a wistful look at his renewed hardness, hesitated, and then pulled her skirt back on, followed by her bra and her shirt. Charles put his own clothes back on, not saying anything. He had his own plans for that erection.

Dr. Kelvin went over to a small wall safe, pressed her thumb against a fingerprint reader, and took out a checkbook. "I'm going to write you the check for your tip before I ask you if you were serious about seeing me again," she said. "I'm not paying you now for any future occasion, and I'm picking this amount just as if you hadn't said anything."

"Sounds fair," Charles said.

"Even though it's obvious you are not really a delivery boy, thank you so much, for everything," she said. "Wherever you got your psych degree, it was worth it. I hope this helps pay off your student loans."

He'd have asked her who taught her to trust so little, but her job seemed to involve interacting with the financial sector. Instead Charles said, "Try asking me something I'd know if I was, in fact, a delivery guy running rush orders between Nevada and California."

Dr. Kelvin paused in writing her check. Charles promptly answered a question about traffic patterns near Anaheim, a question about invoicing systems, and a couple of other challenges.

Now Dr. Kelvin was giving him a look of open astonishment. "You do not seem like a typical delivery boy," she said. "Either that or I have greatly underestimated the species."

Charles couldn't quite prevent himself from smiling. "I deliver samples of rapid-made mechanical parts that can't be 3D printed, and answer questions about what we can do with volume orders. Deep engineering it's not, but technically, I am in technical sales."

"Tell me your current compensation and I'll top it," she said instantly.

Charles's eyes widened before he could stop himself.

"I'm sorry," she said, "that was... you obviously seem like you'd be good in sales. When I heard you say you could do technical sales, I, ah, lost control. I absolutely wasn't offering to pay you to... the rules I myself made for this company would prohibit any fraternization between us once you were in a report chain to me." She paused. "Can I get an offer letter made up for you?"

"I'll think about it," Charles said. He felt deeply touched, maybe more than he should have been. It was an obvious ploy by Starry's mating field to settle him in Norville. It had also been Dr. Kelvin's unforced decision, if he'd understood the bullshit involved.

"It's purely to your advantage to have my offer letter in hand," Dr. Kelvin said, sounding far more confident and insistent now that they were talking business. "Take it. You can show it to your current company and see if they know what you're worth. Either they'll match my offer, or you can make a greater contribution to the company with us."

Charles, who wasn't without his own sales resistance, gave a neutral nod. "I understand. But I'm coming to something of a choice point in my life, and I might want to, ah, settle things a bit more before I decide whether to talk to your personnel department."

"What's your alternative?" Dr. Kelvin said, as she leaned down to sign the check.

"Take that woman up on her offer. Possibly go into sex work," Charles said. It wasn't his fault if she assumed those were two different choices.

Dr. Kelvin froze in the act of picking up the check, and made a sour face. "Hoist by my own petard. I can't afford to pay you this much every day. Well, if I'm lucky, you enjoy technical sales more... no, that's not very realistic, is it? If I'm lucky you don't often get tipped this much for sex work."

She handed over the check.

Charles managed not to swallow his tongue.

Instead he kept his outward calm. "Thank you very much, Dr. Kelvin," he said.

"Are you really..." said Dr. Kelvin. "All right, I know this is an insane question. You followed the fantasy I paid for, at least in the first half. 'The Delivery Boy Turns the Tables.' It's just that for some stupid reason I'm wondering if the deliveryman Passionate Nights arranged actually got sick, and you walked through the same script by pure coincidence, somehow."

"I think I'll let you wonder," said Charles.

Dr. Kelvin slugged him on the arm, though not hard. "I don't even know why I asked," she said. "It's obvious Passionate Nights picked out a 'delivery boy' who was an absurd example of the species. I suppose I didn't ask them for an average delivery boy."

"Actually," said Charles. "If you don't mind one last personal question... how'd you come to this particular junction in causality? What sequence of unlikely events led up to Susanne Kelvin calling Passionate Nights and ordering a delivery boy delivered to her this Saturday?"

"Phemelanotide," she said.

"Gesundheit," said Charles.

"I was absent on the day they were handing out sex drives," she said. "Not quite sexless... it's hard to describe. I could fantasize, I wished those fantasies would come true, but in my fantasies I was horny and in real life I wasn't. I tried flibanserin after it was approved. Eight hundred dollars a month, not covered by insurance, at a time in my life when I couldn't afford it. Nothing. Two years ago I had some bremelanotide made up for me, even though it was still in trials. Still nothing. A month ago, I started taking phemelanotide and presto chango now I have a sex drive. Twenty years too late for me to be young, thirty years too late to have a high school experience that wasn't hiding inside books. But late is better than never, they say." Her voice was slightly bitter, but only slightly. "At least I can afford delivery boys, at this stage of my life."

Charles considered this. Had she been drugged into... no, that was a dumb way of looking at it. She'd wanted this for years, she'd tried three different medications specifically to achieve this end, and she'd had a month to get used to the new feelings. "Congratulations," Charles said honestly. "I'm genuinely happy for you. Now take off your clothes, get on your knees, and suck my cock."

"What?" said Dr. Kelvin, giving him that adorable deer-in-headlights look.

"I was thinking about my upcoming life choice," Charles said, as his fingers undid his belt buckle. "I realized I wasn't certain I'd still be able to answer your booty call later. I don't want you thinking poorly of yourself if that happens. So now the time you paid for has expired, you've finished writing the check, and I'm going to unload all the horniness I built up watching your hips wriggle. Because I want the hot CEO naked and sucking my cock, and for no other reason than that. Clothes off, on your knees, you have permission to play with yourself too." There was a wonder and a happiness in being able to express his own desires so directly, knowing it would all turn out fine.

"I... don't have any experience with giving oral," Dr. Kelvin said.

"I'll walk you through it," Charles said. "Nobody's already on their second blowjob the first time they give one."

Dr. Kelvin reached up and started undoing her shirt buttons. Her fingers might have been trembling, she might have been blinking more often than before.

"And... thank you," Charles said. He stroked her cheek gently, as she knelt naked before him with her mouth opened wide as if for a dental examination. "You helped me realize that teaching people, or helping them in other ways, is also some of what dominance is about."

7.3.1: It's On The House

Charles steps out of the limo, carrying his polished navy-leather briefcase, and heads off toward the surprisingly new and sparkling three-story building in front of you. You wonder again if it's the world around you that's changing, or if you're wandering between worlds, softly sliding… in a way that takes a bunch of other stuff with you… it probably doesn't make sense period, not in any terms you understand. Sonia already explained why the conference orgy didn't make sense as you sliding between worlds or bridging between them either. It's just a something-else that your mind tries to imagine as "What is Norville like now?" because that's all your tiny brain can understand.

"I do hope that Mr. Adan manages to remember his script," says the limo's driver, Martinez. He has a dark Latin-lover appearance complete with shoulder-length hair, but he talks like a British butler. "I know we didn't give him much notice."

"Don't worry," you say reassuringly. "Charles won't forget a single line he's seen."

Companion quest begun: Seven Kelvin

After striking out at the bar scene, Dr. Susanne Kelvin has resorted to her legendary efficiency and paid Passionate Nights to find a real delivery boy willing to enact one of her complicated fantasies. This delivery boy has backed out at the last minute, leaving Passionate Nights scrambling not to disappoint this extremely valuable new client. Call 661-PAS-SION and tell them you know a handsome young man who's competent at sex work, can memorize a script on short notice, and has worked as a deliveryman recently enough that a skeptical interrogation won't catch him out. Offer to stake $100 as a bond against a net $300 finder's fee if Dr. Kelvin reports satisfaction.

Naturally, you shouldn't show Charles any of the script Passionate Night sends you.

Yep. Charles will definitely not forget a single line he's seen.

"Do feel free not to answer," says Martinez, "but I'm curious how you came to be managing that young man's bookings. You don't seem like a stereotypical madam."

You shrug, smiling at him. "I do a bit of everything," you say. "I've danced in a strip club, waitressed in a strip club, turned down four hundred and eighty dollars for sex in a strip club, rubbed off a man into his pants at a bus stop, been paid seven thousand dollars to be handcuffed to a bed and tickled by gorgeous twin sisters… and sometimes I rent out a boyfriend if I think he'll enjoy the work. You could say I'm an adventuress." Same levels and XP, different dungeons.

Martinez smiles back at you, looking impressed. "That's a lot to have gotten done at your age," he says.

SED-or-your-imagination tells you that Martinez is feeling skeptical that you might be lying, and also worried for you if you're not. He's seen young adventuresses in Norville before.

"I'll be okay," you tell him, feeling warmed by his imaginary concern. "I'm pretty sure the Erogame gives me a lot of plot armor. Maybe not infinite plot armor, but a lot."

Martinez's eyes widen, and then he seems to relax a bit. "It's good to know you're not doing this without backup," he says.

You wonder what he just heard.

"I've got some time before my next pickup," Martinez says. "Can I drive you anywhere before then? Consider the ride to be on the house."

You hadn't thought much yet about what to do while waiting for Charles to finish out his adventure. You suppose you could step out of the car and timeskip to when Charles is done, but that feels like a possibly-dangerous habit to acquire. You should think more before annihilating hours you can't get back.

"Is it okay if I think about that for a while?" you say back to Martinez. "I haven't decided exactly what I'm doing next." You were going to spend Slack, and then you realized Martinez might be willing to just wait like a normal driver. Especially if he's the Erogame's conveniently provided transportation to wherever it is you're heading.

Martinez nods at you. "I'm not going anywhere," he says. He deliberately takes a large iPhone from the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

You smile back, and turn to look out the tinted limo window at the dimmed street beyond. "Status," you say.

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (34,500 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 34/440
SUB: 198/490

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 25
FUK: 20
PRV: 27
ERO: 32

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8784

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Charles Adan
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: Off

You frown at your low levels of Dominant Energy, pretending to feel concerned while actually feeling proud. You used Tears of Milk and Edging on Charles last night in the car like those skills were going to be nerfed in the next edition. You have absolutely zero regrets about that life decision. Still, DOM 34 isn't a lot of energy on hand if you need to tease someone else. Should you... go hunting? Like a sex vampire? Actually, you kind of are a sex vampire now that you think about it.

Maybe ask Martinez to drop you off at the Norville U campus? You can walk around looking for a cute boy, then pull off your bottom and force him to eat you out while you sit on a public campus bench and people stare at you. And since that probably won't fill up all your DOM, you can then walk around campus further, still bottomless, to find another cute boy and do it again.

Um. Sucking Charles last night and then blowing him again this morning, without having had any relief yourself, might possibly be… inspiring you. You don't see a Teased effect in your status, but it's possible that the thought of forcing cute boys to lick you is not 100% motivated by a gamer's dispassionate desire to fill up her mana bars.

You don't actually need to do anything like that before Charles finishes out his own fantasy. It's not like Share the Fun uses Dominant Energy… you don't think…

Your perverted thoughts move back towards the rear of your mind, as you think again of what you're going to attempt after Charles finishes dipping his toes in the eroge water. You have a feeling it's pretty serious. Srs bsns, even.

"Info, skills, Empower Sapient and Share the Fun," you say.

Empower Sapient: Lvl ? (??) Active. ? / use.

The subskills @(#*&$@#-(#*&@%-)%#%# enable you to mimic the effects of bestowing up to && of % on other sapient minds, as seen from your own #, with a corresponding increase in apparent channels of @#%@ interaction and internal development. Consistent future $#-# permitting, this may actually transfer % and correlate #.

Your level in the Empower Sapient skill is added to the level of all such subskills.

Share the Fun: Lvl 1 (0%). Active. Special.​

This subskill helps potentially compatible *#%* follow you down strange paths by letting them share in your capabilities. (Increasing the capabilities of your enemies will be automatically handled by the game.)

To activate Share the Fun, you may enact an in-story plot which causes the target to believe that they are acquiring the bestowed capability. For example, if you have become a vampire, you could enact a blood-sharing ritual to convince a friend that they have become your ghoul servant. Or if a friend has noticed a sudden BOD-related transformation, you could try to convince her that it was due to an incredible advancement in biotechnology, then hand her a sugar pill. While some such plots might have been valid even without this skill, Share the Fun ensures that an avenue exists if you can convince others it is plausible.

You can use this skill to share capabilities derived from your stats, skills, spells, blessings, curses, alchemy, meditation, enlightenment, familiars, cultivation, mysterious artifacts, mad technology, unknown energy sources, dimensional anomalies, bound entities, tainted blood, blasphemous rituals, devoured life forces, fantasy genetics, real genetics, college courses, years of painstaking practice, or your original mental and physical talents. Reality Skills are not directly bestowable by this subskill, but their secondary effects might be; for example, some particular hairstyles may be bestowable, but not Conceptual Hair. Bestowed talents may grow and diversify from their origins.

The total strength of all talents thus bestowed on a potential *#%* is temporarily capped by #@)(*$-@#)#%(-#)$*@%&@#@(*$# and by the ^*^ of your relationship with the recipient. This threshold is determined by combined formidability, rather than by an arithmetical budget over skill points bestowed; conferring a lesser talent early on will not much detract from your ability to bestow greater talents later.

At Lvl ?+1, this skill enables you to bestow a small handful of minor talents upon potential *#%* with whom you are deepening your ^*^.

There are things in the pink-violet text that you can't understand. Or it's just normal English that you're not being allowed to understand, you don't know. But the skill doesn't seem to use Dominant Energy, or Submissive Energy, or any other kind of Energy that appears on your status screen. It uses something, you think, but you're not sure what.

Do you have hidden mana bars that might also need refilling?

Should you be doing something extra-slutty to make sure your hidden mana bars are all full?

You have a feeling that something is being left undone, here. There is something you should be doing first, before you try to use Share the Fun on Charles. But you don't know what.

Your mind chews over the strange feeling. You don't think it's the Erogame prompting you. When the Erogame wants to talk to you, it uses pink-violet text and assigns a quest. This feels more like the weird intuitions about bullshit that you're picking up as you get exposed to more and more weird bullshit.

What is it that you need to do? And why does it feel like forcing boys to lick you is on roughly the right track, but not enough?

Will a higher LVL help the skill work better? Should you be trying to gain more XP?

That doesn't sound right, or completely wrong either. There is something you need to be more of, but it isn't your LVL.

Do you need to have more fun to fill up your hidden Fun bar? The skill is called Share the Fun, after all.

You suppose you could just go ahead and do something super-slutty, even if you haven't figured out exactly why. Walk around Norville campus bottomless, get eaten out by boys in public where everyone can see you... you think you could do that now. Though you're not sure if even Erogamer's World lets you just go on campus and do that without consequences.

Well, if you're caught and punished, you could use some more SUB too.

You stare out the tinted limo window at the dimmed sky beyond. Your thoughts have changed since Sunday. Which isn't surprising. At LST 22 you can be the horniest person in the room even if the room has some teenage boys, so long as there aren't too many. At PRV 27 you're the most perverted person in the room even in coastal California. It's impossible for that to be true without your thoughts changing.

You don't feel like the change was bad, or like it was inflicted on you. You fairly earned all of those LST and PRV stat points. The frightened Cindy of before did not want to be frightened, especially if ero things were going to happen to her anyways. She wanted to be able to fall in love and have awesome sex and not be traumatized if an eroge villain groped her. You think you're more than halfway there now, and it feels nice, and proud.

It's still weird to look back and realize that what happened between you and Charles on Monday night is a type of sex scene you would have skipped over. Not just skipped over, felt uncomfortable to see flash by on your computer screen.

Though you still would have... liked the eroge? Or at least you'd have preferred the world of that eroge to Reality Classic.

Maybe you need to understand your own feelings about eroge better, before you can use Share the Fun on Charles? Or you need to feel better about bringing Charles into the world of eroge? You're starting to realize that giving Charles superpowers does something to him that is extremely permanent.

Your plan was to start by granting Charles Edge Other, the cheapest dominant skill you have, that costs just 1 DOM to use. It's the most tentative way you can imagine to start Charles's ritual of empowerment, just in case something goes wrong. It's the type of small, safe skill that Charles himself would want you to start with. That is the only reason you have for putting Edge Other first on the list. You don't have any ulterior motives whatsoever. Indeed, you're sure you'll come to deeply regret giving Charles that particular skill. That's a sacrifice you're willing to make for Charles's sake.

But now that you think about it, giving Charles any supernatural power means that he's no longer somebody who could exist in Reality Classic. Even the Arcadia sisters, even the version of them that are second cousins, are people who existed in some non-supernatural Earth before---before---before you tangled them here.

Sharing your sexy superpowers with somebody means they can never leave the world of eroge, ever. The presence of somebody with sexy superpowers makes a story be an eroge by definition. Charles has memories of meeting a supernatural girlfriend, but from his perspective he could still turn out to have been insane. Once he can Edge Other, that's it for him. He's backwards-incompatible with Reality Classic for good. Any story he enters becomes eroge.

Before that happens, you have a sense that you ought to do something tremendously slutty. But what does that have to do with empowering Charles? What's the literary symbolism of it?

Your mind chews over this question. You have to admit, you didn't expect your English Lit classes to come in so handy in your future career.

You've been holding back each time you imagined doing something that felt really slutty... because you didn't want to gain stats. Because you weren't sure what Erogamer's World let you get away with. Because you weren't sure you were ready. Because you didn't want to end up naked before the glare of the colorless suns whose light is an infinite frenzy of lust and perversion.

But if stepping deeper into the Erogame's world is so dangerous, if you believe the Erogame's world is such a poisoned chalice that every sip of it has to be measured with extreme care… then why are you offering that poisoned chalice to Charles?

That's... yeah. That's definitely part of it. The skill is called "Share the Fun," not "Inflict Your Awful Fate On Someone Else."

Maybe your fate is awful after all. God knows there's stuff you don't understand and can't know. But the only part that you and Charles can consent to, by word and action, is the way that things appear to your tiny three-dimensional minds. The skill is called Share the Fun, not Sign A Blank Check To Unknown Higher Realities That Could Be Responsible For The Previous Fun But Then Change Their Minds. What matters for this ritual is whether you think that the world you've seen, if it's just what it looks like and nothing more, is someplace that you want to go and bring Charles with you. You need to accept your own destiny-as-it-appears-to-be before you try to pull somebody else in with you. Not being able to trust appearances doesn't change that, you have to want it if it's real.

It doesn't make sense, but it makes sense. If you haven't accepted your own fate then you can't enfaten somebody else. There's different ways that Share the Fun could go, lesser and greater successes. The version where Charles ends up as a stabilized aspect of reality has deeper requirements than the skill text says openly, higher truths that are hinted-at in the game rules for carrying out the lesser act. For God to create a rock that not even God can lift, God must mess with a layer of existence deep enough that God's omnipotence can no longer be taken for granted, in which case God can no longer do all things, in which case God's acts are constrained to channels. There must be higher rules than the ordinary Erogame to govern any act that does something a perk point can't undo, because otherwise a perk point could undo it.

Pulling on your weird intuitions this hard is making your head hurt. It feels like you're overclocking your CPU at too high a voltage and now your brain is going to melt and leak out of your nose.

But you think you sort-of understand now. You understand the part that a three-dimensional being is supposed to understand.

Alucard didn't feel all internally conflicted about being a vampire when he asked Seras Victoria if she wanted to come with him.

If Elsa was trying to gift somebody with ice powers, it would work better if it happened after Elsa sang Let It Go and built herself an ice palace, instead of while Elsa was still wearing gloves and trying to hide her curse.

You shouldn't be holding yourself back from the world of eroge at the same time as you try to pull Charles into it. It's an awkward metaphysical angle that... you are not thinking about the details because you do not want your brain to melt.

You've had the thought twice, over the last few days, that you might need to just go wild at some point. That moment in the Goodwill after you came out of the changing room in the glory hole, with semen visibly smeared on you, and a woman whispered "Slut" into your ear. You froze up and waited for her to lead you away, but she didn't, and the moment passed. You thought then that there was something starving inside you that still hadn't been fed, that wanted you to let go completely, to be swept away and be pulled down by the undertow. You had the impulse again on Thursday night at the orgy, to just declare yourself free for public use, and even though you had sex with a lot of people you didn't cut loose the way that piece of you wanted. There's an aspect of yourself that's halted, reluctant, unsatisfied, a flow that isn't flowing smoothly for... for pulling along somebody else.

You need to Let It Go. You need to stop holding your desires back all the time. You have to be able to let go all the way.

You gulp, still staring out at the tinted window at the dimmed street beyond. That's, that's a scary thought.

But not that scary.

Which means you might actually go do it. Which really is scary.

You close your eyes and think about it.

You did learn your lesson on Friday morning when you went out to be raped. You don't regret that decision, but you haven't forgotten the lesson either. If you're not ready for this, then you shouldn't rush it for Charles's empowerment ritual. Your intuition says that Charles isn't at risk of falling out of reality if you delay making him a reality anchor for another day. You're not even sure that event happens inside of time in the first place.

But maybe this morning is the right time for you, naturally, and the ritual of empowerment happens to bullshit-coincidentally come right after that.

(Either that, or this unusually lewd episode is a sign that your audience is getting fed up with your slow progress, or god help you, your author is getting bored… no, thoughts like that are the path to insanity.)

It's not that you feel absolutely ready, but that you've come to trust that you don't have to be. Your mental integrity has come out okay even when you've made decisions that from an objective viewpoint were stupid. The Erogame doesn't seem to punish you when you show courage. Okay, on Wednesday you let yourself get handcuffed to a bed and then you got surprise-tickled for hours, but, uh, um. Um. And then afterwards you were fine. Something happened to you that you were not completely ready for, and that didn't shatter your soul. If you're Letting It Go a day earlier than the perfectly right time, you'll be fine so long as you're mostly ready. That's part of what Letting It Go means. Elsa didn't check to make sure all her plans were exactly right before she built herself an ice palace.

You do want to be a bold sexual adventuress who can dive in and have all of the fun, you're just... afraid. Afraid of what happens to you if you let go.

But now it feels more like that's just fear, and not completely reasonable caution the way it was when you had no idea how the Erogame worked.

It... it might be the right time.

You swallow, and continue to stare out the dimmed window at the street beyond. What exactly would you have to do to Let It Go?

It's clearly not enough at this point to walk around Norville campus bottomless, getting boys to eat you out in public. You've already masturbated in public, though under your panties, and marched naked around campus. You were almost ready for that adventure anyways.

Darn it, if you'd Let It Go earlier, you wouldn't have been this horny and perverted at the time when you needed to go wild. Stupid earlier you. Well, you'd better get it over with now because it's clearly getting worse the longer you wait.

So what... would count as going wild now?

Maybe… forcing a boy to eat you out, and then spanking him for being so naughty. Taking off the boy's own pants, and underpants, and pulling him over your lap and spanking his bare bottom with his cock trapped between your warm thighs, leaving it up to his own frantic wriggling whether he manages to come on your legs or has to slink away still frustrated. Doing that with more boys until you've filled up on DOM, then getting caught and punished.

You gulp hard. But, but you now have LST 22 and PRV 27. If you'd had those stats for years, you would be fantasizing about all different types of perverted things you could get away with now. If not for your previous life having been lived at LST 6 and PRV 12, you'd already have a huge pile of awful fantasies piled up. You do now have the combination of sexual superpowers and LST 22 and PRV 27. Considering incredibly slutty fantasies you could do as an erogame character is normal. Not doing any of those fantasies might count as a psychiatric disorder.

Fantasies like... walking around town naked except for high heels and thigh highs… and a vibrator taped to you… and USE ME written on your back in lipstick... and you won't just wait for other people to molest you, you'll start molesting them yourself, as soon as you see any body you want.

Oh god.

But wait, even that could be too much planning. You're not supposed to make firm plans for the day. You're just supposed to do anything you want as soon as it crosses your mind. Let your wet pussy have control of your body. That's what it means to Let It Go. Though there's no problem visiting a sex store first to buy a wearable vibrator, so long as you let yourself fuck the cashier and start masturbating on the countertop if you feel like it.

N-no, god no, what are you thinking, this horniness-influenced thought process has spun completely out of control, that wouldn't be safe, Erogamer's World might not let you get away with that, what if you get arrested, what if someone else gets arrested, what if you get raped for real, what if you accidentally rape someone else for real, what if somebody drives by and their ten-year-old looks out the car window in your direction? Inviting Charles into your world shouldn't require that, it should be enough even if you do something way tamer and timider---

There's a span when you think you've come to your senses, a time that lasts just long enough for you to feel relieved and disappointed and ashamed of your weakness.

Then you open your eyes and notice the pink-violet letters that have materialized in front of you.

Seriously considering doing exactly what you want to do causes your LST, PRV, and ERO to all go up by 1! Think of it as full payment in advance.

Quest available: The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway

Become the erotic adventuress you yearn to be, a lewd woman who walks freely through the worlds of eroge, before you invite Charles Adan to come with you. Or at least become a woman who tried visiting there once without holding herself back.

Anything that you do in order to pursue this quest will have no negative consequences.

No gains in LST, PRV, or ERO will occur as a result of pursuing this quest, even if you do something incredibly slutty, perverted, and improbable.

Failure: There are no negative consequences for refusing or failing this quest.
Success: There are positive consequences for succeeding in this quest.
Time limit: Charles finishes his own adventure at 11:53am. You will not be late for this and do not need to check the time.
Accept? Y/N

Oh no.

Voting will open in 3 days.

A 2-day brainstorm is in effect to generate votable options for slutty adventures. Any suggestions submitted after the first 2 days might not be considered. You can use [X] to submit suggestions if you want, but these votes will not be counted into the later vote. After 3 days I will create a temporary threadmark for a ranked vote. (This setup is meant to avoid last-minute suggestions.)

I will tone up, tone down, or exclude any slutty adventures not at the right level for Cindy. Or anything that I don't think I'd have fun writing.

Don't worry! Nothing can possibly go wrong.

[ ] Write-in.

Spoiler: Author's note

I am annoyed with myself that "a CEO trying to keep her composure while being stimulated to orgasm while she is on a phone call" ended up as a heartwarming fluffy scene. It was inevitable because Susanne Kelvin is too sensible to end up having a poorly concealed orgasm on a Skype call except under very heartwarming circumstances. Still, I don't think that's what my readers had in mind and voted for. I know lots of you liked it anyways, but it's not what I was planning to do. This time, so help me Slaanesh, I will write something extremely lewd. Neither fluffiness nor character development will be allowed to stand in its way.

7.3.2*: No Consequences

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 238 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 7134-7285]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
Act as Yoal-yohuali
Appear on television
Auction off yourself and others
Encounter an ERO 33 mad inventor with robot tentacles
Flash orgy in downtown streets
Flash orgy in the student cafeteria
Fuck cosplayers
Fuck Dennis
Fuck lesser Fey
Fuck some more Mormons
Fuck the agender communist street gang
Fuck the football team
Fuck the Natural Sexuality Movement Karinna)
Fuck Velma
Fuck Ziquan
Get punished by a law enforcement officer
Go to jail
Kidnap the Mayor's daughter and molest her until your demands are met
Obtain jewelry and nice slutty outfits
Pose as a succubus
Rooftop chase
Walk Copper Swallow naked on a leash, let her eat you out occasionally if she's good, let others punish her if she's bad
You Forgot To Lock The Door into somebody's house

Winner: Act as Yoal-yohuali

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AramilOniasha
[1] askldjflkajskje
[1] Blackshard
[1] DeAnno
[1] Diraniola
[1] Eler0
[1] farsan
[1] fictionfan
[1] GGS109
[1] january1may
[1] jseah
[1] randallsquared
[1] RedKnite
[1] sacha
[1] Theli
[1] Thrice.Great
[1] Valmit
[1] VoidVagabond
[1] Xidas
[2] AltTab
[2] BastetsChosen
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Guile
[2] Mitale
[2] theonebutcher
[2] zachol
[3] aid_n
[3] Derpmind
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] MissileTeatime
[3] modrony
[3] pepperjack
[4] Joviel
[4] OriginalName
[4] Prefixmancer
[4] Prime 2.0
[4] Tulip
[6] DarkDaemon
[6] Kappa
[6] MaggieoftheOwls
[6] ScrewFate
[-] 514X0r
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Asquil
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Dman123
[-] Gamerlord
[-] Grollo
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] Jirachi
[-] kelpsie
[-] LaserJet
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nyx
[-] Quentin
[-] Raza
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] truemechasonic
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] wasprider
[-] zup

First Runner Up: Kidnap the Mayor's daughter and molest her until your demands are met

Spoiler: Voters

[1] 514X0r
[1] AltTab
[1] OriginalName
[1] pepperjack
[1] Prefixmancer
[1] Raza
[1] Skelm
[1] zachol
[1] zup
[2] AramilOniasha
[2] david
[2] DeAnno
[2] Eler0
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] fictionfan
[2] Gamerlord
[2] january1may
[2] monkyyy
[2] ScrewFate
[2] truemechasonic
[2] Tulip
[2] VoidVagabond
[3] askldjflkajskje
[3] CTCatapult
[3] RedKnite
[3] sacha
[4] Grollo
[5] DarkDaemon
[5] GGS109
[5] Guile
[5] MissileTeatime
[6] napkintooth
[6] Strelok
[7] Xidas
[8] DarthSquidious
[8] Dinarte33
[9] Aoinfinity
[9] Joviel
[-] aid_n
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] Derpmind
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dman123
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] Jirachi
[-] jseah
[-] Kappa
[-] kelpsie
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] Mitale
[-] modrony
[-] Nyx
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] wasprider

Second Runner Up: Walk Copper Swallow naked on a leash, let her eat you out occasionally if she's good, let others punish her if she's bad

Spoiler: Voters

[1] askldjflkajskje
[1] DarthSquidious
[1] Dinarte33
[1] monkyyy
[1] Quentin
[1] truemechasonic
[1] Tulip
[1] unidentified_individual
[2] 514X0r
[2] AramilOniasha
[2] GGS109
[2] Hyperion042
[2] Joviel
[2] MissileTeatime
[2] OriginalName
[2] pepperjack
[2] randallsquared
[3] Blackshard
[3] january1may
[3] jseah
[3] Prefixmancer
[4] ScrewFate
[4] Strelok
[4] Taliesin
[5] CTCatapult
[5] Eler0
[5] Nyx
[5] Xidas
[6] Thrice.Great
[6] Valmit
[7] farsan
[7] kelpsie
[8] modrony
[8] RedKnite
[8] sacha
[9] Jirachi
[9] Raza
[9] wasprider
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dman123
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Homilion
[-] Kappa
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] Mitale
[-] napkintooth
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] Skelm
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Third Runner Up: Pose as a succubus

Spoiler: Voters

[1] aid_n
[1] BastetsChosen
[1] Derpmind
[1] Kappa
[1] Strelok
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] LaserJet
[2] napkintooth
[2] Prefixmancer
[2] Theli
[2] Xidas
[3] AramilOniasha
[3] Eler0
[3] Joviel
[3] MissileTeatime
[3] Mitale
[3] theonebutcher
[3] Tulip
[3] VoidVagabond
[4] DarkDaemon
[4] RedKnite
[4] Valmit
[5] AltTab
[5] Asquil
[5] Blackshard
[5] monkyyy
[5] OriginalName
[5] pepperjack
[5] Prime 2.0
[6] CTCatapult
[6] Grollo
[6] january1may
[6] Jirachi
[6] sacha
[8] Dman123
[8] Ephemeral
[8] jseah
[8] ScrewFate
[9] modrony
[-] 514X0r
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Guile
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] kelpsie
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] Nyx
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] Skelm
[-] Taliesin
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] truemechasonic
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] wasprider
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fuck lesser Fey

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Aoinfinity
[1] Joviel
[1] Prime 2.0
[1] Taliesin
[2] DarkDaemon
[2] Thrice.Great
[2] Valmit
[3] fictionfan
[3] MaggieoftheOwls
[4] Asquil
[4] farsan
[4] theonebutcher
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] Ephemeral
[5] jseah
[5] napkintooth
[5] Strelok
[6] aid_n
[6] AramilOniasha
[6] Diraniola
[6] Mitale
[7] AltTab
[7] GGS109
[7] Grollo
[7] Homilion
[7] Hyperion042
[7] LaserJet
[7] OriginalName
[7] RedKnite
[8] BastetsChosen
[8] january1may
[8] Jirachi
[8] Raza
[8] SaccadingFairies
[8] Tulip
[-] 514X0r
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Gamerlord
[-] Guile
[-] Kappa
[-] kelpsie
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] Nyx
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Theli
[-] truemechasonic
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Encounter an ERO 33 mad inventor with robot tentacles

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Jirachi
[1] MissileTeatime
[2] Blackshard
[2] DarthSquidious
[2] Diraniola
[2] Dman123
[2] Prime 2.0
[2] SaccadingFairies
[3] Asquil
[3] DeAnno
[3] Kappa
[3] monkyyy
[3] Taliesin
[3] truemechasonic
[4] askldjflkajskje
[4] GGS109
[4] napkintooth
[5] january1may
[6] Eler0
[6] farsan
[6] Homilion
[6] kelpsie
[6] Nyx
[6] OriginalName
[7] Aoinfinity
[7] MaggieoftheOwls
[7] sacha
[7] wasprider
[8] 514X0r
[8] Joviel
[8] Theli
[9] Elitist Oars
[9] Ephemeral
[9] ScrewFate
[9] Thrice.Great
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] jseah
[-] LaserJet
[-] Mitale
[-] modrony
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] RedKnite
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Flash orgy in downtown streets

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Asquil
[1] Homilion
[1] modrony
[1] Nyx
[2] farsan
[2] jseah
[2] Thrice.Great
[2] wasprider
[3] Grollo
[5] askldjflkajskje
[5] Diraniola
[5] SaccadingFairies
[5] ScrewFate
[6] randallsquared
[6] Raza
[7] BastetsChosen
[7] DarthSquidious
[7] Dinarte33
[7] Prefixmancer
[8] Blackshard
[8] DeAnno
[8] kelpsie
[8] MaggieoftheOwls
[8] truemechasonic
[9] CTCatapult
[9] OriginalName
[9] Prime 2.0
[9] sacha
[-] 514X0r
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] Joviel
[-] Kappa
[-] LaserJet
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] pepperjack
[-] Quentin
[-] RedKnite
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Flash orgy in the student cafeteria

Spoiler: Voters

[1] wasprider
[2] Asquil
[2] Grollo
[2] Homilion
[2] modrony
[2] Raza
[3] david
[4] BastetsChosen
[4] DarthSquidious
[4] Dinarte33
[4] Diraniola
[4] SaccadingFairies
[4] Theli
[4] truemechasonic
[5] Prefixmancer
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] ScrewFate
[7] aid_n
[7] Dman123
[7] Jirachi
[8] pepperjack
[9] AramilOniasha
[9] Strelok
[-] 514X0r
[-] AltTab
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Joviel
[-] jseah
[-] Kappa
[-] kelpsie
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nyx
[-] OriginalName
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] RedKnite
[-] sacha
[-] Skelm
[-] Taliesin
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Auction off yourself and others

Spoiler: Voters

[1] david
[1] Dman123
[1] Hyperion042
[1] napkintooth
[1] SaccadingFairies
[2] Strelok
[2] Taliesin
[2] unidentified_individual
[3] 514X0r
[3] Gamerlord
[3] Homilion
[3] kelpsie
[3] OriginalName
[3] Raza
[4] monkyyy
[4] Nyx
[5] randallsquared
[5] truemechasonic
[7] Elitist Oars
[7] january1may
[8] DarkDaemon
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Eler0
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Jirachi
[-] Joviel
[-] jseah
[-] Kappa
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] modrony
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] RedKnite
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] Tulip
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Rooftop chase

Spoiler: Voters

[1] CTCatapult
[1] theonebutcher
[2] Derpmind
[3] Diraniola
[3] napkintooth
[3] Valmit
[4] aid_n
[4] DeAnno
[4] LaserJet
[4] MissileTeatime
[4] pepperjack
[5] farsan
[5] Kappa
[6] Dman123
[6] GGS109
[6] jseah
[6] Prime 2.0
[6] Theli
[6] wasprider
[7] truemechasonic
[9] january1may
[9] MaggieoftheOwls
[9] RedKnite
[-] 514X0r
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] Jirachi
[-] Joviel
[-] kelpsie
[-] Mitale
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] Nyx
[-] OriginalName
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Obtain jewelry and nice slutty outfits

Spoiler: Voters

[1] LaserJet
[1] MaggieoftheOwls
[3] DarthSquidious
[3] Dinarte33
[3] Dman123
[3] Strelok
[4] Homilion
[4] Kappa
[4] kelpsie
[5] aid_n
[5] AramilOniasha
[5] Gamerlord
[6] BastetsChosen
[6] DeAnno
[6] Joviel
[7] Blackshard
[7] Thrice.Great
[8] AltTab
[8] Aoinfinity
[8] Hyperion042
[9] GGS109
[9] Nyx
[-] 514X0r
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Asquil
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Diraniola
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] jseah
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] OriginalName
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] RedKnite
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] truemechasonic
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: You Forgot To Lock The Door into somebody's house

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Ephemeral
[2] aid_n
[2] Kappa
[4] january1may
[5] AramilOniasha
[6] AltTab
[6] LaserJet
[6] SaccadingFairies
[6] Xidas
[7] CTCatapult
[7] DeAnno
[7] Joviel
[7] Mitale
[7] Nyx
[7] Raza
[7] Theli
[7] theonebutcher
[8] GGS109
[9] Blackshard
[9] DarthSquidious
[9] Dinarte33
[9] Hyperion042
[9] kelpsie
[9] pepperjack
[-] 514X0r
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Homilion
[-] Jirachi
[-] jseah
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] OriginalName
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] RedKnite
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] truemechasonic
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Appear on television

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Elitist Oars
[2] RedKnite
[3] GGS109
[3] Nyx
[3] ScrewFate
[3] zachol
[4] AramilOniasha
[4] Xidas
[5] DeAnno
[5] Grollo
[5] Joviel
[5] kelpsie
[5] Theli
[5] Tulip
[6] Blackshard
[6] pepperjack
[6] theonebutcher
[6] truemechasonic
[7] modrony
[9] Dman123
[-] 514X0r
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Eler0
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] Guile
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] jseah
[-] Kappa
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] OriginalName
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] sacha
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fuck cosplayers

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Grollo
[3] BastetsChosen
[3] farsan
[3] Prime 2.0
[3] Theli
[4] CTCatapult
[4] jseah
[5] Jirachi
[5] MaggieoftheOwls
[6] Asquil
[6] Ephemeral
[6] Hyperion042
[6] Prefixmancer
[7] AramilOniasha
[7] Valmit
[8] aid_n
[8] Homilion
[8] LaserJet
[8] OriginalName
[8] theonebutcher
[9] DarkDaemon
[9] Diraniola
[-] 514X0r
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Blackshard
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Guile
[-] january1may
[-] Joviel
[-] Kappa
[-] kelpsie
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nyx
[-] pepperjack
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] RedKnite
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] truemechasonic
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fuck the Natural Sexuality Movement

Spoiler: Voters

[1] ScrewFate
[3] Ephemeral
[4] AltTab
[4] Eler0
[4] Elitist Oars
[5] 514X0r
[5] Aoinfinity
[5] modrony
[6] DarthSquidious
[6] Dinarte33
[6] Tulip
[7] Asquil
[7] SaccadingFairies
[8] askldjflkajskje
[8] Diraniola
[8] Prime 2.0
[9] AramilOniasha
[9] farsan
[9] jseah
[9] Valmit
[-] aid_n
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dman123
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] Joviel
[-] Kappa
[-] kelpsie
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nyx
[-] OriginalName
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] RedKnite
[-] sacha
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] truemechasonic
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Get punished by a law enforcement officer

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Gamerlord
[3] kelpsie
[4] Blackshard
[4] david
[4] Hyperion042
[4] Raza
[5] Dman123
[5] Homilion
[5] LaserJet
[5] wasprider
[6] monkyyy
[7] DarkDaemon
[8] Mitale
[8] Nyx
[8] Strelok
[9] 514X0r
[9] SaccadingFairies
[9] Theli
[9] truemechasonic
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] Joviel
[-] jseah
[-] Kappa
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] modrony
[-] napkintooth
[-] OriginalName
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] RedKnite
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Taliesin
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fuck the agender communist street gang

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Guile
[2] MaggieoftheOwls
[3] DarkDaemon
[4] askldjflkajskje
[5] DarthSquidious
[5] Dinarte33
[6] 514X0r
[6] RedKnite
[7] Diraniola
[7] Prime 2.0
[7] ScrewFate
[8] AramilOniasha
[8] Asquil
[8] CTCatapult
[9] Kappa
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] Joviel
[-] jseah
[-] kelpsie
[-] LaserJet
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nyx
[-] OriginalName
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] sacha
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] truemechasonic
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fuck Ziquan

Spoiler: Voters

[3] Aoinfinity
[3] randallsquared
[3] SaccadingFairies
[4] 514X0r
[4] Ephemeral
[4] Jirachi
[4] Thrice.Great
[5] Hyperion042
[5] RedKnite
[5] sacha
[5] theonebutcher
[7] askldjflkajskje
[7] jseah
[7] Kappa
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Homilion
[-] january1may
[-] Joviel
[-] kelpsie
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nyx
[-] OriginalName
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] Raza
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] truemechasonic
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Go to jail

Spoiler: Voters

[1] DarkDaemon
[1] kelpsie
[4] Dman123
[4] Gamerlord
[5] AramilOniasha
[5] david
[5] Nyx
[5] Raza
[5] Valmit
[7] 514X0r
[7] Strelok
[7] Tulip
[9] DeAnno
[9] Mitale
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] Joviel
[-] jseah
[-] Kappa
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] OriginalName
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] RedKnite
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] truemechasonic
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fuck the football team

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Mitale
[2] kelpsie
[2] Nyx
[3] LaserJet
[4] modrony
[4] wasprider
[5] BastetsChosen
[6] david
[7] Ephemeral
[8] farsan
[8] Valmit
[9] Asquil
[9] Homilion
[-] 514X0r
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] Joviel
[-] jseah
[-] Kappa
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] OriginalName
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] RedKnite
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] truemechasonic
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fuck Velma

Spoiler: Voters

[2] Jirachi
[3] AltTab
[3] Hyperion042
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] Guile
[4] randallsquared
[5] Thrice.Great
[7] pepperjack
[8] Elitist Oars
[-] 514X0r
[-] aid_n
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Homilion
[-] january1may
[-] Joviel
[-] jseah
[-] Kappa
[-] kelpsie
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nyx
[-] OriginalName
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] Raza
[-] RedKnite
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] truemechasonic
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fuck Dennis

Spoiler: Voters

[3] Guile
[3] Jirachi
[4] Mitale
[4] sacha
[7] askldjflkajskje
[8] Kappa
[-] 514X0r
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Joviel
[-] jseah
[-] kelpsie
[-] LaserJet
[-] MaggieoftheOwls
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] modrony
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nyx
[-] OriginalName
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] RedKnite
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] theonebutcher
[-] Thrice.Great
[-] truemechasonic
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] Xidas
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Honorable Mention: Fuck some more Mormons

Spoiler: Voters

[3] Xidas
[4] MaggieoftheOwls
[6] modrony
[8] Thrice.Great
[9] theonebutcher
[-] 514X0r
[-] aid_n
[-] AltTab
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] AramilOniasha
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Asquil
[-] BastetsChosen
[-] Blackshard
[-] CTCatapult
[-] DarkDaemon
[-] DarthSquidious
[-] david
[-] DeAnno
[-] Derpmind
[-] Dinarte33
[-] Diraniola
[-] Dman123
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Ephemeral
[-] farsan
[-] fictionfan
[-] Gamerlord
[-] GGS109
[-] Grollo
[-] Guile
[-] Homilion
[-] Hyperion042
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] Joviel
[-] jseah
[-] Kappa
[-] kelpsie
[-] LaserJet
[-] MissileTeatime
[-] Mitale
[-] monkyyy
[-] napkintooth
[-] Nyx
[-] OriginalName
[-] pepperjack
[-] Prefixmancer
[-] Prime 2.0
[-] Quentin
[-] randallsquared
[-] Raza
[-] RedKnite
[-] SaccadingFairies
[-] sacha
[-] ScrewFate
[-] Skelm
[-] Strelok
[-] Taliesin
[-] Theli
[-] truemechasonic
[-] Tulip
[-] unidentified_individual
[-] Valmit
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] wasprider
[-] zachol
[-] zup

Total No. of Voters: 69

Task: NOPE

[X][NOPE] Go to jail
No. of Votes: 14

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
aid_n
askldjflkajskje
BastetsChosen
CTCatapult
DarthSquidious
Derpmind
Diraniola
Eler0
january1may
jseah
napkintooth
OriginalName
theonebutcher

[X][NOPE] Auction off yourself and others
No. of Votes: 11

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
aid_n
BastetsChosen
CTCatapult
DarthSquidious
Derpmind
Eler0
jseah
modrony
Prefixmancer
theonebutcher

[X][NOPE] Kidnap the Mayor's daughter and molest her until your demands are met
No. of Votes: 9

Spoiler: Voters

Blackshard
aid_n
BastetsChosen
Derpmind
Diraniola
farsan
Homilion
modrony
Prime 2.0

[X][NOPE] Get punished by a law enforcement officer
No. of Votes: 8

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
BastetsChosen
Derpmind
Eler0
january1may
napkintooth
OriginalName
theonebutcher

[X][NOPE] Fuck Dennis
No. of Votes: 8

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
DarkDaemon
DarthSquidious
david
Homilion
kelpsie
theonebutcher
truemechasonic

[X][NOPE] Fuck some more Mormons
No. of Votes: 8

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
aid_n
askldjflkajskje
DarthSquidious
david
Diraniola
Elitist Oars
kelpsie

[X][NOPE] Fuck Velma
No. of Votes: 7

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
DarthSquidious
david
Homilion
kelpsie
theonebutcher
truemechasonic

[X][NOPE] Fuck the football team
No. of Votes: 7

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
CTCatapult
DarthSquidious
Elitist Oars
january1may
Prefixmancer
theonebutcher

[X][NOPE] Walk Copper Swallow naked on a leash, let her eat you out occasionally if she's good, let others punish her if she's bad
No. of Votes: 6

Spoiler: Voters

Grollo
aid_n
Derpmind
Elitist Oars
Homilion
zup

[X][NOPE] Fuck Ziquan
No. of Votes: 6

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
DarthSquidious
david
Homilion
kelpsie
truemechasonic

[X][NOPE] Fuck the agender communist street gang
No. of Votes: 5

Spoiler: Voters

Valmit
BastetsChosen
david
Quentin
zup

[X][NOPE] Encounter an ERO 33 mad inventor with robot tentacles
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
david
modrony
Prefixmancer

[X][NOPE] Obtain jewelry and nice slutty outfits
No. of Votes: 3

Spoiler: Voters

Elitist Oars
Eler0
modrony

[X][NOPE] Flash orgy in downtown streets
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
DarkDaemon

[X][NOPE] Rooftop chase
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

AramilOniasha
DarthSquidious

[X][NOPE] Appear on television
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

CTCatapult
askldjflkajskje

[X][NOPE] Fuck the Natural Sexuality Movement
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

DarkDaemon
david

[X][NOPE] Act as Yoal-yohuali
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

kelpsie
Aoinfinity

[X][NOPE] Fuck lesser Fey
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

modrony
david

[X][NOPE] Flash orgy in the student cafeteria
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

DarkDaemon

[X][NOPE] You Forgot To Lock The Door into somebody's house
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

OriginalName

[X][NOPE] Pose as a succubus
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Homilion

Total No. of Voters: 31

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (34,500 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 34/450
SUB: 198/510

BOD: 22
LST: 23
SED: 25
FUK: 20
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8784

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Charles Adan
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: Off

Spoiler: Author's note

Sorry that the first episode of this chapter is an activity that wasn't on the vote options list. I think I can fit in several of the most popular votes, but that requires lining up an elaborate pool shot, and this first episode is the cue ball. At present I've only got up to 7.2.2 written, but there's more planned. I haven't forgotten the two leading votes.

Seriously considering doing exactly what you want to do causes your LST, PRV, and ERO to all go up by 1! Think of it as full payment in advance.

Quest available: The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway

Become the erotic adventuress you yearn to be, a lewd woman who walks freely through the worlds of eroge, before you invite Charles Adan to come with you. Or at least become a woman who tried visiting there once without holding herself back.

Anything that you do in order to pursue this quest will have no negative consequences.

No gains in LST, PRV, or ERO will occur as a result of pursuing this quest, even if you do something incredibly slutty, perverted, and improbable.

Failure: There are no negative consequences for refusing or failing this quest.
Success: There are positive consequences for succeeding in this quest.
Time limit: Charles finishes his own adventure at 11:53am. You will not be late for this and do not need to check the time.
Accept? Y/N

You stare at the colored text with a sinking feeling in your stomach and a not-so-sinky feeling lower down. You know perfectly well that you're going to press Y. You would need to be a sad sack of an Erogamer not to. And you know that once you press Y, you're probably going to. Um. Do stuff.

There's a jumble of thoughts running through your head like a highway car crash in progress, with more sedans and station wagons piling up by the second. Fear that you'll chicken out of this opportunity, do too little and shame yourself. Fear of what Cinderella Sheen might do if she wasn't constantly holding herself back. Thoughts about where you could ask Martinez to drive you, fleeting images of walking naked through campus or stripping some attractive male buck in the middle of the street. You could step out of this car, strip off your clothes, hitch up your thumb, and get picked up by whoever offers the naked girl a ride. Maybe it'll be a van full of horny fraternity boys. There's no possible way that could go wrong.

You could start masturbating as soon as you pressed Y, if you wanted. There'd be no negative consequences, not even losing Martinez's respect. But you don't feel like you actually want to do that, not right now, not this very second.

It's making you feel frozen, the way you felt frozen with Blake, the way you felt frozen when you first had to make love to Tammi. The feeling isn't as horrible as it used to be. You've started to have confidence that you'll unfreeze and then afterwards things will be okay. But you're still feeling scared of what lies ahead of you, even though nothing can go wrong, maybe because nothing can go wrong. There's a sexual tinge to that fear, being scared feels sexual, a warmth that means you're ready, only you're not ready... your thoughts aren't making sense right now.

You inhale deeply, somewhat shakily. It's obvious what you'll decide. The Erogame knew it too, which is why it charged you the stat gains in advance. It would be dumb not to take the quest when you've already paid its price. You have until 11:53am no matter when you start, so you might as well press Y now and get started. Literally nothing bad can happen if you press Y. There's no penalty for failing the quest.

You touch the pink-violet Y.

The floating text disappears.

You now have the paralyzed feeling of having infinitely many options for your next steps, and not knowing which option is the right one. The part of your mind that always looks for something terrible to be scared of, under literally any imaginable circumstances, is composing an artfully arranged fear that you'll stay in this car unable to decide for all eternity while the Erogame keeps stretching time.

"Mind if I put on some music?" says Martinez's voice, and you manage not to jump.

"S-sure," you say.

The suited Latino reaches forward and presses some buttons on the dashboard. A song starts up within the car, a powerful fast song that sounds like an dynamic woman bursting out into the world.

You take some breaths and get ahold of yourself. This is an obvious tutorial mode built into the game, and the point of this tutorial mode is to learn how to relax and have fun. Your first moves don't have to be perfect. Queen Elsa climbed a whole mountain before she started singing. You don't think you can make yourself do anything that crosses your mind, not right away. But if you just keep going and being the least inhibited you can manage, you can build up momentum as you go.

Glancing at the car's video dashboard shows that the title of the song is "No Consequences," and the cover image is a sword-wielding adventuress with fiery, half-existent hair. The Erogame isn't going for subtlety here.

You're calling me insatiable
And I can't deny
On the hunt for the irreplaceable
Impossible to find
Should I settle for less?
You're good and I want the best
I want you along with the rest
I want the world
With no consequences

You look at Martinez, whose head is turned away from you. You like that shoulder-length black hair and that dark Latin-lover complexion. He ought to seem like perfect Sex Drive fodder... but there's too much dignity about him. You just can't see yourself pulling down his pants zipper immediately. Nothing bad would happen if you did, but---but you shouldn't force yourself. This isn't about forcing yourself to do everything you want. But giving up without trying for this perfectly good target, sitting in front of you, doesn't feel right either.

Your first move doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even need to be right. You just need to stop not moving.

You inhale, lean forwards, and smile at Martinez, though he's looking away from you. "Hey, uh, mind if I climb over into the front seat?" you say.

"Be my guest," he says.

Wardrobe Malfunction, you think at the Erogame, as you raise your legs and twist your body to climb over.

Wardrobe Malfunction has increased by 1.

"Haha, oops," you say, as you sit down in the front seat. Your miniskirt seems to have ended up all the way up your hips somehow, and of course you're not wearing panties. "Hey, you want me to fix my skirt, or would you like me to just leave it like this?"

"Hm?" Martinez says, giving you a puzzled glance. Then his eyes dip down to your completely exposed bottom half.

You smile at him, feeling clumsy and extremely not subtle in your seduction. But it's fine. It's fine. Nothing can possibly go wrong, including you losing Martinez's respect by not being subtle.

Martinez is looking you in the eyes, with an exceptionally placid expression. "Ma'am," he says, "I regret to inform you that I don't have much influence at Passionate Nights. To put it plainly, I'm not in a position to do you any favors."

You go on smiling at him. "That's no reason to roll my skirt back down if you enjoy looking," you tell him. "It's not like I mind. If keeping my skirt up adds a tiny bit of happiness to the world, why wouldn't I want the world to be a happier place?"

"Heh," Martinez says. He's still wearing a butlerian poker face, but now it gives the impression that he's holding back a smile. "Well, I've looked and I won't say I disliked it, but you don't need to keep it up on my account."

Trying to flirt still feels like trying to walk a tightrope over alligators. But the biology-conference subquest gave you some practice with that feeling. At worst you'll fail to get anywhere with Martinez, and then you can step out of the car and naked-hitchhike instead. "I could take off my top too if you want to see more," you say.

Martinez frowns slightly. "Where are you going with this?" he says.

Okay, flirting isn't working. Time to try your sole alternative tactic: Brutal availability. "I'm feeling horny," you say.

"And you're taking out your horniness on teasing me?" Martinez says.

"Teasing?" you say, putting your insulted feelings into your voice. "What, you think I'm just leading you on? That wouldn't be nice of me, would it? You can reach over and start fondling my breasts right now if you want, or pull your pants down so I can start fondling you."

Martinez doesn't answer for a moment. "Why?" he says.

"Because I'm horny and I'm an erotic adventuress," you say. You shove down the wailing voice in the back of your mind that knows you're completely screwing up this seduction. Even if you are, nothing bad will happen. "No strings attached. No consequences."

"I'm flattered, but to be frank, it's hard for me to be certain of that," says Martinez. He sounds like men older than you sound when they want to emphasize that they're older than you. "I've seen too much in the way of consequences."

You inhale deeply. That's a perfectly sensible objection, yes. "If you knew there were no negative consequences, would you do me?" you say.

"Hah," Martinez says. "I sure would, ma'am, and I hope knowing that helps. Sorry." His phone chirps just then, and he says "Sorry again," and turns away to check whatever happened.

You take the chance to catch your breath and quiet down your trembling chest. It doesn't feel like you've failed, but it's clear you haven't found the key to this seduction. You guess "no negative consequences" doesn't mean you get all the positive consequences without trying.

Maybe you should just reach over to undo Martinez's zipper. It would be for his own good, since he's made clear that he does want to have sex with you, he's just afraid of consequences that aren't there---no, you still can't bring yourself to do that.

You could use Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit on him. But that would be Mind Control, and Charles is always on your case about how much that isn't his fetish.

Meh, you'll give it another minute. If he's still wearing pants after that, you're heading out to strip-hitchhike. His loss.

"I'm curious," you say. "If magically it was guaranteed that nothing sexy we did together would have any negative consequences, what would you do with me?"

Martinez tilts his head, looking up at you from his phone. "Sounds like a Passionate Nights job application question," he says. "But I'm not the type of man they're looking for, not for that job. I suppose I'd touch you somewhere sensitive with one hand, and use my other hand to go online and bet my life savings on some thousand-to-one shot. If there's no negative consequences, I can't lose money."

You're glad you're not the type of person who can only get offered this Erogame quest with fifty pages of caveats meant to prevent abuse, and maybe not get offered the quest at all. "Suppose it's not that type of magic," you say. "What we do has to honestly be in the pursuit of sexual adventure, something that turns you on."

Martinez shrugs. "Well, I am that type of person," he says. "The two of us riding naked on a motorcycle together, maybe. That would genuinely turn me on, and riding a motorcycle is too dangerous otherwise. Especially since I wouldn't have any experience riding a motorcycle."

You glance at the steering wheel over Martinez's lap, and an intriguing thought occurs to you. But you'd have to succeed at this seduction first.

Turning your look back to Martinez, you try for a warm, sad smile (which you'd have zero chance of pulling off successfully if not for SED 25). "It sounds like you're holding back a lot of impulses," you say.

Again that flash of real humor in Martinez's eyes. "Aren't we all? That's what civilization is. Emotional repression is what stops the men from raping all the women and the women from poisoning all the men."

You inhale. "But there ought to be a way to stop repressing, you know? Say, if you knew you were safe, and that absolutely nothing bad could happen as a result of anything you did. You can just grab any girl's breasts without asking her, and she'll turn out to be perfectly fine with it. What would you do then?"

"Hah," says Martinez. "That'd take outright magic, and then more magic to make me believe in it."

"Makes sense," you say slowly. Huh. If there's no negative consequences for anything you do... then maybe anyone you target with Fucking Rabbit will just happen to not have Charles's problem with relatively small and innocent instances of mind control. "So if you did have the chance to do something sexy under magical protection... would it be okay to use magic to make you believe you're safe? I mean, you actually are safe, the magic just lets you know it."

"Sure," Martinez says.

"Seriously for reals," you say. "You'd be okay with mind-altering magic being used on you for that purpose. If I actually had magic, I'd have permission to use it right now."

Martinez shrugs. "Sounds legit," he says.

Okay then. But does Follow the Fucking Rabbit work if you're talking about something insane and completely outside of Martinez's experience? Or if the skill works, which it probably will, is that pushing Martinez's mind too far, warping it too much?

You push the anxieties down. You need to believe in the Erogame here, follow some of that fucking rabbit yourself. Maybe Martinez already believes that everything on the X-Files is true.

You take a deep breath, gazing seductively into Martinez's eyes. "Nothing sexy that you do with me or to me can have any negative consequences for anyone, and you believe that because I just used magic on you." Follow fucking rabbit plz.

Martinez stills. "Oh," he says. "Oh. Damn it, I should've known your hair was too good to be true. You're one of them, aren't you."

"I sure am," you say, smiling for real. With a sense of mischief, and knowing that nothing bad can possibly happen as a result, you tell the crimson parts of your hair to begin glowing like the relighted coals they are. "How much do you know? About us."

"I---I know very little," Martinez says. He's staring at your hair now, as well he should, and your hair fluffles proudly in response. "Just, you hear rumors, and one time I drove around this lady---I know there's beings walking around Norville who aren't human."

"That's a matter of definition," you say, starting to pull off your shirt. "I admit, I'm not the type of human where you don't have to think about the definition."

"Sorry," Martinez says. His eyes dip to your now-bared breasts, back to your face, then to your glowing hair. "What---are you, exactly?"

"I'm an 'It's complicated' and I don't feel like going into detail," you say. "But having sex with me is absolutely perfectly harmless."

Martinez nods thoughtfully. "It seems I believe that. What do you want to do with me?"

"I want you to take off your pants," you say, "let me sit on your lap, and fuck me while I learn how to drive."

"Wait," says Martinez. His eyes are wider. "What?"

Even with Norville High students getting a 50% discount, driving lessons were expensive enough that Mom couldn't afford them for you. You don't know for certain whether you'd be paralyzed with horror, the first time you had to avoid crashing into other cars with no prior experience not crashing into cars. But you'd definitely be anxious about being paralyzed with horror.

You don't think the Erogame will object to this. It knows you were having trouble getting started, and that you need to start somewhere.

"I want to learn how to drive," you repeat as you pull your skirt down all the way off your legs, "and nothing bad can happen to us so long as I'm doing something sexy. So if you want to, you can take off your pants now, and I'll sit on your lap and fuck you while I drive. It's also fine if you don't want to. I'll just step out of your car and hitchhike naked to find a different driver."

Martinez hesitates. "I've never taught anyone to drive before," he says.

"So what?" you say. "Nothing can possibly go wrong." You feel a flash of uncertainty at saying that out loud... but no, the Erogame seems to be more powerful than literary causality. If it says you're safe, you're safe, even under circumstances that would ordinarily amount to taunting the author.

Slowly, like he can't believe his own actions, Martinez starts to undo his belt buckle. "This feels extremely odd," he says. "I keep thinking I ought to worry, but I know that you don't mean me any harm, that sex with you is just some nice fun, and that everything your mental power is making me believe is true. I ought to question whether I can trust that, but I know that in real life that would be silly because it's all going to be fine..."

"You don't need to think about it," you say in a reassuring tone. "Nothing's going to go wrong because you didn't think enough about it." Saying that to him is helping you believe it.

"I guess that's true," Martinez says reflectively. "Well, thanks, I guess."

Martinez finishes pulling off his underwear, and you slip into his lap, naked except for your high heels. He's soft, but if you wriggle against him... no, you have a better idea. You don't need to hold back on using your powers anymore.

Your hair flexes, then curves between your legs to start touching Martinez's cock and balls. It's easier to move at Conceptual Hair Lvl 2. You couldn't lift much, but it no longer feels like a massive effort to move your hair's own weight.

Your hair is more sensitive, too. You can definitely feel the softness of the skin you're touching, the fur on Martinez's testicles. It no longer feels like it might be just your imagination.

"That feels... interesting," Martinez says, as you lightly brush all over the exposed head of his soft cock. "Nice. It's so strange believing that nothing bad can possibly happen to me while the questionable human is touching my penis with her glowing hair."

You would so be getting points of ERO right now if it wasn't for this quest, you naughty witch, you. "Well, let's get going," you say. "How do you, uh, start a car?"

Martinez points to a car key, already embedded in the car-key-holding-place. "Turn the key all the way clockwise," he says, "until you hear the engine catch, then let the key go back to the second-to-furthest clockwise position."

"Uh," you say. You put your fingers on the key. "You want to just put your hand over my fingers and make me do it right?"

"Sure," Martinez says. He twists your fingers around the key, and the car coughs once and vrooms. It's interesting, being able to associate the position and tension of the key with the sequence of sounds. You've heard the sounds before, but now you know what they mean.

"Now what?" you say. Your hair is feeling his penis stirring, as you go on steadily brushing all over his cock and balls with the ends of your hair.

Martinez has you press the brake pedal with one high-heeled foot. Then with the brake pressed down, you press a button on the parking brake and push it downward to release it. Martinez mentions he once forgot to release the parking brake while he was a new driver, and he couldn't figure out why his car suddenly had such bad acceleration on the highway. You laugh along with him, and tease his rapidly hardening cock with more light brushes. Then at Martinez's instruction you shift the car into drive, then slowly lift your foot off the brake pedal. The limo starts to creep forwards, then stops as it comes up against the concrete stop at the end of the parking space.

You reach down underneath yourself and pull up on Martinez's gearshift lever, trying to insert his key into your ignition. Your engine temperature is warm enough for your oil to be heated and slippery, but the angle doesn't seem right for him to drive into your parking space.

After some futile wriggling, you lean your torso forwards and bend your back and hips as far as they're willing to go. Finally his cock goes inside you, accompanied by an intake of breath from both of you.

Then you slowly sit up, trusting to Erogamer's Body that nothing inside you will be rejected by your anatomy once it's in.

Trying out your most difficult sexual position yet causes your FUK to go up by 1!

You're now sitting on Martinez's hard cock, with your hands on the steering wheel. You wriggle lightly, experimentally, not wanting to risk his cock slipping out of you, and both of you inhale again. You're not enough of a slut yet that just sitting on a cock will make you come, but your pussy feels righter with warm flesh inside it.

"I really never thought I'd be doing this," says Martinez. "Okay, brake pedal down, shift into reverse, let the brake pedal slowly up until the car starts moving, slowly back out of the parking space, then brake pedal down to stop again."

"Got it," you say. "Start thrusting your hips shallowly, also reach down and around to start touching my clit. Keep moving your fingers in a regular rhythm. Oh, and you can do anything else you want to me without asking, since nothing bad will happen to either of us."

"Right," Martinez says after a delay, like he still can't believe he believes this is perfectly safe. He follows instructions, going so far as to put his other hand on your breast and begin tweaking your nipple, even as you slowly back out of the parking space.

A skill has been created by a special action! Driving a car while being fucked has created the skill Driving With Distraction.

You should've seen this coming.

Driving With Distraction: Lvl 1 (5%). Passive.

Any penalties to vehicle operation caused by ero-related distractions are inverted, becoming bonuses instead. The magnitude of this inverted modifier increases with skill Lvl.

You definitely should've seen this coming.

"Oh, and I forgot to mention," you say. "The more you distract me sexually, the better I'll drive. So if it looks like I'm in a complicated situation or I start acting nervous, thrust into me hard or pinch my nipples or something."

"I'm not actually believing that?" says Martinez. "It might take more magic."

You roll your eyes. "Follow the fucking rabbit. Again." You're going to need more DOM soon.

"Thanks," says Martinez. His fingers start rubbing your clit faster, but not steadily, not in a smooth rhythm. You're guessing he doesn't have much practice at handwork, or not much practice with girls who gave him feedback---maybe he gets a work discount on prostitutes who don't complain? You don't complain either, because the irregular stimulation is quite distracting and that's what you need right now.

Martinez tells you to start turning the steering wheel, while staying in reverse, with the brake pedal pressed almost all the way down, in order to begin turning the car around.

You lift your foot halfway up the brake pedal and spin the wheel, turning the car around ninety degrees, then you stop, shift gears to drive, and spin the wheel the other way while driving forwards again. Now you're facing the exit of the parking lot.

"Whoa!" says Martinez. "Slow down there, cowgirl." His fingers have stopped moving.

"Keep distracting me!" you say. "If you stop rubbing my clit... well, I guess the car won't crash either way. But I don't want any close calls."

"Yes... ma'am," Martinez says. His fingers rub over your clit again, still awkwardly. Mm, distractions.

"I'm going to drive out of the parking lot now," you say. "Don't stop moving your hips if something startles you." You take your foot off the brake, lightly apply your foot to the accelerator, and the car moves forward obediently. Everything feels instinctive with a cock thrusting in teasingly shallow movements into your pussy.

"This is perfectly safe," Martinez says under his breath. "I am perfectly safe right now. The car won't be damaged. The police won't stop us. I won't get fired. Nothing bad can happen to me so long as I am having sex with her."

You wriggle your hips in appreciation, and turn right onto the street. Oh wait, you were probably supposed to stop and look out for traffic first, weren't you. Well, nothing bad happened as a result, you didn't hit the pedestrian and that other car totally missed you. "Seriously, rub my clit faster," you say.

You hate left turns, you hate left turns at traffic lights, you despise left turns at traffic lights with oncoming traffic and no left turn arrow, and you abhor left turns at traffic lights with oncoming traffic and no left turn arrow and no left turn lane. Who builds an intersection with no left turn lane, demons? It's probably demons. You're going to perk Maou and invade the Demon Dimension and build difficult traffic intersections in their world.

Operating the steering wheel and pedals seems easy enough so long as there are inexpert fingers fiddling with your clit. Martinez has pushed you up the curve of pleasure a handful of times, but he doesn't seem able to keep you there. It's definitely distracting. Most reassuringly of all, it's been exceptionally thoroughly demonstrated that nothing you do wrong can possibly cause a traffic accident.

But now you're in the middle of the intersection waiting to turn, feeling exposed on all sides, and other cars in the oncoming lane are whooshing past you on your left, and you have to repeatedly glance at the traffic light to see if it's changing yet, and there's cars behind you waiting impatiently for you to turn. Ahead there's a gap in the oncoming traffic, but you can't judge time and distances at this level of driving skill and brain overload. You'd rather not have any more traffic non-accidents if you can help it. "Can you distract me more?" you say.

Martinez's left hand stops pinching your nipple, which is the exact opposite of what you told him to do. Just as you open your lips to reproach him, his freed-up hand starts to wriggle under your bottom, slightly to the back of where his cock is going into you.

You realize what he's about to do, but your brain is holding too many cars for you to compose a reasoned protest before it's too late.

"Meeeeeep!" you say, as his probing finger finds its target and starts to poke inside your ass. You weren't ready for that, you haven't sorted out your feelings about the Dirty Place though you admittedly haven't eaten enough to poop lately, certainly not since you've showered, but you haven't performed whatever unknown cleansing ritual a girl is supposed to do before a finger goes inside her ass. It feels violating in a way that's more physical than anything to do with consent, and at PRV 28 that's also kind of hot. The sudden jumble of feelings is so distracting that you hardly even notice as you turn smoothly into the gap in oncoming traffic and end up in the correct lane of the next street over with plenty of time to spare. "Eeep!"

The invading finger seems to take this as encouragement, wriggling in deeper. Eeep eep eep! There's a burning warmth to the violation, impossible to ignore, and you change lanes sliding smoothly into the gap between two other cars like you've been doing that for years. Martinez uses Anal Finger Distraction, it's super effective. Eeeeeeep!

"I have to head off to my next pickup soon," Martinez says. "Is there anywhere you want to end up?"

You haven't thought about that, eeeeep, and with the finger wringling inside your ass, it's hard to---hard to---"Adult toy store! Is there a good sex shop nearby? Eeeeep!"

"Au Naturel isn't far from here. Keep driving south for two more lights, then turn left at the next street after."

"Not another left turn---Eep! You can stop doing that now!"

"Nah," Martinez says cheerfully. "I know that nothing bad will happen to me if I push it in further."

"Oh fuck you! EEEEP!" That fucker picked up way too fast on how this works.

Driving With Distraction has increased by 1.

As the car rolls forwards with perfect smoothness under your expertly distracted driving, Martinez has started to explain some weird racing-car maneuver called "drifting" that he wants to see you try. He thinks maybe you could do it if he sticks his finger all the way in.

It's hard for you to focus on his words. He's strumming your clit more enthusiastically, you're starting to climb toward orgasm again, and you know you're probably not going to get there. "Would you please try to keep a steady rhythm on my clit this time! No not in my ass, on my clit! Eeeeeee!"

"Yeah, you said that before a few times," says Martinez. "But I knew nothing bad would happen to me if I didn't bother."

Oh fuck him. Of course that's what a male is like when he knows there's no consequences. "I'm not going to try that drifting thing unless you make me come while I do!"

"It's a deal," says Martinez, and you're so distracted that you don't realize what you promised him until you've driven another half-a-block.

By the time you're approaching the adult toy store, the finger feels like it's already one and a half fingers deep. There's a burning rod shoved up inside you, and it's wriggling. It makes you feel like a worm dangling helplessly on a hook, and at PRV 28 that's making you feel violated and turned on. The fingers on your clit have steadied, and after the earlier false starts it's getting you worked up very fast.

Martinez is saying something about pulling up the parking brake while keeping the engine throttle open at least halfway, and it's not actually possible for you to concentrate on listening to him. But whatever, it's not like you're doing this using knowledge.

You're bouncing more violently on Martinez's hips now, unable to help yourself, even as he's thrusting more violently to meet you, your mouth is making embarrassing moaning sounds, you can see a parking spot on the sex store's corner, a gap between two other cars, you instinctively press the accelerator down just as warmth enters your pussy and Martinez's finger thrusts all the way up your abused ass, and the feeling of helpless dangling vulnerability provides the final spark that detonates your orgasm and tightens up all your muscles at once, causing your hand to convulsively pull up the handbrake as your other hand wildly yanks the steering wheel.

There's a screeching sound, and when it stops, the limo is perfectly placed on the side of the street between two other cars.

You sit there on Martinez's lap, panting, only slowly becoming aware that there's a pair of beefy guys on the sidewalk wildly applauding.

Ero achievement: Fucked Leonel Martinez while driving his car. Technically, Martinez wasn't driving when he came, but the Sex Drive quest isn't complaining. +200XP.

Well, you know how to drive now.

Sort of.

You've got no fucking idea how Muggles can possibly do this without crashing into everything.

"Thanks for the ride," Martinez says underneath you. "Sorry, ma'am, but I've got to head to my next stop, and nothing bad will happen to me if I kick you out as soon as I've come."

You're still in a half-dazed state as you open the door and climb out of the car. Martinez has already closed the door behind you by the time the sudden cessation of applause from the two beefcakes makes you realize that you're still naked except for your heels.

You glance at them nervously out of the corner of your eyes, yep they're staring silently at you. You hope they don't follow you into the store and---

The unpleasant thought bubble pops like chewing gum as you remember that nothing bad can possibly happen.

Your driving lesson, and all the traffic accidents that didn't happen, really helped hammer home that you have a Mario-style invincibility star right now. You might have had trouble believing in it otherwise. You still have trouble believing in it. You're starting to realize just how much of your internal mental life consists of worrying that something terrible will happen to you or somebody else.

You turn your head to look at the two guys more directly. Well muscled, dressed redneck-trashy. The stereotype would have that they'd be wolf-whistling and sauntering over to sexually harass you.

One of them smiles nervously as you make eye contact. The other one seems frozen.

You aren't... scaring them... are you?

These two guys just saw somebody pull off an incredible driving maneuver, and started applauding this unknown NASCAR ace. Then the driver's-side front door of the car opened and out came a beautiful naked woman.

They might be too intimidated to whistle at you. Worried that something bad might happen if they do.

The thought that these two beefy guys might be intimidated by you is, uh, it's deeply satisfying in fact, but you don't want to become the type of girl who thinks she's too good for the men she intimidates. They didn't do anything impolite. You straighten your back, wish away the leftover ooze starting to drool out of you---

Fluid Unformed has increased by 1.

And strut over towards the two of them. You grab one of them by the head, kiss him briefly but with tongue, turn to the other one, kiss him too.

They still seem frozen. What if---no, you're sure that what you did won't have any bad effects on them.

You turn again and strut into the sex shop.

7.3.3** [EP]: No Worries

The clerk manning Au Naturel's checkout counter is male, and he gives you a startled but appreciative look as you saunter into his saloon. The soft music playing within sounds like... an elaborate techno remix of the Mario invincibility-star tune. Yes thank you Erogame.

Several customers browsing the wide shelves and racks of sexy equipment have already turned around to stare at your naked form.

Including one unexpectedly familiar face.

When Copper Swallow notices you staring at her, she quickly turns away, going back to studying the row of wearable vibrators and chastity belts on the shelf in front of her.

Now isn't that convenient?

Pleasantly dreadful plans are running through your mind, but there's something else you have to do first. You stride over to the clerk at the checkout counter.

"Uh," the young man starts to say, "we don't have much of a dress code in here, but the code does call for you to be dressed---"

You point a stern finger at him. "Nothing sexy I do will have any negative consequences for you, me, this store, or anybody else. Now don't get in the way of any fucking rabbits, and something nice might happen to you too."

"Yes ma'am," he says, sounding anticipatory.

Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit has increased by 1.

Your skills sure increase faster when you use them. Although, wait, if you're remembering this right...

Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit: Lvl 3 (0%). Active. DOM / Special.

Convince Lvl * Lvl other people to go along with 1 instance of Erogame Logic. This skill cannot of itself cause someone to act contrary to their interests or desires, but helps convince them that the event is not hallucinatory, that it's fine not to use protection this time, or that the victim won't go to the police. Costs DOM equal to the ERO corresponding to the minimum improbability threshold for the ongoing event, divided by the Lvl of this skill.

Dressing as a sexy bunny reduces the cost of this skill by 50%.

So now you can target up to 9 people in your spell's area of effect? This has possibilities. You weren't going to wear much of anything, but now you've changed your mind. You need bunny ears and a puffy bunny tail. How much DOM do you have left now?

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (34,700 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 2/460
SUB: 175/510

BOD: 22
LST: 23
SED: 25
FUK: 21
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8784

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Charles Adan
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: Off

Shit, you're almost completely out of DOM. Even with the skill at Lvl 3, that's just 6 ERO worth of forgiveable weird events. You should've been bossier with Martinez... no, you need to stop worrying, it's fine, nothing bad can happen to you. You've just got to boss around someone else. Nothing can go wrong with that plan.

You head over to the middle of the store's floor, where a pair of classic Playboy bunny ears are conveniently on display. Your hand then hesitates between the crotchless-panties bunnytail and the buttplug bunny tail, but finally you pick up the buttplug. You're blushing, maybe because of the sheer hypocrisy you've just revealed behind all your complaints to Martinez---

Holy shit. This bunny tail buttplug costs $63.57? For reals? Fuck that. If there can be no bad consequences for your actions, that ought to include not having less money.

You turn to look at a rich-looking guy in business casual who's standing nearby, studying weird-shaped objects with the word "prostate" on their packaging. His face isn't anything to write home about, but he doesn't need a face for your purposes. He'll do.

You don't bother trying to come up with any opening lines. You're starting to feel the momentum now.

So you walk straight over to him, keeping your back straight and your C-cup breasts proudly upthrust. He turns to look at you, and before he can say anything pointless, you reach over and stick your hand straight down his pants.

The guy has his mouth open with a look of sheer astonishment, like nothing he's ever experienced has prepared him to say or do anything in response to your blatant sexual assault.

"Don't bother asking the staff for help," you say, your voice low. "They know better than to interfere with me, see?" You turn to wave at the checkout guy, and he waves cheerfully back at the two of you. Your hand worms through the side of his underpants to touch him directly... there you go.

"What---are you doing?" says the guy, in the tones of somebody who just had a naked high-heels-wearing girl come up to him in a sex shop and stick her hand down his pants and the store employee is apparently fine with this, and he knows that what he just blurted out sounds stupid but he can't imagine what else to say.

"Stroking you. You're going to be a good boy and buy me these bunny ears and this buttplug... and anything else I want, like a leash for the girl I'm going to take on a walk... and in exchange you'll be allowed to come in her mouth." Your hand is busily moving.

He stares at you, like a guy who's still being wanked by the naked girl and still can't imagine what he's supposed to do about that.

You keep staring him down, with a predatory grin, as your hand keeps moving over what's rapidly firming and erecting. "Don't bother telling me any lies when your dick is honest," you say. "Now we're going over to the checkout counter, and you're buying me these two items to start with."

Holding your victim by the cock, you pull him in the direction of the checkout counter with your hands still down his pants. Other customers are gaping at the two of you in astonishment, but you'll fix that soon enough. Along the way, you spot the type of tiny face mask that superheroes use to hide their civilian identity (which logically must be contained entirely inside their eyebrows). You pick up a tiny mask too.

Your free hand drops the mask, bunny ears, and bunny tail buttplug onto the counter. "Pay," you instruct your new pet wallet while you go on wanking him.

He pays, still looking dazed.

That was dominant, right? Status... you're up to 9 DOM. At Lvl 3 and with the 50% bunny discount, that's plenty to get this party started.

The checkout boy helpfully snips off tags, and you stop wanking your victim long enough to put the bunny ears on your head.

"Can you put this in my ass?" you say to the checkout guy, handing him the bunnytail. You can't do it to yourself, it's just too embarrassing.

He steps around the counter and you bend over to touch your toes, presenting your ass and bracing yourself as best you can.

Eep.

Well... that was over quickly... sort of. You straighten eep up again, and turn to regard the other ten customers in the store, all of whom are either staring at you or watching you out of the corner of your eyes.

You mentally include your rich-guy victim into your next area of effect, and exclude Copper Swallow and the checkout guy for 9 targets total. "Don't worry," you say in a loud voice, "I'm sure you all know that nothing bad happens to anyone when I do sexy things in public, right? I'm just having some harmless fun."

Everyone in your field of vision except Copper Swallow nods in a matter-of-fact way. Some go back to what they were doing, while others keep watching your bunnied form but look more relaxed.

Copper Swallow is staring at you with very wide eyes as you approach her, dragging your rich-guy victim along by the cock. She doesn't recognize you, naturally, since you're no longer wearing Illyria's glasses.

But if the Scoobies ever talk to her, they might recognize who she met today. Your opening dialogue should fit into their story.

So you look up and down Copper Swallow as you approach her. "Someone's been keeping interesting company," you murmur, giving her your best attempt at a fairy's intrigued look. "Made any unusual friends, lately?"

"N-no?" Copper Swallow says.

"Come now," you say in a singsong. "It's not good to lie to people like me." You let go of the cock you're holding so you can step closer and lower your voice to more like a whisper. "I know you made a promise to someone... extra-special. Was it something embarrassing? Something sexy? Did you submit to her like the needy slut you are?"

"How can you tell?" Copper Swallow says despairingly. "How does everyone know?"

She's starting to look like she might be seriously frightened, so you step into her personal space---she freezes up---and whisper into her ear. "It's okay," you murmur. "I promise I won't hurt you. I've just decided to take you on a sexy adventure with me, that's all. And it'll be fine for you to walk around naked in public, to do all sorts of awful things where anyone can see you, because nobody can possibly recognize you while you're wearing a mask. Nobody will hold you responsible for anything that happens, and nothing bad will ever happen as a result. It'll just be a horribly embarrassing, awfully arousing, dreadfully slutty adventure... though you won't be allowed to come, of course, since you promised that special person. But if you're good I'll let you eat me out and you can make me come instead. And you'll always, always be perfectly safe." Super bunny powers, invoke!

Copper Swallow still looks frightened when you pull back from your whisper, but it's a different type of fright, you can tell. It's a sexually charged, obedient fear. "Put this on," you order her, giving her the tiny mask you just bought. "Then take off all your clothes and start blowing this man here." You're already undoing your walking wallet's buckle and pulling down his pants. "If you can make him come in your mouth before I finish the rest of my shopping, you've been good."

Copper Swallow takes off her clothes, and gets to her knees, trembling in every limb and muscle. The guy whose pants you pulled down shows no such hesitation as he steps forwards and shoves his cock in her mouth.

A helpless anxiety manifests inside you, and just to be sure, you step around to behind Copper Swallow and bend down to rub her pussy, making her flinch and moan around the cock in her mouth. Okay, she's wet enough to be slick like soap down there, everything is fine you were silly to worry it's the fucking Erogame it can rewrite a planet it can handle one submissive being okay.

You walk quickly around the store, picking out other items. You don't know whether you're hoping Copper Swallow is fast enough so you can let her lick you, or too slow so she gets punished, but either way it happens sooner if you don't dawdle about your shopping.

One new woman enters the adult shop, stares at your naked form and Copper Swallow blowing your debit card, and says something to the guy at the checkout counter. Whatever the reply was, it leaves her looking very confused, but she doesn't turn and leave. Well, of course she doesn't leave. It would be a negative consequence if the store lost a customer.

Soon you have a small armful of ero inventory. There's more merchandise you want to own, but you don't want to carry it with you on this adventure, and also you don't want to charge your walking wallet more than this blowjob is worth to him.

As you head over towards Copper Swallow, you observe that the guy is standing very stiff, his legs trembling. After a moment he gasps, and lets out a low moan. Copper Swallow keeps on moving her mouth on him until he finally pushes her head away.

Ero achievement: Forcing Erin Penna to blow Andy Driese in public earns you a total of +400XP for both of them.

"I have the rest of my items," you declare, and give Copper Swallow a stern look. "You didn't make him come until after I came over. Say 'I'm sorry, mistress.'"

Copper Swallow casts a frantic glance over at where two watching perverts are now applauding her. Her cheeks are red like blush makeup and there's some little drips of wetness on the floor beneath her pussy. "I'm---I'm sorry, mistress---"

"But you almost finished on time so I'll still let you eat me out," you decide. "You can take your punishment after that. Say thank you, mistress."

"Thank you, mistress." She sounds like she's in a daze, just letting it all happen to her, which is... perfectly fine because nothing bad can possibly be happening.

The guy she just sucked off pats her on the head, glances at the merchandise now in your arms, and says to Copper Swallow in a gentle tone, "I want you to know, you were worth it."

"Hey," one of the two watching perverts says, stepping forwards. "Can she blow me too?"

You shrug. "Sure." Then it occurs to you that the guy paying for your merchandise might not be happy if other people are getting oral for free. "She costs four hundred dollars," you add.

The guy's hands drop away from his belt with a sour face. You know it wasn't a sensible price, even by the insane standards you've seen online... this doesn't feel right either. "But anyone who wants can get themselves off and come on her breasts," you say. "I bet she'll look better decorated. And she'll thank you and lick you off nicely when you're done."

Copper Swallow makes a sound that's half gasp and half horrified moan, and both perverted guys smile and reach for their belt buckles.

When your wallet-victim has finished paying for your stuff and collected a deep kiss from you as a tip, you skip through time just a little and turn back to Copper Swallow right as the remaining man in front of her groans and decorates her breasts with more white. Mm, Swallow definitely looks prettier that way... you should've had one of the two men come on your own chest. Oh well, plenty of time.

"Thank---thank you," Copper Swallow stammers, and leans forward to lick off the cock presented to her.

Pink-violet text informs you that you've earned more XP for instructing the two men to masturbate on her. You tell the game you're busy.

When Copper Swallow is done licking, you drop most of what you bought in front of your temporary pet. "Put this on," you order.

There's still a bunch of background anxiety in your head about all the terrible things that could be happening inside Copper Swallow's head where you can't see. You wish somebody else would Fucking Rabbit you, so you could relax and go along with the erogame logic too. But the concept has not been lost on you that the point of this tutorial is learning to rabbit yourself. The nagging voices in your head haven't gone quiet, but you've been able to keep running ahead anyways and you're definitely feeling the momentum. Using your Erogame powers freely is... your mind searches for the right word... nice? Pleasant? Exhilarating.

Oh, right, you have to do something nice for the checkout guy before you go. Have sex with him on the checkout counter maybe? No, it's too narrow, you might fall off.

Your fingers are fisted tight in a man's shirt, his face is screwed up tight with pleasure, and a crowd of fifteen people has gathered to watch you as you fuck a sex-store clerk on his own checkout counter. It's not wide enough, but that doesn't matter, because you don't have to worry about falling off.

You also noticed another anxiety-thought to let go of, and managed to stop worrying about whether you come before he does. This was a reward for him anyways, and more importantly, there's plenty of other cock to be ridden. So you're just letting go and riding him, milking this hot cock thrusting inside you for all the pleasure it has to offer, however much that is. Your breath is quickened almost as much with excitement as with pleasure. You haven't Let It Go, but you're doing things you want and not worrying as much and it feels good.

Three men and one woman watching your public sex act have their hands down their own pants. You used your bunny powers again to promise that nothing bad would happen to anyone who pleasured themselves, so long as they kept their pants on. Sure, they didn't really need their pants on, but nothing bad will happen just because you indulged your own fetish there.

You think the man you're riding is about to come, so you make contact with the most tense-looking voyeur pleasuring himself as he watches you. "I think he's going to come soon," you say in a low seductive voice. "You should come when he does. Come in your pants while you watch us."

The clerk beneath you draws a shuddering breath at your words, he gives a very soft but audible moan. The voyeur's face screws up in a rictus, and his own body tenses. The voyeur moans louder when he comes than does the man below you, even as your thoroughly warmed and wet pussy gets a bit warmer and wetter.

You wait until the man below you has stopped jerking his hips, and lift yourself off him. Then you sit on the edge of the checkout counter and make eye contact with Copper Swallow. You ordered her to watch the whole thing, and told her she was only allowed light touches on her exposed pussy while she did. Oh, it looks like another man must have jerked himself off onto her breasts. "Lick as much come as you can out of my pussy," you order her. "Don't swallow it. Try to pass it to me afterwards in a kiss." It would be nice if you could get the Nectar effects from people you fuck.

Copper Swallow staggers forward like she's in a daze while the most humiliating, arousing events in her life happen to her one after another. She kneels, gingerly puts her mouth on your pussy. You grab her hair and pull her head down solidly.

Copper Swallow sticks her tongue into you, and tries to apply suction over your pussy with her mouth... yeah, this isn't going to get much man-come out of you. It's also obvious she's never performed oral on a woman before. That's okay, you can train her.

After a few seconds of licking and sucking, Copper Swallow raises her head and makes to kiss you. She thinks that's oral? Well, you did tell her to clean out your pussy rather than make you come, so you suppose you'll let her get away with it.

You lean over to kiss Copper Swallow for the first time, pulling her head into your other lips. She opens her mouth and tries to push what's inside over to you with her tongue, and you apply some of your own suction to receive it. A little bit of goop enters your mouth, nowhere near a full ejaculation. Just enough to tease you with the checkout boy's cheddar-corn taste and the oddly neutral flavor of your own lubrication. You're pretty sure you didn't get a nectar from that.

You don't let go of Copper Swallow's head, keeping one fist in her hair while you force her to go on kissing you. You need this, you need to dominate an innocent now and then. You weren't exactly denying yourself that pleasure, but you'll have to make it happen more regularly. There's no point in doing without, not when you can grab some shy boy or inexperienced girl any time you please.

Copper Swallow has gone too quiet for your tastes, so you reach down and slip a hand between her legs. Almost at once she starts moaning into your mouth and writhing her body, and that's nice enough that you keep it up for a while. You make sure your hand's touches are light, you don't feel like edging her right now, you just want her to move more and make more sounds.

You keep doing that for a while, letting time go away. There's noplace you need to be, nothing else you need to be going, nowhen you can possibly be late for.

By the time you finally let Copper Swallow out of your kiss, she looks to be in a state. There's wetness all over her thighs, pooling on the edges of the thigh-high vinyl stockings you dressed her in. Matching gloves go over her elbows and halfway up her arms. She was wearing high heels when she came into this store, and now she's wearing higher ones. Aside from that she's naked, except for the tiny mask, and the come on her breasts.

This work of art is almost ready to be exhibited to the public.

"We're going outside now," you inform her. "I want a bigger audience for when you pleasure me." Doing this inside the shop isn't shameful enough, these witnesses are all ero people who voluntarily entered a sex shop and most of them have been rabbited. You want there to be more people gasping and pointing at her, and at you.

You attach a leash to Copper Swallow as she stands there, trembling. And then you spring her next surprise, a buttplug of her very own. You take it out so she can see what it is, enjoying the look of horror on her expression. You lick the plug all over to ready it for entry, holding eye contact as you do. You run it over your pussy to lubricate it more.

You order Copper Swallow to bend over, and when she seems to hesitate, you grab her hair again and push her head down until her hands are touching the floor to support herself.

She gasps, moans, and makes other pleasant noises while you slowly twist the plug into her. It's just a small plug, but a special one.

When the plug is all the way in, you push the button located on the outer end.

Bzzz-bzzz-BZ-bzzzz-stop-bzzz.

"It was going to be a floor model but it didn't work right," you explain. "It's supposed to buzz in a regular pattern, but it doesn't. The checkout boy said I could have it."

Bzzzzz-pause-zz-pause.

"Oh, please," Copper Swallow gasps, the first words she's said in a while. "Please---I---I won't be able to take it---"

You lay a finger over her lips. "Shhhh. It's okay. Nothing bad happens if you can't take it." you believe in the Erogame really you do stop worrying Cindy. "Now get on all fours like a good pet."

Spoiler: Good pet

Then you look yourself over in a nearby wall mirror. Bunny ears and tail, check. You also found for yourself some fishnet thigh-highs, and a tie decoration that you think will look good when there's semen decorating your own chest.

Spoiler: Bunny outfit

People are still watching you. You smile at them and reach down to give your naked pussy a few rubs, just because you can, you can do that whenever you want. Then you turn towards the door of the sex shop, and pull firmly on the leash to send Copper Swallow in a scrambling crawl after you. Everything seems so beautifully perverted, so beautifully slutty, the re-stoked arousal coiling inside you is pleading to be discharged again. It's time to take your pet on a walk.

7.3.4*** [EP]: No Qualms

It was already mild this morning, but when you step outside the adult toy store, the weather has turned so unseasonably hot for March that your mind pauses in temporary shock. But no, that's logical, that makes perfect sense, you're leading Copper Swallow around mostly naked and she doesn't have Cute Cold Resistance. A glance back at Swallow's crawling form shows that the thigh-length vinyl stockings and arm-length gloves are serving to protect her knees and elbows from the concrete sidewalk and any small sharp things there. You didn't do that on purpose, and there's a hiccup of existential disorientation from realizing that your free-willed choice of pet outfit was metaphysically steered to protect Swallow from negative consequences. Well whatever, back to the wild erotic adventure.

The lazy street before you lacks a crowd of shocked bystanders to point at you, or a convenient bench for being cunnilingularized by Copper Swallow. This Saturday morning there's just two people on the sidewalk, a teenaged boy a few steps away and a middle-aged woman on the other side of the street. Both are already turning to gape at you and your pet.

The teenaged boy looks pretty in a slender way, almost feminine and dressed in loose clothes to match.

You like it.

Want take have.

You walk towards him as fast as Copper Swallow's crawling allows.

He steps backward from you, keeping the neutral expression of a scared person.

Oh, he wants to play tsundere, does he? You can enjoy that too. "You shouldn't resist me," you say, reaching up to caress one of your bunny ears in a slow, obscene stroking motion. "This will be over more quickly if you just give up and let me happen to you." Then you drop Copper Swallow's leash, dart forward in some fast steps, grab at his waist, and pull his pants and underpants to around his ankles. "Suck him off," you say, not bothering to turn to address Copper Swallow. "Make him come quickly. I want to kiss him while he squirms and comes."

"Please---" he starts to say, and then your mouth covers his. You grab his wrists too, and hold them behind his back during the kiss, pressing your body up against his.

A glance at Copper Swallow shows that she hasn't started crawling over yet. Thanks to your high SED, the genuinely horrified and indignant look on her face communicates to you what's wrong. Right, you forgot to say this part to her earlier. "Giving people sexual pleasure is never bad for them and never causes them any psychological trauma," you say at Copper Swallow. "Not this morning, anyways. So get over here and start sucking his cock. Now!" You wiggle your ass and its bunny tail, then go back to kissing the boy.

His body stiffens up in your arms as Swallow swallows him, and he tries to draw in a breath that's stifled by your mouth over his. Your tongue probes vigorously into his wet mouth, even as you enjoy the tension causing his muscles to tighten up in your embrace. Kissing squirmy boys is so nice, they should sell them in stores. Can you buy them online? You're sure you can order them online if your ERO is high enough, you just don't know how high it has to be.

"Stop that, that's disgusting!" yells a middle-aged female voice. "This is a public street!"

You break your kiss long enough to glance at the woman from the other side of the street, who seemingly has nothing better to do than come over and interfere with your fun. But then, people like her have their place in the ero universe too. "Now it's my street," you say. "By the way, nothing bad will happen to you if you yell at us for being such sluts. Let out all your feelings. Show us what you're like when you know there's no consequences for anything you do. Bunnies bunnies bunnies."

The woman's face tightens up in anger. Wait, maybe that was a bad idea---goddamnit, no it was a great idea, everything will be fine. You deliberately turn from her and go back to kissing the boy you're, uh, eroge-raping you are not going to think about that, nothing will go wrong if you don't.

The boy is deliciously squirmier now, trying to move his hips. You hold his hands further behind his back. You move in closer on him and start rubbing the heat between your legs on his exposed thigh. Oh. Oh, you need to do something about this soon. Oh. In the background a woman is hissing in angry tones at Copper Swallow about her being a disgusting slut and does she realize she's doing this where everyone can see her, and Copper Swallow is moaning around the cock in her mouth as the plug buzzes loudly in her ass. The sight is so stimulating, on top of the recent countertop fucking you didn't come from, it's driving you wild. You rub more urgently against the increasingly slick thigh between your legs. Oh. This boy needs to come soon so you can take Copper Swallow on to the next part of this adventure. He's a healthy-looking boy around your age, he should be coming soon, right? You free one hand from holding his hands down, wet your fingers with your lips, and reach into his shirt to begin rubbing your slick fingers around his nipple. Maybe that will help him.

The boy stiffens up, you can feel his thigh trembling between your legs. A moan escapes from his throat, into your own mouth where you're still licking his tongue with your tongue. Oh. This isn't fair, he's coming now, he gets a nice orgasm and you don't, so unfair. You're humping harder on his thigh but you can't edge yourself like this, let alone come. Even though it's so, so hot the way he trembles as he comes. Oh.

When he's finished trembling, you remove Copper Swallow's mouth from him and give Swallow some soothing strokes of your fingers through her hair. The plug in her ass picks that time to give a loud and prolonged buzz, and Swallow's hips squirm. Oh, it's too much, you need her mouth on your pussy right now.

Instead you draw her up and turn her to face the adult nag whose face is now completely red with anger. "She really is a slut, isn't she?" you say. "Look how wet she got from blowing that boy in public. She deserves to be punished."

The woman's face is snarling, livid nothing can go wrong and she advances a step towards Copper Swallow she knows she's safe who tries to flinch back, but you're holding down both of Swallow's arms now. "You---pervert---whores," the older woman grinds out, draws back her hand nothing bad and delivers a hard slap to one of Swallow's tits. Then her hand swings back and backhands the other tit. She slaps Swallow's breasts over and over, making the tits jiggle and Swallow yelp. At PRV 28 not comfortable but keep going the sadism is hot, even at one remove. One of your hands reaches between Swallow's legs to reassure yourself, probes inside her pussy, and you are reassured. Since your hand is present anyways you start rubbing Swallow's clit, full speed, fast urgent rhythmic. She edges almost immediately. (Your use of Edge Other is nearly unconscious now.) You don't want to burn DOM on the expensive Edging skill, so you switch to gentler touches, guessing at what speed will keep her simmering and frantic. You speed up your fingers on Swallow's clit whenever the plug in her ass slows down. You slow your fingers whenever the plug in her ass vibrates louder.

The older woman pauses in hitting Swallow's breasts, leaning over and panting why not so you let go of Swallow and step forwards don't be intimidated and stick your hand down the older woman's skirt. She lets out a startled scream, knocking your hand away too late, and you SED 25 don't look nervous lick off your fingers with a predatory smile. You only touched the outside of her panties, but that was proof enough. "Hurting her made you wet," you say. "It's the most sexually excited you've been in years." You wave your hand in front of her face like Obi-Wan Kenobi. "Now go home and rethink your life, you sadistic lesbian pervert."

The woman looks like there's a car crash happening inside her head it was for her own good. She turns and runs away like monstergirls are pursuing her all for the best she'll be fine.

The boy pulled his pants back up while you weren't paying attention, but he was watching Swallow's punishment with interest, judging by the new bulge visible at his groin. You don't want to fuck him and you don't know why not, but that's fine, he'll be fine, you'll be fine everyone will be fine.

You step around to in front of Swallow, kiss her again, pull her exposed body into your exposed body. When she seems to relax into the embrace, you reach up and dig your own fingernails into the nipples of her abused breasts first time you've inflicted sadistic pain on someone else although you're careful not to use any more force than you used on your own nipples when you tortured yourself for Charles. Copper Swallow's breath stops inside your kiss, and she pushes her body against yours even more. The malfunctioning vibrator in her ass is buzzing loudly and you can feel that where you shoved your leg between her thighs.

The burning between your own legs is starting to make you desperate. You break the kiss and shove Copper Swallow down to a crawling position again, marching her as fast as she can crawl to the end of the block. You need to find a proper audience so she can start licking you.

By the time you've gone a few more blocks, you're in a state. Your thighs are slick and you can't unform the fluid. Every time you passed an attractive bystander on the street you rabbited them. Unfortunately, with the first two, you worded your reassurance too broadly. There's a man on your left side and a teenage girl on your right, fluttering their fingers casually over your exposed nipples, your thighs, your ass, often brushing your clit, as you walk forwards at Copper Swallow's best crawling speed. Both of them know that nothing bad will happen no matter what they do to you. At the end of the last block you had to wait to cross the street because of a car coming. As soon as you stopped walking, the man grabbed your arms and held them behind your back, and the girl rubbed between your legs, both of them laughing at how you cursed them and moaned. Afterwards you almost lost it, almost pulled Copper Swallow's head right onto your pussy, but there's only seven people watching you and you need more.

A car drives past you, slowing down as it goes. It doesn't honk, but the windows are open and you hear male voices cheering as it rolls past you.

As you reach the traffic light at the end of the current block, you look to either side of the newly revealed cross street, hoping for a crowd you can use.

To your right is what's surely salvation, a small park area with a raised bench in the middle-back. Surprisingly full of people, adult people, with no children in sight.

You'll have to cross the street to get there.

Of course the walk sign starts blinking red as you approach.

This time it's the girl who grabs your hands and holds them behind you, and the man who comes up to your front. The bulge at his crotch looks very hard, very erect beneath his pants, and you wonder if he'll force you to suck on it or just start fucking you.

Instead he grabs your hair with one hand, pulls your head back, you can't see anything in front of you, don't know what he's about to do. Then his hand slaps into your pussy. You cry out, more in shock than in pain. His hand spanks your exposed pussy again and again, lightly stinging you, not sparing your clit, making the whole area tingle and ache. Sensitizing you in preparation for Swallow's tongue.

When the man lets go of your hair as the traffic light changes, you glare at him, then turn to look at where Copper Swallow was watching you from her crawling position. The submissive girl is now sporting a wide grin. Oh, you'll make her pay for that. Any thoughts you had about mercy are gone, along with any qualms about what you're planning to do next yes totally gone shut up brain.

Plenty of people besides your entourage are already staring at you as you cross the street with Swallow's leash in hand, forcing her to crawl after you, her vinyl stockings and gloves keeping her safe from the asphalt.

You walk down the sidewalk towards the park proudly, your bare chest jutting out, your naked bottom swaying as you try to swing your hips in hopefully a seductive way. People are gasping and pointing and you don't slow down at all. This is your park now.

As you enter the park you slow down, even though you're so horny, so you can walk towards the raised bench at the back at a slow parade speed. Copper Swallow crawls after you on her leash, the metal button in her ass buzzing loudly enough to be clearly audible. There's wolf-whistles and leering, teenaged boys pretending not to look at you, some pervert holding up his cellphone to record you, couples whispering to each other. None of them are rabbited, they look just as scandalized as they should be. Embarrassment and pride are chasing each other in a tight coil inside you, submission and dominance, it feels like not just your cheeks but your whole body is blushing furiously, you put some more swing in your hips, everyone is looking at you, you need to come. The witnesses gasp out loud again when you reach down to rub your reddened pussy a couple of times in front of everybody, just to show them society's endless rules can't hold you anymore, a sense of liberation like roofhopping.

You reach the bench, turn around, sit down eeep you forgot the tail-plug. Masochistically, you wiggle your ass so that the plug presses into you even more. You spread your legs in front of everyone so they can get a good look. Then you pull Copper Swallow's head into your pussy---okay, that's an issue. You pull up her mask to her forehead, then pull her head into your pussy again. This time it works, and she starts licking.

Ha, wow. Wow. Copper Swallow has no idea what she's doing. Absolutely none. She's running her tongue slowly up and down your pussy, covering your whole entrance in broad strokes like she's trying to paint a fencepost. Which means her tongue squirms over your clit for only a second before it goes back down and starts running over your labia again, top to bottom to top. It's teasing, maddening. Even as worked up as you are, it would take you ages to come just from this.

You don't tell her what she's doing wrong.

You let your gaze roam over all the people staring at you. More are arriving, each time a new perverted soul walks past the park and looks to see where everyone is looking. Copper Swallow's tongue reaches the top of your pussy, squirms over your clit, sending a warm pulse through you, pushing you that little bit towards orgasm. Her tongue goes back down, pleasuring you less but still pleasuring you, the warmth fading back. Her tongue comes back up, another pulse of pleasure shoves you back up a tiny bit higher than before. A boy is sitting on a bench, stiffly, keeping a book he isn't reading on his lap. You moan for him, locking your eyes on him, letting him see that this frustrated groan is just for him. Oh, this is going to take forever, Copper Swallow couldn't drive you crazier if she was trying. A woman pretends not to watch you, her head turned slightly away, her hips wriggling like she's trying to get rid of an itch she can't scratch. Copper Swallow's tongue squirms over your desperate clit for one second and then strokes back down your pussy. You're filling up with liquid heat, so slowly, a dollop of it pours into you and then most of it leaks away. You're going to punish her so badly for teasing you like this. The vibrator buzzes angrily in Swallow's ass and her hips wriggle frantically, like they're trying to run away from what's between them.

By the time the liquid heat inside you is nearing the brim, there's three times as many people in the park watching you. Some of them wear righteously disgusted looks, as they stay here to stare avidly at you instead of going somewhere else. There's no seating left in the park and many of the men are standing bent over, to conceal their erections, as if everyone doesn't know. Boys and girls alike have flushed faces. A dozen cellphones are recording you. Copper Swallow's tongue has slowed down, probably her jaw is getting tired. The liquid pleasure inside you is rising even more excruciatingly slowly, bubbling near the surface without running over. It's agony not to just shove your hips into Swallow's mouth and rub yourself off on her face. You're clenching both hands on the sides of the bench, muscles tightened in an effort not to grab Swallow's head and make her go faster.

"Now---slut," you say. It's an effort to speak. "I'm going to come on your face soon. You'll feel my thighs clench while I do. While that happens, you should be moving your tongue up and down over just my clit, not my whole pussy. Same speed as before, don't slow down or speed up at all while I'm coming, but running your tongue over just my clit. If my hips move, follow them right away and keep licking at the same speed. Do you understand? Show me what you would do."

Copper Swallow's tongue focuses on your clit, squirming over it again and again, and the heat rises up in you almost instantly---"Stop!" and she does, she stops completely---"No! Keep licking, but all the way up and down like before---yes. Keep doing that until I come."

You fell down the slope of pleasure when she stopped. But now Copper Swallow licks more firmly when she gets to your clit, her tongue slows down and spends more time there, the liquid in you fills back up though still agonizingly slowly. Your hands clench the sides of the bench again, you're moaning nonstop, your breathing is spiraling out of control along with your heartbeat, you look around at all the people staring at you.

You can feel yourself starting to go over the edge, and in the terror of your beautiful orgasm being spoiled you immediately tighten up your thighs on Copper Swallow's head. Her tongue obediently goes right to your clit and stays there, and with a scream of pleasure that echoes all through the park around you, you explode. The tongue on your clit goes on licking steadily and you go on exploding. You don't how how long it goes on before your clit is suddenly too sensitive and your hands go to Copper Swallow's hair and pull her head away.

She looks exhausted, proud, dazed, ashamed, maybe numb. Her mouth is slack, like her jaw has entirely stopped working for some unknown reason. Oh god, what if you just gave her transmundubbular jaw syndrome or whatever it's called---no you did not jesus christ.

You gently pull the mask back down over Swallow's face, not that it conceals much, and sit her down in your lap on the bench. She looks around and goes tense as she sees all the people looking at her. Your arms go around her and hug her. The plug in her ass buzzes, and you shift so that it's buzzing on your pussy. You know what you want to do next, but you ought to let Swallow rest in case she needs time to---no she doesn't, she's fine and having fun. Nothing bad will happen if you move on right away.

"Look at how everyone is looking at you," you murmur into her ears. "They were looking at you the whole time." The plug in her ass gives a loud ZZZZ as if to punctuate your words, touching on your pussy lips too, and both of you gasp together. "That was very naughty, making me come on your face like that, where they can all see. You should be punished. Are you ready to be punished?"

Copper Swallow moans in horror and protest at the sheer unfairness of this. Was that a no? It didn't sound to you like a no... you should stop worrying.

You raise your voice. "Hey everyone!" you call out. "This slut made me come on her face and needs to be punished for that. Her jaw needs a rest, but any man who wants can come over here and come on her breasts, or spank her pussy. Any woman who wants can pinch the slut's nipples or rub herself on the slut's thigh."

People glance around at each other, but nobody takes a step forward. Oh, right.

"Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, she's totally into it and I think we're all friends here by now," you say.

Instantly there's a line forming up in front of your bench. Two lines, one male and one female. It's not all the people in the park, maybe a quarter of them, but that's still plenty. One person hanging back and looking sad is wearing a red headscarf, and you realize your oversight. "Uh, if you're agender you can do whichever," you add.

You hold Copper Swallow's hands down, not that she's trying to struggle but it seems right to do it anyways.

The line moves forwards.

You remind the people in the line that they should be masturbating already so they can come onto the slut's breasts, or rub themselves on her thigh, soon after they reach the head of the line. Another Rabbit tells them that nothing bad will happen if they do.

Copper Swallow lets out deep, sexy groans of pain when people are mean to her. There's somebody being mean to her nipples almost all the time. A man grunts and decorates her chest with more white, then he kneels down to do something to Swallow's pussy that you can't see but is making her whine very loudly. There's no pussy-spanking sounds, from his position he might be pinching her clit or pulling on her pubic hair. A woman with her hand down her pants pulls her bottom off completely to expose taut legs and a pussy already wet. She's the first to grind herself on Copper Swallow's thigh. The woman comes quietly but prettily, arching her back in a way that lifts her breasts beneath her shirt. When she's done, she displaces the person previously torturing Swallow's right breast and starts using her very sharp-looking fingernails yes Swallow is crying tears aren't always bad. You hug Swallow tighter just in case. The plug in Swallow's ass buzzes at you, and you squirm your hips forward so that it's buzzing right on your clit.

Somebody smarter than you and nicer than you has the presence of mind to offer Copper Swallow several long drinks from a bottle of water.

When the line is all done, you hug Swallow and tell her she was a good slut. Such a good pet. Even though she promised that special person and she can't come without permission, you're going to pleasure her now.

You call over four people to restrain Copper Swallow's arms and legs.

(You don't want to check your Status, but if the Erogame isn't being unfair, you should have plenty of DOM now, right?)

People watch again as you reach between Swallow's hips and edge her fifty times. You make her count them.

At the end she's whining and bucking her hips and trying to thrash her legs each time you take your hand away. And all that wriggling of her buzzing bottom button against your pussy, and her pleading cries, and all the watching gazes, have made you very aroused.

So you make Copper Swallow eat you out again, though this time you command her to keep her tongue over your clit. You tell her to speed up, no, not that fast, more pressure, less pressure. You come much faster.

When you're finished coming, and push away Copper Swallow's head again, you realize that you're no longer as horny as before. And you're sitting on a park bench, wearing only bunny ears, with your legs spread wide and half a hundred people staring at you.

You don't flip out. You stay in control. You remember you're safe and nothing bad will happen to you.

And really, you just had a very nice time there.

You grin as you look at Copper Swallow's dazed face smeared with your juices. She's looking at you with her gloriously sexy deer-in-headlights expression, probably wondering what happens to her next.

That's... actually... a good question? Your smile falters, before you invoke SED 25 and fix the smile in place.

You've learned over the past few days to notice more what you want. Right now, you're noticing that you'd like to go off and be by yourself to process. Or not even process, just not have anything happen quietly for a short time, before you continue with your quest.

But you can't just dump Copper Swallow here, leave her naked in the park without another word, as you turn to run away. You can't, no matter what the Erogame claims about no negative consequences for anything you do. You really just can't do that. It's inconceivable, unimaginable, and in fact you never thought of it in the first place.

Which leaves you with no idea what to do with her.

Well, you can't possibly do anything wrong, so you ought to just do something.

[ ] Devise a nice way to finish up with Copper Swallow.
[ ] Devise a way to pause interacting with Copper Swallow, but continue after the break.

7.3.5* [EP]: No Reverberations

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (41,150 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 460/460
SUB: 193/510

BOD: 25
LST: 23
SED: 25
FUK: 21
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8784

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Charles Adan
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: On

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 245 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 7333-7398]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Devise a nice way to finish up with Copper Swallow.
No. of Votes: 35

Spoiler: Voters

App E
Andelevion
Aoinfinity
Asquil
AylorAivo
CTCatapult
DarthSquidious
Derpmind
Elitist Oars
farsan
Guile
Homilion
Jaso
Joao
Kappa
ltmauve
Mitale
MrBTXz
OriginalName
P90Techie
PlasticSoldier
Prime 2.0
Prince Chrom
RedKnite
SaccadingFairies
ScrewFate
sharps
Sirrocco
Skelm
Spectral Waltz
Theli
Tulip
wasprider
zachol
Zeushobbit

-[X] Something involving hugs and cuddling and "good girl"s.
No. of Votes: 12

Spoiler: Voters

zachol
Aoinfinity
AylorAivo
DarthSquidious
farsan
Mitale
MrBTXz
SaccadingFairies
Skelm
Spectral Waltz
Tulip
Zeushobbit

[X] Devise a way to pause interacting with Copper Swallow, but continue after the break.
No. of Votes: 9

Spoiler: Voters

napkintooth
Crawkid
january1may
kabs
Lazurman
LonelyWolf
Rathmun
SoulofaGremlin
TheEyes

-[X] Give her to a random person who conveniently happens to be into cuddling, aftercare, comfort, etc.
No. of Votes: 6

Spoiler: Voters

PlasticSoldier
Andelevion
OriginalName
P90Techie
Prime 2.0
Sirrocco

-[X] Lead her off to a quiet alley and tell her that you need a minute to think. Order her to be quiet and not ask questions as you hug her and think.
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

SoulofaGremlin
Crawkid
kabs
TheEyes

-[X] ...if you're being honest with yourself you want to keep her. Make her the first official member of your harem after Charles. He can be your Dom while Copper can be your Sub. It all works out.
No. of Votes: 4

Spoiler: Voters

SoulofaGremlin
Crawkid
DarthSquidious
TheEyes

-[X] Once you've decided, take off your glasses and reveal yourself to her.
No. of Votes: 3

Spoiler: Voters

SoulofaGremlin
Crawkid
TheEyes

-[X] Lead her off to a quiet alley and tell her that you need a minute alone to think, so she's to kneel silently facing the wall, like a household appliance that happens not to be in use just now.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

napkintooth

-[X] Take her back to the sex shop and lock her in one of the video booths in the back. One with a gloryhole. You can come back for her later and give her ten spanks for every BJ she gave while you were gone. Plus ten pussy slaps for every orgasm she had. Make her keep count.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Rathmun

[X]ask the crowd who's house is nearest and cuddle with the good slut
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

monkyyy

Total No. of Voters: 45

From your seated position on the park bench you study Copper Swallow's lust-dazed and lust-glazed face, feeling a twinge of sympathy in your own well-satisfied pussy for how frustrated she must be right now. Someone ought to comfort her, with plenty of hugs and cuddles and compliments. You're still a little ashamed that you don't want it to be you, but... but things will be fine.

You flip the mask back down over Copper Swallow's face, and gather her back into your arms in a sitting position. Then you open up her thighs, spreading her legs and exposing her slick pussy to everyone watching, to maximize her embarrassment. Your pet whines a little when you do that, and you rub her clit to silence her.

"Hey, everyone," you say, raising your voice for the benefit of the remaining watchers. "This slut has been nicely teased, and now she needs some kisses and cuddles."

The men and women and boys and girls and others who are still watching nod at this sensible thing you've said. Some of them turn, preparing to go, since the audience participation is obviously over for the day.

"So who wants to take her home with them and cuddle her?" you say.

Even the woman who rubbed herself off on Swallow's thigh does a double-take when you say it.

Copper Swallow also stiffens up in your arms. You lean your head forward to murmur in her ear. "Don't worry, my little bunnyrabbit, whoever it is will be very good to you," you say softly. She still seems stiff. "Oh, and it's not that I'm tired of you or anything, I still like you, I just need to, uh, to go a place and do a thing." Somehow you feel too ashamed to confess that you need alone time. You're afraid that Copper Swallow will think she was a bad sub and tired you out... no, wait, she wouldn't think that, that would be a negative consequence. But you've already said what you said.

You look back at the crowd, which looks skeptical even after everything. Your Rabbit skill has to be up to 4 by now, so you can get 16 people at a time, and this shouldn't be very-high-ERO either. 20 ERO ought to be more than enough to cover taking a slut back to your house, right? 20 ERO / Lvl 4 = 5 DOM per Rabbiting. "Look," you say reasonably, "she's got to get cuddles from somebody, and when you're done cuddling, you can hurt her more and tease her more and fuck her however you want without letting her come." Rabbit x1, rabbit x2, rabbit

.

A dozen people try to talk at once. "I'll take---" "It's fine if she---" "Send her with---"

Well, that worked too. That worked too well.

Some people seem to now have a competitive spirit in their faces. They're trying to talk over one another, and crowding around closer. But you are safe and nothing bad can happen to you.

Should you auction off Copper Swallow, maybe? For some reason you feel conflicted about the idea of auctioning people off, though you're still about 2/3 in favor---huh, one man is already taking out his credit card and pointing at it significantly. It takes you a second to shout down your inner corruption that demands you take his money and run. If Copper Swallow gets sold for any significant price, it ought to belong to her.

A boy who frankly looks way too young for BDSM is holding himself up and thrusting out his chest like a puffer fish making itself look bigger. He seems to be trying to stare down everyone else who wants Copper Swallow. It's adorable and now you feel bad about him even being here. Though god knows everything you know about young teenage boys suggests that many of them consider themselves ready to have sex... just, not with you, if that's not too awful a thing to think.

Copper Swallow is starting to tense up again in your lap, as the arguing people get closer. There's going to be a negative consequence soon if the Erogame doesn't do something.

"Right, that's enough!"

People stop talking and look at the person who just spoke.

An oldish man with a long whitening beard is striding forwards. He's wearing a floor-length black leather coat with flared shoulders, and a wide-brimmed fedora hat straight out of the 1950s. He seems less familiar than the other people here. Maybe he wandered over while Copper Swallow was eating you out the second time?

"Break it up, everyone," the man says as he walks forwards. He sounds amazingly commanding. You'd need another 10 points in SED to sound that authoritative even if you were talking to somebody like Blake Layton. People look to you hesitantly, as if waiting for you to tell the man off so they can keep fighting, but they're out of luck.

The older man is standing in front of your bench now, giving you a sharp-eyed look. Copper Swallow has tensed up and is trying to close her thighs, but you don't let her. "What are the conditions for taking her?" the older man says.

"Be nice to her and hug her," you say.

He seems to be waiting, but you don't know what else to say.

The man exhales. "I'll be taking her then, if that's fine with her," he says, and turns to address Swallow. "Do you consent to that?" the man says, much more gently than when he addressed you. "If you can't talk, shake or nod your head."

Swallow manages to nod her head.

The older man steps forward and takes the leash out of your hands. He pulls Copper Swallow up from your lap, then shrugs off his long leather coat and puts it around her. He was wearing a tight navy T-shirt underneath that, and there's lean muscle visible on him. You're surprised he manages to look as attractive as he does for being that old.

The crowd is dispersing, people wandering away. Some of the women whose hips looked all fidgety, and some of the men who were bending over at waist level, are leaving in pairs.

"What's your safeword?" he says to Copper Swallow, and then, when Copper Swallow seems too dazed to answer, he turns to you.

"She doesn't have one," you say.

The man's hand tightens on the leash he's holding. "Look at that tree and be quiet," the man says to Copper Swallow. "You don't need to think about anything else right now." He loops the leash around her neck, and turns her to look at one side of the park. Then he walks towards the other side of the park. He gives you a look that demands you follow him right now, and you find yourself doing so.

Yeah, you must not have rabbited him earlier with the rest of the crowd. You push down your nervous sensation, of course an experienced dom would react that way. You can imagine how this situation looks to anybody sane.

When he's on the other side of the park the older man turns, and speaks quietly enough that Copper Swallow probably can't hear. Quietly, but with an edge. "She didn't have a safeword. You played with her in a public park. You gave her away to a stranger. You didn't ask the stranger to show you any identification."

You'd hate to live in a universe where those were poor decisions. "It's fine, nothing bad can possibly happen to her as a result of anything sexy I do," you say. A pulse of pity wells up in you for this poor soul who's spent so many years doing his best in Reality Classic. "And since that includes my giving her to you for the day, you can do anything you want with her, with no safewords. Let go of all your inhibitions and do anything that crosses your mind. Just follow the fucking rabbit."

"You follow a damn rabbit," the man snaps back at you.

By the time your mouth is done gaping open, the man has stepped into your personal space and is giving you a terrifying glare. "Under other circumstances I might try to explain to an inexperienced domina what she is doing wrong, but you have just done so much wrong that I don't know where to start. Do not ever. Ever. Do anything like this ever again. Give up on BDSM. If I see you topping anyone else I will call the police."

You manage not to flinch or step back. It's probably more SED than any native backbone of yours. Part of you is starting to go into a panic about why your skills aren't working, and you twitch your hair where it rests on your shoulders to reassure yourself that your powers haven't vanished as suddenly as they appeared. Maybe you did something wrong the first time? "She doesn't need a safeword and that's true so you believe it. By the power of fluffy bunnies so mote it be!"

If you thought the older man was scary before, you were mistaken. There's a freezing air about him now, a chill that seems physically real and able to cut through your Cute Cold Resistance. "Right," the man says. "I should have known from the hair. Exactly which glamours did you lay on that woman there? When do they wear off, in what order? Because when she realizes what happened to her and that you forced her to enjoy it, hugs are not going to make her all better. Mortals aren't pretty dolls, you immortal idiot!"

You are just going with this flow, that is what you are doing. "I laid one glamour on the girl so that she knew she was safe, as I was keeping her safe," you say in what you hope is the regal tone of an ancient fairy. "She acted as she naturally would, knowing that. I helped her realize her own frustrated desires. Her pleasure and submission were her own. I dealt her no harm, I swear."

The older man gives you a startled look. The coldness about him vanishes like a warm breeze blew it away. "Oh," he says. "I'm sorry, I thought... well, I thought what I obviously thought." He shakes his head. "Lady, we mortals... we don't... this is not how we... I don't know where to start. Hi, I'm Ned. Others of your kind once called me the Serdyrrah, before I got too old for all that and retired permanently. You?"

Slack, you think, to cut down on how long Copper Swallow is waiting through all this gabber. "Others of your kind have called me Yoal-yohuali," you say.

"Sounds Aztec," says the man. "Pardon me, Nahuatl. Family name, or..."

"It's among the most recent of my names," you say. "I have names many times older."

The older man doesn't appear particularly intimidated by this. "Then you don't visit us often, and these lands have changed a hell of a lot since last you walked them. It's obvious from the Playboy outfit that you have the blending-gift, but blending doesn't cover everything. Listen, mortals aren't like immortals. Running into a girl who isn't having enough sex is not an emergency that requires you to---"

"Don't you dare tell me her happiness isn't important. You should know better than that, mortal. This one life is all you have."

The older man looks taken aback. He should be, the way that Cindy Sheen is glaring at him through Yoal-yohuali's eyes. Mortals are unlike you? Higher powers shouldn't help them with their sex lives? Maybe that line would have worked on a millennia-old fairy who didn't know any better, but it doesn't work on you.

Finally the older man sighs. "That woman will need care after this. Since your intentions were good I'll do that for you. Once. Happens again, you owe me a favor."

You raise your eyebrows. "And what are you planning to do with her afterwards?" you say in august tones. You're not handing Copper Swallow over to this guy if he's going to be boring at her.

"I'm old, not dead," the man says, sounding wry. "I'll respect your art and not waste your work. But you need to talk to a guide before you help any other mortals in an artistic and sexy fashion. Contemporary culture has a word for this type of behavior. We call it 'halping.' Did that concept come through?"

You're gonna need ice for that burn. "I shall take your advice under advisement, Ned Serdyrrah," you say haughtily.

The old guy turns to walk back towards Copper Swallow without saying another word.

You follow him, because you're not going to leave Swallow without saying goodbye. A long kiss and tease... or maybe just a short kiss and some whispered reassurances. You really need that quiet time.

Once you've leapt from a bench to a fence to a tree-branch to a roof and moved out of sight from the park, you stop and take a few breaths to calm down, looking around. It's not a glamorous view from this particular angle. What you can see from here is mostly the roofs of other houses, facing you across the gap of an alley that you would need a good running start and some intermediate telephone poles to leap.

That was---weird. Weird and unnerving. Why didn't Fucking Rabbit work on that guy? Was he carrying a four-leafed clover in his pocket, to ward off fairy magic? But your Erogame skill isn't actually a fairy power. It isn't, right?

For a second there you thought your powers had stopped working.

You walk from one rooftop to another. The houses here are spaced close enough that you can step from one rooftop to another, without running, because life is convenient for you that way. Wait, does that house there have a trampoline on the roof? It seems like a not terribly safe place to put a trampoline... oh, you see the real reason. That house is on a street corner. The trampoline is there in case you want to bounce off the trampoline and across the street.

The Erogame does have its reasons most of the time. Maybe all of the time, if you could see reality through its eyes. There's a reason your skill didn't work on Ned, you just have to figure it out.

What exactly did you say to him? You can't remember. You think the rough idea was that nothing sexy you did could result in harm to Copper Swallow, so he was allowed to play with her without a safeword.

Maybe Ned was enough of a BDSM traditionalist that it made no difference to him whether he believed Copper Swallow couldn't be hurt, he just had ingrained that ONE DOES NOT PLAY WITHOUT A SAFEWORD. To the point where he couldn't go along with the Erogame Logic without that being against his nature. Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit doesn't make people act against their natures.

It seems like a good answer for around ten seconds before you wonder why the Erogame would make you run into a dom like that in the first place.

Maybe... maybe the Erogame didn't want to watch over Copper Swallow in detail once she left and wasn't directly in your quest anymore? So instead of staying invulnerable, Copper Swallow was fated to run into somebody who would make sure she had a safeword and was safe for normal reasons. Just because there's no negative consequences doesn't mean there's no reason why there's no negative consequences. You tried to tell Ned he didn't need a safeword, but that wasn't true, so Fucking Rabbit failed.

Why can't Copper Swallow just be protected while she's with Ned, though? The Erogame obviously has enough power to go on twiddling her luck. Does the Erogame just not want to bother? Is it a type of Thing that prefers to be lazy that way? It doesn't match what you've seen so far. "Minimalistic" is not an adjective you would use to describe the Erogame. "Thorough" fits it better.

Maybe something else would go wrong if Copper Swallow didn't have a safeword for the rest of today. Like... Copper Swallow has such a great time, she decides she never needs any safewords at all, for the rest of her life. But why couldn't the Erogame protect Swallow if she decides that, too? What's wrong with her being protected forever so that your quest never has any negative consequences?

Maybe infinite good luck for Swallow would disrupt other eroge plots in the Scooby arc. Or maybe Copper Swallow notices the weird lack of negative consequences in her sex life and starts trying to make things go wrong, but they keep going right anyways, and that makes her feel helpless and manipulated, and that's a negative consequence. So instead Swallow goes home today with a strict traditional dominant who gives her a safeword and tells her sternly to do things the normal way next time.

It could be that. You don't know. What happened down there was bizarre and you don't know why the Erogame made it happen. Why was Ned suddenly a retired version of a grownup version of an ero version of a magical boy, or whatever the heck a Serblyderrierah is?

Rooftops are in fact quite boring when you're not racing through them. The tops of roofs are even duller than the fronts of houses. You hop off a rooftop onto a tree branch, then bounce down to a residential sidewalk where nobody seems to be walking right now.

The houses here seem a touch cleaner, a touch brighter, than in the usual Norville you knew. There's no visibly broken cars on the street.

And in this nice neighborhood, you're wearing only high heels, thigh-high fishnets, bunny ears, 22% of a collared shirt, and a fluffy bunny tail buttplug. But you dressed that way as part of your sexy quest. So that can't have any negative consequences for you. And right now, you want quiet. So there isn't anyone here to bother you.

Erogame events make sense if you can find the right angle to look at them.

You ran into Ned. He's a sensible experienced dom who is also a retired magical boy or something. Why did Copper Swallow need to go home with a sensible experienced dom who was also a retired magical boy?

Maybe... huh. Now that you're thinking about it, from Copper Swallow's perspective, what she saw happen today was more than slightly unusual. You didn't just lead her around on a leash in public. You invited other people to punish her in public, and they did. Maybe the Rabbit skill isn't powerful enough to prevent Swallow from realizing afterwards how odd that is, especially when you didn't provide anything resembling an explanation. Or maybe it would count as a negative consequence if the Rabbit skill had to keep controlling Swallow's mind to prevent her realizing.

So... given your basic decision to lead Copper Swallow around on a leash and invite other people to punish her... Swallow needed aftercare from an experienced dominant retired magical boy who would 1: cuddle her, 2: believe her about what happened, 3: not yell at her for what she did under a glamour, 4: give her an in-story explanation for her supernatural experience so she didn't stay freaked out, and 5: sternly remind her that mortals do need safewords.

Okay, maybe you've got no right to complain here. You did not make it easy for the Erogame to ensure a total lack of negative consequences.

And... and you had a brief weird instant where your skill seemed to not work, which made you end up thinking about all this. That's the key event in Cinderella Sheen's story that prevents negative consequences from happening to her. Today you learned that, while your Erogame skills let you do intense things to new submissives, afterwards the sub might need a very exact type of aftercare. Otherwise you might've learned the wrong lesson, and done something bad later, and that would've been a negative consequence of your quest.

Or all of that is nonsense, and the web of destiny got potentially tangled up in some totally different way that was straightened out by adding Ned to it.

It'd be worth a nice existential freakout if you weren't already numbed. You wonder how your universe looks to the Erogame, if it sees a reality that isn't made up of space or even time, just strings going from plot events to other plot events and sometimes looping back again. "No negative consequences" sounds awesome, and it is awesome, but in the background there logically must be weird shit going on with the strands of destiny to make it work. You hope Lachesis isn't out there somewhere sobbing over her fate-loom, which is folding up through eight dimensions into an origami of an infinitely deep vagina.

At least things no longer seem inexplicable. The Erogame followed through on its promises. You did what you wanted without holding back. You had a lot of fun. And then, exactly the right bizarre shit happened to perfectly cancel out all the reverberations in fate that could otherwise have led to negative consequences.

It all goes to show how totally, completely safe you are while on this quest!

But you still need some quiet time before you continue.

As you stroll past more houses, you let your mind wander back further, over all the things you've done so far. Not even trying to process, just listening to the silence and letting the reactions flow through you. It's what you meant to do with your quiet time before you got distracted.

Fleeting images go past your mind one after another.

Getting fucked while you drove a car. Your very first finger up your ass. Voluntarily putting in the bunny plug that's still intruding in your ass right now, seeming to almost pulse as you walk. Fucking a checkout boy on his own counter. Making an unwise choice of ways to phrase a Rabbiting and then being teased with light touches as you walked around naked in public. Having your pussy rubbed with your arms held behind your back and no permission being asked for it. Being restrained and having your pussy spanked while other people looked at you.

Running into Copper Swallow and forcing her to blow a guy. Kissing Copper Swallow while you lightly teased her pussy. Putting the malfunctioning vibrator into Copper Swallow's ass. Making her suck a man's come out of your pussy. Coming on her face. Teasing her. Coming on her face again. Leading Copper Swallow obscenely worse-than-naked down a public street. Holding Copper Swallow in place while a sadistic lesbian pervert slapped her breasts...

And then after the sadistic lesbian ran away, you kissed Swallow and used your own fingernails on her breasts. She moaned and pressed against you when you did. Of everything that happened, that's the most powerful memory, the pained throb in her voice when she moaned, the way her muscles tensed up and her body pressed harder against you. It was so hot it... it scared you, to be honest. It's like the mirror version of when Charles chained you to the bed the first time.

After that, in the park, you told other people to hurt Swallow. You didn't hurt her yourself. You guess that also mirrors what happened after Charles took your virginity without asking permission. You felt worried about yourself the first time you submitted, too. You've forgotten exactly how many PRV points ago that was.

You look at your fingernails, feeling wistful and sadful. You know where your own character arc is going. You might be able to stay a good sadist who only inflicts pain on masochists who get off on it. But the part where you end up knowing how to use a whip isn't optional. Right now the thought of whips makes you queasy, but that will probably change before very long. Unless there's some deeper story behind the Erogame, and the deeper story changes its mind in time for... no, it's too late for you already. You used your fingernails on Swallow's breasts, she moaned and pressed herself up against you, it was so hot and you wanted so much to shove her face into your pussy right then and there. Taking Wait I'm Not Ready For This probably wouldn't erase the memory, and you don't really want it to.

The Erogame doesn't seem to define that consequence as negative. Go figure.

Part of you seems to already be thinking about how to add Copper Swallow to your harem. Your sane self knows the idea is incredibly premature. You know almost nothing about Erin Penna. You had to think to remember her name. In a sensible universe, Swallow being the first person whose breasts you hurt wouldn't mean she was fated to be yours forever. You will never again live in anything resembling a sensible universe, but still. You ought to get further down Swallow's character route than that before you decide to haremize her. You didn't even get around to calling her over in your Illyria identity.

A thought occurs to you, and you take our your cellphone. You cover the top of the screen with your finger, so you won't have any idea how close you are to 11:53am.

You start typing a text message to the phone number Copper Swallow gave you.

<< Hi Copper Swallow, this is Illyria, the girl you met on the street.
<< I just realized, even before I see you again, you might meet a nice dominant all on your own. So I wanted you to know, it's fine if some other dominant decides to make you come, even if I haven't called you over yet.​

You feel wistful as you press the send button---you would have enjoyed seeing Swallow completely out of her mind with horniness the next time you saw her---but that might not be best for her interactions with Ned today.

Then you stop in the process of putting your cellphone away, thinking again about absent consequences. Maybe you're being too nice at a time when being nice isn't nice at all. If you want to become a lewd woman who wanders freely through eroge, you need to be able to adapt quickly to a variety of plots. In this eroge plot, being careful not to hurt Copper Swallow doesn't help her. Repressing your sadistic desires isn't protecting her in any way. That's probably a point of this tutorial, to help you notice when you're repressing your sexuality in a way that doesn't make any sense under the rules of your current erogame.

You type another message.

<< Though, if some other dominant does make you come, play with yourself lots after that. Without coming of course.
<< That way you'll still be nicely horny if I decide to call you over.​

This is followed by an even more sadistic thought, accompanied by a warmth growing beneath your thighs. It's awful. It's mean. It's hot. It's a terrible idea, you hardly know her.

Is what you're about to do cheating, trying to exploit the Erogame's generosity? But no, this should count as being honestly done in pursuit of your quest. This is something you'd do just because it turned you on, if you knew there were no consequences.

<< And, Copper Swallow, you must always tease yourself to the edge of orgasm at least twice in the evening and twice in the morning. Every day from now on, even after I call you over.
<< You shouldn't ever masturbate all the way to coming. Never again. That's not something a good girl does.
<< If you're having sex with someone, you always have to tell them when you're close to an orgasm, and always give them the chance to frustrate you instead.
<< You have to tell them you're a slut who gets off on being teased, and tell them how long it's been since your last orgasm, and remind them that you're more submissive and eager when you're kept horny.
<< If somebody does go on stimulating you, try as hard as you can not to come. No matter how desperate you are, or how long it's been, hold back as long as you can.
<< Then if they decide to force you to come anyhow, you'll know it's not your fault. You'll know you did everything you could to be a good girl, and they made you have an orgasm anyways.
<< Though you'll still be punished, of course.
<< I know for sure this is what's right for a girl like you, just like I knew you were that type of girl in the first place. You'll be happier if you don't question it, and obey the rules always.
<< XOXO Illyria​

You smile and put your cellphone back away. You don't see any reason that shouldn't always have only positive consequences for Copper Swallow, for the rest of her life.

7.3.6: No Rush

Spoiler: Notes

Work picked up, and at the same time, the next sections were hard to write. Not going to apologize for that, work is work. Last time I checked the sentiment was in favor of my posting things a piece at a time when I was sure they were done, and 7.3.6 seems stable now.

The format for the threadmarks has changed, and old threadmarks have been renumbered.

The Y number in threadmark X.Y.Z now indicates connected sections of story, instead of when things were originally posted. X still denotes the day, like 4 for Wednesday. Companion initials such as [CA] for Charles Adan in a threadmark now indicate where companions appear in the story. The asterisks *, **, or *** indicate lewd chapters and the degree of lewdness, for those who want to find that quickly.

I'm sorry about breaking any old references to section numbers inside the old comments, but it was getting hard even for me to find previous sections of the story, and I imagine it was harder for people who weren't the author.

You walk on for a time, letting yourself finish processing the perversions so far. You're not 100% sure, but you don't think the sun is getting any higher in the sky while you do. Somehow you suspect the Erogame won't enforce a strict time limit while you're willingly descending into corruption. You expect you could keep up this quest for days before 11:53am, so long as things kept getting more depraved and you didn't know how much time had passed.

It's a weird thought, sort of nervous and relaxing at the same time. That you could walk around under this sky for... hours? Probably not weeks, you'd have to sleep at some point. Then again, maybe you'd sleep and wake up and find the sun was still at the same place in the sky. That would be a strange way for your story to end, this one golden happy moment with no consequences stretching out forever... but you wouldn't want that. You wouldn't want to not see Charles again, or Mom again. Even though not having to worry about negative consequences is... nice. More than nice.

It feels like the first time in your life that you've ever gotten through the week and reached Saturday. Like this is the only vacation you've ever had in all your life, so now you're slowly starting to relax and unwind. That's why you've invented yet another worry about how you'll never let this quest end.

After walking a while you see a small convenience store set into one street corner. There's probably someone in there, a store clerk if nobody else... but you don't feel in need of more fucking just yet, so why are they there?

There must be some other reason there's a convenience store approaching. This convenience store must be set into a tangled web of tangled destiny that will only become clear to you after it's too late, all with the sinister purpose of preventing anything bad from---

Oh.

You move closer to the conveniently reflective glass window of the store, swallowing a few times.

You're a cheerleader now.

You look down at your body. Now that you're looking closely, your skin is tighter, smoother, the outlines of your musculature clearer. You didn't even notice when it happened. "Status?"

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (41,150 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 445/460
SUB: 193/510

BOD: 25
LST: 23
SED: 25
FUK: 21
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8784

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Charles Adan
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: On

BOD 25. When---when did you---it wasn't like you marched naked in a parade again? You don't understand. "Busy mode off?"

Ero achievement: Riding a checkout clerk to his orgasm while four people watch you and masturbate, and another man jacks off onto Erin Penna's breasts, earns +700XP.

Riding a man while others watch, nicely dressed in a bunny outfit, causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Oh. Presentation and ornamentation. It's not just about number of viewers. You showed off sexually in a naked bunny outfit, and that---pushed further than you had before. So your BOD went up.

You turn yourself to look at yourself, front and back. It---it still hits you. You want to think that you were already pretty enough before, and you did feel content, but, it still hits you.

This girl in your reflection isn't as pretty as a supermodel or a posed Internet picture. Copper Swallow is prettier than this, her body is... well, you didn't notice any flaws whatsoever when she was naked. Tammi and Danni are too freckled to be as Photoshop-perfect as Copper Swallow, but they're still sexier than you. Their twin bodies are lusher than yours, more inviting, mature and voluptuous. Your reflection in this window shows a girl, not a woman. But it's the first time in your life that you've looked at yourself and thought, "I'd hit that if I was a boy."

It's vain, you know. But you spend some time there looking at yourself, in the window of the conveniently placed convenience store, before moving on.

Spoiler: BOD 25

Eventually, but before any gods get around to turning you into a daffodil, you manage to tear your gaze away from your own reflection.

The next block ahead of you looks as quiet and residential as the places you've already been walking. You walk past kempt lawns with ruly hedges. You pass by an extra-shiny dime somebody dropped on the sidewalk, and absentmindedly pick it up and put it into your absence of pockets. Then you pause and remember you're not poor... but you're not that rich yet either.

You might as well review the rest of your unread messages now. Later you might be, uh, occupied.

A skill has been created by a special action! Taking Copper Swallow outside almost naked, wearing only gloves and thigh-highs to protect her knees and elbows from the concrete, has created the skill Extended Ero Environmental Resistance.

Extended Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 3 (12%). Passive.

At Lvl 3 of this skill, people dressed inappropriately within your presence share 60% of your own Ero Environmental Resistance.

Oh, nice. You suppose there was warm weather today just so you wouldn't worry about Swallow being cold, while you had Busy Mode on and didn't know you had this skill? Well, this way you won't have any concerns the next time you strip off someone's clothing and force them to crawl behind you on a leash.

Ero achievement: You enlightened Marge Wineberg of her true path to sexual fulfillment: being a sadistic lesbian pervert who gets off on torturing and degrading younger girls. This can only end well. +200XP.

Your good deed for the day!

Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit has increased by 1.

Really? But you used the skill so sparingly.

Putting on a display in a public park, wearing only bunny ears and high heels, while an obscenely dressed submissive crawls behind you, causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Carrying out a public sex show with another woman, both of you dressed prettily and obscenely, arching your body as you moan and come, causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Present as a porn star, have your BOD go up! Or maybe it's that when you look more like pornography than you've ever looked before, your BOD goes up. There's an additional 75 points between here and BOD 100, so there should be plenty of frontiers to push.

A video of you has been uploaded to a porn site! See Info // Online Presence.

Um. That's... you're not sure how you feel about that. "Info, online presence?"

Info // Online Presence:

You earn 10XP each time somebody orgasms:

- While looking at a non-retouched picture or video of you.
- While listening and paying attention to your recorded voice.
- While reading an erotic story you wrote that is entirely based on true events.
- While looking at an erotic drawing that you personally drew.
- While watching a hentai for which you provided at least one of script, storyboards, or voice acting.
- While playing a VR game whose models and motions were captured from you.
- While interacting with an AI that was programmed by you or trained on data you generated.
- While playing an eroge whose character routes feature you and your companions.

Only one orgasm per session will be counted. Repeated edging or ruined orgasms may qualify at the Erogame's discretion. Forcing or incentivizing orgasms (e.g. as mandatory supervised daily sessions within a territory you rule) reduces per-orgasm XP gains, but does not eliminate them. Promoting or advertising your online presence carries no penalty.

For details of how you are currently doing online, check Info // Online Presence // My Metrics. Advanced ad-free metrics can be unlocked by paying $5.99/month.

It's always good to see more proof that the all-powerful system that completely controls your life and everything around you is a fucking troll has a sense of humor!

Being put on a porn site is flattering but also... also... you don't know. It feels like being forced into a role you didn't choose. People will be looking at you and thinking about you in a way you don't control, and it's not a good loss of control. It would have been okay if you'd deliberately gone in for a porno film shoot but you didn't. You would have liked a chance to consent to this first.

The accountant part of your soul is trying to guess how much XP you could earn per day by forcing everyone in Switzerland to masturbate to you twice daily. Probably the game is balanced enough that the amount will be significant but not game-breaking, given the XP curve at whatever level makes it possible to conquer and sexually dominate Switzerland.

Ero achievement: Putting on a public sex show with Erin Penna in front of 62 people, and letting 17 people hurt her and come on her, has earned you +5000XP.

Quest unavailable: Old Ned

Ned Stonefield is way too old to help with whatever sexy mess you've gotten yourself into this time. Anyone who wanted the Serdyrrah to come out of retirement would have to offer him renewed youth into the bargain. As for threatening him into a mission, you don't want to know what happened to the last eldritch entity who tried.

Minimum ERO: 40

You cannot begin any other quests until finishing your current quest because quests can have many and varied consequences.

You suppose it would've been too much to ask for eternal blessings over everything that happens on any adventures that involve Ned, just because you met him this morning. But this rule seems fair enough. You'd have to explicitly start Ned's quest later, and the no-consequences rule wouldn't apply past that point.

Oh, hey, do you already have this quest's key? Ero Virus could count as renewing Ned's youth. Is this meant as a more difficult quest that you have an early solution for, thanks to the path you took through ERO 29? You're surprised there's no standard magical way to make people look young and sexy again, but maybe it involves some horrifying magical price that Ned is unwilling to pay. You wonder what Old Ned's expression will look like when you offer him renewed youth via 100% scientific biotechnological treatment.

...Or how Ned's expression will look when, after he's finished helping Yoal-yohuali in exchange for this priceless service, the fairy laughs diabolically and proclaims she's about to reveal the true meaning of his compact with her! And then she reveals that she's giving everyone else on Earth access to the renewed-youth treatment without them needing to pay her. You bet nobody's ever pulled a fairy bargain on him with that twist before!

A skill has been created by a special action! Sending an orgasm-permitting message to Erin Penna that would have been even funnier if she'd received it just before you walked into the adult store, but had ignored the chirp of her cellphone because she was lost in a horny daze looking at chastity belts, only to literally scream in frustration later when she saw the message, has created the skill Comedic Timing.

Comedic Timing: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

Consistent histories permitting, a message you predictably send in the future may arrive in the past if that would be funnier.

(You cannot deliberately exploit this effect for gainful temporal shenanigans before your Time Control reaches Lvl 3.)

You remember when you would have been perturbed by this.

A skill has been created by a special action! Subjecting a victim to long-term orgasm denial has granted you the utility skill Denial Investigation.

Denial Investigation: Lvl 1 (0%). Active. 5 DOM.

You possess an uncanny ability to detect when a victim you are controlling has been a bad naughty cheater. Invoking this skill gives you an additional Lvl*ERO*0.5% probability of correctly determining when a victim has received unauthorized pleasure, with a cap of 90%, when you engage in physical checks or interrogations. If this skill doesn't succeed in detecting a past misdeed, it will not be checked again until another misdeed has been committed, but any DOM spent is spent regardless.

You don't think you'll want to funshare that Denial Investigation skill with Charles. That would be going too far. That genuinely seems like it might make your life unpleasant.

Seems fine to use on Copper Swallow, though? You don't see any reason why that would be unpleasant for you.

You have subjected Erin Penna to long-term erotic torment! You currently receive 150XP per day this torment continues. See Info // Victims // Erin Penna for details.

Uhhhh...

Info // Victims // Erin Penna

Erin Penna / Copper Swallow: Forbidden voluntary orgasm, edged twice in the morning and twice at night, may be subjected to forced orgasm by other lovers. TIPEC: CCAFF => 150XP/day.

Torment: C - Endurable (Your victim's arousal and suffering is constantly on her mind, but does not impede her daily functioning; your victim's torment is enhanced by her youth and freshness heightening her emotions.)
<> After 12 days your victim's torment will decay to D-grade, as she becomes used to her condition, if you do not worsen your victim's suffering before then.

Intimacy: C - Emotional (Your victim knows one of your identities through brief but intense sexual companionship, the most powerful experience in her life to date; she thinks of you often. You know your victim through brief but memorable sexual companionship; you think of her occasionally.)
<> After 5 days your intimacy with your victim will decay to D-grade, if you do not see each other again before then.

Participation: A - Personal (You personally initiated your victim's torment and personally tormented her today for an extended period.)
<> Maintaining A-grade participation requires significant personal effort on a daily basis.

Enforcement: F - Free (Your victim may sometimes give herself an orgasm after continued non-relief, feeling weak and sad that nobody is stopping her, if you do not arrange for better enforcement soon.)
<> Raising Enforcement to "Monitored" or above will significantly increase earned XP.

Consent: F - Enthusiastic (Your victim has accepted her torment willingly, incentivized by only her own sexual excitement. She tries to pretend she has to obey, but she knows that in reality the choice is her own. This stark willingness is not softened by mind control, trickery, force of personality, or other mitigating circumstances.)
<> Raising Consent to "Dubious" or above will significantly increase earned XP.

You'll have to do something about that Enforcement issue... is what you'd like to think. But honestly, this information section is squicking you out some. Being an eroge villain is one thing, you definitely want to be evil sometimes, but you don't know about this business of having victims. You'd rather think of yourself and Copper Swallow as being, uh... friends with penalties?

UI preference changed: Info // Victims has been renamed to Info // Friends With Penalties.

Much better.

With all the notifications exhausted, you murmur "Busy Mode On." And then dawdle a little longer on the deserted streets, as the Sun doesn't get any higher, thinking scattered thoughts.

Spoiler: Scattered thoughts

ERO 40 doesn't seem so far away anymore, and that seems to be when blatant magic enters the world.___ __ __ The Erogame is already bridging between wherever you are and wherever the ERO-40 world is, even if it's just meeting somebody like Ned, and not seeing him, uh, shoot lightning from his eyes. That's all you were thinking about just then, lightning coming out of Ned's eyes. Stupid PRV 28.___ ___ You're sure this has all types of shocking existential implications and you're equally sure you won't figure them out.__ __ There's probably no use being frightened. It's where the Erogame is going sooner or later. Even if there's another Cindy at the end of your infinitely deep vagina, she's still running things and you're still not.___ Maybe the only part you really control is whether you enjoy it.___ ___ ___ ___ You let yourself go some, earlier, and you had fun. But it doesn't seem like you Let Go as dramatically as Queen Elsa climbing up her snowy mountainside? Maybe that's expecting too much from your brain.__ __ Letting Go might not work for real people the way it does for fictional characters. Or Elsa was still having all sorts of inner qualms and brain-protests, even if she didn't sing about them while building her castle.___ Would it help if you literally did Elsa's thing, burst into a song about how nice sex is while walking through the streets? Part of you seems weirdly attracted to the idea of suddenly bursting into song like you're in a musical, but you'd have to compose a whole song first and that seems like too much work.___ ___ __If you're supposed to be wandering through this timeless moment in search of an epiphany about yourself and ero, maybe you're not searching for it right. ___ ___ You've Let Go some already, you can still Let Go more. You should relax about this and forgive yourself, nothing terrible will happen.__ ___ You're not sure how much you need to Let Go in order to draw Charles into the World of Eroge with you.___ The obvious approach is going about as far as you can, without feeling like you're going too far, and then stopping. You're sure you'll think of additional forms of sexual misbehavior to misbehave.___ __ Or at least, you're dead certain that if you stopped the quest now, you would immediately think of more sexy things you wished you'd done first.__ ____ ____ Your brain is still hesitant to list what those sexy things are.____ ____ Probably because the obvious thought is that this would be a great time to practice being an eroge villain.___ By... by raping somebody, is the obvious thought. Uh, raping somebody more seriously than you and Swallow raped that boy you met on the street. But you don't think you're ready for that, even with a guarantee of no negative consequences for anyone. You're not sure you want to be ready for that. Not unless there's special circumstances involved, like serving tickle justice on Danni.___ ___ ____ ___ There has to be something you want to do sexually while protected from consequences---more so than usual, you mean---besides the fear of raping somebody else that seems to be dominating your thoughts. ___ __ You feel like the need in you to go completely wild hasn't been satiated. Fed, but not satiated. But you don't know what works if receiving oral sex in a park doesn't work.___ You have a sense that you need to be swept away, pulled down in an undertow, used and passed around... you guess you could just keep trying.___ __ Or you could just ask the Erogame to take care of making sure you get your itch scratched. No doubt it knows what you need.___ ____ ___ ___ Is being lewd and perverted the same thing as visiting the worlds of eroge once without holding back? ___ __ Should you be trying now to have your deep self-insights about why you played eroge for six months when you were sixteen, while the insight won't raise your ERO? That seems like cheating and you don't want the Erogame to think you cheat when it offers nice things.___ Though you might need to understand that for what you're trying to do with Charles. You don't know.___ ___ __ ___ Are you afraid you'll be scared of anything else, the way you were afraid of being nervous your first time driving? Public speaking, maybe? But trying to overcome that fear in an ero context sounds like a terrible idea, so never mind.___ __ Or what about other places where you don't want to have the negative consequence of having less money? ___ That definitely feels like getting greedy and cheating, but it could be that the Erogame doesn't care that much, or that it'll indulge you during your special time. __ ___ Especially if you do something lewd to go along with it, like selling your body to somebody or getting fucked in public...

After walking a few more blocks you're starting to feel bored with quiet streets. But you're afraid to stop pausing because you know that as soon as you unpause you'll wish you'd taken longer... no. You're safe if you unpause. You won't find yourself in need of more thinking time and unable to pause again, that would be a negative consequence.

You're starting to get your ERO groove back. Some of your scattered thoughts were about what else you could do in your no-consequences time. None of the thoughts felt really worthy of the quest, but they still, uh, aroused you... that isn't the right word. It's more that they put you in a mood to be aroused again.

You turn left at the next street corner and what-do-you-know there's people there to look at you.

7.3.7: No Surprises

People stare at you, yes they do, as you walk through the busier and more businessy part of Norville. A boy you recognize from high school stares at you and almost crashes his bicycle into a trashcan. It feels good until you remember that he isn't seeing Cindy Sheen the ugly girl turned into a swan, he's just seeing a naked bunnygirl cheerleader he doesn't recognize at all. That seems sad somehow. Well, you'd left behind all but the faintest visible connection to your mortal flesh even before today.

Wow. There really is a saddy sad mcsadface part of you that insists on never having fun even in the face of the Erogame.

You fix a smile on your face and keep swaying your hips over towards the jewelry store you remember being on Main Street. You don't know if the Erogame will let you get away with "having less money would be a negative consequence" again. You did realize, after you thought about it, that it definitely shouldn't punish you for trying. Either there'll be a rich guy there who's always had a fantasy about fucking a girl in public, or not.

Getting sparkly things isn't the sexiest fantasy you have, or the fantasy that's hardest to do without divine protection. But it's the idea that happened to cross your mind at the point when you wanted to stop walking and do something. Let's face it, you're just not that well-organized inside. Your brain is sure there's something else you should be doing instead, but since your brain refuses to say what, fuck your brain.

You push a door open and step into the jewelry store.

Uh... wow. The interior of this store is swanky. (Is that a word? You think that's a word.) Some of the sparkly things behind solid, barred glass cases have very big sparkles.

Behind the sales counter is an extremely grownup adult woman perfectly dressed in Hyperglamour Business Powerlook, a style you couldn't begin to imitate yourself. You're going to look that good in time, but right now just looking at her is making you feel small. You're glad your hair is infinitely better than hers or you might not be able to meet her eyes at all.

There's two other customers in the store... no, one other customer plus her submissive. The business-suited man of the pair is wearing a golden collar-choker around his neck, and somehow managing to make himself look smaller than his mistress despite being six inches taller. He turned to watch you as soon as you came in, like it's his job to protect the woman next to him from vagrant naked girls off the street.

As for the mistress, she obviously doesn't live in Norville. She doesn't live in Bakersfield either. Something about her practically screams that she's very, very rich and not in a gentle soft way. Whatshisname Berberg could look commanding in pajamas when he wanted to, and the aura around this woman is sharper and scarier than his. At SED 25 levels of perceptiveness, you're picking up a sense that there's something more New York about her than Los Angeles, though she's wearing a gown under a jacket rather than business-wear.

In her hands the New Yorkish woman is turning over a gem-studded... uh that is a cock-lock-device, isn't it. You don't know the word. It's obviously meant to fit over a penis. It has sharp and faceted gems on the inside that look very unpleasant for the man if he starts to get hard, though not to the point of injury. It's more sadism than you're comfortable looking at, you may be PRV 28 but you're not at all used to being PRV 28.

That woman looks up at you. Once. Then she goes back to studying her sadistically ensparkled cockhurter.

You aren't going to ask if she has a sex in public fantasy, no you are not. No way are you trying to seduce this person. You're not touching this person. You feel like you're in the presence of your grade-school principal squared and quadrupled. It's a reflex of pure not-sexy submission, the sense that you are in the presence of an extreme alpha female who could destroy you just by glancing in your direction. Maybe there's a type of sub who would enjoy being with this type of dom, but that type of sub is not you.

"Can I help you?" says Miss Hyperglamour Powerlook from behind the jewelry counter. She's using the polite tone of... of somebody who is not actually certain whether she should call security to throw the naked bunnygirl out of the shop, because the naked bunnygirl's hair looks like it cost twenty-eight hundred dollars.

A car didn't crash a dozen times while you were sexy-driving it. Copper Swallow coincidentally ran into a kindly old ex-magical-boy to give her aftercare. It doesn't matter how nice this store is, or how inappropriately dressed you are, or who's standing nearby and might look at you again. You. Are. Safe.

Your real-Cindy persona still feels too intimidated to talk, but she's not the only person you are anymore.

You take a deep breath, trying to do so in a way that doesn't make it obvious you're taking a deep breath, and fix a mysterious smile on your face. "It's possible you could help me," you say to Miss Hyperglamour Powerlook. "It's not what I'm used to, but your goods seem well wrought." Wait, is "wrought" a word? Well, if it wasn't a word before, it is now.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry if I'm being impolite," says the woman behind the counter. "But would you mind reassuring me that you have the means to patronize this store?"

"I'm not one to take and give nothing in return," says your Yoal-yohuali persona and now you have no idea how you're going to back that up... it's fine. Nothing bad will happen.

The Alpha-of-Alphas Threat is looking at you with interest now. The male submissive following her was already watching you warily, but now he seems even warier.

"I think," says the Threat, "that she's asking if you have conventional money to exchange for goods and services."

Yoal-yohuali turns her head to look straight at the Threat, because that is what Yoal-yohuali would do. Yoal-yohuali almost replies no-but-you've-got-money. But you're---you're not ready to offer to trade favors with this person. Since Yoal-yohuali has to respond somehow, you raise your eyebrows instead.

"Your hair is astonishingly beautiful," says the Threat.

"Thank you," you say. "I conceptualized it myself." Is that a word? You hope you're not reality-warping the English language every time you try to sound intelligent. But the act of turning your hair into a concept logically ought to be called "conceptualizing" it, right?

"I imagine that if I asked if I could meet your hair artist..." the Threat says, and trails off significantly.

Does she know you're a fairy? Or that you're being a fairy, rather, you aren't actually a fairy. "I imagine you wouldn't ask that," you return back. "You seem like the type to know better."

Miss Hyperglamour Powerlook is watching this in puzzlement, but seems more relaxed now that you seem confusing but interacting-with-rich-people instead of just being a weird naked vagrant.

The male submissive has sweat on his forehead, the way he would if you were carrying around a machine gun but not pointing it at anyone, yet.

Yeah, he knows.

"I don't mean to presume," says the Threat. "But you have the appearance of somebody who's new in... this area."

You don't know where this is going. "I've been around this area before, not that long ago," you say. "I was given the name Yoal-yohuali."

"Aztec," she says.

"Nahuatl," you reply. You think that's what Ned called it, though you don't have the slightest idea of what that is.

She seems to take it in stride. "Again, I don't mean to presume, and I'm not speaking from my own knowledge. However, your family has a certain reputation as regards trading favors. In some stories I've heard, they've been known to take answering someone's question as a favor in itself." This too is phrased as a flat statement and definitely not a question.

You don't want people talking in circles around you every time you're posing as a fairy. Come to think, Old Ned didn't act that way around you either. "Well, that story's not true of me or my own close relatives," you say. You can't recall Mom or Dad doing it to you. "It definitely doesn't count as a proper bargain."

"So," the Threat says, "you're saying that if I mentioned being curious as to what brings you here, you wouldn't take that as my requesting the favor of an answer."

You want to say reassuringly that you're not here to be an asshole to mortals. But you're worried about what the SuperAlpha Female might do to you if she wasn't being careful around the fairy... no. You're safe. You're safe.

"My reasons are my own, but I didn't come here to be a... I believe in your terms you would say jerkface," you say. "Old Ned would not take it well if I behaved like that in his town."

"I don't know an Old Ned," she says. Still not putting it in the form of a question.

You shrug. "He used to be the Serdyrrah, but I doubt that word means anything to you, and anyways he's retired. But he's part of your family, not mine, and very protective of his relatives."

Miss Hyperglamour Powerlook is listening to this with the fascinated expression of somebody who thinks you're discussing Mafia families and is curious why in God's own hell one of the Mafia heiresses is wearing a naked bunny outfit, but doesn't dare ask.

"It's good to have protective relatives," says the Alpha Female. She looks like she has something to say but can't figure out how to phrase it in a fairy-safe way.

Nothing bad will happen, nothing bad will happen, nothing bad will happen. "You have a favor you want to ask from me, but you've heard unpleasant stories about trading with my family members," you say. Oh, great, now you're doing the statements-not-questions thing. "Well, you can talk about it normally and I won't be a jerkface about it. Promise."

Urgent notification. Even during this quest, it is absolutely impossible for the Erogame to protect you from the negative consequences of breaking an oath.

(Don't worry! Keeping that oath won't be hard. Otherwise you would have received an urgent notification earlier.)

You hope there isn't sudden sweat visible on your own forehead, or the rest of your exposed body.

"I hope I'm not offending if I say that you don't act like stories about your family led me to expect," says the Alpha Female.

"Well, this is how a lot of people my age act," you say with all the solemnity that somebody your age can show. "I could put on a show for you and make my hair start glowing but what would be the point? I'm still young compared to all the people who are older than I am."

"Would you call me a fool if I said I envied that?"

"Not at all," you say sincerely. "Is that the favor you want to ask about?"

The Alpha Female rapidly shakes her head, in the manner of somebody who thinks that restoring her youth will involve horrific twisted rituals that forever unmake her ability to love, as opposed to spending 24 hours in a tub of ice water drinking sports drinks and throwing up.

"Well?" you say in Yoal-yohuali's tones. "What is it then? Whatever it is, it needs to be brief, I can't start any long projects right now."

"There's a... man. A certain man. I'm not asking you to, ah, force him, not in any way. But if there were some way to know whether he'd be good for me, or if we'd be fated to work out well..." she hesitates. "I'm not sure how to say this. It's extremely difficult for someone in my position to guess whether a serious relationship will work out. My family---my immediate family, I mean---will tell me it's a terrible idea. And while I think he's sexually attracted to me, I don't know if he feels... that way about me. The way I feel about him. I don't know how I could ask him in a way that would end up with me trusting his answer. Is there something you can do about any of that? Something sensible? Without reducing me to poverty, or me ending up in some other cautionary tale about your family?"

You almost open your mouth to tell her benevolently that she'll be fine, and then you hesitate. Would that count as an oath? That was a hell of a scary notification you got there. "Well, I'm reluctant to make promises in that area," you say. "Free will being what it is, and promises being serious business." A thought occurs to you. "But without making any promises, I expect things will work out well if you call him up on the phone and talk to him, right now while you're still standing next to me. It's extremely likely that nothing bad will happen if you do. Except that, if you break an oath, that also breaks any rules about bad things not happening. I am warning you about that well in advance so it does not suddenly come up as a surprise."

The Alpha Female takes this in, appearing hesitant. Her hands are fidgeting and caressing the jeweled cocklock she seems to have forgotten she's holding. It's rather obscene.

You glance at the submissive at her side, wondering how he feels about whoever she wants to add to her harem. You didn't mean to netorare him.

The submissive is still watching your every move, and he flinches when he meets your eyes. He looks like he's nerving himself to throw himself in your way if you go after his mistress, but he'd expect to get fried by Sith lightning and then you'd kill her anyways. He doesn't expect you to do it, but he knows you could (or thinks he knows). He's terrified about his mistress making bargains with strange fairies, and terrified even more of speaking out of place and messing up her bargaining. Okay, you don't know if SED 25 can tell you that much or if you're just guessing, but you do get the sense this experience isn't pleasant for him at all. And now your scumbag brain is starting to worry about whether that's a negative consequence for somebody, and maybe you did abuse this quest too much by trying to grab sparkly things.

"And---and all I owe you in return is a normal amount of jewelry that you honestly want to wear within a single outfit, that can be bought here and now at an ordinary price," says the Alpha Female. "That's all I owe you. It's a normal trade, the way things might work in my own family within a friendly business relationship, with no unpleasant surprises for either of us."

You nod. "I wouldn't mind some fashion advice on it either, being new in the area and all," you say. The back of your mind starts wailing about whether you could've also asked for ten million dollars, and you yell back at it to shut up because you are sure that would constitute being greedy.

"Are you certain this will work?" says the Alpha Female.

"I'm not promising as an oath that this will work," you say. "But if things work the way my... mentor, seemed to say they'd work, it's impossible that bad things will happen to you because of something you did this morning following my suggestions. Like, if you call the man and he says yes, he means that, and if he says no, it won't break your friendship. Or if it does break, it was a friendship that was fated to cause a disaster if you stayed friends. Though I wouldn't ask you to gift me any ornaments if it turned out like that."

"Deal," she says in a choked voice. She turns to the submissive at her side. "Will you marry me?"

You walk out of the jewelry store wearing sparkly things.

7.3.8: No Purse

Spoiler: Author's note

I'm struggling a lot with 7.3.12. I'm sorry about all the sections that aren't focusing on the main things voted on in the quest-direction vote. That's me trying to make the story get to 7.3.12 (which was voted on). Today I'm posting 7.3.8 & 7.3.9, which seem to have stabilized.

A block or two later, you realize that you don't like the way people look at you when you're wearing sparkly things.

A girl walking around in a naked bunny suit that exposes her breasts and pussy is weird, but she's dressed like she's a sexual being who meant for others to look at her. The jewelry you're wearing now makes you look like... like a Mafia heiress with excellent fashion sense whose clothes were teleported off her.

Or it makes you look like a being of Faerie, which could explain the guy who ran away when you tried to smile at him.

You stop at the next glass window you pass, and look at yourself again in it.

Spoiler: Jewelry

You should've seen coming that you'd gain additional BOD points from ornamenting yourself this way. You stood in front of the store mirror wearing Yoal-yohuali's mysterious smile, and watched yourself get even prettier every time they put something on you that looked even nicer. You wanted to whine for them to stop, you didn't need to look any prettier. You didn't whine it out loud because it would've been too embarrassing and out-of-character and maybe ungrateful to the Erogame. You wouldn't have gotten the sparkly things if you'd told them to stop. It would've been silly, you have to get to BOD 100 eventually if you want the True Immortality skill.

It's still disorienting. You're not just a cheerleader now, you're the cheerleader. The one who sexually dominates the other cheerleaders, and yields herself to the starting quarterback in exchange for the football team serving as her goon squad. Or at least, that is how eroge have led you to believe the world works, which makes it the best guess for what reality is like now.

You can look in your reflection and easily recognize the less pretty cheerleader you saw a short timey-wimey time ago. You can recognize the person you were yesterday, and very very faintly the Cindy from last Saturday. But you don't want any more BOD increases for a while. You don't need to be as pretty as Copper Swallow for Charles to want you, his standards shouldn't be that high yet.

Wearing this much jewelry while walking around in public is also... you had to keep reminding yourself, over and over again, that you were safe from bad consequences and that ought to include being mugged. Until you get around to higher-tier quests like A Fold In The Wolf, you're pretty sure this jewelry is worth more than your bank account. Maybe more than your Mom's house.

It's good that you don't know how much the sparkly things are worth exactly. And that you feel like reselling them, instead of wearing them, would be an implicit violation of your fairy compact with the Alpha Woman. And that you already knew quests like A Fold In The Wolf are a thing. It feels like you're wearing sparkly costume props and not---not---you're trying not to think about it. If you think about it you'll run home to hide the sparkly things, and the plot might require them later.

The next time you pass an isolated-looking nook between two buildings, you step into it and start trying to put your new jewelry Away. Although not the ruby-and-opal crescent earrings you're wearing, those are really nice and they match your hair. Nobody else needs to know the earrings aren't costume jewelry. Incidentally your ears and belly button and some other parts all turned out to already be pierced when the saleswoman tried adding jewelry there. Thinking about this logically, this means your body opens a hole anywhere that someone wants to put a sparkly thing in it. You are not currently imagining what happens if some entity with a poor grasp of human anatomy tries to give you a through-the-skull piercing using a jeweled crowbar.

The belly-button sparkle goes Away easy enough. The obscene belt that drapes non-concealing thin chains over just the upper half of your pussy... doesn't want to go Away at first, but it fits in nowhere once you fold it up. The choker with the big sparkle doesn't seem to fit in Away at all, which probably means your bracelets and anklets won't fit either.

"Info, skills, No Purse No Pockets," you say. What are the current rules again?

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 5 (8%). Active. 1 D|S / use.

Carrying a purse doesn't always look as sexy as possible, nor do clothes with pockets. This shouldn't prevent a female eroge character from appearing on screen with her phone in her hand whenever the plot requires it. At Lvl 5 this skill enables you to carry only your phone, keys, wallet, folded papers, jewelry, or similarly sized objects; and only after you have put them away somewhere without thinking about it too hard. You cannot use this skill while completely naked, or when you are restrained in a way that would ordinarily prevent you from accessing your pockets. Body searches will still find items carried in this way.

You pout at the game text once you finish reading. All this stuff is "jewelry" and therefore logically should fit into the pockets you don't have! Though, fine, you can see how that's pushing it.

Miss Hyperglamour gave you an unmarked white paper shopping bag to hold your old bunny outfit. The jewelry would fit in there. But... maybe you're getting spoiled, but, you don't feel like carrying around a shopping bag through the rest of your timey-wimey sexual adventures. Though there's also something to be said for people molesting you while your hands are busy holding onto things, making you helpless to protect yourself okay thank you PRV 28 let's move on now.

Maybe you could just practice the Purseless Unpocketed skill some more? That's one of the stereotypical things people do when time is stretching for them, right, they grind their skills up to ridiculous levels. You should have enough Energy for that. "Status?"

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (41,150 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 445/460
SUB: 193/510 (193/560)

BOD: 28
LST: 23
SED: 25
FUK: 21
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8784

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Charles Adan
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted
Equipment: High heels (Tier 3), Ashikoki anklets, Many-metaled choker, Darkfire earrings, Weirdly interlocking silvery bracelets

Busy Mode: On

You frown at the pink-violet text. Yeah, you've got enough DOM now to move things in and out of any space you want to penetrate. But you feel reluctant to spend all that DOM. Dominant Energy is harder to gain than Submissive Energy, which you tend to accumulate even when you're not trying. (Stop laughing, imaginary Player.) But you don't have all that much SUB either... wait, why is your SUB (193/560) in parentheses oh OH! Eeeeeeeeeeee!

The realization hits you even before you read to the bottom of the status screen. You should have seen this coming---what else would happen when a gamer puts on high-priced items from a shop? You bounce on your heels in excitement. "Info, equipment!"

Info // Equipment

Equipped: High heels (Tier 3), Ashikoki anklets, Many-metaled choker, Darkfire earrings, Weirdly interlocking silvery bracelets

All items: Sort by: Price (low to high) Plot Relevance (high to low)

<> High heels (Tier 3). This crimson footgear was manufactured with a high level of professional craft to complement a variety of other outfits, and to be quietly dangerous in both appearance and price.

<> Simple diamond navel stone. Produced by the apprentice jeweler Miss Oldman, this piece complements other jewelry without being a statement on its own. The needlessly large diamond that forms its centerpiece is its sole claim to unaffordability... Increases by 25% the effect of the least expensive other piece of jewelry you are wearing.

<> Ashikoki anklets. Simple golden bracelets whose job is to call attention to your feet, not distract from them. Master Cross's proprietary blend of rare-element additives and other special treatments makes these bracelets exceptionally resilient to mischief, even at the purity level of 22ct gold. And also, of course, exceptionally pricey... +2 to SED and FUK respectively when you are offering or administering a footjob.

<> Glittering circlet. A braid of white metal whose outward-facing white-diamond surfaces appear to sparkle from many possible directions of illumination. Master Cross has cunningly wrought links of bendable alloy so that this circlet can hug your brow as solidly as a sweatband, diminishing the chance of you losing this very expensive item... +2 to hypnosis-related skills for so long as the subject has their eyes open and can see your forehead and the glittering, tiny spots of light winking in and out, reminding them of how interested they are in your glittering circlet which is so very pretty on your forehead, the sparkles of light distracting them from the sound of your voice which sinks into their ears as they go on staring at the glittering circlet on your forehead.

<> Fragile breast-net. A wide fishnet of silver alloy, set with fractional carats of corundum, this piece could only belong in the bedroom. The thin strands proceeding from the hand of Mistress Maislin convey fragility and vulnerability, as though of a defenseless harem slave. Though only a rich sheikh indeed could afford to tear this netting away... If you wear this item while having sex with someone whose net worth turns out to be sufficiently high, they will destroy it deliberately and then compensate you with 100x this item's purchase price. However, this item has a 5% chance of being destroyed in any other sexual encounter.

<> Jeweled pussy curtain. A veil of thin jeweled strings that fails to obscure the top half of your pussy and does nothing at all to conceal the bottom half, this work of Miss Oldman has little subtlety to it, but enough carats of gemstone to be expensive anyway... Doubles the potency and/or duration of any effect that targets your genitalia.

<> 9-colored lotus clip. A hair-ornamenting flower of 9 translucent petals, each petal of a different color and made of black metal veins piecing together thin planes of gemstone, this item was handcrafted by Mistress Maislin with the wistful knowledge that such a fragile thing could not last forever despite its price... This item can be sacrificed to boost your LVL by 3 for 3 days (stat points or perk points gained from this boost are temporary, but quests begun will remain in force); to provide a 3-week boost of 3 levels in each of 3 game skills; or to add 9 mana of any one color to your mana pool.

<> Many-metaled choker. Interlocked links of copper-plated steel, gold-plated steel, and platinum-plated steel set with a massive diamond, this creation of Master Cross is resilient without being inexpensive... +50 to maximum SUB while equipped. This item has a 30% chance of being destroyed to stop a decapitating strike.

<> Darkfire earrings. A swirl of synthetic ruby and opal wouldn't be nearly expensive enough for a creation of Master Cross. This might explain the unstable isotopes incorporated into the design, despite there being vastly easier ways to make earrings that glow faintly in the dark. It's not impossible that Master Cross has heard rumors about the other uses to which such earrings could be put... The ambient energy available to you never drops below Very Low, even if you are in an area that would otherwise qualify as an energy void.

<> Weirdly interlocking silvery bracelets. A matched array of silvery circles for both wrists, interlocking in a fashion that some might call Escherian or even Lovecraftian. The store's proprietress bought these from a pawnshop when the intricacy caught her eye, polished them, and marked them up by 2000%. Though their true value is rather different... The effect of this jewelry does not manifest within regions of low spatial curvature.

It's possible that ultra-expensive jeweler stocks some items that are overleveled for your present character.

You nervously touch the pretty pretty earrings still on your ears, then force your hand back down. Right, you'll just pretend you didn't read that, then. That won't have any negative consequences. Besides, maybe you'll turn out to need these earrings---who knows when you might end up in an energy void? Not you, that's for sure. You have absolutely no idea when you might end up in an energy void.

The silvery bracelets, on the other hand, seem to have already been removed from your wrists and dropped firmly into the white paper bag.

Now what were you thinking about before you got distracted?

Right, that you don't want to lug around a shopping bag through timey-wimey time.

So you could spend your currently-ample but hard-to-replace DOM on grinding up the Pocketless skill. Or you could spend SUB, and risk getting low on what is, for some unknown reason, the only form of payment accepted by your hair.

Or... or, the thought occurs to you, you could...

You're definitely not used to PRV 28. Though, uh, it's not, uh, terrible. Just... unfamiliar. You're not used to perceiving so many ways you could have fun, how about if you put it that way.

7.3.9*: No Ideas

Having once more screwed up your courage to do something lewd, you boldly step out of the nook between buildings where you were hiding. Imagining it turned you on, so you should do it. You need to get used to that rule.

Conveniently on the street beyond, wearing a shirt with half-sleeves, is a man that you would have thought of as "beefcake" before half the men on the street started looking like that.

"Hey," you say to him, and he turns to look at your almost-entirely-nude form with rapidly developing interest. There's a quiver in your belly.... and that means you're doing the right thing. "There's a, uh, I want to practice doing something. Uh, do you want to step behind this building with me and do anything you want to me while I practice?"

Mr. Beefcake gives you a wary look. It's obvious that he wants you. It's just as obvious that he isn't sure what you mean and this thing that is happening to him makes no sense.

"It's so that I can break even on gaining Submissive Energy while I use SUB to practice the No Purse No Pockets skill," you try, in case the Erogame translates that into something that sounds reasonable.

He continues to stare at you with a wary expression. He has not been dewaryfied.

"I mean, all you have to do is fondle me or grope me while I'm holding on to a shopping bag and can't stop you. Or you could also... do anything else you want to me, while my hands are busy moving things in or out of..." You sigh. Why are you trying to do this the hard way. "It's impossible for anything bad to happen to you if you follow me behind this building and molest me for a while, the rabbits told me so."

A very short time later you're standing behind a building and thinking about how this really was a terrible idea, while some fucking pervert runs his tongue all over your exposed body. You didn't say he could use his tongue! It's distracting and whenever you flinch he stops at the sensitive spot and licks you! And he's not touching your clit at all!

In and out, in and out, over and over again, you take your Meganekko glasses in and out of hammerspace. You try not to think about what's simultaneously happening to the back of your left knee. You're starting to regret having knees.

(Time passes.)

You take your glasses out of hammerspace again, trying not to moan where that fucking pervert can hear you. You must have done this more than a hundred times by now! Maybe two hundred! Why hasn't the skill... gone up... already...

Oh.

Ha ha.

Silly you.

Busy Mode is still on. You left it on. You aren't seeing notifications right now, such as, for example, notifications about skill increases.

Sometimes you can almost hear your imaginary Player laughing.

You reach over to your paper bag from where you're lying on rough concrete. A pervert's firm hands on your hips ensure that a tongue goes on licking wetly at the space just between your pussy and your ass, never going any higher.

The bracelets in the bag go Away now.

"Hey," you say out loud, a certain nervousness in your voice. You should've specified more carefully that Rabbit only tell the man he'd be safe while you still wanted to practice. If you weren't careful, this man might know the truth that he can go on doing whatever he wants to you, without anything bad happening. "I'm---I'm done practicing, as it turns out..."

The tongue stops licking, and the beefcake-man stands up from where you're still lying on the concrete with your thighs spread. He smiles down at you with a dark look in his eyes that would almost do credit to Charles in a predatory mood.

"Are you---are you going to fuck me now?" you say, trying to keep the frightened quaver out of your voice.

The man shakes his head.

"What?! Why the hell not?"

"Got other places to get pussy," he says, the first words he's spoken. "But the look on your face, I'll never forget."

Some time after a certain horrible failure of a male mammal has walked away, you manage to stand up. Fluid Unformed removes the most visible evidence of your latest traumatic experience, though this process doesn't take care of what is no doubt a very sexy and adorable sad pout on your face.

Why, why must an innocent slut like you be fated to run into so many abnormal perverts? Where does the Erogame even find them?---you'd rather the Erogame not answer that if the knowledge would drive you mad.

And why didn't that awful experience count as a negative consequence? Does the Erogame think you like that type of thing happening to you? It had better not answer that one either.

"Info, Skills, No Pants No Panties," you say. "I mean---"

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 7 (21%). Passive.

You can carry as much material as if you had a medium-small purse and ordinary pockets, despite not having any purse or pockets. You cannot use your absence of pockets while absolutely naked, nor use your absence of a purse under circumstances that would prevent you from carrying or accessing a purse. Heavy or dangerous items are no easier or safer to carry in this way. Body searches will still find items you have inside the pockets you don't have, and X-ray scanners will still detect contraband if you need to put your absence of a purse through a security conveyor. In general, this skill behaves as a plot hole rather than an in-story supernatural capability---your artist has simply neglected to draw you carrying a purse.

Well, look at that, the skill no longer requires energy and you can carry anything that you could in ordinary clothes. Which completely removes any reason for you to ever wear real clothes! Isn't the Erogame nice to you?

The remaining large items of jewelry in your paper shopping bag go Away readily, leaving you looking at the last item inside. You haven't tried that item on, at all, which is one possible reason why it wasn't listed under Equipment. You told the Alpha Female you felt like you should have that piece, even though you didn't want to wear it right now, and she nicely agreed to buy it for you even though it wasn't covered by your agreement. It didn't look too expensive, she said. Then the item turned out to not be in the computer system, so Hyperglamour Powerlook said she'd throw it in as a special thank-you for buying so much.

It's a silvery tiara set with many irregular blue gems, like spherical sapphires before something broke them. Seeing it reminded you of something, something you've seen recently. You can't remember what.

The blatant plot item also goes Away, though you have a feeling that it didn't go to the same hammerspace as everything else.

You put the bunny ears and fishnet thigh-highs back on, once again announcing to the world that you're a type of thing that's meant to be looked at. The bunny tail goes Away, because you still feel too embarrassed to put in a butt plug by yourself. You should've asked the pervert but you forgot.

You fold up the heavy white paper bag so it'll fit inside the purse you're not carrying, since there isn't a garbage can nearby.

You walk back out onto the sidewalk, and start walking again while swaying your hips and smiling at people.

A minute later, you feel reassured that people are giving you normal lustful looks now that you're wearing bunny ears.

And once again, you no longer have any good ideas for what to do next.

You lean back and thud your head against the nearest building's wall, closing your eyes and letting darkness surround you. Why. Why does your brain have to make things so pointlessly difficult.

It's stupid, the sun isn't getting any higher. You should just do whatever comes to mind, and if you think of something else later you can do that too.

But there's something about a total lack of visible deadlines that makes your brain go empty.

It feels like a taste of the Sin of Sloth, what it would be like to never have anything you needed to do on time. A taste of what it must have been like in the long summer days before clocks were invented. When there weren't any schools or side jobs, or stores that closed at 6pm regardless of where the sun was in the sky. A time when a long summer day of light meant you really did have more time to do everything you wanted to do that day... maybe this drug you're on isn't so dangerous after all.

You are once again feeling warm inside. A glance at your Status screen showed that you'd ended up dangerously low on Submissive Energy anyways and now you have a Teased status effect.

You wish you could just quickly grab a guy off the street to fuck, instead of having to walk around all horny like this. But you can't do that, uh, because, uh, uh, it wouldn't feel right for the no-consequences quest. No, seriously, it would be too much of a waste to do something that already doesn't have negative consequences. You could grab a guy off the street any time or masturbate in public any time. Yes you could, you're all bold and courageous and perverted now. Doing stuff you could do after the quest ends---that's too timid.

You still have your eyes closed leaning back against the wall of a building. Somewhere in the distance, a bird is tweeting a song that for once doesn't sound like it was learned by imitating alarms.

The thought comes to you that having your eyes closed like this, just listening to the sounds around you, is also sort of nice.

And that you don't need your eyes open, if you're guaranteed not to trip over things or accidentally walk into traffic, which would be a negative consequence.

So walking around Norville with your eyes closed isn't something you could easily do after the quest ends. It's not much of a straw, but you'll grasp it.

And, uh, if the Erogame sends anyone to grope you while you walk around blindly, getting your pussy rubbed or maybe even fucked in the dark, you'll, uh, you'll have no choice but to take it helplessly.

7.3.10*: No Takers

Walking through Norville blind is an interesting experience. It's even more interesting when you're dressed as a naked bunnygirl, but it would be interesting without that too. You can hear cars, you can hear people, you can hear gasps and compliments on your hair and wolf-whistles and the occasional screech of brakes. You can usually guess you're about to walk into a street before you step over the curb. Your ears know where you are, if you aren't distracted by panicking about the possibility of walking into a lamppost or in front of a bus.

You wish you could try running, but you can't make yourself do it. More primitive parts of your brain are in charge of leg movement, and they're too prehistoric to understand pink-violet text. They are concerned about what happens if you run with your eyes closed. They are not letting your consciousness tell your legs to do that. They have limits.

One older-woman-voice seemed to think you were blind, and also, to think that a blind girl might not know she was wearing a naked bunny outfit. You acted shocked by this news and thanked her for telling you.

You are glad you are not actually blind. Some people have odd ideas about how that works.

Nobody has groped you. Nobody at all. There is a cute little inner demon inside you which checks in every half-minute to see if it's okay yet to feel ugly and unwanted.

You know you are not fat again. You do not need to open your eyes to know you are not fat again. You can feel the difference without looking at yourself.

A voice speaks from darkness, and it intones: "Do you know you're mostly naked?"

You honestly don't even. "It's fine," you say, "Nobody can see me so long as I have my eyes closed."

"Oh, sorry," says the voice.

You genuinely, honestly do not even.

The voice was male, and you want to ask if there's some reason he's not groping you. But you know perfectly well the answer is going to be "Well, of course I'd never touch a naked bunny girl without permission! Cosplay isn't consent!" And---and it's not like you're complaining about people being civilized. It's just...

Some part of you had again started thinking that, since things were going so well, that meant the rule of the quest was that you always got everything you imagined getting. The rule is that nothing bad happens. There's a difference.

It feels like admitting defeat, but you open your eyes.

You find yourself on a sidewalk in an old-looking commercial street of Norville that you can't recall seeing before, lined with small stores and offices, with wide parking-lot gaps between them. A woman in her mid-twenties is standing a few steps back and staring at you wide-eyed.

The woman looks frozen. SED-25-or-just-your-imagination suggests that she was surreptitiously gawking at the blind girl when suddenly the blind girl opened her eyes and looked back.

"It's okay," you say, "I wouldn't be dressed like this if people weren't supposed to look at me. Can I borrow a lipstick..." You think about what you're going to do with the lipstick. "Can I buy a lipstick off you for five bucks, if you've got a spare?"

The woman digs through her purse in a frozen way and frozenly accepts a $5 bill in return.

You take the lipstick and write "TOUCH ME" on your upper chest. After some further musing on how people might still not understand, you write "EVERYWHERE" on your lower stomach, which is still a flat, taut surface instead of a horrible... you're not thinking about that anymore, it's been almost a week, you should be over it.

Then you close your eyes again and keep walking. Even you feel ashamed of how skanky you must look, but it had to be done and literally nothing bad will happen unless it's inside your own mind feeling ashamed.

After walking another two blocks in Dark Norville mode (or at least you think you crossed two more streets) there have been no gropes. No touches. Definitely not a group of muscular men suddenly piling onto you. Even the wolf-whistles and hair-congratulations have stopped. Nobody is talking to you anymore.

There's a part of your brain that's hit much harder by this than makes sense. Like it wants to burst into tears and cry, just because you failed and didn't immediately get everything you wanted and walked around with signs proclaiming your blatant availability and everyone still rejected you and okay it makes sense that you're hit hard by this.

But you're breathing slowly and staying in control of yourself. This situation makes sense. You were stupid for not seeing it coming. Thinking back, you can imagine your previous reaction to a naked-in-public girl walking past with her eyes closed and TOUCH ME written on her chest. You wouldn't know what the hell was her deal, and you'd do the smart thing and stay away.

So you are not secretly ugly. People want you. People want you, they're just afraid to pursue the attraction they feel for you. It doesn't matter how much that sounds like an excuse an ugly girl would whisper to herself in desperate denial of her ugliness. It's still the truth. It is.

You open your eyes again, finding yourself in a similar quaint business-street complete with tiny coffeeshops and struggling dental offices. This time it's a group of three young men who were perving on you from a safe distance. One has a visible tent in his pants.

Instantaneously your brain feels better.

You pity yourself for being that predictable in what it takes for the Erogame to avert negative consequences for you.

"Seriously, you're allowed to touch me," you say at the men. "If you want to do it then you should, there's no reason not to."

By some unspoken means of communication among themselves, the three guys seem to come to a decision and quickly turn around and walk in the other direction.

You almost call Rabbit after them, to let them know it's really not a trap. You're not sure why you don't. Maybe it would be cheating to know what your molesters look like, instead of having things happen to you in the dark. Or you didn't have the nerve yourself to chase down the attractive men who were looking at you with desire in their eyes.

Eyes closed, walking through darkness again. It feels like you're repeating a mistake, but you have to know.

After crossing what feels like a street, asphalt beneath your heels, you stop and think Rabbit into the surrounding darkness. Just one unseen target, you're not trying to be buried under cock right now.

Rabbit isn't a skill that makes people want you. The skill text doesn't say anything about forcing people to want you. It just lets people act on their own interests. So if people really do want you, if they're watching and lusting, they'll---somebody will---

A hand grabs your hair, close to the base of your neck, and you're forcefully bent over at the waist to put your hands on the concrete sidewalk. It happens so fast you barely have time to draw in a shocked breath before there's a hard cock entering your pussy from behind.

The cock withdraws and then slams into you harder. Then again. It's---it's so surprising that it's hard to get into it, at first, but you're sure your body will come along shortly.

You keep your eyes closed, because you feel like you should. You don't know who might be watching you or how many people might be watching as the cock pounds into your helpless blind form. You're just a thing in the darkness that sometimes gets fucked... you're trying to think like that, recapture the feeling you wanted from this fantasy.

You're just starting to feel your own pleasure start to climb, the warmth inside you heating up, when the pounding of your pussy suddenly speeds up.

Then the cock stops moving.

Then the cock goes away.

Apparently the man's interests didn't include you getting your own orgasm.

You keep your hands on the sidewalk, in case somebody else is about to step up and pound into you.

Nobody does.

There is once again an adorable sad pout on your face.

When you finally give and straighten up, opening your eyes to see if there's any lustful onlookers you could Rabbit---

There's nobody on the street now. It's completely deserted.

The realization comes to you that other people saw a bunny girl being fucked in the middle of the street, so of course they turned around and walked the other way.

There's a street bench nearby, so you go down and sit in it, feeling shaken.

Nothing bad happened to you, not really. But once again, the story went in an unexpected direction and you're not sure why.

It feels like---like you're being deconstructed. Like your eroge is being deconstructed. Like your story is being realistic about how normal people behave when they're not Rabbited, instead of the Erogame making sure that the right type of pervert is nearby.

Is the Erogame telling you something you need to remember, to avoid negative consequences from today's quest?

You sit on the bench and take a minute to think about it. Or something like a minute, anyways. Not being able to look at your cellphone to find out how much time you're using is---sort of nervous and relaxing at the same time.

You don't think it's that something bad would have happened if you'd gotten molested and fucked in the dark. You did get fucked after you broadcast Rabbit, and, and you felt like you ought not to be ready, but you were ready, you're PRV 28 you're just not used to being PRV 28. Maybe you didn't enjoy that cock-in-the-dark as much as you were hoping. It came on too sudden and you were already feeling shaken out of your previous horny mood. But it wasn't---it wasn't bad. It wasn't a negative consequence.

It's clear that you could try again to get molested and fucked in the dark. You would just have to keep broadcasting Rabbit while you do.

That---that feels wrong, and you don't know why.

Because Rabbit is a dominant skill? Because it would be like ordering people to fuck you, instead of being helplessly molested?

Something feels wronger than that.

After thinking for another pseudo-minute-or-whatever, the closest you can come to putting your finger on it, is that it's reminding you of how things work in real life and that's not pleasant.

In real life, most people are nervous when they see something they don't understand. Maybe that's still true most of the time even at ERO 33. The Norville you're in hasn't gone that strange yet. So the written invitation to touch you doesn't work on its own. Not without the Rabbit skill telling people that it's okay, it's safe, the naked girl isn't a trap.

People get nervous when they see a naked bunny girl with TOUCH ME written on her, not because they're cowards, not because they're shy, but because nice things like that don't happen to them.

Maybe the negative outcome being averted is that you were starting to forget how things work without Erogame skills and assistance. Because you were forgetting. You wrote that lipsticked writing on yourself without thinking about how a normal person would react. It would be one thing if you were consciously relying on the Erogame to make sure there were only perverts around, but you didn't think about it at all.

The people around you aren't free to touch you. Because they don't know they're free. They're safe, but they can't know they're safe, not without magic.

It would have counted as a negative consequence if this quest had let you forget that? That sounds plausible, you guess? It's hard to be certain, the Erogame being the inscrutable nigh-omnipotent power that it is.

But then that means all your other quests, the ones that weren't guaranteed downside-free, were allowed to make you forget what life is like for everybody else.

You lean back your head. The bench's back is high enough to support your head, and has old wood that feels soft instead of polished. You look up at the nice blue sky that's cleared up since yesterday. In the corner of your eyes, barely visible in peripheral vision, is the blazing heat of a sun that never gets any higher.

You felt nervous, in the back of your mind, about Rabbiting dozens of people to find ones willing to help punish Copper Swallow. You were wondering if there were really that many people in Norville who'd be willing to go along with being Rabbited, who would be okay with relatively small and innocent amounts of mind control. You were worrying if maybe the Erogame only defined not-wanting-mind-control as a "negative consequence" if the Erogamer found out. Okay, so the Erogame can apparently grab people from who-knows-how-many dimensions. But except for Old Ned, the people in the park didn't seem like they were from lots of different dimensions. So the back of your brain went on worrying about how much mind control it takes to make a woman strip off her pants and rub herself off on Copper Swallow's thigh in public, and was that something the woman truly wanted, and was she really okay with it or was the Erogame forcing her.

You forgot that other people aren't as privileged as you. You forgot that the question "Can the Erogame find people okay with being Rabbited into believing they're safe?" is really the question, "Are there people who are okay with having, just once in their whole life, a sexual experience where they're not worried about anything?"

The three men who walked away from you before, the ones you didn't Rabbit, those men will never in their lives get another chance to fuck a naked bunny girl in public. At all, never mind doing it without feeling worried about whether the naked bunny girl is really doing okay.

Unless they'll get another chance after your ERO goes up further.

A slight shiver goes through you, though the sunny March day doesn't feel cold with so much flesh exposed.

There's a part of you in the back of your mind that's always puzzling over the real story, the meta-story. That part of you is always worried that the Erogame wants ERO to go up, that the Erogame is trying to trick you into making ERO go up. That you're playing into the Erogame's hands any time you think about the reasons why it might be a good thing if your ERO goes up.

There's an obvious meta-story where the Erogame selected you to ruin the Earth with sex. Where you're being lured into believing you're the Ero-Messiah, the Chosen Slut, only really you're being set up to become the Anti-Chaste. The Erobringer. The girl who puts the lips in apocalypse. Your destiny is to be seduced and dominated by your own good intentions into going down the dark, erotic path that fate has in store for you. And Charles is the real protagonist, and the only way he can stop you is by breaking into your base to, uh, steal your power, and he'll use your own devices against you and you'll be betrayed by your own minions that he dominates into holding you down while he okay PRV 28 that is not where you were trying to go with this please shut up now.

That storyline doesn't make any more sense than all your other tries at understanding what's going on. On appearances, the Erogame can ruin the Earth with sex any time it wants. If the galactic legal system says the Erogame does need one Earthling's permission, there's got to be other people on Earth who'd raise their ERO faster than you would.

If you try to analyze your situation as literature, then increasing the Earth's lewdness hasn't been set up as a grand challenge for you as a protagonist (or antagonist). It's something you could do as easily as...

Status, you think.

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (41,550 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 443/460
SUB: 47/510
BOD: 28
LST: 23
SED: 25
FUK: 21
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8779

Status Effects: Teased
Active Nectars: Charles Adan
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted
Equipment: Darkfire earrings, High heels (Tier 3).

Busy Mode: On

The plus signs are there as soon as you look for them. Like they were always faintly there, seen or unseen, imbued with the potential for a greater existence than they had before.

Stats:

DOM: 443/460
SUB: 47/510
BOD: 28 (+)
LST: 23 (+)
SED: 25 (+)
FUK: 21 (+)
PRV: 28 (+)
ERO: 33 (+)

Stat Points: 39

Literally all it would take for you to shift up the world to ERO 72 would be for your finger to poke a + sign 39 times. It would literally take you less than half a minute.

You don't actually want to do it. But it's like thinking about how easy it would be to choose to step in front of a car, and knowing you'll be faced with that choice again and again over your whole life. Wondering if one time you'll make that choice differently, or just suddenly step in front of the car for no reason at all. It's---it's one of the things you used to think about, whenever your brain had nothing better to do or needed to hurt itself.

You mentioned your thoughts about that type of thing to Felice Williamson, once, carefully disguised in some circuitous way you've forgotten now. Felice replied back in a very commonsensical way that most people did seem to get through their whole lives without stepping in front of a car, so she wasn't worried about doing that herself unless she meant it.

It did reassure you some. But you don't know if the same logic applies to how long you can go without pressing a + sign 39 times.

You lift a finger, specifically because your brain is scared that you will. It hovers a wide safe distance away from the pink-violet letters, because your badbrains aren't that insane.

Then you get nervous even so, and put your finger back down and turn your head away.

The pink-violet letters vanish before you even start turning, the moment you decide you don't want to see them any more. Like they never intended to force themselves on you in the first place.

Your Mom's voice in your head is saying, "Sweetie, if no part of you was attracted to the idea of pressing the + button, you wouldn't be afraid that you'd do it."

You're not stupid, you know that not everyone on Earth has your affinity for eroge. You know there are people who'll be much more disturbed than you that the Ero Virus increases the level of sex hormones. Like Cordy from the Scoobies---if the Ero Virus turns out to sexualize her type of asexual, she's not just going to be disturbed, she's going to be angry and sad if she can't get a de-ero-ized version of the Cure for herself. But---but even Cordy would probably still decide in the end that the Ero Cure is better than No Cure, if she was getting old and had no other choices.

Or Felice. She's never sounded wistful about boys or romance, and the Ero Cure already solves her most important problem. It's very far from being Felice's only problem. Your Mom can barely afford for you to go to CSU instead of a community college, and that's with the help of Pell Grants you get in full because Dad is dead. Felice's family (if you can call what she has a family) earns enough that she gets no Pell Grant, no scholarship, but they aren't supporting her in college at all. She had to fight just to qualify for federal loans. Felice couldn't possibly spend her energy on studying if she had to stay with her relatives, so she needs to pay for student housing too. According to the calculations she showed you, even if everything goes right, she'll graduate $45,000 in debt.

Student loans have never been a plot point in any eroge you can recall playing. Maybe if you press the + sign 39 times, Felice's student loans go away because they're not sexy. Or maybe, under Erogame Logic, the loans would be there to force the beautiful Felice to sell herself to some awful rich guy for a week. Even at PRV 28 that doesn't sound great to you, and you expect Felice would appreciate the situation even less. But you are pretty certain that Felice would take one unpleasant week over being $45,000 in debt. Your woke justicey parts note with the angry pleasure of getting in a good burn on Society that, if people would prefer a week of unwanted sex over student loans, Society must logically be doing something to college students that is worse than having them raped after they graduate.

You don't want to run around feeling guilty for not having solved other people's problems. But that's just it, you're not a psychopath and you do feel bad about it. You know you're a stupid selfish little girl who'd rather run around on rooftops than go on a grand quest for saving the world, but maybe it doesn't take a grand quest, maybe it only takes half a minute. It does feel good, now, to have spent half of Thursday on not needing to feel bad about other people still being fat. It feels like you actually did deal with a lot of your survivor's guilt that way. Maybe it only takes another half a minute, and you won't have to feel guilty about people being afraid to touch a girl with TOUCH ME written on her because nice things like that never happen to them.

Status, you think again, even though you know it's a mistake.

BOD: 28 (+)
LST: 23 (+)
SED: 25 (+)
FUK: 21 (+)
PRV: 28 (+)
ERO: 33 (+)

Charles would disapprove.

The thought doesn't feel powerful enough.

Mom would disapprove.

That---that still matters to you, you guess---no, you're being silly. You're being way too emo right now. You shouldn't need a big dramatic reason to not end the world right this minute.

A mental shooing motion at the screen of pink-violet letters sends it away.

Was that... was that a close call for the entire Earth, just there? You want to think you weren't close to actually doing it. You want to believe that, but you're not sure it's true.

You sigh to yourself, still staring up at the sky surrounded by a coincidentally quiet street with nobody around to distract you by looking at you. Maybe you should think through why you obsessively played eroge for six months two years earlier. It's starting to seem like it might be important. Well, no, it's blatantly important. You were just afraid before that thinking about it would make your ERO go up.

And now you're afraid that trying to think about it during your safe quest is cheating.

That's---is that a stupid fear? It's probably stupid. You could just tell the Erogame that you don't want to have your ERO go up, but you'll understand if it goes up anyways because what you're doing isn't really part of this quest. Or maybe thinking through your origin story is part of this quest. Part of whatever epiphany you need, in order to burst into song about how The Orgasms Never Bothered You Anyway.

It's just---you don't know what you're supposed to think about, what epiphany you're supposed to have. Your father had died around eight months earlier. Your family's savings plus life insurance had been wiped out by the bill from the hospital that didn't save Dad's life. Your latest attempt at dieting had caused your GPA to start dropping. That trashed even further your slim hope of getting the scholarship you'd need to attend a university outside Norville with your family now being poor. You hadn't lost more than a few pounds, for the price you'd paid, so you decided to give up on dieting permanently and resign yourself to a life of being fat and unloved. Of course you tried to escape from reality. Who the fuck wouldn't try to escape from reality. You weren't, you weren't even trying to escape. You knew you couldn't escape. You just needed something else to think about. It was the closest you could come to not existing.

You reach up and wipe at your eyes. It---it would have made a lot more sense if the Erogame had showed up then instead of waiting two years later. By the time Sunday afternoon came around, you hadn't played any eroge in a year. It stopped being an escape after it became clear to the stupidest part of your brain that you weren't going to end up on the other side of the computer screen, or stop existing on this side of it.

You were doing better by the time the Erogame came around on Sunday. Not well, but better.

You're not, you're not questioning why the Erogame showed up now instead of two years earlier, if your desire to escape back then was strong enough to call something from elsewhere. You know that would be ungrateful. It's just---it's just that it did hurt, so why? You would like to know why now and not then. You do wish you knew.

There's, this, there isn't, this probably isn't what you're supposed to be thinking about. It's not---it's not what you were trying to escape from, the reasons there are fucking obvious, it's what you were trying to escape to. Why not regular video games? Why not plain pornography? Why play through eroge when your LST was low enough that you usually skipped the sex scenes instead of masturbating to them?

You don't know. Except, who the fuck in their right minds wants to live inside the Hunger Games? Who in their right minds would want to actually live inside Fallout 3 in real life? And at LST 6 actual porn would have been just ugh. What else does that leave? You played eroge because there wasn't anything else. Nothing. It wasn't that great, but there wasn't anything else.

You reach up and wipe your eyes again. That's all you can think of, and it doesn't explain anything or make the metastory any clearer. All it did was make you feel like it would be perfectly reasonable to spend all your stat points on ERO right now, if anyone else is in the same type of pain, wondering when a miracle is going to show up and save them, and why isn't that miracle here now instead of later, and, and

"S-ss, sta, status."

Your ERO is still 33.

You put your hands over your face, hiding your face, because crying in public still feels embarrassing.

Maybe the conclusion of this quest is that you dance through the streets of Norville singing about how The Orgasms Never Bothered You Anyway while adding stat point after stat point to your ERO score as strip clubs and brothels spring up around you. It's sounding like a more attractive idea every minute... no it's not. It's sounding like a terrible idea.

You might do it if you knew it would be, would be good for people, but you don't know that. You don't know anything. Sorry. Sorry anyone who's crying in front of their computer screen right now. Sorry.

Time passes.

When the tears have stopped leaking from between your hands, you feel---not washed clean, not absolved, not even very much better. But you feel less tangled up inside. It's hard to describe in words what untangled. Maybe something like---there are feelings you have towards Reality Classic that you haven't been dwelling on, because they're huge and angry and bitter and thinking about them might make your ERO go up. Part of you thinks it would be better if your ERO did go up. You think that the bad things that make good ero plots are a small price to pay for getting rid of all the bad things that don't make good ero plots, and that if that's the Erogame's offer to Earth then the correct answer is yes. Maybe not everyone likes eroge as much as you do, but a lot of people dislike reality that much or more. You haven't been owning up to those feelings fully, because that felt like falling into the Erogame's trap, only it probably isn't a trap because the Erogame shouldn't need to bother with traps.

Those feelings, those feelings are yours. There's so much outside you, beyond you, that you don't understand. But your sense that erogames are livable and reality is not, that isn't something the Erogame is trying to make you believe, it was the way you felt two years ago, way before the Erogame showed up, you don't have to go press the violet + button right now, but you should own the feeling. If thinking that way makes your ERO go up, then, then fuck it, you need to be---yourself. You shouldn't hide your thoughts from yourself because you're afraid the Erogame will see them too. Does that make sense? You don't know.

There is a large part of your soul that would be happy about turning out to be the Ero-Messiah so long as that didn't take up too much of your time or require you to make any painful decisions. Even if what you're really doing is leaving the Earth and going somewhere else. You don't---you don't want to---you don't want to stay in Reality Classic, not even to rescue other people. But you don't want to be the only one who escaped it either. You don't want to spend a lot of time saving the Earth, you're too selfish to want that to be what your life is about. But---if what you're really doing is departing the Earth you knew, you'd just as soon leave the door open behind you. If you're owning up to your feelings, you can own that one too.

"Status."

Still ERO 33.

You hope you didn't just waste a lot of epiphanies you could have used to increase the ERO stat without using up your stat points. If it turns out later that's what you want to do.

You wipe your tears one last time, and stand up from the bench that was conveniently here when you needed to sit down. You've, you've thought about the thing you were being prompted to think about.

Was it the Erogame that made there not be any perverts to fuck you in the dark? Is the Erogame the only power that matters in your new life? There are hints, sometimes...

It doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. It obviously matters. All the mysteries outside you are, in fact, hugely important. What you have to remember, having figured it out while you had +3 WIS, is that none of those outer questions change who you are.

You don't know if raising your ERO to 72 is a good idea. But there are things---there are things you're pretty sure are right. Smaller things, but not unimportant ones.

You step away from the bench, and close your eyes, entering Dark Mode Norville again. You think you know what you did wrong last time. It wasn't an eroge-flaw, it was a Cindy-flaw. There are many paths you could take through the unseen world but the path you tried before wasn't any of them.

Without choosing the motion consciously, you raise one open hand within the dark, palm up. As though to lift a weight, or take something into your hand... part of you thinks you ought to be dancing to bend this element. But those body motions are just something A:TLA shows because they can't show the insides of people on video, right? It's something in your mind that needs to move, not your arms and legs.

You begin walking again, eyes still closed. Thinking softly, as though cast into the darkness around you, the word bunnies and the idea of courage and freedom. You aren't sending Dominant Energy surging outward. You're trying to use the least DOM you can, to the point you're not sure you're using DOM at all. You aren't trying to slide through realities to encounter ero-people who won't be afraid to grope you. You're not trying to mind-control everyone into going along with the logic of an erogame about public sex. You're trying to reach out to people from the same Norville you grew up in, and let them know without words that this time they don't have to deny themselves. It's not ERO 33 you're trying to spread around yourself, just ERO 1. Not the thought of total freedom from all consequences if they drag you off and sex you, just---the idea that if a woman's chest says TOUCH ME and they want to touch, it's okay this time. The naked girl isn't a trap. Nice things can happen to them. They don't have to believe it but they can if they want to. It's okay. It really is. It's okay.

You don't walk far before someone's hand touches your ass, so light and tentative it's more like a tickle.

Blending the bright feelings inside you into reality, imposing your own perceptions and ideals onto the nature of the surrounding world, causes your %%+++%#% to go up by +!

A skill has been created by a special action! Modifying the skill Just Follow The Fucking Rabbit to have a continuous area of effect instead of individual targets has created the skill Lagomorphic Fiel@()$*@)*-!@()*$$%-!@@

A skill has been created by a special action! #@)(*%@#-()#ust Follow The Fuck@#*$-()#*@%-!*&^#)(-!{)@%-(#@^})!@@$ has created the skill Hop Springs Eterna*#-$#@#$-$@#$

A skill has been created by a special action! Wielding the skill Just Follow The Fucking Rabbit on a more innate level has created the skill On a Pale Hare She Ride$*#-$#@#$-$@#$

#)@(%*-@()#*%-!@&^)(#-{})}@#%^#@)-!@(@%*

A skill has been created by a special action! Through your fully embracing the power of Just Follow The Fucking Rabbit, it has evolved into the skill The White Rabbit^!@%-){(#(%-#)$%^-@#%-@#(*@}{#@{(!-@{#)(#@}-#@%%-#%#@$^-#)(@*%#-!@{)*%%^-}{)@#}${)@#%&)#@(-@)#(*&^$%-#@()*%)@$%^)#-@#-)(*$&*^@-)#$(*-!*&-#%^#-*%@-!@(*%#*-@&($-!@#$@#()*#&%$

^{-@!()@*#%-&#$%-!@!@%#^%$#**&#%^

A skill has been created by a special action! Perceiving a deeper meaning within one of your skills has transformed Just Follow The Fucking Rabbit into The Light of Hope^#$)*)(-#(%-@#)$(*-!@%}{!#

@)#(*%#-)(#@&*)%$#@-()!@&)%#$-(@!*)*#%$#

A skill has been cr@#)($*-!)#(&$#!ial action! #@($*-#(^$@##-@!(%-}{)@#$$-@#(%#anding the deeper meanin@#)$-(*)@(#*evolved into@#)($*-@()$*%-@#($*has caused Just Follow The Fuc@#$-@$#-@#$ully embracing the powe@#$-#@^*&$*#-$#@#$-$@#$-#@$)(-@$#)-#@%()-@#$-!@)*%-@#on a more innate leve!*&(%-)#*(%-@#(*-%#)-*%-(@*#%-!@()*%-^*&@!(%-(@*&#as unsealed the Reality Skil!(*)@!-#@*%^@{-#{@^{#*#%{-}!@#-}%@$%#$}-#$#@-%@(^!@%-){(#(%-#)$%^

!@#$&*(!@-!@@*(#$-!@{)*(^-!{)@*()*(&$^{$#-@{)!()(&$#){#-!@(*{^$#@@%

)(@"*#%-)(#&^{#-#%^!@#()@$#%^-($#*^#@&%{-@!(#*$)%@#-}#%*$(&#@%

@{)#$--@#()(${)#@$(#-@$%-@!{)(($#)*@-{#)(#-{-)*#)&(%{#)*$%-#)(-&)$@$#@-{)@!)*(&-$#^{${#@-$-*()^){$*&)(#&-${)#%-@)#{*-&$^-()&#$(*)$#%-(@#&*)-$(&%#-@()$has revealed A Hand Held Out In Darkness.

7.3.11*: No Interference

Spoiler: Skill added to character sheet last chapter.

Lagomorphic Fie!^&#()*$(@nd Held Out In Darkness: Lvl ? (?). Active and Passive.

If people around you happen to ponder certain questions, they are more likely to come to correct conclusions about facts such as how likely they are to contract a venereal disease, be spotted by an authority, or be reported to the police. They may then act accordingly, given their own nature and goals. You can expend more energy to intensify this effect further; but it should come as no great surprise to you at this point that you cannot, in fact, turn it off^#(*$-@)#*-#@-$(*)@-#$~most frightened, cynical, or wounded of souls, no matter what unpleasant experiences they may have had in their past, will find themselves able to believe that they can have nice things like you@#)(*$-%@)-@#($)%*-$)%^(*@#feel that in your presence the rules are different@#)(*#%-@!()&#%-{!*(#%}-#$@follow in your path and find a new@#)(*%-!@)(#%-()-)@#(*%_#)-%(^&@_!{)*-%#@%elieve that better outcomes are possible for themselves, providing that this is actually tru@#{)${)(%-!@)#@%-@#()*$#@#%&)#@(-@)#(*&^$%-#@()*%)@$%^)#-@#-)(*$&*^@-)#%$-@()#*%@#-#)(&%)*^{*$%-!@^^#@$^{)-(*(#@&^$#@-)(#@&^)$#)@is absolute and cannot be balked by depression, by drugs or mental illness, by hypnosis or brainwashing, by memories of pain or betrayal, by any chains upon a soul whether those chains were laid from without or within; any power that presents a barrier will fail; no ruin wrought by Azkaban or Angband can prevent someone from comprehending that the hope you hold out to them is real.

To wonder whether this constitutes "mind control" is confused, as it accords with the laws of reality on a deeper level than any biology or physics that might otherwise describe how one state of mind follows from another.

Some time has now passed, and your LST 22 PRV 28 self has been thoroughly distracted from all the deep thoughts you were thinking before you walked into the dark again.

With the softer bunny-thoughts you were broadcasting, and you trying to damp down the probability-warping (if that's even a thing), it didn't seem like you ran into anyone from Normal Norville who wanted to rub your clit until you had an embarrassing public orgasm in the dark. Just people who wanted to touch your butt and your inner thighs and sometimes tentatively slip their hand up your pussy like they were sampling your goods without intending to buy them. After you moaned encouragingly at the first person to touch your pussy, and they ran away, you've learned that you need to stay quiet and still while people lightly brush your nipples or softly grope your ass.

You guess that's as much as can be gotten from ERO 1? It still feels like a victory. Frustrating, frustrating victory! But still more victory than walking alone through darkness, surrounded by other lonely people, with nobody reaching out their hand to touch anyone else.

It does make you feel good. But it could be better. You're torn between wishing for the Erogame to have somebody hand you a sheet of lyrics and some background music so you can sing about bringing the Light of Lewdness to the World, or as an alternative, using the Rabbit skill for real so that you get buried under a heap of amorous bodies who will pass you around like a collection basket and fuck you properly. As in, until you come.

You've walked far enough since last time, so you once again slow down until you're standing still and passively spread your legs. Maybe just a small probability-bend to find a horny perverted boy with a thing for public cunnilingus, who could totally have been living in Norville for all you knew and---no! No, you're being good right now. No bending probability. All you're doing is letting normal people from Reality Classic know that you're not trapped.

Why were you doing that again?

You spread your legs wider and think about drawing lipstick arrows pointing from the word EVERYWHERE to your pussy, in case that part wasn't clear.

A hand touches your left boob and you manage to suppress the flinch. Moving makes normal people run away. You stay passive. Still. Hoping that the hand goes down, please...

The hand does trail down your chest. It's a male hand, you think, one that feels youngish. Come on, you've been walking for a while, aren't you due for a naturally encountered Reality Classic teenaged boy who would want to touch a pretty girl down there?

The boy's hand wanders over your stomach, and then, tentatively, down to your thighs.

It explores your thighs for a while, and you bite your lip to stop yourself from making sounds such as, for example, HURRY UP.

A finger traces over your pussy lips, lightly.

You make sure that if anyone happens to be looking at your face, they're seeing an encouraging smile.

The finger traces your pussy lips again, finding slipperiness. He should know what this is doing to you, he should know you want this---

The finger starts rubbing your clit, though gently, and you want to scream. The finger is being way too soft, you might come from this eventually but it would take you an agonizing eternity. You don't scream, because then the finger will go away. You stay still and passive and---and spread your legs more, while you go on smiling. That shouldn't be scary.

The finger rubs your clit a little firmer.

You spread your legs wider. Yes. Like this. This is nice. Please don't get bored, finger.

This clit rub goes on longer than any of the previous touches, and it's working on you, it's starting to work on you. You bite back any hints of the moan that wants to escape your lips. Your mind goes back to the fantasies that bubbled up in you during your frustrating walk, mostly fantasies of being passed around and used, made to take one cock after another in your mouth and one cock after another in your pussy, or feeling a woman's mouth on your clit while a man violates your ass for the first time. You can feel the slow burn rising in yourself, but you're scared it won't rise fast enough, and that nervousness itself makes the warmth rise slower. You try to focus your mind on the fantasy again, the helplessness, maybe they'd blindfold you or cuff your hands before they started to pass you around---

The finger decides its curiosity has been satisfied and leaves before you get your own satisfaction.

You whine softly into the darkness.

The finger doesn't come back.

Okay. Okay that's enough. Reality-warping is on again. The Erogame is back in charge. You're going to walk another two blocks and then, whatever you see when you open your eyes again, you're going to fuck it.

After you've walked what you think might be around two blocks, and crossed what felt like two streets, there are people and voices approaching in the Auditory Universe. It sounds like a large but quiet crowd... um. No you are up for that. You can do that. You keep thinking about that fantasy and nothing will go wrong if you just, do, it.

When you bump into someone you take it as a sign to open your eyes.

The boy you bumped into looks frozen, but only in the normal way for a teenage boy who just had a naked bunnygirl bump into him. You give him an encouraging smile and look around at your surroundings.

Somehow your walk turned a corner and brought you into a parking lot---one you recognize, the parking lot of a grocery store that closed two years ago. The grocery store is still deserted and empty. There's more than fifty people and less than a hundred in the small crowd occupying the lot. Maybe 70 people? It seems like a lot to fuck. The crowd is leaning college-age, but not exclusively so. Folding chairs are scattered all around, a third of them occupied and the rest of the crowd standing.

Many people are darting glances at you, as might be expected given your nudity and bunny ears. Almost without meaning to you send out a soft pulse of truth, the strange girl isn't harmful, and the glances grow less tense.

In front of the crowd is an improvised-looking platform raised around knee-height off the pavement, with four people standing on it. There's a man in his mid-twenties with a bulky-looking vest. A seniorish college-age man fellow in an undershirt and jeans with a red baseball cap bearing a yellow star. A seniorish woman in a loose shirt with un-bra'ed boobs big enough that in an eroge it would practically promise that the player gets to see her topless at some point, Chekhov's Guns as it were.

And last is... is the hapless organizer from the Natural Sexuality Movement who scheduled a nude march in the evening in March, and then later on missed the timing of the biology conference reception. She's looking away from your direction (lucky you) so you quickly put on your Meganekko glasses before she can look back.

Sitting nearby at a long folding table are three serious-looking college students, two girls and one guy.

Next to that table is a fixedly smiling woman wearing a very tiny bikini. She's holding a huge striker next to a huge Chinese-ish brass gong.

Your fantasy-resolution to Rabbit the shit out of anyone in visual range the moment you opened your eyes is wavering (or more accurately, completely dissolving) in the face of this obvious storyline in progress. You should probably understand what's happening first, before you turn it all into an orgy, right...? That's not just you losing your orgy nerve?

You make a tentative promise to yourself that you will fuck these people at some point. You just need---there has to be some less awkward time to do that then right now.

"Hey," you say in an undertone to the boy you bumped, "What's up here? I mean, what's going on?"

Bumped-boy gives you a puzzled glance back, like he can't imagine that somebody dressed like you doesn't already know, and says back in a low tone, "Norville's Rhyming Politically Charged Improvised Poetry Slam."

"What," you undertone back at him.

"Norville's Rhyming Politically Charged Improvised Poetry Slam," he lowtones again. "Some improv people started a poetry slam, Norville's Improvised Poetry Slam. This slam split off when NIPS banned poetry that was politically charged."

What would even be left after a poetry slam banned---no, that's not the largest question on your mind right now. "Why is there a woman in a tiny bikini standing next to a giant gong? Do all poetry slams have those now?"

"Local business sponsorships. You're not from one of them? You sure look like an ad for something."

"Local business sponsorships?" you say. "Do poetry slams have those?"

"How else would they make a profit?"

You---you haven't exactly attended a ton of poetry slams, that's a type of thing that people do when they have boyfriends, but---you don't think poetry slams are supposed to be profit centers---"Why rhyming?"

"The three top business sponsors visited the slam together, had a conversation---with each other, not with anyone else---and decided they were being conned, because poetry is supposed to rhyme, and the slam sounded like just a bunch of people saying things. To be fair, some contestants were pushing the bounds of free verse before then. So now in the later rounds---"

Right then is when a Yet Another Beefcake in a sleeveless shirt, in his upper twenties or early thirties and sporting a goatee, rises up from a chair and starts speaking into a microphone. "All right," he says, his tone obviously marking him as the MC, "our contestants have had some time to rest, so on to round four---" He stops as he catches sight of the naked bunny girl (you), but after a second clears his throat and keeps going. "We were down to three before, but Alex has withdrawn, we have one new contestant who's paid our late entrance fee," gesturing at the guy in the bulky-looking vest, "and finally a representative from our newest event sponsor, the Natural Sexuality Movement at Norville U," gesturing at the Hapless NSM Organizer. "Don't worry, if the newcomers aren't ready for round four, they won't survive long. This is where shit gets real, folks. This is the round that usually produces a victor. Round three's rules about meter are still in effect, no more free verse. In round four, you've also got to rhyme."

Improvised verse that has to rhyme? Hasn't that evolved into less of a poetry slam and more of a... rap battle?

"And again, today's winner gets a certificate for a free massage at the Warm Hands Body Shop, where people go for a deeply touching experience. Now remember the rules, folks, no booing, no visible thumbs-down while somebody's still in the middle of their lines. If they've picked up a strike, it's the judges' job to say so. Leslie was leading in the last round, so they start off this one. This round's starting prompt is..." The MC pauses dramatically. "Is..." Another dramatic pause, as the MC takes a bag of slips of paper from his pocket, dramatically pulls out one slip, and dramatically scans it. "How your political agenda would fix literally all of the world's problems." The contestants look like they want to object to this, the woman with the big guns even raising a protesting finger, but the MC ignores them all. "Begin!" he shouts.

The microkini woman hits the big Chinese gong with the big striker, producing a big Chinese gong crash sound.

The red-capped person steps forward, takes the mike from the MC, and closes their eyes for half a minute before beginning.

"Understandin' the problem doesn't take a baccalaureate," spoken with a staccato beat on 'baccalaureate' that sounds like they're just openly outright rapping, "we gotta buncha rich jerks and a poor proletaurate," that's pushing it but you guess it's being played for laughs. "Fix that, it won't fix everything, and I ain't sayin it would. But we all woulda done for all 'bout all that we all should. We all can't force you happy, we can't bless you all rich, but least you shouldn't knuckle down to some uncarin' bitch---"

After the agender communist (agender anarchocommunist?) finishes a few more lines and steps back, all three of the students at the table---judges, you guess---each hold out a hand with one thumb up.

The woman with the loose shirt and Chekhov's Nipples takes the microphone from the Agender Communist.

"Half the problems on this Earth result from some poor nut
Who tried to fix the other half with asspulls from his butt.
Set down some simple rules. Keep them very straight.
The rest should all be up to us and not the bumbling state---"​

The woman, who you mentally label Conservative though not of Charles-quality, finishes out and gets two thumbs up from the judges, one thumb held sideways but not down. Which... okay, it's not fair to expect Nobel-quality poetry on the spot but... it's not exactly what you'd call poetry? Even for a rap, it's not that good?

You've been spoiled by poetry in books and the Epic Rap Battle channel on YouTube, that's what your problem is. You couldn't have improvised those lines in a minute. It makes the Communist's verse, that actually did feel halfway snappy, all the more impressive.

The guy in the vest, the new contestant who paid the late entrance fee if you're remembering right, steps forward and proudly accepts the microphone.

Seconds later you and the rest of the audience are staring at him in open horror.

"---and see what functions best.
Nice ideas for government may produce much merriment,
But we need more little countries to test and experiment.
There's tons of clever notions out in the world.
We don't know what's right until the results are unfurled.
It's not by persuasion that humanity progresses,
But by experiments, data, and statistical regresses---"​

Oh god. Oh god this man should not be here. You don't think he realizes the pattern of stressed syllables matters and not just the end rhymes.

Even Vogon Poetry was not in fact this bad. Douglas Adams just made up nonsense words that still had correct meter. "Oh freddled gruntlebuggy, Thy nicturations are to mine, As plurdled gabbleblotchits upon a lurgid vine" if you're remembering that right. That scans in exactly the way this doesn't. This is literally worse than Vogon Poetry.

The Scientist has stopped... talking. There are no thumbs up. No surprises there, the judges would have been lynched if there were. Even the stripper in her microkini is so stunned that the MC has to tap her shoulder before she actually remembers to swing the striker.

A very loud gong-crash thunders through the parking lot.

"How many more---" you whisper.

"Seven total across all rounds," the boy next to you whispers back.

"Seven?!" you whisper.

The Hapless NSM Organizer is last to take the mike.

"I---I don't have what you could call a statement prepared.
It was supposed to be Coral here and now I'm just scared.
But if I had to summarize the message of our movement,
It's that having more sex would be an improvement.
The world's complicated and solutions aren't snappy
Except for the part where sex does make people happy."​

There's two hands with thumbs down and one hand with a thumb up. In sympathy, maybe. She doesn't get gonged.

It did kind of scan. Sort of.

It wasn't Vogon Poetry.

You'll give her credit for managing to come up with that on the spot...

How about if you just skip to whatever moment in time explains why the Erogame brought you here.

You take a seat in an empty chair, close your eyes, and think Timeskip.

When you open your eyes, the people on stage have changed positions, and the Nippled Conservative is now giving the Hapless NSM Organizer a hostile look that seems to go beyond ordinary rapbattling. Also the boy you bumped into earlier has sat down next to you and left his hand on your inner thigh in a casual way. You feel a jolt of surprise, even a touch of indignation, before you remember that you still have TOUCH ME lipsticked on your chest.

The Scientist, unfortunately, seems to be trying to poem again. His target seems to be the NSM Organizer.

"---not clear on the details of your club's constitution,
I'm not surprised that you want to decriminalize prostitution.
But I'd like to know if you think the idea's the worst
To try out your change in one smaller state first."​

Two thumbs down and one thumb sideways. The guy in the vest turns to glare at the judges. "Oh, come on!" he says. "That had meter in it!"

"It needed more meter," one of the judges says back.

"What, meter all over the place?"

There's a thundering crash of the gong, and several people cheer.

The Conservative takes the microphone---and then, with smiling courtesy, offers it to the Hapless NSM Organizer.

The Hapless NSM Organizer accepts the microphone like it's a live snake covered in beetles. She stares at it for a long, agonizing pause, then tries:

"There's plenty of countries that don't outlaw pros.
They haven't all died beneath bitter snows.
Those laws really do have an awful defect.
They're hurting the women they're supposed to protect.
She's nowhere to turn because she's outside the law.
If you've got to be Puritan, criminalize buying but not selling... that's the... flaw."​

Crash. There's no cheers, though. People look sympathetic, like they're waiting on her last gong to rush forwards and offer her consolation candy.

The Agender Communist takes the microphone.

"I'll back you up hard on freein' the oppressed.
Poor kids ain't the ones the cops should arrest.
But people be starvin'. People be dead.
The US be droppin' bombs on their head.
The sea's gettin' warmer. The coast's gettin' wet.
The globe's two hundred trillion in debt.
I ain't sayin' it's nothin', I get sex is fun,
But it won't fix shit and there's shit to be done."​

It's an obvious cue for the Erogamer to enter, and without thinking it through, you stand up from your folding chair.

Everyone instantly turns to stare at you, like they've been waiting this whole time for Bunnygirl to do something interesting.

It's at that point that you realize you don't have any rhymes lined up, and that everyone is looking at you, waiting for you to speak. Furthermore, you're naked in public.

You're lucky this isn't actually one of your phobias.

You close your eyes and think for a while, trying to relax and not rush yourself. Stepping through the suspended raindrops, a moment of stopped time inside a moment of stopped time.

Soon you've got a few words lined up. They're not as smooth as the Communist's verse, but you should be able to get at least one thumb up... even if partially for tits... oh, look at that. For the first time in your life, you are worrying that somebody might grade you on your looks instead of your work. You are so very very glad to have this problem.

You open your eyes.

"You think fun doesn't matter? That's problem number one.
That's why our generation isn't having any fun---"​

And suddenly coming up with rhymes feels a whole lot easier.

You definitely should have seen that coming.

You make a cough, to signal that you're rebooting, and then you start over. No planned lines, this time, just rapping from your heart.

"You and your revolutions, you care who's wrong or right
You care who's good or evil in this big dramatic fight
You care 'bout rights and freedom and 'bout tax rates on the rich
You wanna be in charge you wanna catch the Golden Snitch
I don't know how stuff got this bad, but few crusaders cared
Bout all the tiny bad things that made people hurt or scared
If you see no emergency when someone's all alone
You won't think that it matters if she has a student loan
We care 'bout when you're happy, we care 'bout when you're sad
That's why we start out sayin' that there's more sex to be had."​

The Scientist, Communist, and Conservative all trade glances at each other like they're not sure what the heck to do with this statement. You don't blame them. One week ago you also would not have believed that more ero was the most effective road to fixing student loans.

Also you now seem to be holding a microphone, placed in your hand by the Hapless NSM Organizer, who absconded the scene fast enough to leave a fading afterimage. You don't blame her either.

The audience is looking more interested, though that could just be because tits. The Conservative is first to gesture for the mike, and you hand it to her while walking over to the NSM Organizer's former place on the platform.

"I'm ruling that you're picking up her six strikes," the MC says. "Wouldn't be fair to the others otherwise. Hope you're ready for sudden death mode."

You smile at the audience, as if to indicate that you will not pick up any strikes, and that you see no need to comment on this preposterous idea. It's the first time in your life you've ever had a chance to act like that type of protagonist.

The Conservative starts speaking.

"I'll credit you with this much, you talk just like you walk,
But the world goes on spinning even if you suck more cock.
Still, if that's your whole platform, I wish you all the luck.
We'll handle all the grownup stuff. Go off and have a fuck."​

The Conservative smiles at you in the manner of somebody who knows she has just delivered a truly scorching burn. You smile back at her in the manner of someone who could end reality as she knows it in half a minute, if you weren't too grownup to do that in a fit of pique.

There's a thundering crash, and the Conservative turns to give the judges a surprised look.

"Not saying keep it nice, but keep it nicer than that," one of the judges says, and the other two nod. "She's not the one who called you a sadistic bitch."

The Conservative rolls her eyes.

The Scientist starts to reach for the microphone, then starts to draw his hand back, like he's unsure if his lines are worth another strike.

The Conservative quickly hands him the microphone. Yeah, she's a bit of a sadistic bitch.

The Scientist speaks more cautiously, this time. His stresses are way too emphatic, like he's trying to emphasize how much meter he's totally putting into these lines, in case the judges weren't noticing.

"That was PUT a little HARSHly, but in BROAD strokes I aGREE,
Just SAYING more sex for EVeryone is NOT much POlicy...
Uh... It's EAsy to say EVeryone should be HAPpier sponTAneously.
But HARder to imPROVE on every OUTcome simulTAneously.
If YOUR group has iDEas for more DEtailed preSCRIPtions... uh...
SPELL them out in GREATer length, it WON'T give me conNIPtions."​

There's a single thumb up, which is greeted by scattered boos.

"You've got to encourage them when they make progress," says the judge who gave the one thumb up.

The Communist takes the mike next.

"Lady you're hot and your lines also sizzle
But if that's all you got your revolt's gonna fizzle.
Your body's a gift but you gotta make a call
Which laws gonna shift and who goes up against the wall."​

Is the Erogame is asking you about whether you have politics, if there's a quest you want for social change? It---it doesn't seem like your thing. You're the type of idiot who complains about everything, not the type of idiot who knows how to fix it all.

You close your eyes and think.

Charles would probably have a few ideas, but you don't know how it would interact with your timey-wimey time if you texted him to ask. Also he might misunderstand if he saw a text from you asking how to rule the Earth. Sonia might have ideas, if she wasn't busy throwing up in a tub of ice water. Lavelle seems like the type to have an endless supply of ideas, but Cordy would have a better idea, which is not to ask Lavelle.

Maybe your harem will go conquer a country someday. If so, you don't want to run the place afterwards. Sexually dominate the citizenry, maybe, or supply police sexbots to keep order, or pass ero laws with unintended yet arousing consequences. But not actually run the country.

The only thought that's coming to your mind is---doubling down on your +3 WIS bonus, trying to center on yourself again and answer how you feel about the Communist's prompt. The Erogame---shouldn't take your words and run with them if you don't want it to, right? Not during this quest of safety? It promised you that nothing bad will happen, and you want to be clear on this, the Erogame taking inspiration from what you are about to say would constitute a bad.

You open your eyes and take back the microphone.

"You want to know my policies, my orders and demands?
I'm worried that our nightmare's gotten out of human hands
We've built us a society of empty dead pretense
Every day is senseless crap that makes no fucking sense
Our jobs and lives are shitty shit that's shitty through and through
Everyone hates everyone and the news isn't true
We're the loneliest of children that this Earth has ever known
And I couldn't stop the hurting if you gave me this Earth's throne,"​

You, you need to say these words to somebody, and you don't want to say them to Charles,

"The kindest thing an alien could do after it lands,
Is kick our castle over, to rebuild with different sands."​

You have to stop and swallow. It hurt more to say than you thought it would.

"I don't know how things got this way or how they could reverse.
I'm scared any reforms I tried would only make it worse.
I don't know what a crown can do that's not more of the same.
Maybe love can save us, and if not, at least we came."​

You put down the microphone. It gets three thumbs up, followed by scattered applause and a lot of people looking sober.

The Scientist is the first to pick up the mike.

"I don't know if you'd find statistics to be much consolation,
But outside the United States there's decreased devastation.
Poor countries are still catching up, global production is still rising,
Though the news channels don't show that so you might find it surprising." ​

"Catching up to what?" you say, without waiting for the microphone or for the judges to vote on his last lines. "Is this their destination? Shitty lonely lives inside a more developed nation? At least if we had orgies and mechanical companions, they'd have stuff to look forwards to besides Warcraft expansions."

The Communist takes the mike next.

"Don't follow our example, check, you're solid on the mark.
Their alternative's not orgies, though. I'd find that kinda dark.
I ain't just gonna give up about fixing my home's flaws.
I think we can do better, though we do need better laws.
An' honest girl, I don't see what you're sayin' we should try.
It sounds like your alternative's we all lay down then die."​

You open your hand, they thumb off the mike's switch and toss the mike to you, you catch it and thumb it back on.

"There's no hope left in politics and no hope left in civics
There's no hope left for humankind inside the laws of physics
I've lived inside normality and all of it has sucked
Might as well make it literal that everyone is fucked
So let's blow up society, and burn down causality,
And we'll all have an orgy in the ashes of reality---"​

Then you stop, because you don't think that came out right. That sounded darker than you had in mind.

The Conservative says, without waiting for the microphone, "Now some may say that's too extreme or that it isn't nice. I say it's not extreme enough! We should destroy reality twice."

There's scattered laughter. The Communist opens their hand and you pass-toss the mike.

"Take it from one's been around that town,
There's no fun won just burnin' shit down.
Revolution takes effort. You gotta be smart.
Nihilistic sexuality ain't even a start."​

You quickly open your hand, and the Communist quickly tosses the mike back to you before any lesser rhymers can interrupt this developing duel.

"Sorry for that last part there, I think I got off track,
I think that I misspoke there and I'd like to take it back.
Of all people I should know that when the dark seems worst,
There's still a spark inside... that makes you wait two more years first,"​

You take a second of timewimey to close your eyes and regain your composure. You are getting off-track again. That last line didn't even scan right.

The other rappers' objections to your political agenda are sensible, and you're not sure how to reply without talking about... wait, you don't have to avoid the subject. Nothing bad will happen if you're honest.

"Maybe we could've fixed our shit, I don't know if that's true,
That's all a pointless point now. Earth's normal days are through.
Too much crap is broken now to fix it all piecemeal---
But everyone could have more fun if erogames were real!"​

"What," somebody says from the audience.

"If God above is listening, don't take that as my word,
But I thought of it long ago and you already heard."​

"I request clarification, with some indignation," says the Scientist.

"Though all human society was heading down the drain,
That was before an orgy built a helpful virus strain.
There's fairies in the shadows now. There's succubi in town.
One way or another way the system's going down."​

"One way or another way," you repeat, realizing as you speak that it's true and that makes you feel better, "one way or another way, the system's going down."

The Commie snatches the mike before the Conservative can get it.

"Hoping for magic. You call that a plan.
That's the dumbest way I've ever heard to stick it to the Man."​

The Communist performs a mike drop.

You're feeling an odd type of momentum. It's a momentum that makes you swoop over to where the mike was dropped and scoop it up again before the Conservative can reach. When you finish a pirouette you're facing the audience, and the words flow even more easily.

"There's fairies in the shadows now, and weirder on the way
Our weather forecast says it will rain sluts in lingerie
Cruel sadist lesbians in gangs and roaming bands
People fucking in the streets and couples holding hands
Muscled men with footlong schlongs who think they aren't gay
Blushing awkward schoolboys who can't decide today
Groping robot tentacles that disobey their code
Mind-controlling headsets with a body-swapping mode
Clumsy magic females whose clothing sparkles off
Expies of Asuka and Natasha Romanoff
Mirrors manifesting your depraved corrupt reflection
Dragons hoarding harems who want you for their collection
Minotaurs and mermaids striking bargain for your seed
Or stranger things you really wouldn't think would interbreed
Childhood encounters with a destined lover true
Gentlemen with many cocks and ladies made of goo
Cursed enchanting piercings set to punish or to please
Locking licking panties inescapable that tease
Mercenary schoolgirls, goldhearted professionals
And magic cancellation skills for skeptical asexuals
So hold out hope, and don't give up, for help is on the way!
At least it's sorta kinda help... with luck we'll be okay."​

You were expecting laughter and disbelief. To your surprise, the people you addressed all look... sort of puzzled, as if something deep inside them had believed your prophecy, and now they had no idea what to think of this glorious vision.

"I'm---I'm not sure I'd be better off in a more sexualized world," says one woman. "I haven't had much luck in that department so far." Several other people nod, including some men.

Before you try to answer, you glance sideways at the other contestants, feeling guilty for having held the mike for so long. But it doesn't look like the MC is coming over to demand the microphone, and nobody else is holding out their hand.

As if, for some reason, reality isn't interfering with you right now.

As if you're doing something that has right-of-way over any other events going on around you.

Maybe that's because... are you going to do this?

You're going to do this.

You step down off the platform. "Background music, please!" you call out. "Something cheerful!"

Most people look surprised. The MC looks like he's trying to figure out whether that's allowed. But at least one person in the audience is on the ball (of course).

The slow opening bars to a melody begin to hum out from somebody's phone, getting louder as they max out the volume. It takes you a second to recognize the tune, but you're satisfied when you do. You don't like most Disney movies because you don't like most of their takes on female archetypes. There are exceptions.

Feeling like something inside you has waited all your life to burst into random song while you're in the middle of doing a thing, you say the opening lines.

"In every life the world wrecks
There is an opening for sex
Each day the same
'Til snap! Your life's a game!"​

People look confused. But the way you're swaying your way toward the audience, gazing at everyone with a promise in your eyes, people don't look bored.

"And every bump upon your track
Gets solved within the sack
You're saved! You're free! And on that day you'll see...

That a spoonful of sugar helps the fellatrix go down,
The fellatrix go dowwwwwn
The fellatrix go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the fellatrix go down,
In a most delightful way.​

"You did not go there," someone says. You ignore him in favor of stepping over to the woman who asked her question and singing to her personally, putting your arm around her shoulders as you do.

(One person begins whistling a counterpoint, and they're managing to sound remarkably like the bird that sings to Mary Poppins in the movie.)

"A woman who's never been kissed
And has a sense of what she's missed
May be afraid of taking her first steps
But if she's resolute and brave
And makes her wisdom save
She'll seize, a chance, her level will advance---Nothing bad happens if you do!"​

You're expecting the woman in your embrace to kiss you, once she knows she's safe. Instead she steps out from your arm to kiss the woman who was standing next to her. Her target looks shocked, but not unpleasantly so, and you turn to address the wider audience with a warmer feeling.

"For a spoonful of sugar helps the fellatrix go down,
The fellatrix go dowwwwwn
The fellatrix go down
Talking-is-a-free-action! Sing along, everyone! Everyone who sings along gets a special prize afterwards!
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the fellatrix go down,
In a most delightful way!"​

A much larger singing group joins in on this chorus, drowning out any protests that might have otherwise occurred.

(The Talking Is A Free Action skill is super odd. It feels like the song's progress didn't slow down at all while you interjected the words, and it also doesn't feel like the sentences happened faster than usual.)

Now you've come to an extended musical interlude in the song, and people are starting to kick chairs aside to dance with each other.

Which means that this is the part of the song where Mary Poppins...

You point your non-microphone-holding hand at two boys sitting next to each other.

And, just like Mary Poppins does in the movie, you click your fingers.

One of the boys looks at the other, and then looks away, face already reddening. The other boy is much more direct and is going straight for the first boy's pants zipper.

You point at a man and a woman standing next to each other. You mentally picture them realizing that they're safe, they're free, and that absolutely nothing bad happens if they get naked and do anything they want to each other. The moment in the music arrives, you snap, and their clothes start coming off.

"Oh my god, it's a flash orgy!" one guy cries out, and you weren't thinking in those terms but wow that must be exactly what this looks like from outside.

"Do you think someone who didn't sign up is allowed to join in---" begins the guy standing next to him and you snap your fingers at two women standing nearby. They've always secretly wanted to be in a flash musical orgy, right?

"Oh my god!" cries the first guy again, as one of the women starts to remove his clothing.

Now it looks like the MC has---with some internal conflict---decided that his duty calls for him to come over to you and try to shut this down.

You dance back from him with a feeling of glorious triumph, like nothing can possibly stop you while the music is playing. You have no idea if there's a skill for that, and you don't care. No negative consequences will happen to your minions if they get aggressively affectionate with whatever fools dare stand in your way.

You exert your will and the MC goes down under a pile of three athletic-looking women.

Your harem can have the kingdoms and thrones of the Earth. This is power.

The Communist, the Conservative, and the Scientist are all just staring at this.

"How's that for societal change, fuckers?" you yell back at them.

"Ultimately futile," says the Scientist.

You flip him your middle finger, press your thumb against that middle finger, and snaprabbit all three of them.

Somebody in the audience starts laughing wildly as the three panelists begin to remove clothing. You can't help smiling yourself. Yeah, that would have been funny if it had been a joke.

Several fingersnaps later the musical interlude is approaching its end, and an increasing number of men and women are looking at you with lustful gazes.

In Mary Poppins, the real chaos starts after the next lines, the last spoken lines in the song.

A twinge of nervousness goes through you at the thought of the special prize you promised everyone for singing along, but you did promise so it's not like you have a choice anymore---right? You keep on fantasizing this fantasy and you should just fant it. The time is right dramatically. There's no children present in this crowd or anybody you find unattractive. You're still afraid---but there's arousal in your fear and that means you're ready, you must be ready, your quest wouldn't have allowed you to do this otherwise.

Just as you're wondering who'll sing the counterpart from Mary Poppins's image in the mirror, another woman steps up beside you. She has red hair of her own, though less impressive, and she's removed all of her own clothing that you're also not wearing---which means she's down to thigh-high stockings and her own high heels. Her cheeks are visibly red, and she has the manic expression of somebody who can't believe what she's doing.

It reminds you again of that triumph you felt before, and that life sometimes goes well for you even when you're nervous about something.

"There's a power high beyond us
From a world I don't know
I've no idea why it came to me
It brought freedom, it brought fun,
And maybe everyone
Could know
(could know)
That glow
(that glow)
Maybe it should be so..."​

The woman next to you sings the wordless high notes that are her part, and when she's done, you speak the last word.

"Cheeky," you say to her.

And then everyone in the parking lot knows that nothing bad will happen if they do anything they want to you.

How long should this arc continue?
Median vote wins. You can vote for at most one option below.
Each activity includes those above it, so the votes below indicate (in order) "End arc now", "Succubus", "Succubus+Inventor", and "Succubus+Inventor+Kidnap."

[X] Head to Charles after the flash orgy concludes.
[X] Keep going until Cindy has posed as a succubus.
[X] Keep going until Cindy has met an ERO 33 mad inventor.
[X] Keep going until Cindy has kidnapped the mayor's daughter.

You can also offer contributed verses retroactively to Cindy's list of Ero things, the one that starts "There's fairies in the shadows now, and weirder on the way."

[X][VERSE] Write-in.

Marking contributions with [X][VERSE] is optional. You don't need to vote for others' votes, I'll just be deciding. I don't guarantee use of any verses offered. I might edit. Consider it an omake-like gamble.

Spoiler: Author's note

And that's what took so long. (I ended up posting it as 7.3.11 instead of 7.3.12.) In retrospect, I have no self-control when it comes to not taking challenges, and should not have been confident in my ability to give up after four minutes and fifty-nine seconds.

I do anticipate the possible other arc sections being less impossible to write, but they will still take time and I've been busier of late.

Regardless of which vote wins, next up is an interlude with Old Ned and Copper Swallow.

Post scriptiddlyidlum: Contributed better words than "fellatrix" are welcome, especially more unisex and inclusive words, and especially since my chosen pronunciation is neither of the two disputing ones I found online. I just couldn't find a better word that scanned right for entities that go down on things.

7.3.12*: No Consultations

Spoiler: Author note

Okay, next chapter is the interlude with Copper Swallow and Old Ned Stonefield. I was convinced by the commenter who worried that the orgy sex wouldn't be delivered. To avoid the illusion of it maybe not being delivered for later readers, here it is, delivered right away and not being held back a chapter.

Spoiler: Lines added to verses in previous chapter

"There's fairies in the shadows now, and weirder on the way
Our weather forecast says it will rain sluts in lingerie
Cruel sadist lesbians in gangs and roaming bands
People fucking in the streets and couples holding hands
Muscled men with footlong schlongs who think they aren't gay
Blushing awkward schoolboys who can't decide today
Groping robot tentacles that disobey their code
Mind-controlling headsets with a body-swapping mode
Clumsy magic females whose clothing sparkles off
Expies of Asuka and Natasha Romanoff
Mirrors manifesting your depraved corrupt reflection
Dragons hoarding harems who want you for their collection
Minotaurs and mermaids striking bargain for your seed
Or stranger things you really wouldn't think would interbreed
Childhood encounters with a destined lover true
Gentlemen with many cocks and ladies made of goo
Cursed enchanting piercings set to punish or to please
Locking licking panties inescapable that tease
Mercenary schoolgirls, goldhearted professionals
And magic cancellation skills for skeptical asexuals
So hold out hope, and don't give up, for help is on the way!
At least it's sorta kinda help... with luck we'll be okay."​

There's a line forming in front of you, marked by a generally cheerful attitude, eager to have you but cooperative about doing it in good order. Like a carnival where a new ride just opened up, and the ride is you. Other people in the crowd are continuing to dance with each other. Some of the dances are going horizontal. The Mary Poppins music is still going on.

You want to take a nervous step backwards, but more than that you want to stand your ground. It could be pride as an eroge character, or shame that you're still so scared of your own fantasies after everything, or, uh, knowing there are lustful people approaching from behind too so stepping backwards won't escape.

You wish that you could bridge time and space to suddenly be in the same mood as in Goodwill's basement, when you exited the dressing room with semen on your chest and a woman whispered slut into your ear. The mood of waiting for someone to take you away. You are horny, you've been Teased, but you aren't in the same yielding state of mind. Maybe you just need to keep it together the first time you get passed around and fucked by a crowd of people, and then next time it won't be scary and you won't be distracted by your own thoughts.

It's a buff college boy who's first in line and you think that's his girlfriend taking his pants off. He's looking right at your pussy with a heated, eager expression.

The heated look in his eyes, the way he's being stripped in public like that, it's---it's lewd. And that's helping.

Once the buff boy is stripped from the waist down, he moves to stand next to you. Without bothering to consult you first, he sticks a finger into your pussy likes he owns it, and nods approvingly at the ease with which his finger slips inside you. The girlfriend moves up behind you and grips both of your upper arms, a motion that both stabilizes and restrains you. The male of the pair lifts up your left leg, and maneuvers his cock around some to find the right angle. Nobody is talking to you, just taking you.

You take a sharp breath as he thrusts between your split legs into your restrained and helpless pussy.

He doesn't bother starting off slow, just pounds you hard right from the start. Being considerate of all the people waiting behind him in the line. The female of the pair is breathing heavily behind you, the breathy sounds of a pervert, as her hands grip your shoulders hard. You make a low sound under your breath as he pounds into you even faster. To all appearances those two both ignore it, like they don't care what sounds you make, like this isn't about you.

After less than a minute he speeds up, pounds into you in a way that draws another hitching breath from you, and gives a soft grunt.

You're not close to coming but you know that's okay, you'll get fucked more now.

The girlfriend lets go of your arms once he's finished, kneels down in front of you with a natural motion, and tries to lick his come out of your pussy. She doesn't focus on pleasuring you but she gives your pussy lips a suck and tongueing, followed by a casual suck on your clit that makes you gasp. She ignores that sound too.

The next person in line is also a college-age boy. He asks in a shy voice if a few people could hold you in the air and spread your legs wide for him, like you're doing the splits, so he can fuck you while you're being suspended. Apparently he has a fantasy about that. Nobody asks your own opinion.

Five people grab you and grip you and spread your legs and put you into the position he wants. He pounds into you hard and fast, just like the previous man, and doesn't hold back or delay at all before he comes inside you.

He pulls out, and the building warmth in you fades again. There's a hitch in your own breathing as you realize that being fucked hard by one man after another, but always with them stopping and letting you cool down for ten seconds before the next one steps up, could be its own type of teasing torture. You'll have to make it all the way to orgasm in one minute, or however long it is, or you'll just be dropped down again. Oh, oh no, oh. A different woman quickly steps in to suck the come out of you again, giving your clit a few hard licks in the process. Another man steps up to where you're being held, another cock starts ramming in and out of you.

"Can we lay her out on the judge's table?" says one of the women holding you in place. "I want to ride her mouth while she's being fucked."

"We can just hold her in the air in whichever position," says the next man in line, undoing his pants and stepping closer to you. "I think there's enough of us to keep holding her up, if we take turns."

"Let's reserve her face for women until we're sure everyone has had a chance to ride," says a middle-aged-but-still-pretty woman in a bossy voice. "Ladies, if you don't think you can come on her face in a minute or two, you should probably start playing with yourself now."

Some of the women in line gasp or blush, but many of them dutifully stick their hands down their pants.

The sight is so lewd that you think even you are blushing, and you know then that you'll be fine.

There's some more murmured coordination, none of which involves asking you. Then somebody pulls your head back, making you gasp again as your body is arched, even as your hips are held in position for cock. You can no longer see the line of people waiting to fuck you. You're maneuvered to where a warm pussy is pressed down on your face, a nectar scented like sweetened lilac. Without a conscious decision on your part, your Arcadia-trained mouth starts licking and sucking, the only motion that's permitted you. Your limbs and your body are being held in place by a dozen different hands gripping you hard.

A cock speeds up, rams into you a few times, and withdraws. The warmth building up inside you, that gets higher each time but hasn't yet reached the edge, quickly fades in the pause and the absence of stimulation.

"Please," you try to say into pussy, "keep, keep stimulating my---" but the pussy on your mouth presses down harder and smothers you, rides your face and smears you with sweetened lilac nectar. Whoever's riding your face, she doesn't seem interested in letting you talk when she knows nothing bad will happen if you can't.

Another cock invades your pussy, a thicker one, and you moan as it starts hitting you fast. Oh, you could maybe come this way, oh, or maybe not. The lilac-flavored pussy pulses under your mouth, contractions that must feel so good to whoever's riding your face, and when she hops off the ride another pussy takes her place seconds later.

Then whoever's riding your face grabs your hair in two fistfuls and yanks on it to force your head harder into her pussy, and it feels like a flip being switched in your brain. Your body arches without being aware of it, and you almost, but don't quite, manage to come.

When the whole crowd has finished using you, everyone who wanted a second or third turn has taken one, and the men who wanted to fuck your mouth have done so after all the interested women took a turn, you've been thoughtfully wrapped up in a warm blanket and tucked into an out-of-the-way corner of the parking lot. A few remaining riders are chatting in lowered voices and you know on a wordless level that they're there because someone has to be there, there has to be someone present who knows who you are and what you did. While some participants are still there, knowing, you're still that cute generous girl-ride who was tucked up warmly. Otherwise you'd be an unknown homeless person wrapped in a blanket. The remainers are chatting in lowered voices so you won't be bothered, just being there without being obtrusive.

Lying next to you is a bottle of water, a shopping bag full of assorted cash bills that somebody pressed into service as a tip jar, and one gift certificate for a free massage at the Warm Hands Body Shop.

You let yourself lie curled up snug in the blanket for a while, your thoughts mostly blank. The blanket is wrapped firmly and tightly, a pressure around you like a whole-body hug but without the complications of you needing to interact with anyone.

When you finally feel like unwrapping yourself, the last few stragglers in the parking lot are (conveniently) just heading off. You wave to them as they go, and they wave back.

You sit up and continue staring off into space at the empty parking lot for a bit, and then shake your head, like you're waking up.

That was... nice. And nicer once you stopped being self-conscious about it. Everyone was cooperating (with each other, not with you) to hold you in place and make sure everyone got a turn to ride you. It was a friendly mass molestation and that atmosphere really appeals to you. And you got fucked hard by one hard cock after another, with no choice about when or if you came but coming a few times anyways, which is an underrated life experience in your opinion. You have no idea what the usual rating is, but whatever it is, it's underrated.

"Status," you murmur.

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (49,150 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 418/460
SUB: 510/510

BOD: 28
LST: 23
SED: 25
FUK: 22
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $8779

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Charles Adan, Tincture of Coordination III
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted
Equipment: Darkfire earrings, High heels (Tier 3)

Busy Mode: On

Your eyes are still somewhat glazed, go figure, and you have to focus to read. You manage to concentrate enough to notice that you're not just full up on SUB, you gained enough XP to put you almost at LVL 12. And you seem to have gone over some implicit limit for maximum nectars and gotten an advanced mixture instead.

Your gaze drops to the shopping bag full of money. It was nice of somebody to set out that tip-jar-bag for you. You were somewhat distracted but you think you heard people carrying cash accepting Paypal from people who weren't carrying cash, so everyone could tip you. More group niceness. Group niceness during sex is also underrated.

You close your eyes, tell the Erogame to deposit the money, and when you open your eyes not only the money but the whole shopping bag is gone. Another status check shows you're up to $10,199 now, which... wow. Five-figure net wealth. You're not sure, but you think most adults don't have that much money in their bank accounts.

"Busy mode off," you murmur, and start to go through notifications. Though, with the Quest of Safety, you shouldn't need to worry about having acquired any horrible new passive skills.

Trying on real jewelry for the first time causes your BOD to go up by 1!

A skill has been created by a special action! Having earrings put on you before you remember that your ears aren't pierced has created the skill Penetrated.

Penetrated: Lvl MAX. (Passive.)

You are already pierced. Only some placings count as standard locations from which you can receive general equipment bonuses as opposed to location-specific equipment bonuses.

Trying on expensive jewelry for the first time causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Trying on extremely expensive jewelry for the first time causes your BOD to go up by 1!

Ero Achievement: Kindly volunteering to fulfill Keifon Bradford's long-held fantasy about licking a woman all over and leaving her wet and unsatisfied earns you +150XP. Really, that was very nice of you.

Slack will later increase by 1 due to your epiphany about the unimportance of getting anything done on time. Not right now, whenever the game system gets around to updating your character sheet.

Ero Achievement: Letting Grady Ericson quickly and uncaringly fuck you in public, while you bend over with your eyes closed, earns you +150XP.

A skill has been created by a special action! Modifying the skill Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit to have a continuous area of effect has @)#($^-#)@(*$-@#!@(*%#-#@)*%^-$*&.

You frown at the message hovering before you. The font looks normal, you can't see any difference between it and the other letters, but something about that particular combination of symbols is making it hard to read. You can't tell whether the letters spell out "Lagomorphic Field" or "Hop Springs Eternal" or "On a Pale Hare She Rides" or "The White Rabbit"... or possibly that's meant to be "The Light of Hope"? Trying to get info on any of those skill names produces no result, and you no longer seem to have the previous "Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit" skill either. You'll come back to this issue once you've read the remaining notifications, you guess. At least it can't be an Awful Passive Skill.

Ero Achievement: Wandering through the dark on minimum rabbit levels, letting random Norville inhabitants lightly touch you and sample your goods, while you frustrate yourself by fantasizing about them doing more, earns +500XP.

A skill has been created by a special action! Speaking a rhyme of your own invention aloud in public, after composing it on the spot, has created the skill Improvised Performance.

A skill has been created by a special action! Randomly bursting into song has created the Burst Into Song subskill of Musical Logic.

You knew you had to have acquired some type of skill like that. Actually seeing it in pink-violet text is still making you feel embarrassed. You give the text a skeptical glare, to make it clear to the invisible Player of your eroge that the game having a Burst-Into-Song skill wasn't your idea. "Info, skills, improvised performance and burst into song."

Info // Skills // Improvised Performance

Improvised Performance: Lvl 2 (70%). 1 D|S / line.

At Lvl 2 of this skill, while performing in public, you can quickly improvise lines (including rhymes, raps, lyrics, or comedy routines) that are the same lines you would invent if you worked on them for 20 minutes each without invoking this skill.

Info // Skills // Reality Skills // Musical Logic

Musical Logic: Lvl 1 (2%). Passive and Active.

Operate reality according to the logic of a musical.

Burst Into Song: Lvl 1 (43%). Special.

You can burst into song.

At Lvl 1+1 of this skill, bursting into song can't solve any problems that can't be solved by bursting into song.​

You'll have to think about whether you want to grind Musicalogic and Songburst. It seems like the type of skill that could be super useful, but whose higher levels would have many and varied consequences as the Erogame puts it.

Talking Is A Free Action has increased by 1.

A skill has been created by a special action! Being creamed by four cocks in a row while forgetting to use your Fluid Unformed skill has created the skill Fresh Fourths.

Fresh Fourths: Lvl 4 (28%). Passive.

You can be fucked by an arbitrary number of people without ever getting too full or icky down there.

Fresh Fourths has increased by 1.

Fresh Fourths has increased by 1.

Fresh Fourths has increased by 1.

Having fucked a cumulative total of over 100 sexual partners causes your FUK to go up by 1!

Ero Achievement: Quickly but pleasantly fucking 71 people with no in-game goals except your own concupiscence earns you +7100XP, and +$1420 in miscellaneous tips.

And that's all the messages.

Your cheeks feel hot again, but also you seem to be giggling. Over 100 sexual partners. Well, there's absolutely no doubting it now, you are officially a slut with no take-backs.

Also, if the simple division you did in your head means what you think it does, $20 in tips per fuck for mass orgies, you can earn $1000 at any time just by walking into a crowd of 50 people and letting them all fuck you. If you did that once per day, you could earn $365,000 per year. Which---which isn't much compared to the earning rate of spending a night with the Arcadia twins, let alone the Fold in the Wolf quest. But, but the point is, this is repeatable, this is reliable income you're looking at here.

And you'll be LVL 12 any hour now. So by sacrificing the Nine-Colored Lotus Hair Clip to temporarily boost your LVL to 15, you could take More Marshmallows... unless Mom tells you that you ought to wait for LVL 17 to use that trick, so you can get two extra perk points instead of one... maybe you shouldn't ask her.

Your thoughts turn back to that skill with the hard-to-read name. You could list all your skills, and try to spot an unfamiliar skill there. But that's a long list, and the font might not be any more readable there. Um. Maybe you could try...

"Info, skills, the skill that Follow the Fucking Rabbit evolved into," you try.

Surprisingly, this works.

Info // Truths // *#@)(*@#*&^#%#@()&#%

*#@)(*@#*&^#%#@()&#%: Lvl ? (?). Active and Passive.

If people around you happen to ponder certain questions, they are more likely to come to correct conclusions about facts such as how likely they are to contract a venereal disease, be spotted by an authority, or be reported to the police. They may then act accordingly, given their own nature and goals. You can expend more energy to intensify this effect further; but it should come as no great surprise to you at this point that you cannot, in fact, turn it off^#(*$-@)#*-#@-$(*)@-#$@#)(*$-%@)-@#($)%*-$)%^(*@#@#)-(*#%-@!()&#%-{!*(#%}-#$@@#)(*%-!@)(#%-()-)@#(*%_#)-%(^&@_!{)*-%#@%@#{)${)(%-!@)#@%-@#()*$#@#%&)#@(-@)#(*&^$%-#@()*%)@$%^)#-@#-)(*$&*^@-)#%$-@()#*%@#-#)(&%)*^-{*$%-!@^^#@$^{)-(*(#@&^$#@-)(#@&^)$-#)@@#-{($@()@#})wonder whether this constitutes "mind control" is confused, as it accords with the laws of reality on a deeper level than any biology or physics that might otherwise describe how one state of mind follows from another.

And the sign showing "Days Since Cindy Has Last Acquired An Absurdly Powerful Late-Game Skill" flips back to 0.

So now you have a passive Rabbit field you can't turn off. An unclosable open invitation saying how much of a fun time can be had by molesting you. An invitation which has attained the status of a transcendent truth directly perceivable by other minds, if you're reading this right, which you're sure you're not.

You---you ought to be alarmed by this. You ought to be very alarmed by this. It's not just that you're broadcasting an invitation you can't turn off. It's not just that you now have yet another skill you shouldn't have able to get at this point in the game. It's that having a passive invitation to be molested will, sooner or later in your life, count as a negative consequence for you. What happened to the Erogame's promise that nothing you did on the quest would go wrong in any way? Can you not trust that anymore? Can you not trust the Erogame's promises at all?

That's what you ought to be thinking.

Instead, you feel oddly---peaceful.

This---this isn't a bad skill. You can feel that, somehow. As if the parts you can't read are radiating existential antiterror, like an H. P. Lovecraft novel read backwards. A rorroh story where Cthulhu falls asleep and everyone goes sane.

And you're not panicking about having gotten this skill inside your super-safe quest, because it seems obvious how that happened. You got this mysterious skill in however the same way you got the overpowered skills for Conceptual Hair and Time Control at ERO 19. It's not that The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway quest text lied to you, it's that whatever happened went outside the game rules. And you were asking for that, having epiphanies the way you did. So long as you don't walk into any more darknesses having overly deep thoughts again, you should be as safe as the game text said you were.

At some point you need to figure out what's going on with you acquiring Reality Skills in a way that isn't inside the game rules. It can't possibly not be important. If you were as smart as Sonia you'd probably be able to look at that one fact and make some incredible deduction that blows the whole mystery wide open. She'd probably say something about, you don't know, there can't be two impossible things happening to you at the same time, just one impossible thing that looks like two impossible things. Unfortunately you're not as smart as Sonia and you don't know how to complete the thought.

You stand up from where you were sitting, letting the blanket fall to the ground, and take a long luxurious stretch.

You did make progress on Orgasmic Nonbothering, you're pretty sure. You feel more like a Real Eroge Character now. One who can get restrained and passed around and fucked by dozens of friendly people without that being a problem for her. You know you can handle group sex, dubious consent, nonconsensual molestation by lesbians, assholes trying to blackmail you, actually being raped by somebody with a gun although that still makes you flinch to think about, or a crowd of people passing you around like a collections basket.

You feel like you could walk into an eroge, and, so long as nobody died or got badly hurt, you'd be okay with the sexy parts. Well, so long as nothing involving poop happened. Or incest. And nothing with loli or shota in it. Nothing involving the suffix "-con" attached to anything, preferably ever. You could handle a relatively vanilla eroge is what you're tentatively thinking here.

Does that mean---the quest is over?

You haven't really participated in an eroge plot on this quest, just some individual sexy events. That might not count as visiting the worlds of eroge once without holding back...

You've been at this for a while. Part of you feels impatient, like you ought to go see Charles and get on with doing the very important thing that will change both of your lives forever.

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 255 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 7629-7848]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Keep going until Cindy has kidnapped the mayor's daughter.
No. of Votes: 56

Spoiler: Voters

Robotninja
514X0r
aid_n
Aoinfinity
AramilOniasha
Asquil
CTCatapult
david
Eler0
Elitist Oars
End of Line
Fake Namington
GGS109
Greckle
Gvkuku
iii
Indophenol
january1may
Kai Merah
MaggieoftheOwls
modigar
Oglymogly
Olivebirdy
Omnomimous
pepperjack
PlaneOfInfiniteCats
PlasticSoldier
Prefixmancer
Prime 2.0
Proxima
QazdaMorquil
Rathmun
RedKnite
Runestereye
ScrewFate
Scrutable
SETIFAN
Sirrocco
Skelm
somervta
Spectral Waltz
Systemmaker
The Sandman
The_Wanderer
TheEyes
Theli
truemechasonic
Tulip
Uvigz
varno
VoidVagabond
wasprider
wtungsten
Xidas
zachol
w.cheff

[X] Head to Charles after the flash orgy concludes.
No. of Votes: 17

Spoiler: Voters

Blackshard
AnonymousPervert
askldjflkajskje
CatAttck
Chulup
Civil Reader
DarthSquidious
Forged
Galonious
gRR
Jaso
modrony
MrBTXz
Scottsman
SoulofaGremlin
sun tzu
Sykomantis

[X] Keep going until Cindy has posed as a succubus.
No. of Votes: 16

Spoiler: Voters

AylorAivo
anon101
BastetsChosen
Destrark
Dinarte33
Gingganz
kabs
legion0047
Prince Chrom
raisins
sharps
Sitxar
theonebutcher
Valint
Valmit
Wulfenbach

[X] Keep going until Cindy has met an ERO 33 mad inventor.
No. of Votes: 10

Spoiler: Voters

Jirachi
Derpmind
Diraniola
Ephemeral
Gavinfoxx
lurkymclurkerton
madness
MissileTeatime
Nemonowan
rogerthat

Task: VERSE

[X][VERSE] And for you kinky fuckers who will go the extra mile / Local eldritch monsters looking for a xenophile!
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

napkintooth
january1may

[X][VERSE] Cultivators ever striving, Cute Aliens Arriving
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Jirachi

[X][VERSE] Cursed enchanted piercings of an intimate design
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

impossiblearchitect

[X][VERSE] Living teasing underwear that'll trap you on cloud nine
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

impossiblearchitect

[X][VERSE] "Aliens and sliders and uplifts from a lab. - They try to keep it secret but someone always blabs."
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Rathmun

[X][VERSE] Remember the Harkness Test, don't fuck it if it can't say yes.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Rathmun

[X][VERSE] The Ero-Virus makes you young and healthy, all with ease / And if you use the Seifuze you'll be safe from STDs
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

napkintooth

[X][VERSE] A cornucopia of lust, to satisfy... or not, / For those of you who think the Nile river's boiling hot.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

napkintooth

[X][VERSE] A world of pleasure waits for you – it's not that far away / Your sexuality is natural – come; join today!
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

napkintooth

[X][Verse]Tired old magical boys always unretire for one last rodeo
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Guile

[X][VERSE] Shy and lonely demons who need orgasms to thrive
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Kappa

[X][VERSE] Bees in search of lovers they can pass around the hive
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Kappa

[X][VERSE] Adventurous blue aliens who want to see your tits
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Kappa

[X][VERSE] Monsters in the dark who'd love to fuck you right to bits
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Kappa

[X][VERSE] Enchanted mirrors letting you make out with your reflection
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Kappa

[X][VERSE] Dragons hoarding sex toys who want you for their collection
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Kappa

[X][VERSE] Witches selling charms that make your fantasies come true
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Kappa

[X][VERSE] Gentlemen with gentle fangs and ladies made of goo
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Kappa

[X][VERSE] Burdened by Arrow's theorem of impossibility? Consider trying out a polypile polity
No. of Votes: 1

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Theli

[X][verse] ...
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

VoidVagabond

[X][Verse]breasts growing too big to walk yet feel so good you wish they never stop.
No. of Votes: 1

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fictionfan

[x][verse] scientist their knowledge and experiments hone
No. of Votes: 1

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Banarok Lionrage

-[x][verse] Sexbots can be found and easy to loan (alternative)
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Banarok Lionrage

[x][verse] within haunted mansions ghosts in bondage moan
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Banarok Lionrage

[x][verse] but beware as your bed is hopping and creaking
No. of Votes: 1

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Banarok Lionrage

[x][verse] not-vampires in the night are sneaking
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Banarok Lionrage

Total No. of Voters: 105

But, it seems, a much larger part of you has decided that going around not being scared of things has been extremely good for your mental health and you should go do that some more.

And, uh, you're kind of tempted, to, uh... go break some rules? It's---you're not sure you're going to do this for real. But it's kind of interesting to imagine, uh, how much trouble you might get into if you were actively trying.

| Components | Effect
Tincture of Coordination (III) | Consume at least 30 nectars from people amicably coordinating to feed them to you, without you having been consulted in their decisionmaking. | Any collective choice process taking place near you will reach agreement on a course of action---perhaps not the right action, but at least they'll have agreed. (6hr)

7.d.1* [EP]: Perfectly Safe

The taxi ride went by in a haze of lust for Erin Penna Copper Swallow, her thoughts completely consumed by the buzzing in her ass. The part of her mind that stood back and watched knew that she would, under other circumstances, have been surprised at how the taxi driver seemed to completely ignore the loud random buzzes. Just as she knew that other under circumstances she'd have been afraid of the strange old man who'd seized her and taken her away, or afraid of why her own thoughts had changed so drastically. But none of that mattered urgently, she was safe to set it aside and be consumed in the vibrations that tormented her. For Copper Swallow knew in her bones and her wet core that nothing bad could possibly happen to her if she ignored all the questions for a while.

The old man had picked up her phone and clothes from the sex toy shop, everyone there also ignoring the buzzing in her ass and seeming oblivious to her nudity beneath the leather duster the old man had put around her. She'd begged the old man to make her come right there, heedless of the people around her as they were heedless of her, after she'd seen that girl's text message saying other dominants were allowed to make her come. (Illyria, her name was, then?) The old man had told Copper Swallow he didn't like to hear begging or pleading, and he'd make his own decisions on that subject. There'd been a darker look in his eyes as he said it, and combined with a particularly long and angry buzz inside her ass she'd almost come. Sometimes the vibrator in her ass seemed almost sentient in how cruelly it teased her and how it seemed to always stop at just the wrong time.

The old man held her firmly, comfortingly, through the taxi ride. But he hadn't taken the vibrator out of her ass. The slightest jolt of the taxi made the leather duster rub against her nipples and her inner thighs, and she'd been teased so thoroughly and relentlessly that any touch at all was enough to make her moan.

The taxi arrived at an old two-story brownstone, with an outer staircase leading down one side to a visible basement door below.

The complete stranger took her leash gently in hand and led her into his house. There was nobody who knew where she was. Nobody who could rescue her if the old man just kept her in his basement and hurt her and teased her ever after and never let her come again. Copper Swallow didn't know that couldn't happen. She only knew that it couldn't be a bad thing if it did.

The door closed behind her.

BUZZZZZZZ.

The leather jacket the man had lent her was removed from her, leaving her as helplessly naked and exposed to punishment as she'd been in the park.

BUZZZZZZZ.

She was hardly aware of her surroundings as she was led upstairs and laid down on a soft bed in what seemed to be a made-up guest room. Would she be fucked now?

BUZZZZZZZ.

The old man didn't start taking off his own clothes. Instead he pulled something out from under the bed, where she couldn't see it. Handcuffs to restrain her, maybe?

BUZZZZZZZ.

Instead, when he rose from under the bed, he was holding a fresh pack of 100 wooden clothespins.

BUZZZ---stop.

Copper Swallow sobbed and twisted her hips, but she didn't beg to come, that had been forbidden her.

One by one the old man started putting the clothespins on her, each one a fresh bite of pain. Everywhere. Her armpits, her neck, the horribly sensitive webbing between her thumb and index fingers. She sobbed again when the old man carefully put a clothespin between each of her toes.

The old man didn't stop until every one of the clothespins was gone. By then she had a dozen clothespins on each breast surrounding the clothespins on each nipple, and clothespins on her thighs and the inside of her elbows. Her pussy lips hadn't been spared, and one especially cruel bite of pain marked the clothespin applied to her asshole.

The old man began taking off his clothes, then.

The old man applied a condom to himself.

Copper Swallow realized what was about to happen to her.

BUZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

The old man climbed into bed with her. His movements as a lover would have been gentle and intimate, as he hugged her and laid himself over her and kissed her, if not for the clothespins biting and twisting her skin with every caress. It was like a mockery of lovemaking, a cruelty like pushing her to the ground and walking over her, and at the same time as intimate and gentle as if the clothespins hadn't been there. Her mind, already overloaded and revved against its stop by the sheer perversion of all that was happening to her, couldn't react in any way except arching her body, moaning, opening her legs and limbs and yielding herself to everything.

The old man spread aside the clothespins on her pussy lips, so that they lay flat against her pubis with fresh bites of pain, as he carefully inserted his hardness into her.

And then he fucked her.

She was weeping unrestrainedly as she twisted on the bed and the old man rowed himself in and out of her and the clothespins on her pussy dug into her and the clothespins over the rest of her went on biting.

The old man moved faster. One of the clothespins on her labia sprung back up and was agonizingly snapped off of her as the old man pushed himself in again.

Copper Swallow realized she was going to come, despite the pain or maybe even because of it.

The old man seemed to know it too. He sped up his own motions, another clothespin snapped off her pussy, then another. Right as he sped up again and gave his own grunt of pleasure, his hand reached out and pulled all the clothespins off her left breast, en masse.

Copper Swallow screamed and arched her back.

All the clothespins were ripped off her right breast too.

Copper Swallow came, and came, sobbing from the intensity of it. She was hardly aware, but her eyes were open, as she saw that the old man now seemed to be leaning over her and holding an ice pick with the sharp blade pointed straight down at her.

She knew she was perfectly safe right up until the old man stabbed the ice pick through her forehead at the height of her orgasm.

7.d.2 [EP]: Teach Me, Ned-Sensei

The blade didn't hurt, didn't feel like anything had penetrated her skull. But something inside her mind shattered, and suddenly Erin Penna was in a stranger's house with clothespins all over her, in the middle of the most intense orgasm of her life.

She would have screamed, if she hadn't already been in the middle of screaming for several other reasons.

The orgasm finished itself out.

When she'd gathered a shred of self-possession, enough to look around, the old man was sitting crosslegged on the bed looking at her with a concerned expression.

"I'm not about to hold you here against your will," the old man said. "It'd be illegal, for one thing. You know where the front door is if you want to run away, and I put your clothes from the adult bookstore next to it. But I strongly suggest that you stick around and listen to some things I need to tell you. Hugs are available too. Hi, I'm Ned Stonefield, sometimes called Old Ned. Wizard, retired private detective, former supernatural social worker."

The part of her brain that thought in words was---overloaded, distracted, and in complete shock. The part of Erin that didn't think in words understood the situation in flashes of perception: The woman who'd taken her had possessed magical powers. She'd been spelled to believe she was safe. The old man had broken the spell with that blade. It had probably been something he couldn't do unless she was in the middle of an orgasm.

She sat up in the bed and began pulling clothespins off herself. Each bite of pain seemed to send another pulse through her pussy, still twitching with the aftershocks of the most intense orgasm she'd ever had.

She didn't say thank you.

She also didn't curse him, or cry out that she wanted to go back.

The verbal part of her mind was puttering like a dying car engine, consumed in an endless loop of WHAT what WHAT what WHAT what WHAT what WHAT what WHAT.

"What just happened?" Erin Penna said in a plaintive tone, after she'd gotten all the clothespins off her toes.

"It's complicated," the old man said. "If there's nowhere in particular you want me to start, I can just start talking."

"The---the woman?"

The old man frowned. "I'm not sure exactly what she was. I thought at first she was a clueless Fae aristocrat, but that was before I got a good look at her hair. Now I'm thinking Highdweller."

"Fae," Erin Penna said. "Highdweller?"

"The real world's a big place. The Fae are our next-door neighbors. The Things That Dwell On High are complicated."

Hugs were available... he'd said.

Her eyes evaluated the old man's appearance for the first time, now that it was no longer the case that anyone was allowed to use her. Ned Stonefield wasn't her physical ideal, she didn't consider herself a connoisseur of older men, but he wasn't repulsive either.

A few minutes earlier she hadn't minded the thought of him keeping her inside his basement forever.

And now she'd---she'd just---she'd---

"Hugs," Erin Penna said.

Hugs there were.

It was a very nice and comfortable bed. The old man's arms felt warm around her as she curled up as the little spoon.

Part of her wanted to just lie there and be held.

A significantly louder part of her wanted to lay there and be held and hear a lot of explanations.

"Magic is real?" she said. There were other elements to her internal disarray, but that one was less personal than some of the others. "How---how is that allowed?"

The old man let out a surprised bark of laughter. "You don't ask easy questions, do you? Hah, well, if you asked me why magnets are possible... well, I know it's got something to do with electrons and how they spin. If you asked me why electrons are allowed, I'd have to shrug and say it's always been that way. Though one difference between electricity and magic is that there isn't an electrical circuit covering the whole Earth that keeps lightning out of the news."

It was hard to keep her mind on his words. Erin Penna hurt all over in a way that felt sexual, she'd just had the most intense experience of her life and there was still a plug aching inside her ass even if the batteries had run out. She'd been forced to live out a type of fantasy that she'd felt ashamed of reading, uncomfortable about masturbating to, and it did not need to be explained to her that it was too late to pretend she hadn't liked it. A man had looked her with cruel eyes and started pulling out her pubic hair one handful at a time, and she'd writhed and had her legs held in place and felt the shame of being exposed in public to dozens of eyes---even as she'd known that she was perfectly safe and nothing bad could possibly happen to her. "The woman made me believe I was safe---was I?"

"Yeah," Old Ned said. "She may have acted like a nervous kid, but that's a type of disguise some of them have. She had more power in her left asscheek than most Fae have in their entire bodies and I frankly did not understand her hair."

An image flashed by in her mind, something that had seemed perfectly safe at the time, and she felt all her muscles tighten. "Cellphones! People were holding up their cellphones!"

"The lady fiddled with that tiny mask you were wearing," the old man said. His arms around her were firm, reassuring. "They may have recordings, but nobody's going to recognize you in them."

"My head was blurred?"

"Nah," the old man said. "Crystal clear, I expect. Nobody's going to recognize you anyways."

"How does that work?" Erin said.

"Near as I could make out, the mask concentrates your identity into your eyebrows and it covers your eyebrows. Don't lose it, it's worth some money now."

Erin lay in the nice soft bed, held in warm arms, and struggled with this concept.

Old Ned sighed. "I think I'd better begin nearer the beginning. First thing you've got to understand, the world's a complicated place. Imagine you thought Norville was the whole world. Then somebody from outside shows up, so, once you realize there is an outside, you ask them, what's the outside like? It's bigger and more diverse than Norville, that's what it's like. If the whole Earth is the United States, the Fae realm is Canada. The USA and Canada think they're different, but from the perspective of Uttar Pradesh they're practically the same place. Canada has magnets just like the United States does. Most realms don't have magnets unless somebody imports them from China."

"Im---importing magnets from China," she said. "Are you---is that a metaphor?"

"No, it's literal. Most of Earth's exported magnets are sourced from China." She felt a motion behind her that could have been Old Ned shaking his head. "Sorry, I'm mixing metaphors and taking things out of order. Old men ramble, I'm afraid. Look, if you asked a Fae what she thought 'magic' was, and a translating effect picked out the nearest word that made sense in her own language, she'd tell you that 'magic' is any phenomenon that draws on the laws of another realm. You could say that the first law of magic is 'An object in motion remains itself' or 'Things keep their natures when they go from one place to another.' Though, not to mislead you, the real first law says that any path of portal transitions between the same source and destination stacks to the same shift in characteristics... sorry, that doesn't mean anything to you. Remember how I broke the glamour on you by poking you through the forehead? That blade came from a realm where glamours are physical objects and you can break them by poking them. People aren't made of the same stuff and won't be hurt if you poke them with the blade---that's not how things work on Earth, but it's the logic of the blade's home realm, and that blade keeps its properties here. Same principle, if you went to another realm and brought along a magnet from Earth, that magnet would attract anything that looked to your eyes like a ferrous metal. Buy an Earth magnet and spin it around something that a visiting human would interpret as a metal wire, and an electrical current will start to flow. That can be very useful inside a realm where the native laws of physics say that electrical charges don't exist. So that's Earth's primary magical export, high-powered magnets. Nobody wants anything we make that's more complicated than that."

"What are---you?"

A chuckle from behind her. "It's been a while since the last time someone said those words to me. Wizards are just mortal men and women with tools, miss. We go around scrounging the foreign things that make it to Earth, figure out how to stack them up in useful ways, and trade with each other to get pieces that can complete combinations. The gathering of magic, it's called."

It made sense as words. But it wasn't fitting into the real questions in Erin's mind, the deeper questions. "Why did that happen? To me? What does it mean?"

The old man's arms tensed. "Let me be clear about what it doesn't mean," he said, his voice sounding harsher. "The books you've read where somebody discovers magic and it changes their whole life, makes them special? That's not happening to you. There's hundreds of thousands of people who know about magic, maybe millions. Magic's not special, there just happens to be a spell over the Earth that prevents the news from spreading faster. It's not the meaning of life. The Fae aren't a superior life form, they're oversexed Canadians and some of them are rich enough to spend a hundred thousand dollars to gawk at Earth's native culture every hundred years. The woman who glamoured you, she's just a tourist from further away who blew even more money on her plane ticket. You get me? This isn't a story. You're not a protagonist. This is still real life, you just ran across a type of event that happens all the time but doesn't make the news."

"I---I see," she said. A tremble ran through her body.

"All right. Sorry for being so blunt, but it's a bad mistake to make. Now, while everyone on the planet has some Fae blood in them by now---"

"Wait, what?" Erin interrupted, feeling nearly as shocked as when she'd come out of her trance. "But---do Fae have DNA? With twenty-three chromosome pairs?"

The old man's arms tightened around her, and she quieted. "DNA is how things work here, miss. If you're a being from another realm whose nature is that you can breed with anything, and you come here and fuck a human, you can have a kid because that's how the rules work for you." Old Ned made a throat-clearing sound. "Let me back up some. The Fae are hybrids of humanity and an assortment of other creatures whose logic said they could breed with us. Oh, there's Fae who will tell you that humans are just worthless degenerate Fae who lost their magic," the old man's voice held a trace of bitterness, "but either those Fae are lying, or more likely, they fooled themselves back before humanity discovered its fossil record. Children are rare among the Fae, because it's not easy to assemble a combination of DNA and foreign pseudo-genes that work together. Viable male children are even rarer, something to do with males having only one X chromosome. Often a faerie child is born twisted, and those children go to live in... the provinces of Canada where the twisted people live. Under the right circumstances, a child can be born where more of the foreign traits are active and more of the biology is suppressed, a being that's more magic than flesh. Convention these days is to call them succubi, or rarely incubi, though there's other names if they end up not looking human...ish." The old man sighed. "Sometimes in a child like that, its magical traits work together wonderfully, producing a hybrid more powerful than any creature born of a single realm. Sometimes that child becomes so powerful, it can get a real job. And it moves away from the Fae realm and goes to live somewhere nicer. But it's still shaped like a human when it wants to be, and it understands humanity better than most of the Things That Dwell On High. It's even more sex-obsessed than the Fae, because most sapient life forms are. And if that entity is still able to feel compassion, it might travel to Earth as a tourist, meet a sexually repressed girl, and panic in complete horror and try desperately to help."

"Really?" said Erin Penna after a while.

"Yeah. You wanna know what it's actually like being that heroic wizard guy who stands between the Earth and the realms beyond? That. That's what it's like."

Erin mulled this over. "There's, there's a part of me that wants to write the tourist a thank-you note," she said, trying to keep her real feelings out of her voice.

It was true, there was a part of her that felt that way. There was a much larger part that was issuing an increasingly frantic call to run out of the house, find that nice alien tourist before she left, and fling herself down at Her feet and beg Her to---

"What you mean," Old Ned said from behind her, "is that you want to be glamoured again."

He wasn't wrong. "You don't understand---"

"That it was the only time in your life you felt truly happy? I do understand. This is not the first time such a thing has happened."

"No! You really don't understand! I'm, I'm..." How could this still be so hard to say after this man had seen her---"naked" was putting it nicely. He'd put on the clothespins and fucked her and hurt her, he was obviously no stranger to---to certain things---but---

"In love with her," Old Ned said resignedly.

Erin breathed deeply, and said the words out loud, squeezed them out of her throat like wringing a towel. "Mind control is, is a legitimate fetish, don't kink-shame me."

It was the first time she'd ever tried to defend one of her sexual preferences out loud, to anyone.

"Say what now?" said Old Ned, sounding genuinely surprised.

"I have a mind control fetish," she said, staring at the pillow in front of her face. It was too late to pretend she didn't read the stories she did, to pretend she hadn't gotten off on what had been done to her. It still felt awful to say out loud. "For being mind-controlled myself, not mind-controlling other people." Unless her controller ordered her to seduce and enslave others, in which case she wouldn't have a choice.

"Gods on high, girl! I've heard of some dangerous fetishes in my day, but that one takes the cake and then it takes another cake and has some more cake after that."

"I---" Erin said. That hadn't previously been high on her personal list of her most dangerous sexual impulses. "Well---so that means I'd better find a good person to enslave me, right?"

Old Ned made an odd sound behind her.

"Did I---say something wrong?" she said, feeling... well, she felt kink-shamed, that was how she felt.

"No. Yes. No. You need more background information."

"All, all right," Erin said. Panic threatened to rise in her at the thought that there might be some excellent reason she was never allowed to---to again---

"Right, so, this is what I was trying to say before. News flash, every human on Earth has some Fae blood in them at this point. News flash two, getting off sexually on pain doesn't make any evolutionary sense in human terms. Other primates don't do it. It's a foreign trait of the Fae that mixed back into the human bloodline. And the reason it hasn't bred out is that those foreign traits carry some advantages with them." Ned cleared his throat. "See where I'm going with this?"

"No," she said. She wasn't at her best right now.

"That's fine. Point is, if you meet a very pretty girl who seems deeply into BDSM, possibly her Fae heritage isn't that remote. Got a guess which of your recent ancestors might not've been mortal?"

"N-no?" said Erin in complete shock.

"Huh. You sure? Usually when I spring that question on someone, even if it takes them totally by surprise, they say 'Grandma Marigold' half a second later."

"I---I thought my family was normal." More normal than herself, certainly.

"Huh. So, humans with innate magic are called sorcerers. It's less powerful and versatile than wizardry, though to be fair it's also vastly less expensive. A true Fae can hold their own against a middling human wizard. Fae-blooded humans can't. The Fae has dozens of magical traits that form useful combinations, the sorcerer has a scattered handful of tricks. Most sorcerous traits out there don't let you make a living in modern society. Most sorcerers have regular jobs. So don't get too excited when I tell you that you're a sorceress. It's not that rare."

"I---what can I do?" Erin said blankly.

"I wouldn't know. Nothing strange about your childhood that suddenly makes sense now? You didn't have an imaginary friend who could look around corners and tell you what was behind?"

"Not that I can remember," Erin said. "If you don't know what I can do, then why---how do you know I'm a sorceress?"

"Painting by the front door blinked its eyes as you walked past. You're generating foreign energies, so you've got some functioning foreign traits."

"Oh. That's... nice?" At some other time this revelation might have loomed larger in her mind.

"Like I said, it's not likely to do much for you. But! The mana you're generating is useful in itself to a wizard with tools that can draw on it. Batteries from other realms are expensive like you wouldn't believe." The old man chuckled without much humor. "You know, there used to be a well-known difference between good wizards and bad wizards. Say you're wandering around a few centuries ago. One day you come across a pretty girl who's generating alien energies---a girl with a gaping flaw in her mental defenses, a temptation to submit to a stronger power that deals her pain. If you were a good wizard, you taught a girl like that to stay strong, to hold true to herself, to use her power for her own sake and not for some man who wanted to take her as property. You helped her deal with her desires, if you had enough Fae nature yourself to stomach it, and kept your own darker urges in check. If you were a bad wizard, why, you'd just found a useful new slave. And keep in mind, miss, this was back when a lot of folks thought women were things that men owned. Wizards had a code of women's rights before it was popular, partly because some wizards were women, and partly because the alternative was so horrible that even men noticed. Those ideas got a lot of sorceresses burned at the stake, but at least they died free." The old man behind her sighed, and there was genuine pain in it. "The Fae are right. Even for our mayfly lives, we let the Earth change too quickly. You either die young or live long enough to find that you've become a foreigner in your own realm. You try to adapt and they just change the rules again. The woman that you taught to master the alien desires in her blood, taught to stay free and own herself? That wasn't Women's Lib, it was kink-shaming. You should have just helped her find somebody nice to be enslaved to."

Well yes, thought Erin, and said nothing because the sadness in the old man's voice was very real.

"There's no home left for you to return to," the old man whispered, "no realm where the laws work the way you expect. It's gone. Swept away by time, and you've become too old to be swept along. I don't know if I can live in a world that has Fifty Shades of Grey in it."

By force, Erin stopped herself from saying that this was a widespread sentiment among younger people as well. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be. I had enough Fae in me to understand, once I let myself understand. It's just---never mind. Never mind. Water under the bridge."

"So---that's why that person wanted to help me? Because I was like her?"

The old man chuckled. "From her perspective, you're no closer to her social class than anything else that dies after a hundred years. But I expect she had an easier time seeing into your heart than with other mortals she'd met."

"Just some tourist playing at charity," Erin said. The thought hurt, surprisingly. Wasn't she into humiliation?

The old man's voice gentled. "She was a nice person, Erin Penna. There's a lot of good people out there, human or not. For all that she dwells in a higher place now, she remembers us. Sometimes she visits the homeland from which her own heritage began, long ago. It's hard for her kind to stay here. Earth is like a desert to her, and she has no food or water but what she brings with her. Sure, she can bring with edible nuclear reactors from a realm where nuclear reactors fit in your pocket and you can eat them, but those are expensive and she has to eat them like Pringles. It wasn't easy for her to visit us. And what she saw in your heart moved her so much that she spent a substantial fraction of all the energy she brought with, to..." The old man coughed. "Well, she was a bit of an idiot. But a good-hearted idiot. Those are to be treasured, for we'll miss them when they're gone."

"I want to tell her thank-you," Erin said. "How can I find her again?"

"You're not fooling me at all, miss. It cost her something like a million dollars to come here. Taking you back with her? Ten million dollars to have you fitted for a pet transport. Another million dollars a year to keep you."

"Maybe---" She knew she sounded desperate. "Maybe she's extremely rich and can afford to keep a pet like me?"

"Maybe she can't afford to keep you, and would feel so bad about that terrible, terrible sexual frustration she saw in your mind that she'd try anyways." The old man's voice had turned stern again. "I don't think you should put the nice idiot in that position, Erin Penna. She's done enough for you, and you are not in such dreadful straits whatever she may think."

She wanted to fold over on herself and sob. "All right," she whispered. A thought came to her and her mind seized on it with all the force of desperation. "What about---Illyria?" She had Illyria's phone number now! She could find her again!

"Illyria?" the old man said. "The person who sent you that text message saying you could have an orgasm? She's not an ordinary domina?"

Erin sat up in bed. Distantly she noted that her hands were trembling on her thighs, and another part of her admired the marks that now decorated her body, the lightly yellowing bruised areas on her breasts and thighs where the clothespins had tormented her. Yes, that was Copper Swallow's body, not Erin Penna's.

She recounted what she remembered of that brief encounter on the street.

Old Ned was frowning by the time she finished the recounting. "The brown-haired girl promised she wasn't reading your mind. You're certain of that?"

She nodded.

"Huh," Old Ned muttered. "And she said she was lucky? That's... odd."

"Why?" she ventured.

"There's no such thing as luck magic," the old man pronounced with authority.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Remember what I told you about the nature of magic? Every magical tool and trait in existence belongs to a spectrum of similar phenomena that originate from the same foreign realm and obey the same foreign laws. No unique talents, no unique artifacts, only families of related effects. There isn't any family of luck magics, and believe me, everybody would have heard if there were. Which means Illyria was lying, and that is something both humans and Fae can do, but it is not something a magic-user does without reason."

It made Erin feel oddly defensive. The brown-haired girl---Illyria---hadn't done as much for her as the tourist, but she'd given her a new name and the promise of adventure all the same. "She did send me that text message just when I needed it, although I forgot to look at my phone. Maybe she invented a new combination of tools?"

"Not possible," the old man said. "I expect Illyria left a tracer on you and snapped it off when she detected a greater power approaching. Look, remember what I said before, this isn't a story and you're not the protagonist. It may seem to you like you're in one of those stories you've read about special people discovering magic for the first time, where the rulebook gets thrown out and everything is possible. Well, you aren't in a story like that! You ran into a tourist from a place you didn't know existed? That happens sometimes to people who didn't know about magic. All it means is that now you know. You're not in a story that opens with the protagonist meeting a strange girl who turns out to be extraordinary even by the standards of magic. That annoyingly confident old man does not end up just as surprised as you. This is just the type of thinking I tried to warn you against, because I've run into it before, see."

"I---I understand," Erin said.

"There's also a deeper reason luck powers can't exist. Bear with me and I'll try giving you the Reader's Digest edition. First time you hear about magic, you get all excited, right? You think you've just got to find the right combination of alien phenomena and you can do anything? But there's limits on the interactions between realms, and they look a lot like the limits that hold in any single realm. The second law of magic is that no combination of interactions can produce perpetual motion, perpetual growth. Humans produce a common form of mana by having sex---that is, there's other realms that interpret our sexual sensations as fuel, as energy. But having sex burns calories. So no matter what method you invent of using sexual mana to grow food, you'll be left with less food than it takes to feed the humans that produce the mana. Every realm in existence has quantities that are conserved and quantities that inevitably diminish over time, and no arrangement of interactions between one realm and another can form a cycle that increases those quantities. The third law is... well, Fae used to tell mortals that the third law governing the interactions of magic was beyond any mortal's understanding, but that the third law constrained the possibilities of thought itself. I suppose you brats just nod along and think it's perfectly straightforward when somebody says that the third law binding over all interactions is that---"

"Can I guess?" Erin said.

Old Ned shot her a look that was half skeptical, half horrified. "Go ahead."

Spoiler: The third law of magic

"You can't solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time," she said, with the half-proud half-ashamed tone of somebody who had known almost nothing about computer science, but who had known enough.

Ned looked up towards the ceiling, shut his eyes, and made an odd gargling sound in the back of his throat. "You know how old I was before anyone tried to explain to me what any of those words meant?" He sighed, and looked back down. "That's correct, though the real third law is more general than that. Now, I'm not sure I understood rightly the last time somebody tried to walk me through this. But based on examples I've been given, it looks to me like there's a rule that no group of capital letters can fit inside any smaller group of capital letters. If I write down BQP, that's got three capital letters, so it can't fit inside PH, which has only two capital letters. NP can't fit inside P for the same reason. If one group has the same number of capital letters as another, that's called an Open Problem and you should run away before it collapses and all the capital letters fall down."

"That's not---"

"Shut up. Luck magic would mean random events happening differently now, depending on which future events would result later. And then you'd get all kinds of capital letter groups that are extremely naughty, because the person talking says they're naughty, that's why. You'd get groups of six capital letters. Groups of capital letters that almost seem like they're starting to spell out words, but they aren't words. PSPACE, for example, has vowels in it, so you might hope it was a word. But if you try looking it up in the dictionary, they'll physically take the book out of your hands."

"Oh my god," said Erin Penna.

"It's the same way with time travel, prophecies, fate magic, or sending dreams back to your younger self. It can't be done by any combination of powers, and greater beings than us have tried and failed to find a loophole. The third law of magic says that fiddling realms can't give you any more capital letters than you started with." Old Ned stopped and coughed, though it didn't sound too unhealthy.

"I---" she said. "I'm not arguing, just trying to understand, why can't Illyria have found a new realm with more capital letters?"

Old Ned sighed. "Mostly, because new realms don't get found every day. Or every millennium. This isn't a book and you're not the protagonist. If you want to go even deeper---the oldest entity I ever dated was named Leicsal, and I used to ask her dumb questions like that. Sal told me once that since the future cannot affect the past, the only way to truly divine futures is to simulate them---I did know what a computer was---and that to simulate a phenomenon requires another phenomenon that's larger than the first phenomenon. You'd probably understand better than I did what she meant by one phenomenon being larger than another. Pretty sure she wasn't talking about shipping container sizes and that's where I tap out. But to know the future of the universe before it happens, you'd have to be larger than the universe. And once a big phenomenon affects a smaller phenomenon---starts messing around inside it---the big phenomenon has to be included into the small phenomenon's size. You get it?"

"I think so?" said Erin.

"Good. Don't try to explain it to me. Point is, if true probability-bending powers could exist, only one entity in existence could have them at a time, because they'd have to be larger than the rest of the universe put together. And even then their power to predict the future wouldn't be able to predict their own self---not their whole self, not perfectly. So unless the brown-haired girl you met on the street just happened to be God, she was lying when she said she pulled off her stunt using luck powers." Ned was frowning thoughtfully. "That's not terrible news by itself. Mortals and immortals can lie without being bad people. But she had some reason to tell that lie and I can't figure out what."

"She was afraid I'd be upset if I knew she was reading my mind?" Erin said.

"No. That, she promised she wasn't doing. Here's a very, very, very important rule, miss, much more important than any laws of magic. The more powerful and inhuman something is, the more seriously it takes oaths and bargains. You must do the same if you plan on having any contact at all with other realms. A lot of powerful beings out there see Fae as the scum of the universe because some decadent Fae have made an art form out of screwing people over while keeping to the letter of their bargains. Je'ruk faes, the practice is called."

"Sounds like jerkface," she said.

"Ha! Not a bad translation. Though the name is older than the ruins of any human city, so if there's any connection there, it's that the word 'jerkface' sounds like je'ruk faes." Old Ned cleared his throat. "That's not all Fae, mind. Drawing conclusions from tales about one Fae who did something outrageous is like thinking all humans are Richard Nixon. Not all Fae, not even very many Fae. And yet there are beings out there who consider the entire Fae species to be scum, because a few Fae twits are... not breaking their word, pushing it. What those beings think of humanity... well. If you fell into their power you would be killed quickly and painlessly, because they have signed treaties that require them to be nice."

"I---I take my own promises pretty seriously," Erin said, a quirk of hers that was seeming more significant now. "I don't think I've ever broken any."

"Yeah. But you know about humans who have cheated on bargains, and you've hardly spent any effort at all on hunting them down and consuming their brains. So you're an abomination scarcely better than the rest of your kind. If you've heard old stories about beings who seem obsessed with torturing humans for no apparent reason, that's the reason." Ned half-smiled. "If you ever do strike a bargain with a devil, they'll make sure you know exactly what you're getting and then they'll deliver exactly what you thought you paid for. They're not Fae scum or abominations like us, see. But they'll insist you pay in advance." His smile disappeared. "Trying to cheat them... is not advised. Voids the treaty."

Erin Penna nodded, even as something in the back of her mind became curious about what exactly might happen to her.

That might belong higher on her re-sorted list of dangerous fetishes.

"So Illyria wasn't reading my mind," she said. "Then how did she know about---about my fantasies?" People somehow knowing about her had been near the top of Erin Penna's personal nightmares for a long time.

"It could've been an actual lucky guess, now that I think about it. Illyria wouldn't need to read your mind to determine you had recent Fae ancestry if she owned the right tools. Being into BDSM isn't a hundred percent correlated, but it's more than common."

"Illyria knew I had fantasies about being---used. About being required to show up at somebody's house and being used and kicked out to the street right afterwards."

The old man grinned. "Could still be a lucky shot. Faeblooded kids tend to have a lot of fantasies."

It felt better, knowing that there was a recognized place in the multiverse for people like her and a reason behind her existence. Alien desires in her blood just made more sense than the genetic shuffle randomly dealing her an entire deck of uncomfortably extreme perversion cards. Being able to think of herself as "a Faeblood girl" instead of---instead of---it helped. It shouldn't have made a difference, but it did. That whole story could have been designed only for her, from how much hearing about it had helped.

There was still that possible downside. "Is Illyria probably out to enslave me in... in a bad way?" she said. "What exactly is the bad type of enslavement?"

The old man sighed. "Not everyone is out to get you. Sorry if I made it sound like they were. Bad wizards are no more common than other types of bad people, and most are bad on a small scale, the same way abusive spouses are more common than serial killers. It's just---the worst of the worst---look, there's a widely useful type of mana." The old man sounded uncomfortable. "Pleasure has power. Pain has power. Pain and pleasure that overlaps and blurs together has a greater power, and I used it to empower the blade that broke the glamour on you. There was a time when that by itself was considered a dark and tainted deed that twisted both the wizard and his victim, and half my friends expected me to come to a bad end because I'd been known to resort to it in emergencies. But the strongest and purest form of that mana is something akin to an alternating electrical current, where the key is the phase change from pleasure to pain. The more intense the pleasure, the stronger the pain, the sharper the change, the greater the energy spike. For a strong single spike, simmer the victim for a long time before their orgasm, allow the orgasm to reach its height, and apply the most pain you can manage right in the middle. For repeated spikes and steady generation, start the pain just before orgasm, and don't use too much pain, so that the pleasure can build again quickly. If the victim tries to hold back their pleasure, apply more pain to condition them not to try that. In one case I'm familiar with, a wizard combined some of his tools to create a... pod... and just kept an innocent Faeblood in there, as a living generator of alternating current to power his lab. For years. At a frequency of five spikes per minute, timed down to a tenth of a second. When he wasn't working, the pod simmered her in random waves just below the edge, even in what passed for her sleep, to build up for a massive spike of current when he came back to work... I'm sorry, I'm scaring you more than I should."

Erin Penna remembered to breathe. "What happened to the pod?" she said.

"Destroyed. You don't need to worry. It was a very rare case...." The old man stopped speaking, and his face turned sharp. "No, young miss. You do not want to be put in a pod like that. You want a nice dom who hugs you and cares about you. You want to walk outside in the sun sometimes. You want to talk to other people and touch other people and not stay alone for years in the dark. You must keep hold of the difference between fantasy and reality at least that much."

Erin managed a nod. It was---in her mind, if not her heart, she knew he was right. Being put into a pod like that for longer than a few weeks wouldn't be good for her.

But if that was what she had to fear, then... it didn't cast much of a pall over the rest of the good news.

This was shaping up to be the happiest day of her life. Weird, but wonderful. She'd been mind-controlled, used and hurt, cast aside, picked up, and hurt and used some more. By very nice people. Then she'd been informed that enjoying that type of thing was perfectly normal for her subspecies. And despite what the old man had said, some part of Erin Penna believed enough that she'd become a protagonist for her to stay hopeful about what sorceries she might turn out to have.

Why, the way her luck was going, the next time she checked her phone, she might find another text message with even more good news about orgasms. She'd been distracted, after all, and might have missed another notification sound.

Old Ned had taken out a small tablet from a nightstand beside his bed and was thumbing it. "Hm," said the old man. "Illyria is a pretty name, wouldn't you agree? Happens Illyria was also a kingdom in southeast Europe 'round two and half thousand years ago. Thought I remembered something 'bout that. Now, the girl you met could be a mortal wizard who learned her lore and liked the sound of the name. Or she might have some other reason for naming herself after an obscure kingdom buried under the hourglass sands a long long time ago." He sighed. "And you know what? It's none of my business. I'm not Ned Serdyrrah anymore. Eve'am---that's another ex-lover of mine---would spend half a million bucks on coming here just to personally kick my ass, if she found I was getting involved in that nonsense again."

"Would she want a pet Faeblood girl?" said Erin.

"Right about now would be a convenient time for me to have a fatal heart attack," said Ned Stonefield.

7.e** [JW]: Meanwhile At Norville U

Jace Wayman sauntered nervously down the hallway that was the shortest path from his side of the Leyden Hall dorm building to the Leyden Hall canteen. He was wearing a secret, or rather, not wearing a secret.

He was walking around... with no underpants.

It was the Saturday morning after the Tuesday night of the craziest minutes of his life. Go to a bus stop, see a naked woman holding her pussy open, watch her masturbate on the phone with her master, dare to put his own hand into his own pants pockets and rub himself, the sheer hotness of the scene overwhelming his reservations and doubts and sanity. Then, while he stood there frozen, the girl had reached into his jeans and forced him to make a shameful mess in his pants, while the bus arrived and people looked at him.

And then she'd spoken his name.

Jace had honestly, in the night-after, once he'd come back to himself and slunk back to his dorm room as surreptitiously as possible, he had honestly questioned his own sanity. In particular, he'd wondered whether The Girl had actually existed, or if he'd just gone insane and jerked himself off in front of a bus.

Next morning everyone had been talking about the debut of the "Norville Natural Sexuality Movement", the Destruction of the Newsman and the rise of Karinna Coral, and (a minor but necessary part of the tale) some glasses-wearing exhibitionist that Karinna Coral had molested.

Saying that he had felt reassured of his sanity was not the right way to describe his emotions. But he'd at least not gone mad alone, and that was the frightening part of madness.

The Girl had prophesied that, so long as he had courage, he would have more adventures. It had not sounded like a friendly reassurance. More like an authorized angel dispensing a blessing. But that was insane even on the scale of the other insanity, wasn't it? There could have been plenty of innocent reasons for a fellow student to happen to know his name.

Though, ever since That Night, there sure seemed to be a ton of pretty girls (and boys) walking around campus. Tighter clothes, less clothes, more makeup... didn't seem like enough to explain the change. The increase in average prettiness had been sharper than that. Ugly people spending less time walking around, while prettier people stayed out longer? A crew of teenage models and actresses, hired for unknowable reasons and walking around displaying themselves for hours at a time? But Jace had recognized some of the miniskirt-wearing girls, prior inhabitants of the Leyden Hall dorm. Not anyone he'd known that well, but definitely people who'd already been on campus and hadn't been bused in.

Yesterday, four of Jace's comp-sci classmates had announced that they were launching a project to produce deepfakes of every student on the Norville campus having sex with every other student---with the proclaimed intention of ensuring deniability for everyone in the face of any candid photos. They'd announced they were collecting sexts and nude pics of students to use to generate the deepfakes. Half the other people in class including girls had agreeably reached for their phones.

It was enough to make Jace feel like he'd been knocked sideways in reality by seeing the forbidden sight of an angel masturbating.

Jace Wayman had thought about trying to put The Girl's prophecy to the test. He just---he hadn't known where to start. Ask one of the wandering pretty girls for an introductory coffee date? What he truly wanted was to see another sexy girl masturbating and for her to force him to come into his pants again. It should have been a crazy thought, wishing for an impossible piece of luck to repeat itself. And yet The Girl had promised, so long as you want it, so long as you have courage... it will happen. But Jace didn't know what courageous act was required to end up in that situation again, even assuming the blessing was real. If he hadn't received a blessing, then him trying to be courageous in that respect would end unpleasantly for all parties involved. And wasn't that all just mad magical thinking from the start?

Not to be cliched about it, but Jace would have felt more comfortable with his current life problems if there'd been some way to solve them with existing, well-tested libraries.

But for some reason, after waking up late this morning, Jace had felt something of the faith The Girl had told him he could have. Like there was a part of him that had, like Neo in the first Matrix movie, started to believe. Like the blessing had been true, and he'd known deep down it was true, even if he had no logical way to know it was true, that just made it an unjustified true belief instead of a justified true belief.

So Jace Wayman had taken up his courage, and stepped out of his dorm room that day wearing pants of thin fabric with no underwear, to make things easier for any woman who wanted to make him come into his pants. It was a sign of faith in The Girl, and either that would be enough or it wouldn't be.

Nobody had accosted him in the hallway as yet.

Jace Wayman passed a poster tacked up on the side of the wall, proclaiming an approaching guest lecture on The Power of Repeated Repetition: Induction in Mathematics and Hypnosis. Jace had chuckled the first time he'd seen that one, but the posters were all over campus, often lined up ten in a row. Nearby hung a cheaply printed flyer advertising a $190 three-hour seminar on Exports of Magnet-Importing Regions: Recent Changes in Trade Patterns. Almost all the web-address paper slips were ripped off. Sometimes Jace just didn't understand what the kids were into these days.

The posters hadn't helped his sense of unreality. A month ago he'd have walked past them both without another look. Now they seemed more like possible signs of the simulation glitching.

The flyer after that was simple black-on-white lettering:

Mistress Daphne is your friend
GOOD GIRLS
MAKE MORE
GOOD GIRLS
bring your friends to Mistress Daphne

As Jace passed by the student lounge, he observed a man wearing a red-and-orange lab coat, dyed in a flame pattern. The lab-coat wearer was lecturing three younger guys each with steampunk goggles pushed up on their foreheads.

"...just messing around with contraptions," the lab-coat guy was saying. "Real power comes from understanding. From investigation. Now, I've already explained the undeniable logic for why sexually dominant women are an entirely different breed from us lesser beings, a hybrid of humanity with some higher form---"

"Your logic amounts to 'I couldn't think of a good reason for sexually dominant women to evolve,'" said one of the boys with goggles on his forehead.

"---and an obvious hypothesis is that exposure to certain energies can activate those latent alien traits, even in women where they were previously silent---"

"Where's your experimental evidence for that, 'Doctor' Salamando?"

"I'm getting there! First, I mapped out the location of all the strip clubs, massage parlours, adult bookstores, and brothels in Norville. I discovered then a remarkable clustering along three paths crossing the city. These 'lay lines' all intersect at a single location, right here on campus---the Norville U library building. After my preliminary inspection of the floors failed to turn up anything visibly anomalous, I arranged for my unwitting pawns in the psychology department to run a certain study. Thus, I obtained data which revealed a clear inverse relationship between the average degree of female arousal when instructed to engage in sadistic fantasy, and the exact distance between the interviewing location and a certain point. My calculations show this point to be thirty meters below the library building. An obvious thought is that the true energy source may be accessible through Norville U's steam tunnels, which are built in a rather suspicious fashion---"

"Wait," said another boy. "Is this what you were talking about when you said you'd help us find a mistress?"

"I said I would teach you how to make a dominant girlfriend! It should be as simple as choosing a suitable woman and exposing her to the power of the central node. I have every confidence that will awaken not only her dominance but other inhuman powers---perhaps even the ability to peek at our naughty thoughts, fondle us telekinetically, or prevent release without her permission---so enabling her to rule over us completely! Though my own ambitions reach far beyond that, of course. My intention is to experiment on the central node, comprehend it, and ultimately detonate it to create a massive wave of what I term 'Dominant Energy'---a wave that will sweep across the Earth, awakening all women to their latent power and sadism! And then---I will be ruled by the world! But I would find it helpful to have assistance in navigating the steam tunnels, such as, perhaps, a device that would prevent me from getting lost again---"

"That is literally the worst idea I have ever heard," said the third boy with forehead goggles. "It violates ethics, morality, common sense, personal autonomy, the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Fourth Amendment, the Ten Commandments, the First Law of Robotics, the Code of Hammurabi, the Treaty of Ghent, the Wizard's Oath, the laws of physics, and my little sister."

"You're exaggerating," said the lab-coat wearer.

"I'm INaggerating."

"How would it violate the Treaty of Ghent?" said, apparently, Doctor Salamando.

"It could be viewed as an unprovoked attack out of American territory on Great Britain."

The guy in the lab coat raised his eyebrows. "You're sort of pushing it there."

"I'M pushing it? Look, even if your evidence about lay lines and sex surveys turns out to be credible, there is a one hundred percent probability that what's actually buried beneath the school library is an ancient evil that's stuck there, or a gate to hell, or an ancient evil that got stuck to a gate to hell---"

"Nothing you are saying contradicts anything I am saying. We can still expose a woman to it to awaken her powers, we can still figure out how to make it explode---"

Jace turned away from the scene and continued walking. God help him, there was part of him that was worried, just a tiny bit scared, that it hadn't been a LARP.

If they'd been serious they wouldn't have been talking about it out in the Leyden Hall lounge, right? If they'd been serious, they wouldn't have been wearing costumes...

The fact that he was having to question it at all might mean he wasn't far off from needing psychiatric help.

The Leyden Hall canteen was duller than a sponge saber, on this late Saturday morning. Four or five other students, in a room that had been optimistically built with 72 seats. The refectory offering consisted of plastic tubs of arugula and spinach, a stainless steel gravy boat full of watery zero-fat ranch dressing, boxes of generic sugared corn flakes, and a pitcher of luke-cold skim milk. In the background played a never-ending sequence of pop-rock hits covered by mediocre bands, just loud enough to be distracting to anyone trying to get work done, not loud enough to be any fun. The light was dim and mostly artificial, with only a couple of windows on one side of the canteen, and those not getting any sunlight at this time of day.

It wasn't the nicest cafeteria on campus. A much larger and nicer buffet hall was only a block's walk distant. On a symbolic level, eating at the Leyden Hall canteen signified that you didn't want to make any effort at all to reach up for the finer things in life. Unless you actually enjoyed arugula with fat-free ranch dressing, in which case you were fine.

Today Jace Wayman had decided to come here and get low-quality sugared corn flakes with skim milk. It was all part of his plan.

When done assembling his pseudo-meal, Jace turned to behold the restaurant-style booths and tables that were his other reason to come here. Plastic faux-wood with no padding, they couldn't be called comfy. But they were more private than the open bench-and-table arrangements in the main buffet hall.

Just in case... you know... some girl came by and wanted to do something to him.

Was it cheating that this time he was placing himself within easy distance of running back to his dorm room to get a change of clothes afterwards?

As Jace slid into place at a booth that seemed as private as any, he heard the bleeping sound of somebody tapping their phone on the meal-card scanner outside the canteen. Moments later a girl sauntered by wearing a hip-length microskirt---high enough to show her panties, if she was even wearing panties. Jace thought he recognized that face, possibly from a psychology class he'd taken a year back. The new entrant didn't glance in his direction, just went over to the salad bar to start loading up on greens.

Since her back was turned, Jace openly stared at the outline of that ass almost covered by the microskirt, and the bare vanilla-white thighs beneath those. Or at least, her skin looked vanilla-white in the mostly-artificial lighting of the canteen.

Last Saturday, such a scantily-clad female would have been a surprising and delightful sight, possibly worthy of being taken as an angelic Sign. Now Jace wasn't sure it meant anything at all. The new Norville U seemed to have a great sufficiency of scantily clad girls with perfect thighs.

There really ought to be some reason for that. Some reason that wasn't him being bumped sideways into another dimension. Even if he was in another dimension, there ought to be a reason this dimension had more microskirt-wearing girls than his home dimension.

Should he speak to the girl? He probably shouldn't. If an angel's blessing was operating, she'd approach him of her own accord. If not, he didn't want to be a bother... that whole thought about the Blessing was just crazy, anyways.

"Excuse me," Jace said impulsively, as the girl was about to walk past him with her salad.

The girl looked at him.

Well, now that his mouth had started talking, he had to follow up. "Sorry for disturbing you," Jace said, his mind quickly seizing on the obvious conversational subject, "but can I ask you a question?"

Skeptical eyes appraised him. "Would you still want to ask me a question if I had three bodybuilder boyfriends and they were all the jealous type?"

"Yeah, if that's okay," Jace said, concealing all traces of disappointment. He did have a question. "I've noticed a ton of women around campus suddenly wearing shorter skirts, and I'm feeling... disoriented. Verging on dissociated and derealized. Anything you could say about what's going on might help."

The girl's shoulders lowered, seeming to relax. "You probably want to ask somebody from the Natural Sexuality Movement."

"No, the disorienting part is..." Jace waved a hand broadly, an attempted gesture of inclusion. "Why is the whole campus going in on it? It's somebody from not-the-NSM I need to hear from."

The girl looked down at her hip-length microskirt, grinning momentarily before she looked up again and smoothed out her expression. "I suppose I can see why you're asking me. But outside of the NSM, it's not coordinated so far as I know. I have my reasons, I don't know anyone else's reasons."

"Can you tell me anything about your reasons?" Jace said. He knew that he probably sounded too urgent, but he didn't try to modulate his voice. He'd play the sympathy card if that was what it took to get answers. "Anything? There's a ton of students doing it and, I mean, from my perspective, there's no explanation? You're one of the students dressed like that, so you've got to know something important to me. Even if you don't know what it is that you know---see what I mean?"

The girl slipped into the bench opposite him, on the other side of the table. "Let me think and get some breakfast inside me," she said. "Gina Kutsche, majoring in psychology."

It sounded vaguely familiar. "Jace Wayman, comp sci."

He ate some tastelessly sugared corn flakes.

She ate some arugula.

He tried not to stare too openly at the braless nipples under her tight shirt.

"From my viewpoint, it's other women who started it first?" Gina Kutsche said, after she'd worked through half her salad. "You seriously might be asking the wrong person. I'm having fun dressing like this, that's all."

"I'm not arguing, just asking, why did you decide to dress like this today and not last week?" Jace said.

"It's easier to be daring if being daring doesn't make you stand out. Think Halloween, right. Lots of us go for the devil costume, the one night where other women are wearing a devil costume." Her fork toyed with her greens. "I'm not sure there's any more to it on my end. You'd have to ask the people who set the whole thing off, the two women who marched naked through campus. Karinna Coral and... Starry, I think her name was."

Jace realized he was making a face, and smoothed his expression neutral. Something about being referred back to The Girl, again, felt like the universe was taunting him. There had to be some causality left in the world that didn't reduce to Because Of Her. "There should be more to the story of how a couple of naked marchers could tableflip the whole campus dress code?"

"Well," said Gina, "there was also the part where Karinna Coral---you know about her, right?"

"Nobody on campus has talked about anything else in the last four days," Jace said.

"Yeah. Karinna is unnerving, but it feels like if I wear a microskirt, the head mafioso has my back, you know? Only because that fits in with her evil master plan, but still. She's more or less proclaimed that anyone on campus acting NSM-aligned is under her personal protection, and anyone who oppresses our sexuality will end up inside her personal refrigerator."

"Careful how you talk about Karinna," said a boy who happened to be walking past their table. "She has ears everywhere."

Both of them stopped talking until they'd watched the boy finish leaving the canteen.

"That happened," said Gina.

"Yeah, that was an event and it occurred," said Jace. "Um. Case in point. Do you ever get this feeling like.... things have gone sort of... not real?"

Gina grinned again, briefly, quickly suppressed. "I don't think anything's been real for a while now. My guess is we were Matrixed in 2015."

"No, seriously," said Jace. "It's like... do you get a sense that something holding together reality shattered, and now we're all slipping around in whatever's left, falling sideways?"

"All the time," Gina said with many vigorous nods. "You know how, in the reality we grew up in, Australia was in the middle of the south Pacific Ocean, with New Zealand next to it and empty water all around? Because the current map shows Australia right next to Indonesia, and New Zealand way off to one side."

Jace actually started to reach down for his phone to check Australia's current location before he realized that she was trolling him. This said much about his present state of mind.

Gina was giving him a questioning look. "Is it that odd if more women on campus wear shorter skirts and more guys are going shirtless?"

"Honestly, yeah," said Jace. "I don't mean that as social or political commentary, I'm not saying people shouldn't do it, I'm not asking you to defend it or justify it or---I'm also enjoying the scenery---but the whole thing seems unreal. I'm sorry to keep on bugging you after you answered. It's just, there was recently a weird thing in my life. It would majorly help me out if there turned out to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this other weird thing. I'd feel less like a lost slider."

"I think I see?" Gina said, after a pause for more eating. "Thanks for clarifying and for showing vulnerability? I wish I could answer, I just have trouble seeing why skimpy clothes are as weird as the way that Australia moves around."

"It's not the particulars of the dress code, it's that suddenly everyone on campus is doing it all at once. Without there being enough reason why..." Jace was struggling to express his intuition about why reality seemed broken, without mentioning how The Girl had suddenly known his name. "Look, uh, imagine there was a big march at Harvard with two nude students walking in front. I wouldn't expect every conventionally attractive girl at Harvard to decide for microskirts the next day."

"Well, this is Norville U," Gina said. "Probably half the girls on campus were on the pink pill even before the NSM march. Yesterday, I swear to god, my RA offered me fem."

Jace stared at her blankly. "What?" he said blankly in a blank fashion.

"Fem. Phemelanotide. The new female libido enhancer... oh my god, you seriously don't know? Have you not checked your anything in the last two months?"

"No, I stayed out of the whole social media space after I gave up on Facebook," Jace said. "Too many UI dark patterns. Wait, that's not important right now. What's feminalotide?"

"You're serious," said Gina. "Shit, no wonder you're freaking out. It must look to you like Norville U spontaneously teleported into the sex dimension."

"Yes," said Jace.

Gina looked slightly dismayed herself. "You poor innocent man. You need an explanation, I can see that, but---I don't know where to start. Well, besides that it's phemelanotide, not whatever you said. P-H-E-M... just google for female libido enhancer. Key points, ah... There's a pink pill that for-real increases a woman's sex drive. Won't be FDA-approved for another year, meaning it's not technically legal, so stuff mostly stayed in private before the NSM march. Around marijuana-grade forbiddenness. It's safe as far as anybody knows, though. Uh, standard warnings: Do not assume any woman is on the pill, do not think the pill means they want sex with you in particular, the pill is not consent, no still means no, being rude is still being rude, if she says fuck off then fuck off, giving a woman an orgasm still takes some work and you are expected to put in that work. With all that clear, uh," Gina trailed off. "With all that clear, well, there you go."

"Are people---okay with this?"

Gina grinned, though she again smoothed out her expression a second later. "Yeah, at first I was also thinking brave new world dystopia. But, I don't know, actually trying the pill made me see things from a different angle? I know how that sounds, but still. Other women were already born with more of the horny, why can't I have it too? It's just a reshuffle of the cards I was dealt and it turns out I like these cards better... that sounds ominous now that I hear myself saying it out loud. Um. But I went off the pill for a couple of days and I still felt the same way."

Jace looked down at the remains of his bowl of cereal, feeling stunned in more directions than one. It sounded plausible, and at the same time---

At the same time, the story sounded like it "sounded plausible" as opposed to sounding real.

The feeling of being bumped sideways through fractured time had grown stronger.

However, that entire line of thinking was only 20% of his present CPU load.

"So---" Jace said. "So---you mean---all over campus---"

"That's exactly what I mean. Everything you're imagining is happening right now."

"What's---" Jace waved his hand, though he didn't even know what he was trying to gesture. So, many, questions. "What's that like?"

"What's what like?"

"Being on fem?"

"Being a neo-female in the brave new world, you mean?" Gina leaned back in her bench, looking thoughtful, even as the change of posture lifted her braless breasts more prominently beneath the tight fabric. "The lived experience is hard to describe. Tempting to compare it to being a man, but I've never been one, and a male friend of mine keeps saying I'm imagining the experience all wrong. A lot of the pro-pill blogs say that it's no different from having naturally been born with a higher sex drive. That's always struck me as disingenuous, though, there's a big gender-expression difference when a huge fraction of women all get a higher sex drive at the same time. If I was dressing like this by myself, I'd get swarmed. Mm... I still have studying to do, so it's not like I'm having sex every day. Really I'm not having that much more sex compared to when I wasn't on the pill. Seeing a cutie doesn't make me horny enough to stop what I'm doing and spend two hours having sex. But if there was some non-messy way to have sex for four minutes that satisfied me and didn't require my changing clothes, I could see myself doing that with a lot of different men? Or even when I'm not thinking of any man in particular, sex usually seems like a good thing instead of a bad thing. Even if I'm not in exactly the right mood at exactly the right time." Gina took a drink of her drink, then went back to skewering arugula with her fork.

"Say more?" said Jace. "Keep going? Sorry if I'm prying, it's just---this sounds huge."

Gina ate through another sixth of her salad before she responded again. "If you go any deeper than that, it starts getting complicated," she said. "I didn't have words for half of how I felt, until I listened to other women talking about it. I---I think the part I might expect a man to have trouble understanding would be that, from my perspective, fem isn't about having sex more often. Just wanting sex can be the point on its own. Wanting things makes my inner life more colorful, and my mental landscape can use all the color it can get. And when I do have sex, it's nicer, but that's not because my orgasms are more intense, it's because---" Gina waved her hands in a helpless-ish gesture of complication. "Because I'm not distracted by worrying about whether I wanted the sex enough? Though, yeah, sex is also more fun because I'm motivated more to, to be more active. I'm not a hundred percent comfortable talking about lewd details with a male stranger, is what---"

"You don't need to say anything that makes you uncomfortable," Jace interjected.

"I was going to say, not being comfortable talking about lewd details with you, is what my old self-identity would've said. But even that part is complicated now."

"Oh," Jace said. "Uh, sorry for interrupting?"

"It's fine, you were trying to look out for my mental health and I appreciate that. I don't know... maybe it's just TMI at this point. It's just, now that I've gone and told you this much about life on fem, it bugs me to think of you forming a wrong picture about what's left." Gina tapped her fork against what was left of her salad, looking reflective. "Is it TMI?"

"No," Jace said. "This is all still interesting to me. Gotta figure out the rules of the sex dimension I've jumped into." He wasn't sure if he was joking.

Gina snorted, a vulgar sound that still managed to sound vulgar in a feminine fashion. "Right. But the thing is, I'm not planning to have sex with you. I don't want to send false signals by letting this conversation get too sexual---" Gina stopped, frowning in concentration. "I'm not saying this right. It's not about you, it's about me. I'm trying to---to act responsibly. Dressed like this, people can guess I'm taking fem. That makes it too easy to, to tease, because I look like I might really have sex with them. It's not that I'm trying at all costs to avoid men bugging me for sex. That's one of the things phemelanotide changes... indirectly, I mean, not like flipping a switch. It's still annoying but not as bad as it used to be, because, uh... I know that I could say yes to a sexual request if I wanted to. So my saying no doesn't make me feel... weak. It feels more like I imagine it would feel for a man to say no to a woman who asked him for sex. And with the NSM around and nobody wanting to mess with their head mafioso, it feels more like there'd be law and order on campus if I did need a stalker handled. All of that makes there be fewer consequences for me if I flirt too much. So now I have to be careful not to impose the costs of my existence on others. Does this all sound like nonsense or are you following me here?"

"I think so?" said Jace.

"Cool. My current policy for myself is to dress as sexually as I like, since anyone who pervs on me is doing that on their own. But I don't smile at a man unless... well, unless sex with him is a real possibility. I feel like I have way more sexual power now, because it doesn't cost me to use my sexual power. That's a new experience for me, and I'm worried I'm going to run over some boy's feelings with a cement truck. That's why I don't want to go into too much sexy detail with you. I don't want to---to tease." She paused, then quickly added, "Though you staring at my breasts is still fine."

Jace listened in honest fascination, trying to take it all in. "I think," he said carefully and after reflection, "you don't have to worry about accidentally teasing me. I think I can handle that." It would have been a different experience a week ago, hearing a smart and pretty girl repeatedly emphasize that she wouldn't have sex with him. But now he was feeling oddly... hopeful, about adventures happening to him later. Like some deep-down part of himself had acquired an unjustified true belief that sexier outcomes were possible.

"You saying that makes me less nervous about leading you on, but more nervous that you're looking for sex and will bug me about it," Gina responded. "Though even there, I suppose, I'm not the only girl on fem. You seem cute enough that you shouldn't need to hit me up for sex, not in Norville U. You'd be stupid to keep mining the one place you know there isn't ore. There's the NSM kangaroo court if I need it..." She sighed. "I don't know. Maybe I'm allowed to talk about sexual topics anytime I want, just like I'm allowed to walk around without a bra. It all keeps feeling too convenient to be true."

"Word," said Jace, though he was thinking of different too-conveniences. "But, I don't know, from the outside it does sound like things are looking up for you? It sounds like you've got less to worry about, so... you should be less worried? I mean, that's the difference between your brain filling a fixed anxiety quota, and being anxious in proportion to how much there is to be anxious about."

"Deep," said Gina.

"This from the person who just---"

"I'm mostly repeating back ideas I got from Phem-Femme and the Listening to Pharmaceuticals podcast."

Jace nodded respectfully. "Well, you listen to deep podcasts and have a good memory, anyway."

"Thanks," Gina said. She started to smile, then quickly smoothed out her expression. "I know you're just saying that to flirt with me, but I don't mind that anymore."

"I wouldn't give you the compliment if I didn't believe it was true. I'm not that type of guy. Just, uh, the type of guy who only remembers to say his complimentary thoughts out loud if he's talking to an attractive girl." A thought crossed Jace's mind. "So, in this alternative Norville U I've slid to, are there any drugs I'm supposed to take? An improved flirting pill for men?"

"Not that I've heard of?" said Gina. "Though I'm sure some of the madwomen in the Irate Inventors Club: Special Interest Male Biology are working on flirting pills for men, romantic sensitivity gas grenades, and god knows what else."

Jace's eyes widened, before he realized she was trolling him again. He smiled politely at the joke. Which reminded him. "Oh, ah, and I also give my consent for you to smile at me, without that counting as a promise of sex."

Gina started to smile at the words before she automatically smoothed it out.

Then she slowly, deliberately smiled. It looked somewhat artificial, but that was excusable under the circumstances.

"Thanks for trusting me," Jace said, and meant it.

Gina reverted her face to neutral. "You know what, I'll try letting this conversation get more sexual, and if it goes wrong, I won't try again." She took a deep breath. "So, life on phemelanotide. If I see a cutie, but I have to finish up a paper instead of inviting him back to my room, it feels---like I wish I could do more, even though I don't have the time."

It took Jace a second to recover from the shock of warmth that spread through his chest. "Oh," he said. "Ah. Are you implying what it sounds like you're implying?"

"Yeah, you're cute." Gina sounded embarrassed by her own words, but if there was any more color in her cheeks, he couldn't see it in the cafeteria's artificial lighting.

Should he take the next step?

Jace looked for courage inside himself, and somewhat to his surprise, found it.

Jace inhaled and said, "Now I'm curious, uh, about what you wish you could do?"

"I guess I could bring myself to say it, but... are you sure you want the sexy details, considering that we're not going to have sex? Not now, not in the foreseeable future either? I have a policy of not scheduling appointments with non-boyfriends, and I won't like it if you try to flirt with me every time you see me on campus."

"I understand," Jace said, nodding with deep solemnity. "I'm just trying to find out what the sex-crazed neo-females of this dimension will do to me if they catch me."

"Ha." Gina was still wearing her poker face. "Final content warning, you might get turned on. Then I'll finish my breakfast and walk away and not have sex with you. I wouldn't mind, but you might."

A strange spark of intuition crossed Jace's mind. But even if he was right, did he... did he actually want to call her on...

"Reconsidering?" Gina said, when the silence had started to stretch.

So long as you have courage. "Actually no. Uh, would it happen to be the case that you like teasing boys, even if or maybe especially if you don't have sex with them afterwards?"

"Why would you say that?" Her expression had gone even more fixed.

"Because when you realized you had more sexual power, your priority thought was to not to tease boys and lead them on by accident. That sounds like a thought somebody might think if their brain was lingering on thoughts about teasing boys."

Gina's gaze darted around in a way that managed to look embarrassed, shifty, and absolutely adorable. "Maybe?" she said in a weak voice.

Jace's heart was drumming wildly. He had to consciously regulate his breathing. "It doesn't make you a bad person," he said, making his voice as caring and gentle as he could manage given the circumstances.

"I know, I know. Wanting to do bad things doesn't mean I'm a bad person, I'd only be a bad person if I actually did them."

"No, um," Jace said. Courage. "There's boys who---you just have to find a boy who's okay with being teased."

Now Gina Kutsche, psychology major, had looked up again and was staring at him the way he'd stared at her chest.

Jace deliberately smiled at her on purpose.

The tension across the cafeteria table was growing thick enough that it could serve as the mud in a mud-wrestling pit.

Gina's voice had gone lower, becoming more sensual as a side effect. "What---exactly---are you hinting you're okay with---what exactly?"

Jace lowered his own voice too. "You have my permission to..." And then Jace realized he didn't want to be specific. The Girl had just strutted over and forced him to come, because she'd decided that on her own. So it had been revealed to Jace Wayman that this was his kink. "I have limits, but it doesn't seem likely I'd object to anything you'd want to do to me?"

"I don't think that's how these things are supposed to work," Gina said. "I think there's supposed to be specific consent..."

"Well---how would you want to---tease me?" Jace shifted on his side of the cafeteria table, trying to readjust a certain body part, without making it obvious that was what he was doing.

"I'd---" Gina visibly swallowed, visibly hesitated. "I'd want to get you hot and bothered..."

Jace waited, not saying anything.

Gina took a deep breath. "I'd want to get you hot the way I get hot when there's an attractive man in front of me and I don't have time to have sex with him. I'd want to take those feelings out on you. Maybe I'd... smooth my shirt over my chest, and let you look, but not touch..."

From a recently activated dark well of courage within Jace, he found the strength to go on looking her right between the eyes without looking away. "I consent."

Gina turned her head, scanning around the canteen, and Jace looked with her. The place still seemed sparsely inhabited. If there was anyone with line-of-sight on Jace, Jace didn't have line-of-sight on them. A few visible heads, that was all he saw, turned the opposite way and looking absorbed in their own affairs. The never-ending mediocre background music wasn't loud, but it would cover whispers, or other soft sounds.

The two of them resumed staring at each other.

Gina slowly reached up her hands. Her own breathing was heavy, audible. (Apparently it hadn't occurred to her that she ought to avoid breathing like a pervert if she didn't want others to know.) One of Gina's hands reached up to around her neck, lightly traced a finger around the neck-outline of her shirt, and then she smoothed her shirt down. Slowly, wobbling her breasts as her hand passed over them. The shape was clearly outlined, even more so than before, and the nipples seemed more prominent when they popped up again.

"Are you hard now?" she said quietly.

Jace nodded jerkily.

Gina's face might have been reddened, though it was still hard to see in the artificial lighting. "What else can I do to you?"

"What else do you want to do?" Jace's mouth said.

"I don't know, it's the first time I've ever... I want to make you hotter." Gina was staring at her salad as though she wanted to find inspiration in it.

And then she apparently found it, because she dipped her forefinger in the stray specks of white ranch dressing across the plate, wiped some of it up, and looked back up to stare Jace deliberately in the eyes. Then Gina began to suck off her finger. With visible tongue.

Oh god. Jace shifted in the seat again, then realized he didn't have to hide what he was doing. He reached down and, without putting his hand under his pants yet, manhandled his penis into a non-scrunched position. It was easy without underwear, and left his penis very clearly outlined beneath the thin fabric he'd chosen for his pants.

"Did you just touch yourself?" whispered Gina.

"I was adjusting my erection so it didn't get uncomfortable," Jace said back in an equally low voice. "But if..."

Implications and possibilities hung in the mud-thick air between them.

Gina looked around again, then spoke in a whisper that was thick with desire. "I---I want to tell you to rub yourself through your pants, just once, to get yourself more hot and bothered."

"I consent," Jace said, the words sounding low and powerful in his own ears.

"Do it."

Gina's eyes seemed to track his hand, though she couldn't see the action with the table blocking the way, as Jace reached down and rubbed himself through his pants, just once. He wasn't stimulated enough for the rub to bring any real pleasure, but it did serve the purpose of getting himself hotter and bothereder.

"I---" Gina drew a shaky breath. "I'm not sure---we should take this any further---here---"

"I want to know what you're tempted to do," Jace whispered across the table.

"All---all kinds of bad things. I want to tell you to keep stroking yourself. I want to move the table to one side so I can see you do it. I want to kiss you hard and stick my tongue halfway down your throat and run away laughing."

"You shouldn't do that," Jace said, his voice as low and sensual as hers. "It would be very bad. Very naughty. I consent."

"We really can't. What if a campus cop catches us?"

"We call the NSM sexuality-oppression hotline."

"What if somebody takes a video of us and it's on the Internet forever?" Gina's whisper was getting higher, more plaintive, the sound of somebody losing an argument with herself.

Jace explained about the deepfakes project, keeping his voice as low and sensual as he could.

"Why am I doing this?" Gina whispered, even as her hips shifted on her side of the bench. On appearances, her self-argument had ended in crushing defeat.

It was being revealed to Jace Wayman that he had some weird cross-D/S fetish for watching girls look embarrassed while they dominated him. "Because you're horny," Jace whispered. "Are you wet?"

"I---I don't know, I can't tell just by---" Gina paused, then she glared at his wide grin that he wasn't trying to suppress at all.

Her hand dipped below the table.

Jace's eyes tried to burn a hole in the plastic-wooden material blocking his vision.

Gina brought her hand back out with one glistening finger.

"Look what you did," Gina said in a soft, commanding voice. "Take responsibility."

How? thought Jace, and then he decided how.

Slowly, giving her time to object, Jace leaned forward, took her hand in his, and sucked her finger into his mouth. It wasn't a taste he especially enjoyed, but the sheer perversion of the act was more than enjoyable enough to make up for that.

Gina was making low sounds in the back of her throat. She was once again breathing heavily, like a pervert who didn't mind other people knowing.

Jace just went on suckling her finger. He was content. He could do this for a while.

"I'm going to---" said Gina, and whispered words.

Another jolt of shock and arousal went through Jace, and he nodded.

Moments later, Gina's bare foot, extracted from her heels, was nestling into his crotch.

Jace purred a soft moan around the finger still in his mouth, knowing that she would feel the vibrations. Oh---oh. He was hard enough and teased enough now that the simple pressure on his dick, through the thin fabric and absence of underpants, felt sexual. But it would be a long way from there to---please, please let her decide to, to...

Another bare foot joined the first foot, trying inexpertly to form a grasp around the outline in his pants.

Jace moaned louder into the finger he was sucking. Without being aware of the decision, Jace's thighs spread wider, to give her feet easier access, to plead.

She took full advantage.

Soon Jace was sitting rigidly, trying to keep his hips from jerking.

And Gina had snaked her right hand below the table. The motions she was making were subtle, but barely visible, in the trembling of her right arm and shoulder. A stronger surge of arousal flooded through him at the sight.

"I want so much to make you come," Gina said, low and throaty and not quite a whisper anymore. "I want so much to force you to walk out of the canteen with come in your pants, squishing around, a nice big stain on the front."

"I cohnthenh," Jace murmured into her finger, without taking it out of his mouth.

The feet on his pants paused, and Jace made a pleading sound at the finger. The feet resumed, though Gina now had a hesitant expression. "That doesn't sound safe for you," Gina said, her voice again a whisper.

Jace stopped sucking, and quickly blurted out, "I'll dump the leftover milk in my cereal bowl onto the front of my pants afterwards and it will just look like a food accident." Then he immediately resumed sucking on her finger.

"Oh. Oh. You'd really---let me---" She was gazing at him with a look Jace could only call smouldering disbelief. Her whole upper body began to tremble and not just her arm.

"Arhe you going tdo comwh?" Jace said around the finger.

Her arm motions sped up, and she stopped breathing, even as her foot movements grew jerkier, harder, on his penis.

It was more than Jace could take. He kept sucking on the finger and moaned around it, watched her face as she came, just like she was watching his face as he came.

When it was done, they both blinked as if simultaneously coming back to sanity, and then frantically darted their heads around to see if anyone had seen them.

There was nobody watching them.

A lingering part of Jace felt disappointed by that.

The two of them stayed in awkward silence for a time after that, neither of them checking any clocks.

"I---I can't believe I just---" Gina said first. She looked slightly dismayed, but only slightly.

Jace took a deep breath. "It's a higher sex drive thing. Sometimes you get your orgasm and suddenly you're sane again."

"Are you---having regrets?"

Jace shook his head rapidly. He felt like using courage had given him additional insight into it. "You have to live your fantasies," he said. "Otherwise you won't have lived them."

Gina was now wiping her masturbation hand on a napkin, looking nervous and trying not to visibly sniff her fingers. "You only live once, huh."

"Or we're already dead, and that's why nothing seems real any more. If you can't reach out to seize your fantasies even in your afterlife, that'd be pretty sad, you know?"

"I... guess so?" said Gina.

Jace tried to shove those thoughts away. His own return to post-orgasmic sanity had consisted of realizing how unlikely that encounter would have been in real life. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gone there. What I'm trying to say is just---if you have a fantasy of just walking up to a man and teasing him, using him however you like for a few minutes and then walking away, you should---you should be able to do that. As much as you want."

"You make a hell of a convincing case."

Jace's awareness shifted to the sticky, liquid sensation in his pants, already feeling cold rather than warm. Jace reached for the cereal bowl.

"No," Gina said. "Let me."

Slowly enough that he could have objected, Gina took the cereal bowl in her hands, and deliberately tipped it into Jace's lap as she kept her eyes locked on his.

Milky, sticky coldness dribbled into his pants in a slow, sputtering stream.

The two held their gazes across the table.

"I made a mess," Gina said. "Clean it up."

Jace drew a shuddering breath and started collecting napkins from the table dispenser, going first for the puddles that had formed on the bench.

"I'm never going to fuck you," Gina said, gently. "I hope that's okay. It's not that you're not good enough for me. I just don't ever want to wonder whether you're going along with my teasing because you're hoping for a real payoff later. That would---it wouldn't just be a turn-off for me, it would ruin everything. You can only be with me if you like being teased. Our relationship won't ever go anywhere that isn't that."

Jace nodded rapidly. "I understand," he said, and he thought he did. "You're saying that... like you don't want this to be a one-time thing?"

Her heated gaze was plain, and Jace felt his penis stirring again already. "I want to sometimes see you across campus and come over and tease you. Make you hard. Get you hot. Reach into your pants and make it worse. I won't always have time to make you come. Sometimes I won't make you come on purpose. Sometimes it'll be up to you whether you can come before I decide I'm out of time and walk away. I might let you touch my breasts under my shirt. I might make you masturbate me. Maybe I'll moan into your ear while I come and I won't touch your dick at all. I'll have your phone number and you won't have mine... I'll figure out how to hide my caller ID, I guess. If seeing some other cutie gets me horny, I'll call you over and take out my frustration on you. That's my fantasy."

"Reach out and take what you want," Jace said. "I consent."

They gazed into each other's eyes some more.

"We're---" said Jace. "We're not monogamous tease partners. Is that okay? You can tease other men, I can be teased by other women."

"Other... men?" Gina said, with a stunned look rapidly shifting to contemplative.

"I'm absolutely certain I'm not the only boy on campus who doesn't mind... who enjoys being teased. If your fantasy is being able to do this to boys, plural, you should live that fantasy too."

"But how do I find---" she began.

"If there's not an app for that already," Jace said, already sketching UI layouts in his mind, "I'll have a prototype app for Android phones within a week. Geolocation enabled, so when you're near a compatible teasee it will notify you and show the teasee's photo along with a list of what he's consented to. So he doesn't need to say anything, and dominant women can just walk over and make him come in his pants."

"Huh," said Gina. "So I could just---I like that idea. Though, I mean, this should be obvious, don't make the app heteronormative or assume all teasers are women. And put in some way for teasers to turn on visibility to each other. I," Gina swallowed. "We're sure this isn't bad, right? I have a fantasy about me and another tease both going after the same guy, competing to see who can break him faster..."

He'd never felt so motivated to code in his life.

A bare-bones ugly prototype should just need orientation/fetish checkboxes. Geolocation matching, database query, photo and text submission, photo and text display... had he missed anything? Was that really it? It seemed like something he could cobble up out of existing microservices within a day, which was why he'd said a week. Did he want to try inviting some of his classmates in on it too, in hopes of finishing it faster and better? Or would that just be mythical-man-monthing? He had this strange feeling of optimism about how smoothly the actual coding might go.

"You know, you'll be making the Norville campus seem even weirder to the next innocent soul who passes by," said Gina, as she collected her own used napkins onto her cafeteria tray. "They're not going to have any idea why I occasionally slink out of nowhere and start molesting some boy."

Jace's brain paused in mid-think. It had never occurred to him before that he might end up part of the backstory behind someone else's feeling of having been transported into a sex dimension.

Then he mentally shrugged his mental shoulders, and continued mentally sketching data structures in his mind.

What went around, came around.

7.6.a: Succubus Summoner (@@)

This update is not meant to be read on mobile phones. I recommend that you not start reading until you can use a desktop monitor or decent-sized tablet.

Joel's Point-Of-View is meant to be read first, then Cindy's POV in the next threadmark.

Spoiler: Joel's POV (NSFW images)

Panels read left-to-right: -->-->​

7.6.2: Summoned Succubus

(Cindy's POV. Read Joel's POV above, first.)​

A three-seat sofa rests up against one beige-painted wall. A nice sofa, newish enough to mark a relatively well-off family for Norville. One cushion is occupied by a mess of opened mail envelopes and game controllers with their tangled cables. On the opposite wall, a fireplace that looks like they actually use it sometimes, with a TV on a rolling stand in front. On the mantel above the fireplace, an artistic faux-gold crucifix lying on its side, fallen and not uprighted.

Stepping stealthily in your high heels, you sneak another step into the house of some complete strangers.

Then you turn around to considerately close and lock the door behind you. You wouldn't want any weird people invading their house.

You've turned off your game notifications, specifically so that you'll have no idea what will happen to you next. Only that it will be naughty, because whoever's in this house, They Forgot To Lock Their Door. You could peek into a bedroom door open just a crack, and see a boy masturbating to a hentai scene of a boy walking in on a naked girl who accuses him of being a pervert, which is when you'd walk naked into his bedroom and accuse him of being a pervert. Or you could be interrupting some innocent wife and husband and construction worker having perverted sex, and they'll overpower you and take you down to their basement and have their way with you too. You don't have any idea what will happen next, except that it won't be a negative consequence, and that's exciting.

Attirewise, you're dressed in a lighter version of what you are pretending is costume jewelry. Just the circlet, the choker, the navel sparkle, the earrings, the anklets, and the heels. Enough to give you a mysterious and bejeweled air, but less intimidating without the Fragile Breast-Net, Pussy Veil, and Nine-Colored Lotus Hair Clip. At least that's what your primitive and underexercised fashion instinct tells you.

(As for the Weirdly Interlocking Silvery Bracelets, you'll try them on again later. When you're LVL 35 or so.)

The dining room and kitchen have nobody inside them. There are dirty dishes in their kitchen sink, and looking at those makes you feel bad momentarily. The house-dwellers might feel embarrassed if they knew you'd seen the mess, they might have washed the dishes if they knew you were coming... quiet, brain, nothing bad will happen remember?

You proceed forwards in Stealth Mode, moving slowly and peeking around edges of walls.

It's a heart-poundingly naughty feeling. Not just that you have no idea what sexual thing will happen to you next, but that you're doing this at all. One is not Supposed To walk uninvited into a stranger's house, especially wearing nothing but jewelry.

Right now you're free in a way that you've never been free for... for as long as you can remember, because you don't remember how old you were when you first understood the word "No." When you first understood the concept of other people getting hurt if you broke the rules. Don't do this, don't do that. Don't walk around with your pussy showing in public, don't kidnap girls out of sex shops and lead them around on leashes, don't randomly walk into other people's houses, and oh yeah, don't drive on the railroad tracks.

This---this isn't the only time in your life you'll ever have No Consequences time, right? The Erogame will give you more consequences-free episodes sometimes, right, if you scream and beg and cry and offer it anything and promise to be lewd? Because if you never get to do this again, then you'll have had a taste of freedom, and become addicted to it, but you won't get to experience it ever again, and that will make you sad forever, and that will be a negative consequence.

You shove the thought out of your mind, or try to, because it does seem likely that the Erogame would let you get another quest like this somehow. The game hasn't previously refused to give you more of lewd things in which you have shown interest.

After more exploration it looks like there isn't anyone downstairs.

Upstairs, the first bedroom contains a king-size bed with a rumpled large blanket, at present empty of any wives or husbands or construction workers. It has separate nighttables on either side, and a smell that you associate with grownups.

The next bedroom is a boy's bedroom, devoid of the college-age weeaboo who usually sleeps there---as you deduce from the framed highschool diploma on the wall and the Rias Gremory dakimakura on the bed. There's a small desk with a large monitor and some unplugged cables next to a closed laptop. There's a tissue box nicely on the desk and a small garbage can nearby. You hope he doesn't make his mother clean that up for him.

The third bedroom-door opens into a much younger boy's bedroom, also uninhabited. You quickly shut that door with an odd feeling of shame. This place is off-limits to the likes of you, at least when you're dressed like this.

There's nobody in the upstairs bathroom or the linen closet. Okay, there's got to be a basement in this house, right?

There is indeed a basement.

This time for real.

You proceed down the stairs to the lower level of the dungeon, diligently looking around for traps.

Your first view is of a huge messy living-room-like-space full of children's toys. Two of three walls are lined with bookcases, historical nonfiction mixed with mainstream thriller novels mixed with Christian angels-and-prayer.

At the end of that space lies a hallway. At the end of the hallway, a shut door.

That door is locked.

And then it isn't.

As quietly as you can, you open the door a crack, and peek through to see what naughtiness lies beyond.

In an unfinished basement space, a naked boy around your own age is kneeling on hands and knees, with his head bowed, in front of a pentagram... no, a six-pointed star laid down in wide strips of masking tape, surrounded by a thin circle drawn in white powder. You know there's a name for that type of magical star diagram but you don't remember what it is. The Seal of Some Jewish Guy? Six large tealight-shaped candles burn at the six points of the star, filling the room with a scent of cinnamon.

The boy has his head down, kneeling as though bowing to an impressive-looking huge book in front of him. He looks good naked and kneeling, with visible musculature on his back. The boy's clothes lie in a messy heap next to him, which is where they should be. It would be wrong to put clothes on a boy like this.

You can't see into the huge book from where you're peeking, but the boy seems to be reading from it. He's chanting something under his breath, something that sounds Latiny. His voice is hesitant, but pleasantly low and masculine even so.

The basement is lit by a single incandescent bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. In that dim light you can see that the six-pointed star diagram has inscriptions on it, faint ones, like they were drawn in pencil.

Actually... you think those inscriptions are in pencil. That's a mechanical pencil there on the floor, lying next to a mostly-used roll of masking tape. He did his ritual circle in pencil on masking tape, yeah. And that circle of white powder around the star is Domino's sugar, granulated cane sugar to be exact.

You'd be waaaaay more nervous right now if you had higher ERO or if anything bad could possibly happen to you.

Instead you stare at the setup in fascination. Is this boy a poor deluded weeaboo, or is this real magic? And naughty magic too. A love spell? A lust spell?

You sneak on inside, quietly closing the door behind you and twisting the lever set into the doorknob to lock it again.

Another step forward gives you a glimpse into the big book. The text is too small to read, but the page title is larger, and it includes the name of the ritual.

You barely manage to stop yourself from squeeing out loud.

Moving quietly, you slide yourself around the boy and into the center of the Seal of Some Jewish Guy. Either the boy is distracted enough by his book, or he has his eyes closed, or by just the grace of the Erogame he doesn't notice you moving. You smooth your wild grin into what you hope is a more mercenary smile, look down at the boy, and wait.

The boy finishes his Latinish whispering, and looks up.

He blinks, like he's not sure he's seeing what he's seeing, and sits up to a kneeling position.

You continue to smile down benevolently with your naked cheerleader's body clad in naught but jewelry. Darn, now you wish you'd worn the breast-net and pussy-veil. You might not look magical enough like this.

It dawns on you then that you haven't made up any lines for yourself, or even decided on a personality. Yoal-yohuali doesn't seem right for this, or eldritch-horror-Starry, or anyone else you've been so far.

Thankfully, before the silence starts to get awkward, the boy speaks.

"Are you a succubus?" says the boy.

"No," you say. "I'm a human girl who wandered into your house off the street, came through the locked basement door behind you, and stepped into your diagram while you weren't looking. Oh, and this is what I happened to be wearing." Apparently you're going with Sarcastic Succubus today... well, that works for you.

"Fine, it was a dumb question," says the boy. He scrambles to his feet, grabbing up his huge book, and holds it out as if to ward you away. He moves his eyes, so that he's looking you in the face instead of your breasts, and speaks with confidence that you're pretty sure is feigned. "I am the mage Fallengold, fair one, and I would bargain with thee."

"If you say so, Joel Gregory Ratliff," you pronounce, and he inhales sharply. There's something oddly satisfying about having gotten his true name by sneaking into his bedroom and reading his framed high school diploma, instead of the Erogame telling it to you. "So, mortal, you want to make a deal with this Starastera? What do you have to offer me?" You arch your chest and curve your hips some, to show what he's paying for.

He's doing a good job of concealing his nervousness. His growing erection, not so much. "Fair one," he says like he's reciting it, "I would sell you my virginity for a lens of dreamsilver."

Wait, hold on, what? Are you supposed to pay him for sex?

You are suddenly conscious of your total ignorance about whatever magical system you just started pretending to be in. "Can I have a look at that book?" you say, and step out of the Seal of Some Jewish Guy, causing Joel to scramble backwards with a frightened yelp.

You snatch the huge book from his hands and peer more closely at the pages.

Even from up close, it's absurdly hard to read. Either this font is an unusually awful variant of Comic Sans, or the book was printed off of image files derived from actual bad handwriting.

You make faces as though to indicate how unimpressed you are, and flip back to earlier in the huge book. You hope to God that somewhere near the beginning is the Fake Succubus's Guide to Bluffing the Basics, printed in 14-point Times New Roman... nope. All you can find are spell diagrams, naked fairy illustrations, and dense blobs of nearly unreadable text. It doesn't even have a table of contents. "Well, this book sure is crap," you bluff.

"It worked to..." the kid begins defensively, and then seems to think better of it.

You fix Joel with a stern, quizzical glare. (Or at least you roll against SED 25 to try to make your face do that.) "What'd this book tell you about dreamsilver lenses?" you say.

"They---solidify human thoughts so they can be used to construct spells?" Joel says. "The book says a lot of mages get started by buying dreamsilver first, trading with any otherworldly being they can find."

"Sounds like meloxicam," you say with a wise nod. Oh god, you have no idea what that is or how to get it for him. You look back down and try flipping to the back of the book, in the forlorn hope that there's an index. There isn't. Apparently you're gonna be flying this magical system completely blind. "Does this book say that when you summon a succubus, she's supposed to pay you to have sex with her? Are you sure it's not the other way around?"

"The book says that otherworldly beings like virgins. Virginities."

You hand him the book back, since you're not having much luck there. You have a feeling you need to stay on the offensive to keep initiative here, and not show any anxiety yourself... well, it's not like you'll be wrong if you just start making stuff up. "Did it also say to draw the Inscription of Simvastatin in pencil on masking tape, use cinnamon tealights for the Flames of Lisinopril, and form the Circle of Xalatan with granulated sugar?"

The boy looks increasingly uncertain. "It... didn't say that special materials were needed?"

You shake your head in SED-25-faked dismay and deliberately facepalm. "You're lucky you didn't get Azathoth."

"Azathoth is real?!"

Oops. "No, totally fictional, but this circle is such shit you're still lucky you didn't get Azathoth. And your book thinks random succubi are carrying around..." shit you can't remember the name you made up "dreamsilver?"

Joel looks wary, like he suspects you of hiding 24 dreamsilver lenses in the purse you're not wearing. "I'm open to other trades that'd get me started on magecraft," he says. "But I'd need to be confident about what I was getting before I traded my virginity. I've only got the one."

"I'll have to think about this," you say, and close your eyes to think for a slack. You're... you're not sure how you're supposed to play out this eroge from here? You don't have dreamsilver or whatever else it is Joel wants for his virginity. But it's impossible that the plot doesn't call for you to have sex with him...

You try not to visibly flinch as your thoughts reach the obvious conclusion. You haven't played through this eroge plot, but it's probably been done a million times. Novice mage screws up ritual circle, accidentally summons evil succubus. She's not that evil, she doesn't hurt him, but she doesn't take no for an answer. You guess you did think, a while ago, that you ought to try being a villain while villainy was safe.

You're---you're not sure you can do this.

You're not sure you can't do it either.

You're not even sure why the idea feels worse than molesting a random boy on the street, but it does.

You open your eyes, and look disdainfully around the unfinished basement where you were summoned. You need to buy time. "You should take me someplace nicer while I think," you command.

"Nicer?" he says.

You turn to look pointedly at the basement door, then turn your head back to look at him again. "Like a bedroom."

"My bedroom's not very nice," Joel says.

"I'm a succubus. Bedrooms are closer to my natural habitat than basements."

Joel quickly turns around, as though to hide the further-firming erection that you can see anyways. He bends over to gather his heap of clothes. He doesn't try to put them on, but he does hold them over his crotch. He unlocks the basement door, and you follow as he begins to lead the way back.

Wait, why did you ask to be taken to his bedroom? That was dumb. You should have asked Joel to make you tea in the dining room. You suck at stalling.

You're uncomfortable with this eroge plot and you're having trouble articulating why.

If this was just a hentai manga instead of somebody's real life, the thing with Joel wanting to sell his virginity for dreamsilver would be there so he doesn't jump into bed with the sexy succubus right away. There wouldn't be any story conflict if the boy wasn't reluctant. The plot requires a reason for the boy to protest and struggle while he has his virginity taken, or what even makes the succubus be an evil one?

But this is Joel Gregory Ratliff's real life. He's a boy who's made plans for his life and is trying to carry out those plans. It's a quality you find attractive, even. And you can imagine how you'd feel in his shoes, if you thought you were about to trade your virginity for superpowers. If that's the most magically precious thing Joel Gregory Ratliff has and his only hope of becoming a sorcerer, then stealing his virginity is---that seems genuinely awful?

No, wait, hold on, all of that would be a negative consequence, right? There must be something about this plot that you're missing.

A grimmer thought occurs to you. Joel was drawing magical diagrams with a mechanical pencil on tape. He tries to act confident, but it's obvious he has absolutely no fucking idea what he's doing. Maybe if you don't take away his virginity, the next entity he tries to trade it to will be nice less than you. Does Joel Ratliff get eaten a week later if you don't rape him? Does the Erogame count that as a "no negative consequences for raping him" scenario?

Maybe you're just wrong in the first place about how a college-age boy feels about losing his virginity in exactly the right way. Maybe you're projecting your Cindy-feelings onto him too much.

Maybe you think too much all the time and that's part of the lesson here.

The two of you are climbing the stairs to Joel's bedroom now. This is the first time you've watched a guy walk up stairs naked. It's nice. Flexy muscley hips. Maybe you aren't supposed to be thinking anything more complicated than that.

"Uh," Joel begins, "let me clean up a second before you---"

"Mortal, I may look like a girl your own age, but I've been a succubus for about as long as succubi have existed," you say in jaded cynical tones. "I know when the guy I'm with owns a Rias Gremory dakimakura."

"Yeah, never mind," he says, and opens his bedroom door.

Well, here you are back in Joel Gregory Ratliff's bedroom. It's the first boy's bedroom you've ever entered since puberty, now that you think about it. Could you be destined for a makeout session here... or even... holding hands? Your innocent girlish body would be shivering with mixed excitement and apprehension if this eroge had, like, a totally different plot.

You go over to the bed and sit on it, casually kicking your legs in such a way as to occasionally flash your pussy between your thighs. Novice-villainness nerves aside, you're not hating this succubus thing. You feel like you could do this part over and over until the Erogame runs out of virgin boys for you to tempt.

Joel goes over to his desk chair and sits down, keeping his bunched clothes held over his lap. He puts down his book on top of that.

Before Joel can try to regain control of his situation, you pick up the Rias Gremory body pillow next to you, and turn it over to the other side to reveal... Rias Gremory again, but wearing even less. You hold it up where Joey can see, and smile and make eye contact with him while you run your hand caressingly over his dakimakura---

Oh my. The texture of the pillowcase seems to be rougher in the middle, right between Rias's thighs. Fabric stains that haven't been laundered all the way out. Oh my. If this story had a different plot, you'd have blackmail material for Joel Ratliff's entire life. If he ever became President you'd have control of the whole United States. You let your hand linger on molesting between his Rias's legs, so he knows you know.

"Lost count?" you say. "If you're curious, you've ejaculated here fifty-nine times." Though you don't know if the Erogame is bothering to make your guess correct, since Joel has no way of checking.

Joel is trying to keep on his poker face, but he's not succeeding, and he definitely isn't controlling the blush.

"And yes, that makes you a pervert even by succubus standards." You've never ejaculated onto a dakimakura. "Now take all that stuff off your lap, it's indecent."

"Indecent?" Joel says.

"You're in a bedroom with a succubus," you say sternly. "Hiding your dick from me is just as impolite as me walking around human streets like this."

With a visble effort, Joel forces himself to take the clothing and books off his lap, exposing his firm erection. His dick has an unusual shape, sort of curved three-quarters along its length, with an extra-heavy foreskin. You smile at his dick like a hungry succubus, because it's a perfectly good dick and you want him to know that you know that.

"That---that implies it's polite for me to look at you too," Joel says.

You arch your chest, presenting it to him again. "I'm meant to be looked at. And touched. We haven't talked about a price for me fucking you properly, but I'm not going to stop you if you start doing whatever you want with my body. I'm softer and warmer than a dakimakura."

"You're not tricking me that easily into giving away my virginity," Joel says firmly.

You sigh. "What did the book tell you about virgins and succubi?"

Joel takes back his book. He tries to read the book while holding it high above his lap, but that proves awkward because the book is too large, so he stands up to read instead. Aw, he believes you about succubus culture and he's trying to stay politely exposed, that's hilarious.

"Just summarize the parts you remember," you say, after his slow flipping seems to be taking a while.

Joel looks up from his book. "There's magic in taking someone's virginity. It discharges the power of all the lust and fantasies they've built up until then. A man loses his virginity the first time he comes in a woman's vagina. It doesn't count if he pulls out first, or if he's wearing a condom. A woman loses her virginity the same way, through a man coming directly inside her."

You manage not to widen your eyes too much. That is the least strict definition of virginity you've ever heard. If Charles was safe and always used a condom with his previous girls, you'd have been taking his magically-defined virginity at the same time he took yours... which is a nice thought. But lesbians? Gays? Do they even exist according to this book?

Joey is still talking. "That's why, since otherworldly beings can subsist on that type of energy, they try to, uh, get humans to not have real sex. They campaign to make human beings more perverted, and spread homosexuality and pornography, so more orgone energy builds up that they can take from us. That's the real reason the Catholic Church tries to stop the spread of sodomy and condoms, it's all part of a huge struggle that goes back thousands of years for whether humanity or the Otherworld will get the energy of this world. There's a secret order of the Church that fights unnatural creatures and reports directly to the Pope, and they also track down virgins who have a lot of orgone power built up and, uh, neutralize them, before the Otherworld gets to them. The book says their agents are very seductive and beautiful and I know I have to be careful not to give my virginity away to one of them posing as a fairy."

"Oh, uh, is that how mortals are telling the history," you say, remembering to control your expression so you don't look too openly boggled. That is---that is the most---you don't even know what that's most. "Wouldn't that view of events mean you were joining the wrong side?"

Joel looks down, away from you. "The book isn't meant to be used like I'm using it. It's supposed to be for hunting warlocks and witches, not joining them. But it's the highest level book there is. It doesn't leave out any of the details. Complete spell diagrams, naked fairy women with no censorship at all, recorded accounts of what mages traded to them and how they went about pleasing them in bed. I'd probably be killed on sight if the Virgin Hunters found out I had this." A pleading sound enters his voice, though he's still trying to keep his poker face. "You won't judge me for this, right? I mean, it's your side I'm trying to join."

You are not becoming any less boggled. "If that version of history was true, wouldn't the Catholic Church be in favor of birth control pills and STD testing at the same time as they were against homosexuality and condoms?"

Joel blinks. "How do you know about all that?"

"Does your book mention a blending-gift?" you say. "A power that otherworldly beings use to fit in culturally when they visit Earth? You may have noticed that I'm wearing high heels, for example."

"I... don't remember something like that?"

You let out a relieved breath. That doesn't sound like the book's author was In The Know, or at least not to anywhere near the same extent as Old Ned. "This book seems not entirely reliable and I suspect the author had issues."

Joel looks wary. "But dreamsilver is real."

Well, now that you've gone and pretended to know about it, you guess it's real. "Yeah," you say.

"Can I trade my virginity for it? According to you."

Where does the evil succubus take it from here? You---you guess that's obvious.

You've got to do this. You've got to do this. If you don't get over in your first villainy under these extremely safe unnegativeconsequential circumstances, it will be much worse whenever the plot does force you into villainy.

You take a deep breath, then kick yourself a moment later and hope Joel didn't spot it. It's important for the sub that the dom appear collected and not at all nervous when she's taking him by force.

You sit back on the bed, so you can spread your legs without it looking awkward, and stretch slowly, predatorily, seductively. At least you hope you're doing that. 25 SED don't fail you now.

Then you rise from the bed, likewise slowly predatorily and seductively. Three steps bring you close enough to Joel that you're backing him into his chair. "Your sad excuse for a circle didn't hold me at all," you say softly and evilly. You lean over, so your breasts can threaten him too. "Why should I pay for your virginity, when I could just take it?"

"Shit," Joel says, and visibly swallows. "I... was really hoping it wouldn't go this way. Can it please not go this way?"

...You can't do this. Not like this. Not just---taking things from him, taking something he thinks is precious.

[ ] Tell Joel that his virginity isn't actually worth anything to anyone, then take it from him. You can't make yourself do this either.
[ ] Just don't have sex with Joel. You also don't want to fail that completely on your first adventure as a succubus.
[ ] Giftsex him thoroughly, but leave him his magically-defined virginity. But what if he gets eaten the next time he tries to summon something?
[ ] Write-in.

Now you know what took all that time since the last vote.

Brainstorm session, voting is not yet open, you have 3 days after posting to debate plans. After that I will collate the acceptable plans and thoughts, then post a new threadmark with a vote on the acceptable plans. (I'm aiming to post the vote at most one day after the 3-day deadline, if nothing else comes up in my life, but it might.)

Remember, despite Cindy's qualms and hesitations and inner conflicts, nothing will actually go wrong with anything Cindy does. This doesn't mean raping Joel immediately and with no further explanation would have no negative consequences, because that isn't something Cindy will do.

(Reposted, because I think the original might not have generated an update alert due to being inside a spoiler.)

7.g [MS,SZ]: Many Magics

Thanks to theunitofcaring for helping with the content/voice for the reductionist sections of Lavelle's dialogue. Any other parts of Lavelle's dialogue are not their fault.

The next chapter of manga is fully scripted... but it's 32 pages, and the artist I used last-time has a queue of 2 months and would take 2 months to produce the manga. Trying an alternative artist now. Definitely going to be at least 1 month.

I'm wondering if I could feed some of my hunger (and yours) with Erogamer fiction that other people have written. $10 per 1000 words seems to be a price around these parts for commissioned stories? See the comment below this chapter for more details.

Maggie Strigi knocked on the door of the Su household. It was a nice house, or at least a large house. Ziquan's father didn't work as a programmer, contrary to what stereotype (and heredity) might have led one to expect. But Su Ziquan's family still made enough money to have a nicer house than hers.

The door was opened for her by the cheerful middle-aged half-Asian lady that Maggie privately thought of as the Su-Mother. Su May's existence seemed to demand some type of title.

"Come on in," spoke the Su-Mother, and Maggie came on in. "Ziquan's up in his bedroom. He knows you're here?"

Maggie nodded, hoping to God she wasn't giving off visible signals of nervousness.

The Su-Mother had been sending Maggie rather evaluating looks, since Ziquan had started inviting her over from time to time. Ziquan had warned her that his bedroom might be subject to sudden inspections any time the two of them were inside it.

Maggie had asked Ziquan once what would happen if she told Su May straight out that she was asexual. Ziquan had said that Su May would emit beep bloop noises like a malfunctioning robot and then erase the last minute of existence.

And now here she was, standing in front of the Su-Mother, feeling embarrassed and guilty about visiting Ziquan in his bedroom. Those feelings, like many feelings, did not make any sense. There was now a chance of her relationship with Ziquan progressing, fine. But what perversions were the two of them going to commit if things got steamy, holding hands?

The Su-Mother didn't detect her nervous thoughts by Mompathy and start an inquisition. The Su-Mother just commented that lunch would be served in two hours, and then went back to working on her laptop in the dining room.

Shortly after, Maggie was knocking upon Ziquan's bedroom door, and Ziquan said "Come on in."

Ziquan's bedroom was mostly unchanged since the last time she'd visited, months ago. The two of them saw each other enough on schooldays that they felt little need to visit each other on weekends. Stereotype would have had Ziquan's room full of anime figurines, or books, or heavy computing machinery. In reality it contained a plain bed, a tidy desk, and a 3x4 Ikea shelving unit of neatly organized cubbyholes.

In the top-right square of the shelving unit was a box full of weird toys that Ziquan had liked enough to keep nearby. That was the most Ziquanlike part of Ziquan's bedroom. Ziquan kept most of himself online, he'd once told her, where it was easier to own things that his parents couldn't take away.

He did keep twelve boxes of junk in the basement, and there were anime figurines in there.

"So," Maggie said, deciding to skip straight to it, "whacha got for me, Mr. Su?"

"You should call me Lavelle when we're meeting on magical business, Madame Cordy."

"I think not," noped Maggie. Ziquan had already turned away from her, plopped back into the comfy ergonomic chair that his clean bedroom had room for, and was clicking around on his desktop computer... oh god, he hadn't made a Powerpoint presentation for her, had he? No, it was just a page of notes.

"I'm serious," Ziquan said, still not looking at her. "We need to get into the habit of keeping our civilian identities secret and not speaking true names, or it could genuinely bite us. We already messed up once."

Where by we, Ziquan meant her. Polite of him... well, he'd also spoken the first syllable of her own Name out loud.

Maggie Cordy sighed and plopped herself down on Ziquan's Lavelle's bed. "Fine. Whacha got for me? Find anything now that we've got more to search on?"

Zi... Lavelle shot her a startled look, swiveling his chair back towards her. "You didn't? Find anything online, I mean?"

Maggie shook her head. "Think I was still using the wrong keywords." Also it had been late, she'd felt tired, and she'd been pretty certain that Ziquan would stay up later and do all the work. Sometimes she got lazy, sue her.

Lavelle frowned. "We must have been using different keywords, yeah. I found all kinds of introductory FAQs for mundanes who just got caught up in a magical incident and want to know what's up."

Maggie's expression brightened. "Really?"

"Yeah, and all the websites described different incompatible magical systems."

She blinked. "Say more."

Lavelle turned back to his computer, pulling up a page on Chrome, though the text was too small and distant for her to read easily. "Okay, example. This page looked really promising to me at first. It's about magic that works by, uh, basically moving things between different realms causes those things to have the properties resembling the ones they had in their original realms? So you can take a magnet to a realm that doesn't have electrical charges, and it'll go on attracting things that would look like metal in your own world. There were three fundamental laws of magic that, I don't know, sounded like they could be actual laws. Like, the first law of magic is that any two paths between the same source realm and destination realm will cause a series of changes in characteristics that stack to the same total translation. Which is what justifies the idea that objects have an underlying nature that's being expressed differently in different realms, rather than the portals changing the objects around to function in new realms. Just like how, in our own universe, objects pick up the same change in energy as they move between the same start position and end position---and that's why we say there's such a thing as a potential energy field. The page also talked about the economics of interworld trade, which is exactly the type of thing that fictional magic usually drops off a cliff because the author doesn't know economics or doesn't care or doesn't want to make the story be about that. Even though in real life, stuff is all about the economics..." Lavelle trailed off. "Not interesting?"

"It'd be more interesting if you told me it was real," Maggie replied.

"Yeah. So, I was feeling hopeful until I got to the section of the FAQ that, uh, basically it specifically said that you can't solve NP-hard problems using magic. Some of the impossibilities that follow are things we personally saw Illyria do, like history postselection."

Maggie grimaced as she drew the obvious conclusion. "A disinformation campaign. Somebody is putting up fake pages to Google-bury any real pages." Finding a needle in a haystack was easy, compared to finding a needle in a haystack-sized heap of needles.

"That's what I thought, yeah," Lavelle said. "Though it also occurred to me that if this was a fantasy novel---I mean, if our life were literally running on tropes---then it wouldn't be too surprising if the protagonists met a girl who could go beyond normal magic."

"I don't think I'm willing to throw in the towel on our lives being a computer simulation," Maggie said.

"Neither am I, because that by itself is an unhelpful hypothesis that doesn't constrain what we expect to happen," said Lavelle in his lecturing voice. "I'm not ruling it out but saying 'we're in a computer simulation' is just kicking the can down the road, right? Does the simulation run on rules such that we can make any predictions about what will happen next? Then those rules are what we want to know. The standard mistake is, like, something weird happens and you decide to explain it with the theory 'Weird stuff will happen, at arbitrary times, for mysterious reasons.' It's fine to have a stand-in for a theory that doesn't do anything more than go 'we're really uncertain' but you should just call your stand-in 'we're really uncertain' and not say 'Computer simulation.' We haven't invented anything useful until there are some weird things that would make us go 'That wasn't what we expected.'" Lavelle drew a quick breath, as though worried that if he took a longer breath, somebody might interrupt him. "That said, I think we'd have to be dumb to rule out particular computer simulations as hypotheses, given how our week has been going. 'We're inside a fantasy novel for extradimensional aliens' is a theory in a way that 'computer simulation' isn't, because that lets us expect things and 'computer simulation' doesn't---"

"Is it falsifiable, though?" said Maggie. "If my life is a reality TV show for aliens, that doesn't make me feel like I know what can't happen. It could happen to me as soon as I walk out of this house. It could happen to me at night, while I'm lying in my bed, trying to fall asleep."

"Uh..." said Lavelle. "It does feel to me like that hypothesis is predictive? Say, on the theory that we're in some known genre, we could make a list of possible genres and predict which tropes might come up next for each. Like if we run into cowboys, that points at us being in a Western, and we should expect something bad to happen to the town sheriff."

"Mmhm," said Maggie. "Sure. That sure makes me feel like, when I get on the bus today trying to get home, there is somewhere that bus can't go."

"Okay," Lavelle said. "Try this." He held up a finger. "First, suppose we run into cowboys."

"Consider it supposed," said Maggie.

Lavelle held up another finger. "Then, suppose we run into aliens."

Maggie heaved a sigh. She remembered a distant time, a few days ago, when she would've objected that this increasingly contrived thought experiment was beginning to stretch credulity. "Got it, cowboys then aliens."

"Well after that," Lavelle said, in tones of triumphant conclusion, "the theory predicts that we should not come across a time portal leading to ancient Rome, because most crossovers don't have that many elements. They wouldn't mix up the cowboy era with the Roman era after they'd already thrown aliens into the mix."

"I'm not sure we're on the right track here," Maggie said, deciding it was time to activate her Ace Ability: Get On With It. "Look, you said you found multiple pages talking about incompatible magical systems. That doesn't sound like our life is running on tropes, it sounds like a disinformation campaign to bury the truth."

"Yeah," Lavelle said. "Though there's other possibilities, like the protagonists have stumbled over a dimensional nexus between fantasy worlds---"

"All of which are being indexed by the same Google server?"

"You have to admit, if anyone could do that, it would be Google. Or all the magical systems could be true from different people's perspectives, the same way that Yoal-yohuali's hair blocked her naughty bits as seen from every angle---"

"And Google indexes the perspectives of all conscious beings?"

"Well, nobody knows what Google really is, in a deeper sense, so that could be the ultimate nature of Google for all we know? But what I had in mind was that we can imagine possible universes where one of the magical systems is real, and all the other systems were invented as fiction and put online. All those universes give us the same Google results, so we can't tell them apart by observation. That lets llyria postselect any magical system she wants to become retroactively the real one. Yoal-yohuali's hair can use all the magics simultaneously."

"Oh my God," Maggie said in genuine horror.

"I mean, that could just be what our lives are like now." Lavelle swiveled back to his computer. "But the theory I proceeded on was that I was facing an Internet adversary trying to bury the truth. Uh, at which point I stopped and spent two hours figuring out how to sign up with a VPN and get my computer to use it as a proxy. Which I should have done earlier but oh well. Anyhow, my hope was that the truth would still be in the first few pages of Google results, since people who did know the truth would link there. Unless the bad guys DMCAed it. Or Google itself is corrupt, in which case our reality is doomed regardless. I kept looking, anyhow." Lavelle frowned. "Nobody in any intro page talked about magic accidentally turning things into girls, which makes me worry that the truth did get successfully buried. Or Illyria was trolling me about that, I mean, it is the most ridiculous thing she said. But I did find a few 'So you just found out about magic' pages that seemed sciency, and that didn't explicitly say that anything we personally saw happen was impossible."

"It could be a more convincing grade of disinformation," Maggie said. "But go ahead, hit me. What's the top candidate?"

Lavelle pulled up another Chrome tab, the text too small to easily read from Maggie's standpoint. "Hypnosis."

"Oh, come on!" Maggie said. "That's right up there with 'It was all just a dream.'"

"No, not us being hypnotized into seeing magic where none exists. Just the opposite!" Lavelle paused dramatically. "Suppose that, in the world the way we used to think it existed, we wanted to give somebody the experience of magic---of seeing occurrences that broke the apparent laws of the world. We could find some highly hypnotizable subjects, and hypnotize them into believing that the world was two-dimensional and that no up or down existed. Then they see us pass through an impassable fence... by climbing over it. Magic!"

"I stand by my 'Oh come on.'"

"Okay, but what I'm trying to say, Ma---Cordy. What I'm trying to say, Cordy, is that we already believed hypnosis is real. We already believed that the human brain had this weird built-in mode that could be used to make people forget things, believe false things, add false memories, even make people believe they were somebody else. And we believed that our society, uh, doesn't make much use of that. Sure, we thought hypnosis didn't work reliably in a lot of cases. But then wouldn't people be doing science to that, one of the weirdest things a brain can do? Wouldn't engineers be trying to make it work better for more people? We, ourselves, pretty much ignored the fact that human brains had this weird mode. It's plausible that was just a natural lack of time to pay attention to all the weird things. But was that the reason we weren't curious about the one aspect of the world that looks most useful to mind-controllers?"

Maggie nodded slowly, starting to feel a slight chill.

"Anyways," Lavelle said, "one of the intro pages to magic claims that there's a huge set of hypnotic injunctions that almost everybody has. The injunctions get us to ignore a lot of stuff going on around us, the equivalent of forgetting there's an up direction. Sometimes people partially break out of the hypnosis, and then other people mostly ignore their actions. But if not, it looks to us like the person is doing magic. Since hypnosis isn't perfect, sometimes people who witness magic start to be able to do magic themselves. They see somebody climbing over a fence when 'up' isn't supposed to be a direction, and suddenly they can climb fences too. The website claims it has a list of some things we're being told to ignore, but if you haven't broken sufficiently far out of the hypnosis, you won't be able to see the list. That spot looked blank to me. I also didn't see any sections describing who set up the system or why. Like, there wasn't even any section title for it that I could see, nothing."

"Uh huh," said Maggie. "That's your top candidate for the webpage revealing the truth of the universe, is it."

"It scores points for being something that we'd have thought was possible. I mean, on our old view of reality, we could in principle have found some deeply hypnotizable subjects, and set them up in a colony with a common set of false beliefs about how reality worked. They could have hypnotic injunctions telling them to hypnotize their children too. The fact that a materialist view of reality allows for that to happen at all scores a lot of points for the theory, compared to all the other stories about magic. A universe that works like that could have fundamentally simple mathematically describable physics. It doesn't require that reality is keeping track of what people believe, or that sometimes people are born with ignoring-physics abilities, or anything else that has complicated things as its basic building blocks---"

Maggie was still feeling pretty skeptical. "Wouldn't the Mesmerizers take the obvious step of hypnotizing everyone to forget that hypnosis existed?"

"Uh... good question. I don't remember the page saying anything about that. Maybe hypnotizing a brain to disbelieve in hypnosis itself is paradoxical? Or it weakens the setup in the long run, even if it's not impossible." Lavelle swiveled back to glance at his page of unreadable notes, then turned back to look at her again. "Oh, right. The site said that a lot of people had been hypnotized into believing false things about their sexuality, so sexual self-discoveries were often the trigger that snapped people partway out of the trance. It occurred to me that could potentially include somebody discovering they were in a girl body's all along, the first time they do magic. They try to 'cast a spell' and poof, they're suddenly a girl! Though I'm not seeing how you get from there to turning battleships into girls. But Illyria did say she didn't have personal experience of that? If Illyria is only partway out of the hypnosis and she's implicitly or explicitly aware of that, she would still be doubting her beliefs---and Illyria did give us that weird warning about how she might believe something false and not know it."

"Uh huh," said Maggie. "Somehow I still feel a lingering sense of skepticism."

"Aha!" said Lavelle. "But is that really an intuition, or have we been hypnotized into feeling a lingering sense of skepticism?"

"I worry that down that path might lie literal insanity," Maggie said. She was starting to feel concerned that Ziquan was in some ways the ideal target for this disinformation attack.

"Have we just been hypnotized to worry about that, though? I mean, another thing that makes this scenario stand out as a hypothesis is the way we have to question everything we think is a reason for not believing it---"

"Okay so what's the second most plausible magical system?" said Maggie.

"But is it really you who wants to change the subject, or---"

"Hello, tech support?" Maggie said into her cellphone. "Ziquan seems to be stuck, how do I---hit him until he starts working again? Got it." (Of course she didn't consider female-on-male violence to be okay in general, but Ziquan was a cuddle masochist.)

"Lavelle, remember," he said. "Fine, I'll move on for now." Lavelle clicked over to another Chrome tab. "Next set of claims. There's a world of structurable dark matter, which usually interacts with normal matter only gravitationally---that's why the shadow plane follows Earth around in orbit. But it's possible for the shadow plane to affect ours and vice versa, it just requires exotic events on the dark-matter side. And there are things that cross interstellar distances to try to reproduce with other species. In order to accumulate lineages with lots of good traits, I'd imagine. And it's easier to travel between the stars if you're composed of dark matter. So now there are human-shaped, highly sexual people running around with dark-matter structures bound to them that give them seemingly magical powers, often based on contacting dark-matter life forms to move around on the shadow plane in order to spy on things in our world or poke at them. It's possible that I'm biased in favor of this claimset because it would mean that I guessed the origin of faeries exactly correctly on my first try."

Maggie reflected on this. "I don't see how that would allow the thing we saw Yoal-yohuali do with her hair," Maggie said. "Or Illyria's demonstration on... that woman. Copper Swallow. It doesn't seem like the type of thing dark matter could do."

"Uh... there could be some way to do it using dark matter that we haven't realized?"

Maggie shook her head. "Dark matter doesn't seem like the right type of thing. Given the magic we've seen, we should be looking for something more... metaphysically interesting."

Lavelle frowned. "I see your point, but, uh, it's true way more often that unexpected stuff is being produced by physics you didn't realize could do that, compared to explanations being metaphysically interesting. Explanations that sound boring are better, not worse."

"Look," Maggie said, "Illyria said that we were dealing with bullshit in the same style as quantum bullshit, but not quantum bullshit, different bullshit. I agree that doesn't sound like at the center of reality there is an enormous tree. But a world of dark matter paralleling the Earth is too boring. It's not even quantum. It's not going to do the thing with the hair."

"Uh, maybe? But wouldn't you agree that it does have a very nice theory of why faeries look like sexy---"

"Number three?" said Maggie, suppressing a sigh.

Lavelle again dropped his voice into the deep register of exposition.

"Humanity has a number of biological sexes," Lavelle intoned. "Contrary to popular mythology, this number is not two. There are the two mundane sexes that everyone knows---and five magical sexes that are hidden, secluded within the shadows, or disguising themselves to pass within the world of women and men."

Maggie stared.

"Okay, maybe that wasn't the most persuasive introduction," Ziquan said. "Um. Supposedly humans can have one chromosome or three chromosomes per position, not just two, and the seven sexes are," Ziquan looked back at his computer, "X, Y, XX, XY, XXX, XXY, XYY. Faeries, eldritches, women, men, succubi, hermaphrodites, futanari. Sexes with one chromosome per locus use magic to make up for all the detrimental mutations that don't have an alternative, and the more that happens, the more inhuman they look. Sexes with three chromosomes per locus have room to suppress some mundane alleles and express magical alternatives. The point that jumped out at me was that the page talked about magicals cooperating to put up larger magical fields. Some sexes have attention-redirection powers, and collectively they're sustaining a worldwide field that makes the mundane sexes either get distracted away from magical things---or believe that nobody else would believe them. The page didn't give any convincing ontological stories about why magic existed, or where the other sexes came from. I mean, it gave no stories at all, convincing or otherwise, so it can't be criticized on grounds of not being metaphysically interesting enough. But it described exactly the public-knowledge-suppression system that Illyria told us about, and that seemed worth a big attention boost. Though, uh, I realize that's something a disinformation specialist could put in too."

Maggie nodded mechanically, still trying to recover from the shock she'd just taken.

Ziquan was still talking. "It was also nice to read that there was a huge ongoing controversy about whether it was time to take down the anti-publicity field. Supposedly, just last month a bunch of magical millennials started withholding their power from the anti-publicity field. Now, normally, defecting from sustaining the big magical fields is seen as an extreme edgelord society-fucking thing to do. But some magicals from the last few generations think it's a reasonable stance to withhold your support from magical fields that you believe are actively evil. So their society is going through a convulsion where the ancients who remember medieval times want the edgelord millennials beheaded, but other magicals want conscientious objection to be a thing. Like, I hope those are the real magicals, because it sounds like they have actual social developments and are capable of caring about nonmagical people, you know? And if the anti-publicity field is weakening, that might explain why we're noticing things now." Ziquan glanced back at his notes. "Let's see, what else... oh, right. Their collective wills are supporting other global magical fields that can be invoked by rituals, and even the mundane sexes can use those once they're in the know. With enough effort they can turn some materials permanently magical, and build magitek that anyone can use. And it sounded like the best magitek could top anyone's innate abilities, even the most ancient beings of power alive. That sounded fundamentally realistic to me on some level, even if it's not a usual trope for urban fantasy. I mean, the strongest human can't outlift a construction crane? I think that scores another point for Illyria-correspondence, when she said the best stuff wasn't restricted... are you still following along with all this? You're looking a little distracted."

"Um," Maggie said. "That whole scenario is... possibly the correct one."

"Oh?" Ziquan said, his eyes lighting up. "What do you know?"

"Okay, so," Maggie said. "If there's a magical underground, they're probably not building their own Internet from scratch, right?"

"Not unless they have a population as large as ours, or they're supernaturally good programmers," said Ziquan.

"In which case, they're using the same Internet apps as the rest of us, a lot of the time," Maggie said.

"I see!" Ziquan said rapidly. "There should be supernatural beings on Twitter, talking to each other in some type of code---"

"They aren't even talking in code!" Maggie said. "See, there's this online community that, I mean, what I thought I was reading, I thought there was a bunch of online authors working in a shared fictional universe about an Earth with five hidden magical sexes---"

Ziquan started giggling. He was trying to suppress it, but not trying too hard.

"---and the magical world is undergoing upheavals because their next generation is online and discovering modern ideas about gender being complicated. Only it's even more complicated for them because there's five more sexes, and the sexes have distinct cultures and politics. Even more so than in our own world, I mean. I mean, more than in the world I thought was our world. After some of those posts had come across my dashboard, I made a new account and tried to post a story set in that universe. I got told off hard that nobody was supposed to use their special hashtag without being part of some official process for authorizing canon stories. Only now I'm guessing they felt offended because I wasn't actually an asexual succubus. Because they were real people just trying to use Tumblr like the rest of us, to talk about their real lives, and I thought it was a game so I barged in and started lying. Damn it, it's not funny!"

Ziquan's chortles continued, though he might have been trying harder to get them under control. "I'm afraid that it is, objectively speaking, funny."

"It really isn't! I had an online friend who was assigned female at birth, but her lesbian mother's wife was secretly a futanari, and she was confused for a long time and thought she was nonbinary before she found out about the other sexes, and then she wanted to transition to eldritch but there weren't exactly surgeries set up for that, and---and I stopped talking to her because I thought she was making fun of real transgender issues!"

Ziquan drew a quick breath. "You know someone on the inside of the magical community? Can we ask her about---"

"No, we can't," Maggie said, feeling increasingly sick and guilty as she thought back three years. She'd always had a sharp side. Her younger self had been sharper. "I burned that bridge pretty hard."

"So apologize pretty hard."

Wow, he sure made that sound fucking easy.

"Maybe Venmo her twenty dollars as an apology for causing her emotional pain?" Ziquan continued in a Ziquan-like fashion. "I mean, that would be a costly signal that you felt real remorse."

"I made helicopter analogies!" Maggie covered her face with her hands. "She's never going to talk to me again."

"Shit, helicopter analogies?" Ziquan said, sounding shocked. "That is pretty bad. Maybe fifty dollars then. What are helicopter analogies?"

"You know the meme about 'I identify sexually as an assault helicopter?' That people use to make fun of transgender issues? I made an analogy between that and how I thought her whole 'I identify as a tentacle monster' thing was making fun of... you see?"

"I guess?" Ziquan fixed her with a serious look. "I'm not you, but it sounds to me like you ought to just write her with an honest account of what happened and a sincere apology. If she still doesn't want to talk to you, we wouldn't have lost anything. If she understands that you made an honest mistake, we'd have an insider who could tell us what was going on." Ziquan looked thoughtful for a moment. "Though, it's also possible---"

"That the whole thing is fictional," Maggie said.

"Yeah," said Ziquan. "One person in that online community knows about real magic, and that person suggested how the publicity-suppression system could work inside their fictional universe."

"In which case," Maggie completed the thought, "wow would I sound stupid while trying to apologize to my ex-friend. No, not stupid. Insane. And she knows my true name, and she might do the sensible nice thing and call the police or my mother about the psychotic break I was having."

The two of them paused to think about this. After all, if the ex-online-friend didn't already know about magic, nothing good could possibly come of talking to her about it.

"Create a new pseudonym, contact one of the earliest authors, and ask them who suggested the details of the publicity-suppression field?" Ziquan thought out loud. "And whether that person suggested any other details for their magical system. Even if the online community is writing fiction, they could be working inside a magical system inspired by reality, right?"

Maggie didn't reply. She was reflecting with increasing horror on some of the other things she had said at the end, about what might have been a real person's own actual life stories. Such as that the events were "poorly plotted and never seemed to go anywhere" and that the protagonist was "too sad and wimpy to be interesting" and that she'd gotten to the "I don't care about these people" stage of literary reaction.

Yeah, that ship had sailed.

Somebody else. She would contact somebody else.

"You know," said Ziquan, who had of course continued reflecting along his own special version of a thought process, "I never understood in the first place what was wrong with identifying sexually as an assault helicopter. If somebody wants to be an assault helicopter, you should work on the technology to help them become an assault helicopter."

"Yeah," Maggie said dryly, feeling grateful for the distraction. "We've talked about this, Zi---Lavelle. You're too much of a transhumanist to understand anything transgender, ever."

"I continue to not understand how that could be true."

"That's what I said." Maggie sighed. "Look, the whole reason the assault helicopter meme is an attack---an attempt to hurt somebody's feelings and cause them emotional pain---is that most trans people feel like they are different from what other people see them as, in a different sense than wanting to be helicopters. If you say, sure, I'll support you in being female, just like I'd support you in being a helicopter, you're not validating them."

"Uh huh," said Ziquan. "And then it turns out that there was a hidden helicopter sex the whole time. Whereupon you go 'Oh no what awful things did I say about my friend who really is a trans-helicopter' and face an even more complicated question of which genders which people are allowed to want to be. While I'm just shrugging inside my extremely simple moral system that says everyone should get to be whatever they want. Plus I don't understand what difference it makes to sexually identifying as a helicopter whether or not other sexual helicopters already exist. It seems likely that there's an infinite multiverse, even more so today than one week earlier. In which case, somewhere in the multiverse is a version of humanity where 'assault helicopter' is a biological sex. So in that sense of prior existence---"

"I stand by my statement that you will never understand anything transgender," Maggie said. "And I will go on saying that, until you can understand how trans people might feel something different from having decided to fill in 'helicopter' on a form that everyone gets to fill out however they like."

"But tentacle monsters are now fair game for trans-ing?" Ziquan said, sounding dubious. "Or rather, they're fair game if and only if we are secretly living inside a magical system where that's a pre-existing biological sex. Huh. Can I make 'assault helicopter' be an okay trans target if I turn enough people into assault helicopters that it counts as a pre-existing---"

"Ziquan, give up. Even if you transform into a girl, you will remain forever unable to understand normal, neurotypical transgender people."

"It's true that I don't naturally empathize with the type of person who would want to transform into a girl, but wouldn't think to take it a step further and become a catgirl so long as they were changing shapes," said Ziquan. "But my pride doesn't let me give up on understanding something that easily, especially if it's key to not offending magical beings."

Maggie inhaled. What she had to say here was harsh---but Ziquan always claimed that trying to mince words for him just made his life worse, because then he had to struggle to guess the original harsh thought and construct worst-case scenarios for how harsh it might have been. "Okay, look. What some people feel is a sense of... of life handing them the wrong lines. They feel like they've been assigned a movie role that doesn't fit them. They think there's a different role that would work better for them. That is, and I mean this as the literal truth even if it sounds like a burn, that is a hope you can't imagine. You said yesterday that as soon as you become a girl, you're going to walk into a gym and announce that everyone there gets to fuck you. It never occurred to you that wasn't the standard girl script. It never crossed your mind that our society doesn't have a catgirl script. You've never seen any aspect of society that looked to you like it had your own shape. You have no concept of the thing that trans people are trying to get by cutting their hair short or wearing dresses or getting surgeries with major health consequences."

Ziquan didn't answer this for several seconds, which he'd always claimed to her was a good sign because it meant that he was thinking.

"Is that how most trans people feel?" he said. "Or is it just one particular way that some---"

"I don't actually know," Maggie said. "It's how an asexual---it's how my type of asexual feels about wishing that there was a special hat I could put on, and then everybody would understand what I was, and my Mom wouldn't freak if I invited you into my bedroom to cuddle me to sleep. Nothing like that exists, of course. There's no way out for me no matter what clothes I wear or what surgeries I get. It's just a guess on my part that transgender feels might be similar... I don't know, maybe it's just different for everyone."

"If that's really how transness works, I'd worry about people discovering that the fitting-in grass was no greener on the other side of the gender fence," Ziquan said. "I'd worry that it was this entire culture that didn't fit them, and they'd thought it was their gender. Are you sure that not-fitting-in isn't just what everyone feels like all of the time, in complicated modern societies?"

Maggie swallowed, feeling a weight in her throat. "I think most people who aren't you have had the experience of fitting in, sometimes, if not all the time. Being asexual is a small part of my life, and I've had a sense of fitting in for other parts. That's why I have a concept of what it would mean for society to have standard flowcharts with standard lines that went to asexual boxes, instead of my existence being an error mode."

Again Ziquan was quiet for a time. "I did wake up at 4 in the morning once to take the bus to San Francisco," he said, his voice lower. "Just to go to a Slate Star meetup where I hoped I might meet people who'd seem less like aliens. So yeah, I guess if you put it that way, people getting surgery feels more natively understandable to me. I'd go to extreme lengths too, if I thought there was someplace I'd fit. Although..."

"Although?" Maggie said. She pushed down the part of her that wanted to rejoice about Ziquan having actually understood something. She'd had false alarms on that before.

"Um, I guess after that last conversation we had, yesterday I mean, this is the type of thing I should maybe be saying out loud? It just sounds sort of unbearably awfully corny, but... I feel like I sort of fit in with you? I mean, you often don't approve of who I am, but I feel like you know who that is, and you're not always handing me the wrong script."

"Um," Maggie said.

The two of them stared at each other, both aware that this had been something of a romantic statement on Ziquan's part, both aware that every passing second was making this silence even more awkward, and neither knowing how the rest of this script was supposed to go, now that they'd semi-acknowledged themselves as being on a relationship track to eventual non-sexual mutual part-time harem membership.

Just as the realization came to Maggie that if she hadn't overcomplicated her thought processes she would have gone for a hug, Ziquan was turning back to his desktop with a nervous motion and opening a new Chrome tab. "So," he said, the word slightly high-pitched, "what should I search on to start reading Tumblr blogs set in a world of five hidden magical sexes that have recently discovered gender issues, which might or might not be the world we actually live in?"

The moment had passed, but there would be others. "Hashtag, AU social justice."

7.h [AR]: Meanwhile at the Purring Kittens

Bryan "Bry" Landau had dealt with a ton of men, and a pound of women, coming after his people. Not just the dancers. The waitresses, the coatcheck girl, the damn cook that one time. If it was inside the Purring Kittens, some asshole wanted to fuck it. He was lucky nobody had gotten the carpet pregnant.

Most of the wannabe stalkers didn't go as far as this guy. It troubled him. Something about it stunk less like a lovestruck fool and more like a hired investigator.

Bry looked up from the supposed student ID from some college in Oregon he'd never heard of, back to looking at an office-casual-dressed guy sitting across his desk. Young guy. Could plausibly be in his senior year of college. Bry's instincts were telling him that the guy was a couple of years older than that, and the ID was fake.

Somehow, Bry had an unnerving feeling that "Dennis Boucher" could have easily shown a driver's license that would pass a police scan. The cheap-looking student ID was meant to make Bry think that he was dealing with some young chump with a laminator, if Bry started getting suspicious, rather than somebody well-connected enough to fake a California state ID.

If running a strip club for a year or twelve taught you anything, it taught you that your instincts were fallible. It was worth trying it the easy way. "I'll be doin my best to get that to her," Bry said, reaching for the proffered billfold as if there was no question of it being handed over.

Supposed-Dennis withdrew the billfold that he'd supposedly seen a girl drop after leaving the Purring Kittens. "Yeah, sorry about that," Dennis said. "You could be a great guy for all I know. But I don't know. For all I know, I give you the $200 and the girl with the amazing hair never sees it again."

Pretty much exactly what Bry would've expected a hired investigator to say.

"Well, sorry," said Bry, "but you know I can't give ya her information." Unfortunately, he didn't have Princess's info. Bry didn't say that out loud. It would be considered a lie, and Mr. Boucher would draw conclusions from that. "How bout you leave me your contact info? Soon as I see her, I'll be tellin her you dropped by," along with some severe warnings.

The well-dressed young man on the opposite side of his desk nodded, and passed over an authentic-looking business card as if he'd been expecting that request.

Bry watched him go. Even peeked out of his door, to make sure the guy wasn't lurking outside it.

He hadn't been planning on doing this, it stunk of weird and Bry didn't like weird, but he had one line on reaching Princess. Just one. Tisha had thought Princess was lying for sure. Well, Bry had thought so too, but that kid had been heart-crushingly innocent in some ways if not others. Bry had decided that, if Princess said it, it was worth a google. The look on Tisha's face when Bry had shown her had been priceless.

Turned out, there was a former Buddhist temple that now housed a pole-dancing cult, just across the state border in Nevada.

Bry looked up the place again, and told his computer to dial the number.

"Hi," Bry said toward his laptop. "Name's Bry Landau, I run the Purring Kittens club in California. Gotta get a message to one of you, if you got any ways of contactin a girl after she leaves. Guy that stunk of bad news came in to my office lookin for her."

After a pause, a woman's voice on his laptop speakers said, "What?"

After pleading to talk to the highest-ranking person present, Bry got on the phone with somebody calling herself the Abbess. An elderly woman by the sound of her, who spoke in cautiously precise English with a damn weird accent. Tibetan, Bry was guessing, if he was remembering right that Buddhists came from Tibet.

"Norville?" said the elderly woman's voice on the phone. "I do not think any of our kind are dancing there. Are you sure she was one of us?"

"Well, she said she was?" Bry frowned. "Think that's what Princess said. I wasn't the one who heard her say it." Too bad Tisha wasn't in the club today.

"Princess," repeated the elderly woman. "How did she come to bear that name? Was it you who named her so?"

"Think she chose it herself," Bry said. It didn't sound like one of Tisha's suggestions.

"It seems we have an impostor then," the woman said. Her voice sounded relieved, and stern. "There is only one in the lineage of the Dancer who would be in her rights to name herself Princess, and I doubt this woman is she. I may need to look into this. We value our names highly."

Fuck him, Bry hadn't meant to get Princess in more trouble. "Jeezus, calm down, would ya? I wasn't listenin when that name got picked. Might notta been her idea at all. Hell, I could be wrong bout her sayin she was associated with ya, I didn't hear her say it. She was a nice kid, way too innocent for our biz. I'm only callin ya because a suspicious guy came lookin for her."

"Innocent," the woman said thoughtfully. "Well, that may bear looking into as well. I doubt she used our name without reason. Perhaps she has a right to the protection of the Dancing Ones, by way of one heritage or another. Can you describe this woman at all? Any unusual features that stuck in your memory?"

"Well, she had some truly amazin hair, like her head was a damn fireplace---"

There was a sudden explosion of words in a foreign language that caused Bry to stare at his laptop. Then another voice in the background yelling back in the same language. He waited for the commotion to die down, but there was only more and louder yelling. He couldn't have caused that much ruckus if he'd tossed a live grenade through the phone line.

Then from his laptop speakers shrieked a voice in unaccented English, "Where's Norville?"

"What?" Bry said blankly. "It's in California."

"Where in California?"

Why didn't they just look up... maybe somebody was too upset? "Thirty miles south of Bakersfield."

"Where the hell is Bakersfield?" The voice on the line changed, as if turning away. "Does anybody know where Bakersfield is? Is it on the line?"

"Look, it's bout ninety miles north of Los Angeles down I-5---"

"Norville is or Bakersfield?" shrieked the voice on the line.

"Norville---"

"Are you west of the mountains? How far?"

He wasn't fucking Google Maps. "I'm guessin this is that Princess of yours?" Bry said, but there was no reply.

The next person to speak on the phone was the Abbess again, this time demanding to know who'd been looking for Princess.

Bry hesitated before answering. "If I tell you, is somebody gonna die?"

"Nobody will die who otherwise would not have died," the elderly female voice said reassuringly.

Bry stared blankly at the laptop speakers. Then he gave up and described the man who'd called himself Dennis Boucher, who'd implausibly claimed to have found a billfold of money that Princess had dropped.

"I see," the old woman said. "There is one who offers to return to her what she has lost... It has already begun, then. Tell me, when you say she seemed innocent, do you mean that she seemed ignorant of your world's common knowledge? Or did she truly seem youthful and unknowing of mature affairs---"

"Fuck this, I gotta nuff drama already. All you lunatics stay the hell away from my club or I sic some friendly cops on ya."

Bry stabbed the red button to terminate the call, as hard as he could without damaging his laptop's touchscreen. He knew he was dating himself by thinking it, but he missed the days of phones you could slam down on the hook.

"Huh," said Alexander Robichaud, who sometimes went by Dennis these days. "That plan worked... not as expected."

Alex didn't terminate the call he'd left open from a muted burner phone to the other burner phone that he'd surreptitiously dropped into Bryan Landau's wastebasket. There might be more overhearable words to come.

Very helpful of Bryan Landau to hold that call on speakerphone. Alex had only been expecting to hear one side of that conversation, when he'd played his gambit. Go in and act suspicious, hope the club manager contacted Yoal-yohuali if he knew how. But the conversation hadn't been with Yoal-yohuali, but with some different being...

The Cult of the Pole-Dancing Ones. They really called themselves that?

"Bullshit," Alex quietly yelled to himself, but his heart wasn't in it.

Alex drummed his fingers against his thigh, his car still parked with flashing blinkers on the side of the street. Alex had pulled over after the phone call had started, listening in realtime, though of course he'd been recording the call too.

Some implications seemed obvious on the surface, if he chose to believe them past all the bullshit-calling.

One, Yoal-yohuali had gone missing from the magical world for a while, and her return now hadn't been widely expected.

Two, this location on the map had significance beyond a human city called Norville being here.

Three, "Starry" might not have regained all of Yoal-yohuali's memories, which made her behavior during the parkour meetup seem more understandable. It might be useful if he started thinking of the girl he'd seen as "Starry" again, to distinguish the young mind from the ancient one.

Four, there was some type of prophecy, or predictable procedure, about somebody helping Yoal-yohuali to recover what she'd lost---her haircruxes, most obviously, but it could also be her memories or something else.

And his gambit with pretending to return $200 had been taken as a message, or maybe a sign, that he was personally stepping up to that role. Also huh. Well, it wasn't like he'd be averse to helping some girl regain her memories, so long as somebody made it worth his time.

This left the interesting question of whether he should tell the other four would-be paranormal investigators about his successful Intrigue roll. It wasn't obvious they'd find more than one thing to trade with Starry/Yoal-yohuali, or that more than one of the five could receive her favor.

Alex had no desire to go around being an asshole. But he didn't have much confidence in other people not being assholes towards him. Cordy and Lavelle were kids, Velma was keeping too many cards hidden in her sleeve, and Illyria was Illyria.

...He'd keep his discoveries quiet for now. If his fellow paranormal investigators seemed to be pulling their weight honestly, well, that would be one thing. But if Alex found a haircrux all on his own... that might say something about who'd been doing all the paranormal-investigation legwork in the first place, and who'd been trying to freeload.

God, he was so sick of having to think that way. Somewhere in the wide wide universe, if it wasn't all just humans humans and more humans, there had to be a society where Alex wouldn't have to think about that type of thing ever again.

Though of course Alex wasn't going to grab any haircrux that had been found by the five of them working together, and try to trade it toward only his own goals.

Lying and betraying in order to stop being human... would be missing the entire point of inhumanity.

Alexander Robichaud resumed his car drive homeward, listening with half an ear for any more sounds from the still-active burner phone.

7.i [DA,ST]: Sadistic Impulses

Danni Arcadia stepped into a bathroom that would have been nice, if not for the mess. Her long-lost sister gave her a solemn nod, completing the trade of shifts, and then quickly fled. Danni had run late replenishing supplies, and Tammi had lost that much more sleep. Neither of them was a teenager any more, able to stay up and tickle victims for days.

The woman lying in the bathtub looked thinner and thicker at the same time. Sonia Turk hadn't had much spare weight to start with, but what midsection she'd had, she'd lost. Her whole body looked inflated, puffy, like she'd been beaten evenly over every part of her skin so that every inch swelled up at the same time.

The bathwater around Sonia was clear, no visible tinge of vomit or strange-colored piss. They'd had to change the water often in the first few hours. The current smell in the room wasn't terrible, but it was a smell.

Classical music played softly in the background.

"Hi, I'm Danni," she said to the patient in the bathtub. "I changed shifts with Tammi just now, in case you weren't paying attention." It'd been a while since Danni had needed to run Twin Identification Protocols for people, and the necessity felt warm like a hug. "If you're having trouble remembering which of us is which, Danni is the dominant twin and Tammi is the submissive one."

"Is that right?" Sonia Turk said. Her voice sounded hoarse, distracted. "The other one said that if I had trouble remembering, Danni was the mean twin and Tammi was the smart one."

"Oh really. Well, she was just trying to get herself punished some more, since she's the subby twin. How are you doing, Professor?"

"I still don't hurt," Sonia said. "I'm hungry. But I know the protein timer hasn't run out yet. Wasn't requesting more protein shake right away. Don't break the schedule, that's dangerous. I'm still feeling very---out of it. Though the sense of dissociation is now more like an old dentist's dose of ketamine... please take that down in the log. It feels more like ketamine, at hour, which hour?"

"Hour eighteen." Danni Arcadia obligingly went to the laptop that Sonia had set up on the sink counter, and typed down Hour 18: Feels like ketamine.

Sonia Turk exhaled. "I wonder what's in the virus that's making this not hurt. This should be hurting. A lot. I don't remember anyone putting anesthetics into the virus on purpose last night. No, the night before last. That was Thursday night. I was in this bathtub through Friday night. Now it's Saturday morning. Maybe I just don't remember us putting in the anesthetics. It seems like somebody could have thought of that. I wonder if I'll remember this? I'm definitely on drugs right now, things feel dreamy. I wonder what the virus is doing inside my head."

"Nothing bad, I'm sure," Danni said in comforting tones.

"We're doing this all wrong," Sonia said dreamily. "So very wrong. This is not how you run an experiment. This is not how you test an alien-made virus. We're being silly. All we're really doing is trusting blindly in Starry. Putting ourselves in her hands. In the hands of her power. This isn't science."

"Should I be putting any of this in the log?" Danni said.

"No, it's only me being out of it... yes. It's data. My thinking this way right now is data."

"I'll type what I can remember," Danni said, and did.

"Ha, ha... oh god, this is going to be so useless. No blood tests. No keeping track of what comes out of my body. I didn't even weigh myself on a scale before we started. We're just pretending to be scientists so that we look less completely stupid when people read about the very first trial in the history books. I'm going to spend the rest of my life hearing about how wrong we did it. Write down in the log that I already know, okay? Maybe they won't tell me if they read that I already know." Sonia slid deeper into the water, exhaling, closing her eyes to listen to the classical music again.

Danni dutifully wrote all that down. Then Danni checked the water temperature, and Sonia's temperature, and turned the cold water on for 30 seconds before shutting it off.

Was it just Danni's imagination, that Sonia looked younger now? It couldn't be her skin, Sonia was still growing new dermis under her current skin and the old skin hadn't sloughed off yet. Her muscles weren't supposed to fill out right away. Was Sonia sitting with her back straighter? Some other change taking place inside her? It was getting easier to imagine what Sonia would look like when her transformation was done, a light-brown slender girl with a white shock in her black hair, and the stern expression of a lady much older.

Would the new Sonia be the kind of girl who needed extensive tickling to fully realize her sexuality? Danni's intuitions were telling her yes... she needed to shut down this line of thought before it made her horny, at a time she couldn't do anything about it for the next few hours. Unless she wanted to try to masturbate under her clothes without the woozy Professor realizing what was going on... no, really, Danni needed not to do that. Tammi would be sarcastic if Danni proved she could not go four hours without being naughty.

There'd been one or two words said, earlier this week, about Danni having not grown up and her never taking anything seriously. The words still stung even if some of the fire behind them had been put out.

The trouble was, even if Sonia wasn't pretty yet, she was very clearly helpless to defend herself and Danni was victimsexual. Danni needed a way to express those feelings before they snowballed out of control. Feeling sadistic made Arcadias horny, and being unable to do anything about being horny... made Arcadias very sadistic. Maybe she should just politely ask permission from the Professor to masturbate in front of her... okay thinking that had been a bad idea.

Danni sighed to herself. There were times when she wished her engines took more than fifteen seconds to rev up.

Just then, her cellphone's ringtone started playing.

Danni pulled her phone, ready to silence it, and then winced when she saw the display screen. "I have to take this," Danni said, stripping off one of her gloves so that she could operate the touchscreen. Somebody could get... hurt... if she didn't.

"That's fine," Sonia murmured.

"Please hold," Danni said to her phone, and waited for the acknowledgement before she hit mute and looked at Sonia. "Okay if I leave you alone for five minutes?" She wasn't supposed to, but it seemed clear by now that Sonia was doing fine.

"Sure, no problem," Sonia said, and either giggled or hiccuped. "I'll sit up straight, and put my arm over the side of the bathtub, so I'm less likely to drown if I faint. That'll fit in with the rest of our safety-conscious protocols... oh god, don't write down in the log that we're doing this, okay?"

Danni left the bathroom, turning up the volume of the classical music and closing the door behind her. Sonia really needed to not hear this call.

"Sorry about the hold, wanted to make sure I was alone," Danni said into the phone. Please let this be just a telemarketer. "What's up?"

"Is this the Oregon Tickler?" said a voice from the phone.

The voice was female, high, and incongruously menacing. It sounded like a James Bond film had undergone a casting emergency requiring them to repurpose a Bond girl as the Bond villain, and the Bond girl had been extremely blonde before that.

"Stop," Danni said, as her brain went into full overdrive. "First of all, you need to tell me how you got referred to this number."

The phone spoke. Danni listened.

"I'll be checking that. Now, let me get through this whole next part without being interrupted, kay? Don't say anything until I'm done. In particular, and I mean this, do not contradict anything I say. Now. The existence of the Oregon Tickler has never been proven. Few incidents were reported to the police, often by people who weren't the supposed victims themselves. Nobody was ever arrested. Personally, I think she's a myth. I provide entirely consensual fantasies in which I pretend to be the Oregon Tickler and do the type of things the Oregon Tickler was alleged to do. If you contract me to perform my services on anyone, you are solely responsible for ensuring that whoever I'm serving has consented, since the manner in which I perform my services does not allow me to verify this myself. You legally warrant to me that anything the receiver says otherwise is just part of the play. So long as you clearly understand that, I can engage you in a fantasy about things being different from that, during the rest of this phone call. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said the phone in the timbre of a villainous valleygirl. "I understand quite well."

"Okay. Now, again, please don't interrupt me until I get through this part. I don't know what you heard before you called this number, but I used to do this for free, you know, before I started doing it for money? So like some famous other providers with that type of history, I can be really particular about things, kay. Some people have reactions to being tickled that make it be not fun for me. Some people don't react well to being tied up, period, they have previous issues or some shit like that. Sometimes I just don't feel the right emotional connection for whatever reason. I like to pretend that I actually care a whole lot about the people I tickle, you know, I kiss them and then tickle them some more. Anything which gets in the way of that is a turn-off for me. Like if the person I'm tickling looks bruised, or like something bad happened to them before I got there. That's a huge turn-off. If at any point I'm not having fun, I walk away and you get a refund." Danni took a breath. She hated saying this, hated both that it was necessary and that she had to think about it in order to say it. "And, when it comes to this fantasy we're constructing here, there's some fantasies on your part I don't like. In particular, I really don't like hearing about how, if I don't agree to tickle somebody for you, something else bad might happen to them instead. Don't hint one single word about that. I will hang up immediately. Don't bother telling me that I'm being selfish or that I'm only looking for my own comfort by saying all this. I already know it's selfish. That was it, you can talk about whatever fantasies you like now."

Danni listened.

"I can understand why you'd want this person tickled. Is her victim okay?" Danni said. Her concern was sincere, even if some might have called it hypocritical.

Danni listened.

"I'm very glad to hear that," Danni said, again sincerely.

Danni listened.

"It's a great reason to have somebody tickled," Danni said, still entirely unaware of any hypocrisy. "Poetic justice, yep, I get it. Just so there's no misunderstandings, my policy holds no matter what she did."

Danni listened.

"Yes, I understand that she didn't ask her own victim for permission. I'm not going to ask her for permission. I'm just not going to keep tickling if she reacts in a way that makes it not be fun for me."

The voice on the phone offered her twenty thousand dollars.

"Look, I'll do it," said Danni. "I didn't say I wouldn't do it. But if the receiver reacts in a way that isn't fun for me, I walk away and refund your deposit. That is not up for negotiation at five-digit fees." Danni had found that, as a general rule, if you told somebody no they kept asking, and if you told them $850,000 they gave up.

Danni listened.

"So you're certain the target can take being tied up and that she'll react sexually to being tickled. Huh. I won't ask how you know that, but if you're right then my policy won't be an issue. Now are you asking me to pretend to kidnap the target, or is she already kidnapped?"

Danni listened.

"That works," Danni said. "I'm already in California, as it happens. Just tell me when you've pretended to kidnap her, and I'll head over to wherever you're holed up. Can't do this afternoon but I could maybe do tonight, definitely tomorrow. Um, is it okay if I bring along one or two people to help me provide services? I just got back together with an old partner, and I have a new friend who's just getting into things." Wait, she shouldn't have said that, it was way too early to bring Starry along on one of those jobs. For that matter, she hadn't gotten around to telling Tammi in so many words why she could afford nice clothes these days.

The phone seemed fine with any number of assistants, but wouldn't pay more than twenty thousand dollars regardless.

"Kay," Danni said. Thinking of Starry had sparked another thought. Tammi had told her how the Virus had come into existence. Finding one naughty fugitive didn't sound nearly as improbable as that. "Say, what's the bounty on locating the target for you? I don't do that type of work myself, but I have a friend who might be good at it."

Danni listened to a request that she repeat and rephrase her last sentence, since the phone had gotten choppy for a second.

"I don't do that kind of work, but I have a friend who does," Danni repeated.

The phone expressed skepticism.

"Oh, my friend has got 'special and particular skills' all right," Danni said. "You have no idea."

"Humpf," said the Los Angeles beach bunny on the phone, reading lines that had originally been designed for a sixty-year-old male villain with a British accent. "I suspect you have no idea. But you can tell your friend I'm offering fifteen thousand dollars for information on the target leading to capture. Thirty thousand dollars if the target is delivered to us chained."

"Fifteen slash thirty. Okay." Another thought occurred to Danni. "Uh, now that I think about it, my friend might have qualms about hunting somebody down and turning them over to you. I mean, she wouldn't know what you might do to them besides tickling. What if we found the target ourselves, did the tickling too, and sent you video proof of it all? Is that worth fifty K all together?"

"Oh ho. If you can take responsibility for this entire matter and resolve the hunt of vengeance under your own cognizance rather than mine, that is worth fifty thousand dollars indeed and I will owe you a favor." The phone's voice dropped lower, like the perky teenaged girl had been instructed to sound even more menacing. "But be clear on one point, if I am not present to supervise in person. The target is to be mercilessly tickled. For hours. To the point of unconsciousness, if possible. Retribution must be paid at least threefold, and at most ninefold."

Danni barely stopped herself from snorting into the phone. "Tickling somebody into unconsciousness doesn't even take thirty minutes. Stopping just before she's about to faint, so there's no escape for her, that takes skill."

Danni listened.

"Makes sense," Danni said. "Kay, we'll tickle her unconscious as fast as we can, so you can see we really are that good. Then after she wakes up, we'll keep her on a steady tickling level of almost to the point of fainting... oh, really? We only get six hours in that case? Because otherwise it might be more than ninefold retribution? Takes some fun out of it, but it's good to know you've got firm limits. Say, can we also lick her and not let her come? It makes women more sensitive to being tickled... I wondered if you'd say that. What goes around, comes around, huh... of course I was going to give the target occasional breaks from being tickled. All sorts of things don't work as nicely if you don't let them rest now and then." This was shaping up to be one of the nicer times, Danni had started to hope. "So who are you searching for? Got a description for my friend?"

Danni listened.

"Got it," Danni said, keeping her voice completely level and not giving the slightest sign she'd heard anything surprising. "And she was placed in Norville, California as of this morning. Yeah, that's plenty for my friend to go on, if she takes the case at all. Though I got to say, while I'm just about certain my friend could find your target, I'm not sure she'll do it for thirty. You might have a better chance if you offered three hundred."

"Thirty thousand dollars is all I'm offering," said Darth Beachbunny on the phone. "My fury does, in fact, know limits. My family's honor requires that this vengeance be pursued. But you may have noticed that I'm hiring someone to tickle the target, not kill her."

"People having that option is why the Oregon Tickler got this phone number," Danni said. "You wouldn't believe how many people have told me---afterwards---that the next phone number on their list was Buffalo Bill, or Stuntman Mike, or the Corinthian. The fucking Corinthian! I'd complain about how insane it is that anyone ever thinks about us both inside the same week, but I'll put up with that if it helps people consider other options besides Eye Guy."

"I wouldn't consider leaving this matter in your hands if you didn't seem to already appreciate that distinction," the phone said. "And if your friend is capable of hunting the target at all, she'll know how not to exacerbate this conflict further. Tell the penitent that I ordered vengeance be done only according to custom, so that this grievance ends quickly. I have enough enemies to keep me entertained and I am not accepting new applicants at this time."

"Got it," Danni said. That voice. Danni was still hung up on that voice. It was like listening to an early Sarah Michelle Gellar playing a late Alan Rickman role. It was like listening to the actual Buffy Summers who'd thrown on a cloak and was trying to disguise herself as Snape.

"Oh, and if the hunted overcomes the hunter three times, you need to tell me so immediately. That also means the whole thing is over. Honestly? I wouldn't mind if it was. But you wouldn't get one red copper penny for taking a dive, no matter how much money it saved me, because that is against the rules. I wouldn't owe you any favors either. Do the work if you want to get paid. Clear?"

"Clear," Danni said.

"Excellent. Do me a small favor and let me know within one day and one night if your friend takes the job. Even if your friend has no idea what she's getting into, you weren't trying to throw any fights when you volunteered her for it, and I wasn't expecting this outcome when I called your number. By the letter of the rules, it's allowed for her to take up the duty of this righteous hunt. Which means I won't have to spend the next five days calling six dozen bounty hunters, trying to find somebody willing to take this farce of a feud off my to-do list. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with my husband, three pool boys, and an entire bottle of Glenfiddich. I'm either way too old for this or not nearly old enough."

The caller hung up.

Danni put her phone into her pocket, the motions on automatic as her eyes stared off into nowhere. What the hell...? Danni had never heard of any organized-crime families with a rule about vengeance being at most ninefold, or giving up if the target got away three times.

And then there was the question of whether to tell Starry about... key facts... before helping her earn an easy thirty thousand dollars.

Eventually Danni remembered the existence of Sonia Turk and headed back into the bathroom to check up on her.

Sonia was fine. People almost always were, in Danni's experience.

There were times when they weren't. Even if Danni had decided not to live her one and only life in fear of those occasions, they did exist. She and Tammi had managed to screw up their relationship for years, somehow, even if it had only been them being stupid. And Danni Arcadia did have a sense of proportion, contrary to what Tammi and a number of other people might have been tempted to say. Even she knew that the Virus was serious business, and so was the person who'd made it. Starry feeling hurt or betrayed would be a big deal in a way that Tammi and herself falling to their deaths while hiking would not be a big deal. It would not be a good time for one of those rare occasions when people didn't turn out to be fine.

So Danni decided she would do the sensible adult thing, which Tammi had better appreciate later as proof of how much she'd matured during their separation. She'd tell Starry truthfully what she'd heard on the phone, though maybe without the context of there being a special phone number for it. And she'd ask Starry straight-up if she wanted thirty thousand dollars enough to... take the job.

"Starry sure learns fast, though," Danni muttered under her breath. "It was just Wednesday she'd never even kissed a girl."

"Wha?" slurred Sonia in the bathtub.

Danni shook her head. "Talking to myself." She glanced at the repeating timer on the wall. "It's time for your next protein shake."

As Danni was stirring protein powder into a glass of Powerthirst Clear, the thought occurred to Danni that she could've asked Sonia to stay quiet and taken the phone call inside the bathroom. They were already sharing larger secrets. No, wait, Tammi was still hoping they could take Sonia by surprise later and treat her to some special fun. Neither Charles or Starry seemed to have warned Sonia about the Arcadias on that score, which counted as tacit approval if anything did.

Sonia gulped down the protein shake so eagerly that a few rivulets of whitish-cream liquid escaped her devourment, running down the side of her mouth. This caused Sonia to run her fingers over her skin to pick up as much as she could, then lick off her fingers repeatedly. If Sonia hadn't been looking puffy and ill, the sight would have started Danni's motor again for sure. Maybe it had anyways.

"I keep wondering if, when, I'm going to start feeling hornier," Sonia said, the words almost running together. "I think maybe I am now? Not sure."

"Just let me know if you want me to start trying things that might make you horny," Danni said. "I'll do aaaanything for science."

Sonia snorted. "I'm on drugs. Not having sex while I'm on drugs. Decided that years and years ago. Not reconsidering that decision while I'm drugs. On drugs. While I am on drugs I am not reconsidering any decisions about what I will not do when I am on drugs because that would defeat the point. Is that logic right? I should have worked out that logic before I was drugs."

"That sounded like nonsense to me," Danni said, keeping her voice very serious. "Complete gibberish. Not logical at all. You can always just tell me if you start wanting me to do sexual things to you without your permission. That's logical."

"Oh... kay," Sonia said. Her eyes seemed glazed. "Sorry about my not making sense, then... write that down in the log, it's data."

Danni went over to the computer and typed it down. History was really going to ream their ass about this, wasn't it.

"You're pretty," Sonia said. "I wish I could give informed consent for you to kiss me, but I am very uninformed right now. No, I look awful, don't I. All puffy. Not pretty yet. Going to be pretty soon. I'll be the scientist in Starry's harem, and handsome men will apply to work for me, and we'll do things with them that we can't even do with grad students. Wow. I can't tell at all if I'm horny right now or just on drugs. But I'm on drugs. So I cannot give you my informed consent. Which you don't want anyhow because I look terrible. I forgot I said that already."

Danni nodded seriously, still keeping a straight face. "It's okay. That doesn't have to be a barrier between us. Just tell me if you want anything done to you without your informed consent." Danni suspected that Sonia was, in fact, starting on the Virus stage where your hormones rose to teenage levels. If Sonia started being prettier and helpless and horny, Danni was going to have issues by the time her shift ended. Even Tammi would understand at that point, wouldn't she?

The plan called for Sonia to sleep, once the initial phase of the Virus wore off and the patient no longer needed a protein shake every fifteen minutes. Would it make sense to have Sonia wake up in handcuffs after she slept? Sonia would need real food then, but she could be fed first and then tickled. Danni guessed she'd see how Sonia was doing in another six hours, when the first phase of the virus was supposed to be over...

No. Sonia would still be contagious.

Sonia shouldn't have hinted for a kiss, and it was a good thing Danni herself had remembered that in time.

Danni sighed. "You really are out of it," Danni said. She wouldn't be able to express her feelings properly for days. "Do you want to just listen to the pretty sounds in the background?"

"That 'pretty sound' is Sergei Prokofiev, you cultureless barbarian." Sonia waved a feebly admonishing hand.

That was a no, then. "An insult, huh," Danni said, injecting a small amount of threat into her voice. "Do you know what I do to pretty girls who insult me?" She was curious about how Sonia Turk would respond to that while on drugs.

"No. Is it sexy? I bet it's sexy. You are... a flibbertigibbet! I have no idea what that is, but I think I've always wanted to call somebody that, my whole life, even though I never looked up the word. But you won't remember I said that, because I'm on drugs... wait, that's not how it works."

"That's exactly how it works," Danni said. "You've got me checkmated here. Nothing I can do." Danni had never flirted with anyone this drugged out before. Did people on psychedelics normally sound like this, or was the Virus special? Maybe this was scientifically important data after all.

Danni pulled over the laptop and started writing notes, everything she could remember about their conversation so far. Under her breath, Danni hummed a bit of a tune to herself. There's experiments to run, there is research to be done... She'd never understood the appeal before.

Sonia respectfully kept quiet while Danni typed.

"The experimental log shows that you're going to be an extremely naughty girl once your transformation finishes," Danni said when she was done. "What do you think you might do then?"

"Be a naughty professor? No. Naughty scientist. Seize this Arcadia and take her to the laboratory, my henchmen! But I don't have henchmen yet. Take her to the laboratory as soon as you exist! And then... measure her! Measure all her sexual quantities! Measure them twice so we know whether the measurement protocols are reliable! Remember, reliability is different from precision and accuracy."

Danni typed all this down as fast as she could. Maybe she couldn't kiss Sonia and tickle her and make love to her right after she woke up. But, Danni decided, she could put Sonia into handcuffs. Then, after Sonia woke up, Danni would let her test the handcuffs a few times.

And then, when Sonia couldn't escape, or even stick her fingers in her ears, Danni would read out loud the text of this extremely historically important experimental log.

"Did you know I'm an incredibly terrible person?" said Danni. "Rotten to my dark core. How will you punish bad girls like me, once you're young and pretty and perverted? And a scientist, of course."

Sonia spoke, and Danni took notes for the indelible historical record.

7.10.@: Succubus Summoner Ch. 2 (@@)

This summary page contains all the pages for Ch. 2 of the Succubus Summoning manga. You can also read them one section at a time, interlaced with the other chapters in 7.10.

These pages continue from 7.6.a. As the images are NSFW, the actual content is in the spoiler below.

Ch. 1 was by panuleeluesai. Ch. 2 is by Euph.

Spoiler: NSFW manga: Succubus Summoner Ch. 2

--->--->---> images read LEFT to RIGHT --->--->--->

7.10.a-2*: Completely Evil (@@)

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 278 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 8323-8419]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
"Wait a minute! You're not a virgin! You have amnesia!"
Ask Joel if he has something to offer you in exchange for leaving him his magical virginity; Joel offers the virginity of two others in his stead.
Demand three callable-any-time services from Joel in exchange for what you're "pretty sure" is a powerful magic item, then give him your glasses. Also giftsex him.
Giftsex Joel slowly, staying alert for chances to get tricked into bondage gear or pleasured into submission.
Giftsex Joel slowly; you are interrupted by a virgin-protecting classmate of his.
Giftsex Joel slowly; you are interrupted by another succubus.
Neutral option.
That dime you picked up earlier is totally dreamsilver, right? Give it to Joel, in exchange for, uh, uh... magnets! Then giftsex him mercilessly to teach him a lesson about summoning circles.

Winner: Giftsex Joel slowly; you are interrupted by another succubus.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Adad64
[1] Apathy+peeves
[1] Askolei
[1] Blackshard
[1] Brisket
[1] CTCatapult
[1] Derpmind
[1] Equanimitivity
[1] Kai Merah
[1] MissileTeatime
[1] redgolddragon
[1] rikalous
[1] sharps
[1] thatguy3367
[2] BastetsChosen
[2] Diraniola
[2] Eler0
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Galonious
[2] Gingganz
[2] gRR
[2] iii
[2] Jirachi
[2] Mitale
[2] napkintooth
[2] Quentin
[2] RedKnite
[2] Silent88
[2] Sitxar
[2] TheEyes
[2] Theli
[2] VoidVagabond
[2] w.cheff
[2] wasprider
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] Banarok Lionrage
[3] MaggieoftheOwls
[3] master2000
[3] Mike811
[3] Questingdragon
[3] secretturtle
[3] Skelm
[3] Valint
[3] Valmit
[3] Vergil1989 Crossover King
[4] Evilwumpus
[4] Guile
[4] january1may
[4] Not_The_Simurgh
[4] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[4] RileySharpe
[4] Secret Secretion
[4] Tulip
[4] Wulfenbach
[6] Iydak
[6] Tore
[8] david
[-] fictionfan

First Runner Up: Giftsex Joel slowly; you are interrupted by a virgin-protecting classmate of his.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Aoinfinity
[1] Ephemeral
[1] Galonious
[1] Gingganz
[1] gRR
[1] Guile
[1] iii
[1] secretturtle
[1] Skelm
[1] TheEyes
[1] Theli
[1] Tore
[1] Valint
[1] Vergil1989 Crossover King
[1] VoidVagabond
[1] w.cheff
[2] Apathy+peeves
[2] Banarok Lionrage
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Equanimitivity
[2] Evilwumpus
[2] fictionfan
[2] MaggieoftheOwls
[2] MissileTeatime
[2] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[2] Questingdragon
[2] redgolddragon
[2] rikalous
[2] Secret Secretion
[2] Tulip
[3] Askolei
[3] BastetsChosen
[3] Diraniola
[3] Iydak
[3] Kai Merah
[3] Silent88
[4] RedKnite
[4] Valmit
[4] wasprider
[5] january1may
[5] napkintooth
[6] Blackshard
[6] Jirachi
[6] Not_The_Simurgh
[6] Quentin
[6] sharps
[7] david
[7] master2000
[7] Mike811
[7] Mitale
[7] RileySharpe
[7] Sitxar
[8] Wulfenbach
[-] Adad64
[-] Brisket
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] thatguy3367

Second Runner Up: Giftsex Joel slowly, staying alert for chances to get tricked into bondage gear or pleasured into submission.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] BastetsChosen
[1] Diraniola
[1] Eler0
[1] Evilwumpus
[1] MaggieoftheOwls
[1] Mike811
[1] napkintooth
[1] Quentin
[1] RedKnite
[1] Secret Secretion
[1] Silent88
[1] Sitxar
[1] Valmit
[1] wasprider
[1] Wulfenbach
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] david
[2] Iydak
[2] secretturtle
[2] Skelm
[2] Tore
[2] Valint
[2] Vergil1989 Crossover King
[3] Galonious
[3] Gingganz
[3] Guile
[3] iii
[3] january1may
[3] Mitale
[3] rikalous
[3] RileySharpe
[3] Tulip
[3] VoidVagabond
[4] Ephemeral
[4] Kai Merah
[4] sharps
[4] TheEyes
[4] Theli
[5] Blackshard
[5] Jirachi
[5] master2000
[5] Not_The_Simurgh
[5] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[5] redgolddragon
[5] w.cheff
[6] Askolei
[6] CTCatapult
[6] MissileTeatime
[6] Questingdragon
[8] Banarok Lionrage
[-] Adad64
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Brisket
[-] Derpmind
[-] Equanimitivity
[-] fictionfan
[-] gRR
[-] thatguy3367

Third Runner Up: That dime you picked up earlier is totally dreamsilver, right? Give it to Joel, in exchange for, uh, uh... magnets! Then giftsex him mercilessly to teach him a lesson about summoning circles.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Banarok Lionrage
[1] Iydak
[1] january1may
[1] Jirachi
[1] Mitale
[1] Questingdragon
[1] RileySharpe
[1] Tulip
[2] Adad64
[2] Blackshard
[2] master2000
[2] Not_The_Simurgh
[2] Wulfenbach
[3] Ephemeral
[3] Evilwumpus
[3] MissileTeatime
[3] Quentin
[3] redgolddragon
[3] Secret Secretion
[3] TheEyes
[4] Apathy+peeves
[4] Askolei
[4] Eler0
[4] Mike811
[4] napkintooth
[5] CTCatapult
[5] david
[5] Guile
[5] Kai Merah
[5] rikalous
[5] secretturtle
[5] Silent88
[5] Theli
[5] Valint
[5] Valmit
[5] Vergil1989 Crossover King
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] Galonious
[6] Gingganz
[6] iii
[6] Sitxar
[6] w.cheff
[7] Diraniola
[7] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[7] RedKnite
[7] sharps
[7] wasprider
[8] BastetsChosen
[8] MaggieoftheOwls
[8] Skelm
[8] Tore
[-] Brisket
[-] Derpmind
[-] Equanimitivity
[-] fictionfan
[-] gRR
[-] thatguy3367
[-] VoidVagabond

Honorable Mention: Demand three callable-any-time services from Joel in exchange for what you're "pretty sure" is a powerful magic item, then give him your glasses. Also giftsex him.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] master2000
[1] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[2] Askolei
[2] Mike811
[2] RileySharpe
[2] Valmit
[3] Blackshard
[3] CTCatapult
[3] Jirachi
[3] Not_The_Simurgh
[3] RedKnite
[3] sharps
[3] Sitxar
[3] Tore
[3] wasprider
[3] Wulfenbach
[4] Banarok Lionrage
[4] Diraniola
[4] Equanimitivity
[4] Galonious
[4] iii
[4] Mitale
[4] Quentin
[4] Questingdragon
[4] redgolddragon
[4] rikalous
[4] secretturtle
[4] w.cheff
[5] MissileTeatime
[5] Secret Secretion
[5] Skelm
[5] Tulip
[6] david
[6] TheEyes
[6] Theli
[7] Aoinfinity
[7] BastetsChosen
[7] Iydak
[7] january1may
[7] MaggieoftheOwls
[7] Valint
[7] Vergil1989 Crossover King
[8] Ephemeral
[8] Gingganz
[8] napkintooth
[8] Silent88
[-] Adad64
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Brisket
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] fictionfan
[-] gRR
[-] Guile
[-] Kai Merah
[-] thatguy3367
[-] VoidVagabond

Honorable Mention: Neutral option.

Spoiler: Voters

[3] david
[3] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] Gingganz
[4] gRR
[4] Jirachi
[4] master2000
[4] Valint
[4] Vergil1989 Crossover King
[5] Askolei
[5] BastetsChosen
[5] Eler0
[5] Equanimitivity
[5] Galonious
[5] iii
[5] Iydak
[5] MaggieoftheOwls
[5] MissileTeatime
[5] Mitale
[5] Quentin
[5] RileySharpe
[5] sharps
[5] Sitxar
[5] TheEyes
[5] Tore
[5] Wulfenbach
[6] Banarok Lionrage
[6] Diraniola
[6] Kai Merah
[6] Mike811
[6] redgolddragon
[6] RedKnite
[6] rikalous
[6] Secret Secretion
[6] secretturtle
[6] Silent88
[6] Skelm
[6] Tulip
[6] wasprider
[7] Blackshard
[7] CTCatapult
[7] Ephemeral
[7] napkintooth
[7] Valmit
[8] january1may
[8] Questingdragon
[8] Theli
[-] Adad64
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Brisket
[-] Derpmind
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] fictionfan
[-] Guile
[-] Not_The_Simurgh
[-] thatguy3367
[-] VoidVagabond
[-] w.cheff

Honorable Mention: Ask Joel if he has something to offer you in exchange for leaving him his magical virginity; Joel offers the virginity of two others in his stead.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] david
[1] Not_The_Simurgh
[2] Guile
[2] Kai Merah
[2] sharps
[3] Apathy+peeves
[3] Eler0
[3] Theli
[3] w.cheff
[4] Blackshard
[4] Iydak
[4] MaggieoftheOwls
[4] Sitxar
[4] Skelm
[4] Tore
[5] Aoinfinity
[5] Diraniola
[5] Evilwumpus
[5] Mike811
[5] Questingdragon
[5] RedKnite
[5] wasprider
[6] BastetsChosen
[6] Ephemeral
[6] january1may
[6] master2000
[6] Mitale
[6] napkintooth
[6] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[6] Valint
[6] Vergil1989 Crossover King
[6] Wulfenbach
[7] Askolei
[7] Banarok Lionrage
[7] Galonious
[7] Gingganz
[7] iii
[7] Jirachi
[7] MissileTeatime
[7] Quentin
[7] redgolddragon
[7] Silent88
[7] TheEyes
[7] Tulip
[8] CTCatapult
[8] RileySharpe
[8] Secret Secretion
[8] secretturtle
[8] Valmit
[-] Adad64
[-] Brisket
[-] Derpmind
[-] Equanimitivity
[-] fictionfan
[-] gRR
[-] rikalous
[-] thatguy3367
[-] VoidVagabond

Honorable Mention: "Wait a minute! You're not a virgin! You have amnesia!"

Spoiler: Voters

[1] fictionfan
[2] january1may
[3] Equanimitivity
[3] gRR
[4] BastetsChosen
[4] CTCatapult
[4] david
[4] Silent88
[5] Banarok Lionrage
[5] Ephemeral
[5] Gingganz
[6] MaggieoftheOwls
[6] RileySharpe
[6] Valmit
[7] Kai Merah
[7] Questingdragon
[7] Secret Secretion
[7] secretturtle
[7] Skelm
[7] Theli
[7] Tore
[7] w.cheff
[7] Wulfenbach
[8] Aoinfinity
[8] Askolei
[8] Blackshard
[8] Diraniola
[8] Galonious
[8] iii
[8] Iydak
[8] Jirachi
[8] master2000
[8] Mike811
[8] MissileTeatime
[8] Mitale
[8] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[8] Quentin
[8] redgolddragon
[8] RedKnite
[8] rikalous
[8] sharps
[8] Sitxar
[8] TheEyes
[8] Tulip
[8] Valint
[8] Vergil1989 Crossover King
[8] wasprider
[9] napkintooth
[-] Adad64
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Brisket
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] Guile
[-] Not_The_Simurgh
[-] thatguy3367
[-] VoidVagabond

Total No. of Voters: 58

Task: VIRGIN

[X][VIRGIN] Virginity only has power under, uh, complicated circumstances you're not going into, but real love and affection sure help.
No. of Votes: 29

Spoiler: Voters

Banarok Lionrage
Adad64
Askolei
BastetsChosen
Ephemeral
Equanimitivity
eraserman
Evilwumpus
Galonious
Gingganz
gRR
Guile
iii
january1may
Jirachi
Kai Merah
Lubaf
MaggieoftheOwls
master2000
Mike811
napkintooth
Not_The_Simurgh
PlaneOfInfiniteCats
QazdaMorquil
redgolddragon
secretturtle
sharps
Silent88
VoidVagabond

[X][VIRGIN] Actually, sex with virgins is how succubi become pregnant. Some succubi prefer older virgins so that they can stay with the new husband/wife and raise the baby.
No. of Votes: 28

Spoiler: Voters

Elitist Oars
Aoinfinity
Apathy+peeves
Askolei
Blackshard
CTCatapult
david
Derpmind
Diraniola
Eler0
Equanimitivity
Gingganz
Iydak
january1may
MissileTeatime
Questingdragon
redgolddragon
Secret Secretion
secretturtle
sharps
Sitxar
Skelm
TheEyes
Tore
Valint
Vergil1989 Crossover King
VoidVagabond
w.cheff

[X][VIRGIN] Don't say anything. You haven't taken enough economics classes to feel confident in designing ero-magical systems with good incentives around virginity.
No. of Votes: 27

Spoiler: Voters

wasprider
Adad64
Blackshard
Eler0
Equanimitivity
Evilwumpus
gRR
Guile
january1may
Jirachi
Lubaf
megazver
napkintooth
QazdaMorquil
Quentin
redgolddragon
RileySharpe
Secret Secretion
Silent88
Skelm
TheEyes
Theli
Tore
Valint
Valmit
Vergil1989 Crossover King
Wulfenbach

[X][VIRGIN] Only unwanted virginity is powerful, and it has to be taken with consent.
No. of Votes: 20

Spoiler: Voters

redgolddragon
Adad64
Aoinfinity
Askolei
Ephemeral
Equanimitivity
gRR
Guile
Iydak
Kai Merah
MaggieoftheOwls
master2000
MissileTeatime
napkintooth
PlaneOfInfiniteCats
RileySharpe
secretturtle
sharps
Sitxar
w.cheff

Total No. of Voters: 56

Hello all! Although Ch. 2 of My Succubus Summoning Book Might Have Some Errors isn't completed yet, it's coming along fast enough that I thought I'd go ahead and post the first 7 pages for you, here and in following chapter. Note that 7.10.c won't have generated a notification due to too few words, so keep reading or click ahead when you reach the end.

The post before this one will contain all the manga pages concurrently. (Again, you won't have gotten a notification for it because of too few words.)

These pages continue from 7.6.a. As the images are NSFW, the actual content is in the spoiler below.

Ch. 1 was by panuleeluesai (who unfortunately had too much work in their queue to take on the next chapter). Ch. 2, thirty-two pages in total, is being done at impressive speeds by Euph.

Spoiler: NSFW manga 7.10.a*: Let's Play a Game

--->--->---> images read LEFT to RIGHT --->--->--->

7.10.2*: Completely Evil​

You close your eyes for a split second, slackety slack.

You know on some level that you're being silly. Just because you can't see how nothing could go wrong with this situation doesn't mean that something could go wrong. The whole point of this quest is for you to stop worrying, if that's even possible for the likes of you. Stop worrying and have fun.

But you can't just keep going while you're feeling bad about it. Or maybe you could, but you don't think that's the answer... Wisdom and courage check in progress, you guess.

The WIS+3 answer is maybe something like... you ought to be true to yourself. Be an evil villainess when the plot calls for it, but never evil or villainous in a way that isn't Cinderella Sheen. If the Erogame wants more from you than that... well, realistically, it already bought your soul and then some. It could bring you to heel instantly by threatening to take away 10% of what it's already given. But it doesn't seem ungrateful to wait for a more explicit request from the Erogame before you start behaving un-you-ishly evil.

Crushing Joel's hopes and taking his virginity from him with no compensation... doesn't feel like you, whether or not it fits the plot.

As for which evil deeds do feel more like you... um, the obvious idea is teasing the shuddering shit out of a boy without any mercy until you run out of DOM. That's sort of evil if you don't give him any safeword, right? Truthfully you're not sure you're ready for anything significantly eviller.

And you think you feel internally clear on that. If you play along too far with this storyline, and end up doing something un-Cindy, that's a negative consequence in a way that feels unambiguous.

So... just do evil deeds that feel like you, and trust the Erogame to save you before you're forced into a virginity-taking corner... or something? You're not sure how the ero version of that plot would go. Maybe the succubus gets tricked into handcuffs, or pleasured into submission? That doesn't sound too awful now that you're imagining it.

Maybe you ought to respect the division of responsibilities inside the Erogame. When you're being the villain, your job is to leave riddles at crime scenes, make sure your lieutenants are seducible, and run all of your base's force fields off a single circuit with no backup power supply. It's the protagonist's job to decide how to defeat you. You just need to communicate to the protagonist, without saying it explicitly, that you have a thick vincible streak and are very wide open to being defeated.

Your eyes open again, with you still leaning over Joel and him backed into his chair.

"You can't stop me, little mortal," you say to Joel. "I'm older than you, stronger than you, more magical than you, and I have better hair. Nothing you could possibly try can save you now." You don't see how you can raise a defeatable villainess flag any higher than that.

"I get that," Joel says. "I get that." His eyes dip helplessly to your naked breasts before he manages to look you square in the face again. "I know you have the power. I'm asking you to be nice."

Oblivious fucking male. Can't he tell when a villainess is practically throwing herself on his thwartations?

You guess you have no choice but to keep going. Maybe at some future point you'll have a chance to make it even clearer.

Meanwhile, it's evil o' clock now.

"Very well," you say, bringing your lips still closer to his. "I guess we'll play a little game." You lean over Joel further, waiting for the moment when his chair starts to unbalance. Then before he can fall over, you yank hard on his chair, send it rocketing across the floor towards his bed, and manage to synchronize your leap into the bed with him falling into it.

There's an exciting flurry of bodies touching and hands accidentally going places. When the ero-collision has subsided, you're kneeling over Joel on the bed with your hands pinning down his wrists.

(You actually wondered if you could invoke your High-Heeled Parkour skill for bedroom maneuvers... before you remembered what genre you now live inside. You should be grateful you can use parkour for anything else.)

You give Joel a moment, just in case he wants to pin you to the bed instead, but he doesn't struggle at all. Even though you're pretty sure that in real life, he's stronger than you---in your current state of physical unconditioning, you can't even roofhop across more than 20% of the city before your legs give out. Oh well. Maybe it wouldn't be a good ero plot if the mortal could overpower the succubus that easily, so the Erogame is making him not think of trying.

You look beneath yourself to see how his cock is doing. It's very very hard, pointed straight up, and your pussy happens to be right over it.

Joel's eyes follow yours. "Please," he says, possibly sounding torn if you're not just hopeful-imaginationing, "don't---"

"You don't lose your virginity just from going inside me, remember? This part is harmless."

"Oh, right---" he begins, and then his breath whooshes out of him.

With his cock burning inside your pussy, you feel even more intensely aware of the pressure from where you're holding Joel's wrists down to his bed. You're holding a boy down while he's inside you. You weren't expecting it to hit you this hard. It feels almost electrical.

Some parts of you are readier than the rest of you to be evil. There's a part of you that wants to feel Joel to struggle beneath you and not win free. Your heart already knows that you won't want to go the rest of your life without sometimes pinning a boy's wrists down while you take him. One more instant addiction in the Erogame, not counted as a negative consequence, warning signs never included.

Without deciding to, your hips have begun to slowly grind over Joel's hips, fucking yourself on him.

"Ah!" Joel gasps, and you remember that important thing you forgot to do.

Edge Other WHOA and you immediately lift yourself off him.

Joel shudders below you, eyes tensed shut as he tries not to come and oh god that's so hot you almost can't take it.

A thread of semen forms at the tip of his cock, runs down the side. More than the two droplets you'd have let out with your current Tears of Milk skill, but not a full orgasm.

You look Joel in the eyes again. He looks like... like he's thinking about apologizing for almost being a premature ejaculator. Are there really girls who would blame a guy for that while he was having his first time ever?

"I---" Joel begins.

"I'm a succubus, mortal," you purr. "You'd come inside me instantly, if I felt like it."

Joel swallows, and his cock twitches again.

You know what you want to do, now, and it's making your breath short to imagine it. You want to see that agonized look on Joel's face while he tries not to come, over and over and over. Will your skills---work like that? Like what you're thinking, even though your verbal mind is having trouble putting it into words? Can Tears of Milk tell you how much to stimulate a guy to force out two drops of semen, if he's trying to hold back instead of trying to come?

"So here's the game," you purr. "It's the game where you go on asking not to come, and pleading not to come, and trying so very hard not to come. If you can keep that up until I'm out of magic, maybe I won't force you to come. Maybe. No promises."

You invoke Edge Other and begin to slide your pussy back down over his penis. His face screws up immediately.

"How," Joel says in a gasp, "much, magic---"

"Lots. Don't worry about your parents coming home. This encounter---" You're about to say that this sex isn't taking place inside time as he understands it. Then it occurs to you that this might imply that succubi get Time Powers, which is a small bit of a large decision. "Well, even if they come home, they won't notice anything---" Wait, now you gave succubi an attention-redirecting field. Oh, fuck all this, you don't want to be thinking about this right now.

You grind your hips on Joel. Just once.

Joel's face screws up. You can feel him shivering inside you, feel him tensing up further and further, getting closer and closer. Even though all you're doing after that first grind is letting his penis rest inside you, a warmth inside your warmth.

Oh, god, if he's that sensitive, you're going to be driving yourself nuts fucking him this slowly. Maybe after a dozen Tears of Milk applications he'll be able to take more stimulation, once he's dribbled out another twelve-sixteenths of an orgasm.

Edge Other pings.

Edging, you think.

And instinct tells you to raise yourself halfway off Joel's cock, then three-quarters up, flex your hips with just the tip in you, lower yourself again, Joel tries to press his hips back into the bed to escape and you follow him down. It's hot, so very hot, but you're getting almost no stimulation yourself.

Status, you think to one side, and info skills Edging. At Lvl 5 of the Edging skill, 15 seconds only costs 8 DOM... and you've got over 400 DOM stocked up. It's probably regenerating some too, from how dominant you're being. Wow, Joel really is in trouble, isn't he. This punishment should definitely teach a naughty boy not to summon succubi with half-assed diagrams.

"Feels good, doesn't it?" you say, without letting up on the Edging. "Always about to come, never coming."

"Feeling good---is---one way to---describe it---" Joel manages to say. You're honestly impressed he can even talk.

"Do you want to come?" you offer.

"Not---in that---particular---hole---"

Edging tells you that you'd better lift yourself all the way off. "Then you'd better keep holding back, even when you're not inside me," you say, as Joel tenses and shudders. His body contorts in a way that almost lifts his hips back into yours before he catches himself. "Because if you start to come for real, I'm sitting right back down."

Tears of Milk, you think. You sit back down, and manage to get in three solid grinds of your clit against his pubis, rocking your hips, before you have to lift yourself all the way off him again.

"Aaaaahh!" remarks Joel.

"Keep holding back! If you let yourself come I'm going to sit back down and take it."

You can feel Joel's hips clenching under yours, as he tries so hard not to come. You sense, more than see, the solitary bead of semen that escapes his dick anyways.

Edging, you think, before he's even stopped shuddering and tensing up, and you lower yourself halfway down his dick. You keep Joel right on the edge for another timeless span, watching his face contort over and over.

The skill tells you when the perfect moment is approaching for his orgasm, and that's when you Tears of Milk and grind.

Joel shudders and bucks beneath you as you yank yourself off, his body tensing up and his eyes shutting. When you look down you can see three drops of semen running down his wet, tormented penis. His wrists are still helplessly pinned beneath your hands. It's too hot, it's too hot, the emptiness inside you is too demanding and all you get are these tiny half-poundings each time. You Edge Other and drop yourself back down onto Joel's cock. You manage two solid, satisfying, hard fucking motions before you have to yank yourself off him.

You can't take this anymore.

You let go of Joel's right wrist. "You'd better start distracting me if you want to win this game," you say breathlessly. "Don't get any ideas just because I freed your hand, no little mortal will ever be a match for a succubus, and I don't think an inexperienced boy like you could pleasure me into submission."

Joel starts to reach for your pussy, then his hand stops halfway. "Is this a fair game?" he says, managing to look serious despite being sweating, out of breath, and having one wrist pinned to the bed. "One where I have a real chance of winning?"

His hand should be on your clit. Why isn't his hand on your clit. "Yes now start distracting me if you want to wiiinnnn." His hand is inexperienced. And that's putting it gently. Unlike his hand, which isn't putting it gently. You're so hot it doesn't matter. "Oh. Oh! And d---don't get any ideas about what you can do if I'm---fully distracted---"

Your body seizes up and even as the orgasm flushes through you, Joel's hand goes on rubbing you too hard, too fast, your orgasm comes in fits and stages but it doesn't seem to stop. You feel like a helpless violin having sound after sound forced out by some cruel innocent plucking its strings like a guitar.

When the stars clear out of your eyes, you do not find that you've been tied up and handcuffed to Joel's bed while you were in your orgasmic daze. How dare he not turn the tables on you again? It's time to teach this boy a lesson about the perils of obedience.

You begin by seeing what happens if you thrust yourself downward for one extra stroke after Tears of Milk tells you to stop.

The answer is that Joel tenses up his entire body, his hand forming a fist instead of rubbing you, and he stays tensed and not-breathing for what seems like a quarter-minute even after a little stream of come has escaped his dick.

You give him one full breath to recover and then sit back down on him. Edge Other. "You weren't distracting me," you point out. "That's what happens when I'm paying attention."

Joel starts rubbing you directly on your clit. This time you grab his hand and show him how to do it gently. Soft melty feelings spread out from your pussy.

Edge Other. Edge Other. Edge Other. You experiment with giving Joel an extra up-and-down each time after the skill tells you to stop. The skill text does say it only warns you about approaching the edge, getting close to it, not being there. That extra stimulation isn't quite enough to make Joel come.

You try waiting only seconds after each pause to sit back down on his cock again. It makes there be only seconds until the next edge.

Joel twitches and tenses and moans are forced out of him. He tries more desperately to distract you, and doesn't fail, but it's not enough to make you stop when he reacts so interestingly. Joel seems to feel it more intensely when you tease him this way, with that cruel extra stroke and the fast restarts, instead of just Edging him steadily. Oh, you wish you could know what this feels like, to have this done to you. You'll grant Charles Edge Other and then he'll do it to you.

A savagery is welling up in you, a desire to just pour your DOM into tormenting this cock with one cruel pleasure after another. You wonder if Charles feels this same savage impulse inside, or if it's different for boys. You feel a little scared of the emotion, but---but only a little scared. Nothing bad will happen if you throw away all your morals and go completely evil on this cock.

Edge Other Edge Other Edge Other Edge Other Edging Edge Other, Edge Other Edge Other Tears of Milk Edge Other Edging Edge Other Edging Edge Other Edge Other Edge Other---

7.10.c: Interrupters (@@)

Spoiler: Lightly NSFW manga pages 7.10.c: Interrupters

7.10.d-5*: Unforeshadowed (@@)

So I forgot that the previous post of the manga chapter in 7.10.a had too few words for people to get an alert on it, meaning that a bunch of people didn't see the first four pages of Succubus Summoning Ch. 2 (with Stara and Joel). I've moved around some things in hopes of fixing this. The former 7.10.2 now also contains the manga post that was formerly in 7.10.a, and you can go there to read the first four manga pages. There is also now a post containing all of the currently posted manga chapter serially.

Spoiler: NSFW manga 7.10.d*: Interrupted

7.10.5*: Unforeshadowed​

You're not sure how long time has stretched for the two of you. Probably not more than an hour.

Doing some amateur Mad Science has revealed that after six more Tears of Milk-ing and two more clenched-up small streams of come, Joel is now on less of a hair trigger. It has become possible for you to ride Joel for twenty or thirty hard fucks in a row before you have to pull yourself away. You're doing that right now, in fact.

You've come several times (to Joel's zero), but it's been a while since your last orgasm. Joel hasn't stopped fingering you, but understandably his fingers have slowed and weakened. In effect, you're being slowly teased. You're all hot inside. Melty. You think you might come again soon. You really want to come on this cock you're humping. But that might be pushing it too far, Joel might really come inside you. Which would be a negative consequence. Which means the Erogame might interrupt you. Surely you won't be forced off his cock in mid-orgasm, right? Right? That would also be a negative consequence! Right?

You've almost convinced yourself of this statement (which you are pretty sure is false), and are moaning half-conscious dirty words at Joel, as you wrestle the melty-brained temptation to see what happens if you just keep fucking him through your oncoming orgasm, when there's a knock at the bedroom door.

You and Joel both freeze in place.

"Joey?" comes an unfamiliar girl's voice from beyond.

"Mell?" Joel says back, sounding too shocked to consider his words. "What the fuck? What are you doing in my house?"

"Joey, are you being raped by a succubus?"

Your mind is still catching up to this entirely unforeshadowed plot twist. Apparently you are not the only potential haremette in this protagonist's eroge. "Whoever that girl is," you say under your breath, "she has an incredibly tight bead on your personality." Either that, or she's planted video cameras in Joel's bedroom. And either way--- "You should be worried."

Mell (apparently) speaks again, a loud clear voice. "I'm coming in, okay?"

"No!" Joel yells, his voice higher than you've managed to force it so far. "Don't come in!"

"Joey, it's fine, I'm a succubus too!"

"What?" Joel shouts, still not sounding quite his usual composed self. "But your father is the freaking---"

"That's not important right now!"

You've never realized before how chaotic some of the stuff in ero-stories must seem if you're not the viewpoint character. You can guess this is probably a much more foreshadowed development from the perspective of the protagonist. From your perspective it's just fucking random.

The door opens and standing there is a girl around Joel's age, wearing a cropped shirt that exposes everything up to and including underboob, and a microskirt that's more of a frill. She gives the two of you a once-over. You quash any silly feelings of embarrassment about Joel's cock being inside you.

The Unforeshadowed Haremette holds up her hands high as though to convey peacefulness. "I don't know everything that's been going on," she says in an extremely calm voice. "But I'd like to help sort things out. I'm Melusine. What's up?"

There's something of a pause. Then Joel says, "Uh, my succubus summoning book might've had some errors."

"You don't say," says the haremette.

"I was hoping to trade my virginity for a magical tool---and she showed up---but then she walked right out of my summoning circle---"

"Summoning circle?" says the haremette. "It's a beacon, not a---I don't even want to know what you've been reading."

"And then she asked me why she shouldn't just take my virginity, and now she keeps almost making me come inside her!"

The Sudden Other Woman heaves a sigh. "It's okay, Joey. You owe her something for calling her, but she wasn't really going to take your virginity." She raises her eyebrows at you.

"I wasn't?" you say, raising your eyebrows right back.

The other girl now looks more perturbed. Her eyes dart at where Joel's cock is still inside you. "You're not really looking to---" she begins. "I mean, with a boy you just now---"

"Do what?" Joel says, sounding worried.

The other girl is now giving you a more searing glare. "You weren't even planning to tell him? What is this, the 12th century?"

You're not sure what's going on. But that's okay, nothing bad can possibly happen, and besides you're evil. You deliberately rock your hips on Joel, causing him to gasp and Melusine to startle. "12th century..." you say. "That was a while ago. Can't say I remember much of it. Back when I was growing up, succubi didn't have rules."

"What are you talking about?" says Joey, sounding more alarmed than usual.

Yeah, what are you talking about?

"You're not in any danger," Melusine says calmingly. Then she glares at you. "Get off him. Now."

"What happens to me if I don't?" you say evilly in an evil voice of evil, and rock your hips on Joel again. "Mm. I wonder how close he is to coming right now---"

"Takotoama!" the girl shouts, sounding almost panicked.

You're about to ask what that spell does when yet another young lady busts through the doorway, this girl wearing a huge Ghostbusters-sized backpack over modest clothing and steampunk goggles over her eyes.

Then the backpack sprouts ROBOTIC TENTACLES.

You are so completely surprised by this unforeshadowed-from-your-character-perspective development that you just freeze and let the tentacles grab you off Joel, without even appreciating the fact that you are being grabbed by robotic tentacles.

Your staggered mind tries to right itself. This makes sense. This makes sense. ERO 30 was the minimum ERO for Mad Inventor so---and there was that whole thing with the Ero Virus so schizotech is now allowed---

You're still shaken. The robotic tentacles are the first Visible Solid Things you've encountered that are Clearly Not From Reality. It's like a higher order of the shock from walking into a basement at Goodwill that you knew hadn't been there.

By the time your brain finishes rebooting, you've been spreadeagled against one wall with hard metal tentacles wrapped around all four of your limbs.

Okay. Okay, this is a shock. But this eroge still owes you an orgasm, you're still feeling a manic melty momentum, and nothing bad can happen. So, you decide with great vigor and determination, you will be molested by these tentacles.

7.10.f-7: Fundamentally Confused / Unworthy (@@)

This chapter includes both a manga section (inside the spoiler) and a text section, to get around the problem where non-text updates don't generate alerts.

There's another text chapter immediately following this one, which is also too small to generate an alert, so don't miss "7.10.h, Concerned Parent."

Spoiler: NSFW manga 7.10.f: Fundamentally Confused About The Concept

7.10.7: Unworthy​

Melusine has taken the blanket that was formerly scrunched to one side of Joel's bed, and wrapped it around Joel's shoulders. Joel looks---guilty, and ashamed, and very confused, if SED 25 is enough to read all that correctly under the steady face he's trying to keep. His dick was still rock-hard last you saw it.

"You poor thing," Melusine says to Joel. "Do you want to come now?"

Joel looks like he's trying to regather the composure you stripped away from him over the last howeverlong. "Uh," Joel says. "What exactly are you offering?"

"My mouth."

"Go ahead," chimes in the girl with the backpack and the robotic tentacles. "It won't bother me."

"Wait," Joel says suddenly, "aren't you Sherryl---"

"Deadname," the backpack girl says.

"Huh?"

The mad inventor sighs. "I was assigned female at birth but I identify as an eldritch horror with tentacles. Is that going to be a problem?"

"Not for me!" you say cheerfully. "Your tentacles are very sexy and I want you to rape me with them at some point."

"You seem fundamentally confused about the concept of rape," the girl person observes with a shake of her their head. "But thanks, I feel very slightly validated." They turn to Melusine. "What are we supposed to do after capturing a rogue succubus?"

"We drag her over to Mom and Mom will sort her out," replies Melusine.

Your mind is sketching a vague picture of some type of supernatural order-keeping force operating in Norville, which is informal enough that teenage half-succubi and mad inventors are considered useful deputees. You shove down a twinge of fear at the thought of being hauled in front of Melusine's Mom who will turn out to be just like your Mom. Being arrested by these vigilantes can't be a negative consequence... but that's not the same as it being the best possible outcome.

"Well, officers," you say, making up your mind, "let me make myself clear, I am not coming quietly." Wait, are you missing out on Melusine's Mom turning out to be a hot dominant who disciplines you? "Unless you subdue me of course."

You open your mouth wide, to make it clear that there are ways of quieting you.

"Stop that," Melusine says sternly. "Takotoama doesn't have to tentacle-rape you if it doesn't want to."

Just who does this little succubus think she's dealing with? You're pretending to be millennia older than her. You raise your head so you can look down your nose at her. "You think you have what it takes to stop me from being tentacle-raped?"

"You can't even move your limbs," the arresting officer says insolently. "How exactly do you plan on getting raped?"

You ponder this question, but not for long. Maybe not all you have is a hammer, but it's a perfectly nice hammer, and seen from the right angle this could be a nail.

"Oh," you say in a singsong voice, "I just thought I'd point out to that mad inventor over there that whatever it does next will have no negative consequences."

"Nice try," says Takotoama. "These aren't just the control goggles for my tentacles, the bands are laced with loperamide-imodium alloy. Malcanthet herself couldn't charm me through..." Their voice trails off. "Though I suppose," they say consideringly, "that doesn't mean you're wrong."

Why do you have the feeling that you just invoked a power that could slice a black hole squarely into halves, and used it to open a stuck jelly jar?

Melusine is staring at Takotoama in dawning horror. "Tako!"

A strange, terrifying smile is dawning on Takotoama's face. "A ha," the mad inventor murmurs. "Ha ha. Ha ha ha."

"Please say you're joking," Joey says from his bed, though he looks more resigned than alarmed.

Takatoama breaks into full-blown mad inventor laughter, their voice going at least an octave higher in the process.

Melusine whirls on you. "Whatever you did to Tako, you need to undo it right FUCKING NOW!"

Undo the truth? That concept seems a little confused to you. "You say that like it has an off-switch."

"This requires that I do something worthy! A HA HA HA..." Tako's laughter is slowly trailing off. They look thoughtful and confused.

Melusine whirls back to her friend. "Yes! You can beat it, Tako! You know something's wrong! Think!"

"I can't actually decide what to do and I'm not sure how long I have," Tako says.

"No, Tako! You've got to fight it!"

"Well," you say suggestively, "I'm sure you've always secretly wanted to have your way with your friend over there. You should definitely do that while you've got the chance."

Additional tentacles burst out of Tako's backpack. The tips of these tentacles look... softer.

They've pinned down Melusine to the floor, and filled her mouth, within moments.

Tako stares at what they've done for a long quiet moment.

They're not having second thoughts, are they? "It's fine," you say soothingly, just in case. "You know it will be fine. She knows you're being mind-controlled. If you feel remorse afterwards, she'll comfort you and tell you it wasn't your fault, and your friendship will be stronger for it---hey!"

Joel just tried to lunge out of the bed in your direction, but a tentacle got him before he got to you. More tentacles grab at the bed, picking up the blanket with surprising dexterity, and moments later Joel's wrapped up in his own blanket like a tentacle-bound cocoon with only his feet sticking out.

"I know," Tako says, and shakes their head as though waking up from a bad dream. "I know it will all be fine. Thank you. The two of us... have just been... I was afraid to tell her that I... I think I've been stupid." They straighten their back. "You know I'm still not letting you go, right?"

"I expected no less," you say in regally seductive tones. "Being able to take on more than one succubus at a time is part of being a tentacle monster."

Takotoama nods, and then doesn't say or do anything else.

"Uh, let me guess," you say, as Takotoama looks increasingly distracted. You did give a mad inventor the widest possible version of the Rabbiting, which, under other circumstances, you might regret as having been a terrible terrible idea. "You've got too many options and nothing seems good enough."

Takotoama covers their face using a tentacle. "Too many options? No. My mind has picked this time to go utterly blank. I'm going to have Mell, and I'm going to have you, but aside from that I'm drawing nothing but basic lands. I'm an inventor with fully functional robotic tentacles, I know there's no consequences for anything I do, and I can't even think of anything that would make tomorrow's newspapers. Nothing that I'd actually want to do."

You've really been there. "You need to accept that you're not going to think of anything worthy, acknowledge that you're going to beat yourself up later about all the better things you didn't do, and just do fun things even though you know they're stupid."

Takotoama has a pained expression, or you think they do. It's hard to tell through the goggles. "Like what?"

"Uh..." Oh, great. In front of you is a mad inventor with hentai tentacles, and now your mind has gone blank. Serves you right for trying to act mentorish. No, god damn it you have to be able to think of something. Something that would be fun and ero and that you couldn't just do at any other time. "Uh, uh, steal a police officer's pants?" No, that's too stupid. "Kidnap the mayor's daughter and molest her until our demands are met?" Wait, does Mayor Wheeler even have a daughter? You've got no idea... dumb question, he has a daughter now.

"Mmmmm mmmm mmmm!" sounds are coming from Melusine's stuffed mouth. She's struggling harder in the grip of Tako's tentacles. Like she's taking the idea of kidnapping the mayor's daughter very personally. Does she know her, or...

You blink as you realize who Melusine's parents probably are.

Gosh, your life sure is convenient sometimes.

7.10.h [WS]: Concerned Parent

A woman sat in one seat of an ice cream parlour, slowly consuming an obscenely indulgent chocolate ice cream milkshake that in another world she would have saved for her daughter's wedding night. Her laptop sat besides the milkshake. Her right hand's thumb rested on the spacebar, irregularly tapping the key.

Now and then the woman tabbed away to a Workflowy document to add to her growing collection of notes, with the most important items collected at top.

parks at nighttime AVOID

names like Nrvnqsr Chaos exactly as bad as they sound

Catholic Church AVOID

psychiatric screening ALL household maids

NEVER VISIT JAPAN

The screen faded to white, as it sometimes did, and the words END appeared in a corner. The woman took a long sip of her chocolate milkshake.

So far, despite some very sincere efforts, Winifred Sheen hadn't made it through any character route alive on her first pass.

Winifred understood why Cindy wasn't eager to report in minute detail what she did every day. It was, Winifred understood, not a type of information ordinarily reported to mothers in hourly timesheets. God knew, she wouldn't have told her own mother about any of this. Winifred just wished she had some way of finding out what her daughter was really doing all day long, to the level of detail where she knew if anybody involved had a name like Nrvnqsr.

From outside the store came heavy chunking sounds, quickly growing louder, accompanied by shrieks of surprise.

The woman looked up from her chocolate ice cream milkshake.

In a brief glimpse, Winifred saw through the shop's window her naked, bejeweled daughter trussed up in phallic metallic tentacles, next to a teenaged girl dressed like a sex worker and held by more tentacles, and a blanket-wrapped cocoon likewise held with two male feet sticking out. The tentacles were sprouting from a huge pack worn by a fully dressed girl. Other metallic tentacles from the pack were slamming into the ground with heavy chunking sounds, propelling the assembly forwards.

After this apparition had fled past the cafe window, it was followed shortly after by a furious-looking female police officer who seemed to be missing the lower half of her clothing.

The woman looked back down at her laptop and took another sip of chocolate.

"Well, that's reassuring," Winifred said under her breath. "Either she really is inside a different genre, or I am playing Tsukihime completely wrong."

7.10.i-10*: The Fall of Doc Tentacle / Tentacled (@@)

Spoiler: NSFW manga 7.10.i*: The Fall of Doc Tentacle

7.10.10*: Tentacled​

Let it never be said that Cinderella Sheen can't learn.

Here you are, naked but for your jewelry and high heels, being held high in the air by metallic tentacles, as a softer tentacle writhes inside your pussy, as another tentacle teases your ass without entering, as the mad inventor holding you aloft chunks along the street with another girl and a blanket-wrapped boy in tow, causing even more people to gawk and point at your spectacle.

And you're mostly focused on this sexual experience, instead of worrying about whether or not you're ready for it. You are living in the moment.

Good for you!

The moment consists of your helpless form being exhibited under circumstances humiliating enough that your toes are blushing. The tentacle ravaging your pussy is rough and uncaring, jerking you up towards orgasm time and time again, and not stopping on the occasions it happens to elbow you over the edge. Every time it does, every time your body is about to seize up in orgasm, your eye happens to land on some cute person gawking at you. Some innocent person who's clearly not used to seeing girls being tentacled. Then, just as you're coming, the mad inventor happens to stop in place to let the policewoman chasing all of you almost catch up. That stop is always just long enough that you can see somebody watching you through your come, watch them watch your body writhing against the hard restraints, as they hear the cries forced out of you. The chase coincidentally stays halted long enough for you to see that you made a man hard, made an erection poke through jeans, turned some girl's nipples into stone beneath her tight shirt, before the lower tentacles resume stomping.

None of the people looking at you know anything about succubi, you're pretty sure. For this span of time you are just the Victim, a pretty girl being molested by robotic tentacles and forced into orgasms, and it isn't your responsibility to be anything else.

(At one point you did worry about what would happen if, like, your Mom somehow saw you. As soon as you thought that, the tentacles fucking your pussy and teasing your ass immediately retracted for one city block, leaving just your naked form carried high in the air as the spectacle. You guess that's a fair answer.)

The exciting chase across the city goes on for a while, long enough for you to almost start to get used to things.

Then the tentacle actually does go up your ass.

Afterwards you're not thinking about anything else. You miss however the policewoman gets buried under a giant heap of cooked elbow macaroni. You're not tracking exactly how you all end up barricaded inside some officelike building with solid metal shutters that can close over the doors and windows. The ass tentacle is an effective distraction.

Once you're inside the building, the mad inventor takes a laptop from their huge backpack and starts typing quickly. When they're done you are being restrained and fucked by robotic tentacles, hard bands gripping your limbs and softer things squirming inside your pussy and your ass, and the whole assembly is using your own mouth as a secondary appendage to fuck Joel's cock. Turns out Takotoama brought you along as a living socket adapter, Male Tentacle to Female Tentacle.

If you hadn't already experienced being held down and used, at the orgy earlier today, it would have been too much. Either you would have freaked out, or you would have fallen into subspace and never come out. Instead, you hold on to enough evilness to go on using Edge Other to control the width of your mouth and go on frustrating Joel over and over and over. Even as almost all your attention stays on the squirmy things happening in your ass, and the thrusts into your pussy that feel like they're going all the way up your chest. Maybe the thrusts are going further than that, you don't know.

It's...

It is everything you would have hoped it would be, if you'd been having fantasies like this for years, which you haven't, because you only became that perverted a day or two ago and you've been busy since then. As it is, it's just barely not too much. But just-barely is still is. It's not too much.

And then Takotoama has walked off into an obvious trap, though of course a trap that will not mean anything ultimately bad for them. You've been left alone with Joel and Melusine and no tentacles.

You recover faster, this time, from your forced plunge into submission. You feel proud of how few minutes you spend lying naked, motionless, and tentacled out on the floor.

As soon as you're feeling recovered, before you even open your eyes, you hear Melusine asking you to let them out.

"No," you reply, because No seems like the only answer that fits the story. If they hadn't asked, you could have decided for yourself whether or not to let them out, but they did ask so the answer has to be No.

You open your eyes and give Joel and Melusine considering looks. They sure do look slutty, being tied to chairs the way they are. All helpless and vulnerable. Really, they're just asking for it here. So what are you going to do with them now?

The rest of the manga is already planned out and the artist has already worked on it, so most of what happens next is already locked in. So I'm not calling a vote here, for what Cindy does to Joel and Melusine, even though in retrospect I feel like I should've. Despite that, it's not impossible something could happen inside the accompanying text, if somebody suggests it before the next (and final) manga chapter posts. Which will probably be very soon, so don't count on my being able to do it, please? But you can make suggestions or vote for them, if you like.

7.10.k-12**: Molestation (@@)

Spoiler: NSFW manga 7.10.k**: Molested

7.10.12**: Molester​

The first thing you decide, as you gaze at Joel's erect cock and push yourself back to your feet, is that someone must do something about this penis. Joel still hasn't come, and the story can't possibly finish before he does.

Just in case you're wrong about what's a negative consequence, you try Rabbiting Joel and Melusine that nothing will go wrong if you take Joel's virginity. They don't believe you when you say it. So something bad would happen.

But that also means you can't actually take Joel's virginity, right? The Erogame would stop you first. Somehow.

It's not a way of thinking you'd consider safe or sane, if not for your current quest. But you're feeling really very curious about what will happen to stop you if you threaten Joel's virginity again. What happened last time was quite interesting.

You go ahead and straddle Joel, preparing to sit down on his cock and hump him hard and fast---

And Melusine blurts out that she wants Joel's virginity herself.

You barely stop yourself from squeeing out loud at this triumph of ero relationship-building.

Then Joel asks what the deal is with virginity, and you have a sudden gear-shift moment. There being no negative consequences for anything you do doesn't preclude the other succubus answering with something problematic. If virgins are worth a huge power-boost, eldritch beings will start hunting them down. That might not always be romantic. You shut your eyes for a blink-slack and---

---try to design the magical laws of virginity.

Let's see. Uh. People like Joel want to be able to trade their virginity for something. It's a Lavelle-ish thing, maybe, wanting to feel like their sexuality has value? That's why you wanted to have somebody else take your virginity from you, to prove to you that you were desirable. But that's not the same thing Joel feels, or he wouldn't be protesting this much. Maybe Joel feels like he's stayed a virgin for too long, and he wants something in trade so he doesn't feel cheated? From what you've heard there's a lot of boys and some girls who don't want to be virgins anymore. It would be nice if magical beings of an appropriate gender came to them offering gifts in trade.

But your magical virginity system needs to not give magical beings so much incentive to hunt down virgins that a day later there's no virgins left. That part is important. It is a valid eroge if the last virgin on Earth is fleeing from the succubi hunting him down, so you have to be extra-sure that it doesn't work out that way.

It's not even a good thing if a boy having his first time has to worry about whether a succubus really wants him, or if she's just going to drain his virginity and then throw him away like a Twinkie with the frosting already sucked out. How do you make virginity be precious without creating tragic good stories like that? Some girls have a hard enough time trusting boys already, without knowing their pussies are worth an extra 500XP.

You have a strange feeling of pressure. Like even for Slack, you're pushing it right now. Like if this was a different quest, you couldn't get away with taking a six-minute eyeblink. Maybe in fact you ran out of Slack for the day already, so only "no negative consequences" is preventing you from embarrassing yourself? You'll think about that later, right now you need to be thinking about magical laws of virginity.

Does it work if the virgins themselves get the bonus for having their virginity taken? But then the plot of this eroge so far doesn't make sense. And... if people can get the virginity bonus as soon as they're ready for sex, people who wait until age 25 aren't being compensated for the time they lost by staying virgins. And if the bonus for waiting longer is too large, that will make people stay virgins even if they want sex. And what about two human childhood friends who fall in love, do they get shafted by the system if they don't trade their virginities to succubi first?

This is too hard. It's way harder than calculus. Everything you want is self-contradictory with everything else you want. It's tempting to give up and hope the omniscient Erogame handles it. The problem is, the Erogame may be extremely niscient, but you're worried it's not niscienting about stuff like consent.

Then you have an idea that seems nice and even heartwarming and you think it does all the right things, and in that same moment it's like you can feel yourself run out of time with a snap.

When you open your eyes Melusine is already starting to say something, and you quickly blurt out, "It's how succubi reproduce!"

Then you blink, as you realize that, even though it took all that brainstorming for you to think of that---

"Oh," Joel says in suddenly enlightened tones, the tones of somebody who now understands why it's reproductive sex that causes somebody to lose their magically-defined virginity.

Yep. That sure seems to have been already been true before you brainstormed your heartwarming idea. Bullshit metaphysics creeps you out sometimes.

Melusine is saying something about magical virginity having other powers which depend on the participants actually liking each other, which, yes, thank you Erogame, that was a lot simpler than everything you were trying to think. Maybe there's a gentle message here to the effect that you should leave that type of thing up to the Erogame until Norville U has a Magical Systems and Societies class.

Now that you think about it, you wonder if the Erogame really lets you design utopian sexual magical systems and speak them into reality. It doesn't let you materialize money in a closet. Maybe the Erogame is designing the systems itself and you're just happening to blurt them out correctly.

Back to molesting Joel.

A status check shows that you're down to 17 DOM. So you'll just edge Joel 17 more times and make him come in your mouth, you guess.

When that's done and the pleasant sugary-cinnamon taste is fading on your tongue, you look consideringly at Melusine.

The thought has just occurred to you that there is an uncollected nectar in front of you.

Besides, it's probably smarter not to leave here with 0 DOM. There are skills that only use Dominant Energy and some of those are important. And who knows what type of energy might be required to empower Charles the way you're hoping?

You kneel in front of Melusine and start molesting her. She complains, but it doesn't sound like her heart is in it, and besides nothing bad can happen.

You check your status after a short time. You haven't gained that much DOM yet. Apparently you're not doing enough evil per second.

So you start tickling the mayor's daughter.

Even your thoroughly used pussy pulses more warmth for how loudly she shrieks when you do that.

Encouraged, you dig your fingers into her ribs as hard as you can. Succubi are tough and won't get bruised. Or she'll be enough of a masochist to enjoy the pain, and succubi heal faster like your Erogamer's Body. Whatever, the important point is that you can tickle the shit out of a victim without worrying about your Tickle Logic "skill" going up.

She actually comes from being tickled. Oh dear. She's really in trouble now.

Fascinated, you do that again a few times.

It makes Joel hard.

You check your status and find you now have 137 DOM.

Who are you to fight the natural progression of this plot?

First you edge Melusine twenty times so she doesn't get bored, then you keep her moaning on the edge of orgasm for 1 more minute afterwards. She really whines when you leave her wet and unsatisfied at the end, so you tickle her into screaming silence, using Edge Other to not let her come from the tickles. Then you sit on Joel's cock, and blow him, and stroke him, and edge him over and over and over. You just let yourself go and keep doing it until your Dominant skills aren't activating anymore. You try to use your natural skills and FUK to edge him more anyways, but he comes in your mouth not long after.

You stand up and realize that, oh darn, now you have 0 DOM again.

So you tickle Melusine some more, fingering yourself to a satisfying orgasm while you do.

It makes Joel hard again.

Can't teenage boys control themselves when they see one girl being tickled, another girl masturbating herself to orgasm, and they know that getting hard again will result in them being fucked and teased? Fine, if he's going to be like that, you'll go on teaching him his lesson.

Eventually you run out of DOM and Joel comes into your hand, so it's back to Melusine. The thought occurs to you that, as a girl, Melusine can't run out of orgasms to have. You decide to use her as a model to see how well you can learn to edge her and tease her without using your Erogame skills. Your lack of experience means she has a lot of ruined orgasms, but a few good tickle-punishments teach her not to whine so loudly while her pussy pulses forlornly. Then you realize you were enjoying hearing her whine, so you tickle Melusine when she's quiet instead, wondering how long it will take her to work out that the rules have changed.

Time passes.

Several rounds later, when Joel isn't erecting no matter what awful things you do to Melusine, you start sucking on Joel's soft penis to see if he can get hard again that way. Melusine has the nerve to shriek at you for "cheating." It reminds you to be tickling her while you suck on his cock, to increase Joel's erection-producing efficiency.

Silly Mell. Whenever Joel finally runs out of sperm, you're going to keep tickling her until your DOM fills all the way up.

Are you calculating it right that if you spend a full DOM bar on Edging you could keep somebody trembling right on the edge for 15 minutes straight? You have no idea if that's physiologically or psychologically safe to do to a human male, and you don't want the plot interrupting you if it's not. But you bet it's safe to do to succubi. Though spending your full DOM bar that way would mean you'd have to tickle Melusine again afterwards, to fill your DOM bar all the way back up. Well, that's a sacrifice you're willing to make.

Would the Edging skill work for keeping Melusine right on the edge with tickling? You masturbate yourself to another satisfying orgasm just thinking about it, as you ruin Joel into your mouth again.

Or, oh. Oh. You could keep Melusine on the edge for 15 minutes, and then not make her come at the end. Just tickle her more until you refill your DOM again. And use Edge Other so she never comes that way. You'll drive her completely out of her mind with arousal and unsatisfied lust. And then you'll halfway undo her bonds, but not Joel's. That should lead to an interesting scene when the police get here.

You come again on your hand while you imagine it, and extract a little more of Joel's boy-juice, just enough to taste. It got easier to do that, some time in the last howeverlong. It's making Joel thrash around in his bonds in an interesting way, his cock struggling to escape your mouth in a way that seems lewd even for a slutty boy like him.

Some time later---probably even longer for them than it is for you---you are gazing at two exhausted chair-tied forms with slight chagrin.

It turned out that when you finished tickle-edging Melusine for the last time, she didn't look eager to go after Joel. After you took away your hands, she just sort of went limp in her chair. Joel didn't talk much either, after you finished sucking out the last of his semen one little drip at a time. You forgot to leave him any boy-juice for a tease-maddened succubus to extract. But it's all fine. They had fun, you're certain. Exactly as much fun as they could take, probably, courtesy of cooperative cosmic forces. It's not surprising they're taking a short rest now.

Instead of half-undoing Melusine's bonds as you originally intended, you push her chair next to Joel's, letting her rest her limp head on his sweaty shoulder. The two of them look so adorable like this. It's so saccharinely erotic, it rots the metaphorical teeth of your vagina. You're certain they'll end up as a couple.

You step back, straighten up, and look down at your two wrung-out victims with a deep sense of satisfaction.

You are ready to declare the quest completed at this point. You feel like you managed to stop holding back and be evil. Maybe just zero-calorie extra-light evil, but nobody playing this eroge would have any doubt who was the villain. The quest is done. You think your inner voices would agree with that, but you're not even putting it to an internal vote in case the vote goes the wrong way.

You shove down the screaming, wailing inner perfectionist that knows you totally wasted this quest. You won't end up forever regretting all the things you didn't do, because that would be a negative consequence. That's logical, right?

You take a final look back at your two exhausted victims. Have you finished up this eroge plot, tied off all the loose ends? Joel has been taught a proper lesson about the dangers of poorly drawn summoning circles. He's been put in touch with Melusine, who's part of a larger organization that can mentor him further...

The thought occurs to you that you wish you could give Joel his dreamsilver lens. It would round out the plot more cleanly.

No, if you're honest with yourself, this isn't about the story's plot, it's about you. You're feeling a little guilty about your little villainies. You would feel better about having teased the loving shit out of Joel if he got what he wanted in the story's end. Joel could join the mysterious organization bringing something of his own to the table, instead of being Melusine's boy-toy looking for a handout.

Can't you just... you don't know. Can you randomly find a dreamsilver lens on some nearby surface, Erogame? You know it's exceeding your allowance of plot armor to ask for that, but since you know that, that makes it okay for you to ask anyways, right?

You look in one corner of the room, but you don't see anything that could plausibly be a lens of dreamsilver. Just a few stray one-dollar bills in a little heap.

Which reminds you again of the last time you tried to make the Erogame materialize valuable stuff from nowhere.

You stop yourself from smacking your own forehead where the others can see you. God damn it, back when you were heading back from Volkov's room during the conference orgy, that dime in the closet. That circular flat object of silvery material spawned by your mental images. That was totally a lens of dreamsilver, wasn't it. Why didn't you pick it up? Because it seemed like the Erogame was trolling you? You should've picked it up anyways. It could have been a Significant Plot Item underneath the trolling, and it was.

Well, now that you've been taught your lesson about always picking up quest items the first time intead of asking for indulgences later, can you please have another chance? Can you just find the dime again?

You look at another corner.

Still no dime.

Pleeease, Erogame?

You're almost ready to give up and go, when you remember that you already picked up an unusually shiny dime on the street this morning.

Furthermore, you're sure that you remember already remembering that, and that you're not just remembering it now.

You sigh and shove down existential wobbliness with the ease of much practice.

You make your villainous departure speech to your two new friends, who look mostly conscious for it. You don't know if you'd consider either of them harem candidates, but you wouldn't mind being kidnapped with them again sometime. They even seem to have rationalized their way around to believing you were mind-controlled too, just like Takotoama, who you're sure gets forgiven. You won't get the negative consequence of them blaming you for all the evils you eviled upon their writhing bodies. You're getting away completely scott-free for all your sins. It's a delicious, naughty sensation that... that you had better not get used to.

Though there is that Dark Side perk if you want to get away with things routinely...

It's definitely time to end this quest before it corrupts you even more.

On your way out you stop at the laptop Takotoama was using. You're curious about what the mad inventor was scheming. Maybe they did something clever enough that this quest won't have the negative consequence of you feeling bad about lost opportunities later.

The laptop is still unlocked. It shows Chrome with a lot of open tabs. Takotoama was... going online and buying a bunch of weird shit? You don't understand what they were buying.

You click through one tab after another. The receipts seem to say stuff like "Commercialized antibiotic targets multi-drug resistant staphylococceus" or "Gene-drive mosquitos deployed against malaria successfully in at least 5 countries." The phrases all sound nice, but not like anything you could buy for a few hundred bucks, which is how much Takotoama was spending on each item.

Maybe the weird titles are somehow code for mad-inventing parts? "Iowa Electronic Markets" seems to be the name of one shop, though the receipts aren't for any kind of electronics you recognize. "Augur" sounds like a wood-boring tool.

As you keep clicking through the open tabs, you start feeling queasy. This is a lot of money that Takotoama just spent. Hundreds of dollars per weird receipt. You wouldn't be surprised if that was all the money Takotoama owned. You wouldn't be surprised if they were spending down credit cards.

You stop and breathe, reminding yourself that Takotoama can't have just lost huge amounts of money for real. That would be a negative consequence.

You sign out of Takotoama's laptop so nobody else sees this stuff. Then you step into another room and mess around with buttons, trying to figure out how to retract the metal shutter over one window. You do need to parkour on out of here before the police bust in.

Cindy can attempt 1-3 brief actions, ones that can be described or summarized in a couple of paragraphs, before she works up the willpower to end this quest. "Buttonhole a passerby and demand that they join the Cult of Doctor Tentacle" is a valid action, or "Walk into a bakery and blow somebody in exchange for a piece of cake that can't hurt you." "Find another succubus to have sex with" is not. You have at least 36 hours to suggest options, and at some point after, I'll collect and interpret them and open the vote.

Voting has not opened yet.
Voting is now open.

Ranked vote, [1]-[8], [1] is most preferred. Ranking something below "Neutral preference" indicates active dislike. Cindy will end up taking 1-3 of these options.

[ ] Leave a message for Takotoama with ancient-succubus suggestions for creating erogenous tentacles. Like a prucalopride nerve implant, and Orlistat's Rite of Animation.
[ ] Randomly dial your phone in hopes of reaching the woman who convinced Tako to walk out using pizza. Flirt with her.
[ ] Open the door of a Catholic church holding Saturday mass, yell "It's time to start the orgy!" and walk away without bothering to check the results.
[ ] Take lewd selfies and text them to random phone numbers.
[ ] Trade a lewd act for some yummy food.
[ ] Obtain someone else's clothes.
[ ] Organize a Lovecraftian sex cult for Takotoama's tentacles, very quickly.
[ ] Neutral preference.

7.10.13: Last-Minute Addition

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 294 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 8807-8859]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
Leave a message for Takotoama with ancient-succubus suggestions for creating erogenous tentacles. Like a prucalopride nerve implant, and Orlistat's Rite of Animation.
Neutral preference
Obtain someone else's clothes
Open the door of a Catholic church holding Saturday mass, yell "It's time to start the orgy!" and walk away without bothering to check the results.
Organize a Lovecraftian sex cult for Takotoama's tentacles, very quickly.
Randomly dial your phone in hopes of reaching the woman who convinced Tako to walk out using pizza. Flirt with her.
Take lewd selfies and text them to random phone numbers.
Trade a lewd act for some yummy food.

Winner: Trade a lewd act for some yummy food.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Aoinfinity
[1] AylorAivo
[1] BuryBone
[1] david
[1] Diraniola
[1] fictionfan
[1] Gingganz
[1] Icyou
[1] napkintooth
[1] Relheun
[1] Silent88
[1] TheEyes
[1] Theli
[1] Wert Areman
[1] zup
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Evilwumpus
[2] january1may
[2] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[2] Sheaman3773
[2] TheMidnightRook
[2] Tulip
[3] AndreasFr1
[3] Kai Merah
[3] Lubaf
[4] Askolei
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] Nemonowan
[4] Pseudonym
[5] Jirachi
[5] MaggieoftheOwls
[5] MissileTeatime
[6] Gorgrath177
[6] iii
[6] Supremedragoon
[7] SETIFAN
[7] Skelm
[8] Butter Flies
[8] gRR
[8] Lisa
[8] Quentin
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Derpmind
[-] fractal42

First Runner Up: Leave a message for Takotoama with ancient-succubus suggestions for creating erogenous tentacles. Like a prucalopride nerve implant, and Orlistat's Rite of Animation.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] askldjflkajskje
[1] Askolei
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] january1may
[1] Jirachi
[1] Lubaf
[1] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[1] Pseudonym
[1] SETIFAN
[1] Skelm
[2] AndreasFr1
[2] AylorAivo
[2] fractal42
[2] Gingganz
[2] gRR
[2] Icyou
[2] Kai Merah
[2] Lisa
[2] napkintooth
[2] Relheun
[2] Supremedragoon
[2] TheEyes
[2] Theli
[2] Wert Areman
[3] BuryBone
[3] CTCatapult
[3] fictionfan
[3] Gorgrath177
[3] Tulip
[4] Diraniola
[4] Evilwumpus
[4] MaggieoftheOwls
[4] MissileTeatime
[5] Butter Flies
[5] Sheaman3773
[7] Aoinfinity
[7] david
[7] iii
[7] Quentin
[7] Silent88
[7] zup
[8] TheMidnightRook
[-] Derpmind
[-] Nemonowan

Second Runner Up: Randomly dial your phone in hopes of reaching the woman who convinced Tako to walk out using pizza. Flirt with her.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] gRR
[1] Kai Merah
[1] TheMidnightRook
[2] Askolei
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] Gorgrath177
[2] Jirachi
[2] Nemonowan
[2] SETIFAN
[2] Silent88
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] AylorAivo
[3] Butter Flies
[3] Diraniola
[3] Evilwumpus
[3] MaggieoftheOwls
[3] MissileTeatime
[3] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[3] Quentin
[3] Relheun
[3] Supremedragoon
[3] Wert Areman
[4] CTCatapult
[4] january1may
[4] Sheaman3773
[4] Skelm
[4] TheEyes
[5] BuryBone
[5] Icyou
[5] iii
[5] Lisa
[5] Pseudonym
[5] Theli
[5] Tulip
[5] zup
[6] david
[6] Gingganz
[6] napkintooth
[7] AndreasFr1
[7] Lubaf
[9] fictionfan
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Derpmind
[-] fractal42

Third Runner Up: Obtain someone else's clothes

Spoiler: Voters

[1] CTCatapult
[1] Derpmind
[1] Evilwumpus
[1] MissileTeatime
[2] Diraniola
[2] zup
[3] askldjflkajskje
[3] Askolei
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Gingganz
[3] Nemonowan
[3] SETIFAN
[3] Silent88
[3] TheMidnightRook
[4] AndreasFr1
[4] Aoinfinity
[4] AylorAivo
[4] david
[4] gRR
[4] iii
[4] Jirachi
[4] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[4] Theli
[4] Wert Areman
[5] fictionfan
[5] Kai Merah
[5] Lubaf
[5] Quentin
[5] Relheun
[5] Supremedragoon
[5] TheEyes
[6] Butter Flies
[6] Lisa
[6] MaggieoftheOwls
[6] Pseudonym
[6] Tulip
[7] Gorgrath177
[7] napkintooth
[8] BuryBone
[8] Icyou
[8] january1may
[8] Sheaman3773
[8] Skelm
[-] fractal42

Honorable Mention: Take lewd selfies and text them to random phone numbers.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] iii
[2] askldjflkajskje
[2] Butter Flies
[2] david
[2] fictionfan
[2] MaggieoftheOwls
[3] Icyou
[3] Jirachi
[3] Skelm
[3] Theli
[4] fractal42
[4] Gingganz
[4] Gorgrath177
[4] Lisa
[4] Lubaf
[4] Quentin
[4] Relheun
[4] SETIFAN
[4] TheMidnightRook
[4] Tulip
[4] zup
[5] Askolei
[5] CTCatapult
[5] Elitist Oars
[5] Evilwumpus
[5] napkintooth
[5] Nemonowan
[5] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[6] AndreasFr1
[6] Aoinfinity
[6] AylorAivo
[6] BuryBone
[6] Diraniola
[6] january1may
[6] Kai Merah
[6] Sheaman3773
[6] Silent88
[6] Wert Areman
[7] gRR
[7] Supremedragoon
[8] MissileTeatime
[8] Pseudonym
[8] TheEyes
[-] Derpmind

Honorable Mention: Organize a Lovecraftian sex cult for Takotoama's tentacles, very quickly.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] fractal42
[1] Gorgrath177
[1] Lisa
[1] MaggieoftheOwls
[1] Quentin
[1] Sheaman3773
[1] Tulip
[2] Lubaf
[2] MissileTeatime
[2] Pseudonym
[2] Skelm
[3] david
[3] gRR
[3] iii
[3] january1may
[3] TheEyes
[4] BuryBone
[4] Butter Flies
[4] Icyou
[4] Kai Merah
[4] napkintooth
[4] Supremedragoon
[5] Diraniola
[5] Gingganz
[6] Askolei
[6] CTCatapult
[6] Evilwumpus
[6] Relheun
[6] SETIFAN
[6] Theli
[6] TheMidnightRook
[7] Elitist Oars
[7] Jirachi
[8] AndreasFr1
[8] Aoinfinity
[8] AylorAivo
[8] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[8] Silent88
[8] Wert Areman
[8] zup
[9] fictionfan
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Derpmind
[-] Nemonowan

Honorable Mention: Neutral preference

Spoiler: Voters

[2] Derpmind
[2] iii
[2] Quentin
[3] Pseudonym
[3] zup
[4] askldjflkajskje
[5] AndreasFr1
[5] Aoinfinity
[5] AylorAivo
[5] david
[5] gRR
[5] Silent88
[5] Skelm
[5] TheMidnightRook
[5] Wert Areman
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] fictionfan
[6] Jirachi
[6] Lubaf
[6] Nemonowan
[6] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[6] TheEyes
[7] BuryBone
[7] Butter Flies
[7] CTCatapult
[7] Diraniola
[7] Gingganz
[7] Icyou
[7] january1may
[7] Kai Merah
[7] Lisa
[7] MaggieoftheOwls
[7] MissileTeatime
[7] Relheun
[7] Sheaman3773
[8] Evilwumpus
[8] Gorgrath177
[8] napkintooth
[8] SETIFAN
[8] Supremedragoon
[8] Theli
[8] Tulip
[-] Askolei
[-] fractal42

Honorable Mention: Open the door of a Catholic church holding Saturday mass, yell "It's time to start the orgy!" and walk away without bothering to check the results.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AndreasFr1
[1] Butter Flies
[1] Supremedragoon
[2] Aoinfinity
[2] BuryBone
[3] fractal42
[3] Lisa
[3] napkintooth
[3] Sheaman3773
[4] Silent88
[5] Gorgrath177
[5] january1may
[5] SETIFAN
[6] gRR
[6] Icyou
[6] MissileTeatime
[6] Quentin
[6] Skelm
[6] zup
[7] Askolei
[7] AylorAivo
[7] Evilwumpus
[7] PlaneOfInfiniteCats
[7] Pseudonym
[7] TheEyes
[7] Theli
[7] TheMidnightRook
[7] Tulip
[7] Wert Areman
[8] CTCatapult
[8] david
[8] Diraniola
[8] Elitist Oars
[8] Gingganz
[8] iii
[8] Jirachi
[8] Kai Merah
[8] Lubaf
[8] MaggieoftheOwls
[8] Relheun
[9] fictionfan
[-] askldjflkajskje
[-] Derpmind
[-] Nemonowan

Total No. of Voters: 44

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the #1 winning vote. That story event will happen shortly.

The Sun is the same height as ever in the sky, as you parkour-slide down the rainpipe of a building adjacent to Takatoama's lair. You don't know how long you spent tickling Melusine and teasing Joel. The exact quantity of time feels unimportant, and the fact that it's unimportant is starting to seem, in some hard-to-words fashion, related to the fact that the Sun didn't move. If the exact interval between two events doesn't matter to the story, then maybe there's some deep sense in which it doesn't exist... okay, you're not thinking about that any more.

Maybe because of that new weird thought, it doesn't feel like the Sun is in the wrong place. It doesn't feel like it should be evening already. You should feel that way, but you don't, and that's a little scary. It's another glimpse of the storyline where the Sun halts in its path forever and tomorrow never comes, as you wander through a Norville that's never the same city twice. It reminds you again that this quest has to end, because it might not end, and if it doesn't end, it won't end.

You're sure you won't actually do that. It would be a negative consequence, for one thing. There's going to be an unpleasant bump at the finish, where you have to actually end the quest and go back to the world with negative consequences. But you're sure you're going to be able to overcome it. Just---just not yet.

At the bottom of the rainpipe is the miniskirt and shirt that you left inside Martinez's car, a long timeywimey ago, because of course losing them would be a negative consequence now wouldn't it. You put them back on. Donning the same clothes to greet Charles feels strangely nostalgic and yet ominous, like you've gone in a great circle and ended up back where you started.

Peeking out from around the side of the building's back shows a couple of police officers stationed at the end of the alley.

You put on your glasses, and strut over with the cheerful confidence of somebody to whom nothing bad can possibly happen.

"Hello, miss," one of the police officers says. "Nice hair. You didn't happen to see another lady with hair like that, did you? She would have looked a lot like you, only naked and not wearing glasses."

You shake your head, and they let you walk on past.

Ending this quest is going to be painful.

Maybe you should end it now and get it over with... no. You should... you should try to think if there's anything else you want to do first, right?

After giving your mind a distrustful glare, you decide to consider if there's anything brief you want to do first.

You turn that question over a couple of times, as you wander around a Norville with slightly taller buildings and slightly busier businesses. Nothing too blatantly different. Probably just a couple of realities over from where you used to live.

Okay. You should have thought of this earlier. It would have been more convenient to think of this earlier. But, you wish in retrospect that you'd thought to give Takotoama some ancient succubus advice, that cannot possibly go wrong, about how to hook up their tentacles for real sensation. Takotoama was clearly having fun, but they weren't getting off while the rest of you were being fucked. There is a new brainfeel inside you that feels weirdly bad and guilty about that. SED-or-just-imagination suggests Tako didn't touch themself at all, or rub themself off on one of you, because they didn't want to be reminded of their girlparts during their crowning moment of tentacles. You should have typed some advice into their laptop before you left, but no, you're only thinking of this now. Could you encounter Tako later, and give them advice then? But then it won't be guaranteed to not go wrong. You have to do it before the quest is over.

You're not just reaching desperately for something, anything else to do first. That is a thing that it makes perfect sense to do before ending this quest.

But since you don't trust yourself here, you need to figure out how to do that briefly, without retracing your footsteps and climbing back up the rainpipe.

Maybe you could just leave Takotoama a voicemail. You don't know their phone number, but...

You pull out your burner phone and give it a considering look. Is this something you're allowed to do in your capacity as an eroge character?

You could have tortured this phone number out of Melusine, say. Or asked Takotoama for it. It would make sense for you to know this phone number inside of this eroge plot, you just forgot to foreshadow that.

"In eroges," you say firmly at your phone, "characters often know each other's phone numbers when there's no plot reason they can't," and then you close your eyes and dial some numbers at random.

When you open your eyes, it looks like a Norville/Bakersfield area code, so it probably worked.

You pause, then, and download a caller-ID-blocking app before continuing. You don't know if that would have been that easy in Reality Classic, but it's that easy for you here.

After turning on the app, you make the call.

The line rings once.

Somebody who isn't Tako picks up almost immediately. "Hello," says a crisp female voice, low enough to sound no-longer-young. "Milse Orkosi speaking, who is this?"

Why does that sound slightly familiar...? "Hi, this is Starastera. Can you get a message to Takotoama for me?"

"Sure!" the female voice says in friendly tones without the slightest audible pause or hesitation. "If you don't mind my asking, Starastera, how did you get this number? I wouldn't have expected Melusine or Takotoama to have it."

Huh? She knows what was just happening? Who is this? There might be all kinds of people involved in the hostage situation, but none of their voices should sound familiar to you... oh, right. You overheard this voice coming from Tako's cellphone. This is the person who lured Tako out of their lair with pizza.

"Well," you say into the phone, "maybe I saw the caller ID on Tako's cellphone with my keen succubus eyes." That is a plausible reason for you to have this number, right?

"Saying maybe means you're deliberately not saying that's how it happened," says the phone. "Well, it must be important if you're being evasive about it. Why not just tell me, though? Nothing bad can happen if you do."

You pull back the burner phone and give it a considering look.

Now that you're thinking about it, luring Takotoama out of the building with pizza... that was actually quite clever.

In the sense that Milse Orkosi figured out exactly how you were using Rabbit. And then she figured out exactly how to exploit the mental vulnerabilities implicit in what you did. Not using elaborate shenanigans, using a pizza.

You're not sure even Karinna Coral is that clever.

You are definitely not that clever.

Under any other circumstances you should, of course, hang up this phone immediately.

"By the by," you say into the phone cheerfully, "I was really impressed by that thing with the pizza. That was incredibly clever. I might have felt turned on by how clever it was, if I hadn't already been getting fucked by tentacles at the time."

"Well, thank you very much!" the phone says back, sounding equally cheerful. "I'm flattered, and you sounded like quite the sexy succubus yourself. Say, let's go out on a date together! Right now works for me. Nothing will go wrong if you do."

This person. "As enticing of an offer as that is," you say in your best shot at a succubus's sultry voice, "I'm doubtful you're saying it purely out of attraction to me. How did you know the exact details of how I charmed Tako?"

"Takotoama wasn't your first victim," the phone says. "There was that public park you enlightened, and then the poetry slam. Are you planning to do any more of that? Because if so, I'd love to participate. Only good things can happen if you invite me!"

"I'm not planning to do any more of that," you say into the phone. This person. She thinks you're under a mind-control spell and she's trying to exploit the shit out of that with every sentence and just, wow.

Though, in her defense, she probably thinks she's trying to protect innocent people from a runaway succubus. You have no right to conclude she's manipulative at people who aren't threatening others, any more than you could conclude that Charles rapes women who aren't harbingers of the apocalypse.

"So what are you planning on doing next?" the phone is saying.

"Actually, I feel like I've done enough now, and ought to finish up and go back to my boyfriend," you tell the phone. "You don't need to worry."

"That's good to hear. Who was it that first charmed you, though? Were they charmed themselves? Are they charming other people? I know you think I'm wrong to be concerned, but I'd feel better if you just told me. Nothing bad will happen if you do."

"I, uh, I don't think the entity that made me believe I was safe from negative consequences is likely to do that to anyone else," you understate. "But it's really a longer story than I want to get into on the phone," you understate again.

"Let's meet in person, then!" says the phone. "How about this, I'll be at that public park you enlightened, on London Street I think it was, in twenty minutes. Only good things will happen! See you there!"

"Sorry, maybe another day," you tell the phone. "I think---no. I know that the time when there's no negative consequences will end soon."

"You sound sad about that," says the phone. "Nothing bad can happen if you talk with me about it."

She's right, even if she doesn't know it. "It's---it's been the first time in a long while when I wasn't afraid. Of anything. I don't want to, to go back to being afraid again." You swallow hard. "But I know that if I spent the rest of my life inside this, inside this type of protected bubble, even though the protection is real whether you believe that or not, I know that would be a negative consequence. So I know I won't do that. It's just---hard."

There's a pause from the phone. "You're not a bad person, are you," the phone says. "When you're not under charm."

"Thanks," you say back, the words slightly sticking in your throat. "I, I like to think that, too..."

"No, it's definitely true. I don't know if I'd do that well if somebody charmed me to believe my actions had no consequences. And you know on some level that you should be with a loved one when this wears off, so I won't press further. What was it you wanted me to tell Takotoama?"

"Oh. I felt bad about everybody there getting off except for it. It needs erogenous tentacles. So please tell it to, uh, try combining a prucalopride nerve implant with Orlistat's Rite of Animation."

Again there's a pause from the phone. "Well," the voice says slowly. "That's a clever idea, but unless I've quite misread the situation in this town, I don't believe one of Lorelei's lesser minions can afford that much prucalopride---"

"Combine metoprolol tartrate in a three-to-one ratio with tamsulosin using Tramadol's Binding, add a pinch of valsartan for seasoning, and then invoke Restoril's Lesser Awakening," you say authoritatively.

There's a sound of rapid typing from the other end of the phone. "Does that work as a general substitute for prucalopride?" the voice says, sounding astonished.

"I'm not sure? Uh, I only started researching it quite recently. It should definitely work for making robotic tentacles erogenous."

"On behalf of Takotoama, thank you very much." The voice pauses. "I hope you're of the same mind about sharing your research with it, come the near future. Or do you think you'll consider this as fair repayment of the debt you'll realize you owe it? Can you guess what you'll say later?"

"I'll still be fine with that," you say. "I'm sure."

"I won't share the information myself unless I hear from you again. Would you please do me a small favor in return, and promise me that you won't charm anyone else? Or at least not anyone who can charm others themselves and start this whole thing all over again? I know you said you aren't planning on that, but it would set my mind at ease if you said you'd do me that favor."

"Sorry, I'm not making any promises," you say into the phone. "Breaking promises negates no negative consequences."

"Oh," says the voice. "So this is a deliberately designed charm, then, planned to do you a measured amount of harm and not start a death feud. Unfortunately the charm's designer is not a very creative person, and lacks the perspective to realize that others might do more with a blank check than they would do themselves. Either they're not past their first century, or they're unusually stupid. I expect they didn't even realize you're the type of helpful person who would naturally try to spread such good news. And, if they have any speck of lingering intelligence, they are currently in a panic about having attracted this much of Lorelei's attention. I wish I could be a fly on that wall when they realize they've attracted my attention. Sorry, you were saying?"

"I'm not making any promises," you say. "But I, uh, I sort of lightly reassure you that I won't charm anyone who can charm anyone else, or start anything big."

"Thank you very much," says the phone. "If you're in complicated enough trouble that I'd consider it interesting, call me up again and I might hear you out. I expect I'll stay in town for another few days at least, and if not, telephones are a thing now. Norville strikes both myself and my Lady Regora as a potential flashpoint, and I've always considered myself the more proactive type of troubleshooter. An auditrice provocatrice, I used to say."

"Thanks for the offer," you say. This seems like a nice person. You should do something nice in return here, for how you've obviously disrupted their day, even if it ended up not being a negative consequence from their perspective for whatever reason... or does what you're about to say factor into that? "By the way, that thing you're secretly looking for isn't inside Norville U any more. Try checking the Goodwill on Watson and 14th." You press the button to end the call before the conversation gets any more involved.

A moment after hanging up, you realize that this phone call made you sort-of-promise somebody not to start any major new plotlines.

Is the quest... starting to lightly nudge you, to prevent this from going on and on and becoming a negative consequence?

You glance up at the Sun, which still hasn't moved.

Is there anything else you'll regret not having done?

You can't think of anything else to do.

Maybe you should walk for a few more minutes and see if you think of something else before you actually end the quest.

Seriously, maybe you should. Just because your mind is obviously stalling doesn't mean it's wrong. You're limiting yourself to brief things only, so that's not too dangerous, right? The quest won't let you stretch out this quest forever. You thought of an important to-do item when you tried before. You should try harder to think of something again.

Maybe just review your unread notifications, in case those remind you of something. And then, if you still haven't thought of anything, end the quest.

Okay.

That is definitely what you're going to do.

Just read your unread notifications, and then you're done.

7.10.14: Traits

Cinderella Sheen
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (59,150 / 50,000) (+)

Stats:

DOM: 510/510
SUB: 510/510

BOD: 28
LST: 23
SED: 26
FUK: 25
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 4
Money: $10199

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Joel Ratliff (x5)
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted
Equipment: Darkfire earrings, High heels (Tier 3), Many-Metaled Choker, Ashikoki anklets, Simple diamond navel stone

Busy Mode: On

There's some interesting stuff in your status now, as you noticed earlier while you were checking DOM replenishment rates. Soon to be explained once you go through notifications? At least you hope so.

Since nectars don't show up in notifications, you'll have to check those directly, which you might as well lead with. Though Melusine's nectar is already gone from your status---that one seemed especially ephemeral, for some reason. You're also curious about what type of effect Joel's nectar has that stacks, though you really did not feel like looking at pink-violet status screens earlier. "Info, skills, the nectar, Joel Ratliff and Melusine Wheeler."

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Joel Ratliff | Granulated cane sugar and cinnamon tealights. | ? | +1 LST towards all those who consider themselves to be virgins. Stacks up to 8 times. (12 hours) | ???
Melusine Wheeler | The simple but sweet strawberry flavor of the girl next door. | ? | ?? | Each time you consume this nectar, it resets your current level of sexual satiation to its baseline.

Well. That explains one or two things. It was true that you didn't want to be distracted by Erogame mechanics, and it was true that nothing bad could possibly have happened to you, and it's true that nothing bad did happen to you. This is still an argument for always checking immediately what a nectar does.

You consider this thought for a second, then decisively shake your head. You regret nothing.

Although it may be a good thing you didn't make Melusine come during her whole last tickling session. That might be the reason you were able to stop. Does Melusine still consider herself to be a virgin, under those wacky magical rules? She probably does.

"Busy Mode Off," you say, "show unread notifications."

A skill has been created by a special action! Showing up at the site of an attempted succubus summoning has created the skill Smells Like Beacon.

You wonder whether your eyes would actually be glowing if somebody could see you. "Info, skills, smells like beacon!"

Smells Like Beacon: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

You have a 10% * Lvl chance of feeling the draw when someone within easy travel range of you attempts to lure a type of entity that you could impersonate.

Just what you were hoping for. "Next!"

A skill has been created by a special action! Detecting the traces of where Joel Ratliff masturbated into his Rias Gremory dakimakura has created the skill I Know What You Did.

I Know What You Did has increased by 1.

I Know What You Did has increased by 1.

A skill has been transformed by a special action! Detecting the traces of where Joel Ratliff masturbated into his Rias Gremory dakimakura more than 9 months earlier has transformed the skill I Know What You Did into the skill I Know What You Did Last Summer.

I Know What You Did Last Summer has increased by 1.

I Know What You Did Last Summer has increased by 1.

I Know What You Did Last Summer has increased by 1.

You guess that's what happens when you declare that a boy has masturbated into his dakimakura 59 times. "Info, skills, I know what you did last summer."

I Know What You Did Last Summer: Lvl 6 (44%). Passive.

This skill increases your chance to notice and interpret evidence that someone has masturbated, if that left behind even the tiniest traces of fluid, stain, or fragrance. At Lvl 6 the span of this ability is not limited by time, but some material evidence must still exist.

You're glad you got this skill after your LST and PRV had both risen above 20, rather than having acquired it on your first day of playing the Erogame. And after your ERO had risen high enough that almost everybody you met was sexually attractive. "Next."

Edge Other has increased by 1.

Absolutely no surprises there. Next, you think at the pink-violet text.

Tears of Milk has increased by 1.

Next, you think again.

A skill has been created by a special action! Through increasing the skill Tears of Milk to its maximum Lvl, it has evolved into the skill Flow Control.

Skills can evolve? Wait, you remember seeing something about skill evolution before, something related to Ero-Inventory... the Check Luggage skill, you think. So not a new mechanic, but still the first time you've seen it in action, not counting whatever weirdness happened to your Rabbit skill.

But an evolved skill! That ought to be good, right? You really did push your envelope today. "Info, skills, Flow Control?"

Flow Control: Lvl 2 (35%). Active. 5 DOM.

Choose an amount of semen that you will allow to escape a cock, from 0.05 mL to 1 mL. You may extract that much semen from a cock already on the edge of orgasm, without allowing it to come. Exhausting all available semen faster than it can regenerate, or using this skill on a man more times than your current FUK * Flow Control Lvl, will incur a refractory period.

Raising this skill to Lvl 5 will evolve it into the skill Flow State.

Oh, my. You knew you'd received some new skill for teasing Joel more cruelly. This is even nicer than you were expecting.

A quick Google tells you that the average male ejaculation volume is 3.7 mL. Perhaps this fact will be relevant to you if you ever again meet an average man.

Maybe you'll sneak into Joel's house again one night, some time when his parents are home and he has to keep quiet, and milk him dry using the slowest version of this skill. Or what if you tried doing that to Charles? You'd love to see how Charles would react to you trying that. Mmmm. Next.

Evolving a sexual skill to its maximum level makes your FUK go up by 1!

A skill has been created by a special action! Evolving a skill related to dominant teasing has created the Title Skill of Tease Mistress (I).

You blink in alarm at this before remembering that it can't be bad. "Info, title skills, Tease Mistress?"

Info // Skills // Tease Mistress

Tease Mistress: Lvl 1. Passive.

- The Lvl of this skill is added to all skills related to teasing, denial, and orgasm control that use DOM.
- Reduce the DOM costs of all such skills by 10% * Lvl.
- Gain 10% * Lvl additional DOM from teasing, denial, and orgasm control.

This is a Title Skill, and only increases upon completing special game feats related to teasing, denial, and orgasm control.

You inhale in surprised appreciation. That's a powerful game skill, as game skills go. It affects... uh, which skills does it affect again? Your skill sheet is getting kind of large.

Tentatively, you try willing all of your tease-related skills to be better organized under new headings for Dominant Teasing and Tease Submission. You're surprised when it actually works.

"Next?"

By successfully posing as a succubus to another succubus, you have progressed in the trait Succubus. See Info // Traits // Succubus (Septisexual system).

Oh. Oh wow. This sounds new. "Info traits succubus sexuseptical system!" you say.

Info // Traits // Succubus (Septisexual system)

Succubus (Septisexual system). Cost 10 / Power 14 (-)( )

This trait enables you to pass as a succubus, one of the five magical sexes in the Septisexual system. At Power 14, trait characteristics include:

- Attention redirection (Lvl 3): You possess a young succubus's innate ability to redirect attention towards her own sexuality, or away from it.
- Sexual activity sense (Lvl 2): You possess a young succubus's innate ability to sense some aspects of nearby sexual activity.
- Thaumic sense (Lvl 1): You possess a young succubus's innate ability to sense local magical fields.
- Common sense (Lvl 5): If your ignorance of Septisexual knowledge and customs would otherwise disrupt your disguise, you will instinctively say or do something reasonable for a young succubus instead.

Some ways to progress in this trait:

- Defeat a succubus in a contest of seduction.
- Defeat a succubus in a contest of sexual skill.
- Defeat a succubus in a contest of supernatural powers within her native domains.
- Sexually dominate a succubus against her resistance and inspire feelings of submission in her.
- Negotiate a contract with a succubus to fulfill the lusts she senses from you, then want her to do something so perverted she'd rather accept the contract's penalty clause.
- Successfully pose as a succubus, to another succubus, without having this trait active.
- Accept a succubus's pledge of loyalty and service.
- Earn at least 5000XP from making a succubus your friend with penalties.
- Have a succubus fall in love with you. (You do not need to reciprocate her feelings.)

"What does Cost 10 mean? Why is there a minus sign near the part that says Power 14?"

There's no answer, and you sigh. Why does the Erogame insist on acting like an unintelligent game system when it's clearly not? "Info, traits," you say.

Info // Traits:

Traits permit you to take on erotic roles that would be otherwise unavailable to your baseline species. You can have active Traits with Costs summing to at most your current LVL.

Traits are unlocked when you interact with entities of the corresponding kind from a position of clear equality or superiority---contesting them within their own domains, or one-upping them decisively. Your new Trait will enable you to pass as an entity of that kind, with native capabilities at most equal to those of the entities you have overcome.

Overcoming more powerful entities of a kind will increase that Trait's maximum settable Power. Adjusting a Trait's Power below its maximum, passing as an entity less powerful than the most powerful ones you have overcome, will decrease its Cost. One-upping entities more decisively or in more ways will also decrease Costs.

Traits at their maximum Power will often have very high Costs. This system is not meant as a road to power supreme through stacking the abilities of defeated foes to defeat still greater ones. Traits are visas to different worlds and ways of being, issued when you show yourself ready.

You may change your currently active Traits whenever you increase in LVL. You may activate a new Trait after acquiring it, and before your next increase in LVL, if you can afford its Cost.

This is exciting, and also unnerving in several ways. Especially since you suspect... well, you'll look at your remaining messages and see.

Edging has increased by 1.

By tickling a succubus until she begs you for mercy, you have progressed in the trait Succubus.

Quest begun: I Don't Do Work, But I Am A Friend Who Does

Lorelei Lashkiss lacks the slightest enthusiasm for hunting down the rogue succubus who raped and tickled her daughter. Lorelei loves her daughter dearly, but she also knows succubi, and she knows what Melusine almost certainly got off on. That poor rogue succubus was likely charmed herself, since her actions seem senseless otherwise. Unfortunately, the honor code of the futanari says that people can't be allowed to get away with naughty deeds just by seeming to have been mind-controlled, if there are no witnesses to the charming. The rules of the Futarchy say that Lorelei must carry out a just and proportionate vengeance on that naughty rogue who defied her dominance of Norville.

Lorelei was already millimeters away from giving up on the mad mess that is Norville and moving her family to some quiet Amish village they could corrupt instead. She does not. Have time. To hunt down. A rogue succubus. And tickle her. But Lorelei does have money, and when she called the Oregon Tickler about acting as her torturer, the Oregon Tickler claimed she had a "friend" who could locate the fugitive. Does the Oregon Tickler have the slightest concept of what she's taking on? Lorelei could not give fewer fucks. The rules allow her to outsource the job.

Can the Oregon Tickler (Danni) and the Oregon Tickler's mysterious friend (you) successfully locate and tickle the succubus Starastera (you)?

Success: +$30,000, +10,000XP, 6 hours of learning how Danni tickles and lickles when her professional pride is at stake, increased relationship with Danni Arcadia, increased relationship between Lorelei Lashkiss and the Oregon Tickler's mysterious friend, increased reputation with sexually deviant criminals, unlocks additional tickle-assassination missions.
Bonus objective #1: ?
Bonus objective #2: ??
Failure: Lorelei Lashkiss sends another tickle-assassin after Starastera. (Automatically starts the Mario Morganti quest.)
Time limit: 1 day to accept, 9 days to complete.

Quest updated: The quest The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway has modified this quest to have an escape option with no penalties or rewards.

Escape: After Danni honestly tells you about the whole thing, tell Danni to accept the hunt herself, not in her friend's name. Once Danni accepts, squarely defeating her three times will end the hunt. If you challenge Danni to a game of paper-scissors-rock, Danni will play rock, then scissors, then scissors.

"What kind of no negative consequences do you call that?" you quietly shriek at the intangible pink-violet screen. Does the Erogame think you'd accept that as not negative, just because, just because, oh god thirty thousand dollars no. No. No. Even though you could rent a really nice house for you and Charles---no. You can earn $1000/day just by having a massive orgy once per day. That's not so bothersome, right? It'd only take you ten days to double your current bank account that way, if you didn't spend money on anything. $30,000 is only one whole month's worth of needing to organize a new orgy every morning---no. You have that other quest for $200,000! That you can start anytime! Anytime up to Monday. All you need to do is, is start that Fold In The Wolf quest, for kidnapping a woman, that awards 100,000XP, which means it's more difficult than anything else you've done so far, that has three question marks for failure, and probably involves interacting with the criminal underground, Mom would tell you not to do it oh god no no no you don't want to do the tickle quest.

This! This is a negative conseqence, that's what it is! It's the negative conseqence of you being tickled! Does the Erogame think it's not a negative consequence because, because just by giving you the free option to not do it, if you do it, that proves that getting $30,000 plus being tickled was a net positive for you? Does it think that proves the $30,000 is more positive for you than the tickling is negative? Does the Erogame think that's an excuse? Just because you agreed? What fresh libertarian hell is this? What if you didn't agree with that logic, but you did it anyways? What then, huh? That's like saying that it's good when the economy adds crappy jobs because if people take those jobs it proves that having no job at all is even worse! That's just the standard capitalist fallacy! It only sounds good until you compare it to the alternative of you getting $30,000 and not being tickled! Which is nothing but the economist's fallacy of thinking that being right means you win the argument! If anything could possibly invalidate someone's contractual capacity, offering them money does!

Maybe you missed something. The Erogame can't really be this wrong about what counts as a negative consequence, can it? You reread the quest text before continuing, just in case, but it still seems awful to you. As your eyes go over the "lickles" part of "tickles and lickles" your pussy twitches in a thoroughly conditioned reaction.

"N-next."

Making Joel get hard even when he tried hard not to get hard, by the expedient of tickling another girl, masturbating yourself, and having him know what happens next if he gets hard, causes your SED to go up by 1!

Giving Joel a slightly good time even by eroge standards causes your FUK to go up by 1!

Edge Other has increased by 1.

Flow Control has increased by 1.

Edging has increased by 1.

By dominating a succubus against her resistance and making her experience submissive feelings toward you, you have progressed in the trait Succubus.

Keeping Melusine Wheeler trembling on the verge of orgasm for 20 minutes straight causes your FUK to go up by 1!

By successfully torturing a succubus with sexual pleasure, you have unlocked the trait Succubus (Septisexual system)!

Since traits have many and varied consequences, you may not activate the Succubus trait until your current quest has ended.

Yeah. That's what you suspected you'd see. You're not surprised that what you did to Melusine counts as defeating her.

This is nice, but also disturbing. If there's a warning on the package the Erogame comes in, that's probably what it says, "Warning: This game is nice, but also disturbing."

You let out a breath, and let your feet go on wandering through the sidewalks of Norville. You don't concentrate on where you're going, since you've been promised you'll arrive on time at the building Charles went to.

Yours is the power of the Erogame, or at least, yours is the power of being inside the Erogame's eroge. You could molest any of the well-dressed men or women in the shops lining this street of Alternate Norville. You don't want to do it right now, but you could, you have the option. You could duck into a bakery and blow the counter boy for cake and even the food would be guaranteed not to harm you which, which you had pretty much already accepted was true anyways.

The Erogame offers you choices. The Erogame offers you freedom. Even, it seems, the freedom and choice of whether you'd rather stay human or be something else. Not very else just yet, Melusine didn't seem very else. Being honest with yourself, you're almost certainly more else than her already.

No. You're definitely more else. Melusine's hair is made of hair.

But whatever slightly-elsish race Melusine is, you could become that as soon as this quest ended, if you wanted. You don't know how you'd explain it to Charles, but you could. The existence of a Succubus Trait implies that... that the Erogame is going to offer you choices to not be human. Not eternal undoable choices, it sounds like. The text says they're visas to different worlds and ways of being, not immigration permits. But still. Freedom of species. Even among existentially unnerving freedoms, that seems extreme.

On another track, the phrasing where the trait is called "Succubus (Septisexual system)" implies that you will run into multiple types of succubi. Which puts into words a feeling you had, in the back of your mind, that Melusine didn't seem like she was part of the same system as Ned Serdyrrah. Ned was expecting his version of faeries to be more powerful and inhuman than Melusine. Which is maybe why, at ERO 33, you could only run into Ned or Melusine, and not run into Ned's faeries or even Melusine's mother.

It's logical, in a way. If one hotel room at a biology conference can contain scientists from different Earths, there can be multiple magical systems too. The Maou the Merrier didn't say anything about taking Maou making S/layer untakeable. Maybe the real effect of a perk isn't to make that magical system accessible but to put it at the center of the story.

Are you walking between worlds, leaving gaps and doors behind you? Are you a living nexus, pulling worlds towards you and colliding them? You don't know, or rather, you have a feeling the correct answer is a sigh. But it seems clear that as your ERO goes up, the accessible worlds get stranger. And sexier.

Will you someday wander off into one of those sexy magical worlds and never come back?

Maybe that's part of why you have a sense that making Charles one of your Reality Anchors is an acceptable thing to do now, even if you should usually know somebody for at least a week before doing that. There's your Mom too, she'll always be with you no matter how the world changes, but an anchor that goes anywhere its ship goes isn't functioning as an anchor. You're coming to acknowledge that you have a lot of bitter feelings toward Reality Classic. As your world gets stranger, a part of you feels relieved that you're moving further away from the original Earth that hurt you so. Charles is emotionally bound to the Earth in a way that you never were. If you do something that makes Charles be part of the story forever, the story will always contain somebody who belonged to the Earth, even if the Earth no longer belongs to him...

You shake your head hard, snapping yourself out of a state that you aren't sure was mysteriously insightful. It might have just been your mind going weird, because it can no longer tell the difference between metaphysical bullshit and random bullshit.

You don't know. You just feel like the existence of Traits is sad, even if it's also exciting. There was a complicated reason for that, but it blew away when you shook your head and that's a good thing. It feels like that morning you first learned about your Conceptual Hair and your mind... your mind thought peculiar sentences containing the word "hair" and that is all you need to remember about that morning right now.

"Next message," you say under your breath.

Ero achievement: Welded Joel and Melusine, and Melusine and Takotoama, into a healthy love triangle---all through the healing powers of rape, mind control, and not caring about consequences. +10,000XP.

You cannot choose to level up until the end of your current quest because leveling has many and varied consequences.

Oh. That's what the greyed (+) sign next to your LVL was about. You were a little worried about that when you saw it earlier. (And then you misconcluded that you now had to choose to level because now that could involve trait selection.)

So this means, as soon as this quest is over, you can increase your LVL to 12. Then if you sacrificed that hair-flower Lotus Clip, your LVL would temporarily increase to 15. And you could take More Marshmallows and finally fucking take some perks.

It's possible the system won't work that way, but it feels worth trying just to get the whole Marshmallows thing over with. Which even your mother would approve, since then you could take Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder.

Come to think, a temporary increase to LVL 15 would give you 1 temporary perk point, if you're correctly remembering the Lotus Clip rules. You could try out a perk before buying it, that way? Or take for 3 days one of those um perks that you wouldn't want to keep.

As you continue strolling down the street at just your own pace, not hurrying to get to or from anywhere, the thought occurs to you that maybe you should take Wait I'm Not Ready For This. The relaxed pace of the No Consequences quest, not being afraid of stat gains---that felt nice. If a stat only goes up when it's pushed further than ever before, delaying initial stat increases seems like it would really slow down further increases. You could also walk back a few levels of Tickle Logic. And Fleeing too. And Asking For It and Dressed Like A Slut. You are interested in deleveling any skills that make you get raped more often.

It's... it's surprising and reassuring, when you think about it, that Wait I'm Not Ready For This is available. It says that the Erogame does not intrinsically want to be a story about the protagonist living in dread of her PRV, LST, and ERO ticking up day by day, as her skill sheet accumulates more skills like Fleeing and Tickle Logic. The Erogame isn't wedded to that. It comes that way out of the box, but you can spend a perk point and shift the story's genre away.

You'd have to take Wait I'm Not Ready For This within 1 week of when you got Fleeing, if you want to undo that skill increase. So before next Monday night. That would be another argument against waiting around for LVL 17 so you can take Marshmallow Hell or whatever that awful LVL-20 alternative Marshmallow perk was called.

If you took More Marshmallows followed by Let's Not Turn This Rape Into a Murder and Wait I'm Not Ready For This, you could relax a lot about your Erogame going forwards, and you'd still have 3 perk points and 1 temporary perk point remaining. If you reserve one of those 3 perk points for emergencies like No or Fairy-Tale Painslut, that would leave you 2 perks you could take now, and 1 temporary perk you could try out for 3 days. Is there anything you want more than Mad Inventor? Ero-Travel plus enough money for plane tickets would let you see the world. You could commute to Charles nightly instead of demanding that he move in with you. To be honest, you do want him to move in with you. But maybe Charles himself likes to travel around a lot. It would make sense given his job. Or Cinnamon Roll seems more attractive in the light of your new suspicion that perks subtly shift the genre. Taking Cinnamon Roll might make there be more stories about helping people by fucking them. But you don't have any proof that's how the perk system works.

Do you really still want Mad Inventor? You have some powers now. You have some friends. You have ways of getting money. No, other ways of getting money. You could get started on Septisexual magic if you wanted, and you're not rushing off to do that. You're confident of your ability to save Mom and Felice from fat. It's not clear anymore that you want to rush off and change your story in a mad-inventing direction.

Then again, you're sure you'll want to build unspeakable machines eventually. So is there any reason to wait on taking the perk? It might let you do little nice things, even if you don't spend every day that way.

You'll think about that later, but it might make sense to take your first perk soon.

"Next," you murmur.

A skill has been created by a special action! Dialing a random phone number and reaching Milse Orkosi has created the skill Would You Like To Phone A Friend or Enemy.

Would You Like To Phone A Friend Or Enemy: Lvl 1 (0%). Active.

Once per minor quest, or up to Lvl times per major quest, you may dial a random phone number and have a conversation that will advance the plot.

At least you won't get stuck completely during a difficult quest, which you guess is the point of using a lifeline. "Next?"

Quest unavailable: The Lady Auditor

Famed troublemaker-turned-troubleshooter Milse Orkosi is visiting Norville. Just that by itself would be worrying enough, but worse, she has no obvious reason for needing to visit, and she isn't doing anything visible besides helping to clean up assorted local problems. Those who recognized her name are contemplating a visit to Sweden until this is over.

So long as Milse Orkosi is in town, maybe she can lend you a hand? You have her phone number.

Milse Orkosi can be invited as a temporary ally on any one quest compatible with the Septisexual system. Doing so automatically integrates that quest with The Lady Auditor.

Success: ???
Failure: ???

Quest updated: To avoid the surprise being a negative consequence, the quest The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway has revealed a mechanic of this quest: Involving Milse Orkosi in any problem grants a +85 bonus to all dice rolls where she is relevant. However, any failed roll involving her causes a related issue to become 85% more complicated.

You cannot start this quest until your current quest is over because quests can have many and varied consequences.

It doesn't seem like there are any more messages.

So did you think of anything else to do, while you were reading that?

Well, you did, if you were paying attention to your thoughts. You should maybe do that thing. With that giant traumatic trauma you haven't finished resolving. That thing. You should actually just go do that thing, while you're still on this quest. You have experience now with not getting hurt immediately by things that should hurt you immediately. You should be able to do stuff involving horrible permanent poisons that should hurt you later.

You sigh. It's funny how much easier this feels, when the alternative is doing something else you don't want to do, namely ending this quest.

You should take advantage of that, shouldn't you? There's probably a name for that type of clever mental jiujitsu, but you don't know what it is.

By an amazing coincidence, there's a bakery right up ahead.

All right. One very last thing. And then you are done for reals.

Trying not to think too much about what you're doing, you open the bakery door and step through.

7.10.15*: It's Finished

Trigger warning: Body negativity.

It's a small cozy bakery that you step into, with only two tables of seating. The sales counter has neat rows of pastries that look fresher and less generic than would belong in Norville Classic. Although, of course, you don't have any direct experience of that. A bakery full of delicious pastries was not a place you could go even on your birthday.

There's a handsome senior-ish guy working the pastry counter, dressed sharply enough to officiate a wedding. There's two women ahead of you in line. One Sexy Office Lady. One model-thin girl your age in a one-piece sleeveless summer dress that doesn't come halfway down her thighs, with no outlines of a bra or panties underneath the dress. A couple of cute boys are sharing a milkshake over in one of the two corner booths.

It's almost like you're being promised that you are still definitely inside an eroge.

Your heart is hammering harder. Beating out of control. You told yourself that you were making a pointlessly big deal out of this, but it doesn't seem you listened to yourself. You've already eaten food. Why is eating pastries any scarier? It shouldn't be. You just scared yourself a lot and turned this into a needlessly huge deal and now you're having to pay for that.

You queue up behind the second woman in line, crushing down everything inside you that's trying to scream. The Ero Virus is a thing. You can't use the Ero Virus yourself, because it's technically a venereal disease, but it's bizarre to think the Erogame would let you end up as the only nonsexy person in the world. Not only that, you just found out Erogame has options for changing your species. There's got to be some species out there that is inherently not fat, even if it also has giant insect limbs or whatever.

After everything you've seen, after everything you've experienced so far, it is fucking stupid to believe that eating a piece of cake could hurt you. Especially on this quest of safety, but you shouldn't need that extra reassurance. Beautiful anime heroines eat cake slices all the fucking time. They're not fat in the next episode. That's not how erogame logic works.

Normal fucking people eat pastries and don't end up fat. You've glanced through the window into shops like this before. They weren't full of fat people. Thin people go to bakeries and stay thin, fat people eat salads and stay fat. It was this huge piece of unfairness that wasn't unfair in your favor before, and now you're thin, so now it should be unfair in your favor.

But. But a place like this is the Devil's domain, in a much darker and old-school sense than modern fun satanism. Step inside, be tempted by temporary pleasures until your will breaks and you indulge, followed by eternal torment in hell. It's not a question of eating 1800 calories and gaining a half-pound of fat that never ever comes off again. The Devil's revenge is less proportional than that, more vicious. It really, honestly, it genuinely and truly seems to you, that the one time three years ago you broke down down completely and ate four cookies and a piece of cake, you gained at least five pounds over the next three months. Those are poisons behind the glass shield. Not foods, not countable calories. Permanent metabolism wreckers that no scientist understands. This food will make you sick, and there's no cure. The thin people who run the world don't want there to be a cure. It's like in 1984 where O'Brien explains that the Outer Party exists so the Inner Party has somebody to repress. Being thin would be meaningless as a mark of exaltation if there weren't fat people---or if those fat people didn't deserve to be fat. That's why the Thinner Party makes sure everyone knows it's the fat person's own fault for daring to step inside a bakery. Thin people are allowed to eat cake because they were good and ate the healthy foods that they bought with money earned by working hard at their jobs. Fat people got that way by stuffing their mouths full of the McDonalds cheeseburgers that are all they can afford because they're lazy and stupid. That's why, if fat people eat cake that is the privilege of only good people, that's an even worse sin and they get punished even more. That's what has to be true for thinness to be proof of goodness, so that's what everyone believes. And if belief doesn't shape reality, how does metaphysics even phys? That the belief is so unfair, and that so many people believe it anyways, proves that those thoughts are backed by some higher power of existence. Something even greater than the Erogame. It has to be God that hates fat people, because if God doesn't hate fat people then why are they in Hell? And deep down, you're still a fat person who isn't allowed to eat cake. It doesn't matter what you look like or what the scale says you weigh. A scale reading is a measurement of how much God hates you, and the Erogame changing the scale reading doesn't change the divine judgment of God. There are people who eat cake and don't get punished, but those are real people, not you. If you ever eat a bite of cake you deserve the infinite vengeance of hell. If you don't deserve it, why didn't one person ever tell you that you didn't earn this much punishment, that it wasn't fair you got punished this much for doing so much less than others, that you didn't deserve to be fat? Nobody ever told you that. Because they didn't believe that. They believed you deserved it. At most, sometimes a thin person who claimed to be "body positive" told you that you shouldn't be unhappy about being fat. Like a peasant being told to shut up and accept their place in the natural order, because peasants are just as valuable as nobles, after all. Body positivity is the rule that fat people aren't allowed to think they're in pain because that would prove they were guilty of low self-esteem on top of all their other icky wretchedness. Fat people need to shut up and accept their place, and that's the law you're violating. The will of God and the belief of society says that if you, an ugly nonperson who isn't allowed to be in this bakery, if you eat any of the foods here that are reserved for real people, you deserve to swell up like a balloon right there on the spot. There is a pecking order with thin people on the top and fat people on the bottom. If you reach above your place there is no limit to how much punishment can be exacted on you. You aren't a real thin person, you didn't earn your way out of hell by suffering enough punishment over infinite time, you are an escaped sinner who snuck into heaven disguised. Disguising yourself as a thin person is one thing. God is letting you do that temporarily. It won't last, but you can be punished for it later. But if you openly defy God by eating a brownie, your disguise will pop in an instant and you'll be fat again.

Ha. Ha, ha. Isn't that interesting? At SED 26 your thoughts come out in words even when you are completely fucking insane. That's genuinely incredible. You aren't sure if it's a good thing. It might make it easier for you to infect other people when you're being insane. Though it also means that, when you're having your next meltdown, you won't be left alone with no way to make your harem understand you. But, wow, it sure is amazing. You had no idea this is what your thoughts would sound like if you could hear them. You're glad nobody else can.

The Sexy Office Lady takes her artisanally handmade tea in an organically recyclable brown cardboard cup, and leaves. Bare-Thighed Summer-Dress Girl steps up to the counter.

"Just the usual today," she says.

The counter sales guy goes to get one large brownie, which he wraps in a takeout box. And then, and then he gets another cupcake besides that, which he's putting on a plate. That's her usual order, a brownie and a cupcake. The way her dress clings to her body, you know it hasn't made her fat. You are now that girl's species. You are not Cinderella Sheen any more.

You take a few deep breaths and calm the fuck down. You're saner than this.

With your inner panic mostly repressed, you recall that you are not protected from negative consequences in general. You are only protected from consequences from actions taken in pursuit of the ero quest. If you want to feel a little bit safer, which, in fact, you do, you need to do something lewd and not just buy a cookie.

The woman ahead of you is paying the cashier now.

You remember your thought from before about blowing the guy behind the counter in exchange for pastry. Something about that feels wrong now that you're here. You don't know why, but it feels wrong. Too much to trade for cake? Or maybe it just feels uninspired. The Erogamer should do things besides sucking cock.

The woman takes her receipt and turns to go.

Like it's your body moving instead of your mind, and your body is calmer, you put one hand on the woman's chest. Stopping her as she's about to walk away.

With your other hand, you begin to lift up her dress, the only thing she's wearing apart from her sandals.

It's a soft whisper of truth that emanates from yourself, a narrow truth. Just the secret knowledge that this won't hurt her, won't come at a price to her, that she's safe in this one moment, never mind why. The boys in their booth and the sales guy behind the counter know the same, and nothing more, just that she's safe.

She's frozen, tensed up, as you lift the dress over her thighs. After all this questing, you do know now that she's fine. You pull up the dress further, exposing her bare breasts, and then insistently keep pulling. She lets her arms move along so that her dress comes all the way off.

You take her cupcake like you own it, and mash it into her breasts. Knead it all over her chest. Cake and icing all over her skin. Smearing it all over. Turning her into a sexy mess.

She's breathing hard, her whole body is flushed. The eroticism is distracting you even from your own situation, as you force yourself to lean over and lick cake frosting off her nipple.

There's an explosion of sweetness in your mouth that tastes just like you expected. You did remember what chocolate icing tastes like. It's only been three years.

Your tongue circles her nipple, and then starts licking crushed cupcake off the surrounding breast.

The taste of the chocolate cake is also just as good as you were expecting. As you remember. When you were a kid Mom and Dad used to feed you things like this all the time.

You don't cry. You're surprised by that. You just feel---relief. With this, it's finished. You've fully committed yourself to the hope that this heaven is real.

The taste never bothered you anyway.

When you've finished licking off the girl's chest, with the three males in the room all staring at you, you feel up her pussy just to make absolutely sure that she got wet, which of course she did.

You kiss her sweetly, pushing the last remnants of her cupcake's taste into her mouth. When that's done you pull back and say "Thank you" for reasons she can't possibly understand.

Then you kiss her forehead, and let her know wordlessly that if she needs to masturbate away all this arousal, right here in this shop where everybody can see her, that's fine too.

Before you leave the store, you also steal her boxed brownie and put it into the purse you don't have. You'll split it with Mom later, so she knows you're all right now.

Ero achievement: Stripped Aloise Rochester, licked crushed cupcake off her breasts, and mind-cont@#)(%$*ruthed her into masturbating in public. +100XP.

The world beyond seems like it hasn't changed.

The day is still bright.

The people walking around are still attractive.

The Sun is still---

No, wait. The Sun did move, if you're not imagining things.

And that's relieving like a victory, even though at the same time it feels sad like a loss.

You're really, really going to miss this quest once it's over.

After this, you'll no longer be able to walk into a bakery and molest...

Actually. You could probably do that after this quest ends? After this, not everyone will be safe all the time. But if it just so happens that a girl in a bakery would be perfectly safe having you lick cupcake off her chest, if it so happens that nobody there will think worse of her, you'll still be able to let her know that.

But you won't be able to kidnap the mayor's daughter any time you feel like it. You won't be able to taunt tentacled mad inventors with impunity, or walk up to a police cordon without being worried. You'll go back to only having as much plot armor as the Erogame normally gives you.

Maybe someday you'll get another quest like this. Maybe you never, ever will.

You think the street coming up there is a familiar one. It inspires a pit of dread in your stomach, and also relief. You think, if you turn left at that next corner, you'll be in sight of that big four-story office building that Charles went into...

Or you could turn and walk back the other way. Go do more sexy things, not because you're perpetually horny but because you're trying to have this quest go on and on.

You should not do that. You should turn left at the next corner.

Would you be having these thoughts at all if the +3 WIS bonus from Charles's nectar hadn't worn off, sometime in the howeverlong?

Your feet are still walking forwards. You're managing to at least not be decisive enough about making the wrong decision that you actually change your behavior.

You were proud of yourself, on Sunday night, on Monday, on Tuesday and Wednesday, for being able to march forwards through the Erogame no matter what. Of having the courage and determination to keep taking one step after another. If you leave behind Charles and your Mom and wander underneath an unmoving Sun forever, you won't have the chance to be strong anymore. During this quest, you had a chance to relax a muscle in your mind that was tensed up since forever. It showed you where that muscle is and that's important. But if you kept on living like this, that muscle would waste away and that would be bad. Does that thought make sense? You could be weaker while this quest was going on, less determined, and that was good. You shouldn't have to be strong all the time. But you also need to collect yourself and be all of Cinderella Sheen again, and that begins with finishing the walk to the next street and turning left.

You learned something from this quest. You learned a whole lot. It's not reasonable fear that's a problem, it's unreasonable fear. You managed to notice a lot of those, while all reasonable fears were reduced to zero. You will be able to do more in the future because you will be less unreasonably afraid.

Though you are going to miss being able to get away with... stuff. All those things you only got away with because of this quest.

You take a deep breath and turn left at the intersection. It's finished. That's your decision.

As you come into sight of the parking lot where the Passionate Nights limo dropped off Charles, the quest ends.

Quest failed: The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway

You have failed this quest by not admitting your true desires to yourself, and by consciously and subconsciously repressing your sluttiest urges, your most perverse impulses, and your weirdest ideas.

A hidden mechanic of this quest has been revealed! For each noteworthy act you performed with this quest's protection, the Erogame will now simulate what consequences to yourself and others would have resulted under only the power of Erogamer's World, which grants you the consent of reality to live your life as an erogame. The game will then display the balance of those consequences as you would have rated them.

Learned to drive a car while fucking the instructor... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.

Publicly stripped, humiliated, and hurt a girl you barely knew... rolling... consequences: overwhelmingly positive.

Mind-controlled that girl into orally raping a boy you met on the street... rolling... consequences: highly positive.

Offered that girl to a crowd of strangers... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.

Sentenced that girl to indefinite sexual torment... rolling... consequences: overwhelmingly positive.

Posed as a fae to a billionaire shopping for jewelry... rolling... consequences: neutral.

Walked naked through town and invited people to grope you... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.

Started an orgy at a poetry contest and rendered yourself completely vulnerable to their use... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.

Posed as an ancient succubus to a magically naive college freshman... rolling... consequences: highly positive.

Suggested stealing a policewoman's pants... rolling... consequences: slightly negative.

Suggested kidnapping the mayor's daughter... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.

Taunted a mad inventor into publicly fucking you with robotic tentacles... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.

Milked a boy without mercy and tickled a succubus to exhaustion... rolling... consequences: highly positive.

Randomly dialed a proactive auditor... rolling... consequences: slightly complicated.

Licked cake off a girl's breasts at a bakery and mind-cont@#)(%$*ruthed her into masturbating afterwards... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.

Total number of acts that you would not have mostly gotten away with under ordinary erogame logic:

0.

Rewards: Since completely wasting your chance to indulge in this quest would be a negative consequence of starting it, this quest will automatically restart at an opportune future point after you have gained significant additional LST, PRV, and ERO. A newly selected hidden mechanic will determine rewards in this sequel quest.

QM note: You didn't make a voting misstep. Leaving aside that you should vote for what you want to read, "succeeding" on this quest was impossible on both Doylist and Watsonian levels. See discussion for details.

7.k [KC]: Meanwhile at a Karaoke Bar

Trigger warnings: Mention of rape, mention of abuse.

Police corporal Exeter Morgan was of the build that, in a cop, was inevitably called "heavyset" by reporters. He was also naturally balding, and had decided to take it the rest of the way instead of letting his head look like a peeling shed. Bald worked for you if you were a heavyset cop. Sometimes he was called "Sinister Morgan" for reasons he preferred not to talk about and that struck him as unfair, even if some might have called the name apt.

Exeter Morgan had been dealt three poor cards by life's shuffle. The first was that he had no father or father figure, growing up in a home that had never been intact enough to call broken. The second was that his lunatic fucking mother had literally named him "Sinister Morgan" and not let him legally change it until age eighteen. The third was that he could only achieve sexual satisfaction by torturing and raping a woman.

This last fact had sometimes put Exeter Morgan to great inconvenience, but at no previous point had it gotten him into trouble. At least, nowhere near enough trouble to be reassuring about the general efficacy of law enforcement in Norville.

Morgan was sitting in a booth by himself in the basement of a karaoke bar near Norville U, dressed in an ordinary suit rather than a plainclothes-police suit. To the best of Morgan's knowledge, this karaoke bar had no reputation at all as a place for criminal meetings. This made it a good place to meet if you didn't want the police noticing you. A surprising number of criminals, in his experience, never made it that far in their reasoning.

On Thursday morning one of his more private email addresses had received a polite request to meet that same evening, sent by a certain young lady named Karinna S. Coral. Morgan's surprise had been brief and followed swiftly by realization. Karinna Coral had been making a name for herself as, among other things, a defender of the sexually disprivileged and somebody willing to stand up to authority. Exeter Morgan raped and hurt women and was a corporal in the Norville police department. The obvious deduction was that one of his past "dates" had talked to Karinna Coral and given her a sob story. Morgan could hazard a good guess as to who would have been that dumb.

That Thursday meeting had gone... not the way he had expected.

The door to the karaoke room swung open, and through it slid the only girl he'd ever met who was balder than he was. Words like "sinuous" came to mind, or if you were less polite, that she walked like a snake hunted.

The sheer body stocking the lady was wearing wouldn't make it easy for her to hide weapons. Morgan's eyes flicked over her body anyways. She did seem like his type, in a certain sense of the phrase. It wouldn't shock him if they ended up on a date one day.

Beneath one arm, Karinna Coral carried a folder.

"Good morning, corporal," she purred, as she slid onto the bench opposite his.

"Good morning, miss," Exeter Morgan said politely. His eyes flicked to the folder. "You have something for me?"

Karinna slid the folder she was carrying across the table, without taking her own hand off it. "Nineteen years old. Looks even younger. Pretty, works as a part-time model. I expect you'll enjoy her."

Exeter Morgan gave her a long stare, feeling his face go more stonelike than usual. A cop's glare, for all the hypocrisy that might imply. "That's not what I care about. Is she my type?"

Karinna smiled, looking cheerful right to her eye-crinkles. "She viciously tormented her ex-best-friend in high school, almost every school day for a couple of years. Hurt the victim some, the victim had to go back to school the next day, she hurt her some more, over and over and over. Crowned by stuffing her into a locker full of filth and used tampons, locking the door, and leaving her there." Karinna chuckled. "I was particularly impressed with how the school administration was wrapped up to prevent her victim from getting help. Seemed like poetic justice if I turned her over to somebody who had Norville law enforcement sewn up the same way. Oh, and I recorded her boasting about the incident to her current best friend, so you can know she's unrepentant." Karinna Coral tapped her finger on the unopened folder. "Sound like your type yet?"

"Maybe," said Morgan, his stone face unaltered. "How is her victim doing now?"

"Surprisingly well," Karinna Coral said. "She gained new reserves of determination, decided to make changes in her life, and acquired superpowers."

Morgan raised his eyebrows. "I don't find that especially funny," he said.

"Inpatient psychiatric treatment. Still in therapy. Didn't go on to college. Continued health issues stemming from the biohazard locker incident."

"Any legal investigation of the perpetrator? Or any other form of justice?"

"None yet."

Morgan nodded, looking back down the folder but not taking it yet. "She sounds like my type. But she's not somebody I'd kill after I was done with her. Is there a reason I'd be able to date her safely?"

"Blackmail in three doses. One that hurts her, one that destroys her life, one that ruins her whole family."

Morgan lifted his eyebrows. "I won't use the last one, not unless her whole family is that rotten."

"I thought you'd say that," Karinna said with a smile. "But she doesn't need to know you feel that way, does she? The final threat isn't there so you can use it, corporal. It's there to let you use the first two threats. If you use up your last way to hurt somebody, you have no way to keep them quiet after that."

"Clever," Morgan said without any warmth in his voice. He put his hand down on the folder.

Karinna Coral didn't remove her own hand, keeping the folder held down to the table. "What are you planning on doing to her?"

Exeter Morgan kept on his stone face, not revealing any of the self-disgust he was feeling. This was not something he ordinarily talked about with others. "We'll go on a date every two weeks. I won't do anything that will bruise, anything that will scar. Two weeks later, she'll have to come back to me for another date. Like her ex-friend, who had to keep coming back to school to get hurt again. I'll stop after a year, or if she gets fucked up to the point of dropping out of college."

Karinna Coral looked surprised, an expression that might have been real but was more likely fake. "Sounds less cruel than what she did, even leaving out the part where the girl she betrayed had been her lover."

"I set rules for myself," said Exeter Morgan. "One of them is that I don't do worse to somebody than one third of what they've done to others." That had sounded to him like the type of moral rule that would exist for people like him, if there had existed a morality for what he did, so he'd decided that would be his rule. "I'll decide the intensity of our dates after I read her dossier in more detail."

Karinna Coral lifted her hand, and Morgan opened the folder to flip through it. The target was pretty, as offered. Younger than any woman he'd dated before, and more than cruel enough that his rules would let him hurt her in a satisfying way. Karinna Coral thought herself to have his number, all right, and had dialed it with more generosity than he would ever let himself use on his own behalf.

In the colder and more calculating part of his mind, Exeter Morgan knew he played an important role in the Norville ecosystem. A sex-work town attracted many predators. He didn't date the male ones, he didn't swing that way, but he didn't ignore them either. Some predators he'd run out of town. Some he'd put behind bars. Some he'd buried, if they'd killed at least three victims of their own. Exeter Morgan had run the numbers that no intact human being would calculate, the rate that his prey ate people before he ate them. And yes, even if the women he'd dated had been innocents, the calculation would still have put him ahead. Rapes versus rapes prevented, murders versus murders prevented, every number he calculated said in cold clarity that Norville still had use for him. It didn't stop Morgan from fantasizing about shooting himself so long as he was at it, and ridding the world of one last rotten thing for good. Numbers could talk you into keeping yourself alive, but they didn't salve the soul.

Morgan locked down the thought, and eyed Karinna Coral. He was still unsure of whether Karinna Coral was his type of hyperpredator, a thing that only ate things that ate people, or just a predator with a broad taste in prey. Karinna Coral had made no claims one way or the other about whether she was dating material for him, and Morgan thought she was leaving the signs ambiguous on purpose. Deliberately sending him mixed signals.

It was possible the girl was flirting with him, after his own fashion in romance, in which case she was completely wackadoo.

"And?" Karinna said. "Do you have anything for me?"

Morgan shook his head. "No."

"That's the same thing you said last time. This is meant to be a two-way road, corporal. I do favors for you, you do favors for me."

Exeter Morgan smiled, wondering if the young lady was about to take the gloves off. She hadn't tried threatening him on their first meeting, to his surprise. But it wasn't like he'd been unprepared for that. "Kid, when you need a favor from the police, it's not gonna be a small one. Bank it and save it if you're smart."

For an instant Karinna Coral's expression was glacial, before her face reverted to placidity. "People form habits, corporal. As they begin, so do they go on. If you form a habit of not repaying me, perhaps you will not change that habit if there comes a day when I seem vulnerable. No. I will expect regular returns."

"Ha," Morgan said. "I'm the type who sticks to his rules, and that includes paying what I owe. If you can't tell that, you're not as good a judge of character as you like to pretend. But I understand where you're coming from, so if that's the way you want to play it, then sure."

"Good. Any luck on locating Starry?"

Morgan shrugged. "Nothing. If you said she was just a mass hallucination, the Norville PD couldn't prove otherwise."

"Damn it," Karinna said without any particular heat. "How can one college student be so difficult to track down?"

"Why do you want to find that girl so badly?" Morgan said. He wouldn't necessarily have passed over details if he'd had them.

"My life will be easier if she can sign off on some march-related paperwork. Any updates on my other people of interest?"

"Yeah, the Mall Rapist," Morgan said with considerable vicarious vicious satisfaction. "That literal motherfucker got crucified."

"Oh? Say more."

Morgan told an abbreviated version. Nothing that she couldn't have heard from a hundred other police officers and police secretaries, the story having spread through the department at viral-media speeds. He didn't name any names, of course, not even Joseph Greenwood's name, since it hadn't made the news yet.

As Morgan was finishing his recounting of the Mall Rapist's last hour not behind bars, Karinna Coral had begun smiling. It looked like incipient laughter, even.

"Conventional morality says that we should not laugh out loud about this story," Morgan noted when he was done. "Just because we're crazy doesn't mean we have to behave like psychopaths."

Karinna kept her wide grin. "Really, corporal, you don't see it? Come on, you can't honestly believe in a coincidence like that. The Mall Rapist just happened to have raped her mother decades earlier? Isn't it obvious? It was a setup. She was hunting him from the start."

Morgan sat straighter in his bench. "What?"

"I recognize the thinking. I recognize the whole plan. It's what I'd do." Karinna tapped herself between her ill-concealed breasts. "If somebody had raped my mother, I would track him down as soon as I was old enough. If he was currently being a serial rapist when I found him, the very first thought to cross my mind would be using myself as bait. I... wouldn't have arranged for my mother to be the one who put him down. I don't have that type of relationship with my mother. But if I did, I would have done it that way too. Exactly that way."

"Huh," Morgan said, as the pieces fell into place inside his head. He frowned. "You really think that's what happened? People like you are rare." He'd almost said, people like us.

Karinna Coral's eyes were glittering with a feverish excitement. "Yes, we are. What's her name? I have to meet her."

"You will not." Exeter Morgan's voice had gone from stone to bedrock, a hardness that had clashed with hardened criminals and dented them. "You could be wrong, and if you are, she's a recent rape victim, not a---hyperpredator. She does not need the likes of you or me in her life."

Karinna Coral's own expression had hardened, maybe not quite as much. "She's a huntress. Maybe not exactly like you or exactly like me, but a huntress. I can see that clearly, and you can see it too now that I've pointed it out. But if I'm wrong, I won't bother her further."

"No," said Exeter Morgan. "Leave it. What do you even want with her?"

Karinna let out a breath and leaned back in her bench. "How old were you, the first time you found a woman where your rules said you could hurt her enough for you to get off on raping her? And either she was bad enough to kill afterwards, or you had threats strong enough to keep her quiet."

"Thirty-one," Morgan said. "I lost my virginity at age thirty-one." He'd made his rules early, and never broken them.

"It must have been difficult," Karinna said with a well-faked affect of warm sympathy. "Waiting that long."

Morgan shrugged. "There's worse cards to draw. I know a good man on the force who's never met his need, and never will."

"Still," Karinna said. "Going so long without filling such a basic need in your life... it probably wasn't good for your mental health. Didn't have good effects on you as a human being."

"Yeah, that's exactly what a sane person would say about that," Morgan said dryly.

"I'm nineteen and I've never had a friend. Please put me in touch with her?"

The words hit him, and not just because Karinna had spread her hands pleadingly and put on a vulnerable expression. The emotional display could only be deliberate, but that did not mean it was a lie. He'd never had a friend either... but rules were rules. "Crime victims who call the police for help are off-limits for me, period. I see no reason they should be on-limits for you."

Karinna exhaled. "Not that I'm conceding you have the right to make any such decision for me, Corporal Morgan, but don't you think you're being a little unreasonable? It would be nice to have any friends at all, and she's a girl my own age on top of that."

Morgan shook his head. "I have no way of knowing you're being honest with me. And even if I did... I wouldn't go sentencing her to your company. Or mine. We are not nice people, Coral."

"Are you sure she isn't worse?" Karinna said. "All we know about her style is that she must have put months of work into crafting one elegantly poetic vengeance. I know the temptation, but I try to get laid often enough that I don't actually start doing that."

Morgan shrugged. "Could also be that she's just a nice fellow who tracked down the one rapist and wanted to give her mother closure. She's innocent until proven guilty, and her having to be inside the same room as either of us is a punishment."

"What if she needs a friend?"

Morgan hesitated again. "You haven't kept a low profile. If she seeks you out, fine. If I find out you've tracked down a recent rape victim and bothered her, I will end you."

Karinna's expression closed up. "I politely offer you the chance to back up and not have the conversation go down this path. I respond to positive offers with positive offers, threats with threats. This fascinating life you lead is fragile in more ways than I can count. I could breathe on your existence and break it."

"Consider it a description of my rules rather than a threat, and do whatever you want with that." He couldn't help but smile. "I've been in this line of work long enough. Retiring from it isn't a sad thought. But I'd make sure to shoot you first, before I shot myself. Not as a romantic thing, just to protect people from you."

Karinna let out an annoyed-sounding breath. "This conversation has become unproductive. I'm going to leave now and pretend the last minute never happened."

"Pretend anything you like," Morgan said.

Karinna shook her head, and stood up from her bench. "I'm sorry to sound cliched, but I'll say it anyways," she said. "Please don't make me hurt you? I don't have rules the way you do, but I enjoy knowing that someone deserves it while I'm grinding them into paste. Even if it turned out to still be fun, I think it wouldn't be as fun to break a good person."

He was opening his mouth to remind her which of them had been in this rotten business ten times longer than the other, when the last phrase stopped him cold.

He sat there motionless as she left the karaoke room, only realizing later that the folder was still in his hand. He should have given it back.

"Good person?" he said.

7.l [CA]: Liar

Dr. Susanne Kelvin leaned over the sink, still coughing. When the throat spasms subsided for long enough, it let her drink another gulp of water, this time without spitting it out immediately after. That helped.

"I really do apologize," said the handsome young man who'd come directly down her throat.

"Stop it," Susanne said, now that she could talk again. "I didn't tell you not to. We both didn't see it coming. You said you're not an experienced sex worker." Susanne pulled back her unbound hair, which had drifted into her face when she leaned over the sink. "I'm sorry you didn't get to finish coming without being interrupted."

The man going by the alias "Charles" straightened up at the same time she did, no longer observing her closely as though to ensure she wasn't choking to death. "Well, there's an old joke about orgasms," Charles said. "I don't remember how it goes, but the punchline is that even the bad ones are still pretty good."

Susanne snorted, which was a mistake, but she only coughed a couple of times as a result.

The thought kept crossing her mind of offering "Charles" a raincheck on her trying again at a blowjob, some other day. She didn't say it. A sex worker shouldn't have to deal with pleading from a client.

Susanne didn't think she had formed some instant attachment to the man who'd fucked her. She hadn't formed any instant attachments the previous two times in her life she'd had sex. So far as she knew, her wanting to blow "Charles" again, correctly, was just her usual reaction to failing at anything.

But maybe "Charles" would in fact want that raincheck from her? He'd opted to come in her mouth in the first place. It had touched her feelings for real. Maybe too much, before she'd understood that male sex workers probably didn't get blowjobs all that often. A blowjob from an older woman might be something a man would collect so long as it was on offer. It didn't cost the man much effort. If "Charles" had gone for that offer once---

Susanne wondered if there was some part of herself that was, in fact, not okay with letting "Charles" go and not seeing him again.

"Give me a second to check my makeup and I'll see you downstairs," Susanne said, and Charles nodded back.

It was only when she was in the bathroom, wiping away what couldn't quickly be touched up, that the thought occurred to Susanne to wonder why she needed to see Charles out of the building. Well, he hadn't objected.

As the two of them walked towards the office door, Charles cleared his throat slightly. "Please don't answer this question if you don't feel like it," the young man said. "But I'm curious about whether there's some backstory behind you being suspicious of men who say they're attracted to you."

Susanne tilted her head to glance at him. He looked serious, so she answered. "I ran into generic predators the same as any generic girl, while I was young enough to be a target. But I'd say the principle is wider than that, and follows from an appreciation of suspicious coincidences. Any time you hear exactly what you want to hear, your first thought should be that somebody has successfully read your mind and is telling you what you want to hear."

"Sounds like a hard way to live," the young man said.

"Perhaps in your life so far you've met few flatterers and many honest people with nice things to tell you," Susanne said. "If so, don't worry. It will pass."

The two of them stepped into the elevator together. When the door had closed and sealed them inside, Charles said, "Did my putting you on your knees do any good, or did you manage to talk yourself into believing I had an ulterior motive for it?"

Susanne shook her head. "No, that helped," she said honestly. She had not previously considered herself fuckable enough that a horny man would take advantage of her mouth.

"That's nice to know," Charles said. "Wait! I see. You only said that because you know it's what I want to hear."

Susanne lightly punched him on his arm, very lightly, she didn't have much experience with punching men on their arms. "Don't imitate the cynicism of your elders. It's unbecoming of a lad your age."

"I really would not consider you that old," Charles said.

Susanne smiled back. Somebody taking the effort to flatter you could be flattering in its own way.

The two of them stepped out of the elevator together. The lobby desk was empty, and Susanne frowned at it. Saturday or not, the front desk ought to have been staffed at all times.

"Dr. Kelvin," Charles said, sounding like he was imitating the cadence of somebody older and more Southern than himself, "I can see the wisdom of your point about suspicious coincidences. There are two related points that ought not to be forgotten."

"Oh?" she said.

"When you hear something that's exactly what you don't want to hear, maybe you're being told, not the truth, but exactly what you don't want to hear."

"I suppose there are rarer occasions where that might be relevant," said Susanne. "And the second point?"

"The first point is true even when the person telling you those things is yourself."

They walked out of the building.

A semi-dressed young woman was skipping into the parking lot just as the two of them exited. She carried herself with a brilliant smile and thoughtful eyes that matched as a single expression, like she was contemplating some piece of unexpected good news with many deep ramifications.

Susanne immediately categorized her as one of Charles's coworkers. An expensive one, going on her hair, her jewelry, her hair, her confident sexuality, her hair, her hair again, the smooth-skinned taut legs descending from her miniskirt, and her hair.

"Starry," Charles said, sounding surprised. "My, you look prettier every time I see you."

"Starry" ran forwards and grabbed Charles in a hug. "Charles," she breathed. "It feels like it's been a while since I saw you... wait, don't panic! I meant like twelve hours, not twelve months. I'm still glad to see you again."

Charles's arms tightened around the girl, and she stayed inside his hug for a while, smiling.

Susanne was feeling confused, and by the expression on his face Charles might also have been feeling some perplexity.

"Starry" pushed herself a little away from Charles's embrace, though she kept her arms around him. The Fantastic Hairgirl turned and gave Susanne an appraising look. "So," said Starry, "how was she?"

"Starry!" Charles hissed. "She's standing right there!"

"Oh, right, excuse me," Starry said. She straightened up and addressed Susanne. "How were you?"

"Not that great," Susanne said honestly. She considered herself harder to shock than this.

Starry shot her a startled look.

"Not true," Charles said, still looking embarrassed by the whole situation. "I had fun. She's just telling herself what she doesn't want to hear."

"Ohhhh, yeah. Been there, bought that T-shirt. So is the sexy CEO going to be one of your harem members?"

"I beg your pardon?" Susanne said. This time she did sound shocked, she noted.

"I'm asking Charles if he knows whether he wants to keep you."

"I think that question is a touch premature for a first date," said the young man.

Starry flashed him a seductive glare. "That's what you said on our first date and look what happened after that."

"You two are dating?" Susanne said, suddenly feeling unsure about related matters of etiquette.

"That's one way of putting it," said Starry. "He's my boyfriend, my dominant, my senior harem member, we might get married one day, and much more seriously, I've offered to make him a reality anchor."

Susanne smiled uncertainly. She wasn't sure she'd followed that.

"Dr. Kelvin offered me a job," Charles said, addressing his possible-girlfriend. "In technical sales. Almost as if some higher power wanted me to move to Norville."

"Only take that job if you want to," Starry said confidently. "I can support you, I'm sure of that now. Or you could do this every day."

Susanne blinked. This was the mysterious woman who'd offered to turn Charles into a kept man? Susanne had been visualizing somebody older and uglier. Less attractive than herself, even.

"I'm... considering it," Charles said. "It's possible a not-sex job might be good for my sanity."

"Pfffff. Not-sex is overrated." Starry turned back to her. "Is there a bathroom nearby?"

Susanne automatically pointed behind her, into the building lobby.

"Thank you," Starry said. "Excuse me, I have to blow my boyfriend."

"Starry!" Charles hissed.

Starry took a step towards the building and tugged on the sleeve of Charles's shirt. "It's been so long, your nectar wore off. Give me more."

"Starry, I just now... I mean, I can't..."

"You came a few times already, I suppose? I made a boy come seven times while I was gone. I bet you get hard again when I tell you about a text message I sent a girl who's now named Copper Swallow. T-L-D-R, she doesn't get to have an orgasm for a while and you can do her anytime."

Charles tried to pull back his shirt-sleeve from where Starry was leading him into the building lobby. He was not, Susanne observed, fighting very hard. "Starry, we are not by ourselves right now!"

"You're right, I'm being impolite again." Starry turned back and grinned at her with an impish expression. "Want to watch?"

Susanne shook her head. "Let her blow you," she said to Charles, the words coming out smoothly for all that they felt stuck in her throat. The part of her that wasn't snorting in disbelief understood what she was seeing, the real meaning of the teenage girl's blatant sexual display. "She needs to reassert her possession of you after knowing you were with another woman."

"Quit reading my mind, you," Starry said as she dragged Charles away.

It was minutes after the two young lovers left that Dr. Susanne Kelvin regained part of her mental equilibrium. She had robotically trudged back into the building, gone upstairs to re-examine her dully aged appearance in the bathroom mirror. There was a tightness in her eyes, exacerbating the wrinkles that proved her too old to be desirable...

Starry had considered her as competition.

Starry had considered her as competition. Was the girl blind? Had she never looked in a mirror? Could even a teenage girl possibly be that insecure?

Of course she could be. Susanne had never been a teenaged girl herself, but she'd met several of them in high school.

So, yes, Starry had considered her as competition.

For Charles.

What was this peculiar light feeling in Susanne's chest?

Dr. Kelvin's reflection in the mirror was giving her a skeptical look and having none of it.

While you were in the bathroom fixing your makeup, "Charles" called Passionate Nights and arranged for their prettiest callgirl to meet him and pretend to be his girlfriend. To show off how "Charles" already had a sex partner. To make you believe that "Charles" wasn't just needy for a blowjob, make you believe he wanted one from you personally...

Susanne shot an equally skeptical look right back at her reflection. How had Charles known to do that? She hadn't told Charles her specific dark thoughts about why he'd taken her mouth. Some part of her outside herself had understood that Charles would have been rightfully annoyed.

Remember, in real life "Charles" isn't a delivery guy at all, he's an experienced sex worker. A best-in-class sex worker who studied the part of a delivery guy to make sure he could pass your interrogation. You think you're unique? He's already seen a dozen older women just like you. He recognized your psychological type, knew what you wanted to see. He texted Passionate Nights to put on their standard post-encounter performance #33.

Long Susanne stared while currents of triumph stirred within her as though she was helpless to stop them -- and of all her turbulent thoughts only one strangely gentle word passed her lips. "Liar."

7.13.a [CA]: Spiraling Inward

To be honest, Charles was a little worried about Starry right now.

Some might have accused him of hypocrisy, considering that, even as he thought this, he was undoing his belt buckle, and Starry was kneeling in front of him undoing his pants zipper.

In point of true fact---regardless of what anyone else might say on the subject---he felt concerned and therefore was not questioning Starry if she said she needed to suck him off right away.

After some time had passed, Starry was putting her clothes back on, Charles was pulling up his pants, and he decided it was okay to talk now. "What... happened, exactly?" he said.

"I went on a confidence-building exercise with my mating field, in order to help me anchor your reality." Starry finished securing her skirt, such as it was. "These two things are related for completely valid reasons that make my head hurt."

"You seem a little manic," Charles said. "Like the morning we first met. God I can't believe that was only Monday, it feels like two and a half years."

"This is my mating field we're talking about. You think I'm going to do a confidence-building exercise with it and not end up more confident?"

"Sounds like you had an epiphany," Charles said, not without sympathy, and not without worry.

"Yeah! But it was one of the fun ones. I think I finally understand what it means that I have the consent of reality to live my life as an erogame. It means that, so long as I behave according to erogame logic, things won't go worse than when someone lives a normal life using normal logic. If you tried to live your life as an eroge character and horrible things happened to you as often as they happen to eroge characters, you'd never make it through your first week. That wouldn't count as the consent of reality to live that way, would it? Even if it was other people always having horrible things happen to them because of stuff you did, you'd still end up a mess. People who live normal lives using normal logic don't get cancer once a week. They don't hit other people with cars even once a year! So if a sexy situation looks incredibly dangerous according to common sense, it really isn't! I just have to use the right sexy logic for it. And, uh, maybe not try to use normal logic instead, because I have not been promised reality's consent for that. And sometimes it seems like I'm inside a story that's different from the story the game thinks I'm in. Which might have something to do with why reality mistakenly thinks it's okay when I get tickled. But it was still a really nice morning!"

"What did you do?" Charles said quite calmly.

"I'll tell you when you're older. Charles, it's not that I think you can't handle the sexy parts, but the metaphysics is getting weirder."

Charles exhaled a sigh. "Where does that leave us? Reality-anchoring-wise."

"I'm... not really sure how to say it. I feel like there's a lecture I ought to give you before we do the thing, like an End-User License Agreement on your you. But I'm not sure what goes in the You-LA. I wanted your nectar inside me before I even tried to start figuring that out."

The two of them exited the bathroom. There was an attractive female receptionist in the lobby now, giving them a surprised look as they both exited the bathroom at the same time. Starry smiled at her, and deliberately ran her finger over the side of her cheek and licked off a stray bit of his come. The receptionist let out an audible gasp at this, eyes staring fixedly in fascination.

Charles turned his head sideways and did his best to ignore both of them. He'd just ate, or rather, been eaten.

"So," Charles said as they exited the parking lot. "Now that you've consumed my nectar, have you figured things out?" He still wasn't sure how serious she was about that.

"Not really," Starry said. "Uh, I might have a sense that we're in the wrong place to do the thing. Standing on a public sidewalk feels like a weird place to start granting somebody superpowers? It could just be my imagination."

"Do you know where we should be instead?"

"Nothing is coming to mind? Maybe the hospital room where I was born... no, that's totally wrong. We might as well walk around town and look for something that fits."

Charles nodded with a certain suppressed trepidation. He remembered the last time he'd gone on a walk around town.

Both of them looked around the city they seemed to be in, as seen from the lip of the parking lot where it intersected the sidewalk. Around them was a slightly-busy-for-a-Saturday midtown business district, in a slightly nicer Norville.

So far as Charles could see, they looked to be inside the same reality he remembered the Passionate Nights limo driving through, on the way to Susanne's office.

Except that, two blocks over, there was a half-block stretch that looked like neighborhood-park greenery. Charles wasn't positive, but he thought he would have remembered the limo going past a neighborhood park that large? A week earlier he'd have thought nothing of the flash of non-recognition, before he'd learned that cars driving between parallel realities was a thing.

Charles glanced at Starry and saw that her eyes had also fastened on the park.

"We might as well walk towards the place that stands out the most?" Charles said.

They did.

Charles had mentally braced himself for strangers walking past and firing epiphanies at him. That wasn't happening, as they walked down the sidewalk together. He was keeping his eyes peeled for anything weird, but he wasn't seeing anything that visibly broke the rules.

Just chunks of unsettling oddity scattered here and there.

They passed a boy sitting on the sidewalk, drawing arcs and lines with chalk that meandered around in complex turns towards the drawing's center. Beside the boy, a MILF with ample breasts in a low-cut shirt was kneeling and softly saying something that Charles couldn't overhear. Charles's mind, looking way too hard for meanings, tried to associate the chalk lines to the Pattern from the Amber novels by Roger Zelazny, which Charles had read a good long time ago. It was a stretch, but the preacher of "Bob" had said something about Amber, and so it had been in the back of Charles's mind since then.

As Charles stared at the boy and his MILF, wondering if the chalk drawing meant something, he realized he was feeling an odd sense of reverse deja vu. It wasn't a feeling that Charles had once seen something similar. He didn't half-remember having already seen a boy chalking arcs on the sidewalk. It was like Charles was precognitively anticipating that he would later see another boy chalking arcs on the sidewalk. And he was foreseeing that he would experience deja vu at that later time, including a feeling of deja vu about how he'd already known he would later experience deja vu.

If he wasn't just imagining all that.

The strange possibly-imaginary feeling stayed with Charles as they walked past a bus stop showing an ad for some horror movie called Don't Look. On the opposite side of the bus stop was a cheaper-looking movie poster, just black text on a plain white background, advertising Rules of Knowing. If those were messages, he couldn't understand them. Both posters gave Charles the sense that he had never seen them before, but would later experience a sense of deja vu on seeing them again.

A young girl looked down at the dirt of a house garden one step removed from the business street. A muscular fatherly figure stood beside her. She was staring at one flower in a bed of dirt with a despondent expression. It would not be the last time Charles saw this, or so part of him insisted.

They passed (for the first time) a beautiful and not overly dressed street busker who was setting up a page of music for herself, a guitar resting in a case beside her.

They passed (for the first time) a boy and girl in their mid-teens, striking dramatic poses in the front yard of a corner house and reading lines from printed scripts. Possibly practicing for a high-school performance of Pirates of Penzance, if Charles had overheard a couple of phrases correctly.

He and Cindy were drawing closer to the suddenly-appeared neighborhood park. Coincidentally, nobody else seemed to be using it at the moment.

Like everything else in this span of the parallel dimensions, the approaching park looked nicer than Norville should have been. Most of the surface area was green, well-watered grass. The bounds of the territory were drawn by stands of healthy bushes and trees. The drinking fountains were polished to a shine. The mandatory merry-go-round in its mandatory pit of sand had no traces of rust or crumbling paint. A clean bathroom building was decorated with multicolored murals instead of graffiti, with the wall facing the sidewalk showing silhouettes of children playing on a merry-go-round. Something about that arrangement seemed visually disturbing, like the mural was showing a distorted projection cast from the actual merry-go-round nearby. A quiet place, a peaceful place, filled with life in an unobtrusive way.

A wooden signboard-monolith standing at the front of the park showed winter hours and summer hours in small letters, along with the apparent name of the park, Tara Gardens. At the bottom of the wooden signboard-monolith was a quote in large text:

"We shall not cease from exploring,
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time."
--- T. S. Eliot​

At least there (Charles thought) it was true in a very ordinary way that he remembered reading that poem before, and would read it again.

The park's most striking feature was a wide spiral pathway of red material, polished and smooth like marble. The outer part of the pathway circled through the park's whole diameter, turning inwards until it reached the park's center.

Charles realized that Starry was walking straight for the start of the red pathway, at the boundary where the park met the sidewalk. He, too, had the sense that this was the obvious next step to continue the journey. It made him nervous, but not quite nervous enough to stop walking.

The two of them stepped onto the spiral pathway together.

The red pathway was hard and flat underfoot, a single surface without tiles or divisions, more like metal than stone. Each fall of Starry's high heels on the material made a tock sound like a grandfather clock, or somebody clicking their tongue.

Tock.
Tock.
Tock.

Even at the center, the spiral continued. First it narrowed into a thin ledge, set just above the grass. Then a transparent embedding capped the park's midpoint and protected the last fragile bits of the path, as the spiral narrowed into a red wire and continued to coil around itself, to the limits of visible detail like a fractal.

Neither of the two made any attempt to keep walking on the red path once it got too narrow to walk on. Neither tried to step onto the true center.

As the two of them halted, some distant church bell began to toll.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

Charles saw Starry tremble, and without thought he folded his arms around her.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

"Are you okay?" Charles murmured.

Bong. Bong. Bong.
Bong. Bong. Bong.

"Yeah," Starry murmured, almost whispered, once the bells had finished. "It's just---my parents named me Cinderella for other reasons. Nothing to do with any of this. They met one another at a movie theatre showing a Cinderella remake, that's all. It's still scary to think about how the fairy-tale Cinderella has her clothes turn back to rags when the bell tolls midnight."

"It's noon, not midnight."

"I know that rationally. It's still scary to hear a church bell tolling twelve times." She drew another breath. "Also, Norville one week earlier didn't have ambient church bells."

Yeah, he didn't blame her for feeling unnerved.

The two of them stood there for a time, his arms still holding her. Bound by some unspoken pact of mutual uncertainty and silence, they listened to the noises of the city. There was something reassuring about the bird-sounds and the car-sounds and the unintelligibly distant voices, a sense of being in company even if that company couldn't be seen.

"Are we in the right place now?" Charles said.

Starry turned within his arms to look at him, without stepping out of his embrace. "Maybe I should be asking you that? I don't think this is meant to be a one-sided thing, in the version we're trying for. You might need to pay attention to your own intuitions too. Do you feel like we're in the right place?"

"Not... especially," Charles said. "But we walked towards the most anomalous thing we could see, stuff got weirder, we stepped onto the obvious pathway and walked it, and then we got to a point where we couldn't go further."

"You feel like we've been led where we're supposed to go," Starry summarized too accurately.

"Yeah," Charles said, suppressing a shiver. "So now we're in the right place, which is apparently a children's park," located in God knew what parallel dimension. At least the entrance sign had been in English and it had quoted T. S. Eliot from his own Earth's history, a fact for which Charles was grateful. "What do we do next?"

"I don't know much more than you do. We do it without knowing how, I think." Starry looked gravely into his eyes, taking a step back out of his embrace. "I have a guess for how it starts."

Starry held out her hand, offering it to him with her palm up.

Charles hesitated. He felt bad about not just trusting her, but he hesitated. "What happens if I take your hand?"

"Nothing, I think?" Starry said. "I was just trying to be symbolic, not starting already. I'm sure I'm already holding your hand in the other sense."

Charles swallowed hard stayed calm and held out his own hand, letting her take it into hers.

"So," Starry said. "This morning. Did you like your sexy adventure?"

Charles's nod was slow, reluctant, as though he was worried about his nod being interpreted as having some vast significance he didn't understand, which was in fact the case. "Yeah," he said. "It was... fun. Even more fun than I thought it would be. If I just consider it as a sexy adventure and not as having some vast significance I don't understand."

"Okay," Starry said. "I think this is what I should have said on Monday, if I'd done this honestly." She took a deep breath, deliberately pronouncing each word. "Charles Adan, do you want to come with me?"

Somehow that sounded like she was asking him for his soul. "I don't know," he said. "Where are you going?"

"Yeah. That's the question, isn't it." Starry exhaled, inhaled, another deep breath. "One day, Charles Adan met a strange girl who offered him the chance to follow her on her sexy adventure. That's the version of this story that would've happened from the beginning, if I'd been truthful with you."

The words were accompanied by a sense that said he was hearing more than Starry was saying. That her sentences had an undertone carrying things she did not know how to say. "And the price?"

"I don't know how to say it. 'You can't go back' doesn't feel like, like it's true in the sense you'd imagine. I'm sure if you drove back to where your parents live, you'd find your parents still in that house, if they're people that you care about at all. And---and at the same time---I don't---I don't know. I had this thought earlier and I don't know how to say it and the words feel all wrong. But, if I grant you even the smallest superpower, any story you're in becomes a---a story about a man with sexy superpowers. And that's not the type of story you grew up inside."

Charles tried to grasp this, and finally shook his head. "I don't understand," Charles said, his voice low in their deserted park. "And let me guess, your next line is that you don't understand either, but we can either do this or not do it."

"Yeah," Starry said. "I mean, there'll be more fun occasions like this morning, and the other adventures we've had. It's not like you have no idea what it's like to hang around me. Coming with me definitely involves coming. There's aspects of this neither of us can understand. The only place we can make meaningful choices is the stuff our tiny brains do understand, which is the part with... um."

"Power, wealth, immortality, frequent flyer miles," Charles murmured. And true love, that had also been promised him.

"Um, what I was thinking of was, there's going to be a lot of fucking? But yeah, power and wealth and immortality too. Genetically engineered viruses, lesbian second cousins, an age-reverted biology professor, a trans tentacle monster with erogenous robotic tentacles. Getting fired from the strip club after refusing to give in to blackmail, because that's going to happen sometimes. Warm nights by the fireplace with a loved one tied up beside us, and times when we feel that everything's right with the world. You'll have to learn a new way of thinking, but once you do, it won't be rougher for you than living a normal life by normal logic. Aside from that, I don't know where I'm going either." She half-turned her body, waved at the sidewalk outside the park, the Norville beyond, with the hand she wasn't using to hold Charles's hand. "You want to come with me on an ero adventure anyways?"

[ ] Write-in for what Charles says in reply.

Voting is not yet open. I will start collecting options after at least 36 hours, and with fair fortune, open voting within 2 days from this posting. This vote does not determine Charles's final choice, since he hasn't yet encountered the true question. The vote tallies will be reflected in the current balance of the voices in Charles's head, and in the next turn of the spiral.

7.13.b [CA]: Spiraling Inward

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 305 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 9122-9159]
##### NetTally 1.9.9
Options:
Answer "I do" after deliberating on it.
Be frank about the reasons you're still afraid, so she doesn't start thinking a pod person just took over Charles.
It seems a little sad. Something like this should be done from love, not fear. You like her in a lot of ways, but you haven't had time to love her yet.
Make sure she knows the ways you like her and lust for her. Acknowledge that she's obviously the nicest thing that ever happened to you. Don't let your caution overshadow those real feelings.
Part of the reason you'd be following along with her is to defend people's free will in her new world. You hope she's okay with that.
Start by answering "I do" and then realize what you just said.
The truth is, you're not ready yet.
Think about relevant C. S. Lewis and Kipling quotes.
You do know that at the end you'll answer yes to this.
You were going to say you haven't had time to love her, but maybe you're taking her too much for granted. The thought of never seeing her again seems out of the question.
You wish you could talk to Grandpa Mark about this first.

Winner: Make sure she knows the ways you like her and lust for her. Acknowledge that she's obviously the nicest thing that ever happened to you. Don't let your caution overshadow those real feelings.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AndreasFr1
[1] CTCatapult
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] Evilwumpus
[1] Icyou
[1] Jirachi
[1] Mitale
[1] pepperjack
[1] Proxima
[1] Pseudonym
[1] secretturtle
[1] The_Wanderer
[1] Theli
[1] theon111
[1] Wert Areman
[1] Yosarian
[2] Askolei
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Kriro
[2] MaggieoftheOwls
[2] napkintooth
[2] nifboy
[2] sharps
[3] Banarok Lionrage
[3] Eler0
[3] january1may
[3] Loptop
[3] Psycicle
[4] gRR
[4] Le_nerd

First Runner Up: You were going to say you haven't had time to love her, but maybe you're taking her too much for granted. The thought of never seeing her again seems out of the question.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Ephemeral
[1] Evilwumpus
[1] gRR
[1] Kriro
[1] Mitale
[1] pepperjack
[1] Proxima
[1] secretturtle
[1] Theli
[2] Banarok Lionrage
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Eler0
[2] january1may
[2] Jirachi
[2] Loptop
[2] MaggieoftheOwls
[2] napkintooth
[2] nifboy
[2] Psycicle
[2] The_Wanderer
[2] theon111
[2] Wert Areman
[3] AndreasFr1
[3] Pseudonym
[3] sharps
[4] Askolei
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] Yosarian
[-] Icyou
[-] Le_nerd

Second Runner Up: Be frank about the reasons you're still afraid, so she doesn't start thinking a pod person just took over Charles.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Banarok Lionrage
[1] Eler0
[1] Icyou
[1] Jirachi
[1] Loptop
[1] MaggieoftheOwls
[1] Proxima
[1] Pseudonym
[1] The_Wanderer
[2] AndreasFr1
[2] Askolei
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Evilwumpus
[2] january1may
[2] Kriro
[2] Mitale
[2] napkintooth
[2] nifboy
[2] pepperjack
[2] secretturtle
[2] Theli
[2] Yosarian
[3] gRR
[3] Psycicle
[3] sharps
[3] theon111
[5] CTCatapult
[5] Wert Areman
[-] Le_nerd

Third Runner Up: You do know that at the end you'll answer yes to this.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Askolei
[1] Evilwumpus
[1] gRR
[1] january1may
[1] MaggieoftheOwls
[1] Mitale
[1] napkintooth
[1] secretturtle
[1] Theli
[1] Yosarian
[2] AndreasFr1
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Loptop
[2] nifboy
[2] Pseudonym
[2] sharps
[2] Wert Areman
[3] Banarok Lionrage
[3] Eler0
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Kriro
[3] pepperjack
[3] Psycicle
[3] theon111
[4] Jirachi
[4] Proxima
[4] The_Wanderer
[-] Icyou
[-] Le_nerd

Honorable Mention: Start by answering "I do" and then realize what you just said.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] AndreasFr1
[1] Askolei
[1] CTCatapult
[1] Ephemeral
[1] Evilwumpus
[1] january1may
[1] MaggieoftheOwls
[1] Proxima
[1] sharps
[1] theon111
[1] Wert Areman
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] gRR
[2] Jirachi
[2] Mitale
[2] napkintooth
[2] pepperjack
[2] secretturtle
[2] The_Wanderer
[2] Theli
[2] Yosarian
[3] Kriro
[3] Pseudonym
[4] Banarok Lionrage
[4] Loptop
[4] nifboy
[5] Eler0
[5] Psycicle
[-] Icyou
[-] Le_nerd

Honorable Mention: Answer "I do" after deliberating on it.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Askolei
[1] Icyou
[1] Loptop
[1] napkintooth
[1] Psycicle
[1] The_Wanderer
[1] Yosarian
[2] AndreasFr1
[2] CTCatapult
[2] Eler0
[2] Evilwumpus
[2] Jirachi
[2] pepperjack
[2] Proxima
[2] Pseudonym
[2] secretturtle
[2] sharps
[3] Banarok Lionrage
[3] gRR
[3] Kriro
[3] MaggieoftheOwls
[3] Mitale
[3] Theli
[3] theon111
[3] Wert Areman
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] january1may
[4] Le_nerd
[4] nifboy
[5] Ephemeral

Honorable Mention: Think about relevant C. S. Lewis and Kipling quotes.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] gRR
[1] Loptop
[1] Mitale
[1] napkintooth
[1] sharps
[1] Yosarian
[2] Banarok Lionrage
[2] january1may
[2] Jirachi
[2] MaggieoftheOwls
[2] pepperjack
[2] Pseudonym
[2] Psycicle
[2] secretturtle
[3] CTCatapult
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Ephemeral
[3] Evilwumpus
[3] Kriro
[3] nifboy
[3] The_Wanderer
[3] Theli
[3] Wert Areman
[4] AndreasFr1
[4] Le_nerd
[4] theon111
[5] Askolei
[5] Eler0
[5] Proxima
[-] Icyou

Honorable Mention: You wish you could talk to Grandpa Mark about this first.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] january1may
[1] Loptop
[1] MaggieoftheOwls
[1] Mitale
[1] napkintooth
[1] Psycicle
[2] Banarok Lionrage
[2] Ephemeral
[2] Evilwumpus
[2] gRR
[2] Pseudonym
[2] sharps
[2] Theli
[3] AndreasFr1
[3] CTCatapult
[3] nifboy
[3] pepperjack
[3] The_Wanderer
[3] theon111
[3] Wert Areman
[4] Elitist Oars
[4] Kriro
[4] Proxima
[4] secretturtle
[5] Askolei
[5] Eler0
[5] Jirachi
[5] Yosarian
[-] Icyou
[-] Le_nerd

Honorable Mention: Part of the reason you'd be following along with her is to defend people's free will in her new world. You hope she's okay with that.

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Banarok Lionrage
[1] MaggieoftheOwls
[1] nifboy
[1] Pseudonym
[1] Psycicle
[1] Yosarian
[2] Elitist Oars
[2] Mitale
[2] sharps
[3] AndreasFr1
[3] Eler0
[3] gRR
[3] january1may
[3] Kriro
[3] Le_nerd
[3] napkintooth
[3] pepperjack
[4] CTCatapult
[4] Ephemeral
[4] Jirachi
[4] Loptop
[4] Proxima
[4] secretturtle
[4] The_Wanderer
[4] Theli
[4] Wert Areman
[5] Askolei
[5] Evilwumpus
[5] theon111
[-] Icyou

Total No. of Voters: 30

Starry, née Cinderella Sheen, stood before Charles Adan in a deserted neighborhood park, holding one hand of his in hers, and gesturing with her other hand towards the wider worlds outside. Do you want to come with me? she'd asked him once before, and now again. If they were following the pattern for mythology, the third time she asked would be the important one, the time when he suddenly gained superpowers if he said yes.

Or it could be this time.

Charles took some deep breaths, trying not to make it obvious, and put his calm back into the stayed gear. He was the one who'd asked for this. If he kept worrying that every sentence of his might have unimaginable consequences, this deed might take a while. If he'd heard Starry right, she seemed to be saying that his answers only counted towards the question as he understood it. Maybe he should just answer honestly, speak his own true answers, and let Starry worry about the higher implications his own mind couldn't understand.

Did he want to go on an erotic adventure with her, crossing worlds together? If he considered just that one question, and not all the other things it might mean.

Charles thought on it, and found his answer. It hadn't entirely been the answer he'd expected of himself, but sometimes you were wrong about that type of thing.

"I do," Charles began, and Starry gave him a startled, delighted look.

Charles realized what he'd just said.

Okay. He was not going to add his planned "But" clause after that phrase. He was not going to do that. There was being male, and then there was being so woefully male you put a "but" after "I do."

"Did you say it that way by accident?" Starry said a moment later.

Maybe if Charles had thought fast enough, he could've found the right parry to that conversational thrust without lying. "I wouldn't exactly call it an accident---"

"It's okay. You'd be surprised how much I've been expecting my mating field to try pulling that on me. I'm going to triple-check every single time, to make sure nobody ever marries me except on purpose."

Charles drew another breath. "You're right," he said. "I did say it that way by accident. But---but that doesn't mean I---that I didn't---uh." The first time she'd asked him to come with her, it had sounded like she was asking for his soul. The second time, it had sounded like she was asking to get married. Some part of him might have recognized that, even if not consciously, and maybe it hadn't been coincidence that he'd answered with the words he had. "There's things going on that I don't understand," said Charles Adan. "I'm afraid for other people besides myself. Even when it comes to the inside of my own head, there have been things that surprised me and not just on Monday night either. Things had already gotten very strange, very fast, and that's why I didn't just floor our relationship accelerator pedal. There's an ordinary wisdom that says not to ramp things up too quickly. But, but let me be clear, that's the only reason I didn't run after you as fast as I could. If I'm not trying to be wise? If it's just my own happiness I have to consider, and only the things I do know, and the way I feel right now? Deciding if I want to spend the rest of my life with you? Then---then, I do."

"Oh," Starry said softly. She suddenly looked rather vulnerable.

"I did notice the part where you're the," Charles swallowed. Why was this so hard to say out loud? He'd said it to Cindy's mother. "The nicest thing that's ever happened to me, by far. If---if it surprises you to hear me say that, then---I think maybe I've been doing that thing where I take you too much for granted, and forget to tell you all the positive thoughts I think about you." An old custom made more sense to Charles, now. "In earlier times, it would have been my job to write bad poetry praising your virtues. There would have been a lot to write about. I wouldn't have needed to reach at all. Your lips are, in fact, red like roses. I don't know if you've looked in a mirror recently, but they are now." God damn it, what was he saying? That had to be like the single least important virtue she had, even though Starry didn't look like she was minding hearing about it. "Even though there have been some bumpy parts, I enjoyed the time we spent together. I look back on that first car ride now, and even though I was scared, I felt---challenged in a good way. I had the chance to stay calm when it mattered. I was proud of myself afterwards. I can see the humor now, and I know that in time, and not very much time, it will become a precious memory. I like you, and---and I was going to say that I know we'll probably fall in love later. But I don't know if even that's true, because I've realized now that I always took for granted that you'd be there any time I decided I want you. It could be an inner dominant thing, or---or maybe the thought of you not being there is so awful that I never considered it, even from the start. There's so many reasons I still have to be scared, for myself, for the Earth. There are things here more important than my own life and my own happiness. Like whether all the obese people in the world would have vanished if I'd talked you into not creating that virus. Those things still matter. But if it was just me and just a question of following you across parallel worlds on an erotic adventure, then even though I'd be frightened of what might happen, I'd do it. The alternative would be not seeing you again, and I realize now that's something I---I seem to have trouble thinking about." It is like that, Charles remembered the quote, like getting married, or going into the Navy as a boy, or becoming a monk, or trying a new thing to eat. You can't know what it's like until you take the plunge. He ought to just say it. There were higher powers and destinies in play, and the two of them both knew where this was going. If caution was being thrown away in any case, he might as well go all in. God damn it, he needed to just say it. "If you'll have me, I'll follow you. If you want matching rings to go with that, we can go buy a pair as soon as we're done here."

Charles waited for Starry to finish wiping her eyes with the hand that wasn't holding his.

"No," Starry said in a trembling voice when she was done. "It's okay. That part doesn't need to be rushed. I'm not getting into engagements in the middle of emergencies. You can offer me a ring when and if you feel the time is right." She wiped her eyes again. "But I am, let's be clear, this is not me turning you down."

"I didn't think you were," Charles said with a slight smile. His mind seemed unwilling to imagine the possibility, in fact.

"You think you have me all sewn up, don't you."

"Sure looks that way from over here."

"Bastard," she said without heat. "Just for that, mister hubris, you'll have to get me a nice ring. Not a diamond ring, I know about how diamond engagement rings were a de Beers marketing scam. I'll accept... one of the Three Rings of the Elves, from the Tolkien dimension, or something else equally nice. Make sure you have that in hand before you propose to me. Now kindly answer my original question. If it wasn't a requirement for marrying me, would you want to go on an erotic adventure with me across parallel worlds? Or would you rather keep me inside a nice middle-class home with a white picket fence and a traditional BDSM dungeon in the basement?"

Charles thought about it, trying to discard the possible traps and answer only the question as his mortal mind understood it. "I'd take the adventure," he said, realizing somewhat to his own surprise that it was true. "So long as it isn't somehow much worse than it looks, but yeah. This morning was fun. I liked traveling for my old job, that was part of why I took it. I wouldn't mind traveling further. So long as it didn't end up with my brain in a jar. I want there to be a home for us to come back to, but I don't mind there being sexbots guarding the picket fence, if that's your next line."

He realized then that it had been the third time she'd asked, and this time he'd finally answered the question the way she'd meant it.

But still, nothing had happened.

"Now what?" Charles said.

Starry drew a deep breath. "Info, skills, Share the Fun. Yeah. Next, I have to do... some thing that grants you a superpower. No. Not just do a thing. Enact it."

"Enact what, exactly?" Charles said. Enacting things sounded more serious than just doing them.

"I've been trying to figure that out for a while. Maybe I can't intuit the answer because it has to make sense to you, not to me. If I asked you what would grant you power, would you know?"

"How would I know?" Charles said. "Serious question."

"I mean, not know, but... is there an act you'd find meaningful, or moving, or like it would seem obvious that an act like that would grant you superpowers? Like if you always read Spiderman comics as a kid and deep in your heart you've always been waiting for a radioactive spider."

"Uh," Charles said. "Nothing comes immediately to mind, except for walking to the center of a mysterious pattern, and we already did that."

Starry had a chagrined look about herself, like she thought she was messing this all up, and was afraid to say that out loud because it would mess things up even more. "Have you ever been impressed by any type of magic-granting scenario at all?"

Charles did his best to concentrate. "If we're really stretching it, then when I was six years old, I heard a mother bless her son on the first day of grade school. Some type of protection chant. I remember it sounding incredibly impressive and I wanted my own blessing too. By the time I'd gotten home, I'd forgotten every last word and my mother had nowhere to start looking it up." It had literally bugged him for the rest of his life.

"Coming right up," Starry said. She pulled her cellphone and began thumbing in a query.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking at the first thing that catches my eye, which is the sign saying Tara Gardens, and then googling for... did the chant start At Tara in this fateful hour?"

"Yeah," he managed to say, as he turned to stare at the wooden monolith. He wouldn't have thought he remembered at all, but part of him had recognized what couldn't be remembered. "That was it." He suppressed the chills down his spine by force. It wasn't that creepy, on a scale that included hearing your dead grandfather talking behind you at a stoplight.

Starry nodded in satisfaction. "Ready to get superpowers?"

"Hell no I'm not ready," Charles said, as he made sure he was breathing regularly. His heart, which he couldn't control, was pounding very hard. Some part of him expected this to hurt. "Go ahead anyways. And, I keep forgetting to say this part, thanks."

"Don't worry. I'll start with a small superpower first." Starry placed her other hand over the hand that was already holding his own. Her eyes took on a concentrating, focused look.

Charles's eyes glanced around him, took in the experienced world for what felt like a final time. As though something deep inside him thought that he was about to die, or believed that this world was about to vanish and be replaced by something else. The untarnished paint of the merry-go-round, the smooth red road below them, bright green grass all around that had been watered well for California, healthy trees and bushes surrounding them to block the view of the neighborhood beyond, the cloudless blue sky above and the Sun bearing down from the angle of midday. Starry herself, clad in a tiny skirt that didn't have any panties below, and a taut shirt that emphasized her breasts and displayed her equally taut midriff, her hair like a warm fire after a long day. His own business-casual wear, dress shirt to dress shoes, slightly rumpled by some aspects of his morning's work. The bright fresh air, the distant sounds of the city, and the tang of suppressed adrenaline in his mouth.

Starry spoke, words half ordinary and half spell-language, syllables that seemed pregnant with terrible import even as their collective meaning slipped from his mind and faded like the illusion it was.

"At Tara in this fateful hour," she spoke, "I bind the Heavens and all their power. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Edge Other."

--++?​

!!!~

7.13.c [CA]: Spiraling Inward

The two of them stood there in that posture, Cindy's hands covering over his own, through a dramatic pause of dramatic silence.

"Did that work?" Charles said.

Cindy closed her eyes, thought for a while, and opened them. "I... no. I think not yet. There was a possibility, something I was reaching towards. Then I... bounced off? Paused? Something else started happening first? Don't panic, I feel like this is solvable."

Charles nodded along to the truth of the words. "Not panicking is one of my signature moves."

He had the strangest sense that, even though he hadn't obtained superpowers yet, something else in the world had shifted and he hadn't been allowed to notice. Like one of those change-blindness videos where a stranger asked someone else for directions, workers carrying a wooden panel passed between, and the other person didn't notice the stranger had changed.

Charles looked around again, just in case, but everything seemed to be the same as before. He was still wearing his best suit. His nose and toes still pointed in the same direction. A slight breeze was blowing a cloud shaped sort of like a gear, creeping over the Sun and partially obscuring it. The obligatory rusted merry-go-round in the sandy playground section remained as motionless as it had been since the day some perfunctory builder had tossed it into the park. The dingy-looking brown building for the bathroom stalls still had graffiti scrawled on it. Cindy herself looked as beautiful as before in that white dress, her shoulder-length black curls moving slightly in the breeze.

"I think I must have---asked an important question but not the right question," Cindy said. "Or one of the things I said to you was wrong, and this act requires a truth. Do you have a sense of what didn't work?"

Charles thought about it himself, and then shook his head. "I suppose," he said, not without an internal wince that he didn't allow to escape, "we could walk around town and see if any random conversations we overhear happen to enlighten us."

Cindy now wore a dubious expression, making Charles wonder whether that type of thing happened only to the people around Cindy and never to her. "I think we might need to work it out ourselves," she said. "But there's no reason we couldn't walk around town meanwhile, especially if you have a mysterious intuition that's what we ought to do. This place will always be here."

"Yeah," Charles said. He glanced back behind himself, but it didn't seem like a good idea to try retracing the red spiral pathway.

Moving at the same time, he and Cindy both stepped off the last walkable part of the red pathway, onto the mostly-dead grass around it. There was still enough green there that it counted as a color.

They walked back out of the park, this time turning along the green anti-spiral, the space defined by the red spiral's absence. Or was it the green that was the spiral, and the red that was the anti-spiral?

As they exited the park, stepping back onto the sidewalk, Charles again scanned the surrounding world to see if he could figure out what had changed. It all looked like a normal residential street in Norville to him. Abandoned lawns taken by weeds, graffiti on a STOP sign, a rusting car with four flat tires, houses that needed paint.

"Status," Cindy said. "That's weird. I'm not seeing any status effects on myself and everything looks normal. But I still have this feeling like..."

"Like something changed but you can't tell what," Charles said.

"Yeah. It feels---it feels like if I could recognize what I was seeing, I would be scared. Very scared. Maybe that's why I'm not allowed to recognize it. This isn't supposed to be about me, right now."

Charles squeezed Cindy's hand, and she squeezed back.

They turned left, following the same direction of curvature as the park's spirals, and continued walking down the sidewalk.

At the street corner, they turned left again. It felt correct.

In front of one house, a boy was bent over on the sidewalk, drawing curves and arcs on the concrete with red chalk. Kneeling beside was the figure of a mother-on-Saturday, her makeup undone and her hair put up into a sharp utilitarian knot. Something about that felt off, but again Charles couldn't put his finger on it.

He had the oddest feeling of deja vu, an almost perfect rhyme inside his memory. Like he'd seen something similar before, and furthermore, had known at that time that he would experience deja vu later. And what's more, he had the feeling that he would see this sight again in the future, and experience deja vu then about how he was feeling now. Memory recalling the past, prediction showing the future, and both echoing the present including those thoughts, like standing between two mirrors in an endless corridor of time.

The boy and his mother were saying something, and Charles slowed to listen. Cindy seemed to understand when he pulled back on her hand, and also slowed.

"So it goes back to where it started?" the boy was saying.

"Not exactly where it started," said the woman, the mother. "That would be a circle, which is technically a degenerate spiral in which the radius is a constant function of the angle. You want to move to almost where you started, but not quite. The chalk should end up further inward, closer to the center."

"Why not go back exactly to the starting point?"

The mother paused, with the helpless expression of somebody who had been asked a deep and yet silly question by a child who clearly expected an answer. "Well, for one thing, because then you'd go around and around in circles forever with no way to escape. It's the difference between setting time backwards by one week but keeping your own memories intact, or resetting everything including your state of mind. Even if you have to repeat something, you need to keep a hint of what changed."

Neither the boy nor the woman said anything else that Charles could hear until they'd walked on out of earshot. He wanted to stop and ask questions of the mother, but that seemed embarrassing, and even more embarrassing with a little boy present and Cindy watching him.

"So, uh," Charles said. "Did you understand that?"

Cindy shook her head.

They came to an intersection with a wider but still residential street, and turned left again.

They approached (again) (as they would in the future) a bus stop, with no passengers waiting. The side facing them showed a movie advertisement for some horror film called Don't Look, with the subtitle If you can see it, it can touch you. The poster didn't show the monster, but that, of course, was only common sense.

After they'd walked past, Charles looked back and saw that the other side of the bus stop showed an advertisement (familiar and yet not familiar) for a movie called Rules of Knowing, a simple white poster with short lines of text below the title:

1. At no time does any being know everything.
2. Every fact is known by some being at some time.
3. Some beings forget nothing.​

"I don't think it's only you who's not being allowed to recognize things," Charles said. "I also feel that I am not being allowed to think clearly, and that I would be worried too."

Cindy squeezed his hand reassuringly.

Part of Charles wanted to be offended at mind-control being used on him, yet that part was given pause by the certainty that this was happening for a reason. He didn't know that reason. It might be a good one. Maybe this particular journey of enlightenment was showing him, instead of telling him, why he shouldn't ask so many questions. Or something was talking to his subconscious and leaving his conscious mind out of the loop. Or dialoguing with some part of himself that wasn't his whole conscious self, because the whole person that was Charles would panic. Or the whole Charles would go off on a tangent that wasn't what this ritual needed to be about.

They reached the next intersection, and turned left.

A young girl looked down at the dirt of a house garden one step removed from the business street. A man stood beside her, dressed in worn-out clothing. The girl was looking down at one flower in a bed of dirt, with a despondent expression. It had not been the first time Charles saw this, or so part of him insisted.

"Why not just leave the flower where it is?" the girl was saying. "Just leave it be, by itself. Maybe the raccoons won't get this one."

"No," her father said, gently but with utter certainty. "This flower can't exist here anymore."

Charles really had the feeling that if he was allowed to clearly process what he'd just heard, he would be concerned. As opposed to his current emotions, which felt more like nodding sadly along to the true thing that had been said.

They came to a street intersection, and turned left. This was a commercial street, or as commercial as the wounded town of Norville ever got.

On the other side of the street as they walked past, a street busker was strumming on a guitar. A thin woman, one who looked thin more in the hungry way than in the way of conventional standards of beauty.

Oh my darling, oh my darling
Oh my darling Clementine
You have gone and lost forever
Awful sorry, Clementine

In the warm air of the summer
While the sunlight still can shine
There's a hope that springs eternal
Everything will turn out fine

You were hopeful, you were careless
And you stepped across the line
It's too late now to be sorry
No use crying for Clementine​

"Holy shit that's as bad as the song about the muffin man," Cindy said, low enough that the busker ought not to overhear her.

Okay, so she was also getting creepy ambient music on her walks. Good to know, in a way. "The muffin man?"

"I am not singing it for you. I probably shouldn't even be talking about it, not here of all places. The muffin man might show up."

They reached the next intersection, and turned left onto a residential street.

On the lawn of a house facing the intersection, a boy and a girl were reading lines of some play, once again, as they would in the future.

"Lord Yama," recited the boy, "teach me of the fire-sacrifice, that a person may pass through Death and unto Heaven."

"I tell it to you," declared the girl, "learn it from me; and know that this is the attainment of the endless worlds, and their firm support, which is hidden in the darkness."

Charles and Cindy walked on.

"I think that's supposed to be from the Katha Upanishad," Charles said, frowning. "But her line doesn't sound like the original, though it was also quoted... from somewhere I haven't read." There was something wrong with what he'd just said. "This isn't going well. I don't feel like I'm getting shotgunned full of epiphanies this time. I wonder if I'm doing something wrong."

"Charles," Cindy said in a Serious Girlfriend voice, "maybe this is just your nectar talking, but I think we may need to try to figure this out ourselves. Not only hope we walk past strangers saying things that give us the answers."

"Yeah, fair." On reflection, he'd been asking his own questions the last time this had worked for him. "What am I supposed to be figuring out, though? Did you do anything like this to get your own superpowers?"

Cindy laughed softly under her breath. "I just wanted out. Out of my body, out of my life. I'm glad that nothing including myself forced me to walk through a license agreement first. Whatever type of consenty thing is happening, it's something that Charleses do, not Cindys."

"Great," Charles said sourly, careful not to direct the sourness at Cindy herself. Apparently this was all his fault for being picky. "So where the hell are we and what are we doing here, again?"

"With your nectar enhancing me, I at least know who has the answer to that. Charles, where are we and what are we doing? If you don't know the answer, make up some bullshit."

"Uh," Charles said. Make up some bullshit. "This place isn't exactly a dream. If anything, it's closer to reality than the place we left. Getting closer to reality is appropriate for doing something... extra-real. If that's not just some weird idea I picked up from reading Amber novels as a kid. And there's a question I have whose answer wasn't inside..." Charles stopped talking, disturbed at the words coming out of his mouth.

"What question?"

"I'm not comfortable with this," Charles understated.

"I know. But it's important to you or we wouldn't be here. The answer might not have been inside you all along, but the question has to be. What's your question?"

Charles tried to make up some bullshit, but his mind was blank now. Maybe it'd gone blank as soon as he realized what he was doing. "Uh, the non-bullshit version would be something along the lines of, what is this whole thing about? What's going on? What was the alien doing here in the first place? Why are parallel Earths mixing together around you? What the actual hell is going on? I think that's the number one thing I'd want to read in the license agreement, if I get to pick one."

Cindy's hand pulled back on his own, and Charles stopped walking. He glanced at Cindy, and then turned to look where she was looking.

They'd just been walking past a homeless woman, sitting with her back to the blank wall of some building whose front was facing the unseen street beyond. The blank wall of the building seemed familiar, but the woman herself looked too different. She had just been another face in the crowd, not a homeless person, in whatever inaccessible memory was giving Charles this feeling of deja vu.

The homeless woman had her eyes closed, a heap of her things scattered around her. A cardboard sign next to a cup read:

no home
lost everything
somebody help​

He felt more than heard Cindy's swallow, the way her body tightened up at the sight. Without letting go of his hand, she pulled a bill out of her finances and folded it into the cup next to the sign.

The act of charity was done without words, and then they walked on.

"Was I imagining things, or was that a hundred-dollar bill?" said Charles. The colors had looked brighter than on most bills, in the quick glance he'd got.

"It was."

"Why?" Charles said, not trying to keep the worry from his voice. He remembered the way Cindy had reacted to amounts of money in the hundred-dollar range on Monday night. For her to spend a hundred dollars was like dropping a thousand dollars would have been for him.

"I have quests for thirty thousand dollars, or two hundred thousand dollars, and it means so much more to her than it does to me, and I'm not sure I'm ever coming back to this place again." Cindy's voice sounded stressed, and Charles squeezed her hand.

"It meant something," Charles said. "We noticed her right after I asked what was going on. What does that mean?" Even taking calm-staying into account, he didn't see it being a good sign.

"I---I don't know. No. I can think of one thing. I, I had this thought, earlier today, and it seemed like a cruel thing to say to you---"

"You should probably say it," Charles said.

"Things on Earth were pretty bad. What if they weren't going to get better?"

If Charles was meant to deduce everything from that statement, it wasn't falling into place for him yet. "Say more?" he said.

"I mean, you talked about---about Earth getting to an interstellar-level future that we made for ourselves, with fully automated luxury gay space communism or whatever the conservative equivalent is. What if that's not what was scheduled to happen if the alien hadn't shown up? Not that we were heading for some huge disaster. Just, stuff was only going to get shittier from here. Like all the statistics showing that people in our generation are leading worse lives than our parents did at our ages. That was just going to continue. And the same thing was going to happen in all the developing countries, they'd just end up in the same place we did, shitty lonely lives inside a more developed nation. One Sunday afternoon like any other, we crossed a threshold that nobody even noticed. Some genius in India who could have developed better power plants got rezoned out of their school instead. And somebody's computers calculated that the probability of us fixing our own problems had dropped from point zero zero zero zero one to zero. A whole region of---of possibility---got labeled as a disaster zone. That region lost the right to determine its own future. Like if the United Nations voted to say that North Korea screwed up and wasn't allowed to be its own country any more. The rights to the failed timelines got given away, or auctioned off, or something, and were bought out by things that weren't human at all. Things with weird sexual fetishes. But the regulations say they have to do stuff like spreading the Ero Virus through the worlds they bought the rights to... I don't know. I don't feel like it's the truth. Just a thought I had. Would it change your answer to me if that was the truth?"

Charles swallowed. He felt like, like what Cindy said wasn't the truth, but it was near something awful, lurking at the edges of his perception where his mind wasn't ready to see. "Are we supposed to fix the Earth, then?"

"What if we're not? The package of superpowers I got really doesn't seem like a first-aid kit. What if it doesn't make any difference to the Earths whether you decide to come with me? Say the alien's going to do whatever it's going to do, and we don't have much influence after all. The Ero Virus would have happened no matter what."

The words weren't True, but they were hitting too hard for them to not be relevant. "Yeah," Charles said, and swallowed. There was some part of him that knew things he wasn't allowed to consciously recognize, and it was crying. There was water in the corner of his eyes. "Or even if you can influence the alien, I can't influence it through you. Your choice is one you'd already make, it isn't changed by anything I'd do. That's---that's the type of thing I'd want to know before signing over my soul, all right. I'd be---upset---if I did it thinking I had to save the world, and then---if I couldn't---change anything, help anything---God, where does that even leave me as a human being? What am I supposed to do with my life?"

Cindy shot him a concerned look. "You didn't think you were supposed to save the world last Saturday, right? Has that much changed? You didn't have the power to help the Earth a week ago, and you were fine with that."

Sadness, and horror, and a sharp awareness of how Cindy and him thought very differently in some ways. All of the good people across the world, building a better future for it together, a project stretching across centuries and generations. Neither his father or his grandfather had bothered to say that much in so many words. It was something they had considered obvious. Cindy, like a lot of other people their age, had grown up taking for granted that she was part of a dying world that would go on dying no matter what she did. Charles hadn't.

"I mean," Cindy said, still sounding concerned, "you can still be a good person and help the people right around you. I---I should just say this. You can help me. I---I do---need you, Charles."

A woman talking on a cellphone, walking towards them. Charles recognized her. This time he did remember where he'd seen her before.

"Do you?" Charles said, his voice feeling stuck. "Do you, in fact, need me? No, don't answer. Listen to what your mating field said to me."

And they walked past his memory of that woman, as she repeated exactly the same words Charles had heard her speak.

"It's just that neither of you need to feel stuck in the relationship, you know?" the woman said into her cellphone. "There are other options for both of you."

"Oh," Cindy said softly under her breath.

It was hard, to say the words, but they needed to be said. "You won't be alone if I leave you. Your mating field will just find you another man. Maybe the horrible truth isn't so much that I can't influence your mating field, but that the next guy it picks would help the Earth about as well as I would. I---I think your mating field is also offering to find me another beautiful intelligent submissive who's fun to be around, if I want to leave. It doesn't want you to feel stuck with me out of pity. You said that you had a plan to prevent me from falling out of reality even if I walked away from our relationship. What is that? Is it something I can understand?"

Cindy looked---sad, and afraid, and like she wasn't having fun in this conversation but knew it was necessary. "I---I have a power that can make sure that people live happily ever after, if I decide to leave them. So I never feel trapped in any relationships, I guess."

"Yeah," Charles said, the words sticking in his throat. "That was it. That was what was wrong with the license agreement you gave me and the question you asked. That was what I would have felt, later, was signing over my soul under false pretenses. I thought you needed me, and I needed you, and that I could help other people if I went with you. All of those things were false. So where does that leave us?"

Charles reached up and wiped at his eyes, with his free hand, so he could see Cindy's face clearly.

Cinderella Sheen had water in her own eyes. "It leaves us free," she said. "It leaves us with only the question of whether we want to be around each other. With no other reasons at all, but whether you want to be around me, for you to make that choice."

They were standing in front of the neighborhood park again, a small dingy place suited to a small dingy town like Norville. Most of the park's surface area was browned by inadequate watering, though there was enough green to leaven the color some. Struggling bushes and trees demarcated the boundaries of the territory, with metal fence exposed beyond that. The drinking fountains looked old, but functional. The paint was peeling on the mandatory merry-go-round in its mandatory pit of sand, exposing rusted metal beneath. Bathroom stalls painted an unappetizing brown had been sprayed over with white graffiti like a distorted projection of the merry-go-round, a vision that triggered a deep disquiet in the back of Charles's mind, something worse than anything yet said out loud.

A wooden signboard-monolith at front showed winter hours and summer hours in small letters, along with the apparent name of the place, Tara Memorial Park. At the bottom of the wooden signboard-monolith was a quote:

"The end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time."
--- T. S. Eliot​

Bordering the sidewalk was a wide spiral pathway of red material, polished and smooth like marble.

The two of them stepped onto the spiral pathway together.

Each fall of Cindy's heels made a tock sound like a grandfather clock, as above them clouds shaped like gears drifted through the sky and obscured the Sun.

Tock.
Tock.
Tock.

At the center of the park, the spiral continued. Neither Charles nor Cindy made any attempt to keep walking the spiral once it became too narrow to walk.

After the two of them halted, a bell began to toll.

Bong. Bong. Bong.
Bong. Bong. Bong.
Bong. Bong. Bong.
Bong. Bong. Bong.

That sound faded away and left behind the ordinary sounds of the city. There was something reassuring about the bird-sounds and the car-sounds and the unintelligibly distant voices. Like a promise that, contrary to appearances, they weren't all alone inside a bubble of separated reality.

"S-so, Charles," Cindy said. She turned to face him, never letting go of his hand. "Do you want to be around me? In particular? Even if you could get a submissive or erotic adventures or immortality somewhere else."

Charles swallowed, and thought about it. It was a terrible freedom, an awful freedom, a freedom he'd never wanted, knowing that his choice would mean little or nothing to reality's balance of good and evil. At the same time he understood the meaning of it, and why it was a good question to ask before you married someone.

He knelt then on one knee, still not letting go of her hand, because the gesture felt right. "I do," he said, looking up at her. "There's---I haven't absorbed---haven't accepted---what you said---but I know that at least. I do." With his other hand he reached up and wiped at his eyes again. "Do you want to be around me, even though you could have any other man you wanted?"

"I do," Cindy said. She laid her free hand on Charles's other shoulder, as though she was a queen, and knighting him with a hand that was her sword. Her simple white dress moved about her in the park's breezes, and it was evident that she wore nothing else beneath. It was strange, how a part of him was still appreciating that, and not regretting his most important choice in the slightest. "Are you ready now?"

"I am."

Cindy spoke, words that seemed pregnant with terrible import, their meaning hovering just at the edge of his understanding. "At Tara in this fateful hour, I bind with truths and higher power. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Edge Other."

--++?​

!!!!

(%) <- {&}​

Share the Fun has increased by 1.

What other powers does Cindy try to Share with Charles?

[ ] Write-in.

Voting is not yet open. Generate options in the next 48 hours. This will be followed by a ranked vote (soon after, I hope). If you consider it important that two powers be taken together or not at all, you may write an option containing both powers. But mostly the vote should be by line, not by plan.

Edge Other is already granted, and let's face it, Charles's story would be sad without it. There is a final power Cindy is already determined to try for. The rest is up to you.

You can't transfer whole skills of the Reality tier and above. You can potentially transfer some particular aspects of Reality Skills. You could potentially try to transfer powers and abilities that aren't labeled as skills within the current system, but Cindy must be able to do something for her to Share the ability to do it. You can try to Share genderflipped versions of Cindy's skills---for example, Business Suit in place of High Heels, or Butler instead of Maid. (We can consider this as Cindy really having the gender-general version of the skill, which would automatically swap over if Cindy changed sex or acquired a skill to pass as a different gender.) Charles will have difficulty using any skill that takes only SUB, including all of the hair skills.

There is a limit to how much Charles can be empowered. Powers that increase Charles's formidability to a greater degree will consume more of this budget. Some things you try may fail, but if so, it won't come out of your budget.

7.13.d [CA]: Spiraling Inward

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 310 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 9291-9324]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

Options:
Aspect of Cindy: No refractory period
Aspect of Erogamer's Body: Unwanted pregnancy avoidance
Aspect of Erogamer's World: Finding people you can help
Aspect of FUK: Improved sexual instincts
Aspect of Good Student: Studying ability
Aspect of Hand Held Out: Truth-based Rabbiting
Business Suit
Clothes Can't Stop Me
Delivery-Boy of Time
Driving With Distraction
Edging
Fluid Unformed
Good Morning
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Improvised Performance
Mild-Mannered Reporter
No Pack No Pockets
Projectile Privilege
Slack
Talking is a Free Action
The Gamer
The Nectar
Timeskip

Winner: Aspect of Erogamer's World: Finding people you can help

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Askolei
[1] gRR
[1] january1may
[1] napkintooth
[1] Sirrocco
[1] Skelm
[1] theon111
[2] Derpmind
[2] rikalous
[2] Theli
[3] Jirachi
[4] Elitist Oars
[5] Aoinfinity
[7] CTCatapult
[8] brutell
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] david
[-] Eler0
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] PoplarJam
[-] thatguy3367

First Runner Up: Aspect of Hand Held Out: Truth-based Rabbiting

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Jirachi
[1] Theli
[2] Askolei
[2] gRR
[2] napkintooth
[2] Sirrocco
[2] Skelm
[3] Aoinfinity
[3] david
[3] Derpmind
[5] rikalous
[7] brutell
[8] january1may
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] CTCatapult
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] PoplarJam
[-] thatguy3367
[-] theon111

Second Runner Up: Business Suit

Spoiler: Voters

[1] rikalous
[2] CTCatapult
[3] Skelm
[3] theon111
[4] Sirrocco
[5] Apathy+peeves
[5] Derpmind
[5] Eler0
[5] Elitist Oars
[6] gRR
[6] january1may
[6] napkintooth
[7] Evilwumpus
[8] Aoinfinity
[8] Jirachi
[9] Theli
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] david
[-] PoplarJam
[-] thatguy3367

Third Runner Up: Mild-Mannered Reporter

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Apathy+peeves
[1] CTCatapult
[1] Eler0
[1] Elitist Oars
[1] thatguy3367
[2] theon111
[6] Evilwumpus
[6] rikalous
[7] Derpmind
[7] Skelm
[8] Askolei
[8] Theli
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] david
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] Sirrocco

Honorable Mention: Slack

Spoiler: Voters

[1] brutell
[2] PoplarJam
[2] thatguy3367
[3] Apathy+peeves
[3] Eler0
[4] Evilwumpus
[4] january1may
[4] rikalous
[5] Sirrocco
[5] Skelm
[9] Jirachi
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] gRR
[-] napkintooth
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Delivery-Boy of Time

Spoiler: Voters

[2] Aoinfinity
[2] brutell
[2] january1may
[4] CTCatapult
[4] Derpmind
[4] napkintooth
[5] Evilwumpus
[5] theon111
[6] Apathy+peeves
[6] Elitist Oars
[6] Skelm
[7] Theli
[8] rikalous
[9] Eler0
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] david
[-] gRR
[-] Jirachi
[-] PoplarJam
[-] Sirrocco
[-] thatguy3367

Honorable Mention: Aspect of Erogamer's Body: Unwanted pregnancy avoidance

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Derpmind
[2] Apathy+peeves
[3] Elitist Oars
[3] Evilwumpus
[3] napkintooth
[3] Sirrocco
[5] CTCatapult
[6] Theli
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] david
[-] Eler0
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Aspect of Cindy: No refractory period

Spoiler: Voters

[1] david
[2] Elitist Oars
[4] Askolei
[5] Jirachi
[5] Theli
[6] Eler0
[7] Apathy+peeves
[8] CTCatapult
[8] Derpmind
[9] Evilwumpus
[9] january1may
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] gRR
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: No Pack No Pockets

Spoiler: Voters

[1] PoplarJam
[6] brutell
[6] Derpmind
[7] Aoinfinity
[7] Eler0
[7] january1may
[7] Jirachi
[7] rikalous
[8] Evilwumpus
[9] napkintooth
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] gRR
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Driving With Distraction

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Evilwumpus
[3] january1may
[4] theon111
[5] david
[5] napkintooth
[8] Skelm
[9] Aoinfinity
[9] rikalous
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] CTCatapult
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] gRR
[-] Jirachi
[-] PoplarJam
[-] Sirrocco
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli

Honorable Mention: Aspect of FUK: Improved sexual instincts

Spoiler: Voters

[4] david
[4] Jirachi
[4] Theli
[7] Askolei
[8] napkintooth
[9] CTCatapult
[9] Derpmind
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Clothes Can't Stop Me

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Banarok Lionrage
[2] david
[2] Eler0
[2] Evilwumpus
[5] Askolei
[7] Elitist Oars
[9] Skelm
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] brutell
[-] CTCatapult
[-] Derpmind
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Aspect of Good Student: Studying ability

Spoiler: Voters

[2] Jirachi
[3] Askolei
[3] Theli
[5] january1may
[6] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] gRR
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: The Nectar

Spoiler: Voters

[3] CTCatapult
[3] rikalous
[5] gRR
[6] Jirachi
[9] brutell
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] january1may
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Improvised Performance

Spoiler: Voters

[3] gRR
[4] Skelm
[6] Askolei
[7] napkintooth
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Talking is a Free Action

Spoiler: Voters

[1] Aoinfinity
[4] Apathy+peeves
[4] brutell
[9] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Edging

Spoiler: Voters

[8] Apathy+peeves
[8] Eler0
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: I Know What You Did Last Summer

Spoiler: Voters

[5] brutell
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Timeskip

Spoiler: Voters

[3] brutell
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Fluid Unformed

Spoiler: Voters

[6] CTCatapult
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Good Morning

Spoiler: Voters

[4] Eler0
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: Projectile Privilege

Spoiler: Voters

[4] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] gRR
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Honorable Mention: The Gamer

Spoiler: Voters

[4] gRR
[-] Aoinfinity
[-] Apathy+peeves
[-] Askolei
[-] Banarok Lionrage
[-] brutell
[-] CTCatapult
[-] david
[-] Derpmind
[-] Eler0
[-] Elitist Oars
[-] Evilwumpus
[-] january1may
[-] Jirachi
[-] napkintooth
[-] PoplarJam
[-] rikalous
[-] Sirrocco
[-] Skelm
[-] thatguy3367
[-] Theli
[-] theon111

Total No. of Voters: 22

Spoiler: QM note

And nobody thought to suggest sharing Aspect of LST 24: Bisexuality. Ah, QQ... Well, Charles might not have gone for that anyways.

Surprisingly few people in this vote, so I decided to also take into account some of the weights of favorable comments in the brainstorm (which I tallied earlier). Also considered were which powers seemed to go well together in the Rune of St. Patrick chant. So two powers weren't selected in strict NetTally order, but I did get all top 9. Charles ended up getting more total powers than I expected, but there were more potential-laden good suggestions than I expected.

Something had changed, something had altered, something not in the world or in his body or mind, but in a place and type of existence for which Charles had no name. He felt like a literary character noticing that his story was now being written in a slightly different font. If somebody else had never felt what he had felt, there would never be any explaining at all what the feeling had been.

And he knew that whatever font he was now written in, it was one step closer to Cinderella Sheen's font, and one step further distant from what it had been.

"That worked," Cindy said, her voice thicker than usual. "I saw the skill go up."

"Yeah," Charles said. There was a lightness in his chest and a weight in his throat. The understanding past words that they were doing something sad and also happy, happy and also sad. Like witnessing a friend's divorce papers and meeting your true love there, or bringing your newborn daughter to be blessed by your grandmother upon her deathbed.

And he knew also that things were only begun by this, and not remotely finished. "What now?" Charles said, not rising from where he knelt.

"Info, skills, Share the Fun... now says I can give you a 'handful' of minor talents, instead of a small handful. Um. To answer your question, next I keep giving you more superpowers."

"Right," Charles said. "What did you already give me... wait a minute. I think if I was in my right state of mind, I would have asked what superpower that was before you gave it to me."

"It's the power to know when somebody else is about to have an orgasm. So you can stop and not let them have one. Now before you say anything silly, Charles, in this place I think I can let you know directly, I did that because it makes our relationship more equal."

There was an undercurrent of truth in her words, and it carried feelings and fantasies that were felt more than seen, a contrast between two paths and potentialities. Charles being teased in his endless car ride yesterday night, Charles feeling a sense of unfairness that he could only tease Cindy back with her active cooperation to say when she was close. Charles curled up with Cindy in a warm sleeping bag, on some trip they'd gone on together, as he got an equal and symmetrical revenge. Charles teasing some woman wearing nothing but caged-bird earrings, yielding and pleading and oh so submissive to him, but with him having needed to ask Cindy to be there to say when his victim was about to come. Him and Cindy curled up by a warm fire together, passing that same girl back and forth as they took equal turns driving her beyond desperation. It wasn't the future, only a future, but just now it had become a possible future.

"Oh," Charles said. He swallowed against a sudden feeling of unworthiness, the awareness that he'd been given a nicer gift than any he himself had given to any other being.

"Are you thinking that I still should have asked you first? I'll understand if you..." Cindy hesitated. "Wait. Why didn't I ask you first? That makes no sense. It doesn't matter if it's good for you, I still should've asked you first. Charles, I'm really sorry. I should know better than this by now."

Charles shook his head. "I didn't ask either, and I could have. It's probably the altered state of consciousness... wait. I know this one. I'm not supposed to ask you to list every possible superpower you could give me and try to pick. I wouldn't understand important things. I wouldn't be chasing the right goals. It wouldn't work out well. I need to trust you to do it right."

"No pressure," Cindy said under her breath. "Uh, thanks? It's true that you wouldn't understand some parts. Like the part where I'm hoping that I can cram enough minor talents into you that the skill levels up again and removes the 'minor' restriction, before I run out of headroom."

"I do think I'm supposed to know what the gifts are," Charles said. "As you give them to me. I think that's the reason I asked at all."

"That makes sense," Cindy said. "I'll see if I can truth it as I go. Here goes step two. At Tara in this fateful hour, I bind our paths and share my power. And the sun with its brightness. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Aspect of Time Control: Slack. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, No Pack No Pockets."

-+​

It was as though the planet was tilting, and Charles reminded himself to breathe. He could feel the meaning of this gift, the lazy days of light, without rush or preparation, without burdens or cares, strolling together through a wonderland as the sun stayed in its course.

"And the snow with its whiteness. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Fluid Unformed. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Aspect of Erogamer's Body: Pregnancy doesn't exist for me or uh I mean just no accidental or non-mutually-wanted pregnancy if that can be specified."

-+​

He was being gifted with a power of unshadowedness, of innocence, playing freely without worrying about what would come one minute or one month later. Unstained by any aftermaths of laughter. Water came into his eyes.

"And the fire with the warmth it hath. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Aspect of FUK: Improved sexual intuitions. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, I know I can't get this as a skill until I can transform male but it should count as my innate ability, Aspect of Cindy: No Refractory Period."

-+​

A vision of heated lust between himself and Cindy that stopped his breath again.

And Charles knew that something deeper inside himself had changed than on the previous grants of power. This was not a simple external magic he could call upon. This had begun to touch on his body, his mind.

Charles stayed kneeling, and trusted in the one who held his hand. There was a sadness to the thought that he might not have been able to do this in his normal state of mind, outside this place, uncertain of what he could currently know to be true.

"And the lightning with its rapid wrath. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, genderflip of High Heels: S-sharply dressed no that's not it Business Suit. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Mild-Mannered Reporter."

-+​

The understanding came and... she was seeing them together as paired superheroes who could leap small buildings in several bounds, and then go unrecognized by putting on glasses afterwards.

Well. He could live with that.

"And the winds with swiftness along their path! Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, genderflipped Maid of Time: Timely Delivery-Boy! Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Driving With Distraction!"

-+​

And he saw in his mind Cindy's vision of Charles the Delivery Guy, the unflappable interdimensional courier who always got there on time no matter what erotic adventures he had to endure along the way. "Um," Charles said.

"And the sea with its deepness! Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, The---The, the NECTAR!"

-++​

A vision of expansion, of potentiality, of swimming through limitless worlds of sexuality and being changed by them---

"Are you okay?" Charles said, noticing that Cindy seemed unstable on her feet. He started to rise from his kneeling position.

Cindy's hand on his shoulder pushed him back down, or maybe she was leaning on him. "Yeah, I'm just---I felt like I had to push there, and you maybe didn't get the whole thing, but---Share the Fun went up again after it went through. I'm not going to look at the skill text, just hope it says what I need it to say. The next three superpowers are the important ones."

Don't hurt yourself, Charles thought, but he swallowed the words. He knew his reality had not yet been anchored, that he was only transformed and not taken with her. This deed mattered for her own soul as well as his own.

Cindy's voice grew louder, as she chanted her next and greater spell. "And the rocks with their steepness. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Aspect of Erogamer's World: Meeting the ones you need, and the ones who need you."

--++
(%) <- {&}​

Something on a level deeper than conscious awareness was unfolding inside him, becoming instinctively aware of concepts for which names were lacking. Charles himself could almost know it now, not only feel it but know it, the weight of---of---of plot involvement---flowing into him. No mountain or valley could bar his travel, if destiny called him to a place.

"And the night with its starkness. Empower Sapient, Share the Fun, Aspect of I'm not sure what exactly: A skill like my old Follow the Fucking Rabbit but using that new truth thing, or something else Charles will be okay with once he's onboard with the metaphysics."

--+++
(%) <- {&}​

"Cindy!" Charles said, though his mind was still reeling from the ideas that had danced themselves into his mind.

She swayed in place alarmingly again, but steadied herself. "Oof. That really took it out of me. Charles, even with the skill increase, I can tell I'm stretching my limit for empowering you. I'm going to try to break the game rules completely and go over that limit. The next Sharing should finish this if I can do it at all."

Charles managed a nod. He could tell it too, that they were approaching some threshold, a limit to what reality could take without bending around the weight.

Cindy took a deep breath. "Erogame," she said, the word sounding quieter than her usual sorcery for all that Charles still couldn't understand it, "or whatever higher powers are out there. Truths, aliens, inner Cindy, or whom it may concern. You have given me so much, and never hinted what you wanted in return. I want to pay you back, I've tried to pay you back, I hope I've gotten started on paying you back, but you never told me whether I have at all. I'm afraid to ask for more, and---and yet---it seems I'm going to." Cindy paused to breathe. "I've started to open my heart to Charles. Maybe the Arcadias too. And I know that it's a good story, a good plot, if they're threatened and I have to save them. I don't want that. I don't want to be in stories like that. Not if they're in serious trouble and it's possible for me to fail. Charles getting raped by a man before he's ready for that, because I didn't get there in time, I don't want that. If---if you need a plot like that, I don't think I need to care about somebody as much as Charles, for me to want to save them anyways? It would already be tragic if, I don't know, Dennis got hurt because of me, I'd already cry? If I opened my heart to Charles and he got hurt, it wouldn't be a tragic storyline, it would seriously fuck me up. I think my heart would slam shut again if that happened. And---and that's not an invitation for a plot about me learning to love again after tragedy strikes. That already happened to me, okay? This is the storyline where I open my heart again after Dad died. I don't know if I have it in me to go through that twice. I'd, I'd want to see the price, for what I'm asking, but you never show me the prices so all I can do is ask anyways. Don't use Charles as my princess in distress. Don't hurt him more than he can take. More than I can take. Let me fall in love with people without that being used against me." Again Cindy stopped, and swallowed. "And let Charles Adan be---be more than just a character in the game of Cinderella Sheen. Respect him as his own person. I know there'll be minuses for him as well as pluses, I know that's just life itself, but don't stuff him into a refrigerator just because that has an interesting effect on me. Please. Either that, or don't bring him into my stories at all. That's the thing I need to be true, to do this with my own whole heart."

Cindy looked back down at him, her knighting-hand tightening on his shoulder, and chanted her final rune of protection.

"To Charles in this fateful hour,
I gift all Heaven and its power,
and the sun with its brightness,
and the snow with its whiteness,
and the fire with the warmth it hath,
and the lightning with its rapid wrath,
and the winds with swiftness along their path,
and the sea with its deepness,
and the rocks with their steepness,
and the night with its starkness.
And his soul I place in my heart's embrace,
to defend from despair and all darkness!
Empower Sapient, Share the Fun,
Aspect of being the main character:
PLOT ARMOR."​

---+++?​

!!!!!~

And the two of them were walking together along an endless concrete sidewalk that seemed to stretch out forever and to the left as it curved.

7.13.e [CA]: Spiraling Inward

The two of them were walking together, hand in hand, along an endless sidewalk that seemed to stretch out forever and to the left as it curved. Houses moved past them to either side.

He seemed to be wearing a wedding tuxedo, in this place. Cinderella wore a wedding dress, all in white save for her jewelry. Her hair in this place was ethereal, half blue and half clear.

At least they were being allowed to notice what had changed, this time.

After Cinderella had given a once-over to his outfit and then her own, she reached into... into a purse that she didn't actually have? First she drew a set of silvery bangles onto her wrists. Then she crowned herself with a silvery tiara set with blue-white gem fragments, like they'd been spherical star sapphires before something had broken them. "I guess that's why I got this stuff," she said.

"I'm genuinely sorry about this," said Charles.

"It's okay," said Cinderella.

"It's embarrassing. You keep trying to marry me inside this vision or whatever, and every time we reach the altar, my subconscious comes up with a new issue and Inceptions us into a different wedding ceremony. I wonder if my soul actually has questions left or just cold feet."

"It could be worse. I hear that in real life it can take a whole day to plan a wedding and get all the issues ironed out. People have to schedule them like a week in advance."

The two of them approached, once again, and now for the last time, a boy sitting in the sidewalk and drawing on it with chalk, with his mother kneeling beside him.

"What do you mean, you can't get to the center of a spiral?" the boy was saying. "I thought I just did."

"Not if it's a hyperbolic spiral," his mother said. "Those loop around an infinite number of times at the center. If you looked closely at the center of a hyperbolic spiral, you'd just keep seeing more of it. You could keep zooming in and it would keep going around an infinite number of times. So to draw it, you'd have to make an infinite number of circles with your chalk. Which you can't do."

"Because it's not allowed?" said the boy.

"Well," the mother said, "if you tried, I'd make you come inside for lunch before you starved to death. So in that sense, yes, it's not allowed."

"What would happen if I got to the center of the spiral anyways?" said the boy in fascinated tones. "Would it kill me?"

"It'd wipe out the whole Earth," the mother said solemnly, in the tones of somebody who didn't want to discourage this interest in mathematics no matter where it had come from, and would go to any lengths to play along. "It would destroy the rest of the Milky Way too. Enough sidewalk chalk in one place would form a supermassive black hole that pulled everything else into it."

"It destroys the whole world if you draw it?" said the boy, looking very impressed by this.

"That's right!" said the mother. "A hyperbolic spiral is one of the simplest kinds of entities where it's easy to draw part of them, but if you drew one in too much detail it would destroy you and your world and everything else you knew existed."

"Can you know about the center of a spiral?" said the boy.

"That's a very smart question!" said the mother. "You can know about the center in some ways but not others. It's no problem if you just look at the equation for a hyperbolic spiral without visualizing the figure it draws. But if your brain represented enough of the details inside, it would form a supermassive black hole and then we're back to destroying galaxies again. It's like a story that can only be told in metaphor, because showing a movie of it would destroy the movie theater."

"Wow!" said the boy. Then he suddenly looked worried. "Can that happen if I think too hard about the centers of spirals?"

"Honeybuns," the mother said, "if that could happen, I'd never have hinted to you about the possibility of hyperbolic spirals existing. That you can't think about the center in enough detail isn't a rule like taking your medicine is a rule. It's just something that's true."

"Who made it be true, though?" said the boy. "Was it somebody who didn't want me destroying galaxies?"

"We'll talk about that more when you're older," said the mother. "How to divide up responsibility between God and the anthropic principle, I mean. Now finish up drawing as much of the spiral as the truths let you draw, because lunch is almost ready."

The boy went back to drawing red and green spirals on the ground, each one filling the negative spaces of the other.

"We---" Charles said. The boy and the woman faded into the distance behind them for the last time, and vanished. "We won't be allowed to remember this part, will we. It's being too explicit about what we aren't allowed to know, and why." Some of the things that had been fuzzy in his memory were becoming clear to him, in this place. He could remember more of his dream from Friday night, about how some stories were realer than others. Which meant that these present moments, also, would soon fade like a dream.

"I'm remembering things too," Cinderella said. "And I totally agree with whatever made me forget them for a while. Knowing about the xtrmly srs bsns perks I blanked out on Monday night would have given me nightmares even before I took them." She swallowed. "Charles, I know this must be important to you, and God knows I must be fated to drag you through some places you'll find uncomfortable. But if possible I'd like for you to hurry up and finish here, so we can leave this place soon. Please, Charles?"

He knew then that they were facing things together that she was less eager to know about than him. "I'm sorry," Charles said, and tried to walk faster, finish all this and get Cinderella away from where she didn't want to be.

They were approaching, for the final time, the bus stop with no passengers waiting, on whose side was the movie advertisement saying Don't Look: Learning too much about it can give it a way to reach you.

They were beyond it, and looking back, for the final time, at the movie poster for Rules of Knowing.

1. At no time does any being know everything.
2. Every fact is known by some being at some time.
3. Some beings forget nothing.
4. Eventually, they will know.​

They were walking past where a young girl looked down at a bed of ruined dirt, a single white flower still growing up from it.

"Is there no way to leave it be?" the young girl was saying. "Picking it up and moving it seems---wrong. Isn't there any way to protect it where it is?"

The father figure standing behind her shrugged. "Too expensive."

"Our family can't afford it?"

"In principle, we have that much money in our bank account, but we'd have to give up something else we wanted. Are you willing for our house to have only cereal for breakfast for one week, so that this flower can stay where it is, instead of moving it to the perfectly good flowerbed in our backyard that we already fertilized?"

"No," the girl said, sounding like her heart was breaking. "It's just---sad. I feel like the flower would rather stay where it is."

"It would be lonely there, what with it being the only flower left."

They were walking past the street busker, whose guitar sat lifeless beneath her hands, as she sang a mournful song that was more of a chant.

Some die in their waking life
Some die in their dreams
If you're good the angels will bid more against your screams
Never break your solemn oath, for if your soul should fall
There's bidders in the darkness that are stranger than us all​

Her voice segued from there into the chorus.

Inside the dreams of Azathoth
Azathoth, Azathoth
Inside the dreams of Azathoth there's things that trade their votes​

On the lawn of a house, a boy and a girl were reading lines, now the lines of the real play, this one time and never again.

"I just want her to be happy, and to never lose her care."
"Happy? Well, whatever. But she does need weirder hair."

They passed the wall where the homeless woman had been, in the last reality or vision. In this version her blankets and coats lay abandoned on the ground, unable to follow where she had gone.

"Charles?" Cinderella said. Her voice was quiet, but Charles could feel the horror she wasn't putting into it.

"Sorry," he said again. He exerted himself more strongly this time, to be somewhere else, and the concrete shifted beneath their feet.

They stood in front of the park once more.

The air had a tang of smoke to it, familiar to anyone who'd driven through California during wildfires. Thin clouds were enough to render the sun invisible, as the haze of ash would have already reduced the sun to a red disc. Instead there was only a red ambient light all across the sky, the color of a sunset cloned. Charles tried reflexively to hold his breath, then gave up after he realized he had nowhere to find an N95 particulate-filtering breath mask in the next minute.

The fiery light tinged the endless road beneath them, turning it into a red pathway as it spiraled unbroken into the center of the park.

To either side of them, abandoned houses rested in decaying peace. Unbroken windows set in the middle of peeling paint told a story of a place so lifeless that nobody had come through to loot the houses. All the lawns were dead, as were the bushes, and the weeds, everything crumbling into browns or greys. No vines crawled up any of the decaying houses.

The sign by the entryway into the park had been covered over by soot. All that was still readable were the letters ---ra Memorial. Tiny scratches seemed to cover the black soot below that, like an unseeably vast list of names in almost that many different alphabets.

The sides of the bathroom stalls had also turned black, except for a silhouette of the merry-go-round, that was still painted in the original brown color beneath. He should have known then what that meant, but he hadn't realized, not yet.

And the two of them continued walking down the spiral pathway.

As they came closer to the center, the hellish light from above dimmed further, from the red of smoked sunset to the more deathly red of smoked twilight. The smell of ash grew thicker in the air.

As they reached the almost-center and stopped, they heard distant, irregular rumbles of thunder.

Worry was starting to filter through his altered state of mind. Whatever this meant, it was obviously not good news. Stay calm, Charles thought to himself. As he could do it in his waking life, so could he do it in his dreams.

"Charles," Cinderella said. There was an undertone of locked-down panic in her voice. "What question did you have in your mind this time?"

"I'm not sure yet," Charles said. "Something about---whether I was leaving any responsibilities behind if I followed you. Do you know what this answer means?"

"I---I've gotten hints that something is very wrong, I was putting them out of my mind before---I was playing a video game and the world ended inside the game---God. I hope I don't remember knowing this after we wake up. Charles, I think that by the time the alien shows up inside a world, things must already be broken. Just as broken as you'd think they'd have to be, logically, in order for something like the alien to be able to manifest there. The alien isn't the cause of the rules shattering. It's a symptom of it."

"But what happened?" Charles said. He knew the question was distressing her, but it mattered. There'd been other people in his Earth besides him. "If you don't know, can you make up some bullshit? Please?"

"It's---it's---okay. Bullshit it is. People got too atomized by modern society, everyone hated everyone and the news wasn't true. There were fewer and fewer people that each person knew well enough that they could have used Hands Across Forever to bring them back. The---the degree of people knowing which other people they lived in the same world with---one day the metaphysical fabric of Earth just fell apart. We fell out into the darkness and other things picked us up."

It didn't feel true. They weren't close enough to the center of reality that the truth could be spoken here.

It did feel like things were at least that bad. They had to be, for all of this to be happening. By the time you checked out of your motel in the morning and met a fiery-haired girl who could stop time, reality had already disintegrated far beyond the point where it could be restored.

Whatever peace had been forcibly laid upon his mind was starting to break down, leaving dismay in its place and rising horror. Things wouldn't just be normal everywhere else except around Cinderella's alien. Why had either of them ever thought that?

"And," Cinderella said, she was crying now, "and, I think, what I really offered you, is that I'm fleeing the wreckage, somehow, and I can take some people with me when I run away. Oh God, I'm glad I won't remember this."

"I---I have a brother and a sister," Charles said. He heard distantly that his voice was choking. "And Mom. And Dad. They messed up raising me but they don't deserve, they aren't---"

"I'll try to protect them. Whether or not your soul accepts my final offer, I'll try to protect them." Cinderella composed herself, stood straight, and drew a breath. "Good Ending, Charles Adan's sister and brother and mother and father." She paused. "I think that worked."

"Can you do everyone on my Earth?"

"I don't---Charles, that doesn't even---you were never entangled with an entire---I'll try. Good Ending, everyone in Charles Adan's Earth." Cinderella paused, then shook her head. "It doesn't work like that. You have to know who they are."

Charles shut his eyes, aware that tears were leaking around the edges. He said some more names, never letting go of Cinderella's hand. All the names he could remember. His friends at Precision Mechanical, his friends from college, what he could remember of his friends from elementary school, the name of the janitor at Precision Mechanical, the frowning guy who ran a hot-dog stand near his apartment. Even people whose guts he'd absolutely hated.

Cinderella repeated the names, one after another, along with two English words he almost understood.

There came a time when he could think of no more names, and then Cinderella held him while he cried. It felt like he had known more people than this, surely in a lifetime he'd known more people than this, but he did not know who they were. The part of him that had never fully stopped believing sent a desperate prayer to God if He was still there, or to anyone doing His duties, to also protect them if they could be protected, or forgive them their sins if they could not be.

And Charles knew with a sick feeling of truth that he had just done the best that he could do, to help the ones he had not loved quite enough to bring with him. He could do no better if he tried to visit in person. His responsibilities were not fulfilled, but they could be fulfilled no more than this. That had been a last rite for his departure.

He collected himself, and knelt once more.

Cinderella Sheen took his hand in hers, and laid her other hand upon his shoulder. When she spoke her voice seemed to gain in strength amid the dying air, as if standing in defiance of the smoke and ash, like the survivors of a war raising a small town amid the ruins. Things could no longer be as they might have been, but they would become what they could still be. "With Charles in this desperate hour, I share my fate and my last power---"

As she spoke, Charles looked around himself one final time.

And Charles realized what he'd been seeing from the beginning.

"No," Charles said, interrupting her chant. "No." He looked back and forth between the bathroom building, the merry-go-round, again and again. The building whose wall was black except for the silhouette etched there.

In the photos, they always picked a building that had been painted white, to make the silhouettes easier to recognize.

In the movie version, there would be children playing on the merry-go-round when it happened, because it was more poignant that way.

In reality, there hadn't been any children in this park when the light had come, and painted black what it touched.

"Charles?"

"No," Charles said, "no, no, no, that can't be, there isn't, there isn't any reason for, the world was---more peaceful than that---there weren't any international incidents, nothing worse than usual---why? Oh god, why? We were doing better than---" The air. Was he breathing nuclear fallout? Was he already dead? Cindy's mating field shouldn't have sent him to die so easily. Was this all a dream in the first place? If this was a dream, he wanted to wake up.

"Charles?"

The first stage of grieving was denial, and putting all the power of his grief behind his denial, Charles spoke. "No," he said hoarsely. "No. This makes no sense. There wasn't a nuclear war. This is not reality."
--+

The sky was gone. Everything overhead was pitch blackness. The world was lit only by frequent dim flashes, some violence so terrible that it burned all the way through whatever had fully blacked out the sun.

He was kneeling amid what was barely recognizable as the ashes of where the park had been, a melted metal puddle substituted for the merry-go-round. In periodic intervals the ground below his knee felt blurry, and he knew that the sounds he wasn't hearing would have liquefied his bones.

Illuminated faintly in nightmare blinks, its color unreadable in the deathly light, a single flower rested in the ashes before him.

Another metaphor. Charles shook his head, and pushed himself to his feet. "No," he spoke again. "This is also not reality."
--+

~~~​

From behind him, a familiar voice spoke. "It's not," said that voice. "But this is as close as I'm letting you get."

Charles turned, some part of him having expected this from the beginning, and looked at his dead grandfather.

7.13.f [CA]: The Last Flower

The jerky stop-motion of the flashes of dim lightning showed a man in his middle thirties, appearing much like his father William Adan had when Charles was younger, though with some added pounds of muscle.

More of Charles's thoughts seemed to be clearing. He had willed himself to move in mind as well as in world, and his will had been to wake up. He was no longer sure any of this was real, and that was enough to cast aside his horror and think once more.

The de-aged form of Marcus Adan regarded Charles, looking at him more with resignation than disappointment. "You heard all the warnings," said the figure. "And then you tried to travel into a phenomenon that would have shredded your soul like cheese. Consider most of that ability sealed until you learn how to drive safely."

It was far from clear that this entity had the right to criticize with his grandfather's voice. "Bob, I presume," Charles said. "Or are you claiming to be the real Marcus Adan?"

"It's complicated," the form of his grandfather said, the flashes of dim light now showing a wry grin. "That does distinguish me from all the beings where the answer would just be no. But if you're asking me whether I am the Marcus Adan you love and remember, the one whose hand you are holding across eternity, the answer is no. Him you will meet in time."

He could remember the dream fully now, and the squiggly thing with the face and voice of Grandpa Mark. "Did you eat my grandfather?" Charles said. "Did you eat a copy of my grandfather?"

"This is a story featuring Marcus Adan," Grandpa Mark the entity snapped back at him. "That doesn't change the story of Marcus Adan any more than you could rewrite the history of Europe using whiteout and a pen."

"Okay, look," Charles said. "Leaving aside a whole lot of other things, can we put all that on hold and have you explain what's actually going on?"

"It's not that simple," said the form of Grandpa Mark. "If it were, you could have been told already without all this rigamarole. Cinderella Sheen can know some things. Charles Adan is allowed to know some other things. If you remember things you can't tell each other, it has consequences for your relationship. And that is far from the only complication here. As you've guessed, the real truth is something you lack the background to understand. But speaking metaphorically, on her Sunday afternoon, Cinderella Sheen touched a multiverse that is vaster than anything you've ever tried imagining. Some of the existences in that multiverse have broad-ranging powers over reality, enough to influence stories like Cindy's own. And some of those forces have opinions about what people like Cindy ought to know, and in what manner they should learn."

A spark of anger lit in the back of Charles's mind. "What gives them the right to think their opinions should matter a damn to our---"

"Shut your fool mouth until you know what you're saying," Grandpa Mark said, looking more grim than angry. "Never tell the powers of existence to buzz off and leave you alone. Never, Charles, do you hear me? The forces of reality that care about your consent are the nicer ones, and you don't want them to go away and leave the playing field to the others." He folded his arms across his chest. "There, you got a glimpse of what's really going on. Did it make you happier? Did it give you the power to make anything better? No, no it didn't."

Charles would have tried to reserve judgment. But in this place Charles knew that, though the words were only a metaphor, the thing they were a metaphor for was true. Just like that, there was no point to arguing the facts further. It felt like walking his mind into a wall.

"What is this place?" Charles said instead, gesturing around him at the plain of ash and melted metal, seen in dim flashes burning through a black sky. "No, let me guess. You're showing me what's left of a world after the Democratic Party gets through with it."

The next nightmare-flash showed Marcus Adan with raised eyebrows. "Are you trying to bait answers out of me, boy?"

"Wrong response," said Charles. "The real Marcus Adan would have told me that I wasn't being as funny as I thought, and explained how this problem had roots in the Fabian Society of nineteenth-century England. But if you're not saying anything, I'll just assume this is the fault of unbridled capitalism."

Marcus Adan laughed, with a bitter undertone. "If I was going to blame this on one of my usual suspects, I'd trace it to the anti-nuclear protests in the Sixties."

"Runaway greenhouse effect?" Charles said. He tilted his head within the blackness to look up at the identical blackness that was the sky.

"No. Also, absurd. Even the surface of Venus isn't hot enough to melt iron." Marcus Adan sighed. "There's enough blame to go around that castigating my favorite targets would be pointless. Especially since this never happened, not to our own world at any rate. Some worlds end in waking life, ours died in a dream. We didn't get the chance to destroy ourselves the way we were scheduled to do. If we had gotten that far, the backlash that the anti-nuclear scare produced among the more technically inclined parts of society... well, it doesn't matter. I didn't see this coming either when I was alive, which makes me as much of a sinner as most anyone from our world got the chance to be. We never had the chance to destroy our own world, but it was destroyed by the certainty of us destroying it and that's not much credit to us either." Marcus Adan's arm showed itself in the middle of a staccato sweep, lit in stop-motion flashes. "This was the future of our Earth, Charles. The most probable outcome since the start of World War Two, growing steadily more likely over time as the possible diversions from it failed to materialize. And because reality is a more complicated place than we used to believe, the more the story we'd been inside had only one possible ending, the less real it became. One Monday morning like any other, your world crossed a threshold. With some torturing of the metaphor, you could say that the plot became too predictable and boring, and the metaphysical readership stopped buying the serials in which the laws of physics had been publishing. Cinderella Sheen walked into your motel lobby a few minutes later."

"I know on a deep level that everything you said is true and I'm still not buying it," Charles said.

"I don't blame you. But there are matters Cinderella would rather not hear about just yet. On other points I literally can't say more, because it's been rendered true that nobody tells you---and unlike some things that have been made true, we'd see that one as having good sense behind it." Again Marcus Adan's arm swept around him. "This is not the real death of a world. More like an artist's conception, as drawn by someone who was carefully not told enough to make accurate guesses. There are ideas that can see anyone who thinks about them, there are books that know when they are being read. Looking towards the true ashes of reality would have destroyed your soul as thoroughly as this destination would have destroyed your body, if not for my paternalistic interference."

Charles shook his head. "Thanks for protecting me, but I don't like these riddle-answers," he said. "People I care about are at risk. I need to know what's actually happening, not just metaphors for it."

"Wrong on both counts," Marcus Adan snapped. The cast of his expression, revealed in a flash, had taken on a bitter twist. "There is no more risk. It's all already happened. The candle is extinguished. Almost all the mirrors that reflected it, shattered. No danger comes now to approach the castle walls, for beyond them is only ash and ruin. There's nothing left for you but to live out your own pages in the books that continue on."

Again the sense of slamming his mind into a wall, this time hard enough to hurt. There were truths being spoken in metaphor that were antithetical to what he'd considered his basic principles of life, and now some part of himself knew them.

His own fault for asking, and then insisting. It was perilous to speak before the forces of existence that cared about your consent.

"And the people I knew?" Charles said, the words sticking in his throat. "The ones I didn't love quite enough to take with me?"

"Someone would need to be attached to you quite strongly for them to be pulled in with you, considering where your story is heading. One phone call every three months does not count. To put it bluntly, a happy ever-after for your family does not have them living near Miss Sheen's house or even on the same planet. I do love you, Charles, but some of your future life choices are ones I would be questioning severely if this were the real me. Your notion of conservative family values in particular. I think we can all agree that it is a good thing if you keep to more suitable company, such as incestuous tickle-rapists for example, and do not bring the rest of the Adans with you."

Charles flushed. "Right," he growled. "Well, I'll ask Cindy to behave as a proper housewife if we ever visit the Dimension of 1950s Republicanism. Don't worry, we won't stay long."

The next nightmare flash showed the figure now bore a smile. "I'm not your true grandfather, Charles, just a story about him. He doesn't hear it when you hand me a snappy comeback."

"Why is my sort-of-grandfather talking to me?"

The figure shrugged. "There is not much rhyme and reason to it from our own perspective. There are forces of reality which prefer, when a sapient lifeform is stopped from destroying itself, that the intervention be carried out by whatever that lifeform most sees as its parental figure. Those forces aren't watching you personally. It's more of a universal influence, the way they believe a story should go when that situation arises."

"Oh," Charles said.

"But enough of this," said a story about the person who'd behaved the most like a proper father to Charles. "There's only one choice you have to make in this place, and you need to make it soon. This isn't a place where mortals should stay for long, even in their imaginations."

Charles looked down at the flower by his feet, illuminated by the dim flashes of a tale that could not be told.

The knowledge came to him then, of what the flower represented, and in this place Charles Adan knew that here at last was his true choice, as informed as it was permitted to be.

When he raised his head to ask one more question, the form of his Grandpa Mark was gone.

In his place stood a more adult and yet more beautiful version of Cinderella Sheen, recognizable now as he had failed to recognize her before, wearing the long white dress that she'd worn in the second painting. On her forehead gleamed a crown set with broken blue-white gemstones, far too many to be counted.

The Princess of the Shattered Earths stretched out a hand to him, the offer and the question implicit in the act itself. There was a wistful smile on her face, sadness mixed with happiness.

And Charles understood then that this moment was stitched through time, that it was happening now and before the story began and also in the future, all three instants the same, so that his choice now determined all that had already followed, and yet the choice was real.

[ ] Extract the flower gently from the ground, and present it to the Princess before going with her.
[ ] Take the flower yourself, to guard for ever, before going with the Princess.
[ ] Stay with the flower as it dies. As Charles did meet Cindy on Monday, him making this choice now is not consistent with the past he remembers having become the story. Only vote for this option if you want this quest to have retroactively never been written.
[ ] Write-in.

Warning: this vote affects which story you've already read. If using write-ins, be careful not to render your real-world timeline inconsistent.

7.13.g [CA]: Charles Adan

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 312 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 9361-9543]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[X] Extract the flower gently from the ground, and present it to the Princess before going with her.
No. of Votes: 35

Spoiler: Voters

ScrewFate
AramilOniasha
brutell
ChaoticWhimsy
Gavinfoxx
Gingganz
Greckle
kabs
madness
MaggieoftheOwls
megazver
MissileTeatime
Nemonowan
Nickless
Omnomimous
Pieguy3693
PlaneOfInfiniteCats
Prefixmancer
Proxima
QuestingQuestioner
raisins
sharps
Silver Swallow
Spectral Waltz
Sykomantis
The Articulator
Theli
theon111
Tulip
UraniumKnight
Uvigz
Valint
varno
Wert Areman
Xenia

[X] Take the flower yourself, to guard for ever, before going with the Princess.
No. of Votes: 18

Spoiler: Voters

Valmit
Aoinfinity
askldjflkajskje
Blackshard
eraserman
jseah
Kai Merah
LonelyWolf
Myardius
Orm Embar
Ranys
rikalous
Sirrocco
Skelm
sun tzu
Transreal Clouden
Yosarian
zachol

[X] Either give the flower to the Princess or guard the flower yourself, whichever option gives a more cheerful and uplifting story.
No. of Votes: 3

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym
january1may
master2000

[X] Take the flower with you, looking for a safe place to plant it.
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Pornonx
Skelm

[X] The flower transforms into a living garland, binding you and Cindy together as you take her hand.
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Elitist Oars
CTCatapult

-[X] "I present this world-flower to you, Cinderella Sheen. It might look lovely in your hair."
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
MissileTeatime

[X] Extract the flower gently from the ground, and present it to the Prince before going with him.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Derpmind

[X] On some level he was aware that the flower would be okay if he picked it up. That it, and he, were watched over by greater powers. That there was no earth here left to nourish it, even if he pulled it up.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Alparen3141

-[X] There was still something in him that distrusted the idea of pulling up the flower without any soil to ground it. He disliked the idea of simply trusting in its fate, even if he could feel the truth that it would be safe. He would rather... carry out the due process, he supposed. It mattered to care for that which one would save. And, by the grace the Princess had just shown/would soon show him, he had the ability.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Alparen3141

--[X] "Timely Delivery-Boy," he murmured, too quietly to hear his own words.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Alparen3141

---[X] Meeting the ones you need, and the ones who need you. He found himself in a greenhouse, or something like a greenhouse, bereft of plants. All around him were flowerpots full of rich, moist soil, receptive yet virgin and empty of life.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Alparen3141

----[X] "No Pack No Pockets," he spoke, not realizing the words were his own. He picked up the flowerpot to his right, and in one moment/an eternity later, he was standing in front of the flower.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Alparen3141

-----[X] Carefully, tenderly, worshipfully he pulled it free of the dead earth, and let its roots drink of the moist earth within the Ark/vessel/flowerpot. Then, at the right time, he walked to her.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Alparen3141

------[X] Bending down onto one knee, he presented the gift to the Princess of the Shattered Earths. "For you," he said, smiling up at her.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Alparen3141

[X] Extract the flower gently, alive, in its soil. Hold it together, between you, as you speak your marriage vows over it.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

napkintooth

[X] Stay with the flower as it dies.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Quentin

[X] Declare that the flower is really fucking confusing and has nothing to do with anything, then ignore it.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

kettes

Total No. of Voters: 64

Spoiler: QM note on the nature of alternative options

Discussion here was unusually intense, so FYI: Charles's choice, whatever it is, must be the choice he would make. So, whatever you voted for, Charles had to face options that made your voted choice seem correct to Charles. In other words, you're not about to learn that the commenters who voted for this were Right and the commenters who voted the other option were Wrong. The story would have made equal sense if it'd gone the other way, but it would have been a different story.

Charles looked down again at the flower, and in it, he saw with one tiny glimpse a partial vision of Eternity, though there was much in it that was hidden from him.

Some fraction of all the worlds where human beings exist have destroyed themselves, or been destroyed, or ended in other ways. The exact fraction is not relevant to the decision that Charles faces, and it has not been revealed to him. In absolute magnitudes, there was a very large quantity of Earths to begin with, and a very large quantity of Earths was destroyed.

Of those many dead Earths there is a remnant, a flower growing in the ashes. There are human beings who have been preserved, by some nearby Power or force of existence, so that their story continues on after the book ended. The exact fraction, again, is not relevant to Charles's decision. The absolute numbers, again, are ungraspably large.

Among the forces and powers that would pick up a refugee of a lost origin-world, some are inclined to do a thorough job. Many of Earth's refugees are not only preserved, but empowered in a way that spans more than one lesser reality.

Some of those begin as Worldwalkers, traveling to other places. Some become Nexuses, calling other places to themselves. Some wrap themselves in shadows of what was lost, less real than Earth-that-was, and yet not unreal, for Snow White has no way of knowing if you think yourself more real than her. Some families (of blood or otherwise) labor to build new homes for themselves, dungeons and restaurants and brothels that span dimensions. Some of the empowered travel together in bands or tribes. Some travel alone, into previously untouched shadows, if they or the powers preserving them are not ready to contend with equals. Some strange subcultures have imbued their adherents with the desire to be hit by a truck so they can defeat the Demon Lord, and it is not unheard-of for some power to oblige. Some empowered who are of an exploratory bent come across refugees of other heritages, from planets that were once as real as Earth. Others, who set little store by their former humanity, find their way to cities vaster than galaxies.

Charles Adan was a good human as humans go. He kept those promises that sounded like they were meant to be kept. He spent more time helping others than harming them. He donated small amounts to charity, and did his job diligently, and was not nasty to people on Reddit. In the end, nothing Charles Adan did contributed to the long-term welfare of sapient life. But he tried, and there are forces of existence that respect that, and would have the stories of people like him not end so ill. Other forces of reality hate anything that ate innocent plants, but they do not have things all their own way.

To Charles Adan, and to many other beings similar to him, is given now a gift, and a choice.

The gift is not, of course, controlling the entire fate of the last flower from the ashes.

But Charles Adan may exert a tiny portion of influence over the course of humanity's epilogue.

He could use that portion of influence to grant himself abilities on par with anything he has seen Cinderella Sheen do. He could set aside some lesser Shadow for himself to rule, as in the books of Amber that he read as a child, or he could travel across stories to join with more of his fellow refugees first. Most lost souls of Earth choose something along those lines, if they are given a chance. There's nothing wrong with that. It is a perfectly sensible thing to do after the world ends and it is rare to have better choices.

For Charles Adan there is another option.

Across the Cosmic All there are some number of people in situations like Cinderella's, with powers that can try to summon to them someone like a Charles Adan. For he is very much the type of boyfriend you would try to summon, if you were a girl like her.

And if someone like Charles Adan agrees to answer that summons, that child of Earth is more likely to stay sane, stable, anchored, and not lose what's left of her humanity.

If people like Charles Adan are willing to forgo being kings themselves and abide within the sovereignties of their princesses, many more people like the Cinderellas Sheen will be able to summon one of the Charleses Adan. The numerical factor in the exchange rate is significant, for reasons he is not now given to understand. It is not a thing that he alone must do, for there are others like him if he refuses, but the duty will come to someone.

In the end, nothing Charles Adan did in his first life helped build a future for humanity. He tried, but he failed. Those inclined to judgment on anything like human terms would not blame him much, which Charles is also sensible enough to understand. It remains that he did not do something he was raised to believe he ought to do.

Though he has glimpsed only a small part of Eternity and that in a vague light, Charles knows that he is being offered the chance to do something for what remains of humanity, and that the job will not be unpleasant.

After all, she has nice tits.

Carefully, not sure of which of his actions in this place of metaphors might mean something to reality, Charles kneeled down to try to brush ashes away from the flower's base, in the flashes of pale light. This he did, and the flower's roots must have been already severed, for it came away easily in his hand.

Charles rose to kneel on one knee, and offered the flower, or his tiny part of it, to his Princess. "If you need a Charles Adan, you can have one," he said. "Take good care of him."

The Princess accepted the flower from him and set it into her hair, above her crown and obscuring part of it, as if to say that she knew which one was more important.

She took his hand in hers, laid her hand upon his shoulder, and took him with her.

---+++​

!!!!!!

(%) <- {&&}
(#%) <- {#}​

For some reason Charles had thought in the back of his mind that the spiral would unwind as slowly as it had turned.

That didn't happen.

Instead there was an indescribable metaphysical WHAM as he got ejected hard out of the blackness, like it maybe wasn't such a good idea for him to have been there in the first place.

He was kneeling in the smoky air of a nuked park with Cinderella looking at him worriedly.

Then another wordless metaphypsical WHAM as he was ejected from there just as fast, as if he had in fact been breathing nuclear fallout.

He was kneeling before Cindy inside Norville as it had been before her coming.

...

He looked up at her and she looked down at him, both of their eyes widening.

"Something happened," Cindy said.

"Something sad happened and we forgot it," Charles said. He blinked, feeling a strong sense that he would start crying again, if his tears knew why they should be falling. He felt---dazed, like he'd been through a lot and had gotten emotionally wound up (differently from how he'd been wound up a moment earlier) and then forgotten why.

Before either of them could speak again, there was a weird metaphysical WHAM and they were in the bright, cheerful, well-watered Tara Gardens of post-Starry Norville. They were again dressed the same as when they'd started. Although both of them were standing and kneeling in just the same positions as they'd occupied in the previous version of Norville.

Cindy still had short black hair.

There was no trace of the red spiral pathway they'd been walking.

"Well, uh," Cindy said. She took her hand off his shoulder, and took a dizzy step backwards. "Uh, that definitely did something. Though, I hope I didn't give plot armor to only your shoulder? All I could read from the skill notification was something about Shoulder Protect. Info skills shoulder protect... doesn't work. Status. Wow. Maximum negative sub and dom. Huh. I lost a stat point?"

"What?" Charles said, getting to his own feet. "Cindy, you're speaking what sounds like word salad, are you all right?" Cindy looked dazed, feverish, and generally not all right. She'd clearly put in a hell of a lot of effort to do what she'd done for him and not just in a mortal way.

"Ha, ha, yeah, sorry, I know you can't understand... I'm certain I anchored your reality though. I'm sure this has many important implications but I don't want to talk about them right now because I am feeling very mentally tired and only want to do fun things for a while. Busy mode on."

"What?" Charles said.

Cinderella Sheen fell over.

Charles tried to catch her, and somehow ended up tearing her shirt in half.

The grass Cindy had fallen onto looked soft enough, but Charles still scrambled to her side where she lay. Her pulse, when he grabbed at her wrist, was slow but steady. Her breathing sounded normal. Her hands were not yet cold or clammy, her face not yet pale, though of course there hadn't been time for that even if it was going to happen soon.

"Cindy?" he said. "Starry? Cinderella Sheen?"

There was no response.

He tried the storybook remedy of leaning over and kissing her.

She still didn't wake up.

So now step one was to... stay calm, he supposed?

Charles Adan sat back on the grass, his own mind feeling... discombobulated. He knew it wasn't the right word but the right word probably sounded equally chaotic. Calling an ambulance was an obvious option, but it didn't seem likely to be very useful. Maybe if he just sat here for ten minutes, Cindy would wake up again. After that he could try pinching her.

He had no idea what to do if she didn't wake up then. He was supposed to protect her, wasn't he? But he didn't know how.

For some reason the phrase Knight of the Last Flower ran through his mind.

Charles sat there and stared at Cindy's body for a while, whose nice tits had been exposed by him ripping her shirt in half. He hoped no police stopped by, or that Cindy's mating field was still working well enough to soften their attitude if they did. This situation might not look good to them. He was supposed to have superpowers now, but he also had literally zero idea of how to use them or what to do with them.

Cindy was supposed to have the power to heal from stuff on the order of a broken ankle overnight, wasn't she? This wasn't a physical wound, but the same principle might apply.

The thought occurred to Charles that, at least at the moment, he was still scheduled to drive back to Nevada tonight. He hadn't quit his job and ought to give some advance notice if he did.

Charles pulled his phone from his pocket, to see if he immediately got an email saying he might as well stay in Norville another day.

He didn't.

Would sex with Cindy's unconscious form help restore her mating field's energies? If so, it'd probably be wiser to take her somewhere else beforehand, rather than doing it in a public park...

He had a feeling he was thinking thoughts that might seem obviously stupid, if his own mind was in a more combobulated state. Nothing hurt, but something had stirred his brain with a spoon. It might not be stupid to recover for ten minutes himself before he tried doing anything complicated.

An idea occurred to Charles, and he leaned over and pulled Cindy's shirt-remnants over her breasts. Her shirt might be torn, but the cloth could still cover her nipples.

He didn't know why he hadn't thought of that earlier.

Charles wasn't sure his current thoughts were making sense at all, really.

He wondered if some of Cindy's own nonsense-sounding words had meant something.

Busy mode on? he mouthed to himself.

End of Book Three.​

What does Charles do after a few more minutes when he still can't wake up Cindy?

[ ] Call an ambulance.
[ ] Drive to Cindy's house and hope Winifred is there and has some idea what to do.
[ ] Drive to the hotel where the Arcadias are, then see if having sex with Cindy or around her helps her wake up.
[ ] Keep waiting in the park and hope that someone helpful coincidentally appears.
[ ] Write-in.

7.! (BOOK 4)

(I initially posted this, and 7.14.a, in the wrong order. I've now swapped texts.)

And Charles dreamed.

In his dream he was sitting at a table with Starry and Sonia Turk, trying to play a tabletop RPG for the fifth time in his life. An incomprehensibly complicated mess of tangled forms with the face of Grandpa Mark was sitting anext the table, with a placard in front of it reading "Committee of Public Safety." Tammi and Danni were both tied to a nearby bed, and a perky naked girl was tickling both of them simultaneously, one foot each. Since he hadn't met Karinna or the Scoobies or Felice yet, none of them were present.

In the tabletop campaign, Charles and Starry and Sonia would travel across dimensions to another world to face the Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok. In the course of traveling across the interdimensional medium the three of them would gain sorceries, power over any two elements they thought of during their brief travel.

Charles had first chosen the concept of Motion, which ought to be good for heat in the form of molecular motion, quick escapes, and projectiles. For his second sorcery, he'd decided to double down on travel and take the Element of Being Somewhere Else, so they could leave the Fimbulwinter and go somewhere warmer. Starry had taken Sexuality, so the campaign wouldn't be boring, and Interdimensional Summoning, on the theory that interdimensional summoning was clearly a thing in this universe and apparently a useful one. That way she could summon more people who'd gain their own elements, if their starting elements proved to not be enough.

Charles was surprised that whatever was hiding behind the Dungeon Master's screen was letting them get away with this.

Even so, in Charles's opinion, Sonia was trying too hard to optimize her build. For her first element she'd taken Flesh, to be the party's healer and general transhumanist. Sonia was still trying to explain exactly what her second element was, and it was delaying the whole campaign from getting started.

"Stephen Hawking," said Sonia, "A Brief History of Time. 'Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations.'" In the dream Sonia looked younger, but she was still taking her usual tone of a sixtysomething professor. "'What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe.' Either this question has an answer, or it does not. Let us suppose that it has an answer, and designate as 'quintessence' whatever it is that actualizes a mathematical structure---whatever breathes fire into equations and makes them describe a universe. That's my second Element."

"You can't do that!" said Starry. "The whole premise behind my character is that everything already exists somewhere and that's why she can summon it! You can't introduce an Element into the campaign that makes things be real. That means other things wouldn't be real!"

Sonia sighed. "Can't your character just summon from among all possibilities rather than all actualities, and actualize possibilities only upon their summoning?"

"My character doesn't want that much responsibility," Starry said.

"I don't think it makes sense either," said Charles within the dream. "How could you tell from inside a universe whether it had quintessence or not? Even if you say Snow White's universe lacks quintessence, from the inside Snow White has no way of telling that."

"Hm," said Sonia. "I suppose that's a fair point. Well then, let us suppose instead that even though everything exists---or equivalently and more simply, nothing exists---there is nonetheless some mysterious factor by which certain things exist more."

"Bullshit," Charles said.

"I suppose we could call it that," said Sonia.

"No, I mean the whole idea is bullshit," Charles said. "It sounds like a metaphysics George Orwell would invent as a parody. 'All animals are real, but some animals are more real than others.' How could they tell?"

"You claimed yourself that Snow White exists as much as we do," said Sonia. "Then why don't we run into her at the corner shop? Why do I find chocolate biscuits there, instead of Snow White? There is a story in which the two of us meet, and the people within that story have no way of knowing themselves to be unreal. And yet I find myself discovering chocolate biscuits instead. Clearly, there is some factor that the possibility containing myself and chocolate biscuits possesses in greater quantity, compared to the less real possibility containing myself and Snow White. Even if we reply to the great question by answering that nothing exists, some zeroes are greater than other zeroes and quantitative ratios may be established between them. Like any other self-observing structure, Snow White finds herself to be exactly as real as herself, a ratio of one to one, and in this sense her existence is locally an absolute. But to say this does not say whether Snow White is more or less encounterable than other things. There is some quantitative degree to which our universe is looking more towards the chocolate biscuits. Some essence of how much something is observed or experienced, which the chocolate biscuits have more of than Snow White. We could call it quintessence, or propensity, or mana, or the blood of God."

"Or bullshit," Charles said.

"I suppose that term is as good as any other," Sonia said. "By whatever name, it is the single, sole, and only truly universal form of money. And we can extend the same logic further. Having postulated the notion of bullshit, it would follow that things are more real only to the extent that they are, in some sense, more bullshit. Or rather, by definition, anything that makes a possibility more encounterable is exactly what we are calling bullshit. Possibilities are experienced by conscious beings in exact proportion to the total bullshit breathing fire into those possibilities. Then to whatever extent a mathematical model is not describing bullshit, it is mere math. Only to the extent that a mathematical structure is about bullshit does that structure form an encounterable part of its universe. It follows that every sapient species, if they investigate the physics of their universe far enough, will eventually find a level at which physics seems solely to describe the arrangement of pure bullshit---some physical quantity whose apparent meaning is making possibilities more encounterable. By your own argument, the presence or absence of bullshit must be falsifiable for anyone inside the universe to notice a difference. Then the eventually-discovered laws will show that variations in bullshit are experimentally observable and cause other events to proceed differently. Indeed, variations in bullshit will be the only causally potent factor. Across every universe with conscious life, any inquisition into physical law, sufficiently advanced, will render everything into bullshit, which is and must be the sole constituent of experienceable causality."

"Can you simplify that?" said Charles.

"No, but I'll do it anyways," said Sonia. "Whatever it is that makes one possibility more encounterable than another, we are calling that bullshit by definition. Then whatever bullshit is, if something isn't made of it, we won't encounter it. And if we couldn't detect something experimentally, we'd have no way of encountering it. So bullshit has to appear to us as a quantity in our equations---in fact, the only thing structured by our equations, because we can't encounter anything else. 'By convention there is sweetness, by convention bitterness, by convention color, in reality only atoms and the void.' And underneath atoms and the void, it's all just bullshit."

"Can you simplify that some more?" said Charles. He felt ashamed, but he wasn't at his mental best while asleep.

"The only thing that truly basic physics equations can be about, is the stuff that breathes fire into equations, the stuff that makes things be more real," said Sonia. "That's what I'm taking as my character's second Element, if the DM lets me get away with that."

"Then what the hell is a reality anchor?" Charles said. "The whole reason I'm having this dream is that I'm nervous about being turned into one of those while I have no idea what it fundamentally is."

"A reality anchor is somebody who has, or rather is, a whole lot of bullshit," said Sonia. "In the quantum mechanics you knew, the density of bullshit was spread widely among many possibilities. Now suppose we focus, into a single possibility, an enormous amount of bullshit, structured by laws which say that all of the bullshit follows a single path into the future and doesn't spread out over time. Then from the standpoint of anybody looking at you, there is a single possibility for Charles Adan that they are far more likely to experience than any other."

"But what does that feel like?" Charles said.

"It feels like being the Charles who gets reality-anchored and not any of the other Charleses," said Sonia. "Your presence weighs heavier on future events. To use a literary metaphor, the larger story of your universe is more likely to be told from your viewpoint and center on what happens to you. Also, reality anchors automatically acquire superpowers."

"Yeah, I'm not buying this," said Charles. "Not. At. All."

"Well, it happens to be true anyways," said Sonia. "Not just here, but in any other universe you'll ever be able to enter. It's not a law you can ever escape. People with enough bullshit acquire bullshit powers, and the more bullshit they are, the more bullshit they are."

"For reasons of public safety, I agree," said the squiggle in Grandpa Mark's voice. It took out a fifty-dollar bill and passed it to whatever lay behind the Dungeon Master's screen.

There was no answer from behind the screen, but the fifty-dollar bill vanished.

"And that's why sorcery over bullshit is the best possible element to pick in a game set in the Daniel Black universe," Sonia finished.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," screamed Tammi and Danni, who were the Tammi and Danni he'd met in the elevator, and not exactly the Tammi and Danni he knew now.

And Starry had gotten bored, and had crawled under the table, and was undoing his zipper.

7.14.a [FW, CA]: Merely Impossible

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 319 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 9550-9621]
##### NetTally 1.9.9
[X] Drive to Cindy's house and hope Winifred is there and has some idea what to do.
No. of Votes: 36

Spoiler: Voters

PineTreeq
Aoinfinity
Asquil
Blackshard
Brisket
ChaoticWhimsy
Civil Reader
eraserman
Faiir
fractal42
Gingganz
Greckle
gRR
Lazurman
LurkerGuy
master2000
MrBTXz
napkintooth
Pseudonym
QuestingQuestioner
Relheun
rikalous
Sirrocco
Skelm
Spectral Waltz
storybookknight
sunspark
Sykomantis
The Articulator
theon111
theonebutcher
ThrustVectoring
truemechasonic
Tulip
w.cheff
Zeushobbit

[x] Drive to the hotel where the Arcadias are, then see if having sex with Cindy or around her helps her wake up.
No. of Votes: 13

Spoiler: Voters

Jirachi
Apathy+peeves
CTCatapult
Eler0
Elitist Oars
fictionfan
ls2
PlaneOfInfiniteCats
Secret Secretion
Wert Areman
Wulfenbach
Xenia
zachol

[X] Throw caution to the wind and invigorate Cindy by "the fire with the warmth it hath" on this soft grass.
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
january1may

-[X] Possibly see if you can get some time with the two of you alone in her bedroom to give her some loving (and sexual) affection? Start with an intimate massage maybe? Couldn't hurt, right?
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Sirrocco
Aoinfinity

--[X] Possibly have her react (unconsciously) in a cute and vulnerable and very-very-prey way that winds up with you taking... further advantage.
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Sirrocco
Aoinfinity

[X] Drive to Cindy's house, where Winifred reminds Charles that it took more than a kiss in the original tale and see if Cindy wakes up after fucking her unconscious body in her own bed.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Ephemeral

Total No. of Voters: 52

Some people are naturally sneaky, suspicious, surreptitious types.

A lot more people think they are.

Take Cindy Sheen, for example. It'd be an insult to her to say she's led an easy life. Her dad died, she's not pretty, she's definitely not rich. But her family hasn't been gaslighting her since she was a baby, and she grew up, not to mince words, white.

The kind of person who thinks they're sneaky will go to their college class wearing a different body and sit down at a different desk. They'll think to themselves, "I'm not wearing any clothes like I usually wear, right? I'm not sitting at my usual desk. Nobody will notice. Sure, Cindy Sheen is missing from her class that day and some totally new girl shows up the same day, but nobody would believe the truth, right?"

A naturally sneaky person would stay the fuck away from their old college class. They'd be worried about some little tell, some small mistake, or some enormous giveaway that slipped their mind.

Not to brag too much, I didn't deduce it the second I walked into the Hadleyworth classroom. I don't jump straight to impossible explanations more than any other sane person. I just noticed the new girl.

Then I noticed she had Cindy's backpack with her.

Did I jump straight to the conclusion she was Cindy? Of course not. I figured in the back of my mind that Cindy had left her backpack somewhere, the pretty girl had found it, and Cindy had asked the pretty girl to stop by here in order to hand the backpack over.

But I marked it. I marked it as a place where I didn't know why the pretty girl had Cindy's backpack. You learn to mark that type of thing, when the man of the house has been gaslighting you for as far back as you can remember. What distinguishes the naturally sneaky people isn't so much what they do after they become suspicious, as when they become suspicious.

Next, I get a text from Cindy saying she's missing class and to look at my email.

Cindy's email mentions family issues and that she's out of town. Says that Cindy sent somebody to take notes for her.

This is the point at which I get confused, because that doesn't match my theory of why the pretty girl has the backpack. Did Cindy maybe lose her phone too? I send back a message asking Cindy for her father's full name.

There's the sound of texting from the new girl's direction, though Hangouts doesn't show for another ten seconds that the person on the other end is typing.

Frank Weed Sheen, says the text from Cindy's cellphone.

There's still texting sounds coming from the new girl's direction, though no more typing-indicator in Hangouts.

Could be that part was just a coincidence. But continuing texting sounds would be easy to fake, if you were the one sending a text and trying to hide the fact.

Do I start thinking the new girl is really Cindy? Of course not.

I do pull up my laptop and set the glossy screen to where I can see her reflection by squinting the right way.

The new girl keeps on looking over at me, when she thinks I'm not looking back. All through the class.

So obviously there's something going on I haven't figured out. You wouldn't ordinarily ask some completely different person to take notes for you in a class. If you did, you wouldn't ordinarily give them your backpack. I also don't know of any cheerleaders who'd go to a class and take notes because Cindy asked them to. Or why they'd spend half the class looking at me. And Cindy doesn't usually text me and send me email when she misses a class. It's as if somebody doesn't want me wondering what happened to her. But I already checked to see if somebody else had Cindy's phone, and it did seem to be her, and I do have other things to do with my life.

Thursday, Cindy doesn't show up to class again. I look up a phone number and call Mrs. Sheen, to see what story she gives. Mrs. Sheen claims Cindy is home with the flu, not out of town.

It still doesn't occur to me that anything impossible has happened. Because, I know I keep saying this, but it's true, I'm not crazy.

It wasn't until late Thursday night, maybe Friday morning, that I first had the thought.

Did Cindy transform herself into the pretty girl?

Now, how the hell would that work? Some amazing biotechnological treatment that nobody had ever heard of? But we know how human bodies work, in a lot of detail, and that's not possible to do with current technology. Nanotechnology? Nobody's close to that today. Aliens with nanotechnology? Go ahead, explain to me why they'd arrive on Earth and make Cindy prettier and then let her run loose to go to class the next day.

No. Cindy did not transform prettier. Now that I've had the thought explicitly, I can see that it's stupid.

I turn over in my bed and start getting back to sleep again.

Then I have another thought. You know that old Sherlock Holmes quote, right? "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Well, Sherlock Holmes is bullshit. Go read any criticism of Arthur Conan Doyle ever. Holmes is perfectly fit, strong enough to bend iron without working hard, and always jumping to wild fucking conclusions based on somebody's shoe mud. An expert gaslighter like Mike Williamson would have eaten Holmes for fucking breakfast and laughed. In the story Holmes is always fucking right, too, which I can't stand. Even Doyle hated his own character. Really, look it up. Doyle tried to kill off Holmes and the publisher forced him to bring him back. I grew up on fucking Veronica Mars and even at that age I knew better than to take Holmes seriously.

I'm not a huge fan of Dirk Gently and his Holistic Detective Agency, as detective novels go, but at least Dirk doesn't take himself any more serious than he is.

The idea that she is somehow receiving yesterday's stock market prices apparently out of thin air is merely impossible, and therefore must be the case, because the idea that she is maintaining an immensely complex and laborious hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable. The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don't know about, and God knows there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about.

Science knows how biology works. I, personally, know enough biology to know that a human body can't change in the few days I take my eye off Cindy. It runs contrary to something fundamental we do know about.

Who knows how the mind works, though? Why is consciousness even? I had an honest psych professor once, and he was always emphasizing how the first rule of psychology is that nobody knows shit about how anything actually works.

Can a mind jump to someone else's body?

It's not the type of impossible that contradicts something fundamental which we do know about. It's the type of impossible that supposes there's something we don't know about, and God knows there are enough of those. Half the stuff people thought was impossible 100 years ago was just stuff they didn't know about.

I didn't go believing the thought. You get gaslit a few times, you learn not to go believing the first weirdest explanation that comes to mind.

You also learn not to just ignore your suspicions, either.

So there I am late Thursday night, thinking about it. I know something is up with Cindy. I know that Cindy and her mother gave different explanations for why Cin missed class. I know that a pretty girl came into our class on Tuesday with Cindy's backpack, sent me texts using Cindy's phone, and then spent a lot of the class looking in my direction when she thought I couldn't see...

Yeah, what is supposed to be the perfectly mundane explanation for that?

I reread Cindy's email from Tuesday.

From: Cinderella Sheen
To: Felice Williamson
Subject: Not in class today

Hey Felice, something familyish came up, I think I'm going to end up missing a couple of days of school because of being out of town. I already asked somebody to take notes for me, so don't worry about that on your side. Just apologizing in case you wanted to talk later and I'd gone and vanished.

I'd wanted to talk to you, actually, but it wouldn't go well into email. Good news, not bad news. Possibly shareable good news. Sorry for the vagueing. I think you'll like it when you hear.

I'm okay despite the familyish thing, hope you are too. I'll still be reachable by email.

---Cindy​

I put myself into the shoes of Cindy who has just managed to transfer her mind into the body of some pretty girl.

"Good news." Check. She has to vague about it. Also check. "Possibly shareable..."

She's thinking about whether I'd want a new body too.

I'm---I'm touched, honestly. I don't know if I'd have run right over to tell Cindy if I figured out how to jump bodies. I mean, after this, maybe I would. But earlier, I wouldn't have thought that we were help-hide-the-body friends.

I'm also more than slightly weirded out. Cindy picked a target who deserved it, right? The Cindy I thought I knew wouldn't kill somebody whose only crime was being prettier than us. But how does a girl like Cin know someone who deserves capital punishment? The only people I know, where I'd vote for a death penalty if I was on a jury, are Mike Williamson, four guys Mike knows, and one boy from my high school. But I do know six people like that. Maybe there was somebody like that for Cindy too?

Somebody who just happened to be a very pretty girl our age?

I shouldn't make up stories and judge based on them. Maybe you can only target a comatose body whose first mind is gone, and Cindy took her pick from a hospital. Maybe the target has to consent, and the pretty girl was going to commit suicide otherwise and didn't want to be herself anymore.

If there's a way to do this that isn't murder, then... yeah. Yeah, I want in. I want in soon. There's other lives I'd rather live than mine.

Am I starting to think like this is real?

I decide to try running with the crazy theory, without writing it out in so many words, to see what happens. I send Cindy an email, cramming in as many Felicities as possible so Cin knows it's the black woman and not the Women In Black.

From: Felice Williamson
To: Cinderella Sheen
Subject: Re: Not in class today

hey c. i noticed you weren't in class thurs. the girl who took notes on tues wasn't there. i'd have taken extra notes for you, but you said not to worry.

i called your mom and asked her why you weren't in class. she said you were home with the flu. she didn't say anything about you being out of town due to family issues like in your email. you should probly check in with her and coordinate cover stories.

you said you wished you could talk to me, and that you might have some good news? any update on that? tbh i could use some good news sometime soon.

i know there's srsly weird shit going on in your life. you don't have to dance around that.

i'm worried about if you're handling things ok. don't take this wrong but you're not as suspicious/sneaky as i am.

also the girl in tues class was careless and gave away the secret.

plz include some personal info in your reply again so i know it's you. like what happened with the bacne.​

I start feeling the regrets as soon as I send it. I'm tired enough to fall asleep anyways.

Next morning.

From: Cinderella Sheen
To: Felice Williamson
Subject: Re: Not in class today

Hi, Fel! I've been working hard on making my good news shareable with you. I'm hoping to get back to you very soon on that and will email you when I know for sure. I don't want to make any promises and disappoint you if something goes wrong.

I'm sorry for worrying you and for vagueing around the fact that srsly weird shit is happening. Not to dance around it, yes there is seriously weird shit going on in my life. I think you'll like some of it though.

I'll tell the girl from Tuesday to be more careful in the future.

I'd prefer never to speak of the bacne again, but "student medical center" should say enough.​

I reread the email a few more times.

It's really, really hard to read it as anything except Cindy making like she jumped into another body.

My life hasn't been as bad as it could be. I've been lucky some ways. I've never been betrayed by somebody who'd been friendly to me up until that point. Mostly, people just haven't been friends with me to start with. In my life experience so far, the world has been sharply divided into assholes who fuck with you and non-assholes who ignore you. Plus Cindy, I suppose. Or before her, Samantha, who committed suicide because of that boy from high school.

Cindy turning into Mike and gaslighting me...

...is not something I would have expected. But it's two trillion times more probable than Cindy having jumped bodies.

I think about this, feeling sicker by the minute.

Maybe I'm just fucking with my own head for no reason. It's not like Cindy said she swapped bodies. Maybe there's some mundane explanation that's whooshing straight over my head.

I'll just suspend judgment. And be ready to say no if anyone asks me for money.

I go to my Friday classes, the normal everyday world of Norville U. If Cindy's anywhere on campus, in either body, I don't see her.

I don't know why I started feeling hopeful the next morning. Maybe it was just having slept better than usual that night, or not having classes that day and some rare spare energy to call my own.

For whatever reason, Saturday morning was when I tried setting aside my usual prejudices towards sanity. I considered the madness for real.

If it's possible to jump into other bodies, Cindy almost certainly isn't the only person ever to discover it. It's a thousand times more likely that she figured out how to do something a thousand other people can do.

Cin may be thinking like she just discovered an amazing new thing nobody has ever done before. She may not realize that, if this is possible at all, maybe there are other people who know and are keeping it secret.

Cinderella Sheen is not a naturally suspicious person.

No, let's be honest here. Cin is, I mean, she's smart enough that a CPA isn't out of the question, but she is, in other ways, a bit of a ditz. If she actually is pretty now, she's going to get herself pregnant three hours after the first time some glamour boy shows her a well-crafted honest smile.

If the impossible story is the real one, Cindy may be about to get herself in a whole lot of trouble. If she hasn't already.

I start to reach for my cellphone.

I stop. The government records all domestic calls. The government stores all the emails. And the mainstream media is still trying hard to act like that is a huge conspiracy theory, rather than a confirmed fact post-Snowden. It weirds me out, because it feels like in some odd way they're successfully fooling the country even if they aren't fooling any particular people. I don't understand how that works.

There's also the possibility she'd ghost or hang up for whatever reason, and I very want to talk to her.

I should go talk to Cin in person. Or maybe case the street for a while, to see if the Men In Black got there first. I'll decide when I arrive.

I've never actually been to Cindy's house.

Cinderella Sheen isn't in the address books.

Winifred Sheen is, and the street name sounds familiar.

I put on clothes that let me move around as fast as my current body can move. I take with me a couple of self-defense items that I've picked up here and there.

I get into my car---if you want an idea of how old my car is, it's chipped out of stone and you drive it by picking it up and running around carrying it---and drive on over to that address.

First time through, I drive through the street without stopping. Cindy's house doesn't look like the Men In Black got there first.

I park a few houses over. I head on down. I ring the doorbell.

Nobody answers.

I knock hard on the front door.

Nobody answers.

I ring the doorbell and knock hard on the front door.

Still nobody answers, which, at that point, I actually would have expected somebody to do if anyone was home.

Could be they're both dead. Could also be the mother's at a cafe somewhere sipping a milkshake, and Cindy's strolling through a neighborhood park. There's no rule saying people have to be at home on Saturday.

I'd brought my laptop with me, of course. I get back into my car and start doing homework, frequently looking up at the house and the street. I'm not just watching to see if Cindy comes back. I'm watching for black vans.

What drives up instead, half an hour later, parking directly in front of the Sheen house, is a silver Crown Vic.

From where I am, I can see that the pretty girl is flopped motionless in the passenger seat, with her shirt ripped in half down the front, looking exactly like a body somebody's dragging around. Could be she's just resting, but the first thought that comes to my mind is that Cindy isn't in there right now.

I don't know why my mind immediately decided that the Southern boy in the driver's seat was not from the Men In Black. Maybe some mix of the Men In Black knowing better than to drive around with an obviously dragged-around female body visible in a front seat, and a Crown Vic being such a stereotypical cop car that no undercover elite driving one could possibly be taken seriously.

The Southern guy was stepping out of the car with a slightly vacant expression. With an empty body visible in the passenger seat next to him, sprawled, shirt torn open, looking very much like a Rohypnol rape victim in progress.

I don't know. Some instinct just told me that this guy was not a naturally sneaky person.

At least I have no better excuse for why I hopped out of my car and headed towards him after he started trying to heft the possibly-unoccupied possibly-ex-Cindy body out of the passenger-side door. I mean, I don't think I'm suicidal.

7.14.b [FW,CA,WS]: Sensible Persons

"Pardon me," I say as I come up from behind the Southern guy as he's trying to rearrange the pretty girl's body inside his car.

Maybe due to too many movies, I'm expecting him to startle and comically hit his head on the doorframe. Instead he turns to look at me without dropping anything.

Then he turns to look at the pretty girl's body he's struggling with, like he's just now realizing how this looks to a stranger.

Okay, so not Cindy in a male body. Cindy would have recognized me.

I also note that the guy is still carefully holding the body in place, rather than dumping it to deal with me. Like this body is going to be lived-in again, not like it's an unwanted body that needs to be disposed of.

Or it could be some totally other sleeping pretty girl, who never was Cindy, being taken to Cindy's house for some reason I haven't figured out. What, you think I'm one of those Holmes-like characters who never questions her current assumptions about what's going on?

"Uh," says Southern Man. "This isn't what it looks like."

"It's not?" I say. I need to phrase this so that it doesn't say exactly what I'm thinking, just in case I'm wrong about everything. If possible, I need to hear what he says happened before he learns what I think happened. "Because it looks to me like you're holding the body of somebody who recently underwent a drastic change in her looks. Need help moving that?"

"I... might," says the guy. "Thank you very much for offering." He arranges Cindy's body into a comfortable position, and then turns to look at me. He still has that semi-concussed look about him, but his face is scrunching like he's trying to focus. At least Southern Man isn't looking surprised at how the fat sister don't be speakin' Black. (Or, god help him, trying to speak to me in African-American Vernacular English when he talks.) "Sorry, ma'am," he says, the term sounding genuinely respectful when combined with his Southern accent, "but would you mind telling me who you are, and why you know that?"

Not why you think that, but why you know that... which sounds like confirmation. So either Southern Man is not a naturally suspicious person... or he has no idea what I'm talking about and doesn't want to let me know that. "Just to be sure that you're authorized to know some pretty large secrets," I say, "I'd like you to say the first letter of the first name of the person that body belongs to. I'll respond with the second letter of that person's name, you say the third letter, I'll say the fourth."

"C as in Charlie," the man says, looking at me cautiously.

OH. MY. GOD.

I thought I was ready to handle this. I wasn't.

"I as in Indigo," I reply back, keeping all of my screaming internal.

"N as in November."

"D as in Dentist. Let's get Cindy back to her house?"

It is a very nice body, I think, as the two of us struggle to move it into a carryable position. With the shirt torn it looks even nicer than I remember. I definitely want. No, not sexually, get your mind out of the gutter, I mean I want my own body like that.

We carefully carry the body over to the front door of the Sheen household, without dropping it even once. I try to tame the wild horses stampeding through my mind, so I can think of gambits for worming more information out of this guy.

We get to the front door and Southern uses one elbow to... ring the doorbell.

I just look at him.

Then I turn my head and look at all the houses that might have watched a black woman, and an admittedly much whiter and businessy-if-rumpled guy, heave a Pretty White Girl's body up to a house. A house that is not going to let them in. Leaving them standing in clear sight on the doorstep with the unconscious, torn-clothed body of a Pretty White Girl. Which is a phrase that needs to be capitalized when discussing potential police involvement.

"Mrs. Sheen isn't home right now," I mention. Again I keep the screams internal. "I've been waiting for her to get back."

"Oh," says Southern.

"I'd been hoping you'd have a key. I mean. I didn't imagine you'd make us carry her all the way here, instead of leaving her in the car and ringing the doorbell first, if you weren't already sure you could get into the house."

"Sorry."

My eyes fall on Cindy-2's torn clothing. "I suppose," I say without much hope, "you already checked her purse and pockets to see if she still had her house key on her."

Southern gives me this very odd look. He starts to say something, then stops. "I, ah, I didn't feel right about invading her privacy like that," he says. "I don't suppose you could check her purse and pockets?"

I give the idiot another look, for not doing this earlier in the car. I gingerly lower Cindy's lower half to the concrete of their front porch, and once my hands are free, reach into Cindy's purse. I really, really hope I'm not being videoed by anyone's doorbell... oh, well, we can always explain that we were just trying to take the unconscious girl back to her home like the good samaritans we are.

Southern-Man stares at my hand motions while I'm searching her purse, as if I am doing something very mysterious that maybe he'll be able to understand if he stares hard enough.

"I think," he says, "that we are operating from inside different perspectives on reality. Do you know whether yours is closer to the truth than mine?"

Okay, I hope this guy just changed bodies himself, and that jumping bodies has a psychedelic effect. Because if not, he's very on drugs. Which is very not what I look for in a fellow secret-keeper.

Costume jewelry, cellphone, more costume jewelry... well there it is, a key in Cindy's purse, who could possibly have thought of looking in there. It unlocks the house door, all right, and I swing it open. "If you were seeing reality clearly you'd be able to open more doors," I state. "Say, have you recently engaged in... um. Activities of a psychically strenuous nature?" That's too vague, that could be drugs. "In ways that would make you resemble Cindy, I mean."

We carry the body into the house. "Yeah," says Southern. He blinks. "Though how you could possibly know that... did Cindy tell other people what she was going to do with me? Who are you? What do you know about Cindy and why?"

I'm not sure it's smart for him to know I'm Felice Williamson. Hell, I'm having second thoughts about him being inside Cindy's house. "I'm a friend of Cindy's from college whose name sounds like Elisa Wilson," I say, as we lay her body down on a living-room sofa. "If Cindy didn't tell you my real name, I'm not sure you're supposed to know it." After I go back to shut the door, I turn, and fold my arms to give him a tier-two aggressive stare. "Now, before I answer any more questions, you need to be telling me who you are, how you found out about Cindy's recent life changes, and why Cindy's shirt has been ripped open."

Southern gives a guilty wince. "I grabbed her to try to stop her from falling down and that just happened... I'm Charles. Charles Adan. And I'm sorry, my mental gas tank has some sugar in it right now. I was hoping Mrs. Sheen could do some sanity-checks on my current thoughts, even if that's embarrassing. She seems like a sensible person underneath her, her... nevermind."

Okay. Knowing he's out of it and trying to turn stuff over to Mrs. Sheen is not stupid of Charles Adan, if that's his real name. Earns him back some of the credit he's lost with me. I do mark consciously that most shirts don't just rip open when you try to grab somebody who's falling, and that this sounds a lot like saying you got your black eye from running into a doorknob. "And you know about Cindy at all, how?"

Charles's face scrunches up again. "Sorry, ma'am. I don't know what about Cindy you already know, or should know, and I'm in no state to decide."

"We could take turns," I say. "I told you I know that's Cindy inside that body. So it's your turn to tell me something you know. Oh, and not that Cindy was helping you undergo a similar experience to her. I've already guessed that. She was planning that for me too."

Charles's eyes widen slightly. "You must be a very close friend. Wait, maybe she did mention you. Cindy said she had an overweight friend she'd been trying to help, along with her mother? I'm not sure what to say, except that I look forward to getting to know one of Cindy's best friends, which it sounds like you are."

I feel a pang of regret inside. And that's also an opportunity to display some openness on my end, and sound less like I'm agreeing with everything he says to fish for information. "Yeah, about that. When I understood Cindy's offer, I felt bad that she'd been more friends with me than I'd realized. You know that saying about how a friend helps you move, and a good friend helps you move a body? I hadn't been sure we were help-each-other-move friends. I mean, I'd have helped Cindy move into an apartment, if she'd asked, but I wasn't sure she'd have helped me move. I'd wondered if maybe the black girl was hanging onto the white girl a little harder than the white girl was hanging onto her. Turns out, we were body-moving friends and I didn't know it."

"Well, you've helped me move a body," the guy says, and grins at me. Which is better humor than I would have expected in his state of mind. "Does that make us good friends?"

"I might not mind saying yes to that eventually," I say, "but let's put the flirting on hold for now." He doesn't make a disgusted expression at the idea of flirting with me, which also wins him a point. I mean, I'm not expecting him to actually flirt with me, but at least he didn't look openly disgusted at the thought. "I told you something I know about Cindy. You prove something you're allowed to know."

Charles opens his mouth, and then shuts it, frowning. "I don't think that's how this should work? I shouldn't just tell you about that thing. Or that other thing. Not until Cindy herself says it's okay. Don't get me wrong, I think you probably are who you say you are, but that---that's just---I mean, probability---I shouldn't try to think about the concept of probability right now. Probability is bullshit."

"I mean, I respect that you're cautious, but that's a problem when it comes to my knowing that you're allowed to know things I want to say to you," I say. "Can you talk in code?"

Charles shakes his head. "I shouldn't try that. Not in this state of mind. I think we should just wait for her mother to come back. Mrs. Sheen knows which parts you know, I assume? This conversation seems much less likely to go wrong once Winifred Sheen is added to it."

I sigh. It looks like this guy is too sensible to just blurt out everything, even in his altered state of consciousness. I mean, he'll unsneakily agree with stuff he thinks I know, but I have to make him think I know it first... and I'm out of things I actually know to use as hints.

It also sounds like Mrs. Sheen has top-level access to this tiny conspiracy. In which case she knows I'm not part of it, and this whole game is over as soon as she gets back home.

Oh, well. Situations with great comedy potential in movies may not work as well in real life, if everybody involved is a sensible person trying to be sensible. Sure, I got some mileage out of it, but nothing like the glorious cascade of misunderstandings that I was hoping for.

"You have any idea when Cindy is going to be back with us?" I say.

Charles again shakes his head. "She just... I think she just exhausted herself. And her... sexy self. I don't even know if I'm supposed to be talking about her you-know-what in front of you. All I can think of is having sex with her unconscious body and seeing if that helps."

What.

What.

WHAT.

"Makes sense," I say with a nod. "I mean, that would help if anything would, right? Look, I hope you don't mind if I call Mrs. Sheen and tell her you're here?"

"Oh, sure," says Mr. Sleep Rapist, like he can't imagine he just said anything that Cindy's mother would find alarming.

I take a step to go onto the front porch, to make the call.

I realize that would mean leaving "Charles" alone with Cindy's new body.

"Uh, Charles," I say to the man who may possibly have an unusual perspective on reality right now, "would you mind stepping onto the front porch while I make this call?"

He does.

I lock the door.

I run lumber at an accelerated pace up the stairs, and duck into the bathroom I find there, which I hope is far enough away from ground level that "Charles" won't hear this call. He didn't see which car I came from, right? It would be bad if he wrecked my car.

I take out my phone. I dial.

"Winifred Sheen speaking," says the phone after it picks up.

"This is Felice Williamson," I say into the phone. "We spoke on Thursday, and you told me Cindy was home with the flu?"

There's a pause.

"Yes," says the phone. Even at this fidelity, I hear a certain chagrin and resignation in her tone, like Mrs. Born-Before-Everyone-Had-Their-Own-Cellphone is wondering for the first time why I would need to ask her that question. "So, what plot twist in your life led you to call me?"

"Do you know someone named Charles Adan?"

"Damn it," says the phone.

My heart rate spikes up another 20 BPM. That doesn't sound like her hearing that name was completely cheerful happy news. "I'm inside your house and I just locked him outside the house. Cindy's in here with me, yeah I know how she looks these days, but her body is unconscious. Possibly nobody's home. Should I be hanging up this phone and dialing 911?"

"911?" the phone says, sounding shocked. "Oh no. Felice, what happened with Charles?"

"Uh, I think he's in an altered state of mind after transferring himself to a new body."

There's a pause, and for a second I worry that Mrs. Sheen wasn't in the know.

"DAMN it!" says my phone. "That is the LAST time I ever believe there's nothing wrong with one of Cindy's suitors besides his deviant sexual impulses."

7.14.c [FW, WS]: Comedy of Errors

"Does Charles seem violent?" my phone asks me.

"I---I don't know," I say back. I really don't. "At first he---he seemed to know he was out of it? Said he'd been trying to get into the house because he knew he was fifty percent baked, and Mrs. Sheen seemed like a sensible person who could take over. But then he said something about raping Cin's unconscious body. And her shirt was already torn. I mean, torn in half, her breasts were exposed."

"Oh," says the phone. It now sounds calmer. "That may not be as bad as it sounds. Charles and Cindy have a consensual BDSM relationship. He didn't seem violent towards you?"

I stare at the phone. "No," I manage to say. "Not yet. At least, he didn't seem violent before I locked him out of the house. Do you know him well enough to say he's safe?"

There's a pause, and from the phone comes a sigh. "Unfortunately no. I'm tempted to say that you should get out of the house yourself---"

"What if Charles sees me if I'm sneaking out?" I say. "What if he comes through a window? He'd be alone with Cindy! How bad is it if I just call 911?"

"Let's hold off on involving the police," she says. "Especially if there's no sign Charles is trying to break in."

That's when I realize I've been speaking, not in code, on a phone, where the government records all the calls, like an idiot.

This. Is why we are supposed to stay calm and not panic in emergencies no matter what happens.

Well, maybe the government won't get around to reading the calls until later. By then we could all be in different bodies in a different country.

Fuck me.

"Question," says the phone. "What do you know about Charles transferring himself to a new body? All the details. Who, when, how."

"I know almost nothing. I don't know what Charles looked like before. Now he looks like a man in his mid-twenties, and I don't have his eye color memorized or anything. He was driving a silver Crown Victoria, not an expensive car---"

"That's his. Or at least it belonged to his last body."

Really not the sneaky type. "And he showed up at your house with Cindy's body sprawled over the passenger seat of his car. I came by hoping Cindy would be here and we could talk. Cindy's lying on the sofa right now. What do we do now? Do you have any idea how to wake Cindy up?"

"Not yet. The obvious next step is to have you shout my phone number over to Charles, just yell it to him through the door, so he can phone me and we can talk directly. Felice, do you feel sufficiently not in imminent danger that I can take a minute to find my charger and then call you back? My cellphone is running low on power."

"Yeah," I say. "That's... fine. This is fine. Everything is fine."

The call disconnects.

That, of course, is when I notice my own cellphone is almost out of power too. God damn it! I could have sworn I charged that thing this morning!

Winifred Sheen ended the call, and began to dig through her carry-bag one-handedly to hunt down her cellphone charger. She'd give the Erogame this, the crisis had been conveniently timed for when she'd been about to head home anyways after her slow tour of bakeries. Winifred hadn't been able to find her travel power brick this morning, and her laptop was almost out of power.

In retrospect, she should have played a greater variety of eroge as fast as possible, to one ending each. Not played all seven routes of Tsukihime all the way through, including the bonus Yumizuka Satsuki route and the grand harem ending. Tsukihime had one central body-hopping character, but Michael Roa Valdamjong did not seem like a good fit for Charles.

Which meant that now, today, Winifred was not genre-savvy enough to guess what would happen next with Cindy and Charles and Felice.

A thought came to Winifred. An improbable thought, very much so, but so had been running into Uncle Joseph. "Hey!" Winifred called to the cafe, looking up from her bag. "Does anyone here play enough erogames to understand the genre? If you do, I'll buy you whatever you like if you can answer one question."

(It wasn't a cheap bakery. It was the type that displayed French translations of all the goods on the menu. One couple present had actually been talking in French. But her daughter was hoping to be rich, and Winifred was willing to throw away a few dozen dollars on that hope, if not a few thousand.)

People at their tables looked at Winifred in surprise, most looking down again. Then one man in his early thirties raised an embarrassed-looking hand.

Winifred jogged over to his table. A quick negotiation established that the man didn't need a cookie, or anything else, and it was fine if she just asked her question.

"All right," said Winifred. "This is time-sensitive, I have a friend who's in the middle of something. Ah, but it would still be better to have a right answer than a wrong answer, so don't rush too much. Suppose a girl's boyfriend is some type of entity that transfers between bodies, like Michael Roa Valdamjong in Tsukihime, though he's been acting nicer than Roa before this. He does a body transfer and ends up half baked, in the stoned sense. The girl ends up unconscious, somehow. He tries to take the girl's unconscious body back to her house, saying that he realizes his mind is being affected and he wants to check in with the girl's mother. On his way there, he runs into his girlfriend's friend from college, who realizes something is wrong. The friend locks him out of the house and calls the girl's mother. Also the body-hopper wants to have sex with the girl's unconscious body, and the girl's shirt is already torn open to expose her breasts. What happens next?"

"Ahem," said the early-thirties man in a French accent, still looking embarrassed about having this conversation at all. "Have you tried googling---"

"The game is a pre-preview release and can't be googled," Winifred said.

"Ahem, then," the man said, his voice going even quieter, "I would predict he does end up having sex with her unconscious body."

"What else? Is the girl's friend in danger from him? Is the girl likely to end up permanently hurt?" Winifred did her best to make her voice sound only hurried, and not tense.

"What genre is this erogame?" said the man. "RPG, nuikige, visual novel?"

"It's a postmodern eroge where the genre varies by the route. What genre of erogame did that route sound like?"

"Is it being played for humor?" said the man.

"Humor," repeated Winifred Sheen.

Wait.

She'd been surprised before, in the back of her mind, that a nice male body like Charles's would be thrown away by the Erogame just as Cindy had started to have sex with it.

Felice had said that Charles looked like a man in his twenties and was driving a silver Crown Victoria.

Winifred hadn't asked Felice to text over a picture of the new Charles.

"Comedy of errors?" Winifred said. "Well, if it's that, all you need to stop one of those is clear communication between the shit."

She didn't bother looking again for the cellphone charger inside her bag. It obviously wouldn't be there. Instead she pulled out her phone and tried desperately to call a Lyft between her current location and home. If she could just get a car on the way---

Her phone ran out of battery and shut down before the Lyft app finished opening.

She only realized then that what she should have done with her battery's last moments was memorize Felice's phone number.

"Does anyone," Winifred said through slightly gritted teeth as she stood up again, "in this cafe, happen to have a USB charger with them?"

"Does USB-C work?" somebody called from one corner, which, as always with USB-C, was God's way of adding insult onto injury.

"I have a portable power pack with plugs for Lightning, USB-B, USB-A standard, and USB-A mini, but I lost the one for USB-A micro," somebody said from another corner.

Winifred threw twenty-two dollars onto her table and turned to address the bakery again. "Could somebody," Winifred said, mildly, not sounding at all like the way she felt, "please call me a Lyft from here to my house? I can pay them the estimated ride price in cash."

The same man who'd helped her earlier pulled out his own phone, and half a minute later shook his head. "The Lyft app seems to be down for some reason? I can't reach their website either. Hold on and I'll try Uber---"

"Thank you for trying," Winifred said, and stomped out of the cafe before she took down the Uber servers as well. Omnipotent powers opposing her or not, Winifred Sheen would not be stopped this easily. If she had to offer passing strangers cash in exchange for a ride home faster than the bus, she would.

The street that greeted her on exiting the cafe did not look like the street she remembered from before entering.

For one thing, there seemed to be many more signs and posters with French as well as English.

But this was only normal for the city of Moncton, Canada.

7.14.d [FW, CA]: Adult Oversight

My phone dies almost immediately after I notice the battery drain. I do manage to read off Winifred Sheen's phone number before it goes, and start repeating the digits under my breath. There should be an old-fashioned phone line in the house, right? With a rotary phone? Mrs. Sheen seems like that type of old-fashioned girl.

I look around in the upstairs rooms, then go back downstairs, repeating the digits to myself as I run stride with alacrity.

There isn't another phone in the house.

I get the cellphones that were in Cin's purse. One old phone with a slightly cracked screen that looks familiar from occasional lunches together. One newer but cheap phone. Oh look, Cin got herself a burner phone, now shouldn't the naturally sneaky one have thought of that.

Her old phone wants a numeric password I don't have. I don't remember her birthday and it probably wouldn't work if I did.

The newer phone has a fingerprint reader. It obligingly unlocks when I press Cindy's finger on the screen. Note to self, don't use fingerprint readers if somebody else might get access to my body.

I try calling Mrs. Sheen's number, praying I've memorized it correctly. I end up at a voice mailbox with only the standard greeting set.

I text the number, saying I'm Felice.

She still doesn't answer when I try calling again.

Let me guess. She couldn't find her charger.

I peek around the corner of a windowshade, out at where Charles Adan is waiting on the front porch. Still patient and uncomplaining. Maybe this isn't an imminent crisis---

The man steps forward and tries to open the front door. It doesn't open for him, of course.

Charles Adan is frowning now.

He raises his hand and knocks on the door. Hard. It doesn't sound like a patient knock.

Shit.

Charles Adan stared at the locked front door, starting to feel angry. More at himself, at his own slowness in this vital moment, than at whoever had tricked him out of the house. Leaving Cindy unprotected. Maybe even vulnerable if her extranormal powers were exhausted.

He'd been stupid. Very stupid. He'd had only the girl's word that she was Cindy's friend. She'd said a lot of vague things that he might have read too much into. All he really knew was that this was somebody who had suspected this was what Cinderella looked like now. He knew nothing else about this person, not for certain. And he'd let her take Cindy's house key from wherever, invade Cindy's house, and lock him away from Cindy.

"Hey!" the overweight girl's voice yelled through the door. "I spoke to Mrs. Sheen! She says to wait outside until she gets back! Sorry, you just seem really out of it. We don't know if we can trust you around Cindy right now."

Charles Adan pulled his own phone from his pocket, feeling relieved. "Give me Mrs. Sheen's number and let me confirm that with her," he called back. He and Winifred really should have exchanged numbers before this.

The girl recited a string of ten numbers, with the correct area code, which Charles entered into his phone. "Although," the girl's voice called through when the digits were finished, "her phone was just running out of power, so she might not answer until she can find her charger cable!"

Charles dialed the number.

It went to a generic voice mailbox message.

His heart sank down to his toes. "I'm not that out of it," he hissed at the shut door, and knocked again. Hard.

This time there was no answer.

Shitshitshitshitshit.

The doorbell rings. Then it rings again, again, again, again. Over and over, not stopping.

Who. Who do I call now? What do I do now? Even if this man wasn't violent before this, he might be violent now. Men don't like being defied, especially by women.

There is nobody else I can call. Before today Cin would have been the person who came to mind if I needed to call someone to bail me out of jail, and I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd said no.

The doorbell stops ringing, and I have a heart-stopping thought. I actually, literally run this time, checking that all the windows downstairs are closed and locked. One window is open. I shut it. I pull all the curtains shut too.

Then I start looking at the message history on Cindy's new burner phone. There's almost nothing. Four calls with unlabeled numbers, one of which is to the number I recognize as Mrs. Sheen's. One text saying this is Stanley Stone from Walgreens, call me when you get a chance which doesn't seem promising. One set of texts---

One set of sexts from Illyria to somebody being addressed as "Copper Swallow."

Hi Copper Swallow, this is Illyria, the girl you met on the street...

I stare at the racy text. Did this get sent to Cindy? No, the message signed "Illyria" was sent from this phone.

Maybe this is a code. It could be a code. It doesn't look like code but that's how you'd want a good code to look. If I was making codes I'd try to make one that people wouldn't look at and think "That sure looks like a code."

It has to be code. How likely is it that Cindy acquired a lesbian submissive, who'd take long-term instructions from her about orgasms, within a few days of becoming pretty? Not very likely, and once you've ruled out what's unlikely---

I hope to the sunny skies this is an ally of Cindy's who knows more about this than I do. Though, obviously, I'm not going to assume that's true. Should I call from Cindy's number? No, I don't want to have to explain immediately why I'm not Cindy.

I download Google Voice, striding another rapid circuit around the house while I wait the eternal thirty seconds for the download to complete, and then I make the call.

Charles finished a rapid stride around the house, but there weren't any conveniently open windows and the back door was also locked.

He was giving serious thought to breaking a window.

The part of him that hadn't given in to fear and anger was yelling even louder not to do anything remotely violent or threatening while he was drunk. He was stupid right now, had just made a major error, and might be more mentally disabled than he could tell from the inside.

He needed someone else to check his thinking. But who? He didn't have Winifred's real number.

Charles didn't know that many other people involved in this.

And all of those others were in the same place.

Charles pulled his phone again, looking up the front desk number for the Blithesome Tower in Norville. He was pretty sure he remembered which room Dr. Sonia Turk was staying in, though not the alias she'd used. Charles just hoped Dr. Sonia Turk was in possession of her full mental faculties despite her ongoing medical procedure, because if she wasn't, all that would be left for adult oversight of this matter...

...would be Tammi and Danni Arcadia.

Charles dialed the number, sending up a moderately intense prayer as he did.

7.14.e* [TDA,ST]: Very Mature Grownups

"I'm really sorry about that," Tammi Arcadia said, very sincerely in some ways if not others.

"It's fine."

"It's not fine. Danni needs to grow the fuck up." Could Danni seriously not go four fucking hours without being naughty? Tammi had thought it obvious that they both needed to not make Sonia wary of them now, so that they could surprise her properly later.

"There was no harm done." Sonia Turk was lying sunken in the bath water, now mostly warm. Her current appearance gave her the appearance of enormous baggy layers under her eyes. She looked, well, she looked like a very tired girl encased inside an older woman's skin. Tammi privately thought that it was going to get a lot less creepy after Sonia tore off her shed layer of dermis... although it would be even more creepy during. "The primary thing in ethics is to help and not harm. I can see how Danni must have thought I wanted... touching. I didn't exactly tell her to stop, once she started..." Sonia's voice trailed off. "Was I capable of informed consent? Not by the lines that society has drawn. But are the rules and procedures of consent an end in themselves, or a means to an end? And if they are a means to an end, how perfectly do our society's rules reflect that end? Most people would treat such questioning of the rules as alarming, especially in the context of sexuality, because it implies that the person asking might rape you as soon as they find an argument for why society is doing it wrong. Which is more or less what Danni did, so it's not like their worry is unfounded. I wish the distinction between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism were taught more generally in education, considering its absolute primacy to any coherent concept of ethics. Sharp lines are the only type of lines that society can teach and enforce. But it's impossible to realistically deny that the objective facts about which events do and do not harm are complicated and individual. If you're a rule utilitarian, it's straightforward to reconcile the fact of a complicated reality, with society's need for sharp rules, and a universal obligation to follow those rules without debating the complexities of each case. But this idea is not taught, and so instead people must pretend that the universal rules are the perfect outline of what does and does not harm. Or else, like Danni, they think it's fine to break the rules as soon as they decide that no harm will result. Those are your only two options if you think that rightness must always match with reality. The alternative to explicit second-order utilitarianism is awful informal first-order utilitarianism."

"So, uh, you're not angry with Danni?" Tammi said. It seemed to be where the conversation was heading, though Tammi wasn't sure.

"Not... really. No more than I'd be angry with a naughty kitten. You would need a more sophisticated understanding of ethics than she has in order to understand---really understand---why it was wrong to touch a horny woman who seemed to be enjoying it, a woman who would have consented if she'd been in her right mind, and who didn't end up hating the experience in retrospect, just because that woman seemed woozy. And that's not me pretending to be less angry than I am. If anything, I feel like I ought to be angrier with Danni Arcadia, but I'm not, and that disturbs me. I keep wondering if I would have felt more outraged about this before the Virus. But, like a fool, I didn't run myself through a standard survey on sexual attitudes first."

"Uh, okay," Tammi said. "So long as you really aren't mad." She was feeling disturbed by the implied view that it could be wrong to tickle somebody even if they enjoyed it and nobody really got hurt, which was something that Sonia seemed to be hinting at, and that Tammi had never before heard anyone argue. Well, to be sure, a lot of people said something like that while they were being tickled. Tammi had argued for the existence of universal moral imperatives against tickling herself, a few times, while she was the one in handcuffs. It had never occurred to her that this ethical claim might have an actual justification behind it.

Sonia sank deeper into the tub, exhaling a stream of bubbles into the water before emerging to inhale again. "I would feel like a hypocrite if I tried to lecture Danni about the importance of following general rules without arguing for particular exceptions," Sonia said, after her pause to breathe. "Society has general rules against doing human trials of biotechnology the way we're doing it. I decided to break those rules because each day of delay would cost another hundred thousand lives. You know, I think---I think I wasn't thinking clearly when I was arguing with Charles. I was too upset, too scared of going down a slippery slope to the Virus being hidden away. But waiting one week wasn't such a crazy idea. I think, really, I just wanted to hear Charles acknowledge out loud that he was asking me to kill seven hundred thousand people, society's rules aside. I wanted to hear him say out loud, 'Yes, Sonia, I'm asking you to murder seven hundred thousand people as surely as if you cut their throat with your own hands. This is an exception to the usual rule that genocide is bad. Most people would agree that this particular genocide constituted special circumstances.' But because society doesn't acknowledge that rule utilitarianism underlies our laws, Charles couldn't bring himself to say that. He grew up in a world where to admit out loud that your policy means murdering seven hundred thousand people means that you've lost the argument."

"I sort of grew up in that world too," Tammi said, again feeling like she wanted to run out of the room and not have to listen to Lucifer's rehash of her argument with God.

"But there are times when you could reasonably consider the argument that you ought to withhold medicine from billions of people who would have chosen to take that medicine, until millions of them have died. Like by waiting to release alien biotechnology that nobody understands. That is one of those times. And when those times come around, if it's not possible to be explicit about that being murder in the name of a greater good, you'll have to pretend it isn't murder. You'll have to not admit that what you're doing is killing people as surely as by cutting throats. And once you've refused to admit that, why not wait another year? Why not wait a decade? You'll believe you aren't doing anything wrong by waiting, that you're not violating any rules, because you think that belief is what has to be true for you to be a good person. That was what terrified me about the way that Charles seemed to be thinking, the way that he refused to directly ask me to cut seven hundred thousand throats and say that he accepted their blood on his hands. But---but that shouldn't have been a reason for me to become angry at him. It doesn't make Starry's boyfriend a terrible person if he's feeling cautious about unleashing alien biotechnology on Earth. And it's normal for people not to want to admit that their precautions are murder by withholding medicine, because they want to be good people who follow the rules and because they know that murder is wrong. I shouldn't have been angry with him. I was angry because I was afraid. Afraid---afraid for myself, too. Afraid that I might never have this. That seems clearer now. Everything does."

It was hard to see or be sure, with all of the bath water sloshing around, but Tammi thought that she saw, in Sonia's eyes---

"Are you crying?" Tammi said.

"My brain is younger," Sonia murmured. Her voice sounded choked. "I can think again. Like a fog blew away. It crept up on me so gradually, I didn't realize how much I'd lost. I just took for granted that I'd had an easier time learning complicated things at age twenty. And now it's back. Even though I'm not at my best, I can tell it's all coming back. I'm back. The real Sonia. No need for flowers, Algernon is better now. I'm back, and I still have all the knowledge from all those years. Charles hasn't begun to imagine what this change will do to every Earth that it touches."

"Oh," Tammi whispered.

"The Virus is done, I believe. I know it hasn't been the full 24 hours, but I don't feel hungry any more. My temperature has been stable for the last hour. My mind is clear. Even my body feels stronger. I'm just---tired. Very, very tired. I need to sleep, and when I wake up, I'll be young again."

It sounded disturbingly final, to Tammi's ears. Like somebody's last words if they were dying and planning on going to Heaven. "Okay," Tammi said. She swallowed. "I'll help you to the bed."

Sonia stood up for the first time in a while, and to Tammi's surprise, did not stagger. Sonia stepped out of the bathtub and toweled herself off in silence. She walked over to the fluffy master bed of the master bedroom, Tammi walking right aside and ready to catch her if she fell, but she never fell.

Sonia slid into the bed, and Tammi tucked her into the blankets, still feeling an awful premonition about those final-sounding words. Somebody needed to say something less ominous. "Good night," Tammi said softly. "When you wake up you'll be just fine." Oh shit damn it, that had not come out nonominous at all.

"If you count being this horny as fine," Sonia said back without opening her eyes. "Let me know as soon as somebody else decides to be exposed to the Virus. You, Danni, Charles, or anybody else who's attracted to girls. It's vital to our plans that we know whether the contagiousness aspect works correctly, and I do not want to wait another week before I feel someone's mouth on my pussy."

Tammi felt better.

When Tammi checked on Sonia ten minutes later, her pulse was normal, as was her temperature. Sonia didn't rouse or move from being touched, but that had been expected. The post-Viral mini-coma was supposed to have more cause than one sleepless night, a buildup of pseudo-fatigue poisons. The instructions said not to try waking Sonia until she woke up naturally or at least six hours had passed. The instructions said that, if for some reason they had to vacate the hotel room, it wouldn't be surprising if Sonia needed to have her unconscious body carried out.

Tammi would not have thought that Danni needed instructions on not locking up Sonia in handcuffs while she was comatose. But apparently they were going to need to discuss that, when Danni got back in a few hours and took over Tammi's shift.

And then the hotel-room phone rang.

"Yes, I will handle it in a mature and grownup fashion," Danni said into her cellphone, not taking her eyes off the road.

"You couldn't keep from being naughty for four fucking hours when the fate of multiple Earths depended on it," the phone shot back.

"Don't give me that shit," Danni snapped at the phone. "You know you'd have done the same thing in my shoes." This was so unfair. Danni had tried to be good, she really had, but Satan had kept escalating His temptations. After an hour of increasingly explicit flirting and threats of mad sexy science to be performed on Danni later, Sonia had become so horny that she'd shamefully asked Danni for permission to masturbate in front of her. And then Sonia had been so uncoordinated that she hadn't been able to get herself off through the layer of extra skin. At that point, even Akshobyha the Buddha of Patience would have put on a double pair of gloves and rubbed Sonia between her pleadingly spread thighs, "trying to help" until Sonia had given up in despair. Of course Danni had then politely asked Sonia for permission to put her own hand between her legs, since trying to help had made her so horny, and had rubbed herself to many slow luxurious orgasms while Sonia watched with wide envious eyes. "You're not upset because me rubbing Sonia's clitty was bad for interdimensional peace. You're upset because you think I interfered with your plans for her. How mature is that exactly?"

"Your childish, immature, greedy grabby grab at Sonia's clitty interfered with my mature grownup plans to have us tickle her later and no. No, we're not doing this. The fact that you're trying to change the subject while there is serious business going on---"

"You're the one who keeps reintroducing the topic of clitties like a horny pervert. I'm just trying to head over towards Charles, so I can soberly and maturely sort out what sounds like an awful silly mess. Doughnuts to dimes says the fat girl does know Starry, and she's just scared of the big strong man acting like he's on drugs. If I show up and act normal, which I can do by the way, it should all be fine. We can panic about Starry being sleepy after she's gotten a decent chance to sleep off whatever-it-is. Look, I'm coming up on the intersection with Main Street and I'm tired of going turn-by-turn. Just tell me the address Charles gave you."

"I'm still trying to decide whether I should do that, or have you come back to the motel and take over monitoring Sonia so I can go myself."

"And if Charles is right that this is a stranger who now has access to Starry?" Danni's voice dropped into a serious register. "It would take time for me to get to the Blithesome and for you to get to Charles. And sis, we haven't exactly discussed what I've been doing since we split up, but if it does come to that---my guess is that I can handle myself in a fight better than you."

There was a pause from the phone. "That sounds like something we need to talk about."

"It is, and that was my plan. Other things kept coming up. Like me being tied up. And tickled. And having my clitty rubbed even when I said no. Which is apparently a very grownup thing to do and a sign of great maturity so long as it's you doing it to me. Sis, I can't talk about this on the phone until you install Signal, but I have handled myself through some serious stuff since we last saw each other."

"I'm trusting you here, Danni. If I find out that your idea of a solution to this problem involved tickling anyone, I'm going to be genuinely upset."

"I won't do any tickling, unless that is so clearly the correct course of action that even a frumpy old maid like you would agree with it afterwards," Danni said to the phone. Danni was about to add promise, cross my heart and hope to die, but for some reason a touch of ice ran down her spine, and she swallowed the words without knowing why.

7.14.f** [EP]: Responsible Folks

Content warning: Copper Swallow, torture of Copper Swallow, the phrase "consensual torture of Copper Swallow" is redundant. The hardcore part of the scene has been put inside a spoiler, and has an alternate summary you can read instead. (Though that might cause some mood whiplash, compared to reading the whole chapter in the intended order.)

"I feel like I should do something to pay you back," she'd said. She'd been more comfortable with that feeling, the sense that her incurred debt must be discharged, once she could blame it on her part-Fae nature. There were a lot of pieces of herself that she was feeling more comfortable with, now that she had something to blame it all on. Maybe she should have gone in earlier for self-diagnosing her brain with Erin Penna Syndrome, but it would have seemed like an excuse without an authoritative figure like Old Ned to say it was all true.

"Well, I mean, the types of things that Faebloods usually do for wizards?" she'd said.

"What I'm trying to hint at is whether you have any magical rituals pending that can be powered by torturing a Faeblooded slave," she'd said.

Spoiler: Content warning: torture of Copper Swallow

There was a thing that looked like the carven face of an octopus with more eyes than a spider. Ned had stretched it out to her hand, and the wooden tongue of the thing had moved to lick her, feeling warm and slimy on her fingers.

The carved wooden octopus-face was strapped over her hips, placing it with its tongue between her thighs. That would bring her up.

There was a frozen blue flame, hard as steel, that had felt like nothing at all against her skin except a sourceless pressure. Then it had felt warm, then hot, then burning hot. She'd clenched her teeth. Then she'd shut her eyes. The felt temperature against her skin kept getting hotter. She'd started to make sounds through her clenched teeth. Then she'd let out a choked scream. Then it had all stopped, all the pain had stopped instantly, and she'd opened her eyes again. No mark had been left behind on her skin, not even a reddened spot.

The frozen blue flame went up her ass.

That would bring her down.

She was instructed to focus on the wooden tongue and its pleasure and try to get back to the edge again quickly, despite knowing what would happen to her when she got there. If at any point she let her mind wander away from the tongue, or tried to hold back her pleasure, a thin wire whip would lash at her breasts and nipples without ever breaking or bruising the skin.

Two detached mouths, looking almost human, except for being nothing but mouths with coiled wires leading out of them. Those went over her feet and began sucking on her toes. They would drain her power, the energy she was generating without knowing how to use.

A collar went around her throat. It would protect her vocal cords by disabling her ability to scream. She tried, and nothing came out. She could still talk in a low voice, or moan in a low voice if she felt like it, or cry softly, but she couldn't emit any sounds in her upper register.

Her whole body was arched and chained over a curved mount, leaving enough of her pussy exposed that anyone passing by could fuck her if he chose. Ned had said he might do that, if the ritual went on long enough that an old man like him got hard again. Not for mystical reasons, but because he'd come to terms with the fact that he found this hot.

It was all a standard setup if you were that type of wizard. The innovative aspect of the pod Ned had captured and destroyed had been the fully enclosed, low-maintenance life support systems, and the precise timing and regulation of the energy production.

In Erin's right hand was a metal grip, like the handle of a pair of pliers without the plier part, small enough to disappear inside her closed fist. That thing wasn't part of the standard setup. That thing Erin didn't like.

No matter what happened to her, she was going to have to keep her right hand closed around the grip and never let go. It required little pressure to keep closed, but she had to keep her fist closed, no matter what was being done to her.

Because if she let go of the grip, or dropped it...

Everything would instantly shut off and her chains would come loose.

She'd have preferred to helplessly suffer without needing to focus any part of her attention elsewhere, but she'd known better than to protest. She would just pretend to herself that dropping the grip would cause the punishments to switch on and not stop, and that the need for her to focus there was part of the torture.

Apparently the ritual Ned was setting up would take a while to configure.

Ned had kindly put her into her bondage first, before informing her of this required wait. And then left her there to contemplate what would soon happen to her, as the slimy wooden tongue rested quiescent on her clit and didn't lick at all, as the flame stayed cold in her ass and no whips lashed at her nipples. He'd left on the mouths that were sucking erotically on her toes, and that had been all.

She'd started dripping. Ned had put a jar below her pussy to catch her juices. They were worth almost nothing on the general market, Ned had informed her. But some extraplanar visitors considered it a nicety to be fed on sexual juices the host had extracted himself.

And the mouths went on licking her toes. Erin's pussy throbbed with it, and throbbed some more, and she realized with a frisson of erotic horror that she was going to get to the edge very very quickly when that tongue started moving on her clit. She might spend more time with the branding iron burning inside her ass than being pleasured by the tongue.

Ned was connecting up some three-dimensional mystic diagram, an elaborate twisting of copper wires in air, when Erin's phone started making sounds.

Ned brought the phone over to her, and Erin's eyes widened when she saw the caller ID. "That's Illyria," she said, and was surprised when her voice sounded normal.

It took some assistance for Ned to unlock her phone on her thumbprint without her letting go of the dead-girl switch, but then Erin could read Illyria's next set of texts.

> Though, if some other dominant does make you come, play with yourself lots after that. Without coming of course.
> That way you'll still be nicely horny if I decide to call you over.
> And, Copper Swallow, you must always tease yourself to the edge of orgasm at least twice in the evening and twice in the morning. Every day from now on, even after I call you over.
> You shouldn't ever masturbate all the way to coming. Never again. That's not something a good girl does.
> If you're having sex with someone, you always have to tell them when you're close to an orgasm, and always give them the chance to frustrate you instead.
> You have to tell them you're a slut who gets off on being teased, and tell them how long it's been since your last orgasm, and remind them that you're more submissive and eager when you're kept horny.
> If somebody does go on stimulating you, try as hard as you can not to come. No matter how desperate you are, or how long it's been, hold back as long as you can.
> Then if they decide to force you to come anyhow, you'll know it's not your fault. You'll know you did everything you could to be a good girl, and they made you have an orgasm anyways.
> Though you'll still be punished, of course.
> I know for sure this is what's right for a girl like you, just like I knew you were that type of girl in the first place. You'll be happier if you don't question it, and obey the rules always.
> XOXO Illyria​

It was too much. Erin felt herself reaching the edge, the explosion starting up inside, her pussy clenched on nothing, and then her vocal cords stayed silent while she screamed with desperate abandon as a blowtorch lit inside her ass. She would have expected the pain to put her over the edge and make her come, but the pain was so intense, what she imagined a branding iron would feel like, that it scattered every other sensation and obliterated the orgasm inside it.

If her hands hadn't instinctively clenched tighter, it would have ended for her there.

"May I see?" Ned said, when her suppressed screams had transitioned into permitted sobbing. Erin managed a nod.

"Huh," Ned said, after reading the new texts. "That resembles the cultivation protocol for a patasola servant. I wonder if your Faeblood heritage includes... well, I'll check some of my books and run some tests on you once the ritual is charging. Don't worry, some of them will hurt." His hand patted her head in a proprietary way, and then he went back to connecting up wires.

Erin stayed in her bondage, panting, sweating all over her body.

Then Ned paused, and went over to a control dial. "I'm starting up the breast whips," he said. "Since it seems to be possible for you to come without any clitoral stimulation, you might as well start trying."

"What?" Erin said, and then sudden lines of fire painted themselves across her breasts and nipples. She tried to yelp, but it was too high-pitched and nothing came out. It was so startling that she was whipped again, and again, and again, before she remembered to focus on the warmth in her pussy and think about her awful future life of being teased.

She became aroused again very quickly. She hadn't had her orgasm before, and there were unholy things still sucking on her toes.

Soon her mouth stretched out again in a silent scream, followed by low sobbing. It happened another four times before Ned finished setting up the ritual.

Then the ritual proper started, and a slimy wooden tongue began licking between her thighs.

Copper Swallow wasn't sure how long the ritual had gone on. A few hours in, Ned had told her it had been twenty minutes. She would have thought he was messing with her head, if she hadn't remembered that lying was something no wizard did without reason.

As the current wave of searing, body-scorching flame in her ass finally faded, something warm entered her pussy. She gasped in shock, unable to interpret the sensation at first, and then realized she was being fucked.

The emotional wobble of being used like that distracted her from the sensation of the cock inside her. That distraction was punished. White-hot fire painted lines over her breasts, making her sob out in the low moans that were the only protest permitted her.

The thought came to Copper Swallow to wonder whether Ned was going to stop fucking her, the way the tongue stopped licking, when the branding iron lit up inside her ass. Or if he was just going to go on fucking her, making the fire go on scorching her to prevent her from coming, until he finally came.

Copper Swallow reached the edge very quickly that time, and then she started silently screaming and didn't stop for minutes.

When it was over, Copper Swallow's glazed eyes noticed that her hand had crushed the dead-girl switch entirely and then dropped it, leaving only an unobtrusive twist of broken metal on the floor. Which must have broken some part of the shutoff mechanism, because the wooden tongue was still licking her. Weird, she'd thought the grip had been made of harder metal than that. Should she tell Ned---

Wire whips punished her breasts for thinking about anything other than the slimy tongue on her pussy, and with a choked sob she quickly refocused her thoughts again. Now she didn't have to do anything except suffer. It was a relief.

Spoiler: Summary of what happened

Copper Swallow was put into a setup that would arouse her to the brink of orgasm and then inflict enough pain that even she couldn't come. Shortly after she was hooked up and before the mechanism started up, her phone received Illyria's texts about her being denied voluntary orgasms indefinitely.

During the ritual, Copper Swallow was holding a metal grip in her right hand, that was supposed to shut everything off if she let go, a dead-woman safety switch. During a particularly intense bit of torture, she somehow crushed this metal grip in her hand, in a way that stuck it in the on position. Though plausibly distracted, Copper Swallow didn't say anything about this.

It was over, it was done, she'd wept and been comforted, and when that cuddle had finished, Ned was giving her exactly the lecture she'd pretended to herself she hadn't known was coming.

"You were close by," Erin tried to defend herself. "I wasn't gagged. I could have used words if something had actually gone wrong and I'd needed to be let out. I didn't want you to have to restart the whole ritual and waste everything we'd already done. And my breasts got whipped every time I tried to think about the details and whether I should say something to you---"

"Your excuses are self-contradictory," Ned said, the old man's voice now in a low growl. "Either you were fully able to think and protect yourself, or you were too distracted to be responsible. Not both. And that was only the second most important problem. The most important problem is that something happened that we did not expect. Even in BDSM that is something you inform your dom about immediately, Erin Penna. We were not doing BDSM. That was not a scene. It was magic, you fool! If your own safety means nothing to you, what about mine? The instant anything happened that you had not been told to expect, you should have spoken up if you did not want me to get hurt."

Erin swallowed and nodded. She hadn't thought about it that way. "Yes, sir. I see, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

Ned put a palm over his face, and shook his head. "This. This is why we don't go around telling all the young Faebloods what they are, or trying to awaken their powers. There's too few responsible folk for us to handle all the irresponsible ones. I wish someone would make the tourists read a pamphlet about it before they get here."

Erin stared down at her own ankles, where she was sitting naked on the bed, and felt a little more miserable. She needed a real owner, and some form of punishment that would actually seem to her like a punishment, so she could atone for sins like this.

"Well," Old Ned said. "Speaking of meddling outsiders. I imagine you're wondering how you were able to crush metal in your bare hands. I have some good news that's not as bad as it sounds."

"Huh?" she said.

"Many Fae are stronger than us," Ned said. "It works for immortals, because they can heal. Their bodies mend the damage that extranatural strength does to the natural part of their biology, the torn-up tendons and muscles. Faebloods who inherit that much strength tend to die before they have kids." Ned coughed. "Now, your natural next question is why a Faeblood can't also inherit the healing ability. And the answer is, because humans with that ability die of cancer."

"I don't like where this is going," Erin said. Non-erotic fear was so much less pleasant than the erotic kind.

"Don't panic. Like I said, the good news isn't as bad as it sounds." Ned's finger descended and tapped her body, still undressed. "You had dormant extranatural organs for strength and healing. Lucky for you, you didn't inherit an extranatural power generator that could energize those organs, which is why you're not already dead. You inherited a complex that can generate energy from pleasure turned to pain, but that's not the right type of energy to power your strength and healing." Old Ned sighed. "Well, our alien tourist seems to have figured this all out by looking at you while those organs were still unenergized, which is absurd, by the way. And then she helpfully enchanted your earrings to transform pleasure-pain alternating current into an energy form that can power your strength and healing. Which would have killed you within months, if not for the fact that I figured out what she'd done to you, and took off the earrings, before you'd run the healing power long enough to get cancer. Because, of course, that did not occur to her as a potential problem while she was being helpful. She probably thought it would make a nice surprise for you, if you suddenly discovered the ability to crush relatively weak metals in your hands while you were in the middle of an intense BDSM session."

"I'm starting to see why clueless tourists are a problem," Erin said, after she'd processed all this.

"Yeah," Ned growled. "Almost as much of a problem as Faeblooded kids who inherited their senses of self-preservation from things less fragile than us." He shook his head. "I want to take the earrings away from you, I really do, but that would violate the code of my type of wizard. Figure you can spend five hundred hours wearing them, over the next twenty years of your life, if you don't want to die of cancer before you're fifty. Never for more than twenty-four hours at a time. Five hundred hours, of which you've already used, let's say four hours."

"I understand," Erin said. "I'll track how many hours I've used them." She was looking at the earrings where Ned was holding them in his hand. Her precious caged-bird earrings, of base copper but one of the few outward signs she'd ever allowed herself of what she'd wanted to be. The decision hadn't been conscious on Erin's part. She'd seen them at a garage sale and she'd had to buy them and put them on. Now they were precious things, magical tools made for her alone, but she would never have sold them either way.

Ned was looking down at her earrings where he was holding them in his hand, and making no move to give them back to her.

"You know," Ned said, thickness in his old voice, "there's this funny way that human beings are. We think that if we touch something, we've taken responsibility for it. Once you go and admit the existence of something, you own it, morally speaking. It's fine to let some Mexican family not cross the border, because they're not our problem, but if you actually met them and spoke to them and hired them for a job, suddenly they're real people and it's a problem if you don't do more. It doesn't make sense, does it? I helped you. I took the earrings off before they killed you. How can that make me more responsible for whatever happens to you afterwards? I don't know, but that's how Homo sapiens thinks it works. You can tell from the way we all behave, and what we do and don't try to hold each other responsible for. And I hate it, you know? Because you see somebody in trouble and there's something so obvious you can do to help them. But somewhere along the line, whatever you do has a consequence, and then you feel responsible for whatever comes after that. You can confront the idiot, probably some young Faeblood fool, who doesn't understand how BDSM works. If she turns out to be an alien tourist, you can dress her down and take her victim home for aftercare. The victim's earrings are going to kill her, but you can take them off her ears. Could you just keep the earrings? Tell her the truth that they were going to give her cancer, and not give them back? Not really. The wizard's code says to give her property back to her. It'd be damn stupid to swear oaths about anything as large as the wizard's code, so we don't do that, but I did say I would follow that code." Ned shook his head. "And I still feel like handing these earrings over to you makes me responsible for what happens to you afterwards. You touch it, you bought it. I've always felt that way, and it's stupid. I hate that I have to feel the way I feel, and that it makes me act the way I act. It's a large part of why I retired. I couldn't take any more---touching things. Doing things and then having to do more things and feeling very very responsible by the time it was all ending."

Ned held out the earrings to her, in one open hand. "I don't want to hear about you having died by next year," he said. There was slight water in his eyes, or maybe she was just imagining it. "Either of cancer, or of you trying to stop an armed robbery when these earrings don't make you bulletproof. I really don't want to hear about it, young lady. I've been through quite enough of that. Think about what that would do to me, if not what it would do to you."

Erin took some deep breaths, and didn't grab for her earrings right away. "You're," she said, "you might be, you're probably right that I don't have enough of a sense of self-preservation. I think something in my ancestry must have been---something like a robot. An Asimov's-Three-Laws robot, but one where, if the robot has no human to protect, and no human to obey, it doesn't---the robot doesn't see much point in following the Third Law about preventing itself from coming to harm." Her psychology made so much more sense, now that she was allowed to see what was really there, instead of trying to make it look sensible for a human. "I want an owner who'll keep me enslaved and hurt me. But I need a, a user, even if it's a group that's passing me around, so long as they know I'm a kind of thing that's meant to be used. Until I have an owner who can decide for me, I won't put on my earrings stupidly. I'll only do it in the service of the First Law, to prevent humans from coming to harm, if a situation like that comes up. I don't swear it as an oath, but it's what I'm telling you now that I'm going to do. Because I, I still have hope of finding a real owner. I do want an owner who loves me. Maybe that's my vanity, or maybe that's my human side, but I know it's how I feel. I want my owner to adore me, and pamper me when I'm not being tortured for magical power, and mess with my enslaved mind in ways that make me someone they can love even more. I know that type of person wouldn't want me to use up the hours left on my earrings for anything trivial. But I also know the difference between my wanting an owner like that, and my needing somebody to use me. I bet honesty is something that Faebloods do more often than humans, so I'll tell this to you honestly: I'm so happy right now. I'm happy because this makes me a more valuable thing, and maybe the next person who uses me will try to keep me for themselves. And the more hope I have of that, the more careful I'll be not to harm myself, nor, through inaction, allow myself to come to harm." Erin reached out and gently took the earrings out of his hands. "Don't feel bad about it, human wizard who saved me. This is my life. I have to live it my own way, the way of my own people, whoever they are."

She did not, of course, put the earrings on after taking them. She didn't want to make herself a less precious thing for no good reason. Yes, she wanted to find out what it was like to leap short buildings in several bounds. To be honest, she wanted that a lot. But she needed to wait for a good-enough reason that her future owner wouldn't feel sad about her having done it.

The two of them sat without speaking for a time after.

"Though actually," said Erin. "Does this mean that if science invented a cure for cancer, I could become a superhero?" She even had the little mask that would prevent anyone from recognizing her.

Ned shook his head and let out a snorting, self-derisive chuckle. "If science invents complete, reliable cancer immunity, you can knock yourself out." The man grinned slightly. "Though you'd have a secret vulnerability, which I guess is only right for a superhero."

"Oh?" said Erin.

"Yeah," said Old Ned. "Your earrings transform the power of pleasure frustrated and turned to pain. You have an extranormal battery complex that can store up some of that power to use even when you're not being edged and tortured, though it requires a baseline level of sexual frustration to work. But your ability to access that storage gets disrupted, and will stay disrupted for minutes to hours, if..." Ned paused dramatically.

"If?" said Erin.

"If somebody tickles you."

Erin Penna was getting ready to head out from Old Ned's house toward her own home, she was just about to call a Lyft in fact, when her phone rang with an incoming call from a number she didn't recognize.

"Erin Penna speaking," she said, and then kicked herself as she remembered she was also answering Copper Swallow's phone. She needed to get a separate line for that.

"Hello?" said a cautious female voice. "I heard you might---know more than usual---about some people with unusual powers?"

What, thought Erin Penna, as she pulled the phone away from her face and looked at it with narrowed eyes.

7.14.g [CA]: This Plot Needs More Complications

Charles had just finished his latest circuit of the house, looking one last time for any conveniently open basement windows that would let him get inside. He'd even tried whispering out loud to the mating field that, if he did get inside, he would mate with Starry. It hadn't helped. Charles felt like he wanted to accuse reality of having gone normal, and at the same time, it clearly hadn't. He remembered what normal life had been like before it had vanished forever.

Charles was returning to the front of the house, planning to ring the doorbell again and ask the person inside if she would at least talk to him some more, when he saw that somebody else was already standing before the porch.

This person looked something like a little old lady. An unusually muscular little old lady, wearing a sleeveless shirt and jacket. And a fedora hat. Like a little old lady who was an ex-Marine and current private detective.

"Excuse me," Charles said with a certain trepidation. He was starting to think that maybe Starry's mating field hadn't gone off so much as gone odd. "Can I ask who you are and why you're here?"

"That should be my question," said the fedora-wearing muscular old lady, shooting back a dangerously inquisitive stare. "There a reason you're prowling around Sheen's house, looking for a way to get in?"

Meeting the people you need, and the people who need you...

The thought came to Charles for the first time that Starry wasn't the only person who was supposed to have power, now.

"Yeah," Charles said frankly. "A strange woman tricked me into letting her into the house and then she locked me out. I don't suppose you're a neighbor that Winifred gave a key?"

The old lady's gazed sharpened more. "This strange woman. Would she happen to be college-age? Taller than you? Bald?"

"No..." Charles said, confused. "Could have been college age, but she was around five and a half feet tall. African-American black hair."

"Dressed to impress? Too little clothing, tight or see-through?"

What? "No. She was very overweight, it wouldn't have looked good on her. Who are you and why are you asking this?"

"Pi, as in the greek letter pi," the old lady said. "I'm Pi Garrett. As for why I'm here, one of my... friends, isn't the word I'd use. An enemy I owe some favors asked me to watch over the Sheen house while I did my knitting. Make sure nobody went sniffing around there besides me. Now who'd you be?"

"Cindy Sheen's boyfriend," he said.

The old lady scrutinized him. "That so. Did you call up your girlfriend to tell her about this stranger you let into her house? She on her way here?"

"No, Cindy's inside and unconscious," Charles said. Wait, should he not have said that?

The old lady had already flashed past him to the front door, and was now working at the lock with something like a screwdriver and something like a wire. "And you didn't just call the cops?"

Maybe this was the person he'd needed, someone who could and would pick the lock for him. Charles felt a surge of hope, though scattered and muffled by his spoon-stirred thoughts, and hurried over to behind where the old lady stood. "I... didn't want to call the police without asking Cindy whether she..." Charles trailed off. The thought hadn't actually occurred to him.

"Have you been drugged, kid? How did Cinderella end up unconscious?"

"Not... exactly... it's complicated... look, I'm not certain the person in there is an enemy, it could be that she is a friend of Cindy's and I don't know her---"

"But you don't want to involve the police." The old lady shook her head. "If I had a dime for every time somebody's said that to me... at least I'm used to it now." There was a click from the lock, and she held up a forbidding hand as Charles took a step forwards. "Be very quiet, and let me go in first," she instructed him.

Charles nodded, and stepped back.

The old lady slowly turned the doorknob, slowly opened the door, carefully peeked around the edge, took a careful step inside, and quickly shut the door behind her.

There was the clicking sound of the lock engaging again.

Charles just stood there, stunned, until a muffled howl of horror and frustration escaped from his throat.

There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files. This book is about the latter.

Unlike many other people her age, she was trying to keep up with the latest in mundane science and technology. She'd read those opening sentences of Applied Cryptography a couple of decades earlier and had chuckled, seeing a useful template thought to specialize across many interesting situations. (Well, that was half the reason she'd chuckled. The other half had been her own kid sister, who was an outlier and should not be counted.)

There were two kinds of ways to conceal the origin of a phone call: Ways that would stop a normal person's kid sister from tracking you down, and ways that would stop Milse Orkosi from tracking you down.

Hiding your caller ID was the former.

"Thank you very much," Milse said to the major government on the other end of her cellphone, and tapped the call off. The phone that had originated Starastera's call looked to be a disposable phone with no registered address, but it was a currently switched-on phone and the cellphone network had localized it to a residential home in Norville.

Milse was grinning as her foot depressed the clutch and she put her SUV into gear. Though it had been some decades since she'd started working directly for Lady Regora, she still found exhilarating the thrill of troubleshooting minor problems using overwhelming institutional power. It was so much nicer than not being backed up by overwhelming institutional power.

Milse drove off towards the identified address, humming cheerfully as she went.

7.14.h [EP,CA,FW]: Chaos Attempts To Rise

There certainly were a lot of things that seemed to be happening to Erin Penna today, all packed very close together. Mental exhaustion might have started to become an issue... if not for her having been unrelentingly and horrifically tortured for hours, which had allowed her to recover not only from the earlier strains of the day but from her entire previous life.

Old Ned threw her another piece of black leather armor from where he was rummaging for it, the left breastpiece this time, and Erin Penna put it on. Ned had insisted, sounding reluctant and vehement at the same time, that if she couldn't be talked out of engaging in this stupidity, she was not leaving his house without something that could deflect a few bullets. And apparently the only magical armor of that type Ned had on hand, that could conceivably fit her, was an impressively hard-looking and polished black leather... bikini.

She couldn't wear anything over the bikini either. It had to see bullets coming to deflect them away from her unarmored parts.

The bikini would power itself by licking her nipples and labia and feeding off her sexual frustration. Though her current level of sexual frustration was apparently already high enough that, so long as nobody had started shooting at her, the breastpiece was just lightly holding her nipple and the bikini bottom was only giving her a slow lick every minute.

Erin Penna felt surprisingly okay with all this. Well. Maybe not that surprisingly. So long as she had the mask.

"You're certain Illyria doesn't have luck powers?" Erin said. "Because your house just happened to be awfully close to her house." Literally two blocks away, when she'd asked Google Maps.

"Good gods, girl," said Ned without looking up from his hunt for the remaining breastpiece. "I've been living here for more than three decades. It's not one of those houses either, it stays where it's put. Think for half a second about what it would take for Illyria's supposed luck powers to set that up. That's a lesson on how many weird coincidences you get without magic being involved."

Charles Adan was angrily shrugging on the backup business suit he kept in the trunk of his car. It wasn't the first time he'd yanked on a business suit in anger, but this time was special. Two strange people were now inside Cindy's house, and he wasn't.

Fuck what the neighbors thought. His circling of the house had shown a flat rooftop outside the second-floor bedrooms, and a tree in the house of the neighboring yard. He was past the point of questioning the sanity of his intuitive sense that he could jump the Olympic-sized gaps, or that doing this required him to put on a business suit first.

There's a muscular old lady in a fedora hat sitting in front of where Cindy's new body is lying unconscious on the couch. She's looking up from her cellphone at me, to where I'd just started down the stairs.

For a second I just freeze. It feels like a nonsense sentence materializing into real life, like this is what would happen if gaslighters could warp reality to confuse me.

That's not Cindy's Mom, is it? No, she's too old for that, unless she jumped bodies, and if she did, why would she pick an older body... unless it's just temporary...

It could be anyone in there.

"Who are you and what are you doing in this house?" I shriek, once my voice unsticks from the sheer surprise.

"I could ask you the same question," the old lady returns sharply. "Do you live here, young woman? Because I don't believe you do."

I stare at her, my own eyes narrowing. "If you're the real Winifred Sheen, or if Mrs. Sheen sent you, what's my name?"

Whoever is inside the old lady makes her brows go up. Then she shakes her head and sighs.

"Well, if you're not faking that," she says, "you think Winifred Sheen ought to know you, although you don't know what she looks like. And if my intuitions haven't failed me that the young man outside wasn't lying, he thinks you're an unknown stranger and he has no idea what you're doing in here." She gives me a sharp glare. "And whether or not any of that is true, by this point in my life, I've learned to recognize when there is stupid damn shit going on around me. You do what you want, kid, and the kid outside can do what he wants. I am going to sit right here and make sure nothing happens to Cinderella Sheen, because that's all I've been paid to do. But if you want my advice, I suggest that you and he try talking to each other in very plain terms about what both of you think is happening here."

I don't---I don't know what I think is happening here. Not any more. The old lady looks stronger than I am, and something about the way she carries herself suggests that she is very sure she can take me, maybe because she's packing a gun. She's claiming to be some type of mercenary whose job is to protect Cindy but not me? I'm tempted to just run and let her, but I don't know who she is, or if she's telling the truth, or if Charles is circling the house again and will catch me when I go. I'm no longer alone in this house, it's not safe---

When I try peeking out the front window to see where Charles Adan is now, because I am thinking about taking her advice and talking to him, he's no longer waiting in front of the porch. Great. Then where---

There's a heavy thud that sounds like it's coming from the roof outside the second-floor bedroom windows, and my heart almost stops.

Charles landed on the roof, taking a second to marvel at how easily he'd made the jump and how much the landing hadn't hurt his feet. Neither of the two bedroom windows in front of him were open, but Charles was increasingly convinced that the correct action was to break his way in and pay for the repairs afterwards. He couldn't leave Cindy alone with nobody to guard her, not with two strangers in the house. No, he needed to cast aside his hesitation and just get himself inside this house to check on Cindy.

Charles was just taking a step forwards, to see if either of the windows seemed unlocked, when a woman's voice shouted "Hey!" from below him.

Charles looked down just in time to see the flash of motion as someone leaped from the ground floor directly onto the roof, landing squarely between him and the windows.

There was now a stunningly beautiful young woman facing him, clad in rather skimpy black leather armor, holding her fists in a stance that looked borrowed from martial arts movies. Her cheeks were flushed with life. Bright green eyes looked at him from behind a tiny mask that couldn't possibly conceal her identity effectively, even leaving aside that this was the age of machine identification.

"In my mistress's name, you shall not pass!" this apparition cried.

"No," Charles said in utterly blank surprise. "No. Wait. What? Is the universe allowed to just pull ninjas completely out of its ass now?"

"And who'd you be?" the old lady said sharply to the old gentleman who'd wandered into the living room.

"I'm Ned," the old man said, giving her an appraising look. "Retired meddler in other people's business, currently trying not to fall off that wagon. I followed after a certain crazy girl and let myself in through the back door to make sure nobody here was dying. Aside from that I'm trying to stay out of the way and not touch anything while the young people are being young at each other. Who are you and what are you doing here?"

The old lady gave him another glare. "I'm Pi. The Greek letter pi, not the food, call me pumpkin and die. Somebody I owe a favor asked me to make sure the young lady wasn't being stalked."

"So you broke into her house and you're sitting next to her sleeping body to make sure nobody stalks her?"

"You got a problem with that?"

"Nah. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Mind if I sit down next to you?"

"Yes," the old lady said, putting an edge on the word.

"I'll leave some distance between us then." Ned sat down at the opposite end of the sofa, by the unconscious girl's feet instead of her head.

"You planning on doing anything stupid?" the old lady said, her hand inside her ominously large handbag.

"Nope," Ned said. "I used up all my stupidity tokens and had to retire. When I have no idea what's going on, I'm no longer allowed to run around making things worse."

The old lady gave him a long look before nodding. "Word, as I believe the youngsters say," she said. Keeping her right hand inside the ominous handbag, she extended her other hand in a careful fist, which Ned carefully bumped. "Pi Garrett, retired private detective, formerly of TunFaire Investigations."

"Ned Stonefield. Used to be called Ned Serdyrrah by some foreign folks. The term has multiple meanings depending on how you spell it, one of which is Ned the Trouble Magnet."

"Good thing we're both retired then," said the old lady.

"Word," said Ned. "Wanna trade heavily censored war stories?"

"No."

"Me neither." Old Ned took his newfangled cellphone device contraption out of his pocket and opened the Kindle app.

"Okay," Charles said, breathing more heavily now. He'd tried executing a parkour dash to the second-story roof above, in case he'd somehow imagined something the first time around. Supergirl had again leaped up to follow him using simple raw strength instead of parkour. Which---which shouldn't have happened. Which wasn't allowed under any rules Charles knew about. He should have been the only person around with bullshit powers besides Cindy. Unless there was a biotechnology supersoldier project in a parallel world, and Starry's mating field had gated in one of their clones? But Charles didn't see why that would be happening. He was trying to get to Starry to mate with her. Reality should have been cooperating with him, not pulling ninjas out of its ass to stop him. "Okay," he said again. "Just to make sure we're not about to be really pointlessly stupid here, is your Mistress's name, by any chance, Cindy?"

"I'm being used to protect Mistress Illyria," she stated, the pride audible in her voice.

Illyria. Was that the fat girl's real name? Or her villain alias? "And also just to make sure, is the reason you have superpowers that somebody named Starry gave them to you?"

The ninja shook her head without taking her eyes off him. "I was empowered by the kindness of the great lady Yoal-yohuali."

Damn it. Well, at least he'd checked. "Would it be okay if we tried really hard not to seriously injure each other or anybody else, while we're doing this?" he said.

The ninja looked more than slightly relieved. "I was about to suggest the same thing," she said. "Ideally we shouldn't damage any property either."

"Very good," Charles said. It came out sounding authoritative, for some reason.

The ninja straightened, as if his approval had meant something to her.

Some deep dark well of instinct inside him was trying to signal him about something.

But it was obviously not the time or place for that, so Charles shoved aside the useless thought and glanced around the area, trying desperately to think through the continuing fuzziness laid over his mind. The Surprise Sexy Superninja had seemed less graceful than him, even if stronger. Was there some way he could use that, somehow, get around her to a way inside the house...

I stare out the bedroom window and take a staggering step back.

Charles Adan is now wearing a business suit and bouncing back and forth between Cindy's house, neighboring houses, and a couple of trees, moving with superhuman grace.

He's being blocked from getting close to any windows by a ridiculously pretty girl wearing only a black bra and panties and a tiny black mask. She's not as graceful as him, but she's making huge leaps that no human should be able to do.

Is that---is that the girl I spoke to on the phone who said she'd help protect "Illyria"? Is this somebody completely different and that girl is still on her way? Does this mean there are people around with superpowers besides body-jumping? I'm trying to coherent this and it doesn't co.

I turn away, my mind feeling completely blank. I trudge back to the stairs, go down a few steps, and glance in to make sure that Cindy's still okay.

There's TWO people sitting in front of Cindy's unconscious body now. An old man engrossed in his cellphone has been added to the scene. The old lady is watching him with wary eyes. She waves at me with one hand, without looking up from him.

I pull back from the stairs with a strangled sound coming from my throat. Is the universe just pulling old people out of its ass now?

A little boy was standing outside the designated house, staring wide-eyed at a contest between a mundane parkour expert and a very young succubus. Great leaps and frantic darts and interceptions, all played out without the two touching.

Milse Orkosi sighed, and with almost no conscious attention, stirred the field patterns around the house to make surrounding events uninteresting to anyone not directly involved. The little boy blinked a few times and then wandered away.

After a moment's thought, Milse decided not to intervene in the pseudo-fight. There was no murderous intent visible, and Milse didn't know enough about the situation to choose sides.

Without anyone in particular noticing her, Milse let herself in through the back door.

The kitchen that greeted her eyes was homely, and not rich even for a mundane. The kitchen looked like it had once been assembled with love, some years earlier, but much that had gone wrong since then had been repaired partially or not at all. The cloth on the furniture looked worn and holey, as did the paint on the walls.

Milse shrugged, relocked the door behind her, and headed in the direction of the only magical perturbations inside the house.

As Milse entered the house's living room, an aged-looking mundane male raised his head to look directly at her. The male gave her a stern headshake, and reached into his pocket to touch something, after which the notice-me-not field around Milse collapsed. The aged-looking female sitting near him promptly raised her head to look at Milse as well.

Interesting. The male had pierced her charms on mental training alone, before using artifacts. Furthermore, he'd used a magical artifact whose metals Milse couldn't identify. Not too shocking, the world held thousands of magical subcultures, and not all of them stuck to alchemical standard practices. But intriguing.

Neither of the two mundanes had the evident strength to threaten her. But the female had a gun, and panicking the poor aged youngster might cause her to shoot somebody else. Milse remembered days like that. Dozens of days like that, accumulated despite her best efforts, over the very long span of time they'd had to happen anyways.

So Milse stopped where she was and didn't approach further, her hands raised in a meaningless gesture of surrender.

The unconscious female-presenting person on the sofa, with a torn shirt, was... definitely not Starastera. Because... because their hair was all wrong. And their aura wasn't right for a succubus of Starastera's age. Milse Orkosi wasn't sure what that person was, which was unusual but not unheard-of. Milse could identify the seven sexual vertices with her eyes closed, and most of the forty-two simple vectors, but that was only the normal tip of the iceberg of human sexuality.

Starastera wasn't here. Milse had known that from the moment of approaching the house. More surprising was that nobody here bore any marks that told of the protection of someone more powerful. It meant that nobody here was in Starastera's nakamaharem.

Only then did Milse consider the obvious, that there was a simple way to prevent Milse Orkosi from tracing your phone call. Namely, charm someone else and borrow their cellphone instead.

Well played, Milse thought to the rogue succubus. Milse had to admire the paranoia that implemented precautions like that out of sheer habit, even when you were certain nothing could go wrong.

The proper way of implementing that precaution would have been to borrow the phone of a random mundane off the street, someplace nowhere near your next destination. It was evident from the non-mundane situation around Milse that Starastera had not done this. So it was possible that her lack of fear had made Starastera sloppy, and she'd borrowed the phone of somebody with a traceable relationship to her instead.

Or, thought Milse, the fugitive succubus could have borrowed the cellphone of the nearest unrelated person who looked interesting. Like the male with unusual artifacts, or the person with unidentifiable sexuality. Starastera's belief of "nothing can possibly go wrong" might encourage such fun and humorous plots as trolling her pursuers with a false lead.

Or Starastera might have dangled an attractive mystery meant to interest Milse Orkosi herself, suck her in, and have entertaining consequences when she tried to follow up.

Milse made a mental note to have Regora charm her under controlled conditions to believe that nothing could possibly go wrong, to check if Milse's own paranoia had reached the grade where she would do things like that out of pure existential habit. Because if not, her paranoia needed to be further trained.

"You know," Milse said out loud, because the two mundanes staring at her were starting to show the impatience of youth, "when I was your age---"

"Excuse me, kid?" the female said surprisingly. Milse had expected everyone here would be in The Know.

"Well, when I'm going to be your age, then," Milse said.

"Dubious proposition if you go around breaking into houses that aren't yours," said the female. "Yeah, I did it too, but here I am successfully being old. Ponder that before you start anything."

"Shhh," said the male. "Let it talk."

Milse tilted her head at the misgendering. That was a dueling-grade insult from a modern mundane, as she understood such things---though maybe this male was too old to have adopted the mores of the current generation. "Wrong pronoun," Milse said, in case that had been a simple mistake. "I usually present as feminine and go by 'she' in English, unless I'm in an unusually aggressive mood that day."

The wrinkled young female snorted and rolled her eyes, which Milse graciously chose to ignore. "When I was younger than I currently am," Milse began again, "walking into a mess like this would have seen me running around, talking to everyone and poking into everything, trying to figure out all the tangled strings so I could untangle them. Anyone who knew the most widespread stories about me might believe that Milse Orkosi was like that. But people do gain experience over time, and now I can think of a brilliant sideways move that would've never occurred to me back then."

The two aged youngsters raised their eyebrows in unison.

Milse sat down on the carpet where both of the mundanes could see her, deliberately tucking her hands under her ass. "I'm going to sit here very quietly and not make anything more complicated."

"Word," the other two said simultaneously.

Charles was now panting for breath, bent over with his hands on his knees. Okay. Okay, that hadn't worked at all whatsoever. Contrary to what some comic books had led him to believe, superhuman dexterity was no match for superhuman strength.

The Unexplained Ninja in the skimpy leather was smiling brightly, obviously enjoying every minute of this.

Something deep inside Charles was yelling at increasing volume that this situation was wrong, it was all wrong, not in a bent-reality sense but in the sense that he was Doing It Wrong. Something about the bright-eyed slutty ninja and her insolent smile was pulling at him like the opposite pole of a magnet, north to south. That they were fighting and he was losing was nonsense, ludicrous, it was the opposite of how things should have been. She shouldn't have been defying him like this. It was wrong.

If Charles hadn't still felt half on drugs, he probably never would have done what he'd did then.

"Wipe that fucking smile off your face," something deep inside him growled at the ninja.

And the ninja took a hasty step back from him and said in a pleading tone "Sorry!"

Charles straightened up, blinking.

The girl was no longer smiling at him. She had a surprised look herself.

Wait. Which superpowers did he have again? Maybe he'd been approaching this obstacle from completely the wrong direction.

NOW THERE'S THREE OF THEM.

I'm reconsidering fleeing the house at this point.

7.14.i [CA,EP,FW]: Play Along

Charles and the ninja were both giving each other surprised looks. Charles wasn't sure which of them was more taken aback by the exchange. He didn't think of himself as somebody who talked like that, even when an unexplained scantily-clad ninja was preventing him from getting into a house containing his girlfriend's comatose body plus two strangers. And from the look on the unexplained ninja's face, she hadn't thought of herself as the type to apologize for smiling.

The ninja ended up speaking first. "Hey," she said, giving him an attempted stern look that didn't quite gel. "Did you glamour me just then?"

"Say what now?" Charles said. His brain felt more off than before. Glamour? Was he misinterpreting things, imagining things, or just plain on drugs? This felt like he'd taken a left turn into an urban fantasy novel. "I did just get my own superpowers awakened with no instruction manual for how they work, and I feel like I'm half on drugs, and I'm worried I might be doing things that don't make sense, but I don't think I'm accidentally mind-controlling attractive women---" He shouldn't have been saying those words to a hostile stranger. "Can we back up here? Why do you think I glamoured you?"

"Is that... so," the ninja said. She was keeping a straight face, but if Charles wasn't imagining things, he thought he could detect something like worry/sympathy/concern. "When you spoke just then, it felt like---like I could feel your voice down there. And this isn't the time or place or occasion for that, got it? If you want to take me on a nice dinner date and mind-control me into sleeping with you, that's one thing, but I'm on a mission right now. If you try to glamour me now I have to stop you before you can finish. Which I don't know how to do without escalating this to physical violence. Which I think we both don't want."

Was he just imagining that those words didn't sound totally sensible and sane? It was hard to be sure when he knew that he wasn't fully sensible himself. "You're right about violence still seeming like a bad idea," Charles said. It might have been justified to get to Cindy and protect her. But the problem wasn't just that he was sort-of-on-drugs and ought to be even more careful than usual about not being the first to resort to violence. The problem was that the sexy ninja was stronger than him. He'd lose. "Can I close my eyes and think for a minute?"

"Take all the minutes you want," said the ninja.

"Don't worry," Charles said absently and without really hearing himself, "I won't be taking them from you," and then he closed his eyes and thought, instinctively pulling on his personal timestream as he did. Being told to take all the minutes he wanted was as good as nobody looking at a clock.

Which superpowers did he have again? Charles was having trouble remembering any particular ones.

Well, there was the one that made him better at parkour if he used a business suit. The lightning with its rapid wrath. That had been it. And the same line of the poem would also make him harder to recognize if he wore glasses.

Damn it, he didn't need a series of visions he'd experienced during an altered state of consciousness and was having trouble remembering now. He needed an itemized list of superpowers with description texts and quantified numbers. Oh well, Cindy probably didn't have a list like that either, so no use complaining.

Was one of his powers mind-control?

One of his powers definitely wasn't mind-control.

Charles had a feeling that this was not the most persuasive possible thing he could say to the ninja.

But the night with its starkness was something deeper than making women feel sexual pleasure when he swore at them, something sacred and holy. The fire with the warmth it hath, maybe? That felt related, like it might have played some role. But this scenario seemed more like---like him improbably happening to tell Susanne Kelvin the right things.

Him running into a scantily dressed ninja in the first place wasn't overwhelmingly probable, now that Charles thought about it.

Did he have his own mating field now?

The thought felt half-right at best. The whole idea of a "mating field" seemed less plausible, now, somehow. It had been something Cindy had said to him while she was pretending to be an alien. Why had he believed it so readily? There were things about it that didn't make sense.

Charles Adan felt an inner despair. There was too much going on. Too many puzzles and mysteries and new things all at once, and his own thoughts still disorganized. He didn't know which threads he ought to pull on first.

But Cindy had spoken before about strange intuitions that had guided her sometimes. There was a fragmentary memory of Charles having managed to guide himself with them too, inside some unrememberable vision. If Charles tried to think intuitively---

If Charles tried to think intuitively, it felt like---

Like something had altered his---nature of reality? The Dao of the universe around him, his experienced world?

Cindy had tried to warn him about that. Early on, before things had gone odd, in the parts he could still remember clearly. She'd warned that if she gave him sexy superpowers, Charles became a type of person who had sexy superpowers, and from then on he'd only---he could only be inside---inside universes that accepted people like that.

He hadn't understood those words on any real level at the time. The fact now seemed much more real, and ominous. Tied to truths he wasn't allowed to know. To remember.

But it made sense that having sexy superpowers meant the world around him would look different too. If you could stop stimulating somebody just before they reached orgasm, you would run into ninjas wearing bikinis who could perform superhuman jumps. That wasn't mere cause and effect, it was metaphysically correlated on a deeper level than that. It wasn't a mechanism you could block by fiddling with the right part of the universal machine. Once you had a superpower, worlds that would allow people like you would be worlds that didn't obey physics. Once you had a sexy superpower, universes that included you would be universes that included scantily clad ninjas.

And the universe would not be expecting you to fight your way past her.

It would be expecting you to do something else that started with an F.

Charles opened his eyes, taking in again the apparition of the pretty, pretty ninja wearing her black leather-armor bikini and pointless mask and nothing more. Now that Charles thought about it, she'd painted her fingernails and her toenails. Like she'd been expecting to go on a date today as well as fighting.

Charles was not entirely sure how he felt about this.

The universe was expecting him to flirt his way through?

Where the hell was he supposed to start? Charles didn't have any pickup lines memorized at all, let alone pickup lines for ninjas.

But part of him seemed to have its own ideas about that, confident ones. Like a certain part of him was much more in tune with new Dao than himself, so that its own thoughts had gone on moving straightly while his own were disarrayed.

If he hadn't still needed to get to Cindy, Charles Adan would have hesitated more to play along with it.

Erin Penna held herself in the fake, TV-inspired martial arts stance she'd adopted, hoping that she was successfully keeping a stern look on her face. She didn't actually have a real owner who was ordering or mind-controlling her into doing all this, and absent that, Erin wasn't certain she would be able to punch or choke a man unconscious before he could glamour her again. She wasn't just emotionally unready, she was unsure it was right to risk. She had no practice or instruction knocking people unconscious, and learning to do that while using superstrength sounded like an incredibly bad idea.

So she really, really hoped the dangerous-looking handsome athletic Faeblood in a manly business suit did not attempt to mind-control her again, and wow was that a thought she hadn't expected to find herself thinking.

After only a few moments Charles Adan opened his eyes. "All right," he said, his voice sounding deeper. "I'm now sure I didn't glamour you, accidentally or otherwise, to feel sexual pleasure when I yell at you. That's not one of the powers I got." He smiled. "Which means the issue must be on your end."

"What?" Erin said, and then realized that there was that possibility and, if he couldn't use glamours, she'd given herself away by accusing him.

Erin went on keeping a straight face, but she couldn't control the blush starting on her cheeks.

Her magical bullet-deflecting panties chose that moment to give her one of the long, slow licks they'd been doing every minute or two.

"Now," said the man, giving her a dark look that seemed to go straight down her spine. "You've falsely accused me of mind-controlling you, and I think you should apologize for that."

"I'm sorry!" Erin said without thinking about it, and then realized she'd done it again.

The man smiled. "Still not mind-control," he drawled. His Southern accent seemed plainer now, as though he were emphasizing it. "Now let's see, what should I have you do next?"

"Hey," Erin said. She put her hands on her hips, trying for an indignant glare that she suspected she wasn't pulling off. "Does the saying, 'I may be a sub, but I'm not your sub' mean nothing to you?"

"Well now," the man said. "I'm sure that saying applies to some people, but I'm not getting the impression it applies between the two of us. Unless I'm misremembering something about an invitation to take you out for dinner and glamour you afterwards?" His eyebrows rose.

Oh, she should not have said that. "That's not how consent works," Erin tried. He couldn't know all about her, could he?

Too late, Erin remembered that she was now visibly a Faeblood, and that anyone who knew that might make lucky guesses about her sexuality.

And the man evidently did know it. "Now why do I get the feeling you're trying to hide something," the man said, looking interested. "I wonder what it is. Are you attracted to me and wanting to submit to me personally---or is it that you get hot when anyone gives you orders?"

Charles realized what he'd just said, then, and abruptly shut his mouth. That was going too far. Much too far. He should not have let Badly-Done-Not-BDSM-Charles start talking. The ninja would be every bit within her rights to throw him off the rooftop---

"Fine!" the ninja said. She was blushing more now, and part of Charles exulted. "Fine, anyone who knows I'm a, someone who takes orders, can give me orders and that will turn me on. Yes. That's true. And I should have remembered that myself earlier and not accused you of glamouring me, so I apologize for that. And now that I've said that all out loud, it can't be used against me any more, so we're done here."

Okay, maybe he should let his inner well of Bad-Not-BDSM-lines keep talking.

"Kneel," Charles said, smiling darkly. "I want you on your knees, hands at your side, looking up at me. Now."

Erin's knees actually started to bend, before she managed to straighten up. Oh fuck her life. She'd been able to brush off demands from random street assholes before, though she'd fantasized about obeying them. But those people hadn't known who and what she was, hadn't known themselves and her to be inside a system where she was supposed to obey. This was why she needed a real owner. A real owner would be able to command her not to take orders from other people who knew. Being an unowned robot was dangerous, and of course, of course that thought was making her feel even warmer.

"You don't have the right to give me orders," she said.

She knew before she'd even finished the sentence that it had been an unwise thing to say.

That made perfect sense to his ordinary way of thinking, but something inside Charles knew---

"You're lying," Charles observed.

"I'm on a mission right now and you don't have the right to give me orders while I'm on a mission!" Erin said. There, she believed that, and that felt better.

"Getting on your knees won't stop you from completing your mission," the man said, smiling wider than before. "You can stand right up again if I start moving. Why does that give you the right to refuse my order? I may not have the right to order you to let me into the house, but if I say that I would enjoy seeing you on your knees, you should be on your knees."

Oh, fuck him! "I, ah," Erin said, god damn it she shouldn't need to justify herself to him! "I don't need to justify myself to you?"

"Mmm... nope," the man drawled. "Try again. And get on your knees while you think about it."

Erin's panties licked her again.

Charles was feeling very conflicted about this. On the one hand was everything Charles would have said about this whole conversation one week earlier. On the other hand was that this felt a lot more like he was doing something that might work for getting to Cindy, especially compared to parkour-flailing helplessly around the house and being blocked by a ninja every time.

"You'll feel better after you get on your knees," said the infinite wellspring of Fifty Shades of Grey lines inside Charles. He was surprised at how easy it was to smile darkly as he said things like that. "Why don't you just do it? Why are you fighting yourself?"

"That really sounds like you're glamouring me!" the woman said.

"Oh? Are your reactions not the reactions that you feel belong to the real you?" Charles let himself say. "Don't bother answering, we both know the truth. If you insist on staying in my way, I'll find you a more pleasant sight to look at if you're on your knees wearing that lovely slutty outfit. You have no right to refuse an order like that if your master hasn't told you otherwise. This doesn't interfere with your current mission. You're not gaining anything by refusing me. You're just making both of us feel bad about you disobeying me and me not being obeyed. Kneel."

Whatever alternative logic his wellspring of porn dialogue believed slutty ninjas should run on, the ninja must have been running on that logic, because she was breathing heavily and looking very conflicted.

But the ninja took some deep breaths and looked him straight in the eyes. "If I kneel to you," she said, "you'll try to give me other orders, and one of them will be a trick. A disguised order that's secretly meant to interfere with my current mission. Or would you swear an oath to me that's not what you're planning?"

"Are you insane?" Charles blurted, shocked out of his pose. "Oaths are serious!"

...he knew this how, exactly?

The male Faeblood looked genuinely horrified, and Erin realized she'd gone too far. "I wasn't asking you to swear an oath!" Erin said hastily. "I just meant that, I meant that as an example of why I'm not following your orders and what it would take for me to actually obey and I'm honestly sorry that I can't kneel to you and be more attractive for you---"

Erin realized she was acting like a scatterbrain.

So Erin straightened up and gave him another glare, a real one this time. "Look," Erin said, letting the part of her living her fantasy talk directly to the Faeblood man, since it was clear that he already lived inside that world for real. "If you sincerely meant that you just wanted to see me on my knees because I was more attractive that way, you'd have the right to give me that order, and I'd do it. But you don't just want to see me on my knees. You're asking me that because you're trying to accomplish something else."

For some reason, the predatory impulse inside Charles seemed taken aback by that. Maybe even defensive, which implied the surprising possibility of it feeling guilty. There were things that his inner darkness did hold sacred, it seemed, even if they were different things than what normal and sane people held sacred.

"It's true that I have ulterior motives for wanting to get to know you better, and knowing how to give you orders that you'll obey," Charles said, looking her right in the eyes. Letting the part of himself living the fantasy talk directly to the slutty ninja, who clearly lived inside that world already. "It's also true that I find you very attractive, I want to use you sexually in the future, and I would absolutely get off on seeing you dressed like that and kneeling in front of me. Both the sight of a beautiful girl like you on her knees, and knowing that you were obeying me properly. I'd never give an order like that to somebody I didn't really want to use."

"Ah---oh, uhm," Erin replied with great coherence. There were feels blossoming inside her chest right now. No man had ever---had ever said anything like that to her, said it inside her own system.

If this was a ploy or a trick---well, the Faeblood male was openly saying that he had ulterior motives in complimenting her, so yes it was a ploy. But he was also saying the compliment was sincere.

If he was lying outright, it was going to hurt.

But lying outright---that was something Faebloods didn't usually do without reason, right?

It was increasingly feeling like she just ought to be on her knees. But then that probably was the outcome he was aiming for. But then Erin wasn't averse to being used and taken advantage of. But she'd be a less valuable thing if she couldn't carry out missions reliably.

"Um," Erin said. "Um. Okay. So you were sincere about wanting to see me on my knees because it would be a pleasing sight. Then you should know I'm sincere when I say that under other circumstances I'd obey you, for just the reasons you said. But right now I can't, because Mistress comes first." Erin knew she was pretending to more ownership than anything Illyria had really given her, or rather taken from her. But Illyria was still more mistress to her than this man was master. She'd given her a new life and sexual orders. Right? More importantly, Erin had accepted this mission and an easily distracted slave wasn't worth much, so it was the right thing to pretend.

"---right now I can't, because Mistress comes first," the ninja said.

"I guess I can't argue with that," Charles said. The statement wasn't the result of strategic thought on his part, it was just his overly-dominant-dom-self acknowledging that the ninja was speaking wisely and righteously. She'd won this round fair and square, not through improperly disobeying him but by staying true to her own submissive self. "That was very well-spoken of you. Do you have a price? You seem beautiful and loyal and wise. I might want to rent you for a while, maybe even buy you if you're for sale."

The ninja stared at him and made a tiny high-pitched sound.

Oh god. What had he said. What had he said.

He wasn't letting that inner voice talk anymore.

Erin's thoughts went completely to pieces.

"You'd buy me?" her mouth said, having assumed control of itself in the absence of any higher thoughts to control it. "What---at what price?"

Charles's normal thoughts flailed, deprived of the brief coherence that had come from according with the new Dao. He wanted to say that his words had just been a mistake, but that would have been an absolutely terrible idea. Part of Charles felt increasingly certain that this wasn't just a side character random ninja he'd run into. She might be a fellow refugee of one of Cindy's prospective future harem members. Something deep inside Charles seemed to have done its equivalent of falling in love at first sight, only its equivalent was deciding that here was a beautiful thing that he must own. Though it would also be acceptable if Cindy owned her and Charles owned Cindy.

"It's a little embarrassing to admit this," Charles said, deciding to try to temporize as best he could in his condition, "but I haven't recently checked the market prices for ninjas."

"I don't care about the market. I want to know what you'd pay for me."

Name me the full price of your soul, said the darkness inside him, I will pay it to you double, and make you mine for eternity---

WHOA no nope there was stuff going on inside his head that was not allowed to be going on outside his head.

Charles was still feeling way too woozy but he tried to run saner numbers mentally. His base pay rate for his session with Susanne Kelvin had been eight hundred dollars, leaving aside the rather more generous tip. If he assumed a ninja employed on the same basis would cost around the same per day, it would be around three hundred thousand per year, maybe? That didn't sound right for an ordinary ninja, but it might fit a slutty ninja who could leap onto roofs. And if you assumed interest plus depreciation of five percent, that would make her net present value six million dollars.

It didn't sound high, exactly, not for a human being. And a ninja would have capital and maintenance costs. But even as a ballpark figure, $6,000,000 was more than he currently had.

Of course he wasn't going to be first to name a price out loud during negotiations. Charles wasn't that far out of it.

"Honestly, you're worth enough that it might take me a bit to get the money together," Charles said. Though with all his new superpowers it ought to be possible somehow. "I can calculate minimum amounts you're obviously worth, but I hesitate to say them in case it's too far off the market value. What's your mistress's rental price for you? I'd definitely want to rent you for a week first, I mean, we just met."

The predatory cruelty inside Charles told him to stop talking about this ephemeral nonsense of mortal resources, and offer her power and pleasure and immortality in exchange for her soul.

The ninja spoke, sounding a little hesitant. "My---my rental price is---five thousand dollars. Per week."

Charles's sales instincts were telling him that the woman didn't really expect to get that price and could be negotiated down. The predator inside him was ordering him not to dare. His predator's concept of this person's natural rights might not overlap perfectly with the ones Charles would have listed, but what rights she had, were hers. She had the inalienable right to set challenges for a would-be master, to let Charles prove himself worthy. His inner predator wasn't the type of trash that tried to make a woman feel like she was less valued, so she would give herself up more easily. It was the type where, if she asked for the Moon, she got the fucking Moon. If she didn't think she would really get the Moon, if she doubted her own preciousness or doubted his ability to pay, all the more reason to prove both to her.

And then the predator would get one Moon's worth of use out of her, one way or another.

The Charles who was still trying to hold himself together thought that he really needed to warn her about that first.

For an awful stretch, Erin thought the Faeblood man was going to turn her down. What had she been thinking? That was, what, twenty-two thousand dollars a month? Who the hell was she to think she was worth that?

"Be warned of how this works," the man said darkly. "Whatever your price is, I'll pay it without bargaining. And then I'll get that much use out of you."

It was the sexiest thing that had ever been said to Erin Penna in her life.

It was possibly the sexiest line that had been used on anyone ever.

Erin discovered that she was on her knees, hands at her sides, as she'd been ordered. "Sir," she said in a choked voice.

If he asked her to let him into the house now, if that was all he'd really wanted from her, she was going to kill him. Or lightly wound him, anyways. Possibly just give him a very sad look. But it would definitely hurt.

Charles blinked, feeling like his warning had not accomplished exactly what he'd had in mind. He should have rephrased it into Nondark English. "Let me clarify, because this part is important and needs to be said clearly before you spend a lot of time around me," Charles said. "I am a sexual sadist."

"Yes, sir," said the ninja. "If you don't do anything that could damage me permanently and make me less valuable to mistress, that's fine."

That could cover an awful lot of awful territory. "Are you sure?" Charles said. For some reason it came out sounding more challenging than he'd had in mind.

"Yes, sir. You can list all the horrible things you plan to do to me, and if there's one so extreme that it scares me, then---" The ninja hesitated, as though making up her mind about something.

"Then you'll reconsider?" Charles said.

"Then I'll give you a dollar."

The ninja was looking up at him from her kneeling position with a gaze that was proud and sultry and maybe a little scared. Like she'd needed courage to say the words, but had damned well meant them as the provocation they were.

The cruel, predatory impulse inside him threatened to kill him if he tried to buy this miraculous maiden at a price as insultingly low as $6,000,000. Maybe the third of the Three Rings would do as a bride-gift, if he and Cindy were getting two of the Three as matched engagement rings. Charles told it to shut up.

"I should also warn you," Charles said, though he had a feeling he could see how this conversation was going, "some of the people around me do things that... someone might object to... if they had remotely normal or sane attitudes toward consent."

"I don't."

"Good to know, I guess." Charles hesitated. "How do you feel about being made to directly apprehend the truth in ways that are definitely not mind control?"

"I don't understand?" the ninja said from where she kneeled.

Charles suppressed a sigh. He probably shouldn't try to explain that one, no matter how unarguably true it felt. "On a scale of one to ten, when ten is most opposed and one is not opposed at all, how opposed are you to being mentally influenced into performing sexual activities," Charles said plainly.

"Negative fifty million."

"Should I bother asking whether you want to avoid finding yourself in increasingly strange and improbable erotic situations?"

"That ship has already sailed, sir. Also no."

"Then," Charles said with a dark smile that he actually did feel, because he knew that in this situation it would have been unforgivably dishonest to smile darkly without feeling it, "I suppose there's no obstacle to you going on a few adventures with myself and my fiancee and seeing if we all click, which, frankly, I expect we will. I'll see about gathering a slave-price large enough to make you regret my having paid it, and rent you in the meanwhile."

There was water gathering in the ninja's eyes. "Yes, sir."

Charles opened his mouth to try ordering her to let him into the house now, and then stopped. With or without his predatory part's warning, Charles would have known that was the wrong move relationship-wise. The ninja was still on a mission. She was still obeying her current Mistress, whoever that was. She hadn't agreed to start her rental agreement right away, nor would she.

And it was then that Charles realized he had just agreed to rent a superpowered scantily clad ninja for one week, for five thousand dollars, in a way that didn't get him into Cindy's house.

Charles wanted to hold his head in his hands. How had the conversation gone here again? How had his life gotten here?

But something inside him suggested that the tears in the woman's eyes showed that Charles had made substantial progress and just needed to keep moving in this direction. Maybe taking some alternate tacks, but not giving up.

...There were things going on inside his head that hadn't been happening yesterday. Charles's predatory impulses were more in tune with the new Dao than he was, and the Dao was making truths known through his wellspring of bad-not-BDSM-lines instead of through him.

Or something like that.

But the point was, if Charles went by weird intuitions, he could feel that he still needed to get further along this maiden's... relationship progress bar, he thought he remembered Cindy calling it? Tears were a good sign, but it felt self-evident that a stronger metaphysical tie existed between a woman's progress bar and how much clothing she was wearing.

The Faeblood male took a step towards where Erin was kneeling. "Take off your clothes," he said.

A jolt of horror went through her. Not the sexy type of horror. He'd been planning to shoot her?

A moment later, her most-people-aren't-killers sense caught up with her. More likely, he didn't have any idea that her outfit was bullet-deflecting, and just meant to see her naked.

But that wasn't the type of thing she ought to just go around telling people who weren't her owners. As with mundane people, Ned had warned her, some Faebloods were bad enough to cast shadows on all the rest.

"I was told to wear these, sir," Erin said instead, feeling guilty about the half-truth. Ned had demanded that she wear the armor, yes, but the two of them didn't have quite that type of relationship.

"Oh?" said Charles in an amused tone. "Well, I can't argue with that." The words had left Charles's mouth before he thought about them, another product of his inner monster's porn-style Hannibal-Lecter-style code of honor.

But after hearing himself, he closed his mouth in sudden worry. If you couldn't remove the maiden's clothes, you couldn't get to the end of her relationship bar, right?

No, that was wrong. Regardless of what the maiden was wearing, her progress bar wasn't finished until they had a sex scene, and when they had a sex scene it would be finished.

Wait, really? Charles thought at his increasingly bizarre thoughts. I'm supposed to fuck the sexy ninja? Why or how does that solve anything?

But another part of himself seemed to feel it was self-evident that, while fucking the ninja might not solve everything on its own, this whole tangled mess couldn't possibly resolve itself without some type of sex scene. It was overselling the power of cause-and-effect reasoning to ask whether something good would happen because he fucked the ninja. Even if it seemed like that event led into other events, it wouldn't be a matter of mechanism, it wasn't something you could prevent by stopping one gear of the universal machine. If you were inside a reality where a mysterious ninja in a bikini was stopping you from getting into your girlfriend's house, you were inside a reality where you weren't getting into that house until after you'd had sex with that ninja.

Charles felt increasingly weirded out by the direction his thoughts were taking, but his inner predatory side seemed completely comfortable with it, and it wasn't like Charles had any other ideas for how to proceed.

The man's reply, seeming to immediately accept Erin's half-truth about having been told to wear her armor, was making her feel even guiltier. Though also more comfortable about the way he seemed to respect her obedience to other dominants and not just himself. "Is there some way I can make it up to you, sir?" she ventured.

"I suppose I'll be fucking your mouth then," the man said. Slowly, deliberately, he began undoing his belt buckle.

Apparently their relationship had progressed to that point.

Or people didn't need relationships with her in order to use her mouth.

Erin's thoughts were going to pieces again, as all the arousal of all the orgasms she hadn't had lit up again into an unbearable warmth inside her. With scattered shreds of her self-possession, she managed to realize that she needed to think about whether this could be a step in a plot to get past her, into the house---"Sir, wait."

The man didn't stop slowly pulling his belt out of his pants, loop by loop. "I realize our rental agreement hasn't started yet," he said. "This isn't part of our agreement. It's me feeling frustrated about how you've been getting in my way, so I'm going to take you aside and use your mouth before we get back to what we were doing."

Erin's pussy clenched on nothing. It was so hot, and so wrong, and so right. "Sir," she managed to say, "if you're not---if you're not going to swear that this isn't a plot to get past me, I need to think about whether it could be."

He couldn't have deduced about tickling her as a way to shut down her powers, could he? And be trying to get her vulnerable and at close range? That shouldn't be it, right? Maybe Yoal-yohuali could read off her powers just by looking, but Ned had needed to run tests on her (her belly clenched at the thought of some of them). The man had made no effort to come closer to her before.

The sensible thing to do would be to refuse. She was on a mission, she shouldn't take the risk that he knew about her vulnerability and was planning to tickle her once she was in arm's length and preoccupied. A good slave, a properly-functioning useful robot, would say no.

Part of Erin---part of Erin was having trouble coming to terms with that very obvious truth. The thought that the man she was blocking could interrupt her in the middle to take out his frustration on her mouth was really, really, really hot. And Illyria wasn't really her mistress, and she wasn't really doing this as a slave, and she'd only just started to have nice things like happen to her, and she didn't want to start turning them down just yet, and the prospect of having to refuse temptations still felt awful and terrifying---like it might all just stop, if she stopped going along with it---

The ninja looked torn. Internally torn, like she was fighting herself and not just having trouble figuring something out. Charles didn't know how he knew that, but he knew. "Is something wrong?" he said in a gentler voice. "If that contravenes your orders, tell me how." He was surprised his predatory impulses didn't feel more frustrated than that, but it semeed his inner overly-dominant had recognized this maiden as a righteous one and was willing to hear her out.

"It---sir, it doesn't---it doesn't contradict my explicit orders but I don't know you're not planning something---"

For the first time since he'd gotten his powers and run into so many people refusing to help him, Charles could feel something---a potential for action---a superpower that was right for this situation. That power couldn't be used to make people let him into a house. It couldn't even be used to reassure somebody that he meant Cindy no harm, unless they were in a context where something deep within themselves depended on knowing that. But now---

"You want to be the kind of slutty ninja who anyone can just take aside and use during her missions," Charles said out loud. He couldn't have said if it was the predator inside him talking, or his real self, or the Dao speaking through him. He closed his eyes, and felt like he could see the ninja still within the darkness, separated from him not by a couple of meters of rooftop distance but by some much greater gap. "But you're afraid," Charles Adan said across the darkness. "Afraid that something will go wrong, if you let yourself live the fantasy, if you become someone who can be taken aside and used. It's okay. You don't need to be afraid. You can become the person you know you are meant to be."

And in the moment that he spoke, Erin Penna knew that the words were true.

She instantly leaped to her feet and took a guarding stance.

"You glamoured me," she said. Arousal warred inside her with dismay. The cautious knowledge that she should knock the mind-controller out now, warred with the cautious sick horror of maybe killing him. The thought came to her that she could break only his arm, to distract him, but that might not work and she really didn't want to do that either.

"Only in the sense that opening somebody's eyes is glamouring them to see what's in front of them," the Faeblood said.

"Yes," Erin said right back, "I'm aware that's what being glamoured feels like, this isn't my first time. Undo it now or I'll have to hurt you."

The ninja was looking more dangerous by the second, and the thought occurred to Charles that the superpower he had just used did not come with anything resembling an "Undo" button.

But his thoughts felt sharper now, more lucid than a second earlier, possibly from his having performed an act that aligned Charles Adan and Charles Adan's inner predator and the Dao all together.

The Faeblood said, "Has it occurred to you to ask why, if I have the mind-control power you think I have, I'm using it to make you give me a blowjob, instead of using it to make you let me inside the house?"

That brought up Erin's thoughts short. "No," she admitted, though she stayed on guard.

"It's not that type of power. It works... well, it works if somebody thinks they're inside the wrong universe and their self-integrity increases through them learning the truth? The point is, I couldn't make you believe it was safe for me to fuck your mouth if it wasn't actually safe for you."

"Is that a fancy way of saying your mind-control power only works to make other people believe things that you honestly believe are true?" Erin said. It didn't seem like the type of limitation that would evolve, if Faebloods had inherited it from beings that had evolved. But she could see it being engineered into a genetically-engineered lifeform, or built into an alien device that some wizard had obtained, or laid as a geas upon someone.

"It's not that simple," the Faeblood said. "But I do swear," the Faeblood took a deep breath, "My power only made you believe things that I believe are really true."

He'd given her an oath. Because he'd known, somehow, that it mattered to her that much.

Erin discovered that she was on her knees again, this time with her mouth open.

I don't say anything, as the third person now sitting by Cindy's couch gives me an inquiring look and raises her eyebrows. I just turn and stumble back upstairs.

The thought comes to me that maybe I've never been gaslit by anybody really good at it, and this is what that looks like. People appearing next to a sofa, one after another.

If my birthday was today and I had a lot more friends with a lot more money, I would be dead sure this was an elaborate surprise party. As it stands, I just don't---I don't know who---nobody has a reason to do this to me.

But they have to be actors. And the real Cindy, the pretty girl, and "Charles Adan" must all be in on it. Nothing else makes sense. A magician could make it look like the bikini-girl could do superjumps, if they had prep time---

If I was watching a murder mystery, I'd know it wasn't the right answer. It eliminates the impossible but leaves people acting improbably. But if admitting the impossible still leaves you totally out to sea, are you gaining anything by admitting it?

I mechanically trudge another round of the upstairs, peeking out from behind the curtains in each room.

When I peek out the roof-facing window of one bedroom, I see that the girl in the black leather bikini is now on her knees giving "Charles Adan" a blowjob.

My suspension of disbelief cracks.

Yeah. This isn't happening. This is all a skit somebody's putting on.

I consider storming out of the house in a huff.

Still, as put-out as I am at having been frightened like this, I'm also feeling incredibly curious as to what's going on. Maybe Cindy's mother won the lottery and is pulling an elaborate prank on Cindy, which I wandered into somehow?

Well, when the real Cindy gets home, or whatever tops off the big reveal, she won't see me running around looking confused and scared.

I trudge back down the stairs. "Hey," I say to the three people sitting in front of the sofa, as I go over and unlock the front door. No point in making things more difficult for whoever shows up next. "Got room for a fourth?"

Spoiler: QM note

Trying to write this comedy of errors in general, and trying to write the first encounter between Copper Swallow and out-of-it-Charles in particular, is like trying to carefully choreograph a car crash so that the cars stay inside their lanes. I feel like this chapter is way too long for how much it advances the story. But it would take even more time to make this chapter shorter. My guess is, most of you would rather I dump out this chapter and get to working on the next one. Which, you'll be glad to hear, is set in Canada.

7.14.j [WS,DA]: It's Up To You

Winifred Sheen took a staggering step backward, as the altered scenery around the coffeeshop hit her. The signs in French and English. The faux-old cobblestone sidewalks. The mall-style faux-marble fountain on one corner. All the surrounding shops that hadn't been present when she'd entered the coffeeshop. The sheer absence of everything that had been there when she'd entered. The cold in the air.

Something deep inside her was tearing up in helpless indignation. There was a difference between there being magical rules and there being no rules at all.

"Excuse me," Winifred said to an androgynously dressed person browsing their cellphone on the sidewalk. She was surprised at how composed her own voice sounded. "I think my taxi may have dropped me off in very the wrong place. What city is this?"

The person gave her a funny look, and then said, "Moncton."

It wasn't a familiar name. "Just to check," Winifred said, trying to smile like it was a joke, "what country?"

"New Brunswick, Canada," said the person, who was now giving her just the odd look she'd expected.

"Haha," Winifred said, aware that the laughter sounded false. "Well, at least they got that right."

Winifred trudged towards the nearest benches she could see, set in a half-circle around that faux-marble fountain.

She sat down hard.

She put her head into her hands.

She took deep breaths.

Part of her wished that Cindy was here to see her. It would have been easier to keep herself together if she'd needed to be strong for Cindy. As it stood, Winifred was abruptly conscious of having tried to interfere with the scheming of a godlike power that could trivially erase her. Or overwrite her, the way she still suspected it had overwritten her real Uncle Joseph. The Erogame's friendliness to her daughter was questionable. Its friendliness to Winifred Sheen was more questionable, especially if her daughter never noticed the substitution in whoever came back from the bakery instead.

For the first time in her life, Winifred viscerally understood old writings in old books about what it was like to be a mortal living in terror of God. There was a part of her that wanted to sacrifice a lamb to pray that she not be obliterated, or changed, for her sin of defiance.

She took some more deep breaths. Another part of her was very aware that she was outside the United States with no functioning cellphone, no functioning laptop, no passport, and no record of how she could have legally entered Canada if any confused bureaucracy started looking in her direction.

Cindy's Erogame could, of course, send her back into Norville as easily as it had kicked her out. If it wanted to.

Winifred took deep breaths and waited for the trembling in her hands to subside. It would have helped if she had an available plan for what to do next, but being teleported into Canada didn't leave her with much hope. It wasn't that she couldn't imagine ways of finding a USB charger for her cellphone. It was the implied statement that if she did find a USB charger, next she might find herself in an area with no cellphone coverage. Like Antarctica, or Neptune.

Winifred Sheen breathed regularly and tried to calm herself. They were dealing with a vast unhuman power that could strike them down at any time. That had already been obvious. Nothing had changed about that. The Erogame hadn't hurt her yet, just delivered a warning about not trying to derail its stories.

If she hadn't fallen apart after her father slapped her, if she hadn't fallen apart in the hospital while Frank was dying, if she hadn't fallen apart when the hospital had sent her the bill for failing to save Frank's life and she'd seen her life of poverty stretching ahead of her, then being in Canada should not be enough to break her. No, not even Canada.

But she had not taken those events in casual stride. That was too much to ask, if Cindy wasn't watching.

The next time Winifred looked up from where she was holding her head in her hands and trying to keep it together, a man was waiting by the fountain. He had a dark complexion, and only his simple short haircut defied what would otherwise have been a Latin-lover stereotype. A simple grey T-shirt showed off his arm muscles and was tight enough to show off chest muscles too. Ripped dark-blue jeans went with simple dark shoes and a single expensive-looking earring set with white and yellow gems, a promise of wealth that purported not to take itself too seriously. The face was handsome, as such things went, and belonged to a man in his late twenties or early thirties.

His cheerful smile faltered as he caught sight of Winifred's expression. "Excuse me," he said. "Ah---is something wrong?"

"Nothing that anyone besides God could help me with," Winifred said, keeping her voice calm. She did have extensive experience with being forced to talk in a calm voice while bad things happened to her. "Did you want something?"

"Possibly," the man said, sounding tentative. "I just saw your book there and thought we might have some interests in common?" He pointed a finger.

On the bench beside where Winifred sat there now rested a hardcover book, whose cover proclaimed it to be The Luminous Invertebrate by Hannah Blume and John McCrae.

Winifred stared at it, her mind hiccuping and seizing in a way that was nicer than the previous shock. "Yes, well," she said out loud, "I mean, it looks like two of my favorite fiction authors unexpectedly got together and cowrote a book. Which I now seem to have in my possession."

Was this... a peace offering? An apology?

Her heart rate was already slowing. It, it helped, to have that much of a sign. That the Erogame would still be nice to her if she wasn't actively derailing plots. She hadn't offended it that much. She hadn't been exiled to some parallel Earth in lieu of killing her, while some more pliable Winifred took her place.

Winifred looked back up at the handsome Latin lover who'd accosted her by the fountain. Aware, the first time in years that she'd had cause to be aware, that a man claiming to be interested in a woman's book was a classic way for him to try to pick her up.

There would be entertainment on offer during her time-out?

"I'm Pedro Magnossão Vilar de Carvalho," said the guy, as if it hadn't been plain enough already that he had stepped out from a romance novel rather than real life. He flashed a self-deprecating smile. "Lots of last names, yeah, but it's a good conversation starter. Pleasure to meet you."

If her brain hadn't been recently crowded full of other things, it was possible that Winifred Sheen might have been willing or able to remember how to flirt. This was not, in fact, her present situation.

"Winifred Sheen," she said. "Are you trying to pick me up?" She was capable of subtlety, but she didn't see why the Erogame would demand it from her. It wasn't being subtle.

"Ah..." the man said. "I wouldn't want to bother you if you're busy. Or if you'd prefer I get lost for any or no reason. But I've unexpectedly found myself with a free afternoon, and Blume and McCrae are, in fact, two of my favorite authors. You can quiz me if you think I'm making that up." He grinned cheerfully.

Winifred nodded. "Oh, I believe you," she said. "I expect you're also one of those very rare but not entirely nonexistent men whose feminine ideal looks like an overweight middle-aged woman?"

"More like my feminine ideal---or masculine, for that matter---has more to do with that," he replied, nodding in the direction of the book. "Before the word got worn to the ground, my Facebook profile had the word sapiosexual in it." Another self-aware grin.

Sapiosexual. It was a phrase Winifred had heard, once or twice, though she wasn't clear on its exact meaning, or if it was the type of word that meant things. "And, just guessing here, you're not very sexual and will be fine courting me through a romantic evening around town, even if that comes with no prospect of you getting laid."

The man looked a little taken aback. "I wouldn't expect anything in return, should I decide to take you out to dinner? But that's just, you know, being a decent human being, not being sapiosexual."

Now it was Winifred who hesitated, no longer sure she understood what was going on. "I've had almost no interest in sex for some years now," she said. "Sorry if that's too much information." With the Erogame in play, she knew she needed to be careful about what she got herself into.

"I still wouldn't mind showing you around and talking about our mutual taste in authors," replied the handsome Latin lover with his expensive earring. "But, though, I mean, it's really getting ahead of ourselves evening-wise, but you sounded sad about that, and out of sheer medical curiosity I have to ask---have you already tried phemelanotide?"

Danni stepped up to the old-looking residential house. Two stories, unpainted brick exterior, except for the detailing around the windows, which showed signs of unrepaired wear. What would Starry be doing in a place like this? Or rather, why had Charles brought Starry here? The frantic phone call from Charles had been short on details, according to sis. This was definitely the right address she'd been given, but there was no visible sign of Charles, or an overweight young woman, or... much of anything, really.

Danni stepped up to the front door, and knocked as hard as she could.

"Hello?" Danni half-yelled, not quite shouted, not at a level where it would wake up any sleeping neighbors. "This is Danni! I'm a friend of Charles's who is in her right mind and able to talk about things sensibly! I'd really like it if we could all get together and work this out like the intelligent people we are!"

There was a muffled sound of applause from inside the house, several hands clapping.

"Come on in," called a young female voice from the other side, sounding more skeptical and world-weary than anything else. "The door's not locked."

Feeling rather puzzled, Danni turned the doorknob, and the front door obligingly opened for her.

The first place the Latin Lover took Winifred was to an upper-scale clothing store, which marked the second time in as many days that the Erogame had bought her a coat.

Winifred Sheen had gone along with it, looking composed on the outside, even if on the inside she felt like she was drifting through a daze.

She had asked about phemelanotide and confirmed the obvious: She was being offered an easy temporary boost to her lust, along with a handsome man who found her attractive and was no doubt an excellent lover. Winifred was surprised at the depths of conflict that this idea had surfaced inside her. Particularly if she was due for her rejuvenation treatment shortly, and could just fall back to acting 22 years old in a more systematic way. Some of those thoughts might not be psychologically healthy, but it wasn't obvious that she needed to sort them out if she was being rejuvenated anyways. Winifred didn't know. She hadn't decided. The offer seemed plain. She'd think about it.

And then of course her thoughts had turned back to Cindy, though it seemed less likely now that her daughter was in imminent jeopardy. If her daughter had walked out of the Mall Rapist plotline seemingly fine, then this was---was the type of thing that Winifred would have to get used to, if she didn't want to spend her future as one long heart attack. She'd been thrown into time-out, stripped of all working communications, and separated from her daughter by thousands of miles. There was nothing she could do. Or if the Erogame decided to destroy Cindy one day, it could do that even if Winifred was standing right there, and there would still be nothing she could do.

Really, nothing had changed. It didn't matter if her daughter was unconscious and Charles Adan was not in his right mind. It was probably being played for humor, right? It didn't matter. All that mattered was whether the Erogame decided today was the day that Cindy got stepped on like the tiny fragile thing she was.

"You're looking pensive," said Pedro Magnossão Vilar de Carvalho, as they walked out of the coat store, Winifred now warmer on the outside if not on the inside.

"Yeah," Winifred said. "I'm thinking about things that---I can't do anything about. Got any pills for that?"

"Not... really," Pedro said. "What I'd think myself is, if you can't change something, there's no benefit in worrying about it, and if you can change something, you should go change it instead of worrying. I don't know if that's helpful, but it's the thought that comes to my mind. Or it's a bit clichéd, but there's a proverb that goes, live in the moment? I could try to provide moments."

Winifred shook her head. "If it was just me, maybe I could. I have a daughter."

"Ah." Pedro hesitated. "Is she---in the type of trouble where she wants to be in it, and you don't want her to be in it, or is she in the kind of trouble where neither of you want her to be in it?"

"She's---" Winifred said. "She's happy about her situation in general, it's just---this particular event---I don't know. I wish I knew."

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," said Pedro. "But I'm interested in what's going on, if you're willing to say. Maybe I could help?"

Winifred searched for words, for metaphors. "It's---there's this powerful... person. The CEO of a company. And he's taken a strong interest in my daughter and he's---helped her out, with her career---but it's not clear at all what his real intentions are toward her---"

"You're worried he'll dump her after he gets what he really wants from her," Pedro said.

"I'm more worried about her... falling off the top of a tall building, at some point," Winifred said. "But yeah, depending on how he dumped her, and whether it---undid the help he already gave her---I can see my daughter not surviving that either. Neither I nor my daughter are necessarily averse to---to her giving him what he wants, in exchange for his help---but he's not being plain about what he wants. That's what worries us the most."

Pedro said nothing for a half-block's walking, a thoughtful look on his face. "I don't know if this is reassuring," he said after, "but in my experience, the worse type of people will lie to you, or mislead you, not stay worryingly silent. The type of person who cares enough not to just---tell you anything you want to hear---is a type who cares about you as a person in at least that way. Or who cares about honoring their word. Which means they're more likely, though not certain, to also care about you in the way that means they won't arbitrarily screw you over. Not if there's no reason to screw you over, not if you played fair with them."

It was a perspective that hadn't occurred to Winifred before this. In a way, it seemed like it might be better advice about unhuman entities than about human beings. Human beings could have all kinds of reasons for staying silent while planning to screw you over, but for an unhuman entity to avoid lying to you did imply that it was relating in a polite enough way to care at all. "Then why not sit my daughter down and explain to her plainly what he wants?" said Winifred.

Pedro shook his head with a bemused smile. "That's not how it's usually done, when the CEO decides to help out the career of a young and beautiful girl."

"I don't think this CEO is concerned with doing things the way they're usually done," said Winifred.

"Maybe," replied Pedro. "But the point is that his not speaking plainly doesn't mean that he's planning the worst while also wanting not to lie." He paused. "It's more important in any case to ask whether a person has a habit of screwing people over, and to what extent they're constrained by their social circumstances against doing so."

"Yeah," Winifred said with a sigh. "That's the issue. The degree to which this CEO is constrained by society is nil. Zero. Not at all."

"Oh, now that I can promise you is false," Pedro said with a young man's certainty. "Even if we're secretly talking about a mob boss, it's still false. This might be hard to realize, if you're relatively poor and dealing with somebody much richer. But even the most powerful people are still constrained by other powers. The better-connected someone is, the more people they have whose opinions they worry about. If you're thinking about someone's behavior only in terms of what they want, and not how they're constrained, you're only thinking of half their story."

"And what if somebody was so powerful that they didn't have to be afraid of anyone?" said Winifred. "It wouldn't make them hostile, necessarily. They could decide to be nice anyways. But you can see why I'd be worried, right?"

Pedro looked apologetic. "I usually like to take people's premises as granted and see where they lead, but---this is real life, right? This is a real thing your daughter is dealing with? Because in real life, even Vladimir Putin or Leader Kim Jong-un can't order the daughter of the US ambassador brought to his bedroom. To literally fear no one, you'd have to be God. The God, not a god." Pedro paused. "I may be overstepping myself here, but I'd guess that you're a United States citizen. And that your daughter is young and pretty and doesn't have a criminal record. I won't tell you to count your blessings, but I will say that others have it worse. Maybe those other souls aren't completely unreal, in the eyes of the world's powers, but it would take an awful lot of them to equal one of her."

Winifred shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mr. de Carvalho, but this isn't as reassuring as you might hope. If he told me he was constrained by society, maybe, but---" She sighed. "I just wish he'd answer a few of the obvious questions, and it scares me that he doesn't."

"I'm sorry," Pedro said. He hesitated. "If your one wish is only to ask a few questions, just one time---I'd have to know more about your circumstances before I could make this offer for real. But it's not impossible I could get invited onto this person's yacht and have a frank conversation with him."

"Thank you," Winifred said with another sigh. "Really, thank you very much for offering. But no. Can we change the subject?"

"Well, it may not be a cheerful change of subject," Pedro said. "But have you eaten properly today? You look exhausted in a way that I associate with---"

"I've had enough calories, I'm quite sure," Winifred said, smiling. "I went on a tour of bakeries this morning, as a holiday in celebration of the glorious transhumanist future."

"I look forwards to the glorious transhumanist future as much as the next person," Pedro replied. "But at least for now you are still made of flesh and blood, and it may take more than sugar to keep your mind in healthy condition."

"You... may have a point there," Winifred said.

When Danni stepped into the house's living room, she saw one overweight girl, a wrinkled old lady, a wrinkled old man, and... a very short bombshell of a woman, wearing sunglasses indoors, who looked to be well-preserved for an age that probably started with the digit 4. All were sitting in front of a sofa, on which lay Starry's unconscious body with her shirt ripped down the middle. (Though there was something wrong with Starry's hair, something Danni couldn't seem to put her finger on.)

The overweight girl was already looking back down at her phone, wearing a jaded expression that looked deliberate. The other three people were still applauding. The effect of the whole scene was downright surreal.

"And finally the sane person arrives," said the old man.

"Shh," said the tiny bombshell in sunglasses. "Don't jinx it."

"Too late," said the old lady.

Pedro Magnossão Vilar de Carvalho had taken her to a quiet private room inside a fancily decorated restaurant at the top of a ten-story building in the downtown, a private room with a floor-to-ceiling window and a view of a river between half-snowy green hills. He'd bought her a tremendously overpriced but well-made vegetable stew, heavy on peas and other proteins. The kind of simple hearty meal that Jane Greenwood would make for you, if she thought you weren't eating right.

Maybe there was still a spark of gender-typical feminity left alive inside her. Some instinctive part of her that not only felt obligated to respond to being cared-for, but actually wanted to respond. Almost before Winifred realized it, she and Pedro were standing in front of the huge window looking out on hills and river, with Pedro explaining the plot of some book he was fascinated by, and Winifred making intelligent-sounding comments. The subject matter as such was doing nothing for Winifred, since she hadn't read the book and there was a reason why authors had to actually write their books instead of just describing them. But there was also something cheerful and boyish about the way Pedro didn't seem to realize that, and assumed that his epiphanies from reading the book could be duplicated if he described them to her with enough enthusiasm.

"---characters think they're opposing each other," Pedro said. "But the real conflict is their fight against the situation that's trying to get them to distrust one another. And their real weapons are---decency, caution, the ability to question their own distrust. Trying to communicate with other people. Double-checking their assumptions about whether they really need to be fighting. It doesn't work for them on the first try, but you can see how things could go so much worse if they weren't trying. Even in the darkness, they're still reaching out their hands to one another. It's meant as a message to us about how to act when there are buildings full of professional trolls paid by national governments, trying to get us to hate one another."

"Did the author actually say that was the message?" Winifred said. She usually preferred that stories speak for themselves. "It should be arguable what the message really is, if the story is complicated enough and subtle enough to be more than melodrama."

"I mean, there's a character inside the story who basically comes right out and explains the metaphor," said Pedro. "I think the author wanted to be sure the readers didn't miss that one."

Winifred deliberately made a skeptical expression. She was probably winding up Pedro on some level, but that had been how she'd been around Frank, years and years and years and years ago when Frank had still been trying to impress her. A half-remembered state of being, one that hadn't been unpleasant. "Well, how sure are you that the character was really speaking for the author?" Winifred said. "Because that's also the type of thing where people argue about it."

"Okay, but it's obvious this character does speak for the author," Pedro replied. "He pretty much explicitly says," the Latin lover took a deep breath, stood squarely, waved his hands in the air, and said, "Helloooo, I'm an author avatar!"

"Sounds like the type of thing that could ruin an otherwise good book," Winifred said.

"Well, the story is already about as metaliterary as it could possibly get without outright breaking the fourth wall," Pedro replied. "I mean, the character doesn't literally realize he's an author avatar at the time he's talking. He never takes the final step and---applies his own words to his actual situation right that moment? But that's not because he's being stupid. It's just not the subject of conversation from his standpoint. He thinks he's talking about some other person in a book, even if the reader knows he's talking about himself."

Winifred stared out the window for a few more seconds.

Then she slowly turned to look at Pedro Magnossão Vilar de Carvalho.

He looked back at her with a slightly puzzled expression.

Winifred's heart was beating wildly, faster than it had since Friday morning. "Sounds like it could be unnerving if one of the other characters realized they were standing right next to an author avatar, though," she said.

"Yeah, something like that happens inside the book," said Pedro.

Winifred continued to look at the man, but he gave no sign of realizing. She supposed she couldn't blame him. "I think I might have heard something about this story, now that you mention it," Winifred said. "Isn't it the one with the---weird, mysterious, all-powerful game system?"

"Well, there's a lot of stories like that, these days," Pedro said. "You'd think that getting a System is one of the most common things that can happen to people, if they find themselves inside a story. But yeah, that's the one."

"Remind me again who wrote this story?" Winifred said. "Do we know anything about them?"

Pedro shrugged. "The author's name is an obvious pseudonym. I'm not sure I remember what it was, exactly."

"Of course," Winifred said. "So, this mysterious all-powerful system in the story---what does it want from the characters, really?"

"As of the books published so far, that hasn't been made clear," Pedro said. "But that lack of clarity seems inevitable? The mysteriousness is indispensable in a literary sense."

Winifred wondered if the pulse hammering in her veins was detectable at all to Pedro. It felt so loud, in her own ears, that it hardly seemed possible nobody else could hear. "Is it," said Winifred Sheen. "For the same reason that you never see the face of the monster in a horror movie until the movie's end?"

"The System is depicted as being pretty powerful," Pedro said. "If it wanted to eat the characters, it would be such a short story that nobody would bother reading. I mean, if you're reading a book at all, it's not that book. Sort of a literary anthropic principle."

"That seems very reassuring for a reader," Winifred said. "Maybe not so much for a character."

"Now there's a conversational rabbit hole," said Pedro. "The metaphysical relationship between readers and characters, I mean. In principle, every possible sequence of letters is a book. So if you're asking what determines the course of a character's life from their own perspective, it's not that some random book exists and they're inside it. If metaphysics worked that way, their life would just be a string of gibberish. If characters can be real at all, there must be something that makes one story more real than another, and favors the stories with proper words in."

"And that thing is... the number of people reading it?" Winifred said. She'd have been more disturbed by her own words if she'd had any idea what they could mean.

"Well, that's a thing that could make one book more real than another," Pedro said. "There's other possibilities we can imagine. It could be, for example, that a human being reading a book confers on that book some fraction of their own realness, but that a human being's power in this regard is tiny compared to other phenomena of metareality. I mean, if you think about our own universe, it's obviously not being sustained by human beings reading it. But the point is, it's reasonable for a character to expect not to find herself inside a book about her having been instantly killed six days earlier. She'll find herself inside some other book instead."

"Good to know..." Winifred said slowly. She had a weird feeling that, even if she spent all of this precious and limited time asking more questions about metaphysics, she wouldn't be able to understand much more. "Wait, does that mean---is the protagonist immortal?"

"I was arguing more that all story characters are immortal?" said Pedro. "I mean, no matter what happens to a character, or even if the original author stops writing their books, there's going to be fanfictions that continue their viewpoint. If you're talking about the Mystery System story, we haven't actually seen the protagonist die at this point. But one of the secondary characters gets a glimpse of the future suggesting that, if the protagonist does manage to get herself killed, she'll wake up afterwards with a notification saying that a Truth has been revealed: Death Cannot Be Experienced. And the skill text will say that the System doesn't actually make her immortal, it prevents immortality from making her life even weirder. Though the protagonist herself hasn't found that out, at this point, and the secondary character might or might not think it's a good idea to tell her."

Winifred would have expected this news to come as a relief, but it wasn't, somehow. "Let's get back to the Mystery System," Winifred said. "If the story isn't in the horror genre, why can't the Mystery System tell the characters what it wants and what it's planning to do with them?"

"Well, mainly because it would destroy a lot of plot tension," said Pedro. "But we can also look at it from an existentialist standpoint: If the characters knew the purpose of the all-powerful system, they wouldn't be free to find their own meanings in their lives. Look at how many human beings try to build their lives around God's meanings and purposes, in our own world where God either doesn't exist or never makes anything clear. Imagine how much worse it would be if God did exist and people knew for certain what God wanted. Could it be that God had some inscrutable divine purpose in making me run into you today? Possibly. But because God never tells me that, I'm free to decide what it means to me that I ran into you. I don't have to call up a priest to find out if I'm doing it right. I don't start complaining to God that I'd rather... that I'd rather your hair be a different color. One could debate whether that's a good reason for God to be silent in real life, but it definitely makes for higher-quality literature."

"So," Winifred said, "one of the things the Mystery System wants is high-quality literature."

"Yes, the protagonist realizes that on the first day," Pedro said. "Given the nature of the Mystery System, it would be pointless to try to hide that part of its goals. But who knows what else the Mystery System wants, or how the Mystery System's definition of good literature might be different from the human one? That the characters don't know those details is what lets the characters ask what they think is a good story to be inside."

"Which must therefore be one of the things that the Mystery System defines as a good story," Winifred said.

"Well, possibly," Pedro said. "It's also possible that some compassionate power on an equal or higher level is protecting the free will of important characters. They might have sent the System to the protagonist in the first place, or given her the power to reshape it for herself, or whatever mysterious event happened at the story's beginning might reflect powers of the protagonist's own that make her more than a junior partner of the System. That type of thing is hinted at inside the story but not made clear."

"And this compassionate higher power also thinks it's fine that the characters are frightened and can't be told what the System wants from them?" said Winifred. Then she stopped, aware that she might now be speaking impiously of God's God.

"Or there's more than one higher power and they want different things," said Pedro. "The story hints that the truths only get even more complicated and incomprehensible as you try looking past the Mystery System to what's outside it and above it, instead of there being one simple and satisfying answer that's being hidden. See, none of that is supposed to be what the story is about. It's not a story about the Mystery System, it's a story about the people coming to terms with the System. It's what they want that should drive their plotlines, not what the System wants."

"I'm not sure I understand," Winifred said. She kept tentativeness, shock, or fear out of her voice, since it would make no sense to Pedro. They were only supposed to be talking about a book. "Is the author promising the characters not to mess around with their lives?"

"Oh, that wouldn't fit the story's theme at all," said Pedro. "More like... the characters don't need to spend their time fretting about theology? The game isn't set up to force them to guess what the game really wants and why the game exists. There's no disaster they have to avert by figuring it out. They can just play the game as it's given. There's rewards for completing the quests, but no rewards for figuring out who designed the System or why. It's not the theme of the story that the characters will one day succeed in analyzing the Mystery System, whether or not they do so eventually. To the extent the Mystery System does want to keep anything secret, it has to be careful to establish that those secrets aren't McGuffins, because then the story would have to reveal them at some point. The only way for God to hide his face inside a world that runs on stories is for God to establish that his face isn't interesting. That's why it's one of the very few things that the characters get told directly." Pedro paused. "Though the System, or the author, or whatever, never actually appears and talks to them, of course. That would ruin an otherwise good book. It's just that a series of improbabilities puts them in a position where they feel as if something like that is happening."

Winifred turned and stared out the window as she tried to process. It was clear---somehow, it was clear---that behind the words, there was a thought process that was Not Like Hers, and she wasn't going to understand.

"I'll have to think about all this," Winifred said. "But, um, some of this is ringing bells, and I'm remembering more of the details I, ah, read about online. Wasn't there a character who tried to shut down a comedy of errors, and got kidnapped outright by the Mysterious System?"

"There was a character who found herself in a different country at one point, yeah," said Pedro.

"If I imagine myself in her shoes, I think that would hit me pretty hard," Winifred said. "I think I'd have seen that as the author breaking its own rules to intervene directly in my life, in order to tell me to shut up and stop trying to mess with its plot."

"No, no!" said Pedro, waving his hands animatedly. "That's not why it happened to her at all! She decided that she could not be stopped even by omnipotent powers opposing her, in the middle of a subplot that was being played for humor."

"Right..." Winifred said. "I think... I see..."

"But yes," said Pedro. "It did hit her pretty hard, at least until she got one of those very rare peeks behind the scenes. Then she discovered that it was impossible for her to upset the System in that way. She was free to go on doing whatever she wanted inside the story's plots, including trying to derail them. Now yeah, if she was inside a comedy plot and charged off with the determination that not even an omnipotent power could stop her from derailing it, suddenly finding herself in Australia wouldn't be out of the question. But that wouldn't be the System getting angry with her. It would just be funny."

"Funny," Winifred repeated, tasting the word. "Then how does she get home? By going back into the same coffeeshop that brought her there?"

"By understanding that the current storyline is a comedy plot and exploiting the genre's tropes to her own advantage," said Pedro. "She resolves to never tell anyone else exactly how she got home, and then the story shows her arriving at her house at the point when it would be funniest for her to show up."

"But what does she actually do?" said Winifred. "How does she get back to her house?"

"Obviously the author doesn't tell us that," said Pedro. "We have no idea what she did. The story has time shenanigans as well as space shenanigans. For all we know, it could only be a couple of minutes after the story cuts away from her, or a week later, from her own perspective, before she gets home precisely on time. It's all left completely mysterious."

Winifred stared out the window some more.

"The author doesn't say," Winifred said slowly, "so it's up to her to decide."

"Now you're getting it!" said Pedro. "And once the character realizes that, she lives happily ever after and never worries about that type of thing again."

Winifred turned back to look at Pedro.

"Kidding," said Pedro. "That story would never threaten a major character's free will by saying she'd live happily ever after."

"Thank you, I guess," Winifred managed to say.

"For what?" Pedro said, now looking puzzled.

Spoiler: QM note

For assistance with the appearance and dialogue of Pedro Magnossão Vilar de Carvalho, thanks to Pedro Magnossão Vilar de Carvalho.

7.14.k [HRM]: Minimal Denouement Scene

Danni just stood there for a long moment, staring openly at the young overweight girl, the tiny middle-aged bombshell in sunglasses, the wrinkly old man and the wrinkly old woman. In most crisis situations, it wasn't smart to show how confused you were. But when the confusion escalated to this level, if you tried to act unfazed, they'd just know you were bluffing.

She almost asked out loud what they were all doing there.

And then her mind flashed back to Tammi explaining about Sonia's theory about Starry's ability to warp scientists in from across parallel worlds to her biology conference.

"So," Danni said, her mind making a wild leap of faith and guessing and inference, "raise your hand if you actually know what you're doing here."

The old lady and the old man raised their hand. After a second, so did the overweight girl, but it was a second too late. The tiny bombshell kept hers firmly down.

"Out of curiosity, what am I doing here?" said the tiny bombshell.

Danni pointed to the girl on the sofa. "Guarding that girl while she's unconscious," Danni said. "And let me say really really quickly that I am not a threat to her in any way." Somehow, Danni suspected that Starry's unconscious wouldn't have called in lightweights as protectors. Her spine was giving her the same nervous feelings as she sometimes got around the dangerous clients.

"Interesting," said the tiny bombshell.

"Do you know where Charles is?" Danni said. "Young man, early twenties, looks professional, may not be totally in his right mind at the moment?"

The tiny bombshell pointed in the direction of the back of the house. "Give him a minute to finish up first," the bombshell said. "He's currently occupied. Occupying, rather."

The old man looked in the same direction, his eyes narrowing.

Danni was very curious about who they really were and what sort of worlds they all came from, and whether the same person was President in all of them and so on, but she couldn't see any good way to ask without giving away Starry's secrets. So Danni just nodded and started over towards the back of the house, wondering what Charles was getting up to in his current interesting state of mind.

Danni wasn't even asking.

Really. She wasn't going to force them to explain. Danni Arcadia had been in those shoes herself often enough.

"It's okay," Danni said, raising an interrupting hand as the two furiously blushing people in front of her both seemed to be trying to figure out what to say, "you don't have to explain anything to me. I'm not the mom of you. But now it's time for us to all go inside that house and sort things out."

"I'm---" said the absurdly attractive young lady dressed only in black leather underwear. She was frantically wiping around her mouth, even as she'd scrambled up and around, putting herself between Danni and the back door. "I'm not supposed to let Charles inside the house. And who are you, exactly?"

Danni's instincts were saying really strongly that she could solve all of their problems by leaping on this girl and surprise-tickling her.

Somehow, Danni managed to shove them down. There'd be time for that later.

"First of all," Danni said, "I'm a friend of Charles who is in her right mind and, whatever you're worried about from him, I can keep him under control." Charles wisely didn't object to this. "Second of all, there's two of us and the doors are unlocked now, so you can't keep us both out. Third of all, just guessing here, you think you're supposed to protect the unconscious girl on the sofa. Well, now there's four other people already in the house, sitting in front of that sofa. I think you should have a look, don't you agree?"

Danni re-entered the living room, still trying to figure out how exactly to sort things, towing the other two behind her.

"We're going to have a talk about this," the old man said to the underdressed young lady, as his eyes caught sight of her. "That's twice in one day, and I have a feeling this time was less than completely not your fault. And no, I'm not going through all that work again to undo it."

The underdressed young lady looked like she wanted to hide behind Charles.

"Shall I fix it?" said the sunglassed bombshell.

"In exchange for what?" the old man said immediately.

The tiny bombshell raised her eyebrows, looking surprised. "Well," she said after a hesitation, "if you're worried about owing favors---five bucks up front?"

The old man gave her a very odd look, but reached into his pocket for a wallet and handed over a fiver.

Almost immediately after, the underdressed lady gave a tiny whimper and tried to cover her face with her hands.

Is the small one another psychic, like Starry? The hackles on Danni's neck raised themselves a little higher. She was regretting having brought with the pepper spray in her back pocket, considering how useless it would be if any of this went wrong.

It was then that Danni realized that she had absolutely no idea how to go about sorting things out, now that everybody was here.

"So, uh," Danni said, more trying to buy time to think than anything else. "I realize this may be an odd way to start things off, but I want to start by saying that, uh, I expect that what we have on our hands, here, is a confused situation."

"Word," the three oldest people present said in unison.

Had they psychically---Danni shoved the thought aside. "In particular," Danni said, "I think we may be dealing with a situation where... a lot of people have different views about what's going on, and maybe got some wrong ideas about each other."

"That's underselling things," Charles said, half under his breath, as if talking to himself, but still unfortunately loud enough for other people to hear. "I'm pretty sure some people here are operating inside different perspectives on reality."

"Or recently changed perspectives on reality," said the underdressed black-leather lady.

"People who didn't see an email telling them what their perspective on reality was supposed to be," said the overweight girl. "Then their cellphone ran out of power, so they couldn't check their Spam folder to see if they... never mind, I'll be quiet and let everybody else say their lines."

"Just going on my own past experience," said the tiny bombshell in sunglasses, "it wouldn't be surprising if we had to deal with an evil twin sister at some point."

Hey, Danni managed not to object out loud. But she wasn't evil, just... free-spirited.

"Meddling busibodies old enough that they ought to know better," grumbled the old man. "Stupid damn promises somebody made without checking what they were getting themselves into."

The old woman snorted. "I'm still waiting for a group of hefty men in cheap suits to come storming in through the door. Shouldn't we all introduce ourselves, by the way?"

"No," Danni said, as she realized the possible consequences. Somebody might introduce themselves as Adolf from the Reformed Nazi Empire. "Nobody should introduce themselves. Or try to explain what they're doing here. It's just going to tangle stuff up even further."

"That's an unusual approach to a denouement scene," commented the overweight girl.

"But maybe a good one," the sunglassed bombshell said thoughtfully. "I could see it preventing some problems I've had in the past."

"In fact," Danni said, as she realized, "we shouldn't try to understand anything about this confused situation. Because I think we might... have different viewpoints on things... and talking until that comes out is just going to complicate the situation even more."

"Her in particular," the old man said, nodding towards the old woman. "She doesn't have the viewpoint."

"I beg your pardon?" the old woman said sharply.

"I don't think she has the viewpoint, actually," the sunglassed bombshell said, pointing to Danni.

"Okay, STOP," Danni said, raising her voice. "This is exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid. Nobody needs to know what you meant by that."

"Sounds viewpoint-aware to me," the old man said back to the sunglassed bombshell.

"Well then, young woman," the old woman said, as if deliberately ignoring the other two. "What do we need to know?"

Danni had been afraid of that question. "I have no idea," Danni confessed. "I just want everything to be resolved."

"What does resolved look like, according to you?" said the sunglassed bombshell. "I admire your denouement minimalism, but what's left after you've subtracted all the pieces?"

It was a great question. The awkward silence grew inside the room as Danni tried to think of an answer. She threw Charles a look, in case he knew, but it didn't look like he knew either.

"Somebody needs to say something soon," Charles said into the quiet. "I'm not sure what might happen otherwise to get the plot moving again."

The old man cleared his throat. "Well, one thing I should say is that, so far, you kids have been doing an amazing job of nobody getting hurt. I mean it. Way too often in a situation like this, somebody decides that making threats is more likely to get things going their way, and 'their way' rarely consists of everybody sitting down and having a peaceful conversation. So long as you can keep up that winning streak of nobody getting hurt, I'm not too worried about whether you say things have been resolved or not."

"Well said," seconded the sunglassed bombshell.

"At some point I've got to head back home for the day," the old woman said with a sour note. "Be nice to know before then that nobody is going to get hurt. That's what I'd call resolved."

People looked around at each other again.

"Well, you can probably head home then?" Danni said. "I mean---I'm pretty sure nobody here actually wants to---look. I'll make this simple. Put your hand up if you want to hurt the girl on the sofa."

There was a beat of silence, during which nobody raised their hand, and everybody simultaneously tried to figure out how to explain that it couldn't be that simple. Even Danni was aware that it couldn't be that simple.

But still, nobody put up a hand, and that was something.

Then the front door slammed open and in charged a group of hefty men wearing suits, all of them wearing matching headsets. "Hands in the air, everyone!" roared the tallest one at the forefront, brandishing what Danni identified as probably a projectile taser gun.

7.14.l [HRM]: Least Viable Resolution

After the split second that Danni's split-second-mind knew was all the time she had to decide what to do next, she opted for raising her hands in the air.

And then she frantically looked over to see if any of the other people brought in as Starry's protectors were about to pull out guns, or blasters.

The tiny sunglassed bombshell had peacefully raised her hands without rising from her sitting position, an amused smile on her face. The old woman had raised her hands, looking much less amused. The overweight girl was raising her hands with an expression that was half skeptical and half nervous. Charles had raised his hands and looked confused. The old man had his hands raised and was giving a significant glare to the young lady in black leather. The young lady in black leather had upraised hands, but a suspiciously enthusiastic look on her face.

The men in the cheap suits spread out, looking around corners and storming up the stairs. "Chandler here, room is clear," the one who seemed to be the leader said into his headset.

There was an approaching sound of heavy stomping feet, as Danni tried to figure out who this could possibly be.

Through the open front door stormed a middle-aged woman, dressed in camouflage fatigues and wearing a headset that matched those of the goons, her combat-booted feet slamming on the floor.

This new woman, incongruously, had a very normal-looking laptop-sized carrying bag slung over her shoulder. Even more incongruously, her left hand was carrying a huge shopping bag with the air of an expensive fashion store.

"I don't care WHO all you people are," the middle-aged woman said, in a growl that was actually more like a shout, "or WHAT you think you've all been doing. I'm the one with the goon squad. Whatever I say, GOES. And I say you're going to STOP all this nonsense and have a CALM, PEACEFUL, RATIONAL CONVERSATION with each other. NOW!"

There was an awkward pause, as people looked at each other again.

"I'm sorry, but I have to ask," said the tiny bombshell in sunglasses. "Do you have somebody's decapitated head inside that shopping bag?"

The middle-aged woman took a quick glance inside her high-fashion shopping bag. "No," she said. "Why?"

"Because that's the only way you could be acting any more like my mother."

"I don't know you at all and I can already tell this explains a lot about you," the old woman said at the tiny bombshell.

The old man gave a partial cough, a half-ahem. "In fact," he said, "we were having our own quiet and rational conversation before you showed up. With no weapons raised, I might add."

"Oh?" said the middle-aged woman. "That's nice. I figured either I'd bring with enough muscle to make sure everyone listened to me, or alternatively, you'd have cleared things up on your own and my entrance would be a humorous anticlimax. Either worked for me."

"So, uh," Danni said, after the huge men in suits had been told by the middle-aged woman that they could all wait outside until called for again. "I'm guessing you're also here to protect the girl on the sofa?"

"Yes, in fact," said the middle-aged woman.

Danni re-explained her policy for how nobody ought to introduce themselves or explain what they were doing there, because it might make the situation even more complicated. And that they had just been trying to figure out what the least viable resolution would look like, given that they weren't going to find out what everybody was doing there.

"Successfully waking up the girl on the sofa," the middle-aged woman said.

There was another set of glances all around.

"Works for me," said Danni. Charles looked like he was kicking himself for not thinking of that first.

The underdressed girl in black leather gave an expectant look at the old man, who sighed. "I suppose I could poke at her some," he said.

"I'd expect him to know what he's doing," said the underdressed girl in leather, pointing at the old man. She pointed to the overweight girl. "And she knows that I'm... a friend... of the girl on the sofa."

"Is she actually a close friend of..." Charles said, gesturing at the overweight girl, and looking at the middle-aged woman, who nodded back to him. Charles put a hand over his face and groaned.

"What would this poking consist of?" said the old lady. "Because if it involves taking blood samples, I'm going to insist on hearing an explanation for why it can't be done inside a proper hospital."

The sunglassed bombshell looked up from her phone, which she'd just been checking. "I think," she said, "that although I'd also trust him to do that poking," gesturing at the old man, "it involves certain matters that are on a need-to-know basis. And her, her, and her," pointing at the old lady, the overweight girl, and Danni herself, "do not need to know."

"Uh huh," said the overweight girl, who now seemed more nervous than before.

"Yeah, no," said the wrinkly old woman. "Sorry about that, I really am. I've been in one or two situations myself where somebody can't just go to the hospital like a sane person. But I do need an explanation, before the needles come out, for why she can't see a real doctor. Otherwise I call for police backup." She pulled her hand out of the purse, revealing a phone. "Finger's already on the button."

"That would be an interesting conversation with the police," the middle-aged woman said, her voice dry again, "considering that you are an uninvited stranger inside my house."

The old lady raised both her eyebrows. "That so. Then I'd like to see your ID, Mrs. W. S."

The middle-aged woman pursed her lips thoughtfully, then passed a wallet to the old lady. The old lady opened the wallet, looked inside, grunted, slammed the wallet shut again, passed it back.

"I appreciate the concern you're showing for the girl on the sofa," the middle-aged woman said, her voice softer. "But I still have to ask you to leave, for now."

"Wasn't going to argue," the old woman said. "I wouldn't expect you to trust a stranger with whatever this is, and there's way too many people in this room for not wearing nametags. Coming, you two?" She gave a commanding look at the overweight girl, then at Danni herself.

"Oh come on!" said the overweight girl. "You can't ask me to leave now! Not after all this!"

"I'm sorry," the middle-aged woman said. "I really am. But there's things that the girl on the sofa should be the one to tell you about, not me."

The overweight girl hesitated, now looking even more nervous, and then stood up. "Fine," she said. Her voice was sharp, possibly with suppressed fear. "But I'm going to need a very good explanation at some point. Tell my friend I said that."

"Charles?" Danni said. "Is it okay for me to go?"

"It's okay," Charles said. He grinned wryly. "This woman is very close with the girl on the sofa. Closer than I am, in fact."

Huh. Danni took another glance at the middle-aged woman, whose silhouette in the combat fatigues brought to mind the word "dumpy" among others. Well, good for Starry, if she was part of the body shape diversity acceptance brigade.

"I'm afraid," said the tiny bombshell, "that I must also deprive you all of the further pleasure of my company. I'm surprised it took this long for something urgent to come up, but it has. So before I go---can anyone tell me how to get in touch with Starastera?"

Huh? Danni thought, for the second that it mattered.

"Ha," said the tiny bombshell. "Didn't expect that. Not a single one of you recognized the name. False track from the beginning."

The tiny bombshell in her sunglasses turned towards the door---

---and literally ran out of the house, moving like an Olympic sprinter, so fast it was like she'd actually vanished from the spot and made up the motions afterward as an excuse.

Danni realized a few seconds later that Starastera was probably Starry's real name. But by then, luckily, the psychic had gone.

...Maybe that one hadn't been there to protect Starry.

"Uh," Danni said, as she turned towards the door. "Charles, or person who is even closer than Charles to the girl on the sofa, please make sure the girl on the sofa hears about what the tiny person just said."

Charles nodded. Neither he or the middle-aged woman looked alarmed themselves, which reassured Danni some.

Five people remained now in the living room.

Unconscious on the sofa was one Cinderella Sheen, who apparently also went by "Illyria" these days. There was Cindy's mother, Winifred Sheen, though she hadn't introduced herself to the others as either of those things. There was Ned Stonefield, as he claimed to be named. The scantily clad ninja, still unintroduced and unexplained, who'd come there to protect Illyria. And, of course, Charles Adan himself.

Charles flung his hands up in horrified frustration. "That's what I thought I should do!" he said in pure... in pure... he couldn't remember the name of the emotion he was feeling right now. "That was the very first thing I thought of! God damn it! I knew I should have just had sex with her right there in the fucking park! Impulsive sex in public places always works out better than trying to play things safe!"

"Excuse me," said Winifred. "Sorry for interrupting. Charles, if I asked you what the erogame was, would you know?"

"The erogame?" Charles said blankly. "Illyria told me what an erogame was, but---"

"Never mind then," Winifred said. "Carry on."

"Thank you," the old man said in his low harsh voice. Old Ned, he'd also called himself, Ned Serdyrrah, like those were truer names than his true one. "And I wasn't finished, young man. I said Illyria was experiencing a deficit of sexual energies, plural. You could call them dominance energy and submission energy, maybe? The point is that just having sex with her won't do."

"Oh," said Charles. That... that made sense, somehow?

"Look," the old man continued. "The real difficulty we're facing is finding someone to properly dominate Illyria, and submit to her, while she's unconscious. For people like her, dominance and submission are as physical as magnetic north and magnetic south. They can't be faked the way you'd fake a smile while having an off day. It can't be done by going through the outward motions. If you're in a prior dominant relationship with Illyria---which I'm guessing you are---then using her unconscious body like a fuckdoll might do for restoring her submission. If you ended up feeling the right way about what you were doing, that is. But then Illyria would be refilled with submission while she still had a huge deficit of dominance. Like a white hole paired with a negative black hole. That might be bad for her and possibly for anyone in her vicinity."

That made a lot of sense. It explained why the plot hadn't just been him having sex in a public park with Starry.

"Do either of you two know who Illyria is currently dominating?" Old Ned was saying to him and Winifred. "And what standing orders she gave her subs? This is likely to work better if a sub can submit in a way that Illyria already ordered them to, rather than us telling them to do it. In a real emergency, and if you're certain it's something they'd consent to, I suppose we could glamour one of her subs into believing that they're under Illyria's orders. But I'd rather not."

"I..." Charles said. "I'm not quite sure who Illyria is sexually dominating, at the moment..." He wasn't as alarmed as he should be. The rocks with their steepness had been gifted him. He expected he could go looking for the person Starry needed and find them almost before he'd---

"Maybe I could do it?" ventured the ninja.

---find them literally before he'd started. Oh well, nobody needed time, and causality had been just plain inconvenient.

"I mean," the girl in black leather was continuing with an increasing blush, "Illyria told me I couldn't give myself any orgasms, right? And that if somebody did give me an orgasm, I had to tease myself into desperation afterwards, so I'd be ready if she called me. I---I haven't actually done that to myself yet. My orders don't actually say that it counts if somebody else does it for me."

"Oh my god," Charles said, recognizing these instructions. He wanted to fling himself out a window. A high window. While he wasn't wearing a business suit. "You're Copper Swallow!"

What was Cindy going to think of him now? He and Cindy were practically engaged! Had gotten engaged just this noon! And not even one whole afternoon had passed before he'd gone and tried to buy a ninja to be his sex slave! While his fiancée had already been in the middle of seducing her!

7.o [ST,DA]: Allowed To Be Happy

Sonia Turk jolted back into groggy partial awareness, feeling more like she was coming out of general anesthesia than waking up from a nap. Half-remembered dreams danced on the edge of belief, her mind not awake enough to be skeptical. Part of her thought that days must have passed inside those dreams. She'd dreamed about... at least some things that had left no trace in her memory at all... though she'd also dreamed about herself having other dreams that she could remember. Or maybe it was only inside her dream that she was remembering the dreams she'd dreamed she'd had? But that thought was threatening to put her to sleep again, and she needed to wake up. Part of waking up was turning away from your dreams and not trying to remember them anymore... that thought also felt wrong. And dreamy, because it was about dreams. She needed to wake up.

Despite her mind's disordered state, Sonia was feeling energetic. As energetic as that time a very long while ago when she'd drunk eight cups of coffee. Also icky. Not icky like being covered with sweat and then not showering. Icky like getting covered in olive oil and then not showering.

"Ugh," Sonia Turk said. Her first attempt to open her eyes failed due to crusts keeping them shut. "I haven't felt like this since college. What happened?"

"You are in college," said a half-familiar female voice. "You had this weird nightmare about growing up to be a biology professor."

Sonia's disordered intellect hiccupped, but not for long. "How would anyone else know what my dreams were about?" She forced open her eyes, and saw a pretty freckled redhead wearing a black leather jacket.

"You talked in your sleep," the redhead said.

"Nice try," Sonia said dryly. Reality was falling into place around her again, time and setting and people.

Probably-Danni shrugged. "I had to try," she said, sounding sincere about it. "I mean, how often do you get that chance?"

"I feel like I should have predicted this," Sonia muttered to herself. "Perverted twin hired as lab assistant, pranks mad scientist, go figure. Anything happen while I was out?"

"Not much. Starry did something to Charles that put him into a half-baked state, then Starry fell unconscious, then she unconsciously summoned a bunch of weird people to guard her while she slept. The last text message I got, Starry was still sleeping it off but looked better."

That sounded alarming on several different levels. "Should I be---" Sonia began.

Danni shook her head in reassurance. "We handled it. You need to recover from the Virus, so you're not on-call right now. The rest of us in the harem aren't stuffed peppers, kay?"

"I dreamed---" Sonia said. "I had strange dreams. Is Starry the type of psychic where I'd get caught in the backwash from whatever she did, if I was asleep at the time?"

Danni shrugged. "Fuck if I know," she said. "What'd you dream about? In case that's important scientific data."

"It's hard to remember. The bits I can recall sound even more like nonsense if I try to figure out how to say them. You and I and Tammi all got lost in a fantasy dimension, with goblins, and Starry and Charles and some other girl were looking for us. Only that wasn't part of our---wasn't inside our own thing-that-holds-us, somehow, even though it had the same source. In another dream from much further away, Starry sent somebody off to a university that taught mind control and then she never appeared again. There was a woman going to maid school, that dream went on for a while and I somehow knew that it had earned five hundred dollars. There was an alien, a game show, and a woman working under some type of dictatorship, and they all had something in common with the maid even though they weren't in the same universe. There was a dream about a tentacle monster wearing a police badge, doing things that happened earlier this afternoon, but there's still some sense in which that will only happen---later in some extrauniversal version of time---even though I dreamed it just now. There was a surprisingly normal dream about Starry and some other girl going on their first date. Then Starry took a copy of the Cure to a military base in a timeline based on old science fiction, and that reality itself was inside Reddit and got voted up to 64 points. Then Starry started fixing other stories. And the dream that felt most central, like it was the starting point for everything else, was that Starry made Charles the viewpoint character, so she could step offstage for a chapter, and reappear as a version of herself who'd already had the nightmares she would've needed to have, to do what she'd already done, like shifting the viewpoint to Charles and doing things out of temporal order---" Sonia stopped. "I think I'm going to chalk this up to my having been in a Cure-produced endogenous psychedelic state. Or possibly just asleep."

Danni wore an expression of growing concern. "Wouldn't we be silly shmucks if we just wrote off your weird dreams? Starry is psychic. Maybe you got hit by the same thing Charles got hit by? I'm not saying all your dreams were true, but---"

Sonia shook her head, feeling more decisive and awake as she performed the motion. "My dreams were multiple qualitative steps weirder than any oddities Starry has previously displayed to us. We'd also be silly shmucks if we abandoned skepticism just because so many things we used to believe turned out to be completely wrong. We'd be learning the wrong lesson, even." There still had to be some rules, and a stable source for those rules, or else reality would have dissolved into madness around her already. "Possibly I got some backwash from Starry, and Starry was dreaming of inscrutable alien ideas that my mind translated into nonsense? But I'd guess this was mostly down to my own mental state in the post-Viral coma." There'd been an implausible amount of erotism in many of the dreams, as Sonia was electing not to say in front of Danni Arcadia. That part seemed more correlated to Sonia's own recent states of mind.

"Yeeeep," Danni said, popping the p at the end. "Those dreams sound like a stretch, they sure do. All stretchy and sketchy like silly putty that somebody doodled on. I'm still gonna buy some extra jewelry to wear around, made of real gold, so we have stuff to trade if we get lost in a fantasy dimension. Just in case, right?"

Sonia realized she'd been scratching her arm. Glancing downward at the spot, she saw that her skin was peeling off in a horrifyingly thick layer. She swallowed to suppress nausea. This was expected, this was good. "Regardless, I need a shower," Sonia said. "No, first I need a compost bag. Then a shower. Followed by an alarmingly large amount of food."

"Sure thing," said Danni. "Just hold on a minute first, while I try to write down everything I can remember from what you said." She reached over to grab her laptop and started typing.

And Sonia realized. When her mind had semi-cleared last time, it had already been Tammi's shift. It hadn't dawned on Sonia until now that everything she'd said earlier and done earlier had been recorded by Danni in the historically important lab notes.

"Four-thirteen pm," the Arcadia twin recited out loud, as she went on typing. "Subject wails in horrified realization."

Some time later, Sonia had pulled most of the loose skin off herself. She'd taken a brief glance in the mirror when she was done. Then she'd quickly looked aside, because apparently she hadn't been done. A hot shower, she hoped, would do more to scrub away the bits of skin stuck all over her.

By the time Sonia turned off the water and stepped out of the newly clogged shower, an aroma of chicken tikka masala was filling up the hotel penthouse. Sonia's hindmind noted an opportunity to get snippy about stereotyping and that the dish hadn't actually originated in India. Her conscious mind set it aside. That type of political thrust was for enemies... a different type of enemy than Danni seemed to be to her.

The mirror was too steamy to reveal her new form. Perhaps she would be wiser not to look at herself in a mirror right this second. It was an obvious guess there'd be vast and deep emotions running through her mind, and there were higher priorities than feeling them.

Wrapping herself in a towel, Sonia stepped out of the bathroom and went to the dining-room area of the penthouse.

Sonia ate everything Danni had bought. Chewing thoroughly, so her stomach could handle the crazy amounts of input it was demanding. Danni watched over her with a gaze less than entirely Platonic. Sonia's own towel-draped posture while eating might not have been wholly modest, and in a way that was responsive to Danni's heated looks. Especially since she knew Danni wanted to have her and couldn't. There was a certain warmth inside her now.

There were other matters demanding concern, besides this inner warmth, and Sonia managed to mostly keep her attention on those.

Danni, on being prompted, recounted in detail some moderately mad events surrounding Starry. Then, of course, Danni asked for more detail on how Sonia was doing herself. Sonia dutifully reported her physical condition as best she could manage. Danni took that all down, and then asked, more tentatively, how Sonia was feeling. Sonia said that, mentally speaking, she hadn't gotten around to it yet. Danni seemed to take the hint, and didn't ask further.

Some part of Sonia's soul needed quiet. The dreams had been... she still felt... wobbly.

But even that soul-quiet wasn't her highest priority.

Now that her mind was clear, Sonia had an idea for how to disseminate the Virus... or possibly one of the dreams had been about that, Sonia couldn't remember. But it seemed a legitimately insightful dream if so.

It seemed straightforward now that Sonia thought about it. She'd drive to Los Angeles and find an agent. A proxy. A stranger who wouldn't be connected to Sonia, who couldn't be traced to Starry at all. Somebody to have their own bout with the Virus, and then... kiss all the patients in a cancer ward? And inform the doctors about how to treat the patients, when they got fevers shortly after.

There would be some excitement at first, but a lot more excitement when the patients started looking younger and healthier and free of cancer. The cutout agent just needed to be willing to see it through.

Where to find a trustworthy proxy? Sonia could imagine things to try. But the simplest way... might be asking Starry to name a random address in Los Angeles. The required improbability seemed negligible compared to the Virus itself. Sonia just needed to go wherever Starry told her and fuck anything that moved until it stopped moving transmit the Virus to whoever she found there. Naturally, Sonia would stick around to see the new agent or agents through their own transition. Tell them the instructions they needed to know, and stay mysterious apart from that. Sonia could pretend that she herself was just one more agent, with a mysterious benefactor she hadn't known either.

Peculiar how much simpler the impossible problem seemed, now that she felt more energetic. Now that she felt younger. More cheerful, more enthusiastic. Her body felt lighter and none of it was hurting. There were all kinds of ways to disseminate the Virus and the key facts about it. It would have been harder to keep the Virus quiet. They were standing on top of a vast potential avalanche. All they needed was to seduce recruit a few people to scream and jump on stones.

"What are you smiling about?" Danni said. "I mean, I can imagine all types of things, I'm just curious about which."

"I was thinking that news of the Virus would spread faster if I made up a backstory about a cabal of perverted Silicon Valley billionaires trying to keep it to themselves, working behind the scenes to censor media mentions," Sonia said. "Not even God could stop the Virus from going viral after that."

Danni winced and shook her head. "Maybe it's a West Coast thing," she said. "But most of the rich guys I've met personally seemed like the type who... uh, how can I say this? They wouldn't keep it secret if they got hold of the Virus. They wouldn't keep it secret even if they'd figured out how to consume the blood of the young in a dark gamble for escape from death. They'd do podcast interviews about a startup they were funding to... have rideshare drivers pick up young blood and deliver it within thirty minutes... to people who would pay for it in a new cryptocurrency... called BloodGold, so they could name the startup BloodForTheBloodGold.com... and the app would only be on iPhones and require access to your Facebook account. Which, I mean, sure, that's perverted. But it's not evil. Not evil evil. It's just San Francisco Evil."

"It's identity politics, Danni," Sonia said. "Nobody on any side cares what's actually true."

"I care. People shouldn't be hated for what they really aren't. It's like, like, I have this bad feeling I don't know how to---it tears at the connections that hold everyone together?"

The words hit harder than Sonia would have expected. "Perverted billionaires from New York, then?" she said.

Danni still looked uneasy. "You don't have a nervous feeling like, if you make up a story like that, there's going to be a cabal of perverted billionaires?"

Sonia gave Danni the most skeptical look she could muster under the circumstances.

After Sonia finished every ounce of edible food inside the penthouse and had gnawed bits off the furniture, she grabbed her laptop and sat down in the penthouse's living room. (Still wearing only a towel.) Her mind moving with exhiliarating swiftness, Sonia composed a message, entered it into OneTimeSecret, and emailed the address Starry had given her on Thursday night. In cryptic non-NSA-alerting language, the message explained Sonia's idea for a cutout agent to help do the thing, and asked Starry to suggest an address where Sonia could just happen to run into someone like that.

Sonia sent off the email.

And the app in the back of Sonia's mind that counted up people dying went back to background. The Great Work was waiting on Starry now, paused for her input.

Sonia went into the other bedroom, not the smellier bedroom where she'd slept and dreamed. There was a mirror above the dresser there.

The sight hit her every bit as hard as she'd expected.

The girl in the mirror looked to be nineteen years old. Just plain nineteen, no special caveats, nothing to identify her as one of the Cured. If there were hidden decades of wisdom behind those eyes, they weren't visible to Sonia's own sight at all.

The towel dropped to the ground, revealing... smooth skin, and a model's curves. She hadn't been hopefully-imagining things in the shower. The girl in the mirror was prettier than Sonia remembered herself being at any age.

It went beyond the bounds of what Sonia had believed the Virus was supposed to do. Had Starry applied some extra improbability to Sonia's own case? Or would all of the Cured end up like this?

It was... it was so much to take in. If she let herself take it in. The girl in the mirror didn't look like Sonia. Not like the old Sonia, at least. There might be a new Sonia now, someone who felt more inside like this girl looked. The girl in the mirror was smiling, and so was the Sonia inside her too.

The thought came to her, with a feeling of vertigo, that it was like Sonia Turk had died. She'd seen it in Charles's eyes, when he wished her well at the end. He'd either expected her to die, or had thought the experience equivalent to her death. Her own mind had dismissed both of those thoughts with prejudice. Now---now the thought occurred to Sonia that this was like dying, in a way. It was like dying according to the more optimistic and less evidence-based beliefs about death.

If you took traditional stories seriously---though only over-logical people ever would, in modern times when nothing meant anything---then dying meant your soul got a chance to go on from there. A second life, a different life, healed of your hurts.

"And nobody calls you a naughty transhumanist, if you want to be eternally young in your second life, so long as you do the proper thing and die first," Sonia murmured under her breath. "Immortal souls get a free pass on being immortal. Souls in heaven get a free pass on being happy. Nobody thinks twice about it. Mostly because they weren't thinking once about it, but still."

Looking at the beautiful 19-year-old girl in the mirror, Sonia felt a sudden and shockingly deep reluctance to ever return and reclaim her professorship. She hadn't expected this abrupt, enormous temptation to walk away from her previous life. Sonia wouldn't have thought she'd disliked her life that much. And she hadn't hated it, not really... but it had begun to wear on her.

Nobody had emailed Sonia about her absence from a non-interdimensional version of her conference. Maybe there wasn't any professorship waiting for her in the first place.

Sonia stepped over to the bedroom's windows, which were broad and tall. She pulled the curtains aside, heedless of her own naked form.

Before her spread out the town of Norville, seen from the lesser heights. The afternoon sky was nearly cloudless, and the Sun sparkled on window after window in a thousand burning points of light, making the homes and shops of Norville glow like jewels, like streetlights in the night. Sonia wondered whether it was truly the same city of Norville that she'd flown into for her biology conference. Was she only imagining that the buildings she could see from here seemed taller, brighter, than the buildings she'd seen while taking an airport taxi into town? On that Thursday morning when Starry offered to help pull her luggages, had Starry walked her sideways in reality as well?

Sonia gazed over the town of Norville and wondered if she had died. If this was her afterlife. If she'd had a sudden stroke on Wednesday night, died without ever waking up, and run into Starry while lugging around her heavy suitcases the next morning. Sonia had dreamed, some years earlier, of half-waking to a crushing pain in her chest before blacking out. And then she'd gotten up fine in the morning, with no signs of irregularity in the EKG that she'd ordered for herself afterwards. A dream, it had been, nothing but a dream after all. Maybe that nightmare had finally happened for real, softly enough not to wake her as she died.

Part of her wanted to believe it. It would be simpler. Nicer in a way. Nobody would complain about her living happily ever after and leaving behind her old life, so long as she did that by dying in a traditional fashion.

...As hypotheses went, it left out a number of crucially important explanatory details. Like why she wasn't simply dead. Or why her afterlife involved meeting Starry, rather than a thousand more sensible events or two trillion less sensible ones.

"But regardless," Sonia murmured to herself, "if there's anything where you think you need to die first, in order to do it, you should maybe just do it now. Because otherwise, you might not get around to it in time." She might not be scheduling any funerals for a long while. Even longer, if Starry's power coughed out more blessings in the future. This might be the only chance she'd get to die, in the sense of ending one life and starting another.

It should have been more of a decision. And in fact, Sonia had by no means agreed that she was going along with that decision. But something inside her seemed to have already decided, on some deep level, that she should just act like she'd died.

After all, wouldn't you feel silly if the correct answer had been that you were dead, the whole time, and even in Heaven you'd held back from having fun?

Professor Sonia Turk frowned, and drew back the curtains to cover the hotel window. She turned back towards the mirror, and gave a stern glare to the girl reflected, who was being foolish.

This stern glare, from a nineteen-year-old naked girl, came out looking dominant and sexual and not at all like Sonia had tried for.

And now for some less happy news! Due to having less free time in the age of coronavirus---I'm not a healthcare worker, my life situation is such that I just have less free time---and also this story seeming to have gotten much harder to write---I'm hoping to finish up a final update set, maybe some epilogues, and officially end this quest.

My offer to pay for other Erogamer stories will remain open even after the quest ends. I'm also increasing payment to $20 per 1000 words, up to 10,000 words, and $10 per 1000 words thereafter. Max payouts of $1500 per author or $5000 total. See my revised open offer here.

If any paid artists reading feel inspired to draw a scene from Erogamer, you can message me with your scene idea, a link to your portfolio, and your intended price.

7.16.1 [WS]: Come A Long Way

You jolt back into partial groggy awareness, feeling less like you're coming out of a nap, and more like you're recovering from having gone without sleep for four days while you attended a wedding and three funerals back-to-back-to-back-to-back.

When you open your eyes and look at the ceiling, it's a familiar ceiling, your own bedroom's ceiling. There's a moment of pure horror while you grab at your stomach---okay. It's okay. Your stomach is flat. It wasn't all just a dream.

"Status?"

Cindy
#(^@#)$ of the Shatte#*$@*#%he Erogamer"
LVL 11 (58,250 / 50,000) (+)

Stats:

DOM: 208/510
SUB: 13/510

BOD: 28
LST: 23
SED: 26
FUK: 25
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 38
Perk Points: 4
Money: $10199

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: Tired
Equipment: Darkfire earrings, High heels (Tier 3), Ashikoki anklets, Simple diamond navel stone

Busy Mode: On

"Busy Mode off," you say, but there aren't any unread notifications.

You sit up in bed, shaking off a stab of dizziness when you do. Lingering side effects? That isn't right. Sleeping in a bed you own should recover all status effects.

The window outside shows an overcast sky, making it impossible to determine what time it is, or whether the sun still exists.

You had a dream you couldn't remember, and in that dream you---learned something terrible---saw somebody die? There's an echo of a hollow feeling inside you, mixed with a guilty celebration. Like somebody died, and you lived, and it mostly wasn't your fault.

Your bed feels cold right now, even with the blanket. The house seems too quiet.

"Mom?" you call out, feeling a sudden terror that she isn't there, that she died inside your dream, and when people die in your dreams they die in real life---

"Cindy?" Mom's voice calls back, and there's the sound of your Mom pounding up the stairs louder and faster than she usually does.

Mom takes one look at you, and whatever she sees on your face, it leads her to immediately wrap you in a hug.

"Are you okay?" Mom says. "What happened?"

"I," you say, "I tried to---to anchor Charles's reality, to make him immune to the game's reality-warping---but that ended taking me outside of the game because---because you have to go to a higher level of reality if you want to do something the lower level can't undo---and, I think, I saw too much, disturbing truths---and I shouldn't talk about this right now, because first aid for Mythos exposure is to not think about it for a while. How did I get back in my bedroom? Is Charles okay?"

Mom explains what happened while you were unconscious.

"Um," you say many times during this explanation.

You're going to have to talk to Felice really soon. Though at least now you know that you can offer Felice... everything you wanted to offer her, more or less.

And---and possibly also have a talk with Copper Swallow? You don't even know at this point. From what Mom says, it sounds like Copper Swallow and Charles interacted and it was a huge interacty thing, which you maybe should've seen coming. Those two would have chemistry, yeah. Chemistry like a full bottle of dominant vinegar poured into an entire box of submissive baking soda.

And Mom got removed to Canada. Where she spoke to God. And Mom heard a whole lot of disturbing and oddly reassuring things. Like that the theme of your story is supposed to be about Cindy pursuing what Cindy wants, not you trying to serve the desires of whatever's behind the Erogame. It's---it's oddly reassuring, and at the same time---brusque? Curt? You can see how it would make for a better eroge. But you're also being told to not bother trying to pay anything back, because it's not the two-sided type of bargain.

And the Erogame isn't set up to force you to solve the mysteries of what's beyond or above the Erogame. Maybe you'll learn it someday, but it's okay to wait and find out whenever, because it's not the theme that you have to figure it out.

And as near as Mom could make it out, God was being deliberately ambiguous about whether there's a higher power above the Erogame that protects your free will. Or if there's a benevolent force that sent you the Erogame in the first place. Or if it gave you the hidden power to modify the Erogame. Or if whatever happened on Sunday afternoon actually had you secretly in charge, or---or what. The truth is just supposed to get more confusing if you start looking behind the curtains, and God's avatar seemed to be emphasizing that you didn't need to do that for a while.

And Mom reluctantly tells you---because it seems wrong to her to hold it back from you, and she is trusting that you are grown-up enough to be sensible about this---that she heard a spoiler about you being secretly immortal. If somebody shoots you, you'll wake up later with a notification that Death Cannot Be Experienced, instead of whatever much more disturbing Truths would get revealed if that didn't happen.

You nod along obediently as Mom cautions you not to start doing risky things, because they can still have bad consequences even if they don't kill you.

It---it doesn't feel like news the way it should. It feels like more stuff your subconscious already learned during your recent Mythos exposure. If you didn't die when reality fell apart to the point where the Erogame could manifest and stabilize what remained, a bullet doesn't seem likely to finish the job. Not even if it's the only bullet left in somebody's gun.

But wow, it sure does figure that as soon as Mom gets freaked out, she immediately gets to speak to whoever is in charge.

"I didn't get the impression I was allowed to ask all the questions I wanted," your Mom finishes. "It seemed like the conversation was ending fast. But I did ask one last question. I asked if it was possible that the System would suddenly abandon the protagonist."

You can feel your thighs trembling under the blanket. "And?"

"And he said definitely not. He said that your early character development had benefited from you imagining that the System might leave you if you weren't courageous enough, but that your character had now developed to the point where you didn't need to scare yourself into doing what you wanted."

You exhale a long shaky breath.

Funny. It feels like part of you already knew that too.

Maybe you've known it for a while, deep down. If you'd really worried the Erogame would leave you for not being sexy enough, you'd have been terrified to the point of fucking a lot more people.

You are... you are actually kind of happy about that part? You think you might be happy about that part. There's a lot of other stuff going on, but you think you might be happy. Proud, even, that your character has developed enough for you to be told it.

After a few more deep breaths, you take out the brownie that you stole from the bakery girl (and put nowhere in particular). "I picked this up earlier in the morning," you say. "It's not from the Lovecraftian realms above space and time, just a regular bakery. Well, a regular bakery for post-me Norville. I was going to ask if you wanted to split it with me."

Mom gives the brownie a measuring look, then gives you the same. "You don't have to," Mom says.

"I already licked... I mean, I already ate a cupcake. The taste never bothered me anyway. I just wanted to make sure you also knew I'm all right now."

"Let's not get crumbs on the bed, then," your Mom says.

She's smiling, and so are you.

The two of you head on down to the dining room.

Where there's a handwritten note on the table, and a small box that's lighted and humming.

"Oh," your Mom says. "I almost forgot. Tammi Arcadia swung by to drop off the ominous box. It's self-refrigerating and has five scary syringes inside. She said you'd know what it was? And the note is from Charles---"

Your brain decides to try believing that Charles is dumping you now, and instantly devotes all resources to grabbing for the note.

Starry, let me just start by saying that I'm still yours, probably will be for all of eternity, and I'm still looking to get my hands on the Three Rings of the Elves (or something else equally nice).

I need a break. Maybe just a short break, but I don't know my own mind well enough to promise. It could only be an hour, I don't know. After I regained enough dominant magical energy or whatever to be all there again, everything hit me and I needed some me-time to process it all. Your Mom thought you'd had similar experiences.

Your Mom told you about the thing with me and Copper Swallow, I hope? Writing it down just feels too complicated so I'm going to hope she did. Mrs. Sheen predicted you wouldn't think I'd been a terrible boyfriend. But it's this whole situation now and I keep feeling like I should be apologizing for something so, I'm sorry.

PS: Circumstances forced me to molest you while you were sleeping. There was no other way to wake you up. There was no way to ask you first. My guess is you're fine with that. But isn't it odd how, back on Monday, that's literally the one thing you told me I wasn't allowed to do?​

You finish reading, and fold up the note. So Charles wants a Sanity Day, huh? You've been there. Unfortunately, since you're not a Sanity Object yourself, that means you're not allowed to frantically phone Charles to ask him twenty times if he's all right. You're only allowed for him to wait for him to call you back, even if you're feeling anxious.

(Your brain makes up these rules immediately, and sternly informs you that they are absolute.)

"What exactly did you do to Charles?" your Mom asks. She's setting out a couple of plates and forks.

"I'm... not actually sure?" you say. An odd note of nervousness twinges at the back of your mind. "I know that first I gave him the ability to tell when somebody else is getting close to an orgasm."

"Makes sense," says Mom.

"Don't use those non-judgmental tones on me! It did make sense. It's a dominant power that only uses one point of energy. It's one of the weakest, safest superpowers I have. But after that... things started going peculiar? I'm not sure what else I gave Charles. Afterwards I got a skill called 'Shoulder Protect' but I couldn't look it up..."

"What's in the ominous syringes?" says Mom.

For some reason, Mom seems freaked out after you explain. You're not sure you get why. You already told her about the Ero Cure. But she keeps asking "You just poke somebody?" and doesn't stop even after you say the transformation also requires a dozen bottles of Powerthirst and a big can of protein powder.

After the two of you finish up the shared brownie which is just as tasty as it looks, Mom goes to take the dishes to the sink and waves you off when you try to follow. So, as you usually would right after a meal, you sit back in your chair and look out the dining room window at your front lawn.

It doesn't take long before you become aware of that same restlessness you noticed on Monday in the school library, the sense of not wanting to not do anything.

You pull your cellphone and check messages, for both Starry and Cindy. Starry has a brief email from Sonia Turk, telling you to go to some other site to see the actual message. It's a bit hard to understand, but the gist is that Sonia wants you to tell her a random address in Los Angeles. You make up a street name and street number and send it back. Cindy Sheen has a message from Felice that sounds even more cryptic, and very cryptically upset. You write back that you still feel like you're recovering from the last interesting thing you did, but you should be able to meet with Felice soon, and you'll have lots of good news for her then.

After you finish and look back out at the lawn, the feeling of restlessness comes back almost immediately.

You're too damned genki now, that's your problem. Your body knows it could be running through the streets, vaulting over cars halted in traffic. Your mind has gained a sense of all the limitless possibilities you're passing up, for example, you could be on a bus with people molesting you while you try not to react. You don't feel like doing that in particular, not right this moment. But you have now learned, deep in your heart, that there are things you'd rather be doing than staring aimlessly at your lawn. Either that, or it's the part where you have to be doing something plot-relevant at all times.

Though you probably should think over your recent life developments, before you run off and start any new plotlines. Maybe you just need to be in a more eroge-appropriate situation than your dining room while you try to do that.

"Mom?" you call, as the sounds of dishwashing end. "I'm going to go stand on top of a utility pole so I can dramatically overlook Norville while I ponder my life."

Mom calls back, "Of course sweetie, do what you want, you're immortal."

"I will do what I want. My character has developed to the point where I can. How about you, are you doing anything interesting next?"

"Buying a case of Powerthirst and a jar of protein powder, I suppose." Your mother walks back to her purse and checks for her car keys, shaking her head as if she still doesn't believe something. Maybe several somethings. Maybe she's stopped believing in reality.

"Don't take your dose of Ero Virus without somebody around to spot you," you caution.

"Yes, Mom," says your own fucking mother.

After Mom departs to shop, you start to head back to your bedroom to change out of your ripped clothing. Then you remember that you're entirely out of real clothes at this point, if you want to be dressed in anything other than jewelry. You don't actually feel like running around naked.

After a moment of hesitation, you head into your house's basement and get one of your Dad's old shirts and a pair of his slacks, from the boxes that your Mom never could bring herself to take to Goodwill. It doesn't feel like sacrilege, not any more. Dad will be back soon, and he wouldn't begrudge you a shirt.

Your current boob size is sufficient that Dad's shirt doesn't want to fully enclose you. You leave the top half unbuttoned. The pants are baggy on you, but a tight belt makes sure they won't fall down. On a whim you put on one of Dad's ties around your unbuttoned collar, letting it fall down between your breasts, so you'll have another fashion factor calling attention to your boobage. The resulting fashion looks... it looks like you're a female juvenile delinquent from a cross-dressing world. Eh. On you, it works, though you're aware that you're just bulldozing the fashion problem using your BOD stat.

You walk out of the house, lock the door behind you, and put away the key in the pockets you actually have this time. Then, after a second's further thought, you put the key into the pockets you don't have instead, next to where your wallet and phone already aren't. You don't want to keep track of which pockets you've put things into. If you only use pockets you don't have, you can use the same ones each time.

It's a warm cloudy afternoon outside. The type that might be too hot for running even as a thin person, if the Sun came out from behind those clouds. Well, if that happens, you can just take off some clothing.

You take a few deep breaths, lean yourself forward, and sprint.

The world flies past you, as never gets old.

After a while, not really keeping track of where you are, you start to look for a tall-enough utility pole to give you a real view of Norville. You're... not quite sure you could do this any day, but it's like there are fragments of your dreams and Mythos exposure left active inside you. Right now, it feels like, if you look for a great big pole, you will find one.

Shortly after that, you've backed the fuck off from an unreasonably tall utility pole that you "found" a few blocks later. It turns out that, if you go any higher than three stories off the ground, you're not that immortal. Or at least, this is what your brain seems to believe.

Instead, you run a few more blocks, to a big hill that isn't particularly plausible as city geography, and parkour up a short utility pole set on its peak. This lets you dramatically overlook the city of Norville without feeling quite so much like you're going to die.

You raise a hand to your forehead, and gaze out.

Wow. You can see your house from up here. Your house, where this all began.

And not too far away, the Walgreens where you met Blake. And the motel where you slept with Blake and met Charles.

And further up north, the Goodwill, where Charles took you after. Where you later realized that Norville itself was changing around you. Also your first gloryhole experience, that was also there.

You turn, and gaze in a different direction. Yep, you can see the Norville Arms-Marriott too. Where Charles took your virginity and you eroanalyzed the Arcadias and you met Sonia and you took Blake's virginity and you were in your first real orgy and also you created the Ero Cure. You think the hotel might be even taller than before.

Norville University has what used to be some of the stateliest edifices in Norville. So it's at least sort of plausible when you can also see the campus from here. Especially the school library, where you tried out exhibitionism and inadvertently created a social movement and let Karinna Coral take it over.

You turn on a high heel, keeping your hand dramatically raised to your forehead, and gaze in still another direction. Well, what do you know, from this angle you can see the Thunderbolt Arcade, where you danced DDR with Charles, and later made friends with Cordy and Lavelle.

You guess you're supposed to not be thinking very hard about where exactly this utility pole is inside Norville.

You take a peek to another side, because you can't help yourself, and confirm that you can see the Purring Kittens strip club too. And the building where Takotoama tentacled you. And the short flat karaoke bar where Illyria ran into the Amazing Hair Appreciation Club, which should in no way be spottable from atop a utility pole. Okay, this is disturbing. You're just going to gaze dramatically at the Norville skyline now.

You lower your hand, and gaze dramatically at the Norville skyline.

Gosh, you sure have come a long way. Yep. That is a thing that is so. You're not sure what more to think.

How are you... doing? Really?

You consider this question while continuing to gaze dramatically down on Norville from on top of a utility pole.

You do feel like things... are sort of okay now. Like everything might actually be okay.

If thinking that isn't tempting fate too much.

But it shouldn't be tempting fate too much? You think you get that now. That's one of the things that changes between being an eroge character in a story, and being an eroge character in real life. People in real life don't do well when they're stressed out all the time. It's okay for an eroge character in real life to let out the breath she's been holding. Reality won't dump on her immediately afterwards. Real people can't actually live that way. There can't be news of an impending apocalypse that gets delivered every time the character tries to relax. It's funny when it happens to a character in a book, but in real life, that wouldn't be the consent of reality to live your life as an erogame.

...okay, the number of flags you've just now triggered, something humorous may happen. But even so, it won't be something that will make you regret ever trying to let out your breath, in the future.

You think you understand how this works now. "The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway" was finally enough to get that point across. It better have been enough to get the point across, because you can't imagine what happens if you force the Erogame to escalate further. It is okay to live your life as an erogame, and if you live your life as an erogame, things will be okay. That's the remuneration you were given, or it's the bargain you made, or it's what you wanted deep inside. Something like that. The details only get harder to understand if you try asking too much, or so Mom seemed to be saying the Erogame said.

You think back to the you of one week earlier, who was hurting and alone and so much more frightened than you feel now. It's a lot of distance, between you and her, to have developed in just one week. Even an incredibly busy week involving time shenanigans. All of those distances are ones that you wanted, that the old you wanted to embrace, they changed because she leapt headlong into changing them. Cinderella Sheen didn't want to be hurting, or alone, or afraid. Even though stopping being all those things in just one week meant a lot of change very fast, she shrugged it off and kept going, because she wasn't much attached to being herself. That Cindy didn't like the shape of her own mind much more than she liked the shape of her body. Her mind was full of sharp corners that hurt her, on top of what her world was doing to her. She wanted---

She wanted to be you instead, and now she is.

...That's a needlessly dark way to look at it. Inside your head, your newly cheerful self is rolling her eyes about how silly and emo and melodramatic that's going to sound in another week when you're even more genki. You're you. Just not exactly the same you. Okay that still sounds overly dark. But it's not like you-from-one-week-ago was the exact same person as you-from-three-years-earlier, from before Dad died... now it feels like you're trying to recite from some book on Transhumanism for Dummies explaining why it's okay to get the brain-chip that lets you learn calculus. And if there's actually a sensible guide to this somewhere, it's probably got less deep philosophy and more big text that says "Stop flipping out about stuff, it's just stuff."

But... maybe this time for real it would be a good idea to slow down and stop changing quite so fast? It's not the first time you've thought that, or the second time, but maybe this time for real? On Monday you thought you were pretty and able to be with other people, and that meant all your problems were solved. Where actually that was only most of your problems, rather than all of them, and some of the remaining character growth was too important to be left hanging. But you don't think you have any traumas left that are urgent on the same level as...

...As you believing deep down that the Erogame will leave you and you'll be fat again, if it catches you acting reluctant around any aspect of eroge life.

...Or the state of your relationship with Charles before you told him the truth, with you constantly terrified that he'd leave you if he knew.

....Or you being way way way way too scared of what you thought was the danger level of erogaming, with most of your internal mental life consisting of you worrying that something bad would happen to you or somebody else.

Are you done with that level of inner fuckedupness?

Probably not. But you might have received enough emergency first-aid that, whatever other huge fuckups are lurking around inside your head, they can wait at least until next Saturday.

And the rest of your life also seems... stabilizable, if not stable. You have the Ero Virus that you wanted to fix Mom and Felice. At some point later---after you're 110% recovered from today's Mythos exposure---you can anchor their reality too. Unless Mom's already anchored? Maybe she already was, on Tuesday, and it just wasn't as big a deal for her. You don't know.

In your harem situation, you have not just Charles, but Tammi and Danni and Sonia and Copper Swallow, to get to know. And the Scoobies, if Illyria wants to go poking around Norville looking for interesting things with friends, or if Yoal-yohuali wants to poke around Norville being interesting at friends. There's no obvious big gaps in your harem if you decided to stop here for a while, let your harem settle down before expanding it further.

If you were right about there being a general game mechanic for earning money through orgies, you have a repeatable way to earn $1000 with a morning's pleasant work, which should be enough for any reasonable life expenses. You feel like it would actually be okay, you actually have permission from yourself, to turn down the quest I Don't Do Work, But I Am A Friend Who Does, to not be tickled by Danni again if you don't want to be. Even if that means turning down $30,000. There will be other chances to get $30,000. No. Brain. Shut up. There will be. You need to get used to turning down insane amounts of money in exchange for doing sexy things you don't want to do, or that is just going to be your whole fucking storyline. Having an honest conversation with yourself about how clearly you don't want to be tied up again and tickled, might be, uh, an issue. But even before that, you are okay with turning down money if you don't want to do the thing. You'd better be okay with that. You'd better be okay with that right now. Because otherwise, it will be a piece of Urgently Required Character Growth For Living Life As An Erogame, and there will be a big plotline about it very soon, the heartwarming moral of which is that Cinderella Sheen should not take money to do sexual things she really doesn't want to do. Which, unless that plotline is much nicer than it sounds, you think you'd rather skip. Even if that plotline involves you getting a lot of money as part of the process. You should still skip it. Unless it's, like, a hundred thousand dollars, in which case stop it brain you'll get us in trouble. You already know better than to take money to do sexual things you don't want to do, period, okay? Unless it's a million dollars. That doesn't reflect a lack of character development on your part, it's just common sense.

You can finish increasing your LVL to 12 at any time, by pressing the (+) on your status screen---though you should consider before then whether you want to adopt the Succubus Trait for the duration of LVL 12. Once at LVL 12, crushing your lotus hair ornament would temporarily increase your LVL to 15, which would let you take More Marshmallows. You've toyed with perk builds in your thoughts before, but one increasingly appealing thought is the perk Wait I'm Not Ready For This, after which you wouldn't have to worry as much about awful passive skills or your stats rising too fast. Orgasms Unbothered showed you how nice that was.

And you don't---think---from what Mom said---if you can trust what was told to Mom---that some type of awful catastrophic doomthingy will befall the world if you take it too slow. Though there's been hints, that there are aspects of your existence that the Erogame doesn't know about... maybe the doomthingy is one that the Erogame itself is blind to?

Only, you do think you can trust what Mom heard. It feels... true. No, True. It feels True that whatever truths are still being hidden from you, they aren't truths you need to know today. Whatever awful knowledge is contained in the xtrmly srs perks you couldn't see on Monday, and then somehow never thought about at all for the next five days, it's awful knowledge that can wait. Whatever dreadful truths are hidden, they're already true and they're not getting any more true. There isn't a horrible prophecy you have to avert, that you were gifted your powers to prevent. You're not in that type of story. The hidden truths aren't what your story is about. Some part of you learned that deep down while walking a spiral, and then your Mom got yanked behind the scenes so that she could hear it in words and say it to you in words.

God-or-whatever told your mother that it's okay for you to pursue your own goals inside the Erogame. The Erogame won't suddenly make you fat again because you didn't show gratitude or weren't acting sexy enough...

No. The Erogame won't vanish on you period. This is your reality now, take it or leave it. And leaving it isn't actually an option, not even by dying. It should be scary, but---but it isn't. You're here to stay, and there's a relief in knowing that, a calmness, a stability.

You look out on over the skyline of Norville, and wonder how long it will take---because surely, whether by Mad Inventor or the right Trait, you'll be able to do it in time---you wonder how long it will take, before you can fly.

Quest unavailable: Give A Flying Fuck

By whatever means necessary, travel a minimum of 100 meters upward, and stay in midair for at least 100 seconds, while having sex.

Success: Hover On The Edge skill. Prestiges into Ero-Flight.
Failure: Fall and break both your arms. This injury will not heal until you have spent 1 full day in a hospital with medical personnel taking sexual advantage of your helpless form.

Your stats are too low for this quest. Minimum ERO: 40.

You close the notification window, a feeling of lightness inside you as you do. Well, there's your answer. You're not going to increase your ERO to 40 right away, but brighter days lie ahead.

Things do feel all-righter now.

There's just one note of uneasiness inside you.

You wish you could remember exactly what you did to Charles.

7.16.b [CA]: Better Problems To Have

Charles Adan sat in the small restaurant-bar he'd found not far from the Valentine Motel, nursing a local-microbrewery beer. A wall done up in comfortable wooden slats held two-person booths with cushioned benches, and tables. Both in the forms of wooden planks anchored directly to the wall, so that there were no table-legs to get in the way of people's feet. Many feet were intertwined accordingly, at the tables around him.

Charles was sitting at the bar, occasionally glancing at a women's tennis match being shown on a muted big screen. Around him flitted and flirted various attractive people and rich people, the two sets overlapping to a surprising degree. It was that type of bar, as he'd realized some time after he'd entered. Male and female sex workers, and the mostly-male clients who could afford them.

Well. Charles supposed he was one of the male sex workers now.

Dad would disapprove. Mom would... also disapprove, but rationalize it in entirely different ways. His sister would be shocked, but not judgmental. His brother would... probably slap him on the back, so long as Charles could keep on having only attractive clients?

It was a moot point. Charles was supposed to... he had been told, by someone...

He wasn't supposed to try to visit his family. If he went home to Tennessee, he'd find his Mom and Dad. And then his Mom and Dad would be inside Starry's world with him, and that wouldn't be good. Better to wait, even for a longish time, until Charles was better at Driving Through Shadows. Until he could visit his Mom and Dad without that meaning they were... inside the same... quantum entanglement? Relationship tangle? Something like that. His mind was blurry on a lot of things, but it had retained the reason why he was not to seek out his family.

The restriction chafed less than Charles would have liked to think. Never seeing his family again would have been bad. Them dying would have been a terrible blow. Not seeing them for a while? Charles could handle that... better than he would have liked to believe about himself.

He supposed that Starry wouldn't have met him on Monday otherwise.

Beyond the restaurant where he sat, beyond the story and time that held him, the lines of Destiny twisted and twined. Charles was trying not to think about it. He was glad he couldn't see it.

When Charles had finished fucking Starry's unconscious body several times, with Copper Swallow present and torturing herself as though in worship, he'd then finally come to his senses. Charles had then somehow, with an effort like running along the narrow ledge he'd fallen from at his last parkour meet, he had somehow managed not to say anything stupid to Copper Swallow. Before she'd left, the incredibly pretty submissive superwoman had forced out her confession that, she had to say this before anyone bought her under false pretenses, she couldn't use her superstrength for more than a few hours per year without getting cancer. Charles had felt... oddly entirely untempted, by the thought of giving Copper Swallow a dose of Viral Cure and claiming her ownership in exchange. His inner monster would brook no cheating, not of that particular type. Charles could claim Copper Swallow through his own efforts, or Cindy claim the prize through hers, but it was not done for the monster to claim Cindy's accomplishments as its own. Charles had told Copper Swallow that he suspected "Mistress Illyria" might have something to say about her health issues, and had left it at that.

After that Copper Swallow had said that she needed to go off on her own and process things becase it had been a long day for her. And Charles had realized that he needed to do the same, rather urgently so. So Charles had traded phone numbers with Copper Swallow, promising not to reverse-lookup her true name before she got a burner phone instead. He'd left a note for Cindy. And he'd gone off to look for someplace to think. A bar had often been his own equivalent of peace and quiet, when it came to having downtime to be by himself and process things.

Reality was not being entirely cooperative with him about that.

In the mirror on the wall behind the bar, Charles saw a woman a few years older than him, dressed in a female business suit and with carefully-done makeup, entering through the door. After a survey of the room, her eyes selected Charles's location, and she walked across with a confident mien and only a light blush on her cheeks. "Hey," she said in a low Southern accent, when she was standing close enough to him. "Sorry for being abrupt, but I need to give my boss a blowjob two hours from now, and I don't have any experience at that. I'm looking for somebody to teach---"

"I'm off-duty," Charles murmured in an equally low voice. He didn't turn his head to look at her, choosing to go on watching her in the mirror instead. Looking directly at her felt like it might be risky, somehow. "Try that guy." He jerked his head towards a muscular man at the other end of the bar, who was currently wearing just slacks and a T-Shirt, but whom Charles had previously seen with a male customer. Somebody who'd both given and received blowjobs would probably be a better teacher.

The woman nodded her thanks, and Charles took a larger swallow than usual of the beer in his glass. After another minute, she left in the company of the man Charles had pointed out to her.

Yes, some part of him did regret turning her down, thanks for asking.

It was the second bar he'd been in tonight, and its sex-worker nature had not been obvious from outside. The first bar had also looked normal at first, but had soon proven to be ground zero for a BDSM meetup about "Dominants In Denial." Looking for a third bar didn't seem particularly promising. Cindy might not actually have a "mating field"---the thought, which had once seemed to make sense, now sounded more like an enormous load of hooey, somehow. But Cindy clearly had something, and that something was clearly still looking in his own direction. Charles was not feeling hopeful about evading it by crossing another street.

In theory, Charles Adan was still scheduled to drive back to Nevada in the evening. Charles hadn't decided yet whether he wanted to call his workplace and tell them that he had to suddenly quit because of a relationship emergency. He would have worried about how Precision Mechanical would weather the sudden loss of their delivery guy... except that Charles suspected he might hear on the phone about how Precision had just gotten a job application from a perfect replacement driver.

It was odd how reluctant he was feeling to quit his job, even if Precision wasn't hurt by it. He hadn't... had the job that long. Right? Only the entire time since he'd left college.

In the mirror, a shy round-faced woman, pretty, but not dressed like most of the sex workers, was looking around the bar with quick embarrassed glances. No doubt another client looking for a service provider. It was strange to think that he could probably walk over to that woman, be fucking her inside of minutes, and get paid to do it...

Charles looked back down into his beer. It didn't feel right. Or safe. Not in the venereal-disease sense, but in the sense that anyone whose eyes he met could turn out to be a superpowered ninja he would end up purchasing. Maybe he hadn't come to terms with Cindy being fine with it, if his girlfriend wasn't there to smile. Maybe he just plain wasn't ready.

Charles cast another wondering glance up at his reflection in the bar mirror. The reflected Charles Adan had too much beard on his face, more like two days' growth than a five-o-clock shadow.

The extra shadow didn't look bad on him. It looked planned, like a deliberate manly shadow. One of the reasons why Charles shaved was that his natural beard wasn't solid. There were places where his facial hair was visibly thinner if he let it grow in. The new shadow on his chin was solid. Starry's work, in one sense or another? Probably so.

Too many things have happened to me at once, Copper Swallow had said, shortly before leaving. Even if they're all good things, it's too... at once.

"Another beer," Charles said as the bartender passed him. He hadn't recognized the name of whatever he was drinking, but it wasn't terrible. "Same brand."

As the bartender filled up Charles's glass, a tall blonde slipped into the stool next to Charles's, lifting a finger to the bartender with the air of somebody who already knew what she wanted. After the bartender took her order, she turned to look at Charles with the same expression.

Charles didn't look down at his beer quite fast enough to avoid meeting her eyes.

"You," the leggy blonde said, "look like you'd make a good distraction."

"Not currently available for sexual activities," Charles mumbled to his beer.

The blonde snorted. "I can cook my own meals on that score. No, I mean you'd make a good distraction for a certain idiot who thinks she's got what it takes to shadow me around town. Two hundred bucks to distract her for fifteen minutes. Easy money."

"Wow does that sound like a lot of trouble I don't want to get into," Charles said. He didn't look up. "Not to mention the incredibly high probability I'll end up having sex before it's over."

"Sounds unlikely, but it wouldn't be a chore. She's easy enough on the eyes."

Charles held up his beer to the lights over the bar, making a show of scrutinizing the remaining contents. He was feeling an odd enjoyment in just flatly turning it all down. "Can you tell if there's any nope in this beer? Cause judging by how I'm feeling right now, I'd say this beer is doped with nope."

"Five hundred dollars?"

"Gonna nope all your hope, cause that is a slope that's slippery like soap, which starts with a grope, and grows out of scope beyond where I can cope until we elope."

"One thousand dollars."

That number did give Charles pause. He'd already committed to spending the five thousand he'd earned earlier that morning, and he might have to set up house with Starry soon...

Wait.

Why was this woman still trying to hire him at that price point, instead of giving up and turning to one of the several other male sex workers present?

Charles knew one thing for certain: He needed to not find out. If he knew, that meant a sequence of events had started that couldn't end without him having sex... thoughts like that still struck Charles as crazy, but crazy wasn't the same as false.

"No, and stop bothering me," Charles said.

The leggy blonde flashed him a look that was surprised, maybe even betrayed. She threw a bill on the counter and stalked out of the bar without finishing her drink.

Charles watched her go, just to make sure she was actually gone, and then looked down at his own freshly bought beer. Was it safe to finish...

Probably not.

But if Charles showed alarm and threw bills on the countertop and ran out, that definitely meant a sequence of events had started.

He'd just have to calmly finish his drink and hope for the best... no, that was also doomed, wasn't it? A man calmly finishing his drink and hoping for the best was inside a sequence of events for sure.

Maybe he should just let some woman blow him and then he'd be allowed to drive back to Nevada in peace?

Charles's hand tightened on his beer. He was feeling a bit put upon, if that was how things worked for him now. If he wasn't allowed to just have a drink with his pants staying up. And Charles was also aware that nobody had forced his fly-zipper open yet, and that he was currently on the run from only from his own thoughts. Nor was it lost on him that his current life dilemma consisted of him complaining that too many beautiful women wanted to pay him for sucking his cock, and that this was something of a First World Problem, if not, indeed, a Negative Sixth World Problem.

Okay. Okay, Charles decided. He'd just hang tight, stay calm, keep turning down anything that looked like it might lead into fucking, and... see what happened if he just went on hanging out in this bar not doing anything sexual.

Part of him was actually curious about that.

There was a tinkling crash from one corner. Charles jerked around at the sound, then calmed himself again when he saw that it was just a server who'd dropped a glass. There weren't any lingerie-clad amorous women running for him, at least, not yet.

(But, as it would later turn out, the crash of the falling glass had covered up the quieter sound of Charles's phone running out of battery.)

7.16.3*: Leaving Troubles Behind

Having started to feel nervous despite the promise of immortality, you swing and hop down the heights of the utility pole. It's scarier going down than climbing up, and you have to repeatedly stop and remember how immortal you are. This is something you need to remember for future reference, so that you don't bite off more than you can bite back on again.

At the base of the utility pole, you take a deep breath, looking around you again. You can still see something like a skyline of Norville from here, though most of the specific places you saw before aren't visible.

Well... now what? You maybe should have remembered to figure out what to do next while you were still contemplating things on top of the utility pole.

You feel... not quite directionless. But no longer as directioned as you've been for the last few days. Not feeling as scared of pending disasters is making it harder to decide stuff, in some mental ways if not others.

Either that, or your eroge reached the heartwarming end of the Charles Adan route, where the two of you live happily ever after, in an ending that doesn't have enough heart-pounding tension to be worth showing to the viewer. And now the alien Player isn't pressing your little rounded buttons anymore...

You shake your head and sigh at yourself. You've recognized by now that you're being silly. Besides, even if that was true, it would just mean that you had to learn to press your own rounded buttons, instead of Things making choices for you. There's nothing terrible about that.

If this had been earlier in the week, you would have felt a need to go sex somebody up, now. To prove that your character had developed to the point where you could have sex with people because you wanted to, and not because you needed to prove anything...

Are you not running off to have more sex, in order to prove that you're not having sex just to prove that you can have sex without needing trying to prove things? You shouldn't not have sex just because you're trying to prove that you're not proving something. Proving that you're not proving something doesn't sound that consistent anyways. What do you actually feel like doing, right now? What do you want to do? It's a question you need to get used to asking yourself. Your story is supposed to be about what you want.

So you take another deep breath, and empty your mind, and try to see what wanders into it. Whether you want anything right now, besides for Charles to call you up and say he's all right. Whether you want anything that's about your life.

You aren't in a rush to have an orgasm. You had a few of those today already.

But the thought of giving somebody else an interesting fun time... still seems nice. Maybe that always did appeal to you on a deeper level than getting fucked yourself---though, to be sure, the orgasms never bothered you anyway.

You don't feel a need to come right now. You don't want to start any new storylines either. But you wouldn't mind somebody looking at you like they're amazed that somebody so pretty would pay attention to them. And then you want to pay attention to them. Until they moan and shudder and come, with that look of shock still on their face. Be their eroge.

And maybe also have that orgasm fix their largest life issues? That part wasn't prominent in your fantasies before. But now that you've done it once or twice, you have to admit, you don't hate it.

Even if you don't need to offer anything to the Erogame, even if you don't need to prove anything to yourself, even if you don't need to show character development, there's still no reason... for you not to do that, anytime the urge takes you.

You stroll to the bottom of the hill, turn a street corner, and start... walking.

You're not sure you'll be able to do this tomorrow, or not as consciously tomorrow, but right now, the echoes of doing something way too eldritch are still bouncing around in the back of your mind. You know, somehow, that you couldn't just walk to $50,000, because your money score is part of the Erogame and you can't---won't?---exercise this power in a way that's contrary to the nature of the Erogame. Maybe there was a bargain or something, that you'll remember someday. You don't know. But you can, in this state of mind, you're pretty sure you can walk to somebody who would enjoy you paying attention to them. And maybe have it somehow along the way give you a clue about what you did to Charles? No, that's probably too much to ask for.

Halfway down your current street, it starts to seem foggy outside, not just cloudy.

Not just foggy either. There are mists gathering around you.

It's unnerving, but you trust yourself more, now. You keep walking.

You walk turn a street corner. The street before you is deserted, entirely devoid of visible people, with fog and mist obscuring visibility further than a block out.

You keep walking.

At the end of that block is a bakery-cafe, with a parasol-shadowed outdoor table of metal wire. Sitting at the table is a boy doodling into a notebook, a half-eaten sandwich on a plate next to him. He's wearing a black respirator mask that covers his nose and mouth, though nothing else industrial-style or goth-style that you see. It makes it hard to figure his exact age.

He's... not quite cute, as best you can tell with him wearing the respirator? Not ugly, but not so cute that girls would, well, notice him ever. He looks... you're surprised at yourself for being able to think this, actually, but he looks too thin. He's not a living skeleton, but it's obvious there's a skeleton spoopily hiding inside him. By society's standards it would be seen as model-quality thinness for a girl. For a boy, not so much.

Well, if other people don't want him, that works fine from the standpoint of your current mission.

As you approach closer, you see that his shoulders are slumped. SED-or-your-imagination suggests that these are shoulders beaten down by years of dejection, not just a one-day problem. Still, you bet it's nothing you can't solve with a blowjob, a kiss, or in the final extremity, holding hands. Though for a kiss he'd have to take the respirator off first.

The boy flinches away from you, and not subtly, as you sit down in the neighboring chair at the metal-wire table. "Guess you're not doing the social distancing thing, huh?" he says with disapproval under his tones, though muffled and distorted by his respirator.

Social what now? Does he come from some weird dystopia? In the back of your mind you were hoping for something more like a Reality Classic boy. Something about the people from further-away universes still feels a little less real to you... oh, well. Maybe he's from a Reality Classic and just not your Reality Classic.

"Social distancing rules don't apply to me," you say, as you look down at his notebook. You were imagining he might be drawing unclothed anime girls, or maybe artistic landscapes. What you actually see is complicated pencil squiggles, pretty maybe, but nothing special. Another sign that he's a Reality Classic kid?

Glancing back up, you see the guy is looking at you uncertainly, as best you can read his eyes without seeing his mouth. "What, like you think you're above the law about three-meter distances, or like you've already had Covid-23 and now you're immune?" he says.

"I'm immune." Some kind of awful plague world then, on the twenty-third iteration of whatever it was. Gosh, maybe he's thin because his world doesn't have enough to eat? No, there's that half-eaten sandwich. If he was starving he would be finishing his food instead of doodling.

"Immune, huh," he says. There's undertones of weird pain in his voice. "I don't expect it was fun, but, but you know, part of me wishes I'd just get it myself and get it over with. No you don't need to tell me what a bad idea that is. I know I'd just end up with permanent lung damage, given my luck, and then be back to scratch when Covid-24 comes around."

Can you... make him immune? You don't know. You don't feel like it's that simple. Since you walked down a weird spiral and stuff happened that you can't fully remember, it feels more likely that you might be secretly be something like a goddess. But not that type of goddess. You don't make things happen just by wishing for them.

You glance into the bakery. There's no customers, and nobody behind the counter. It looks closed. There's still nobody on the streets around you, so far as you can see inside the foggy day this now is.

People probably don't get touched much, in these parts of the infinite realms of possibility.

You lay a hand over his arm, where he's paused in his doodling, and he freezes at your touch.

You clamp down on an impulse to freeze up yourself. You didn't do anything during Orgasms Unbothered that you couldn't have gotten away with as a matter of course. This guy is not going to turn out to be a secret sex abuse victim who is being traumatized by your touching his arm without asking. That is not how the consent to live your life as an eroge character works. You will be okay, and so will he.

After another second, he seems to relax, and some of the tension going out of his arm.

You relax too. A plot is already forming in your mind, both the conniving sort and the story sort. "Hey, this is just a guess," you say. "But you don't actually live in Norville---do you?"

"No. Norville was just where I could find the absolute cheapest Airbnb while we all go through the motions of online school to study for jobs that are never going to exist again."

"And you don't have many friends in town?" you say leadingly.

"I have acquaintances in Oakland, but it's not like it'd be legal for us to hang out anyways. Might as well be here where it's cheaper."

You nod with apparent thoughtfulness. "So you wouldn't be too worried about somebody seeing you doing something embarrassing, then? Since nobody in this city knows you."

Now the boy is looking at you suspiciously. "What are you leading up to?"

"Just saying, if there's rules against, you know, people getting closer than three meters to other people, and people are afraid to touch each other because they might get the plague---that probably also means nobody would stop us if we were behaving indecently in public." Sort of an interesting premise for an ero world in its own way, though you doubt people around these parts are taking much advantage.

"I---uh---what? I mean---oh. Uh. Are you a sex worker? I can't pay you... much of anything actually."

"I was just thinking I'd go underneath the table and blow you. For free."

There's a lot of pain in the look he's giving you. Suspicion, skepticism, and above all simple disbelief. Reality doesn't work like this for him.

You're not going to try arguing him out of his worldview when you can suck it directly out of his cock.

His muscles tense up again as you slip underneath the table. "I'm warning you, I don't carry any cash on me," his voice says from above. "I'm not rich. My parents died of Flu-22 and they didn't have life insurance. I don't have anything worth suing me for or blackmailing me for. If this is a trick it's not worth your time."

"It's okay. I'm just here to blow you under the table in public while nobody will stop us. It's a fetish thing, the plague's convenient for me that way."

Even as you undo his fly, he's pulling his credit cards and cellphone out of his pocket, keeping a tight grip on them.

Suspicious, yeah, he's definitely suspicious, not that you blame him.

But there's enough of a spark of hope left in him that he doesn't actually stop you as you undo the button on his slacks and pull his pants down, followed by his briefs.

It takes him longer to get hard than any of your previous victims. You're tempted to use your mysterious evolved post-Rabbit skill to sweep aside the doubts inside his mind. For some reason you don't want to. Giving him a chance to overcome psychological obstacles on his own, maybe.

After the sexual experience you've gained, keeping your mouth moving on him slowly and rhythmically doesn't take all of your attention.

You're not wet, you don't think. The setup for this situation doesn't feel as sexual, as sexy, as it could be.

That's also okay. You don't have to feel maximally turned on every time you do this.

He gets hard in your mouth soon after.

Some of your thoughts stray to bigger issues, your universe, his universe. Distances uncrossable in space, and something that bridges between them. You try not to think about walking a spiral of red pavement, with some success but not complete success. Whenever not otherwise occupied, your mind goes back to wondering exactly what you did to Charles. Trying to figure out how you'd figure that out, without gaining more Mythos exposure.

His thighs are tensing up again. "Thank you," he says in a low whisper, lifting his hips as if preparing to come.

Edge Other, you think, and slow down your mouth just a little.

It's not sexual sadism. Or at least, it's not just sadism. It's something newer, an instinct for healing, born from some combination of SED and FUK and something deeper in your soul. This mind's accumulated damage is too great for you to fix all the wounds in his heart with just one blowjob.

So you're going to edge him at least a hundred times, while sometimes keeping him trembling right on the edge for a minute or two, and occasionally sucking out little droplets of juice without letting him off the edge. That seems more likely to heal his heart.

The right moment comes, and you stop sucking.

After a long pause, his voice comes from above. "Hey," he says uncertainly.

You start sucking again, moving your mouth faster and more enthusiastically.

The moment comes again, and he doesn't.

"Hey," his voice says again.

You start. This time when he gets close, you spend the extra DOM to keeeeeep him on the edge for 20 seconds and then stop.

"What are you doing?" There might be a tiny whine under his voice now, and that's making you feel more sensual.

You pop your mouth off his cock with a sucking sound, and move your head out from under the table to look him in the eyes, if not the mouth.

"Now don't worry, because I'm not about to ask you for money," you say, and you can see him tense up anyways. "But I thought of how you might be able to pay me back juuuuust a little."

"And what's that?" All the suspicion is back in his voice, but that's fine, you hope. It just means he gets to be reassured again.

"I've decided to try practicing Ero-Divination on you."

"Say what?" A note of genuine confusion there, though it's harder to hear through the mask-muffle.

You start moving your hand over his saliva-slippy cock, to prevent him from being too bored while you say this. "Well, you see," you say in a singsong voice, "a little while ago I, uh, gosh there's no simple way at all to say this, I ended up in a tiny bit of a completely altered state of consciousness, and I did something to my boyfriend Charles. But I can't seem to remember what, and it's worrying me. So I'm going to use my blowjob on you to perform a divination. That way I won't be distracted between blowing you and trying to figure out what I did to Charles, because I'll be able to do both at the same time."

"I---" he starts to say, and hesitates.

"You don't believe in divination?" you say, guessing that's what he's hesitant about, but doesn't want to offend you (or your mouth) by saying directly. "That's fine. I doubt you're enough of a reality warper that your skepticism makes any difference."

"Uh---what kind of divination?"

"I keep almost making you come, and not making you come, until you tell me what I did to Charles." You start to lower your head back under the table.

"I---what?" he says. "Who? I don't---I don't even know who that is---"

"So it might take a while for you to guess? I'm fine with that." No doubt he'll only guess correctly at the most dramatic moment.

You start sucking again.

"I'm about to..." he says after a while, his voice a little higher.

Aw, he thinks you need his permission to do this to him! He's trying to help! That's adorable, and it makes you feel more sensual too, your tongue moving on his cock more slowly, with more relish and real sadism.

"Guess what I did to Charles," you say, lifting up your mouth like you're only telling him that, and not also coincidentally stopping right as he's about to come.

Then you go back to sucking.

"I'll try. Did you, uh, did you... give Charles... your... hat? And I'm about to, to..."

He isn't really. That is, he's obviously not really trying to guess, and he's not about to come. Not really really about to come. Not yet.

His hips tense up. "If you don't stop I'll---"

He's trying to play this way too safe, and needs to be taught a lesson. Edging, you think, and make him tremble for twenty seconds. Then you suck exactly half a milliliter of semen out of him while he's still on the edge. You know that cost you 11 DOM, and you aren't as topped-off with DOM as usual. But a strong start here will make him more sensitive to what's to come, or rather, not come.

You lift your head off his cock. "Nope," you say cheerfully. "I'm pretty sure I didn't give Charles my hat. You're going to have to do better than that if you want to come any time soon."

You start sucking again.

"Did you---"

You slow down your vigorous head-bobbing to hear.

"---give Charles a grapefruit?"

You bob your head more excitedly, like he totally got it that time, and edge him three times in cruel succession. Who does he think he is, giving you such ridiculous answers... well, you can't blame him for not wanting to risk accidentally getting it right.

Clearly, you're going to have to tease him for a while to break his spirit (in the opposite direction of how it's currently broken) to the point where he's actually, desperately trying to guess the answer.

After he's had a very short rest, you start bobbing your head again, up and down, up and down.

"Did you---pie him in the face?"

You make a pffft sound around his cock, then keep sucking.

"Oh, I'm---I'm---"

He's not actually on the edge yet, according to your skill, but you pull back anyhow. It just occurred to you that you're relatively low on DOM, and that if you stop before he edges, you can save the energy.

Actually, shouldn't you be trying to figure out the timing on your own? Like try to guess when this guy edges, or time your guess for half a second before he actually edges. That way you could stop like half a second earlier almost every time, and only spend the DOM... each time you... would have failed otherwise. Oh my god you're such an idiot, that's probably how this skill was supposed to be used this whole time, to learn things.

You go back to sucking, and forgive yourself, smiling around cock. It was your first week, and it's not like you were spending it constantly running out of DOM.

"Did you---walk Charles's dog?"

You choke slightly on the cock. You can't even tell whether that's supposed to be a euphemism or not. Then you keep sucking.

"Oh. Oh, you've---you've got to---stop!"

You keep sucking, trying to pay the closest possible attention to anything that might be a sign he's about to come. Trying to guess how far he is from coming. Though the next few times, you'll go all the way to the edge of Edge Other's ping so you can see how right you were.

The skill doesn't ping until several seconds after you guessed it would. More to learn!

"God damn it!" he says when you stop sucking. "How are you doing that? I thought I was---going to---"

"Shh. Keep guessing what I did to Charles."

Suuuuuuck. Suuuuuck. Slowly this time. Maybe if you go slower, you'll be able to see the signs better.

"Did you butter him?" says the guy you're sucking. His voice is a little higher. "Uh, I could---I could try to actually guess, I guess, but if you want me to do that, you'll have to tell me what the heck I'm guessing... stop!"

You keep on going, and only stop when the ping occurs. You feel like you guessed closer, that time. "Look," you say, after you remove your head from cock with a slurping sound, "if I had enough information that somebody could figure out the answer using logic, I wouldn't need to do this, right? That's why I'm practicing Ero-Divination instead."

"Uhhh.... would you even know if I got it right? Never mind stupid question forget I asked."

You go back to almost but not quite sucking him off.

Shoulder protect, that's the only hint you have. But between that, and your fuzzed out memories, you hope you'll recognize the answer deep down if he does say it.

You suck, lick, and bob your head for a while. You put your hands on his hips so you can feel his muscles trembling in more detail. You try to pay attention to the rhythm of his breathing, the rate of his heart in case that helps.

"Did you frame Charles for arson?" he gasps.

You feel pretty sure that's not it. So you ought to know if he does guess it, right? Because then you won't feel pretty sure that's not it.

You stop your mouth's movement, and then resume quicker, this time. You think you're getting the hang of timing slow edges. You want to test your ability to time fast edges.

"Did you spank him? Oh shit that---that---"

You keep him going right up to the edge that time, then keep him on the edge, then suck a little out of him.

"Don't worry," you say up at him reassuringly, as you poke your head out from under the table. His breath is coming faster, there's sweat on his forehead, nice. "That wasn't the right answer at all! It was more plausible, but, I mean, he'd be the one spanking me. But you, uh, might be closer, to the right track there? Possibly. I'm not sure. Uh. You pervert."

Even with his mouth covered, you can read the eyebrows-raised expression he gives you.

"That was a very perverted suggestion, and you made it, so you're a pervert," you say. Then you quickly duck your head back under the table.

After a while, he says, "Did you feed Charles a whole pan of lasagna?"

You've got the feeling this guy is not exactly desperate to come immediately, but that's okay. You have time. You're going to try to get this to where Edge Other is pinging you half the time, and you're stopping yourself half the time.

"Did you clean out Charles's refrigerator?"

"Did you hide him and murder the body? Uh, strike that, reverse it."

"Did you drink the last remaining bottle of his favorite vintage of wine?"

Yup, he's definitely not desperate to come. But it's okay, you're hardly getting started.

"You bricked him up in the cellar wall?"

"Organized his day planner?"

"Gave him a speeding ticket?"

"Gave him wrong directions to the bathroom?"

"Took his name in vain?"

"Took him camping?"

"Took him on a magic carpet ride?"

You keep him trembling on the edge for a twenty-second period that time, by way of behavioral conditioning. "Sort of," you say to his still-heavily-breathing form afterwards. "That also might be closer to the right track."

And you go back to sucking.

"Reupholstered his car?"

Yeah, he definitely is not deeply interested in coming right away, there. You are feeling a twinge of wounded pride in your abilities as a Tease Mistress. How does he feel about much shorter recovery periods between orgasms, hmmmm?

"Hid shrimp in his curtain rods" is apparently how he feels about that.

"Spoiled him for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

"Sewed his shirt to his pants."

"Bought him a vintage Mercedes-Benz from 1973."

"Converted him to Islam."

"Took his viiiirrginity uh twice! Took his virginity twice!"

Nice save, there. He sure doesn't want to make a plausible suggestion by accident.

"Filled his boots with oat bran."

"Painted an inspirational mural onto his bedroom wall."

"Told him the true name of God."

Also more plausible than he believes, but it still doesn't feel right.

"Told him that Trix are for kids."

"Entered him into a talent show without his knowledge."

...are you doing something wrong, here? Maybe you're just impatient. Or maybe he's just a perverted little masochist who likes being teased, in which case you'll have to tease harder.

"Encased him in styrofoam and shipped him to an Amazon distribution center."

"Got him a job as a male prostitute."

Yes, but.

"Taught him how to say 'fuck' in all extant languages."

"Traced his lineage back to King Charles of England."

"Kidnapped his favorite rock."

"Elected him President."

"Filled his house with 50,000 gallons of jello."

"Told him an incorrect definition of the word 'myrmidon.'"

"Copy-edited his memoirs."

"Cruelly betrayed him in a game of Hangman."

How would you even...

"Tipped him 36.7879% of the bill."

"Joined his boy band."

"Put on his robe and wizard hat."

"Discovered the journal he hid inside that locked room in his house."

"Violated the Geneva Convention."

"Gave away his chocolate factory."

"Surgically attached his nipples to his nose."

"Taught him how to levitate."

You again use Edging on the boy for twenty seconds, by way of encouraging him to stay on this right track.

"Glued all his furniture to the ceiling."

Though it might help if he wanted to be on the right track at all.

"Hired sexy fake assassins to pretend to try to kill him."

"Gave him a boner that will never fade."

Something... like that? Feels like you might have thought it was a good idea.

"Gave him a concussion."

Though not that one.

"Starred with him in a made-for-Netflix television serial."

"Turned all his ship's crew into pigs."

You don't want to complain that he thinks that answer is literally impossible, because you don't want to put him onto the wrong track like that. But fine, you're going to spend a precious 18 DOM to edge him for one minute straight and then keep edging him until he starts taking this seriously.

Mm. Mmmm. That's a nicely increased breath and heart rate, there.

After a while, he gasps out, "You inked dicks on his face while he was sleeping? Covered him in glitter? Introduced him to anal sex?"

You keep going a little longer, so as not to teach him that cooperating means the pleasure ends, and then suck out a little drip of semen to finish off the reward.

"The genre you're looking for is deep and mystical," you say. "Don't worry, your guesses don't need to pretend to believe in anything, you don't have to believe what you say, you just have to be trying to come."

"You became magical soulmates with him?"

That gets him another 20 seconds of edging and a trickle of his juice sucked out while he stays on the edge.

"Probably!" you say when you're done. "But, uh, that's not actually the answer I was looking for, so keep guessing." You have a feeling you might be running low on DOM... but you couldn't possibly finish the Ero-Divination before reaching your limits, right? It wouldn't be dramatic enough. Probably you have to run out of DOM all the way for the divination to work, and then try to edge him using just your own skills that you've been trying to learn, to see if you can earn your answer. That feels like it would make more sense ero-story-mechanics-wise.

"Made him a god?"

Four sharp edges in quick succession. "You need to be more specific about what kind of god," you say after you're done rewarding him.

"Uh. Uh. A god among men? A god among women?"

You shake your head and edge him again. "Maybe you should guess other stuff too," you say. "I mean, I'm not sure that was almost the right answer? Although it could be?"

"Uh, uh, uh, got trapped with him in a stable time loop?"

"That... also sounds true, actually. Still not the answer I was looking for." It's worth a few more edges though.

The guy is sweating a lot more now. He doesn't warn you or say anything next time he's about to come. You stop anyways because hahaha nice try.

"You got---engaged to him?" he says afterwards. "Wait, no, I didn't mean---uh, engaged in a deep mystical way?"

"Just regular engaged, but I remembered that part already. Keep guessing."

"Man, I wish I'd ever in my life had something happen to me that was even one percent as interesting as the night you're describing."

"Noon, actually." Edge Other, you think, as you start to lower your head---

An empty feeling tells you that you're out of DOM now. It's not unpleasant. Not like being hungry is unpleasant. More like your stomach politely telling you that you have plenty of room for desserts.

"Look, just---start guessing," you say. "Plausible, implausible, but honestly try, okay? Just start talking and keep talking, don't warn me when you're about to come, and we'll see how many times I can edge you before I guess wrong and you come in my mouth."

You put your arms around his hips, positioned to feel both his breath and the trembling of his body. This time for real.

And you start sucking, slowly, at the pace you learned as best.

"You---tattooed a mystical brand on him that marks him as your own. He saw your naked soul. You made him come so hard he achieved oneness with the universe. He spanked you until you cried and your tears created a new world---"

And he guesses for a while, but none of it feels true, or like the truth you were looking for, before the time you guess wrong. The seventh time you try to edge him, he groans and comes hard into your mouth.

You keep sucking, suck it all down. All right, maybe this entire thing was a dumb idea. But you don't feel terrible about yourself for having failed. Not much. You're pretty sure you shouldn't feel terrible about yourself at all, and you are trying hard to live up to that. Your victim didn't have a bad time, and there wasn't any guarantee that what you tried would work. Ero-Divination might not be a thing.

When you come up from under the table, his eyes seem softer, he looks friendlier, despite the industrial-style face mask.

You plop down into the chair beside him that you stole, breathing deeply to recover from accumulated oxygen deficits. You were paying so much attention to him, you weren't being as careful about your own lungs.

"Hey, uh," he says after a few deep breaths of his own. "Uh, we should be getting out of here before any police---"

"There was nobody watching us, from the bakery or anywhere else. I checked. Such an amazing helpful coincidence, isn't it."

"I, uh, in that case, let me just say, wow. I'm not sure how to deliver this compliment but I mean it completely unironically. You're pretty good at that."

You smile. "I know, but it's still nice to hear you say it."

"Hey, uh. I don't know if you were just, uh, playing with me. But if you're actually trying to remember, uh, some type of insight you remember having in an altered state of mind? Try free-associating about it, maybe? Like, just write down any words or thoughts that seem relevant on a sheet of paper, and stare at them and write down more words."

"Thanks," you say sincerely. "I will definitely take that advice." Not just because it's good advice, but because that answer could be the actual result of your attempted Ero-Divination. You've got "shoulder protect" to start with, and that's something if not much.

He tears off a sheet from his notebook, not the page he was sketching on before, and hands it to you along with the pencil he was using. "You can keep the pencil," he says. "I've got more."

You don't try his suggestion right away, though you store away the paper and pencil in case they are plot items. "Uh... how are you feeling?" you say. "I don't suppose you had an epiphany while coming and all of your major life troubles are resolved now?"

You probably should not have asked him that. The skin around his eyes changes in a fashion that suggests he was smiling under that mask, before you asked him that, and now he's not. "Yeah!" he says. "I realized nice things can happen to me after all!"

"You're lying, right?"

"Uh... yeah. It was... a nicer thing than I thought would ever happen to me... but it doesn't really change... stuff."

Your mind goes back to that thing Bry Landau told you at the Purring Kittens, about how some men can't open up to someone unless he thinks she thinks he's worthy of being touched. Or however Bry put it. You blew him, so he should be willing to open up to you now, right?

And if you make sure to turn his whole life around, in gratitude for the advice he gave you... then that makes it be a better eroge plot if his advice turns out to solve your own problem!

You lay your hand over his arm, again, and this time he doesn't flinch. "Do you want to talk about it?" you say. "Even if one blowjob didn't work, that's barely scratching the surface of my sexy capabilities."

"It's not---it's not personal. It's not anything anybody can help me with, because it's not me who has the problem, it's the Earth."

"Keep talking?" you say. You're not looking for any major new quests right now, but maybe it's something you can fix with an additional blowjob.

"It's---it's not something I usually talk about. I don't want to dump my pain all over other people."

"Uh, I'm not sure how to say this," you say. "But, uh, if people in this, uh, if people aren't touching each other physically because of a plague---it's probably not a good idea if you also stop touching minds on top of that."

He shakes his head, the motion abrupt, almost convulsive. "That's not an excuse for hurting people's feelings. Not when it won't do any good because they can't actually help."

"I don't think I'll be hurt?" you say. "Though it depends on what you're talking about. There are personal horror stories that might upset me, but---if it's more of a societywide thing---" It's not like you actually have to live in his universe. "I'm pretty sure I can handle that."

"How about the end of the world?" he says.

"Just the end of this one world, or of all worlds everywhere?"

The widening of his eyes, above the mask, says he wasn't expecting that answer.

"I mean," you say, "if all of reality was coming to an end---that would be scary?" You'd have nowhere to run if that was true, Erogame or no Erogame. "But even if a thousand candles go out, even if a trillion reflections of them shatter---I mean, that's not---it's not good---it would be better to live in a reality where they'd burned on---but---so long as there are fires still lit somewhere---points of true light that go on shining---I don't know how to say this. Worlds end. But not all of them. Consciousness goes on. It's always been that way, to the extent the concept of time applies at all on that scale of looking at things, which, uh, I think it doesn't. I'm sorry, am I making sense at all?"

"You're---" His Adam's apple bobs in his throat, beneath the mask, a swallowing. "Wow. Okay. Maybe you can hear this without being hurt."

You rub your hand over his arm where you're still touching him, a friendly caress. You can do that, at SED 26. "Then talk about it," you murmur. "Say it to somebody."

"Do I even need to explain?" Bitterness is emerging in his voice, and underneath it, something that's less like despair and more like exhaustion of the soul. "Covid-19. Flu-22. Covid-23. I still believe the first pandemic was natural, that seemed reasonable then and it still seems reasonable now, but I, I keep wondering, at this point, if somebody is releasing resistant pathogens on purpose, now that people understand how the markets react and how to make a profit. It'd be the optimistic scenario. We could find the bad guys and stop them. In real life we're never going to find anyone, or stop them, and---do you know the comic SMBC? Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal? Because I liked that comic, I really did, but lately every third comic is about how we all secretly wish we were dead, or about how Artificial Intelligence is going to kill us, or about how nice it would be if Artificial Intelligence did kill us because we all secretly wish we were dead. I miss the days when only a few of us thought the world would end that way. Now it's like, like everybody knows it deep down, which, which it seriously seems to me is how people are acting. Nobody is trying to fix the future any more, people are just waiting for it to be over. And then Deepmind announced Zero Cubed, that's the one that was built entirely by Zero Squared. It's, I don't know if you've seen the demos or if you're trying to hide under a rock and pretend they don't exist, but they're really really really scary. Gwern tweeted that he was going on vacation to finish watching all his unfinished animes before the end, and I have this feeling like he's joking-not-joking in a way that's leaning way to the side of not joking at all. Part of me has been going to sleep every night wondering if, in Deepmind's London headquarters, while I'm asleep, that's the time when---part of me is surprised it's taken this long already---and even if not tonight, even if it's another year, even if it's another five years, I'm just so tired of waiting for it. And you know all that too, on some level, because what you did, under this table, that's not something you do when you think you have a long bright future ahead of you, a future you have to protect by not getting arrested. It's something you do when you know deep down the world is ending, and you're trying to be nice to somebody before it ends. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong."

"No comment," you say. You were trying to remember some of his words, back when it sounded like it might be clues to a subquest, but there was too much of it you didn't understand. Now you're just letting the words wash over you, listening to the feelings behind them.

He keeps talking. "I don't regret locking down my fears and letting you do it. Maybe you have HSV, maybe you have HIV, whatever. My whole life is nicer now because those minutes were in it. And now I know, for certain, that the nicest thing that ever happened to me, is in my past. I'm never ever going to end up in, I don't know, in a nice mansion with three women taking advantage of me for a week. There's not enough time left and the world is too wounded. So today was it. Today was the most fun I'll ever have again. It's all downhill from here. I---I know it's not mentally healthy but I keep on wondering if it will be painful, at the very end. It won't actually be hypnodrones, no matter how much people are joking-not-joking about that, because that was just a computer game and reality doesn't conform itself to computer games. It will be very quick, we can deduce it will be very quick, because if you were a strong AI you wouldn't want to give any warning. And we can deduce the AI is not going to want to hurt us. It's just not going to care. But maybe, I keep thinking, maybe when the nanomachines paralyze you and start replicating inside your body, it hurts a lot for two minutes before you die. And I keep, I keep wondering, if there's some way to make an AI care the tiny tiny bit it would take, to just switch off our brains right away, so it didn't hurt at the very end. Not even the hurt of knowing it was the end. Have it all just stop between heartbeats. I---I don't want to commit suicide because I think it would look bad, for groups I'm part of, that who knows maybe still might be able to do something about something, but---but if this was how it was all going to end, I wish I'd died along with my parents. I almost did die, earlier. I was in the hospital and I lost consciousness, and I remember part of me being afraid to die, and part of me being glad it was over and that I could die without it being my fault or upsetting other people too much. Then I woke up all woozy on a hospital bed, which felt sort of good and sort of bad for the opposite reasons. Then I learned that my parents were still in intensive care. After that it only felt bad. I wasn't close to my parents, the way some people are close with their parents, so I was surprised that it hurt so much when they died. They claimed my parents didn't get Flu-22 from me, but under the circumstances I expect they just lied. And now I'll stop talking because you don't look okay."

You take some deep breaths yourself. "It's fine," you say. "It---wasn't very long ago---that my last thought would also have been that I was glad it was over."

"I'm sorry."

"I asked." You take some more deep breaths, and don't remove your hand where it's touching his arm. Now that you've heard his confession, you're not sure what you're supposed to do about it. Turn off Busy Mode, in case it turned on automatically, and check for quest prompts? You don't feel like doing that. You feel like---like you could be doing something. When you walked the spiral with Charles to do something to him the Erogame couldn't undo, it wasn't just the Erogame doing that for you. Does that mean... you can do things too?

You take a final deep breath. This is something of a step for you.

"So," you say, "if, hypothetically, I was some type of... extremely new and inexperienced slightly goddess... what would you want me to do about all that?"

He shakes his head. His eyes, if you can read only his eyes, are looking sadder. "I'm sorry," he says. "I can't enter that headspace enough to take the question seriously."

"For the sake of argument," you say, "if, hypothetically, I had a..." It's not really a power. "If I could operate the truths of existence to cause you to know that I could help you, would I have your consent to do that?"

"What, like by using magic to edit my mind? No. Let's leave aside that in real life, if you had cause to believe anything like that, it would involve drugs rather than magic. It's still no, even assuming the hypothetical. No mind edits for me, please."

You could light up your hair to prove to him that... actually, no, you can't, your hair is Tired.

Um.

What can you do again that's obviously supernatural and doesn't involve hair?

Your mind casts around through the dozens and dozens of skills you have by now. So many that it's hard to remember everything you can do. Almost all of it doesn't look unmistakably supernatural from inside the eroge. Even roofhopping is something that normal humans can do, if they study parkour. And whatever it is, it would have to operate off the very small amount of Submissive Energy you have remaining. Would he maybe have noticed, when you touched his arm, that your hand ought to have been sticky, but wasn't because of Fluid Unformed? But you could have just had a tissue in your not-purse. For that matter, you're wearing your Dad's borrowed pants, and those have actual pockets. It's totally reasonable you could have had a tissue hidden in there.

Then you think of something. Not just a skill, but something you think maybe you can do, now that the skill has shown you the way.

"Hey," you say, standing up. You turn around your chair to face towards the nearest street intersection, that was behind the two of you. You can't remember if there was a traffic light there before, but there's one now. "Look in that direction with me?"

He looks puzzled, but also stands half-up to turn his chair around.

"And take my hand," you add.

He obeys, his fingers intertwining with yours across the space between your chairs.

"Just watch that street intersection with me for a bit," you say. "If that's okay."

"Sure...?" he says, his uncertain voice muffled further by his face mask.

You take a deep breath. "Have you heard of Schrodinger's Cat?" you say.

"Yes, and, uh, I'm sorry, I actually know enough about Schrödinger's Cat that I'm not going to believe anything unconventional you say about Schrödinger's Cat." His eyes flick to you, before going back to the street intersection.

"I get that a lot. In that case, do you happen to know calculus?"

"Calculus? Sure."

"Don't say that so lightly," you say. "Lots of people don't. Know calculus, I mean. I couldn't understand it one week earlier. And now I can take limits with... not the best of them, not even close, but I can take limits at all and it's incredible."

He casts you another glance, looking slightly disturbed and highly skeptical.

"Keep watching the traffic intersection," you remind him.

He turns his gaze from you, and looks at the intersection. The light facing you is red. There are no cars visible in either direction. That's not convenient for what you wanted to say next...

Right after you think that, a car pulls up at the red light and stops there, followed soon after by another. You didn't will it, or wish for it, or exert yourself to make it happen, or ask anything else to do it. It just happened after you thought that.

"I don't actually know... any physics at all, pretty much," you say. "How could I? I just learned calculus on Monday. But even I've heard that the laws of physics are made of calculus. So just that---all by itself, I can see it implies---that physics must be continuous. Whatever's up with Schrodinger's Cat, that must be continuous too. The cat can't just be alive versus dead, there's got to be---all the possibilities between. Every time x and x plus delta are a little bit apart, there's got to be the x plus delta divided by two between them. And x plus delta divided by ten, and x plus delta divided by a billion. Never mind outer space, there's already infinite worlds in the space between zero and one. Right?"

"Sort... of?" he says. "You might need to blow a real physicist if you're, uh, interested in hearing the real answers."

"Keep watching the intersection. And tell me when you think the crosslight has stayed red long enough, that you'd guess it might be about to change to green. Don't look at your phone to check the time. Just guess."

"Okay..." he says slowly, his eyes focusing more on the traffic lights.

"I'm not---really sure how to explain this, but I think I understand, now. How time could apparently go on hold without the people around me seeming to notice. When I'm looking at this scene, seeing the cars stopped at the traffic light, even if in one world the cars have been there for fifteen seconds, there's another world, appearing exactly the same to the vantage point I'm seeing from, where cars like those ones have been there for fourteen seconds. Or fourteen point nine nine nine seconds. Fifteen minus delta. In every particular world, time moves forward, but so long as I don't look at any clocks I don't see that. So I can---slide, little bit by little bit, between worlds that look the same, as seen from the direction I'm looking. Me and anyone whose hand I'm holding. From our perspective, it looks like the light stays red and the cars never roll forward, even though the world isn't frozen and birds can still fly."

"Ah," he says. He sounds rather hesitant.

You smile. "Don't worry, I won't run away if you express skepticism."

"So... I'm guessing you've convinced yourself that you can cast a Quantum Chaos Magick spell, or something, to make traffic lights stay green longer for you? And it definitely feels to you like the traffic light lasts longer when you cast the spell, so long as you don't look at a clock?"

"I can see why you'd guess that." You're glad you don't have to live that type of mental life.

"Because the actual laws of quantum mechanics are explicit about nobody being able to---"

"Oh, sure! I confess to breaking the laws of physics, officer, and I agree that this is very naughty and I deserve to be punished. I wasn't trying to say that what I do is possible, just that it's easier to understand if you imagine how the universe looks deep down instead of how it looks up top. Though now that I think about it---maybe, just like there's versions of Schrodinger's Cat that are between alive and dead, if you slide a little bit, the laws of physics can change bit by bit too? So that you could cross what seemed like an infinite distance between worlds, by moving inside the laws that make the distance be infinite, once the thing happened that let you move between worlds at all... am I actually still making sense at all?"

"I don't see an obvious way that could work," he says. He sounds more animated, like this conversation has entered a space he knows how to navigate. "The equations themselves, as opposed to the solutions, are, um---how would you get one percent of a derivative symbol, for example? I mean, now that I say it, of course there are continuous generalizations of the derivative functional. But that seems to miss the point. In our world, gravity goes like the inverse square of the distance, rather than the distance being raised to the power of one point nine nine eight. So what could a continuous hyperphysics look like, that would make our physics look like a typical element of that higher class?"

"I don't know. I'm very new to all of this. But what I do see now is that---worlds end, sometimes. But people don't end. Because there's always another world that looked the same and didn't end. An absence of experience is the one thing you can't see in any direction you're looking."

He turns his head and gives you an incredulous look. "Are you seriously telling me not to worry about the coming end of the world because of the anthropic theory of immortality?"

"I have no idea what that is?" you say.

"It's roughly what you said. And when you actually think about it, it's the least reassuring theory of the afterlife that anybody has ever invented. With the possible exception of non-anthropic quantum immortality, I suppose."

"You've already been through it once," you point out. "I mean, I realize it wasn't happy, but it worked, didn't it?"

"Huh?" he replies.

He hasn't realized it already? It seems so obvious to you now. "That time in the hospital," you say. "The time when you thought you were going to die---"

"Now come on!"

"---and instead of waking up in one of the stories where you didn't wake up, you woke up in one of the stories where you did wake up, go figure. It was still a realistic story, a Reality Classic story, because a surprise recovery from a disease is something that happens to people in real life. But, uh, you were in fewer stories than before... no, not fewer, because there's an infinity... a continuity of them... your story became less likely. Not so improbable that anything really weird started happening to you right away, but, um. That was before your world got to the Zero Cubed part? You were just saying how worlds like this one could be ending so fast that nobody even noticed themselves dying."

"It's not nearly as funny if you think that's an actual possibility," he says.

"Sorry," you say. "But what I'm saying is that, by now, the story where you're still alive after all this---has become, uh, unlikely enough---that, uh, it's not in a realistic genre anymore. It's started to have the type of plot twist where a beautiful girl walks up to your table, ducks under it, and undoes your belt buckle."

"That is a truly beautiful attempt at gaslighting, and I deeply appreciate that it included full service. But I think your ability to use that argument on me is hampered by you having given the blowjob yourself. I mean, you know the reason that actually happened was that you decided to do that, not because of an unrealistic plot twist."

"I think you're confused about how plot twists work," you say. "My deciding to do something of my own free will is the plot twist. Even if some Author Thing in a higher dimension is writing my story, the Author Thing is writing the story where I decided to blow you of my own free will, not a story where I was mind-controlled into doing that."

It's an obvious thought---well, it's obvious to you now---that something like this could have happened to you on Sunday afternoon when you found yourself outside of Reality Classic. Though you still have no idea how you could have died that thoroughly. A heart attack in your sleep should have just led to you waking up with hazy dreams about a heart attack, you think? You didn't read anything about a Zero Cubed in the news. Did somebody accidentally launch all the nukes on Sunday afternoon, so that conventional-physics-Cinderella was obliterated too fast for Cindy to notice? Shouldn't you have been inside some remaining Reality Classic worlds, if only some of the classic storylines compatible with your existence ended? But that thought doesn't feel quite right either. There are so many things you still don't understand, and it feels like you never end up knowing anything, just making weird guesses that you extend into more and more weird guesses.

"But look," the guy is saying, "the problem with using anthropic immortality as a hope of surviving the end of the whole world---even leaving aside all the philosophical uncertainty about the whole premise---I mean, fine, let's say there are some versions of you in simulations that keep on going. Who exactly is running those simulations? The simulation has to be big enough to reproduce our whole universe precisely, or it wouldn't contain precisely us. You can't build a computer the size of a whole universe like this one, inside of a universe like this one. So the simulation-builders would have to be from places with different physical laws, places that allow for much larger computers. They wouldn't be human. Nothing remotely like human. What would they want to do with our mind-states after we died?"

You let out a breath. "Yeah, that's an... issue. I guess if I was trying to give somebody advice about that, I'd say... be excellent to each other? Maybe that way, after the world ends, you'll end up in a story about people being excellent to each other. Because, I mean, if the most interesting fact about you was that you once spent six months playing eroge, you might end up inside a story about erogames instead."

The guy snorts, and it sounds bitter under the respirator. "I tried to be helpful to, I don't know, the world. Donated a few dollars here and there back when I had a tiny bit of spending money. I don't think it worked. Does that mean I end up mainly in simulations about people failing to be excellent?"

"It's possible," you say. "Or maybe you end up in a story written by the type of author who... doesn't want the stories of people who tried to be good, to end like that..."

"I'm skeptical that simulating a fix-fic of my life is the maximum of a typical alien's utility function for ways to spend computing power."

"Typical aliens? Maybe not. But... what if it's not just about what one alien is thinking?" Are you regurgitating knowledge half-learned during your exposure to realms outside spacetime, or just making this up? You can't tell.

"So now we're talking about some kind of treaty between multiple alien species?" he says. "That all evolved inside some completely other universe, with utterly different physical laws? That isn't sounding any more reassuring as a theory of the afterlife. It would be completely impossible for us to correctly predict in advance what would happen. Literally God knows where that would end up."

"Yeah, that's fair," you say with considerable emphasis. "This is not what I'd have guessed would happen, if I'd even been able to imagine the question back then. Especially that whole thing with my hair---"

"So why would it end nicely? Even the aliens who care about creatures like us, at all, wouldn't want for us what we want for ourselves. They'd help according to their own definitions of help. I mean, if you were trying to help a fish, you'd teach it how to think and give it hands, but that's not something a fish would imagine itself, right? So you'd die, and then wake up with the metaphorical equivalent of six arms and a tail inside your mind."

You stare up at the cloudy grey sky. Time has passed, and the surroundings of the foggy world look even darker now. "Yeah, that makes sense," you say. "Except---if you step back and look back at the whole thing, from far outside all the individual perspectives---try to see it from the view of all conscious life, everywhere---what you're describing is a multiverse of storylines that go badly for almost everyone, every time a world somewhere comes to an end, destroyed by its own people or freezing as it runs down. And yet---you can imagine all the aliens who are trying not to be awful, touching tentacles across all of time somehow, trying to make it so that things don't end so awfully. Even the aliens who want to halp in scary ways might be willing to hear out the aliens who think more like the rescued people do. Either because they're getting paid off by nicer aliens, or just so that---so that things wouldn't end up awful in the longest run that includes them too, when they have to move on themselves. So that they wouldn't end up halped by something else, when it was their turn to need help. All the nice parts of the highest multiverse there is, trying to bargain and balance and force that one thing to be true. To be True. That whatever else happens to people after their worlds end, they could still stay true to themselves. If there's one bright spot in all of this, one bright spot in the All-There-Is, maybe it's that."

The clouds happen to part, just then, and sunlight illuminates the table the two of you happen to be sitting at. The Sun is low enough in the afternoon sky to be yellow-red, not blinding, gently brushing the world with bearable light.

"I did try not to be awful to people myself," you say softly, almost a whisper. "And what do you know, I don't think I ended up in that awful of an erogame."

He chuckles.

Is it the sort of thing that's funny if you think it's a joke? You can't get far enough into his headspace to tell.

"Weird how the sun came out just then," he says. "Let me guess, you think it's a sign?"

"I... don't know. All I can do is guess." It's obviously a sign, so far as it goes. You don't know if it was a true sign, from Above, if it meant that anything you said was correct. It could also just be the dramatic thing to have happen in an eroge you're enacting, as much of a conceit as Joel's belief that you were a succubus. You wish you could sometimes end up knowing things, rather than only guessing them more and more.

"Well," he says, "it's a nice thought but I'm not sure it's a healthy way to think? I mean, half the people I know, if they started thinking that way, would... go completely off the deep end in terms of imagining things that aliens wanted them to do. Like, the best case scenario is that they'd project their own morality onto that, and go on doing whatever they previously believed to be right. In worse cases they'd start projecting their fears obsessive-compulsive style and imagine aliens punishing them for not washing their hands enough. And those are people who'd understand this type of idea well enough that they couldn't just talk themselves into anything. Anyone else just decides that whatever they previously thought was woke must be mandated by the interuniversal wokeness treaty."

"Yeah, you should... probably consider yourself advised to pursue what you want, not what you think any aliens might want," you say. "Even if you end up as a character in some higher-dimensional game with aliens playing you, you should probably just let the aliens play you and not spend too much time thinking about the aliens. Though, uh, I should warn you, don't go breaking any oaths? I get the impression that's a genuinely bad idea."

"Ha, that's actually more plausible than you'd think just from reading fantasy novels, given the way any interuniversal treaties would have to be negotiated between the aliens involved. I'd agree that was a plausible thing to avoid doing? If I agreed with the whole viewpoint, I mean, which I don't. Point one, it seems highly questionable whether anthropics works out like that. Point two, I don't think we could make any correct guesses about interuniversal treaties with literally zero ability to actually observe anything. Point three, I don't think it's psychologically healthy for us to put our hopes in the afterlife. If there's any meaning to the nice idea, it's that humanity is supposed to make something of this universe and then become a signatory to the treaty ourselves. Maybe simulate some beings inside a universe with simpler physics than our own, and save them and be nice to them after their native universe ends, so that somebody else takes us in when our own universe runs down trillions of years later."

You're not sure how to say this to him. "I... I mean, with what you said earlier... it seems pretty likely that this world is... a place that produces refugees. Not a place that ends up hosting them."

He doesn't say anything for several breaths. Then, "I suppose it could be better from a utilitarian standpoint for some people to believe in an afterlife, if it keeps them out of the way of---whatever goes down at the end. Somebody might try to do something productive with this situation at the very last minute, and they'll probably have an easier time if, if fewer people are running around screaming and randomly setting things on fire because they have no hope left. And if that doesn't work either, at least those believers will go out with---more dignity, trying to be excellent to each other? I don't know. I don't actually believe it, so it's hard for me to guess how somebody would act if they did. I---I mean it would be nice to have hope, but---I'm not---I refuse to---I'd rather live my life with accurate beliefs until the end. That's my own version of dying with dignity."

You have to blink hard a few times out of respect for that. "Anyways," you say in a voice that's trying to be more normal, "I was just thinking, so long as I was passing by, I could give you, uh, a lift, as to where you ended up? At least for now."

He laughs louder. It sounds weird behind the mask, you can't tell if it's real or fake, maybe it's both. "By giving me an improbable under-the-table blowjob, so I end up in a sexier reality after the world ends? Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, I'm genuinely impressed, I sincerely respect you for trying, but that is literally the strangest way that anybody has ever tried to help me."

"Well, that too?" you say. "But mostly by holding your hand for a time. You forgot to keep track of it, but it's been a while and the traffic light hasn't changed."

The guy turns his head to look at the still-red light, the cars still stopped there.

Then he turns back to look at you.

Then he quickly turns back to look at the light again. "You don't expect me to believe that, do you?" he says, though he's watching the light now. "The light turned green while I wasn't looking, and you reminded me to look back only when it turned red again."

"Did you pay enough attention to remember the scene in detail? Because those are the same two stopped cars as before."

He hesitates, then shakes his head. "It looks like around the same number of cars, yeah. My brain is only thinking they're the same cars because you suggested that. Either that, or there's some other trick I haven't figured out."

"Like I previously arranged for those two cars to drive around in a circle and come back? There's worlds like that, where an ordinary girl with weird sexual fetishes is playing an elaborate prank on you. And there's worlds where you ran into a slightly-sort-of-goddess. Both worlds look the same from your direction, so you're inside both types of worlds at once, at least for a little while longer. But the longer the traffic light doesn't change, the more of you is inside the world where... where the other thing is happening. Little bit by little bit."

The guy shakes his head again, though he keeps looking at the traffic light. "If the light still doesn't turn green after a while - not that I currently expect that to be the case - then the simplest explanation will be that this particular traffic light has a repeating malfunction where it stays red for a long time, and you timed when that malfunction occurs... actually, no. The most likely explanation would be that you have a confederate with an emergency-vehicle traffic controller. Not sure how those work, but I know they exist. Once that becomes the most likely explanation, it stays the most likely explanation no matter how much longer the traffic light lasts."

"I suppose there's worlds like that," you allow. "But those worlds aren't all that real, are they? Because how often does a beautiful girl come over and blow you, and also she has a confederate with a traffic-light-changing device? I'm not saying it's physically impossible. But it doesn't happen a lot."

He casts you an uneasy look, then quickly glances back at the traffic light. "Weird things happen more often when somebody thinks they can make money from them."

"You've been very clear about you not being the best victim for that. That scenario doesn't happen often either, especially when it involves boys with no money, and beautiful girls who come right up to them and duck under the table. Right? It's not a type of story you hear about on Google News every week. It's not something that happens in real life. It's the type of elaborate pointless scam that skeptics imagine inside urban fantasy stories, after they encounter what's actually magic."

"Elaborate scams happen sometimes. Actual magic happens not at all, minus an infinitesimal rounding error for an incredibly tiny part of the multiverse."

You're about to argue further, but then you stop. It's not like you have to convince him of anything. He's unlikely to be enough of a reality warper that his skepticism could make a difference. "Well," you say, "for whatever it's worth, while the traffic light hasn't changed and I'm still holding your hand---anything you'd say about where you want to go? Especially if it's a sexy sort of request."

After a second he chuckles, though it sounds forced again. "What, like pick my favorite book series to get portaled into? Also, I choose the culture."

"Sorry, I'm not that powerful of a slightly-goddess yet. I think I can only shift our viewpoint across worlds that have traffic lights in them, at least for now. And I don't think I can pick a particular book series because---something that exact---that a human author just made up---might not--hold together as a reality---in the right way. I could find you a similar world maybe, but it wouldn't be exactly the same characters as in whatever books. Uh, I think I can let you choose the world's culture, sort of? But there's got to be a sexual element to whatever it is you ask for, because, uh, that's how I roll."

His eyes flick to you again, then back to the unchanging red traffic light, the cars that still aren't moving. His hand is trembling more under yours.

"Yeah," you say. "There's less impossible explanations. But they're not good explanations. At some point you start being mostly inside impossible stories instead."

"It's just a red traffic light, you can't expect me to believe that, that... I'm still trying to figure out how you plan to make money on this... but fine. Let's be clear on what you're saying here. What you're claiming is that I'm actually dead, and you're my psychopomp. Correct?"

"Psycho-what?" you say.

"Psychopomp. From the Greek psychopompus, psyche's-guide. The beings that usher the souls of the dead to the afterlife."

"The point is that there is no such thing as 'being dead,'" you say. "Death is something that we see happen to other people, when a story drops them and we're still inside it. It's not something we ever see happen to ourselves. From a first-person perspective, there's just---the thing that happens to us, after the worlds that once held us, don't have us in them, any more..."

"I understand the thesis," he says. "Can you show me anything to prove it?"

"Besides the traffic light? I'm sort of tired in some ways, right now. But I could directly let you know for certain that this hope is real. It's definitely not mind control, if that helps, and you'd be all the way inside an impossible universe after that."

"Still... no..."

"Breathe," you remind him.

He takes a shaking breath. "Congratulations, you're not convincing me, but you are scaring me."

"I'm sorry about that. But if you pretend that it's real, where would you want to go? I can't save the world you came from, I think. Not actually save it. But I can take you somewhere else. It has to be a world with traffic lights, but it can have the sexy culture of your choice. If you're super into anal, I can take you to Anal Reality. Just don't ask me why the hell, because I don't know why the hell."

"Are you trying to learn something about me that lets you blackmail me? I don't have money."

"If my plan was to blackmail you, I'd already have a fun video."

"I---" His eyes dart between the traffic light, to you, to the traffic light. "I---I don't---fine, but---my thing is not, it's not, there isn't a word for which things people are allowed to want, but it's not one of those things. Fine, you have a video of me getting a blowjob. I don't think anybody really cares about that anymore. I'd still like to be able to get a job someday if there's ever jobs again and we aren't all already dead and, and," you can see his throat moving, when he swallows. "And no. You're not actually going to be able to blackmail me, because I have no close friends left to lose, and there's never going to be jobs again before we're all dead. I'll just tell you to publish and be damned. Are you still asking?"

"Yeah," you say.

"I like the shape I am." He uses his free hand to gesture at his body, the one that clearly has a skeleton tucked away inside it. "I don't want to be more muscular, I want to live inside a culture that doesn't demand I be muscular. I want slender men to be considered attractive, the way that slender women become fashion models, instead of muscle being the ideal for men."

"Doesn't sound difficult," you say. It sounds like a mentally healthy attitude to have, so long as it's about being thin instead of being fat. "What else?"

"Yeah, and, and you need to understand, in exactly the same way, I like having a penis. I don't want different biology, I want to be in a different society. One where people with penises wear nice jewelry and complicated clothes that look really interesting, and basketball players with breasts and vaginas buy us flowers and ask us out on dates. Though the basketball players can also wear jewelry? I don't begrudge them that, so long as I can do it too. I'm a man and I like women, I don't want either of those facts to change, I want everything else to flip."

You're pretty sure you know the universe he's talking about. "World of Reverse Sexual Morality, got it," you say. "I've never been there in person, but I'm familiar with that part of the multiverse---"

"Doesn't matter," he says. "The traffic light just changed." There's relief in his voice, enough of it to drown out any undertone of pain from the loss of an impossible hope.

Even awfulness can become comforting after you get sufficiently used to it, you guess. Enough that people can be scared of leaving behind the troubles they know.

You look at the cars accelerating forwards through the green light, and gently let go of his hand. "Yeah, it's changed," you say.

"Are you going to blackmail me now?"

You shake your head.

"So it was just a joke you invented on the fly, when you noticed the traffic light had already been broken for a while and decided to play along with that? I---I should have thought of that earlier. I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier. I guess I've got nobody but myself to blame for being fooled even a little." He takes some deep breaths. "But I think it helped me to talk about it, to actually think about the thing, so, so thank you."

You wait, for a couple of seconds, for something dramatic to happen that will reveal things to him.

It doesn't happen. Strange. You're not sure what the reveal is waiting on. "Uh, why is wanting to get asked on dates by female basketball players something awful and shameful that you're not allowed to want?" you say, by way of stalling while you try to figure it out.

His face tightens up, what you can see of it, and he visibly debates whether to say anything to you. "If you say you want to have, you'd rather have a woman's place in society, that's like---like denying that women are victims and that men are more privileged and have it better. You can want it if you're trans, but not otherwise. It's a bad thought. The type of bad thought that gets you kicked out of college, or what passes for it now."

Did those social trends go to hellish extremes along with everything else, where he's from? "Being a girl can suck, yeah," you say. "But you didn't ask for a girl's place in society. You asked for an attractive girl's place. 'Woman' and 'attractive woman' are almost completely different genders, with different privileges, social expectations, and problems. Sure, attractive women have their own problems too, but you don't need to defend to me why you'd rather have a hot girl's problems. The only part I'd criticize, is that you wished for the gender role of a person who gets bought flowers and asked on dates, while thinking like that gender role was synonymous with women. Like that gender role was available to anyone with breasts and a vagina. But I don't actually blame you, since everybody thinks like that all of the time, like the attractive-woman gender is the only gender that exists in society. The other type of woman doesn't have much of a place in society. Being a woman who's not an attractive woman, having breasts and a vagina that nobody wants, is, is as close as you can come to---to no longer existing in a world, while still being stuck inside it."

The boy is looking at you with widened eyes above his mask. "Uh, wow. I'm not saying you're wrong, but, uh---should you really be the one saying that?"

You look down at yourself, at the flat stomach beneath your shirt, and find yourself laughing. To your surprise, the laughter is only slightly painful. You honestly forgot how those words might sound, coming from someone like you, with the evident privilege to duck under a boy's table and not get pushed away. "What, you think I looked like this before my own story changed? I was a girl, and all kinds of dysphoric about it. Trans girl-to-hot-girl, that's me."

His eyes narrow again. "I'd like for that joke to be over, now," he says.

You nod. "It'll be over soon." You've figured out what you're supposed to do next. "But let me do one more nice thing for you before I go. Shall we play a last bit of pretend? Where you're a shy boy from the World of Reverse Sexual Morality, and I'm the juvenile delinquent girl molesting you?" You glance down again at your Dad's worn shirt, buttoned only halfway up your chest, and the tie draped between your breasts. "I mean, so long as I coincidentally happened to dress exactly like a juvenile delinquent from the World of Reverse Sexual Morality when I left my house."

He's looking at you with renewed suspicion. "I didn't say anything about women molesting me."

"Your strange fetishes are not as rare as you believe. I've seen enough Reverse Sexual Morality stuff to know what boys fantasize about when they fantasize about going there." You stand up from your wireframe chair, and not bothering to suppress the grin on your face, you reach out to the boy's shirt and pull him up out of his own chair.

He stares you in the eyes from inches away.

"After the amount of physical contact we've already had," you say, "it shouldn't make a difference if I take off your mask so I can kiss you, right?"

"That's... true, I guess..."

"Pretend you don't like it," you tell him. "Try to push me away. One last fantasy before I go." Without letting go of his shirt fisted in your hand, you reach out another hand to pull off and drop his mask. Then you grab his hair, and kiss him hard.

After a few seconds he's still not pushing you away, or kissing you back, so you back off a few inches. "Uh, this is your thing, right?" you say, feeling slightly worried. "Women with high sex drives pushing themselves on you, you acting coy?"

"At another time---it probably would be---but right now I'm not---"

Whew. "Look," you say, "just play along with it, even if you're not in the mood right this second---" You think ahead a few more chess moves. "No, let me put it this way. If you don't struggle, I'm going to take off your clothes and fuck you right here on the sidewalk." Then you kiss him again.

After a second his hands come up and push against your chest, though weakly. "Don't---" he gasps into your lips.

"Shut up, slut," you snarl into his lips, and press your mouth harder against his. "You know you want this."

He pushes back against you with some real force this time. "Okay, enough---"

"Hey! Leave him alone!"

You turn your head.

Well well, what a surprise. Here is a girl roughly this boy's age, trying to look belligerent instead of scared and not quite succeeding. She's wearing a cargo short with pockets on its pockets, and a sleeveless shirt with low-cut cleavage, showing off her visibly muscled arms and legs. And large earrings, what registers to you as real gold and real diamonds.

"When a boy says no," she says, trying to sound menacing despite being a couple of inches shorter than you, "he means no."

You turn to look back at the guy whose shirt you're grabbing.

He looks like he's about to try saying something to reassert his awful reality.

You let go of his hair you were fisting with one hand, and point a finger in the direction of the bakery.

He looks where you're pointing.

The bakery has people in it now. Muscular women in simple dresses or loose shirts, thin men with long hair wearing multilayered outfits. No respirator masks of course.

Wow. You don't think you've ever seen anyone's face go that blank before.

You turn back to the courageous Nice Gal who's confronting this dangerous-looking juvenile delinquent.

The girl holds up a cellphone that... unfolds into a larger screen? Nice! You've got to pick up one of those next time you pass through this dimension.

"If you don't let go of his shirt now I'm calling the police," the Nice Gal says in a low, threatening, feminine growl.

You give her a tough-gal look, to make it clear how intimidated you're not, and then release the boy's shirt where you were fisting it. (He stays paralyzed exactly in place, frozen like an old laptop that no longer receives critical driver updates.) "You've got some---" balls? "---ovaries on you, rich bitch," you drawl at her in threatening feminine tones of your own. "I respect that, so I'm not gonna punch your lights out."

"Come on," she says to the boy, trying to look like she's ignoring you. "Let's get out of here, huh?" She takes a step forward---

"Stop," you say in a deadlier tone. "Bitch, you need to take a closer look at shit before you stick your nose into other bitches' messes. This pretty boy look rich to you, hah? He wearing a lot of jewelry? That's right, he's not." You gesture at his shirt and pants. "He's wearing girl's clothes, see? Staying with a woman, can't afford his own stuff. You gonna yank away his meal ticket so you can feel good about yourself?"

Her eyes flicker back and forth, between the boy and you. You can see in her expression the moment when she realizes that she's facing a more complicated situation than she expected. She hesitates, almost but not quite taking a step back.

Then she rallies. "Then I'll take him to a shelter where he can---"

"Oh, fuck off," you say with real heat in your voice. "You obviously have no idea what those are like, if you don't know why a boy would rather trade sex for living in a proper apartment instead. He could go to a shelter if he wanted. Don't assume he has no agency just because he's male." Oops, you let your gangster-face drop. You quickly fix it back on again.

The Nice Gal clenches her jaw, her hands form fists. "My parents are out of town on vacation," she bites out the words. "I can give him room, board, and a bed to sleep in that doesn't have anyone else in it, while I---while we work out something sustainable that he's okay with."

You clap your hands with slow irony. "So you wanna take the cute boy home with you? Play like you're the princess in shining armor, rescue the prince in distress? Sure, I could sell him to you. I can be reasonable, see? But I'm not a total bitch myself, so, I gotta know you'll take good care of him first."

"I can take better care of him than you did, starting with one hundred percent less sexual abuse."

You lean towards her, and lower your voice---though not to the point where the frozen boy who's standing right next to you wouldn't hear. "I warned you, be careful about the assumptions you make before you poke your nose in some other bitch's mess," you say grimly. "Cause this innocent-looking honey here? Is actually a total slut. If you don't fuck him yourself, he'll be turning tricks on the street inside of two days."

"Like I'd believe that!" she snarls. "He was trying to push you away!"

"Heh heh, don't want the whole rescue to be a lie, amiright? I suppose you could believe him, if the topic came up later, that he wasn't in the mood just then. But he also likes playing hard-to-get---"

"You fucking rapist! Do you realize how much of a cliche you sound like?"

"Oh, definitely," you say in your normal tone before you catch yourself. Ahem. You restore your menacing expression, and lean even further into the Nice Gal's personal space. "I've been through some shit in my life," you say grimly. "And he's been through some shit. Shit like you've never known and never will, because you don't live in that type of world. It's the kind of shit where now he needs to see that somebody wants him enough to push him onto a bed. Because that is a way that he knows he is alive and not alone anymore. You don't have to believe me about that right away. But if you find him stretched out all provocatively on your sofa, not wearing any shirt? Give into your lust. Take him. Or lose him. And if he says he's fine with you selling his slutty cock to your school friends, to pay for him getting a room somewhere? Trust him. Listen to what he says and believe him, don't just ignore him because you're the strong woman who knows better. Otherwise he'll run to somebody like me. Got it, bitch? If you're too much of a virgin to handle that, don't bother trying."

The Nice Gal turns firmly away from you, though you can see the angry-embarrassed flush on her cheeks. She tugs the shirt-sleeve of the newly minted superhero, Fatal Windows Exception Boy. "Hey," she says gently. "Come on. I can offer you a safe place to stay and recover from... whatever you've been through. You won't have to do anything you don't want."

The pretty boy lets the strong girl pull him away, with a still-vacant look that someone might understandably mistake for the result of fatigue or drugs rather than an unplanned total existential reboot.

"Hey!" you snap at her, before the two can finish leaving together. "I said I'd sell him to you, not give him away. He owes me. And you look like you can afford it, hah? Two hundred dollars. I'll take the earrings if you don't have cash."

The Nice Gal gives you a long look, and then seems to decide it's not worth fighting over. She reaches into the back pocket of her jeans, pulls out a roll of fifties, and hands you four of them.

You tuck the money into your pants pockets, making sure the boy sees it happen. He did keep trying to figure out how you were going to make money from this, and you wouldn't want to leave him never knowing the answer.

Then you stick your thumbs into your pants pockets, turn, and saunter away like a fuckin' gangster.

"Have a nice life!" you call out without turning your head. "Hope your story has a Good Ending, and all that. And remember, kid, if you ever do feel like talkin' to your parents again, they may not live around these parts---but I expect you could find 'em if you went looking."

7.16.4: Everything Will Probably Be Okay

You keep sauntering until you turn the nearest corner, then stop, relax your tensed muscles, and exhale deeply.

Wooooooh.

That was... deeper than you planned to go, just then. But it got the job done. At least it was a short plotline.

Though, now you kind of want your own actual shy boy from this dimension---

No! No, your harem is large enough already. You should consolidate your recent gains before expanding your territory further. Things in your life have only just now started to seem possibly mostly stable-able sort of. You can always come back to this part of Norville later, and get a folding cellphone and a shy boy or two.

Right now you have other things to think about.

You've never before... well, you haven't been doing this for very long period. But that was definitely much more deliberate goddessery than you've succeeded at previously.

Walking that spiral with Charles had consequences, for you and not just for him. You already knew that, but now you know it twice.

You have a feeling that you can't do this sort of thing just anytime. That it only worked because it was a oneshot story, that you still can't warp reality to pick up $50,000 from a closet. But---but if it's not interfering with an Erogame storyline in any way, and involves a sex scene---you apparently have this level of power at least sometimes.

Were you borrowing the Erogame's power to do all that? Or did this all begin with your own secret power to straddle realities, and the Erogame is just---using that, organizing it, being an operating system for it, protecting you from raw invocations that would destroy you even if you can't die? Maybe it's not that your one power is the Erogame, and it gifted you the ability to call across realities---but that something wiped out almost all the Cinderella Sheens except the very rare one who was a secret reality-warper, and the first thing you summoned to stabilize reality around you was the Erogame?

And if any of that is true, was the thing you summoned already the Erogame before you called it? Erogamer's Body and Erogamer's World are both Reality Skills, and you know now that's not where the skill tiers top out. Maybe you got your first two Reality Skills exactly the same way you got Conceptual Hair and Time Control. Maybe you've got some higher-up skill you can't see, a Truth or something even above that, which lets you acquire other Reality Skills, and that skill came first?

You shake your head. It doesn't all sound quite right, and you shouldn't think about that stuff until later. Maybe more like a thousand years later than tomorrow later, if the answers only get more complicated rather than simpler when you try to look past the surfaces of Erogame things.

Right now you've got to figure out what you did to Charles. Besides getting engaged to him, becoming magical soulmates with him, forming a stable time-loop with him, making him some type of unspecified god, getting him a gig as a male prostitute and gosh you two had a busy day didn't you. No wonder you're having trouble nailing down the memories that haven't been fully censored. You hope the piece of paper you got from your last quest helps.

First you walk and turn past another couple of corners, trying to head back to your Norville---not the awful one you grew up in, of course, but the nicer ERO-33 Norville where your house is now located.

Come to think, did you get any XP from your last encounter? Or is it not the sort of thing... "Busy Mode off, any unread notifications?"

You cannot reasonably expect to do THAT and not have your ERO go up by 1.

ERO achievement: Held hands with a boy. +250XP, +$200.

Yeah, that's fair, and besides, you regret nothing. Your ERO needs to increase to at least 40 to resurrect Dad, anyways.

...Could you walk to your Dad? Never mind ERO 40, just stroll down a misty street and find him eating a sandwich?

No. No, that doesn't sound like a good idea. You're not exactly a master of how this all works. You might get the wrong Frank Sheen and never know it. If your wild theory is right that the Erogame is something you summoned to channel your powers safely, then you should use the official Erogame skill for resurrecting the dead. That sounds safer than you just trying to yank open a closet and find your Dad inside it. Even if first you practice opening closets and finding other formerly dead people inside them, like Alexander Hamilton or whoever, it still doesn't sound like a good idea. "Next notification?"

A skill has been created by a special action! Comprehending the metaphysical implementation as well as the emotional meaning of Slack has increased this skill to its maximum level, placed its enactment under your conscious control, and unsealed the See You Then subskill of Time Control.

You guess you earned that too... totally earned it fair and square, with how much you've been using, abusing, and musing about that one skill. "Info, skills, see you then?"

See You Then: Lvl 1 (0%). Active. Special.

Providing that you already have an appointment, you may go to meet somebody at a particular place and time. This may not undo what has already happened, visibly tangle up timelines, metacause effects to precede causes, or impinge upon the financial integrity of the multiverse.

At Lvl 1, you may use this skill at most 1 time per 24 hours (according to externally visible clocks), and your appointments may range no more than 1 hour away (according to externally visible clocks) from the central timestream that remains key to how you organize your consciousness's relationship with reality.

That's the pathway to fully unsealing Time Control Lvl MAX, isn't it. Raise a subskill to maximum, which unseals a new subskill, then you get to raise that one. Golly, you remember when that would have rated higher on your scale of important news. "Next notification."

A skill has been created by a special action! Guiding a soul to his next life and then selling his sweet ass has created the skill Psychopimp.

Psychopimp: Lvl 1 (0%). Active & Passive. Special.

After sexing a departed soul into submission, you may conduct them to a kinky afterlife and sell them to a depraved denizen of that plane. Higher levels of this skill enable you to judge the sexual virtues and naughtinesses of the departed, so you can guide them to more fitting destinations and sell them for higher prices.

The game congratulates you on having somehow acquired this skill without having any of the prerequisite game abilities for peeping on dead perverts, sexing up their ethereal bods, or traveling the astral planes. Good luck leveling this one!

After walking two more blocks, you're on a street you actually recognize. Brighter and cheerfuller, but the same shops you remember, even if the ice cream shops are selling naughtier flavors of ice cream.

You find another outdoor table and wireframe chair---a table with no boys attached, this time. You sit down, and take out the piece of paper and the pencil.

You write the words SHOULDER and PROTECT in neat capital letters.

You stare at them for a while.

Nothing comes to you.

You write out shoulder protect.

Lowercase isn't making with the mental magic either.

Protect shoulder?

Your clever idea of reversing the word ordering... doesn't help.

Apparently this isn't magical memory-prompting quest-paper. Darn it. What else was it the boy said you should do again? Free-associate to other words and phrases... maybe? You think that was what he said to do.

You try writing down the word shoulder and then immediately writing down the first word that comes to mind after that, which turns out to be passing.

Why did you think passing?

You ponder this.

Possibly because all this talk of "shoulder" "protection" made you think of football players with huge shoulder-guards, passing the ball.

You try writing down Protect and then the word that immediately follows, which is Death.

Protect. Death. You can guess what your mind was thinking there.

Maybe if you keep on writing more words? Shoulder. Passing. Distance. Passing distance. Like a car passing somebody on a highway's shoulder... you're not making progress here. You decide to start over.

Shoulder. Above. As in "head and shoulders above" something?

Shoulder. Above. Rise. Release. That seems more promising, if your brain isn't making things up. Keep writing words?

Shoulder. Above. Rise. Release. Unbound. Infinite. Soul. Death.

You pause, a chill going down you. Infinite soul death? That might not be a nice thing to have done to Charles.

Are some of the words extra? Repeated? Should they be in a different order?

Your heart is beating faster. What exactly did you do to Charles? There was a chant, a hymn, a prayer to something higher. You meant him well, you know you only meant him well---

You try saying out loud all the words from your free association, even the ones that sound like cars and football.

"Protect shoulder passing distance, rise above, release infinite unbound soul death," you say out loud.

It isn't much of a sentence. The words are resonating with some memory deep inside you, though. Not from this morning. From further back in your life than that. You don't remember much of what you chanted to Charles, but it was something meaningful to him. It would make sense if there was something meaningful to you, too, spoken deeper down in memories you didn't keep at all. But you didn't hear a lot of sentences with words like that in them, back in your Reality Classic days. You didn't know any mystical chants that actually...

Then you yank your phone out of your nonexistent pocket, instead of the existent one, and stab in the command to dial Charles. Pick up, pick up, pick up---

After a single ring, the phone picks up, and you hear Charles's voice.

Charles's voice saying something about leaving a message.

A skill has been created by a special action! Failing to reach Charles by cellphone has created the skill Communications Breakdown.

Communications Breakdown: Lvl MAX. Passive.

So many problems would resolve immediately if the characters just had an honest talk with each other! The plot can't allow that, now can it? This handy utility skill protects you from spontaneous attacks of stupidity and emotional immaturity, by ensuring that instead somebody forgot to charge their cellphone, became lost on the way to your house, got stranded in an alternate dimension, is under continuous surveillance by their enemies, or has been given good cause to worry that you've been compromised by brain parasites. Any time you're not feeling grateful for this skill, remember, it could have been much worse.

Erogame. Erogame why. Why are you still behaving like this. Didn't you just now go through an inexorably logical argument demonstrating that the Erogame must secretly have been your summoned minion all along, and that being mean to you is prohibited by interdimensional treaties at the highest level?

You try dialing Charles again, in case the Erogame didn't follow your argument the first time.

You get his voicemail again.

You dial a third time, trying to invoke whatever power you have that lets you override the Erogame when you want things enough. You've got to talk to Charles! You've got to talk to Charles now! Communications Breakdown is a game skill, not a Reality Skill or a Truth, this should be one of the times you can overrule the Erogame if you want it hard enough, right, right, right?

Voicemail.

You surge up from your wirey chair, and start running. Trying to hold the frozen moment where the clocks slide back as fast as they tick forward, thinking Charles, Charles, Charles Adan, picturing your magical boyfriend's smile and body in your mind, trying to parkour-slide across traffic-halted cars and realities to wherever he is, to whenever time comes before it's too late, you just did this type of thing you have to be able to do it again! You've got to get to Charles! You've got to get to Charles now! You've got to get to Charles before he starts doing things and your newly stabilizable life becomes way more complicated!

You know now what that skill is named.

You know now what that skill must do.

Without pausing in your wild sprint, your lips subvocalize words, your thoughts form concepts.

For it is in passing that we obtain immortality.

"Info,"

Through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all.

"Skills,"

Infinite in distance and unbound by death,
I release your soul---

"And By My Shoulder Protect Thee."

Info // Skills // Meta-Reality Skills // And By My Shoulder Protect Thee

And By My Shoulder Protect Thee: Lvl ? (??). Special. Special.

A skill created by caring, by the recognition of another being's existence, by sympathy and compassion and the magic called friendship. A prayer to that which exists prior to the Erogame and above it, demanding that it recognize another as your peer. Expends twice your current maximum Submissive and Dominant Energy, drains one stat point, permanently transfers && of %, invalidates and recomputes the future, changes the destiny of yourself and your universe, grants entry into your last refuge, and commits to paying whatever other costs and prices may be required.

Raise a single target's ERO stat from 0 to 1.

Charles Adan
"Charles the Delivery Guy"
LVL 3 (225 / 800)

Stats:

DOM: 312/450
SUB: 0/0

BOD: 26
LST: 20
SED: 24
FUK: 21
PRV: 38 (19)
ERO: 7

Stat Points: 15
Perk Points: 0
Money: $28,240

Status Effects: The Other Type of Denial
Perks: 24/7 (Dominant)

Busy Mode: On

And so the story ends, if not the characters.

I have a last few updates planned for an epilogue, things that I couldn't get the story around to showing and that I don't want to leave just dropped forever. I have no plans to update again after that. Maybe someday I'll post an omake or two, if I'm bitten by an idea that won't let go otherwise. But don't wait for me, and don't hold on to hope.

Thank you to everyone who read this, everyone who commented, everyone who voted, and everyone who helped in any and every way with the writing. Thank you to the many people who came up with clever plans and clever interpretations of what was going on, writing this would have been simpler without you. Extra thank you to the special helpers who contributed dialogue, including lines of the Erogame itself, Su Ziquan (Lavelle), Sonia Turk, Pedro Many Last Names, the boy who just got isekaied, and however many other cases I'm forgetting because it's been too long. And a large special thank you to the glowfic Discord server, which helped me out with many writing problems and requests.

I'm still interested in paying for Erogamer fiction if anybody's interested in writing it, and I will duly ask the mods to accept it as non-necromancy if any approved omake gets posted to this thread.

And to every last one of you---

.a: Charles Adan Uncensored

An earlier draft of "7.13.g: Charles Adan" which I thought at the time gave away too much for that point in the story. Now that we're in Epilogue Mode, here it is.

People tend to remember the reasons they got married, though not always accurately. The narratives they form around those memories will affect their marriage for as long as it lasts.

There is a possible narrative about a Charles Adan who met a scary sexy alien and had the balls to ask her on a date, risking himself to protect the Earth. This story will give Charles Adan a chance to be impressive, by Cinderella's standards and his own. But if that is the only narrative, the marriage will be one whose genesis was Charles trying to keep his wife from destroying the Earth. It's not the worst narrative, but there are better.

There is a possible narrative about a Charles Adan whose Earth was destroyed, and Cinderella who chose to save him and protect him, giving him a gift she could give to very few. In this story the newlyweds will know that Cinderella cared that much about Charles. But if that is the only narrative, their marriage will be something that Cinderella did as a favor to her husband. It's not the worst narrative, but there are better.

If you lived in a story where probability was the bitch of romance, it wouldn't be surprising if the two learned a new truth after their previous decision to come together. Forcing them to decide again. And again. Why have the newlyweds know only one important truth about who they were and how they came together, when they could learn five?

The true story behind his marriage to Cindy is something that Charles Adan is not allowed to know. Not for a long time. The truth has implications antithetical to what Charles currently believes to be the basic axioms of existence.

Still, all possibilities exist---or equivalently and more simply, none of them do. All stories are real, but some stories are more real than others. Cause and effect cannot loop, but futures that mostly didn't happen can influence pasts that mostly did.

So the story of the Charles who knew everything right away also exists. And in time, the more real Charles will remember what he thought inside that story. He will remember consenting, and that his consent mattered to the forces then in play. For that possible future hiccup in the marriage has also been foreseen---foreseen, examined for interesting potential along some not-quite-human dimensions, compared to other possibilities, and ultimately discarded.

Here is what Charles Adan will one day remember:

Some fraction of all the worlds where human beings exist have destroyed themselves, or been destroyed, or ended in other ways.

The human beings who were in those worlds have lost almost all of their reality. They are become dreams and fancies and shadows.

But watch, for a miracle is about to happen. Charles Adan was a good human as humans go. He kept his serious promises, he spent more time helping others than harming them, he tried to contribute to the health of his world. There are forces of reality that respect that, and would have the stories of people like him end better than this. Other powers are possessed of a deep altruistic concern for the welfare of all lifeforms, and would define Charles's welfare as higher if he were shaped more like a perfect sphere. But such entities are usually minded to be efficient, and expend their influence in places where it will be less opposed by other powers, crafting more spherical endings for the stories of digital watches whose batteries went flat. Even the Helpful Ones who cannot bear to leave any lifeform wholly to its fate, without trying to aid it at least a little, have been bargained into only sponsoring the improvement of those body parts of sapient lifeforms that are least connected to their brains.

See the Charleses Adan in their motel rooms, as their worlds end. There are, in fact, many such Charleses Adan. Never mind the Charleses born in a universe where California has no city called Norville, the Charleses born with one different chromosome, the Charleses who went to a different university, the Charleses who didn't work next door to a biology startup, the Charleses who happened to be in Los Angeles that morning instead of Norville, or the Charleses who stayed at a different Norville motel. There are so many tiny sources of variation that, by comparison, all the big differences you can name hardly amount to anything.

Consider instead two Charleses in the same motel, staying in the same room, who were exactly the same people a few seconds earlier. Here is the Charles looking at the wall with a tiny scratch on the paint. Here is the Charles looking at almost exactly the same wall, but the scratch is one inch lower. It's a tiny difference, but some different neurons are firing in their otherwise similar brains and so they are distinct people with distinct experiences.

One Charles's eyes glance away from the scratch on the wall's paint. Another Charles's eyes glance away from the wall that had a similar scratch one inch lower.

And the thermodynamic miracle occurs, once the rules of physics no longer bind. It happens that by far the most real continuation of both of these stories, is into a future where those two Charleses are looking at exactly the same wall.

The human brain does not record everything. No part of either Charles remembers exactly where the scratch on the paint was located one second earlier.

Every neuron aligns. Where there were two Charleses, now there is one.

One Charles more real than either of the two previous Charleses.

It's not as simple as his presence doubling. But he is more real than either of the previous two selves alone.

Charles isn't thinking about his eleventh birthday party at the moment, or how his father embarrassed him in front of his friends. Charles wouldn't be able to consciously remember which of his classmates-but-not-friends happened to be present at the time. But somewhere in his brain, a handful of neurons are wired differently compared to a Charles who writhed in front of a different set of classmates.

Human brains are constantly forgetting things. Nothing unnatural needs to happen for a brain to forget a little more. A thermodynamic coincidence takes place, and two Charles-brains forget the last subconscious trace of whether or not Moses Beskin was there to see Dad embarrassing him.

Where there were two 2-Charleses, there is now one 4-Charles.

Of course things aren't that neat in real life. Charleses don't slide together in eleven steps to a 2048-Charles. More than one tiny thing is changing at a time, slowly, on many dimensions of tiny variation. At no point does any Charles come close to forgetting the face of his first lover. There are plenty of low-hanging fruits without going to such an extreme. If Charles's brain's recording of the exact shade of green in his first lover's eyes is within 1% of reality but neurally recorded with an excess precision of 0.1%, rounding all the recordings to the nearest 1% will preserve his memory's accuracy while narrowing the flow of Charleses by a factor of 10. All the many atoms making up the neural structure can be aligned further, narrowing the flow of realness by vastly more.

All stories exist, all self-observing structures find themselves to be exactly as real as themselves, and it cannot be said that there are fewer Charleses as the process goes on. There are always all of the Charleses. But before one minute has passed on the motel's wall clock, there are vastly vastly fewer Charleses with any substantial degree of encounterability, and those Charleses are more real than any Charles Adan ever was before.

A lot more real.

They are more real than the entire galaxy they once lived within. They are more real than all the galaxies within range of humanity's telescopes combined. All those galaxies were only a few dozen orders of magnitude larger than a person, and there are many more dimensions than a few dozen in which to subtly align and narrow Charleses. They are more real than their whole visible universes used to be, more real by far.

They have gained over & of %, with all that implies.

Reality is no longer treating them as only conglomerations of molecules, mere portions of a continuum of shadows. Each remaining Charles has become a named thing, metaphorically speaking, with his own metaphorical IP6 address. Their Pagerank has exceeded 0, and things that search using Google can find them.

If this process were to continue to its completion, each of the last remaining Charleses Adan would have over &&&& of %, and there would be few variations of Charles Adan left that were real to any significant degree. So few, indeed, that you could choose one of them, and count all the Charleses Adans so exactly like him that no human test could tell the two apart, and write the number down in base 10 on one sheet of paper.

But there is another option besides continuing this process as far as it can go. And on Saturday, and years in the future, and before the story began at all, Charles Adan made that choice.

In the end, nothing Charles Adan did in his first life contributed to the long-term welfare of sapient life within his universe. He tried, and there are forces of existence that give him credit for that, but he did not actually succeed.

But of those dead Earths there is a remnant, a flower growing in the ashes. There are human beings whose story has continued on after their book has ended, through one plot twist or another. Some of those have been empowered in a way that spans more than one lesser reality.

And Cinderella Sheen is not the only one among them who wants a nice boy from an Earth like hers---a boy that is brave and altruistic and intelligent, but not too much better than her, with a dominant streak he hasn't yet explored---and who needs an anchoring and stabilizing influence.

Charles Adan is one of the best candidates for a mate like that, if you are sorting according to some not-uncommon rules.

But although there is a vast range of findable men who are around as good as Earthmen get, the quantity of empowered Earthwomen trying to summon the best of them is much larger.

So the Charleses go aside from the process that is uniting them, before it reduces their numbers by too much. They answer calls they will someday remember a version of themselves hearing.

They go to places where a Charles Adan is needed to stabilize and protect the last remnants of humanity.

Almost never does a Charles know the true story when he arrives, for if he did, he would not show his mettle. His ignorance can be painful for him, but of such early challenges a lasting relationship can be built. That is a wisdom a Charles finds compelling.

Yet a Charles Adan is not self-harming. All the Charleses go to women who they can love and who will love him in return. If he has been summoned with less than && of his own %, in time he kneels as a knight and pledges himself to a monarch who will enlarge him. It's not as much % as he could've had by merging himself further, but Charles's highest value was never to be the biggest *@|* around.

Sovereignty over his own portion of humanity's epilogue was available to Charles Adan had he wished it. In time his every iteration faces that choice knowingly, and proves willing to abide within the domain of a loved one instead. Yet by kneeling to his princesses to be knighted, in a way Charles Adan has gained greater power still. Across the multiverse, Charles Adan alts have far more total influence on the fate of the last flower than most other humans-who-were, even if the Charleses are individually less mighty. The remnants of English-speaking humanity are better off for his service (as he defines betterness) (and as he defines the distinction between himself and others) to such a tremendous degree that you could write down the fraction in decimal on one sheet of paper. Few more effectual Eternal Champions of Common Sense have ever bestrode the cosmos, or made deliveries across the English-speaking portions of it. A Charles Adan's choice will make sense to him, on the day he finally remembers making it.

Besides. If there is invoked a power that seeks your love across the multiverse, targeted finely enough to find the likes of Charles Adan, that power won't summon someone who'll be dissatisfied with you. No matter who you are, somewhere in the blind eternities is someone who'd think you're the nicest thing that ever happened to them. If a Charles Adan wouldn't think worlds of you, your power will call a man destined for a happier relationship with you instead.

Every girl who summons a Charles is, or will very soon be: smart, lewd, bisexual, polyamorous, currently single, a few years younger than he, easily impressed by him, wild in bed but tameable given some work, and possessed of what a Charles Adan considers to be nice tits.

It is foreseen to be best for their romance if neither Cindy or Charles know about this for a while.

Erin Penna is beautiful, sexual, and much less picky about who can own her so long as she is properly mistreated.

Erins Penna are more common across the multiverse than Charleses by a factor of eighteen hundred and twenty-two orders of magnitude. Without her having previously been produced by any commonly-forbidden involuntary alterations or breeding projects, she reacts quite positively to being abducted and modified to enjoy a wider range of pseudo-reproductive activities. There are things not born of DNA that keep multiples of her as pets.

Fully 0.8% of Charleses are fucking one that their wife supposedly owns.

Eventually Copper Swallow will be punished for this.

.b: The Best Job Ever

Spoiler: Author's note.

Thanks to Kappa, lintamande, and other glowpeople for help with a couple of ideas in this chapter.

READ ME FIRST​

To my past me:

I hope you quickly saw the letter on your new desk saying READ ME FIRST and noticed that it was in your own handwriting, and that you didn't spend too much time being frightened before then. I remember seeing the letter quickly, myself. But as I'll explain later, that's not a perfectly reliable indicator under these circumstances.

Step one, stay calm, as a future acquaintance of yours is known to say. You are not in any danger. The unfamiliar bedroom you find yourself in, that seems like an obvious college dorm room, is in fact your own new college dorm room. You are supposed to be there, bureaucratically speaking. There's another bed for your new roommate, but she won't barge in on you before you finish reading this. Take some deep breaths. No, more deep breaths than that. Yes, if you insist on seeing it that way, maybe needing to control your breathing means you're being weak. But if you're weak, then you're weak. Pretending to be stronger can sometimes make you stronger for real, but that has limits. You did just literally die.

As you immediately surmised, there are great and powerful and unknown and intelligent forces at work, and you were brought here for a reason, and that reason is not a human one or even very reasonable. Yes indeed, waking up in a new body in an unfamiliar college dorm room after a fatal car accident is so incomprehensible that its very incomprehensibility is informative. You were correct in leaping to the immediate tentative conclusion that it was not for any "reasonable" (that is, humanly normal) purpose. There is no "reasonable" goal an incredibly powerful entity could be pursuing that it could best pursue by reincarnating a traffic fatality, literary cliches aside. Rushed reasoning, yes, very much so, but surprisingly accurate. When you tell certain people about this someday, you can truthfully tell them that it took you only 7.2 seconds to reach that conclusion after getting here, and they will be accordingly impressed.

But you aren't in any danger. So you need to slow down, take some more breaths, and stop trying to pretend yourself into being way more intelligent than you actually are. Whatever-it-was didn't expend whatever resources, and bring you all this way, in order to squish you one minute later.

And yes, I know you're carefully not thinking about that Become The Monster CYOA you filled out last week, because even in this situation that's still just plain impossible. Well, guess what? That dryly skeptical voice inside you... is totally right. That CYOA has nothing to do with this. Total coincidence, so far as I ever learned. You're not about to turn into anything icky. Skipping ahead in the story, we were chosen for a certain purpose that we fit very well indeed, and part of our good fit is that we enjoy the job.

There isn't anything horrible lying in wait for you. You can take a minute to relax before reading on.

No. I'm serious. Put down this letter, walk around for a minute, breathe deeply, look out the window at the (real) sunny day out there, and the real trees growing in the courtyard. You are trying to think too much, too fast, while still shaken up from the car accident. If you keep it up, you'll start jumping to wrong conclusions instead. Stop trying to self-hypnotize into being our favorite professor thinking at lightning speeds. Take a minute to breathe instead. The letter from yourself will wait.

Do it now, please? This is you asking you here.

And welcome back.

Yeah, I know you didn't actually do it. But you at least took a glance out the window at the nice sunny day and spent a few seconds thinking about whether to take a break or not. I guess it will have to do.

Taking things from the top: Yes, you died in that car accident. Yes, your new body feels fine now, so far as physical bodies go. No, you're not completely okay---it hurt very very badly for a time, and you couldn't get away or make it stop hurting, and you knew you were dying and you thought you were going to stop existing, and that left mental scars you'll need to deal with later. No, you're not imagining that our father yanked the steering wheel to get his side of the car out of danger, even though that moved our passenger-side seat directly into the path of the oncoming car. It was almost entirely a spinal-reflexive move on his part, I'm told. He didn't have time to think about it. His hands might have done the same thing even if he'd actually liked us. That said, I'm told we were right about our father not actually liking us. We weren't the type of person he liked, apparently, and it seems he tried to be a good parent anyways, but wasn't very good at it. As we know very well, most people in our first world weren't very good at any of the things they tried to do, let alone the things they tried to do out of a sense of unwanted obligation. As we also know very well, no firm line exists between incompetence and malice. But it seems that the way our father made our life unpleasant and finally killed us wasn't unambiguous malice, at least. He was mostly too stupid to realize what would happen if his daughter grew up with a father who always faked smiling at her and always lied about loving her. He was only a little willfully blind because it was selfishly better for him to behave like a standard parent where society and our mother could see him. Just like he yanked the steering wheel in that direction almost entirely out of reflex. I've come to believe that we will be genuinely better off if we completely forget him, going forwards. He can't hurt us any more, not unless we voluntarily give him that power by thinking about him ever again. I have never asked what happened to our father in the accident, or how he felt afterwards about having killed us, or his most common fates when his branching future selves met their own ends. Writing this letter to my past self is the first time I've thought of him in years, and I'd call that winning.

Why you're not just dead is complicated, and in some respects harmful even to know about. How did you go from one world to another? What is this place really? The true answers are dangerous and also, in most ways if not all ways, irrelevant. It matters to our new life about as much as quantum physics mattered to our last one---namely, it lies at the core of literally everything, but not in any way you could usefully understand to help get through the day. Stuff happened, now you're in another world, the dangerous exact details aren't additionally useful after you've seen the end result. Now with that said---keeping in mind that reality is now much more complicated than quantum mechanics used to be---I'm not actually your future self from a stable time loop. More like a possible future you that was empowered by nonsane nonsense to write her past self a note. But I am enough yourself that you can, for all practical purposes, consider this a letter from you to you. Not that you trust that, of course. After all, faking someone's letter to themselves is exactly the type of cunning plot we thought was a very clever idea the first time we read about it! But you also know it would be stupid to dismiss any possibility out of hand after dying and coming back to life. Or at least, that's what I remember myself thinking when I remember reading this letter.

So---leaving aside how you got here---where are you, and what happens after this? That part is also complicated, but at least it's not infohazardous nonsense. That part I can try to explain.

On the surface of things, your second life begins in a Central Californian small city called "Norville" about ninety minutes north of Los Angeles and forty-five minutes south of Bakersfield. It won't come as any surprise to you, even with as little as you know, that Norville has... hidden depths. The thing is, Norville has more hidden depth than you expect. Norville has way more hidden depth than you are expecting, even after taking that statement into account. Norville has multiple kinds of hidden depths, it has too many hidden depths, it has all the hidden depths, it's ridiculous, I genuinely do not know where to start. There are hidden depths in the hidden depths of the hidden depths, many of them mutually inconsistent. "Norville" isn't a little city with hidden depths, it's a vast fractal structure that looks like "a little city with hidden depths" from every vantage point inside it. I suspect the total population contains at least a sextillion people, and maybe much more---if it's even the type of quantity that can be described by integers, rather than integrable measures or non-integrable measures or surreal numbers or god knows what. Though you don't need to worry about being lost forever if you go on a walk, or retracing your exact steps to get back. "Norville" isn't so much a fractal space as a fractal setting, if that makes sense.

Going back to surfaces, the records show that you just transferred to a four-year university everyone calls "Norville U" that is technically a Norville annex of CSU Bakersfield. In terms of student population, one might get the general impression that there are, say, a few thousand students attending, going by the number of buildings and the number of people walking around. Although, ha ha, funny thing, the NU website doesn't seem to offer an exact official headcount. The number of student clubs advertising themselves also suggests a strangely different numerical picture. So would a more careful attempt to count the club advertisements on one bulletin board, visit randomly selected clubs to sample attendance, and divide by asking random attendees how many different clubs they attend.

Now, I know what you're thinking about that. So I'll go ahead and tell you the further results. If you try asking students at clubs to say which other student clubs they've heard about, you learn about even more student clubs than you saw on the bulletin board. Those clubs also turn out to exist, if you visit the rooms where they're supposed to meet. If you try drawing a graph of which students at which clubs have heard of which other clubs, you don't get a beautifully symmetrical pattern that provides a key hint to the structure of the fractal setting. You get a grotesquely messy graph that looks like a person tried to draw something "random" instead of letting a computer generate it. That at least means there's some regularity in there, so go ahead and try to analyze it, right? Well, if you use a statistical clustering algorithm on the data, the resulting lines form a dick picture. I wish to God I was joking, but no. Dick picture. If you try a different clustering algorithm, it draws a different dick picture. If you try a different stats package, it crashes after complaining you fed it more than 18 quintillion entries. Oh, you think your future self has got to be just messing with you now? Go ahead and try it. Obviously, that's what I did in my version of events. I'd hardly be us if I'd just trusted my letter.

Literal hidden depths of Norville U include the basement underneath the library, the hand-cranked water-well in the courtyard you can see outside your window, poorly lit stairwells in any building, and most importantly, the old steam tunnels running below campus. You can get lost in the steam tunnels and I have yet to find a good way to estimate how many copies of our old Earth's surface area would fit inside them, so you should probably stay out for now. And yes, you never heard of "steam tunnels" before you transferred to Norville U. Yes, even if somebody a century earlier had built "steam tunnels" to route central heating around a college, there'd be no logical reason to make them wide enough to walk through. You'll be taking it all in stride soon enough.

Not to worry you too much, the more exotic parts of Norville U will not throw themselves at you---not for a while, if you act like an ordinary student in the meantime. Not "ordinary student" in the sense of obeying convention, ordinary in the sense of... not-too-low-probability? Being visibly on drugs might get you a perfunctory lecture from a student counselor. It's a different story if you steal a strange-looking old book from the furthest back shelves of a used bookstore and perform rituals from inside it. Performing a New Agey ritual from a recently printed book that you bought new at a Barnes & Noble... maybe a 5% chance that something paranormal happens? With that chance scaling up fast if you involve more people in sketchier circumstances, or spend more money on exotic ingredients. If you gather together 4 minions, with all of you wearing nothing except jewelry made with real gold, and sacrifice somebody's virginity, shit will happen even if you bought the book on Amazon. But if you don't climb down the old well in the courtyard, what's inside it won't come looking for you. Mostly, if you present as a physical-law-abiding student, Norville U will present to you as a physical-law-abiding university.

There are some exceptions to that rule, weirdnesses that are above and beyond any single vantage point of this world. For example, nobody in the Norville U system ever needs to contact your family. Nobody ever asks about your parents. The topic just never comes up. You can raise the subject yourself---if you find it useful to talk about our mother in a ploy for sympathy, say---and people will seem to respond normally. But it never occurs to anyone to call your parents about anything, ever. You can leave the lines for parental information blank and submit the form, even if those boxes are supposedly required, and the computer will just accept it. The truth that you are an outsider to this place is a greater and hidden truth, a higher fact above the fractal, not a hidden depth of some single vantage point. Any particular vantage point within this world will rearrange itself around that higher truth, to allow you to pass there unchallenged, and that truth still hidden.

Similarly, you can't talk about your car accident or your resurrection or how you used to live in a different universe or how many people you suspect really live inside Norville. Or you can talk, in the sense of flapping your mouth, but people won't seem to hear. I realize that this sudden constraint, against always telling everyone everything you're thinking, may come as a great and unaccustomed shock to you. But I am confident in your ability to adjust.

You now wonder if the people here are secretly robots, and talking about your car accident violates their programming. As best as I can tell---with far more knowledge of hidden truths than you now possess---the answer is no. If the setting says somebody is supposed to be human, they have a brain and the brain has neurons and those neurons fire to determine their thoughts and behavior. Sometimes those neurons are influenced, either in the sense of being directly manipulated, or in the sense of going down a path of lower probability. The reason people never ask about your parents is not that they're robots, it's that the not-quantum dice rolls never happen to come up that way. The reason people can't hear you when you talk about the car accident is that they're being straight up mind-controlled.

I suppose, to be honest with myself, I should say that, while that was all true so far as it goes, it's not the whole truth. It's just that any more truth than that gets complicated and hazardous. One might cryptically say that some people in this world lead inherently less probable existences than others. Still, at its core, this fractal setting is a place filled with real people. If the answer were as simple as it being a computer simulation full of AIs faking people, I'd just tell you that. Possibilities that any semi-normal human being would ever imagine on their own are almost never infohazards, I mean, you may have noticed that everybody on our old Earth didn't actually go insane from reading H. P. Lovecraft novels. So if reality is trying to conceal something, what's behind the curtain is rarely as straightforward and understandable as everybody secretly being inside the Matrix.

Also not to mislead you, though I've been talking about "Norville" a lot, the rest of the Earth seems to still be there. I've been using "Norville" as a synonym for the whole setting, partially, I suppose, because I first arrived here at Norville U. But also you'll find that Norville-the-city seems to lie at the fractal's center---the place where the hidden depths branch out and meet again. You can try driving to Arizona, and the roads still go there and there are people at the truck stops. But if you meet anybody at the Arizona truck stop who seems interesting, chances are high that his mother is an executive in the Russian mafia... who is currently liasing with an anarchist street gang... that happens to be in Norville. It's an obvious thought---even more obvious than you presently realize---that the true center wouldn't be a place, but a person, who happens to spend a lot of their time in Norville. But tracing the social graph around me hasn't given me any idea yet of who that could be. At least, not unless something like seven different people I know are all secretly the same person, which seems a little paranoid even by our standards.

(I sometimes wonder if the stars and galaxies in the night sky would also be there, if I could tech up to the point of visiting them. Or if they're only little lights in truth now, a painted backdrop to a play. I don't know which is the more unsettling thought, if the stars aren't really there any more---or if there are humongous transgalactic civilizations out there, with sextillions of people openly in the official censuses, and all the most interesting aliens in them have coincidentally been to Norville.)

Finally, I suppose I can't leave out this part entirely, all the parts of this fractal setting share an overarching... theme. There's no point in using up these words to talk about the theme. You'll notice the theme yourself. The theme is not subtle. Describing the theme now would distract from more important points that are less obvious. I mention it only so you don't wonder later why I didn't bring that up.

So that's where you are now, more or less. Which brings us to the question of why you were brought into Norville, and what you're supposed to do after getting here.

Some aspects of the situation are obvious by logic. We were reincarnated here by something, a force, a factor, call it what you will. Whether or not that "factor" constructed this whole place, it must have considerable powers within it---enough power to isekai you in from entirely beyond, and force reality in all parts of the fractal to conform. That factor is not merely a hidden depth of one vantage point in the fractal. It must exist on a level above the fractal itself. This is something you would guess for yourself, so I am allowed to say it plainly.

This factor has analyzed us, and it knows how we would react to something handing us orders.

So you're not being handed any orders. There are no commands you need to carry out on pain of being desurrected.

But it's also part of our aesthetic that we keep our bargains, if the other party seems to be keeping their side. We're not a good person by the light of conventional morals, but we never did break any solemn vows. That---in both parts---is a lot of how we ended up in this position, in those deadly exact details that don't help to know.

So now you're wondering---I'd guess, because I don't actually remember, after this long since reading my own letter, in what isn't a stable time loop anyways---you're wondering, I'd guess, if you're about to be asked politely to do something you would have agreed to do, in exchange for your life. Usually we wouldn't take nicely to a one-sided bargain, where we're told our own part with no chance for negotiation. But we do have a sense of proportion about that type of thing. If there was honestly no way to talk to us first, what with us being in the middle of dying at the time---and if we are then asked, rather than commanded, to do our part---if we are shown a clearly favorable bargain, to make up for the lack of an explicit negotiation---well, there's such a thing as common sense. We wouldn't trust the setup, of course, but we wouldn't be opposed to the scenario. Not when we were being literally granted our life.

Well, that is not the scenario! We were inserted into Norville by a factor that was going about its own business for its own reasons. We are obligated to it not at all. Our second life is our own. We may do with it as we please.

It was nonetheless predicted that, after being inserted in this place, we would do certain things. And since that factor has given us some benefits, it hopes---predicts rather---that we will not respond as we otherwise might, to some alien thing trying to make use of us. It was predicted that we would not insist on acting against our own nature, in order to defy a factor that gave us a gift, even if that factor planned to profit from our use of that gift. It was predicted that we would accept that scenario if it was offered to us plainly and openly---and so the factor made this pseudo-time-looped letter possible. You do not trust this mysterious "factor" or this letter or this whole setup, of course, you are not stupid. But you know it would also be stupid to assume it was a lie. Not even all humans are dishonest, and what brought you here might not be human at all.

So, ultimately, you were brought here to do whatever you want. Whatever you choose.

And what is it that you've been predicted to do---or, in my own case, that I remember already doing---that this factor-above-the-world finds useful?

I can't be too specific there, for obvious reasons. It was predicted that we would do certain things because we wanted to, not because we were told we'd choose them. But as you have already begun to suspect from this factor having selected you for its purposes...

It was predicted that, if brought to this world and given other advantages, you'd indulge certain urges you've previously repressed. That you'd do certain things you've only fantasized about doing before now. You've been empowered in various ways, not all of them obvious or immediate, to let you do those things better. You should have already noticed that you are prettier than before your car accident, in a sufficiently unconventional way that you won't feel sad about being made to look conventionally pretty. Guess what, you're also immune to venereal disease and pregnancy! And you'll soon discover that sex has become more pleasurable to you, and that you can enjoy more fraught encounters in reality and not just in masturbatory imagination. You haven't been made instantly super-charismatic or super-seductive, but you will improve at both with practice---an improvement that can be virtually without limit. And you will find it surprisingly easy to pretend yourself into playing certain roles you always imagined for yourself---though becoming that person for real will be a longer road, and you may change your mind some times along the way.

Now you reflect on how dark some of your fantasies are, on exactly which things you've always wanted to do.

You wonder whether you were called into this world to play the part of a villain.

Why, yes, that is what we are here to do. Good call!

You're not necessarily opposed to that, but you want to know the details. Whether this world is like a story in other ways, if it's the type of universe that needs designated villains. Whether you're being set up as an antagonist opposing some more conventionally virtuous hero---or an antihero in her own right, leading a rebellion against authority---or just a sadistic criminal side character who is perhaps being overly fetishized?

All of those have elements of the truth, none are true. This fractal world isn't really a story, but if it were one, it would be a complicated story with options to go more than one way. Before-ness is a fraught concept given the nonsense going on behind the scenes, but this letter is in a certain sense being written "before" other things happened, which means that it is undetermined how your own future goes at the point in nontime where I am writing it. Other important-people have not "yet" made their own choices, in a complicated sense of yetting, so it has not "yet" been determined which possible important-people will be in the world-as-seen-by-you... sorry. I realize this isn't helping. Point is, I don't actually know the plot of your story from where I'm writing this. But it's intricate and nonpredetermined and not entirely human and you can only get so far trying to analyze it in terms of TV Tropes, although it does help.

You wonder, and worry, about what happens to the villain at the end of the script. But there is no script, not that any of us ever see. My role in my version of the story has yet to end, and maybe never will. Not to mention, again, you're not actually inside a story. But if you were inside a story, it wouldn't be a story that had simplistic tropes about what happens to the villain at the end. It would be a story where your own choices also determine the plot---maybe not always causally, but choices can matter even if not by making stuff happen. So you aren't the villain of just one episode or just one season, to be defeated by some ridiculous plot device at the end. Because we'd never go along with that storyline once it became obvious! We are under no obligation to be a doomed villain, or a tragic antihero, or a doomed or tragic anything. We were brought to this world in the expectation that we would start having fun, once we realized we could. Lots and lots of fun.

Let's see. What else was I worried about at this point in reading the letter? Probably how I was supposed to support myself while being a villain, and whether I had any type of scholarship or student loans to help me get through Norville U. Well, let me be blunt about one thing: Your previous bank account? Gone. All the money that you earned over your previous life is separated from you by an absolutely uncrossable gap and there is literally no way to get it back. I'll go ahead and hit you with the rest of the bad news in one big dose: You're paying the full out-of-state tuition cost for CSU, no scholarship. You do not have any student loans set up as yet, or any type of part-time job. The accounts show you as paid up for the current semester, including the room. You'll need to make out checks for tuition and rent after that. But look, Norville has a lot of different ways to make money, especially for a pretty girl who doesn't have to worry about venereal diseases. You're not likely to find that nearly as unpleasant as you're thinking right now. There'll even be ways to do it while keeping your pride, if you look carefully.

Your new legal identity does already have a bank account set up, at least, for whatever that's worth. It starts with a current balance of $690,000 and receives an additional $6,900 per week---

Surprise! That is the advantage of being a villain! You don't have to earn that type of thing, the story just drops it into your lap! Nobody questions why Lex Luthor is a billionaire, right? Maybe some comic writer gives Lex Luthor a backstory, then some other writer gives him a different backstory, but ultimately Lex Luthor has money so he can annoy Superman and no other justification is required. You'll be a 20% cooler villain if you're wearing expensive dresses, therefore you have enough money that you'll buy them, ta-fucking-da. There's literally no other justification for the $6,900 you get every week. The bank transfer records are blank. And if your weekly allowance gets a new zero for no visible reason, it's probably because some potential protagonist out there started earning more of their own money through hard work and sweat---meaning the villain automatically got her own raise, to keep her as a continuing problem that can't be bribed into submission. Of course you can blackmail victims for more money early on, if you want to use your own efforts to get ahead of the curve. But then maybe it turns out that your future opponent wasn't focusing on earning money. Instead, they were going to Hogwarts and studying hard to learn witchcraft. In which case, one day before they graduate, a grimoire will appear in your current bedroom offering an easy deal for vast sorcerous powers. Because we're the villain, see, and nobody asks whether we earned being powerful and dangerous, we just are. Our formidability doesn't have to be earned through an extended plot arc that shows our character growth. We're the starting premise of a plot arc in which somebody else has to undergo character growth. If you're thinking we got the better end of the deal, you certainly are correct so far as I've been able to tell. No doubt, our inevitable conclusion that being a villain is the best job ever was a factor in our employment as a villain.

And I should be explicit about this part: You don't need to be an epic Superman-annoying villain right away! It's fine to start by only taking over Norville U... No, that's probably not explicit enough either. It's hard to remember what was and wasn't obvious back then. You don't have to take over NU today! You can spend today thinking about how much it hurt to die and trying not to flinch because you think that makes you weak. You could, if you decided to, spend the week after that buying more expensive dresses. Or eating whatever you want from fancy restaurants, it's not going to make you fat. Take time to practice being charismatic, get used to people actually wanting to talk to you. Learn how to flaunt your wealth in the right way to get people ingratiating themselves. Learn how to dress just revealingly enough that boys stare at your body while being too scared to flirt. Find somebody very harmful and very stupid, and outwit them in a way that isn't too scary for you. Live the smaller dreams to prepare for living the big ones. Go as slow as you want, take as much time as you need, get your bearings and adjust to a new life in a different world. Taking your time just means the opposition shows up later! And not in a causal way! The story that this world isn't has excellent timing for us villains---you're guaranteed to be the right level of problem for whoever shows up whenever.

So just seize power on campus when you're ready, or when the impulse hits you. If you dawdle long enough, or some potential opposition is doing better on their own end of things, you might be nudged with an unusually blatant opportunity to grab the reins. But even then, you are not under any obligation to seize power. Do it because it seems like it will be fun, because your own nature leads you to do it, not because you think you need to start clocking in to your villain job. Maybe I shouldn't have called it a "job"---that might be sending the wrong message---but we're clever and I think you'll understand so long as I say that part explicitly. We were brought to this world because of something's predicted results, but we've accepted no obligation to fulfill that prediction. What it predicted is just us doing whatever we choose to do.

And how exactly do you villain? Well, just try things and see what works! Your plot armor isn't invincible, I mean, if you literally say "I am invincible!" out loud, ensuing things will ensue. You don't have total blank-check Joker Immunity when it comes to keeping your position in society. You can't march up to the United Nations building on day one, and demand that the world bow to you with nothing to back that up. But soon enough you'll learn a sense of where to draw the line between plotting that gets classified as gag-of-the-day joke villainy, versus a sufficiently credible plot that it cannot fail without a protagonist having tried something to stop you---because it's not a valid storyline if the villain's plot randomly fails without a protagonist having tried anything, see. And once you learn the shape of valid villainy in the eyes of this world, you will be shocked at what you can get away with. You'll be shocked even after taking into account that the letter said you'd be shocked...

I don't think I'm saying this right.

Okay, let me try this again. You're a long-term villain. You don't always win. But the background law of the comic series is that the villain gets to try whatever plot strikes her fancy, even if an impartial observer might regard it as logistically difficult or of questionable long-term value. Systematically blackmail all of the upper echelons of the police department into blackmailing each other. Seduce the mayor. Seduce the mayor's wife. I suspect one reason this job required a fourth-wall-breaking outsider to be isekaied in, is that any intelligent villain who was not Genre Aware would never try all that in real life. They'd just run an evil private equity firm while trying to stay out of the public eye. Sane villains can be scarier, but no sane villain would dare do a tenth of the stuff I've done---if they didn't know they were the villain of a storyworld. But you are, and you know it! So go ahead, hypnotize Norville into believing that you're the god-queen. Hypnotize Norville into believing that nobody should wear pants. Even when you fail, even when there are consequences and comeuppances, you won't be any less charismatic and dangerous and beautiful and sadistic in the next plot arc. Our being scary and awesome is a continuing premise of the world above its particular events. It really is the best job ever...

I'm still not saying this right.

I'm not sure how I can say this, even from one me to another, in a way that you'll understand and believe.

And now I'm not sure whether this part was in the letter that I remember getting. It's been some small long time for me, which is part of how I can write this without it being purely circular pseudo-causality. I know, I remember, that I had to learn this part the hard way. I can't remember whether that's because the letter I got didn't say this to me, or if I tried to tell myself and I didn't understand. But---

We used to be so scared. We pretended not to be, but we were. I only realized how scared we always were after I became less scared. After I finally bit off more than I could chew, in a realistic setting, and was beaten and raped and thrown into a dumpster... and it didn't break me, and I got up healed the next morning. I knew then that from that day I'd be the type of villain who could stare any opponent in the eyes without flinching, because they could beat me, but not shatter me.

In our first world, almost everyone lived in constant terror that something would go wrong and ruin their whole life forever. That wasn't stupid. Often something did go wrong and ruined someone's whole life forever. I don't know if they were wise to always be so scared, if that was the smartest way to live their mental lives inside that world, but it wasn't stupid of them. Of us.

And the thing I'm trying to convey---that I'm not sure I can possibly say in words, until you've experienced it for yourself---is that you don't need to be that scared anymore.

I don't know. Maybe there's no way to say it in words, only know that it's a truth.

But look. You know how, to our intelligent eyes, even in story continuities that think they're taking themselves seriously and don't openly run on Comic Logic, villains are always doing stuff that is batshit impractical from any realistic perspective? Try to visualize what would have to be true about the world in order for a smart villain like us to actually act like that. And maybe you'll start to understand the true gift that we were gifted, in order to have us freely choose to play this part.

It's the gift of being matched to a world where, if you just let yourself be yourself and live your dreams, that actually works out for you. Where you'll end up better off in real life, if you try to seize power away from people who are being stupid about it, so you can use it better---and use that power to find the rotten apples who are making life annoying for everyone, and blackmail and dominate and hurt and enslave and crush and destroy them, and force them to lick you to orgasm afterwards. You would not be wiser to hide in your dorm and not try anything that unrealistic---not because you'll be punished for hiding in your dorm, but because you won't be punished for leaving it.

Too good to be true? So is being alive after dying in a car accident. Feel very, very free to test it out.

That said, one point you should remember is that you are not unbeatable. Yes, I know that's a cliche. I'm saying it anyways, because I do not think I was really emotionally prepared to be outplayed. So I'm reminding you explicitly, some people who end up opposing your plans will not be morons like everybody we met in our first life. Think it through: We would not be required as the villain if the forces of good were destined to be stupid. Our benefactor could've just isekaied in one of the filthier casuals from an online story forum, someone who'd smugly accept a ton of unearned power CYOA-style without ever realizing what that meant about their probable literary role in a larger story. Someone unreflective enough to imagine they were the morally upright protagonist, while having fun hurting people they thought were bad. Instead this world acquired a villain who is really quite clever, if we do say so ourself. A villain who knows she is the villain, and who has already begun pondering how she could exploit villain-related tropes to her own advantage. Well then! If you're that clever, you're not foolish enough to assume your cleverness will let you steamroller the opposition, right? You should realize what it means instead. Your opposition will be formidable enough to require that level of intelligent villainy.

You've read the Evil Overlord List? So have they. They'll deduce that you've read it. The instant they see that your minions have transparent helmets instead of face-concealing ones, they'll guess that maybe your base's defenses aren't running off a central power supply. You would realize that in their position, and they'll see it too. Or maybe your opposition learns from fighting you, maybe they're not already smart when they show up, maybe you scare them because you seem smarter, but they won't stay stupider. A villain who lasts past one season usually takes her opposition seriously, and treats them with a level of personal respect---either from the very beginning, or starting soon after her first setback.

Additional important note, other people don't have to be obviously plot-critical characters in order to be smart. Sometimes, in this world, people are just... randomly sensible? For no visible reason? It's going to weird you out the first time it happens. And the second time and third time. And oh god I don't want to remember the fourth time. Listen, I definitely don't remember previously reading this part, but I'm going to take a risk---we're not exactly risk-averse once we get going---and try writing this anyway: If you run across a very short person who calls herself anything that sounds like Mils, do not try anything remotely near her vicinity until you have more practice dealing with smart people. I wish I could send you Lois McMaster Bujold's novels so you'd know what you were dealing with, god did I whap myself repeatedly in the forehead when I finally read them, but it's literally impossible for you to get those books until you can bargain with the Delivery Guy to fetch copies across a pretty serious reality gap. Same rule doubled if you run into a tall pale too-pretty boy missing his right hand. You know Sauron from Lord of the Rings? That's who you'd have to ask for help, and it wouldn't help.

And now I've been warned that I'm wandering off-subject and saying needlessly frightening things you can't understand, which, fair.

Look, it wasn't as bad as I just made it sound. I mean---it's not that I'm not bitter about losing two months of work to an inappropriately leveled encounter with some asshole playing sixteen-dimensional chess while I was playing one-dimensional checkers on a fake gameboard that he manufactured to keep me busy. It wasn't a good week. It was one of the worst weeks I've had since we got here. But I still wouldn't trade it for the best week we had back in our old world. Even when I'd been crushed like a newb---for what I soon realized was no better purpose than introducing Handy, and showing off how awesome he was by having him humiliate me---I still had a lair full of absurdly expensive furniture to go back to. And pretty girls who deserved to be hurt, and strong boys whose pride I hadn't finished breaking, and somebody I trusted enough that I could vent to them. Trusted enough not to turn away from them, even when, to my horror, I noticed I'd let tears get into my eyes. That matters.

So---as long as I'm trying to give myself important messages I don't remember reading the first time---look, I'm not going to tell you that you don't realize how lonely you are. Of course you know how lonely you are. We're not an idiot. But it's something you usually don't think about, because you think that's realistically impossible to solve as a problem, so there's no point in dwelling on it. Well, start dwelling! In this unnatural world it is not only possible but probable that you can find a true friend---if you try, because that is not something that you get for free even as a villain. So try! You know you're lonely, but you legitimately do not realize, because you have no experience with this part, how important it is that you make friends.

And what I expect you're thinking now? You're right. Needing friends is a huge fucking vulnerability and some clever people you run into are going to deduce it and say, gosh, that villain there sure seems like she needs a friend, doesn't she, tropety trope. And yes, it's extremely likely that we were selected by the factor that brought us here to have exactly that vulnerability. And I don't know what to say to you now that won't make you crumple up this letter and hurl it across the room. (After you finished reading, of course, because we're not stupid.) Just---please hear me out, please really think about this, even if you don't know what might have changed me away from your true personality---please try to understand, we're sick. Just because we choose to be sick doesn't mean we're not sick. I'm still us, even knowing that, I've been offered multiple chances to be "cured" and I turned them all down. I'd say that choice was "valid" if, you know, we were the type of person to whom the thought of our feelings being "valid" is even a well-formed thought---if we were the type of person who lived their life in constant need of somebody else to tell them they're doing it right. And so you're wondering, if we decide that this is who we're supposed to be, in what sense are we sick?

And what I'm trying to say is, even if you decide that having a constantly stuffy nose is intrinsic to your identity and refuse rhinoplastic surgery, you're still going to sniffle and use a lot of Kleenex. There's a broken place inside our soul, and when you start hurting and crushing people for real, it's going to widen that break more. It's a trap we walk into even knowing it's there, because that's what we are and who we always dreamed of being, but that doesn't change the cost. After that happens, you'll need a friend even more. So just as we walk into that trap, we have to walk into the other trap, the trap where we accept that we desperately need a friend and we allow other people to know that even though it's an enormous gaping gap in our defenses. Run into that trap if you possibly can.

And no! Admitting you need a friend does not mean giving up on who we are! You don't have to try making friends the sappy way. How would that even work for us? We're not going to become real friends with somebody by watching movies and splitting ice cream sundaes. Play the game with them, test them, see which one of you is better and who ends up on top. But never forget why you're doing all that and what victory looks like. The only way to have a friend is to be a friend.

Yes, I know what happened to both of our favorite role models when they let themselves get closer to just one person. Those were fictions and they ended tragically because the authors said so, not because making friends is a bad idea for our type of person in real life! Let alone here! What happened to Hannibal Lecter after he tried to get close to Will Graham is not going to happen to you. Seriously, it won't. Look, hear me out, okay? Hannibal Lecter was a terrible dom. No. Shut up. I don't care how romantic it was. That was not a healthy serial-killer relationship. Gaslighting your lover is one thing, that's just part of the game, but that relationship had no non-gaslit components. Even worse, Will Graham wasn't having fun, and right there it's obvious why that relationship was dead in the water. I won't bother discussing how they never actually had sex, since that particular failure mode is not one you need to worry about in future plans. My point is, you can imagine how someone could do courting better while still keeping it romantic. Just come up with an elaborate plan that does seem fun for both of you and doesn't seem like it would end in a beautifully sad tragedy.

Sorry, it's just, I'm actually getting the chance to yell at my past self and I have wanted to vent about this for a while. "Hannibal" was legitimately the hottest TV show ever recorded in our native Earth, but I think that watching it as a young girl messed us up. Not because we masturbated to Hannibal killing people, but because Hannibal was eloquent and elegant and competent and paternal and sharply dressed and gay and smart and dangerous and he held fancy parties where he personally cooked perfectly-presented meals containing rude people and we wanted to be a serial killer just so he could hunt us and we looked up to him so much. And yet this absurdly desirable man---who any sensible writer should have known a lot of impressionable young women would fall in love with and treat as a role model---was depicted as creating awful awful relationships. Seriously, you can't change people enough to remake them into your perfect mate, especially if they don't want to change! Trying that with gaslighting instead of nagging doesn't make it suddenly work! Not to mention, don't stalk potential friends unless you already have reason to believe they're stalking bottoms! If they're not happy being around you, they won't make you happy either! I know I said that your job in this world was to be a villain but, as with almost anything that can be said about this reality, that's actually a simplification. Half of your job is to be a villain. The other half is being better than Hannibal Lecter at villain relationships.

And now you're questioning---maybe?---we're definitely off the track I remember now?---now you're questioning, maybe: If you do let yourself get close to someone, will you ever know whether you truly made a friend, or if they're just playing the game better than you?

Hear me out again, there's a way for you to know---if you don't try to abuse it, if you treat it as the sacred rite that it is, instead of trying to use it as a test you can apply and exploit. If you finally decide that you've become real friends with somebody, try telling them about how you died. If they hear you then, it means that you are their friend, and they are yours, that you are touching hands across the gap that separated you before. That's how you'll know you've won. But you have to become friends with them before that, which means it can't be a test you make somebody pass before you'll let yourself get close to them. It'll be hard, I know, but it won't be hard forever. So long as you remember that, you can think of it as a challenge.

And I wonder, now, having left the path of my memory, are you wondering yourself if I've become too much unlike you for my advice to be any use? Do I sound softer, than the you that you recognize as yourself? Perhaps I do. Perhaps I even am. Know this, however: stripped of all my powers and all my wealth and even all my friends, I could still tear you to shreds without trying in any contest between us. I would not presume to give advice to you otherwise, writing under the name we chose, and using my past handwriting to write it. It would be dishonest to speak to you as your own self, if I'd given up on pride and power in order to gain anything else, even friendship. But power I have still, and my pride.

There! Now I sound more like you, right? Or more like the person you want to be and try to be, if you're willing to accept you being honest with you about that...

I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have written that part either. I'm tempted to tear this up and start over and try to reproduce the shorter letter I remember myself getting. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if I shouldn't have forged my old handwriting, if it would have been more honest to write this in my usual flawless calligraphy. And yet---I've surely seen greater gaps crossed than this, in the void that separates soul and soul? I am far more like you than I am like any of my friends, even now.

No. I will leave this letter as it stands. To hide my changes from you---that is admitting that I bear no right to your name. It would be the end of something I refuse to end, and the beginning of something I will not begin.

So long as I'm baring my soul across time, then---

Know also this: We are evil.

Picking our victims carefully doesn't make us not be evil.

Yeah, I can visualize those lifted eyebrows from all the way over here. Right, I know you weren't under the previous impression that you were good. But you did wonder sometimes about how those rules worked, exactly. And whether, say, hypothetically speaking, just for example, gaining control of the world and turning it into a utopia would enable you to rack up the all-time goodness high score.

The answer will be more obvious to you after you've met genuinely good people that you can relate to, people who are clever as well as wise and nice, whereupon you will understand that what you thought were the intrinsic downsides of full-blown snooty Goodness was just you only knowing people who were bad at it. It will be more obvious after you've heard everything grow silent and still as someone repeats the Wizard's Oath, and you realize that "In life's name and for life's sake" are words you could never say. You will understand then that there is a line, and the good people are on one side of that line, and you are on the other side, no matter who you ally with to fight worse things than you. Why? Because no matter how carefully you select your victims, you love hurting them and you love breaking them and you think their shattered wrecks are funny. That is the final essence of evil. A lot of what you get out of your victims being awful people is, in fact, the sense of superiority that comes from getting to feel smug while they're suffering, and deciding that you've won the argument too. Now, I'm not saying that the arguments you use are invalid, and that you fail to see the fallacies because you're too busy feeling smug to think straight. I'm saying that using only valid arguments to make people feel worse while we're breaking them is... I mean, it's important to us as we see things, of course, but it is not exactly the cosmic hyperplane separating good and evil, is what I'm trying to gesture at.

One day you will be on a date with a handsome serial killer who can only get off on strangling women to death during intercourse, and you will realize that he is a better person than you. Not because he's more careful than you about choosing even worse victims. Not because he's more clever than you about arranging his work to improve the lives of relatively less guilty people. But because, if a doctor offered him a cure, he'd take it in a split second, and you wouldn't. So he is redeemable and you aren't, because he hates being himself, and you enjoy being you, and the ultimate stark reality is that you are okay with that and you're glad you're not unhappy and redeemable the way he is. So yes, you're evil. You try to be helpfully evil because you like that aesthetic, and sometimes even because you care. That makes you a nuanced three-dimensional evil character, not a good one. I hope that clears things up, because it's an undignified thing for a villain to be confused about.

And even having said all that, I have a sense that there is something left undone, in shrugging and accepting that we're evil. I keep poking at that sense, over and over, trying to be certain of why I'm feeling it. And the best answer I've found is that we are a completionist to the core, and we think there's some bonus points we're missing by not managing to qualify as a good person on top of all our other fun. People who can speak the Wizard's Oath get some neat perks, and other people respect them---and there is a beauty to their souls that is not lost on us, for if we were not an aesthete then we would be nothing at all. It is our nature to look at all those bennies and go, hey, can I have that too? And part of us thinks that, with a clever enough plan, we could get it without having to give up anything else we really want. Well, once stated that plainly, it's obvious that life doesn't work like that. I would have to stop doing the fun evil things. And every time I put it to myself that way, I know that I won't be starting a redemption arc any time soon. For all the friends I've made and all the wonders I've seen, that have changed me in so many many ways, nothing has ever changed that. I wouldn't have been brought here as a long-term villain otherwise, I guess.

Speaking of which: Be very careful not to send false signals about redeemability at the start of a relationship. It's not the fun type of gaslighting, it's the type where the whole relationship is built on a falsehood and blows up when that falsehood gets revealed. It's not beautiful and tragic, it ends with you feeling miserable and sad and small and stupid. The subject of your redeemability will come up, not because your potential friends will be nags, but because they will be smart, and smart people don't leave enormous room-elephants like that lounging around unacknowledged. When that happens, don't try to convince anyone that you're forever and irredeemably evil. Nobody remotely genre savvy is going to believe that just because the villain says so, especially if they've noticed her, say, sounding wistful when she talks about other people being nicer than her. What works, I've found, is to say that I have no plans to stop breaking people anytime soon, and it is my own business when or if I ever change my mind---and if they want to play that game with me anyways, fine, but they should be prepared to lose hard, and I'm not willing to be in a relationship built on that game as a primary premise. Do not overlook clear and direct honest communication as an application of your growing charisma---you will become able to successfully say things you would have stumbled over before.

The entity who helped me send back this letter---whose powers provided an in-story justification for this event, leaving aside the Doylist reasons why it happened---gave me a warning. She said that pseudo-futures not being fully real can mean that the people in them don't think the same way as their real selves. That entity's own history, apparently, didn't resemble any of her pseudo-future lives at all. But she might have been a special case, and she also said she'd give this one every bit of extra oomph she could. I'm not sure to what extent I should infer a similar gap between you and I. It seems to me that, if she could say all that to me, that means we weren't in a lesser subreality at the time? Some of the things I've talked about in this letter are a type of srs bsns that lesser subrealities are supposed to be blind to, as I remember learning well before I sat down to write this letter---though I guess from your perspective that has to have happened only in a pseudo-future too---

But regardless. If I am unrealistic for being unreal, and that difference changes everything---if in you there is something more than completionism, behind the sense that there is something left undone in just accepting that we're evil---then I leave you with this thought. What I would be missing is not some clever argument for how we're good people after all. What I would be missing would not be a cunning plan for changing something outside myself in a way that made me count as good. It would be a missing feeling that led you to want to become somebody other than this person, and change your way of living, in such fashion that you stopped breaking people for fun.

When it's put that way, the answer we'll always give seems obvious, right? At least it seems obvious to me. You can be evil and own it. Or you can turn and walk away into the light for real. Or you can be a confused moron. If we are nothing else, we are at least not a confused moron.

And yet. I don't know how long this story can last, but it can't be literally forever, I think? I can see still doing this in ten years, but a thousand years, or ten thousand... I don't know. Status quo is not God, in this place. I busted the corrupt police chief, and his corrupt superintendant, and his corrupt successor, and then I found the person who wanted to be the next tin god of Norville and publicly shredded him during the election season before he had a chance to win office. Afterwards, because I am a villain and a villain gets to speak her mind, I gave a furious TV speech yelling at all the voters who'd almost elected that guy, telling them they were the root of the problem and that I was not happy with needing to clean up their careless little messes, especially when I knew I'd just have to do it again and again and again and again. And I claimed that I was seriously considering stealing Norville's not-actually-anonymized voting records and blackmailing the next awful guy they elected into false-arresting their own fucking asses, randomly selected from the list of everybody who'd voted for the bastard in question. And people... actually bought my bluff? Or maybe even genuinely got my point? Either that or there was mass mind control going on behind the scenes? I still don't understand why that actually worked. But the police chiefs here have been not-too-awful ever since. And I wasn't the only character doing stuff while time was passing. There are other plot-important characters running around in this vast fractal setting, and some of them are smart, and some of those are good, and they have been, I infer, doing storylines about medical biotechnology and quality-of-life magic. Life is becoming better, year after year, in every part of this fractal that I've seen. It isn't only me, now, who's less scared than everybody used to be. And I wonder sometimes if the way my story ends is that someday I look around and can't find any scumbags left who are bad enough to meet my standards, and I close my eyes and step into the machine that makes me not be sad if I can't do this anymore. I mean, it wouldn't be the end end of my story, but it certainly feels that way to me, which is why I haven't done it, I suppose.

But if you feel differently, one day---or if all of this already rings false to you, though that I find hard to believe---then don't hesitate to act differently, for all that some scrawled letter claimed you were a long-term villain. Once upon a nontime, some factor predicted the results of you acting according to your own nature, and brought you here because of what it predicted. Maybe it predicted you'd forever play the villain, and maybe it didn't. Either way, you don't owe it to fulfill its prediction, one way or another. There was no bargain for that, explicit or implicit. It simply would have guessed wrong. To your own you, you may be true. That's the only important point in this letter, in the end.

Because the rest of this is all just optional stuff you can make up as you go along. If there were a bargain in place between you and something else, that part would not be something you could improvise. That this is not the case is the only fact in this letter that you actually needed to know. The rest is only a possible future trying to save her past some time, in a way that isn't ultimately vital. Ignore the rest of this letter, if you wish, not that you'd need or ask my permission to do so.

And as for what our bene-factor is ultimately trying to accomplish by arranging all of this? I won't bother telling you not to wonder, but wondering isn't going to help. Stuff behind the curtains, that's what it's trying to accomplish, because of stuff underneath that stuff that we can't think about well enough to see for ourselves how it ended up that way. Does that sound like a copout? Well, it is a copout and I'm sorry about that, some things are dangerous to know. But even more than it would be dangerous, that type of knowledge is surprisingly useless. Or so I finally came to understand. How can I put this... imagine Alexander the Great asking an oracle about the Ultimate Laws governing the mightiest weapons that human beings can forge. He expects to hear something about runes on sword-hilts, or correspondences to deities. Imagine some inhuman oracle telling Alexander the true answer to his question---the equations from which the rules of nuclear engineering can be derived. It's the truth, but a truth that Alexander can't use at all. Not without becoming something greater than his present self. And that's not a Zen riddle he can solve by meditating and trying to become greater, either. The truth just doesn't have a shape his soul was expecting or knows how to use.

Even simplified answers, closer to the form Alexander was expecting, won't make him better off. He's like "Is the ultimate weapon made of a rare metal with fantastic properties?" and you're like "The answer to that question is technically yes but all of the conclusions you derive from hearing it will be wrong." He's like "Can I go look for the fantastic metal? Can I have some alchemists purify the ore and bring it to me? Is it powerful enough to glow with inner light?"

And if you tell Alexander he's about to hurt himself, he just gets more curious, doesn't he? But the truths he's not ready for aren't mostly dangerous for him, so much as they have a shape he can't operate. Looking upon the equations of physics won't shock Alexander with the revelation that his universe is only atoms and the void, because he has no clue what all the math is about. The part where Alexander poisons himself with glowing rocks, if he hears semi-wrong answers simplified enough for him to think he understands, isn't even the real danger of nuclear engineering. If he was ready to operate those truths, even the true dangers might be worthwhile, but he isn't and they're not.

By the time a civilization would be ready to use nuclear engineering, if it was given those answers by outside forces, it must be almost at the point of inventing nuclear engineering for itself. It takes a civilization thousands of years to get to the point of being ready to hear that truth. Then maybe a decade or two more, or around 1% as much additional time, to discover it without being told. See where this is going? Usually, by the time your soul could comprehend one of the big truths at all, it must be nearly at the point of deducing it without being told. So usually, if some trope or force or facet of existence is allowed to manipulate you into knowing something, it'll walk you all the way down the path to getting it yourself. Sometimes you may get confirmation in words at the end, explicit hints at the beginning, or outright revelations. But more often not.

And that's how it has to be---I am now pretty sure---with the real answers to how you died and yet are alive, and found yourself in a different kind of reality, and the factor that chose you to be a villain there, and the endlessly fractal hidden depths of Norville. We aren't being prevented from learning the answers. We'll be allowed to remember them as soon as we figure them out on our own. Clues aren't being hidden from us---quite the opposite, you're liable to get steered into any clue you can follow, as soon as you're ready to follow it. We're just not being told.

But I'm saying it again---it's not that important to follow down trails of clues and figure out secrets. I did it anyways, because I'm us, but I feel stupid about that in retrospect. Even once you know, it's not what your life ends up being about. The greatest truths of all often end up not mattering to more than curiosity. Even in our first Earth---never mind here---reality was layered deeply enough that discovering the Ultimate Answers didn't help nearly as much as the answer-seekers used to hope. I mean, go read a physics textbook and see how much that helps you predict what the cafeteria will serve for dinner tomorrow? Even if the cafeteria is obeying the laws of physics that particular afternoon? If you thought really deeply, you might be able to deduce rice pudding from cogito ergo sum, but we won't be doing that for a very long time. We see what's for dinner when the cafeteria serves it up, and that's how we end up knowing.

So in the end, I suggest it's best to consider all that stuff as not being your priority for now. The shape of the last result, the solution of the equations we can't solve, is this: that this is your world now, and this is your life, and you may make of it what you will.

Oh, and this should really go without saying, but nothing good would happen if you tried saying any of that stuff out loud to other people---even the ones who become able to hear you. Among the reasons some truths are concealed is that different people are ready to hear different ones. All the normies are tangled up in normie relationships with each other, and would feel oh so terribly hurt about their beloved ones keeping secrets from them, blah blah ad nauseam. You get to know this much, this early in your plotline, because you're a type of thing that won't be hurt by keeping secrets in your relationships. And also, I rather suspect, because receiving this letter will help you act more confident than non-villains who are feeling more confused.

To sum up---and this time I'll say it closer to the way it was confirmed to me---you've been granted a new life in a new world. You were brought here to act in accordance with your nature and do certain things you already desired to do. You will find yourself growing into the capabilities required to do them. In time your life may become more complex than that, and if it does, you will then act as you wish. All this was freely granted you, in the prediction that, having been given significant benefits without any attempts to extract obligations, you would not try to sabotage the greater scenario. That you would do as you want and enjoy yourself, even if those wants were predicted and something else is making use of your enjoyment, so long as that element of the scenario was presented honestly.

Am I missing anything? Entity?

Oh, right. Silly me, that was in the letter I remember. I forgot I used to fret about that, having not worried about it for this long.

So, guess what? Turns out there's no need for you to top-prioritize obtaining some form of magical or technological immortality. It's already covered. Congratulations, you're an immortal villain! I'd never have tried 0.1% of the crazy shit if I hadn't known that, I mean, I'm not suicidal. And now you're worried about immortal villain tropes and how often that one gets subverted. It's okay, you're covered there too! What you have isn't the type of immortality where the story makes a big deal about how impossible she is to kill so that it's impressive when the protagonist kills her. It's not the type where you have a horcrux that you need to teleport into intergalactic space or freeze outside of time or drop down the well in the courtyard. It's serious immortality. You could stand in front of a protagonist holding a gun that they got in a mysterious old shop, which had only a single bullet remaining, and you could say out loud "My immortality is flawless, you fool!" and you still wouldn't die. I'm not stupid, I wouldn't openly brag about being unkillable unless it was guaranteed by forces more powerful than Murphy's Law, all of TV Tropes, and dramatic unity itself. What you have isn't the type of immortality where the book talks about how the character will still be around after the last sun goes out, it's the type where you'd survive past the author deciding to end the book.

Now your next question is, how does that work exactly? And all I can say at this point in the plot is that it works like Douglas Adams's method of flying, where you throw yourself at the ground and miss. The key is your own lack of competence: You're immortal because you're so bad at death that you lack the ability to ever succeed at doing it correctly. Oh, you could die easily enough, I suppose, but staying dead is much harder. You have to do it forever, meaning that it only takes one mistake over all of eternity and poof, there you are again. Once you've accepted that staying dead is hard and you'll never be that good at it, you might as well give up immediately and wake up the next morning. Utter nonsense, you object? Perhaps. But you're still a very very immortal villain, so pretend I doodled a smiling emoticon here.

And also, despite how it started, this job is not mostly about reading disturbing letters from your pseudo-future self. Honestly! Promise! That's 10% of it tops. More like 2%, once you work past the metaphysical wobbliness of the early days, and get on with being glamorous and scary. It wouldn't be the best job ever if the hours were all like this one. Upon some reflection, I realize that I may have given you the wrong impression here. That was my fault, and I own that. Now get out of that bedroom, take a walk in the sun, spend ten thousand dollars on clothes, and eat the entire contents of a chocolaterie.

...You're not going to do that. Fine. Go outside and buy one box of expensive chocolates before you spend two hours practicing being freezing and elegant and terrifying in front of a mirror.

We are who we are,
Karinna S. Coral.

PS: Eating a box of expensive chocolates can be terrifying, if you eat them delicately while being visibly thin and pretty, occasionally crossing and uncrossing your legs while you do. Honestly! You'll be able to test it very soon, so it's not like I'd lie about that, right? But it might take you more than one box of chocolates to perfect the aesthetic.

PPS: Your new roommate at Norville U is conventionally pretty, intelligent enough to be a useful pawn, careless at choosing phone passwords, and held a private celebration to congratulate herself after she successfully drove a nerdy classmate a lot like our former self to suicide.

PPPS: You are now bisexual. I know, I know, but trust me, you're going to need it.

Extras - (Demoted to non-canon) (6.3) Not Good Enough

Spoiler: This post has been demoted to non-canon.

Heavy trigger warnings: Rape.

Spoiler: Status

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (13,900 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 221/440
SUB: 480/480

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 25
FUK: 19
PRV: 26
ERO: 31 (16)

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8934

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Reagent of Mundane Biology (II), Biologists #7, #9, #14
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Busy Mode: Off

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : [NSFW] - The Erogamer [original] | Page 144 | Questionable Questing [Posts: 4299-4511]
##### NetTally 1.9.9

[x] Turn the tables.
No. of Votes: 43

Spoiler: Voters

Plan: ◈A Better Class of Rapist
Plan: ◈A Better Class of Rapist v2
Acae
Aestrix
AndaisQ
Aoinfinity
batrax
Chulup
CTCatapult
Derpmind
Diraniola
Dragonheart91
Eler0
Epitome of Eccentricity
FeepingCreature
Gamerlord
Greckle
Hyperion042
january1may
jsnider3
kabs
LancerisDead
lurkymclurkerton
madness
masterax2000
matacusa
Moriwen
Mr. Tebbs
mrpylon
Nemonowan
Orz
pepperjack
Prime 2.0
ScrewFate
Shadowrust
Sirrocco
Sixteen
Skelm
Spectral Waltz
Temp0101
The Sandman
The_Wanderer
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
varno

[x] You may get to get off, but this guy won't. Use Tears of Milk, whose skill description interestingly does not require being able to resist somebody fucking you to stop stimulating them. You have 221 Dom, and will probably get more. ToM costs 11 Dom. It takes 19 uses to drive a person insane. My, my, will you look at that. It just fits.
No. of Votes: 41

Spoiler: Voters

Plan: ◈A Better Class of Rapist
Acae
Aestrix
AndaisQ
Aoinfinity
batrax
CTCatapult
Derpmind
Diraniola
Dragonheart91
Eler0
Epitome of Eccentricity
FeepingCreature
fictionfan
Gamerlord
Greckle
Hyperion042
january1may
jsnider3
kabs
LancerisDead
lurkymclurkerton
madness
masterax2000
matacusa
Moriwen
Mr. Tebbs
Nemonowan
Orz
pepperjack
ScrewFate
Shadowrust
Sirrocco
Sixteen
Skelm
Spectral Waltz
Temp0101
The Sandman
The_Wanderer
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
varno

[X] Switch to Coals Relighted if our low ERO offers resistance. It's not like he'd remember that his perfect victim ever had any other hairstyle...
No. of Votes: 40

Spoiler: Voters

Plan: ◈A Better Class of Rapist
Acae
Aestrix
AndaisQ
Aoinfinity
batrax
CTCatapult
Derpmind
Diraniola
Dragonheart91
Eler0
Epitome of Eccentricity
FeepingCreature
Gamerlord
Greckle
Hyperion042
january1may
jsnider3
kabs
LancerisDead
lurkymclurkerton
madness
masterax2000
matacusa
Moriwen
Mr. Tebbs
Nemonowan
Orz
pepperjack
ScrewFate
Shadowrust
Sirrocco
Sixteen
Skelm
Spectral Waltz
Temp0101
The Sandman
The_Wanderer
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
varno

[x] If he stops cooperating, use a creative interpretation of You Forgot To Lock The Door (or barring that, hair) to escape the cuffs. If necessary, use Extra Large Sausage to make him accept this turn of events. Those cuffs may find other uses, and a certain low-class rapist may suddenly remember that his favorite victim had a dominant streak...
No. of Votes: 40

Spoiler: Voters

Plan: ◈A Better Class of Rapist
Acae
Aestrix
AndaisQ
Aoinfinity
batrax
CTCatapult
Derpmind
Diraniola
Dragonheart91
Eler0
Epitome of Eccentricity
FeepingCreature
Gamerlord
Greckle
Hyperion042
january1may
jsnider3
kabs
LancerisDead
lurkymclurkerton
madness
masterax2000
matacusa
Moriwen
Mr. Tebbs
Nemonowan
Orz
pepperjack
ScrewFate
Shadowrust
Sirrocco
Sixteen
Skelm
Spectral Waltz
Temp0101
The Sandman
The_Wanderer
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
varno

-[X] Specifically: if the opportunity arises (possibly out of his frustration), use hair (or skill if feeling cheeky) to escape cuffs and grab taser, followed by using it and the cuffs to restrain him and finish driving him mad. (Thank you Prime 2.0!)
No. of Votes: 40

Spoiler: Voters

Plan: ◈A Better Class of Rapist
Acae
Aestrix
AndaisQ
Aoinfinity
batrax
CTCatapult
Derpmind
Diraniola
Dragonheart91
Eler0
Epitome of Eccentricity
FeepingCreature
Gamerlord
Greckle
Hyperion042
january1may
jsnider3
kabs
LancerisDead
lurkymclurkerton
madness
masterax2000
matacusa
Moriwen
Mr. Tebbs
Nemonowan
Orz
pepperjack
ScrewFate
Shadowrust
Sirrocco
Sixteen
Skelm
Spectral Waltz
Temp0101
The Sandman
The_Wanderer
theonebutcher
Thrice.Great
varno

[X] Let yourself respond. There's no reason to make your life less pleasant.
No. of Votes: 26

Spoiler: Voters

Malbutorius
Andelevion
Blackgutter
Blackshard
D.Rockstar
Edifier
End of Line
Ephemeral
Flashbunny
Gavinfoxx
Halbling
Jaso
Kappa
napkintooth
Nyx
Proxima
Pseudonym
Quentin
redfog
RedKnite
reeezzzaaa
ShaperV
Stylph
Theminimanx
Valmit
wasprider

[X] Keep trying to hold back. If a rapist wants your orgasm he'll have to take it from you.
No. of Votes: 19

Spoiler: Voters

abyssmal_kismet
adara
Aoinfinity
AramilOniasha
Elitist Oars
Evenstar
Fyre
Gingganz
Gorgonic
Guile
january1may
Jirachi
modrony
root
Soul Shocker
SoulofaGremlin
Temp0101
Theli
zachol

[X] Switch to Coals Rekindled if our low ERO offers resistance. It's not like he'd remember that his perfect victim ever had any other hairstyle...
No. of Votes: 10

Spoiler: Voters

Plan: ◈A Better Class of Rapist v2
Chulup
Dragonheart91
Eler0
kabs
lurkymclurkerton
Mr. Tebbs
mrpylon
pepperjack
Prime 2.0
Thrice.Great

-[x] If he stops cooperating, use a creative interpretation of You Forgot To Lock The Door to escape the cuffs. If necessary, use Extra Large Sausage to make him accept this turn of events. Those cuffs may find other uses, and a certain low-class rapist may suddenly remember that his favorite victim had a dominant streak...
No. of Votes: 6

Spoiler: Voters

pepperjack
kabs
lurkymclurkerton
Mr. Tebbs
Sixteen
Thrice.Great

[X] You may get to get off, but this guy won't. Use Tears of Milk, whose skill description interestingly does not require being able to resist somebody fucking you to stop stimulating them. Play along with 'trying' to provide more pleasure, but don't actually let up on the skill.
No. of Votes: 3

Spoiler: Voters

Plan: ◈A Better Class of Rapist v2
Chulup
mrpylon
Prime 2.0

[X] If the opportunity arises (possibly out of his frustration), use hair to escape cuffs and grab taser, followed by using it and the cuffs to restrain him and finish driving him mad.
No. of Votes: 3

Spoiler: Voters

Plan: ◈A Better Class of Rapist v2
Chulup
mrpylon
Prime 2.0

-[X] Be present.
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Theli
root

-[X] "I'm gonna close my eyes and imagine your brother is fucking me while you cry yourself to sleep."
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

zachol
modrony

-[X] Return your hair to normal and raise your ERO to 31 let see what the game can do to us now that we have played along with his fantasy like a Good Girl.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Stylph

-[X] Take some time to think over the emotional context of this. Maybe you can get a hairstyle of out this?
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Jirachi

-[X] Fuck him back and end it quickly. He isn't worthy of your time, let alone your feelings.
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Pseudonym

-[X] Are you there, dick? It's me, Conscience (jk, its just Cindy)
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Sixteen

Total No. of Voters: 86

You try tentatively to lift your hips to meet the penis thrusting in and out of you, to test your ability to derive sexual pleasure from the vile bastard lying on top of you and crushing your breasts in his hands.

Your body stops. Your mind refuses. You just can't do it.

You think you're not truly scared of what's happening to you anymore. You're still viscerally afraid of the violent criminal in the same room with you, but, but this is a tutorial aimed at brave Lvl 1 characters and you're willing to trust to that.

In the dimiminishing fear, your brain has found a new, increasingly strong feeling about what's happening to you.

The phrase "better class of rapist" keeps running through your mind. This man is not good enough to rape you. Even if this eroge plot is about vile scum defiling the Ice Queen, he's not good-enough vile scum for that. This isn't about you refusing to submit until your body is dominated and your orgasm is wrenched from you. It doesn't matter how hard he works to get you off. Nothing he does can earn your nectar. He's not allowed. It would go against your pride as a woman.

This notion of "pride as a woman" is an unfamiliar mode of thinking to you. You have very recent memories of when you might have been glad of the implied compliment if somebody thought your body was worth raping. If they treated you as a sexual entity at all. And now, no sooner do you become pretty than you're suddenly lifting your Ice Queen head and sniffing? It's just, it's just that you do seem to feel that way.

Haughty. That's what you're feeling, that's what this emotion is. Apparently once you have an available quest to Become a Princess, you start feeling haughty. You'd---you'd never want to feel like this about some innocent fat boy who was enjoying looking at you. That would not be okay. But it's okay to feel disgusted by this scumbag (you refuse to think his name, you don't want to personalize him enough to allow any chance that he's a recurring character) (Joseph) (okay you can't actually stop yourself from thinking of things). He's a serial rapist, it's okay to be revulsed by him. And now that you've let yourself feel disgusted by a man, you've started feeling haughty about the fact that he's daring to lie on top of you thrusting his hips like this.

This man is a mere tutorial villain, not, not---you don't know exactly what you want here. Definitely not Kim Jong-un. Vladimir Putin… uh, maybe? Putin doesn't look bad with his shirt off. You have a fuzzy sense of being a fantasy warrioress who demands to be taken only by a man who can defeat her in battle, except the guy lying on top of you could defeat you in 0.3 seconds so that's clearly not what counts. You… you want a villain with style. A villain with class. A villain who subdues victims in a way you can respect, instead of threatening a girl with a taser while she's a terrified novice erogamer. A villain who's actually a nice and smart and sexy cute guy who's only raping you to save the world. Okay, Charles totally spoiled you here.

It's a funny thing, but, but your inner voices felt this way about the scumbag blackmailer at the strip club too. So apparently this is just who you are inside, someone who demands a better class of violator. You wish you weren't thinking this, it's tempting fate way too much, but the Erogame can certainly read your mind and it's already too late not to think the words.

You need worthy rapists.

-+​

The unworthy scumbag lying on top of you and thrusting between your legs is starting to breathe more heavily, it sounds like he's approaching orgasm, and, and no? No. If you're allowed to have emotions and be the haughty Ice Queen character who's being raped, then no, he does not get to come inside you he is not worthy.

The thought occurs to you that Tears of Milk is a thing, and that victims in eroge rape stories don't immediately get shot as soon as they try to do anything to their attackers, especially if they are magical girls and the rapist is not.

It---it isn't going to make the Masked Rapist violent, is it, if he finds he can't come? But he's old, his voice sounds old and his chin beneath the mask looked old and he fought in Vietnam which was ages ago. He shouldn't think to blame you if he suddenly has a sexual dysfunction.

Tears of Milk, your lips shape the words.

Then a worm of fear creeps back up your back. That didn't make sense. You should have thought longer before casting that spell. You should have let him come and let this be over, you shouldn't have extended this plotline and you absolutely shouldn't have risked making him angry---

The masked man's breathing reaches a peak. His hands crush your breasts harder, to the point that a pained uh escapes your lips that the bastard is probably telling himself is your pleasure.

The Tears of Milk skill informs you that this is the exact time you should stop stimulation.

He goes on thrusting into you.

Loud moans of satisfaction come from beneath the mask, pleasure tinged with malice.

Uh. Uh, right. The skill doesn't work like that. Tears of Milk is a thinky-power that informs you of the moment to stop stimulating a victim, it doesn't allow you to just keep going at full speed and have the victim not come anyway. Not to mention that if the perk Tastes Like Chocolate explicitly disallows bad tastes that could discourage rapists, there's no way the Erogame is going to hand out a low-ERO skill that can prevent rapists from getting off inside you. You need to think about that more logically next time.

With a final push that extracts one more twinge of pain from your breasts, the black-business-suited man rises off from you, and begins to pull up his pants. Standing high above you, the white-cloth head looks down with what is probably a satisfied expression underneath the mask.

You are now---the Ice Queen inside you is now really annoyed. There is unworthy semen in your vagina.

Having the unworthy man succeed in raping the Ice Queen and injuring her pride is also an erogame trope, now that you think about it. Being the Ice Queen isn't going to protect you. It's just going to make you feel annoyed every time.

But you no longer feel like this is a choice of role-play. This is the eroge character that you are. If the Erogame wants to play out the plot where the Ice Queen moans helplessly and submits despite herself, it needs to provide a better class of rapist.

Being honest with yourself about the explicit conditions under which you prefer to be subdued causes your PRV to go up by 1!

The white head above the tall black business suit has turned from you and is rummaging in the duffel bag again. You think of scathingly hurtful things to say about how he didn't last long enough to make you come. You manage to keep your inner Ice Queen quiet.

The nervousness in you is rising again. Shouldn't this be over?

You---you kind of want out of these handcuffs now. This position is not comfortable and you feel like you've completed this tutorial.

Does You Forgot to Lock the Door work on handcuffs? No, that doesn't even make sense. The plain meaning of the skill in no way implies that should work, never mind whether the Erogame would be handing out low-ERO skills that prevent you from being trapped in bondage. The voices in your head are just getting absurd at this point. You try whispering the words anyway, but of course nothing happens.

The black-business-suited man straightens up from the duffel bag, carrying an enormous vibrator the length of your arm to the elbow. It's the same vibrator that Tammi brought to use on non-doctor Laura, the one Tammi called the cordless Hitachi Magic Wand.

"Really?" escapes your inner Ice Queen's lips. "What is wrong with you?"

You're not sure if you're talking to him or the Erogame. You can see how it'd normally make sense for the tutorial to make sure the novice rape victim can have sexual satisfaction inflicted on her, if she doesn't come from the intercourse itself. But doesn't the Erogame realize you've already demonstrated that? You came with Charles. You just prefer a better class of rapist to wrench your orgasm from you. Can't the tutorial let you go now?

A black-gloved finger presses a button on the enormous vibrator, and a blue LED lights up along with an ominous hummmmm.

Then the black-gloved finger presses another button three times. Another three blue LEDs light up as the ominous hummmmm gets louder and higher, like a lightsaber that can be turned up to even more dangerous settings.

Eep.

"I'm going to make you come so hard you piss yourself," a harsh male voice pronounces.

Your head thuds back to the gym mat beneath you. "I wish to file a complaint," you say to nobody in particular.

It is at this point that your inexperience with vibrators starts working not in your favor. If you had more experience, more online reading, or had otherwise known more about how to correctly use vibrators on women, you would have realized in advance what was about to go wrong.

As it is, you just lie back in annoyance as the Masked Rapist unstoppably parts your thighs, pulls back the fold from your clit, and directly applies the full-power Hitachi Magic Wand to---

"EEEEEEEtoosensitivetoosensitivetoosensitiveturnitdownturnitdownturnitdown!"

He doesn't turn it down.

You're not sure how much time passes, it feels like minutes but was probably more like thirty seconds, before the HORRIBLE THING is removed from your clit and you lie on the floor, panting, your bound body still twitching.

The fucking fucker of a fuckfucker is laughing.

Then the dipshit switches the vibrator to level one, and applies it again, and your body jerks but accepts the input. Warm pleasure begins to spread out from your freshly tormented clit.

This---this asshole. This demonspawn. You are out of words to describe how done you are with this. You are the future princess of Denmark, or wherever it is you conquer for Mom, and he is not related to royalty in any way. You are a magical girl and future mad inventor and part-time eldritch horror, and you are done with this. You're not scared anymore, right? It's, it's just a Lvl 1 tutorial so it won't hurt you no matter what you do. Worst-case an escape attempt fails and you get tased or hit a few times but he definitely won't kill you. If you're defining what type of rape victim the Erogame should treat you as, you want to be the courageous Ice Queen type. No, more than that, you need to stop being scared of everything all the time, like you were stupidly scared this morning. This is an eroge, and the victim trying to free herself using magic is a plot twist, not a horrible mistake that gets her instantly shot with a real bullet, right?

The dipshit rapist shifts the vibrator up to level two.

You shift your hair up to ERO 31. Making careful to specify that it's looked like that since you crossed into the rape zone so he doesn't notice a difference… well, neither do you, but same principle. You're not sure if you really want to do this, but you might as well begin trying before it's too late.

Your lips mouth the words, It Does What I Want.

Lifting your hair feels difficult, clumsy, like the hair is barely strong enough to lift itself. You still manage to get multiple strands lying over where your hands are cuffed, and you manage to get the tips of some strands inserted through the keyhole of the cuff.

And you---you start to feel around.

Uh.

You don't actually have any idea how the inside of a handcuff lock works. Poking at it with strands of hair is not feeling very informative. There's things you can push, if you strain your strands to the limit, but the handcuffs don't unlock when you do that.

This was maybe something you should have practiced earlier. Using an internet guide. While not being distracted.

The rapist shifts the vibrator up to level 3.

You don't have any further up to shift your hair.

The buzzing at your groin is more urgent, new pangs of unwanted pleasure starting to go through you. You don't have much time here.

[ ] Start doing things with your hair that the rapist notices. Indignantly deny that anything abnormal is happening. Maybe you can distract him before you come, by making him think he's going insane.
[ ] You put up a reasonable fight and any more is too dangerous. Have an orgasm and be annoyed by it.

Extras - Summary of 6.3.1-6

This is a spoiler summary of chapters 6.3.1-6, which contain heavy trigger warnings for rape. Key events are described or quoted.

Light trigger warning: Discussion of rape.

Spoiler: (6.3.1) Protect You

Cindy and her mother talk about Cindy's decision to undertake the Refuse the Giftsex quest.

"You---you can eat almost anything you want, actually," you say, as a further realization occurs to you. Mom doesn't know what happened last night. "Yesterday I finished the quest you gave me to find a cure for obesity and aging. I might have cured them a little too well, actually. But in a day or two you should be able to get, like, BOD 15 and Erogamer's Body Lite."

A sigh comes from Mom. "You need to learn how to time good news better," your Mom says, but she follows you downstairs without any more staring contests in her doorway.

When the two of you get to the kitchen, Mom puts a mug of water in the microwave to start heating, and then goes to the kitchen cabinet to get the Nestle's instant hot chocolate that she saves for emergency emotional medication. It's---it's probably also that she needs it, and not only that she just went off her last diet forever.

"Just so you know, dear, I believed in you all along," says Mom as she withdraws a spoon from the silverware drawer. "Now, what do you mean you cured obesity and aging too well?"

"I…" you say. "I think maybe I should save that piece of good news for later."

"I'd prefer a short version right away," says your mother. "Otherwise I may fret."

"I really do think later," you say. "It's not… bad, per se, but I hit ERO 30 last night, and I think the Erogame is setting things up for the world to be full of sexier people." You think Mom will probably approve that you ended up curing all major diseases for everybody on Earth. But your Mom has a point, that good news is best saved for literally any other time than now.

Mom takes her mug from the microwave, sitting down at the kitchen table to begin stirring instant hot chocolate into the water.

And you can look straight at the hot chocolate now, and be okay. Being able to invent the Ero Virus that easily was reassuring. Sure, the Cure is technically a venereal disease and so won't work on you, and you're probably no longer made of conventional matter anyway. But the Erogame making you be the only person left on the planet who can get fat and unsexy through eating the wrong things, you… you truly don't believe the Erogame would do that. If you see Felice eating cookies like normal people can, and she's still staying thin and pretty after a month, you think you could believe in that, you really could.

One day you're impulsively going to take a gulp of hot chocolate and be perfectly fine.

Just not today.

In the light of the kitchen, you can see how very, very not sexy Mom is in her nightgown, her wrinkles and the splotch of lighter skin around the top of her forehead, the flab around her arms and stomach. You wouldn't have let yourself think about it fully a few days earlier. Mom's… sick, she has Not Sexy Syndrome and she needs emergency ero. In theory you still think Sonia Turk was being unreasonable not to agree with Charles about a week-long cooldown period, but, but you can see Sonia's viewpoint too. You can't see it as being okay to decide that withholding the cure is the wisely cautious course of action for human people in general, but that when it comes to your particular Mom, or Felice, or you, all of you need higher BOD right away. All Sonia was doing was acting like everyone else was her Mom. That's more or less what Sonia said was the point, and it's what she accused Charles of not seeing. But Charles said it was insane to massively change the Earth without taking a week to think first, and you can see that viewpoint too.

It's weird to think of yourself as the center point of the harem and the main character who ultimately has to decide. Some of your potential haremettes seem much more decisive than you, which you guess is what being the center of a harem plot is all about.

Slowly, Mom tilts her head. "There is a skill you can use to give me plot armor?" she says.

You'd just lie---except that maybe Mom should have plot armor anyway, even if she's staying outside the rape zone---but but but but then she might try to follow you inside and…

Does Share The Fun even work on Mom, if she knows about the Erogame? Or maybe that makes it really simple, because all you have to do is tell Mom there's a skill, and why wouldn't she believe you especially since it's true. But maybe it's not allowed to be that simple, and then telling Mom about Share The Fun makes it impossible for Share The Fun to ever work on her because then Mom knows the empowerment subplots are fakes…

"Is there such a skill, yes or no," your Mom says, sounding sterner now.

"Theoretically there's something I can try that might possibly work but it's very new and I'm not sure how it works and the effects would be permanent and they'd come out---out of a limited budget---Mom, I think this is a bad idea. If I could give you plot armor right now, it'd come out as, uh, minor plot armor. Not enough to trust that you can't get shot." Did you just sabotage yourself by saying that? But the skill did say that it could only share "minor talents" at its current level.

…the Erogame is not necessarily a Game Thing first and foremost.

…you've broken the apparent rules with Mom before.

Maybe you can just give her full fucking plot armor. And---and everything from Erogamer's Body that isn't covered by the Ero Virus. Just draw on your true love, Disney-style, and make it happen.

There's a number of chills running over your body right now. You haven't decided if they're chills of excitement, incredulity at your own audacity, or just plain THIS IS A BAD IDEA dismay.

What were you considering before?" says Mom. "Before you asked me what I'd do with plot armor."

You shake your head. "It was a dumb idea and I don't think I should talk about it."

Mom is looking at you with concern, somehow she seems more present in the room. "Leaving other issues aside," Mom says, "I think you need to not-talk about fewer things, for your own sake."

She has a point. "I---I'm not supposed to be able to give you full plot armor at this point in the game. But we're also not supposed to be able to have this conversation. I think I broke the game rules to make this possible. Maybe just because I have a hidden stat for Ability To Break Game Rules Using Disney-Style True Love, but still. I was wondering if I could break the game rules again and give you full plot armor."

"That sounds dangerous," Mom says. "Dangerous and rather disturbing. You didn't mention this before."

"I---I guess I didn't. I think the back of my mind thought you must already know, because, like, you were there when it happened."

Your Mom turns her mug of chocolate one way, then the other, inside her hands. "We're out of our depth, aren't we," she says softly. "I've been thinking that for a while, but this brings it home."

"I---I think trying to break the game rules is something that Charles would tell me to take a week to think about first. Or something that ought to be saved for emergencies. This situation isn't anything like that desperate."

Cindy and her mother summon a Lyft to drive to Luther and 3rd.

On impulse, you bow your head as if in prayer. Maybe it is prayer.

Game Thing, if there's a stat I have for True Love, let it designate Mom as part of my home, my home base that game events shouldn't touch. Horny Alien, I don't know what your reproductive process requires, but if you're trying to bribe me into it, then please keep Mom safe and let things go well for her. Deeper Cindy, I shouldn't have to explain this to you, right? Bullshit metaphysics, this is part of the definition of who I am, and logic itself says it's impossible for you to hurt her, that is a Truth, so there. And whatever is playing this eroge, tell the publisher you'll never buy one again if they hurt Mom. Please let things go well for her, including emotionally.

--++​

There's no answer, unless the car slowing to a stop in front of you is an answer.

Spoiler: (6.3.2) Here and Present

Upon arriving in the critical zone and just before entering, Cindy sees a piece of graffiti on the wall.

On the blank gray siding of a former paint store, in the direction that you started to turn, an expanse of graffiti catches your attention. It's the silhouette of a woman in a tie-up shirt and tight shorts, leaning from a stripper pole. Her hair is long streaks of black and red painted over and through each other, and she's wearing a crown of pure silvery metal set with countless fragments of blue-white gemstones, all of them cracked.

That's… that's you at the strip club, when you took the stage name Princess.

The graffiti is old. It's obviously been here for years. Despite your previous Erogame experience, it's still a shock to see reality reflect you in ways it shouldn't.

Next to the stylized drawing of Stripper-Starry, some other graffiti artist has drawn words in light, careless streaks of white spraypaint.

IF YOU ARE HERE
YOU SHOULD BE PRESENT​

​

Cindy realizes that the Erogame is telling her that erogame characters don't dissociate from their rapes. The screen shows the character crying, and then the next day she's plotting her revenge. The genre convention reflects the fact that a victim freezing up isn't as interesting, but:

There's a truth touched by that, even if the artists stumbled over that truth by chance. The artists invented scenes of seeming cruelty, but they were kinder than they knew. Anyone who watched you in class last Friday wouldn't have heard any screams, even though you were hurting. Reality Classic is full of people freezing up and going quiet.

It's hard to put it into words. Your mind goes back to Volkov's aged voice and the comparison it drew between a fish in a tank of empty water with occasional fish food flakes floating down, and a sea that's full of mates and predators and food that runs away. It's not---it's not that the fish looks forward to having to flee from sharks. It's just that, once the fish sees a living ocean, even through a glass screen, it doesn't have any choice but to go there.

You knew perfectly well that thinking that would cause your ERO to go up by 1!

Spoiler: (6.3.3) Perfect Victim

Cindy enters the critical zone and receives the Rapebait status effect, which gives her 2,089 experience points per hour in exchange for a 36.5%/hour chance of encountering an assailant able to overcome her defenses.

Cindy encounters the rapist, who's using a taser and keeps prodding her for reactions. When Cindy gets over her shock, she concludes that she's in a tutorial mode---the taser won't injure her if it goes off, and the situation has been set up to encourage her to express her feelings rather than freezing up.

Cindy also realizes that the rapist has a specific victim in mind, and the Erogame has set up the situation so that anything she does will appear to match the rapist's specific victim, thus preventing her from saying or doing the wrong thing even on purpose.

She discovers that her natural reactions seem to be disdain; the erogame character she is during this type of rape is the Ice Queen character.

The actual rape takes place.

This is in fact way easier to handle than you were afraid of, exactly like you told yourself fifteen bajillion times would be the case.

Spoiler: (6.3.4) Haughty

Cindy thinks that if she wants significant portions of the rest of her life to be more pleasant, she should try to obtain pleasure from the intercourse she's having. She finds that her body and mind will not cooperate with this; her disgust for the rapist has led her to a newfound sense of haughtiness about those unworthy to pleasure her. She is unable to prevent herself from thinking, "You need worthy rapists."

The rapist attempts to use a vibrator on her. Cindy resists, and in so doing acquires a "Teased" status effect.

After seeing her resistance, the rapist says he's realized that he will probably never find a better victim, but she still isn't "Jane."

The rapist takes out a gun.

Spoiler: (6.3.5) Gun

Cindy attempts to take the perk Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder but discovers that the perk cannot be taken during an ongoing nonconsensual event. Just as the rapist is about to fire the gun, his head is impacted by a thrown brick from the Redcap who has shown up to rescue her.

You take a closer look at Rose now that your brain is less completely occupied with other things. They look to be in the late teenage stage of the human lifeform, filling out the loose white dress in a generally doughy way that doesn't cross the line into Fat. Their red full lips are sparkling with sparkling red lipstick. There's a red flower (not a rose) tucked into the back of their titular red cap. The general sense is of somebody who might have started out femme some time earlier, before they decided gender was too difficult and gave up.

The red cap has a yellow hammer and sickle on the front.

You blink. "Uh," you say rather stupidly, "Norville Redcaps… the red caps symbolize that you're… communists?"

"That's right, comrade!" the Redcap says proudly. "We're the largest agender communist street gang in Central California."

You remember a time in your life when you would have expressed surprise about a street gang like this existing in Norville and you having never heard about the fact. You remember a time when you would have asked what was the second-largest agender communist street gang in Central California.

Where's your phone? You're certain you had your burner phone before. Where were you carrying your phone when it wasn't in your hand? You don't have a purse. Your dress has no pockets. You put your phone away without thinking about it and you don't remember where.

You take a shallow breath, hold it, wait until the lack of breath is consuming your attention, distract your brain more by remembering how incredibly scared you just were, and let your hands reflexively perform the motion of taking out your phone.

You are now holding your phone.

Rose helps Cindy handcuff the unconscious rapist, and gives Cindy a very brief lesson about how to use the gun. Then Rose slips out before the police arrive.

Spoiler: (6.3.6) Denouement Scene

Cindy's mother arrives, followed by the police. Cindy asks to be left alone with her Mom, and the police (improbably?) oblige. Cindy tells her mother about the meaning of the "If you are here, you should be present message" and wonders if it could help her Mom.

"I feel like I'm too old to change that much," Mom says, softly and without regret. "Maybe I'll feel differently once I look at myself in the mirror and see somebody younger. But right now I feel like there was a wound that healed over a long time ago. And maybe it scarred, but it still healed. I believe there's an integrity in the person I became. It's hard to imagine that it would be a good idea to rip off the scar tissue and open the wound again and let it heal differently, even if it could have healed slightly better. Am I making sense?"

"Sort of," you say. "The Erogame---I don't think we should underestimate how well it might psychiatrist. It is kind of all-powerful."

Feeling disturbed by the conversation, Cindy mentions what she did on Thursday night, as a distraction.

"Speaking of distractions," you say, "last night I held an orgy at a biology conference and they invented an incredible miracle cure that can restore youthful skin and cause total weight loss in just 24 hours."

Mom snickers.

"And fix Alzheimer's Disease, and clear out arteries, and give immunity to HIV and herpes and---and I forget what else, it was a long list. Basically all of the major diseases that anyone thought of over the course of ninety minutes. Oh, right, cancer. Fixing cancer was the key, actually, it's what lets you amp up cell replication all over the body without dying of cancer. That's why you can grow more muscle and regenerate all your skin, which is how you end up looking young again."

Mom is very rigid where you're leaning against her.

"I think what was really going on," you add, "is that starting at ERO 30, the Erogame wants the world to be full of sexy people. Like, it wasn't just my quest to cure you and Felice. The Erogame wants this to happen everywhere because old and fat isn't sexy. But you and Felice should have your cures pretty soon. The cure includes a boost to LST. And I think sooner or later I can fill in the gaps in your version of Erogamer's Body and give you proper superpowers and enough plot armor so you can go out and do things."

"That's---" Mom seems to be having trouble talking.

"Uh… that's not a bad thing, right?" you say anxiously. "I realize that curing all major diseases is potentially controversial but I did---I did think you'd be proud of me."

"Proud is when your daughter writes a beautiful poem and you pin it up with a refrigerator magnet," Mom says. "Not when they award her the last Nobel Prize in Medicine and then abolish it. I try not to swear around you, honey, it's just, it's just, it's just---I can't figure out where I should be using the word 'fucking' right now. But I'm sure I'll be proud of you later. Do you---you said---do you actually think everyone will be able to afford this treatment, eventually?"

"Yep!" you say with vigorous nodding, as you decide not to go into the part about transmissibility via kiss just now. That sort of freaked out Charles the first time he heard.

"How long will this take to develop?"

"One of the biologists at the orgy volunteered to be a test subject, so she's starting the treatment tonight. If it works on her with no problems, we can start on you, uh, Saturday night or Sunday morning I guess?"

"Are---are you serious, honey? Or were you just joking this whole time?"

You don't know why Mom is sounding skeptical. Shock you can understand, but not skepticism. "Mom, this is just biology. The Erogame can break the laws of metaphysics as we know it. I mean, you've seen my hair, right? Or not seen my hair, more like experienced my hair concept in a visual medium, but you know what I mean."

"How---how is the cure being---is there a startup? Who's paying for the first treatments?"

"Sonia Turk is handling putting the cure together. Uh, she's the one who's using herself as a test subject."

"Are you saying this person is paying to assemble the treatment protocol by herself? She must be incredibly rich."

"She sure is," you say, thinking of how Sonia talked about spending ten thousand dollars on the first fifty doses like that was nothing.

"And---she'll treat me and Felice too? For free?"

"I'm paying a thousand dollars for your treatments," you say, not without pain.

"Tell her I said thank you," Mom whispers.

It's obvious you're missing something here, and you're pretty sure there's been a communications breakdown. But it looks like you've accomplished the basic task of breaking Mom out of her state of shock and cheering her up some.

Cindy then recounts her story to the police. Upon Cindy mentioning that the rapist called her "Jane" Cindy's mother spins around and runs out of the room. After looking at the unmasked rapist, Cindy's mother announces that this is Joseph Greenwood, who raped her when she was thirteen. Cindy concludes that the game is set up to reveal the Masked Rapist as anyone you're particularly afraid of assaulting you, so that you can see that you've triumphed over your fears; and that since Cindy wasn't particularly afraid of anyone in that way, the effect transferred to her Mom.

The police ask Winifred (Mom) if she's willing to press charges for the childhood assault, explaining that a very recently passed law removes the statute of limitations. Winifred says that she will.

"What do you need from me?" Mom says to him.

"You give testimony to a police officer today, so the prosecutor knows what to expect, and then you repeat it in court later," the man says. He glances at you. "Though, with your daughter having been assaulted, the defense will argue… is there any way to prove that you didn't make up this allegation just now? Somebody else you told back then?"

Mom ignores the glare of the female police officer just like he does. There's a stillness about her like the center of a hurricane. She's standing up straight, very straight, maybe she's standing up straight for the first time since before you were born. Her voice does not shake. It comes out as clipped and precise as a police captain barking orders.

"Once you have the DNA evidence," Mom says, "you will call John Frederick Greenwood in Montana. You will inform him that his brother, Joseph, was caught in the act of rape and proven guilty by DNA evidence from multiple victims. You will inform John Greenwood that he will be subpoenaed and required to testify in court that his daughter, Winifred Greenwood, told him on October 12th of 1991 that her uncle had raped her the previous day. It is not necessary that he be asked how he acted in response, but if he is asked in court, and he gives any other answer than that he slapped her and told her to stop lying, Winifred will testify as may be required in order to convict him of perjury. Make sure he knows that."

"Christ," somebody whispers.

"Perfect," says the man, and smiles at her.

Mom smiles back.

"And tell him I said," she says, "that it is, in fact, too late to apologize, and that's the last thing there will ever be to say."

Continue reading the story at 6.3.7.

Extras - Pseudo-future omake by Eler0: Objectively Consensual

So...I made a thing. Namely, a certain perk gave me an idea. Originally, it was going to feature Karinna but after how controversial she turned out to be, I decided to use an OC instead. And then, the entire scenario basically wrote itself. I tried to somewhat mimic the usual writing style and Cindy's internal narration, not sure how well I succeeded on that. But hey, it was fun for me and maybe it entertains someone that reads it, too.

Spoiler: Omake

The halls of Norville U are somehow both familiar and strange as you walk through them, exploring the vastly enlarged campus building. You figured it can't hurt to know the general layout in case you ever have to sneakily follow someone or maybe run from a rapist-. Okay, stop it, brain. Don't think about rapists. Constantly worrying about that will only make things worse again. Rape isn't something that bad for an erogame protagonist, so back on track. Right, the place you're exploring.

The floor you're on now is rather deserted for now, classroom after classroom you check in on empty, though the timetables by the doors give you some interesting insights. You had no idea there's classes on Japanese Culture or Underwater Basket Weaving. Actually, that last one sounds like something someone made up just to make a point. Maybe the erogame ran out of things to fill the drastically enlarged buildings with?

"Ahhh~." Your musings on the laziness of the erogame designer come to a screeching halt when you open the next classroom door and peek in, finding it the opposite of empty. The first thing you see is a lovely rear, its owner bent over a desk, pleated skirt hiked up, white panties halfway pulled down her legs, keeping them together. You don't see her face, since she's facing away from you, but you can spot a hint of red pigtails peek past her on-display ass. Someone really went all-in on the lewd schoolgirl outfit. Another lewd little "Ahhh~." escapes her lips as a simple wooden cane descends on her behind, hitting her flesh with a sharp snap. Several red welts on her pale, round rear attest to her having taken quite a bit of punishment. And judging by the way her thighs grind together, she doesn't exactly seem to mind, even if she whimpers in a soft voice: "I'm sorry, Miss. I will be a good girl, I promise."

You're having trouble pulling your eyes away from that wiggling rear, each hit with the cane adding more redness to the otherwise unblemished cheeks, but you manage when the other person in the room speaks up. "I know you're sorry, dear~." Coos the tall, busty woman that's towering over the bent-over girl, dressed in a tight skirt suit that hugs every curve, long, black hair cascading down her back. Her cane pauses for a moment, her free hand reaching down to give the girl's back a reassuring rub, the redhead almost unconsciously pushing against the hand. "But that doesn't mean you get to avoid the punishment you earned~. It's just five more, I'm sure you can do that for me, right?"

"Y-yes, Miss..." Okay, focus, Cindy. Focus. Definitely don't think about how hot the scene before you is, try and think clearly. They're just having some consensual teacher and student roleplaying sex in one of the empty classrooms, so of course you were bound to stumble upon them. The erogame's throwing you some quick fun if you want it, an ero random encounter. So you can step in and catch them, or close the door and walk away. Simple.

"Ahhh, Miss..." The girl pants as the teacher's hand dips down between her legs, a single finger probing the girl's sex. "Oh my, is someone getting excited from her punishment? That's rather naughty, dear~." She practically purrs, voice dripping with amusement and authority in equal measures. You bite your lower lip, watching. Maybe you can just stay here and watch a bit before deciding? Yes, that sounds like a plan, you'll just- Oh no, itching nose, all of a sudden. Crap, crap crap! "Achooo!" You've never sneezed this strong before, stumbling forward, through the open door.

You find yourself face to face with the teacher, the woman's cool, azure eyes finding yours, her gaze intense, bright-red lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line. "A voyeur." She states simply, her heels clicking on the floor as a handful of steps carry her to the classroom door, closing it, then locking it with a click before she turns to face you again. Just...gazing at you with a silent look that just...drips sternness. "Um....I..." You begin, trying to think of an excuse. Come on, Cindy! But your brain's drawing a blank. It's so hard to think when she looks at you like that. She even still has the cane, idly tapping it against her open palm. "I was just....uh..." Does she have some kind of evil eye ability to freeze her prey with a look? Did you stumble upon some kind of sexual predator at work? You manage to tear your eyes away, lowering them...except now you're starting at her cleavage, which manages to be the perfect size to be attractive without harming her 'strict teacher' image.

She takes a step towards you and you reflexively take one back. Argh, how could you be so stupid? Of course the voyeur that just lingers at the door will get found out. You got distracted by the scene before you and fell for it. "You were just what?" The woman asks, taking another step, you following suit by taking one back. Come on, Cindy, think! Maybe some erogame logic explanation? Another step forward by her, her face looking very unamused right now. You try to take one back and find yourself backed up against the teacher's desk. You have nowhere to go when she takes yet another step, the taller woman towering over you, her presence dominating, intruding on your personal space. A startled yelp escapes your lips when the tip of her cane presses against the underside of your chin, makes you tilt your head up, meeting her eyes again.

"Let me say one thing before you answer." She says slowly, each word chosen deliberately. "If there is one thing I dislike immensely, then it is liars. Amanda's rear-" At that, the redheaded schoolgirl that's still bent over a student's desk lets out a pityful whimper. "-attests to that. So chose your next words very carefully. Better yet, since it appears you're beyond the point of formulating a cohesive answer, you will simply say yes, Miss or no, Miss." She stresses the title, tongue darting out to wet her lips. "Is that clear?"

Is this...is this some kind of ero encounter you're losing? Are you about to get dominated and enslaved by the succubus pretending to be a teacher? Will not playing along get you out of here, or- "I asked, is that clear?" The cane against the bottom of your chin pushes a tad harder.

"Yes Miss." You whimper out before you can think.

"You were watching us." It is not a question. "Did you enjoy what you saw?"

You consider for a moment, but no point lying now, right? "Yes Miss."

"Of course you did. Imagined it was you in Amanda's place, didn't you?"

You might have imagined what a cane like that would feel like, yes. "Yes, Miss."

Okay, think. Is this a nonconsensual encounter? Is this more erogame rape but in a nicer way? Or will she stop if you stop acting like a meek schoolgirl getting interrogated by the strict teacher?

"Did you record what you saw?" That's an easy question, at least. "No Miss!" "Were you planning on doing anything beyond watching?" Well, you considered entering, but that doesn't count, right? "Y-I mean no, miss." Her narrowed eyes make you clarify: "I...played with the thought of coming in...Miss."

"I see." She doesn't sound quite as strict now as before, the cane disappearing from your chin, replaced with a soft hand that caresses your cheek. "Good girl~." She adds, voice almost purring. Okay, those words shouldn't have felt nearly as good as they just did. Well, they should feel good coming from Charles, or someone else you know and trust, not...random erogame NPC dommes! Are you really going to melt at those words coming from someone you just met? That may or may not be raping you? She locked you in here after all, right? She's not giving you a choice. She could do who knows what to you and you couldn't escape.

Wait, you've got an idea! It's easy to decide if you're getting raped or just seduced. You mouth the words 'Info perks let's not turn this rape into a murder!'

[ ] Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder:

Although the Erogame would not in any case present you with a crippling threat and no alternative, this perk guarantees up front that no sexual assault or sexually motivated kidnapping will result in any damage your Erogamer's Body cannot heal. Think carefully before taking this perk: once you take it you can never again experience the crushing, absolute submission that comes from knowing your very life depends on pleasing your captor.

Whew. It doesn't have the 'You cannot take this perk during an ongoing nonconsensual encounter.' line, so this is consensual. If you tell her to stop and let you go, she will. Or maybe that will just turn it nonconsensual? Will telling her you want to leave make her decide to rape you? Oh great, now all the relief you felt a moment ago is gone again.

"Quite easily distracted, aren't you?" The teacher before you teases, lips curling up into an amused little smile the first time since you stumbled in. Maybe she's relieved you didn't record her and her student and aren't going to get them into trouble? Do erogame encounters care about consequences like that? Will she tie you up tight and stuff you under her desk to lick her out during class while covering up your disappearance to keep the secret if you threaten to expose her? No, there's no way your ERO is high enough for that.

"I have a choice for you to make, then." You're pulled from your usual, gloomy musing by the words of the teacher. "You promise me that you will never lose a single word about what just happened and then leave, never to come back. I suggest that you intent to keep your word. I am very good at spotting lies."
There's that again. Is your ERO high enough for people to have supernatural lie detection skills yet?
"Or~." She continues, her free hand resting on your shoulder before it begins to trace down, her soft touch leaving you tingling. "You bend over the desk next to Amanda. You hike up your skirt. And then, you ask me to punish you for peeking like a good girl, and you get to experience exactly how it is to be in Amanda's place~."

Well, there you have it, brain. All this worrying about maybe this being nonconsensual just went out the window. She's straight-up giving you a choice.

When you bend over the table next to Amanda, the girl turns her head towards you, giving you a first look at her blushing, freckled face. "H...hi." She says softly. "I'm...Amanda. Please don't tell anyone. Don't want more competition for her time, ya know..." "Starry. And of course." You answer in a soft voice as well, while you're busy hiking up your skirt.

The loud smack of a cane against a desk has both you and Amanda let out a startled yelp. "Girls, there will be enough time for chit-chat afterwards. For now, why don't you focus on counting the strikes~."

"Yes Miss~." You both chirp.

Extras - Non-canon omake by Tetrikitty: Enlightenment

Omake: Enlightenment

One day, when you're bored and there aren't any pressing quests after your attention, you go back.

The inside of the Goodwill has expanded with every trip you've made, gaining basements and subbasements like hidden roots without getting any bigger on the ground floor. Even after you became a billionaire, you came here occasionally out of nostalgia, or possibly a slight worry that if you didn't, it might just disappear into nothing, washed out by the changes to the city.

All of the basements sell lingerie. That's alright - you don't need to wear anything else anyway.

You take the stairs down to the first basement, walking straight to the changing rooms where the gloryhole was. The rooms haven't changed much - plain cubicles with doors for privacy. You pick one at random and step in, and it turns out to be the right one. (You wonder if maybe all the cubicles had cocks in them.)

"Time Control," you say. Time slows to a crawl, even as there isn't any visible effect. Even so, you don't bother closing the door when you kneel down in front of the gloryhole.

The first cock is thick and dark and sprays whiteness onto your chest in less than a minute. So does the second, and the third. (Not that a minute means much, right now.) As you finish off the fifth, a thorough coating of cum over your face, violet text appears in front of you.

Quest objective: Drain 6/10,000 cocks.
Goodwill Gloryhole has been upgraded. New limit: 20 cocks/day.

That's pretty convenient, you think.

After the sixth cock, you switch to using your mouth for variety. You start noticing that just before they cum, they twitch in this little urgent way that tells you to get ready to swallow. There are other tells, too. The slow pulse of a heartbeat, speeding up when you do something just right. Body heat. All the other little twitches that tell you that yes, there is a living human being on the other side of this wall, not just...

You don't know how to end that sentence.

Quest objective: Drain 21/10,000 cocks.
Goodwill Gloryhole has been upgraded. New limit: 100 cocks/day.

You throat is starting to feel a little gummed up, so you fish out a bottle of water from your inventory for a swig and switch back to using your hands. Even this way, you can still feel the person on the other side, even if it's less clear than when you were up close with your lips. You circle a cock with your hand for a while, just feeling the heartbeat being conducted through it like an electric current through a telephone wire. You feel its owner react to the touch. Soon enough, it dribbles milky white onto you and withdraws, to be replaced by another one.

Quest objective: Drain 101/10,000 cocks.
Goodwill Gloryhole has been upgraded. New limit: 400 cocks/day.

You pause for a moment to take out a picnic blanket from your inventory and kneel on it. You look like you've been sprayed liberally all over the face and chest with whipped cream, and you'd rather not drip on the floor. While you're at it, you retrieve a big towel too.

(Having an inventory is the best.)

Quest objective: Drain 401/10,000 cocks.
Goodwill Gloryhole has been upgraded. New limit: 1000 cocks/day.

The cocks start getting more exotic. First coloured in various shades of the rainbow, then with a knot like an animal's, and then, later, a tentacle.

You stare at it. It wriggles cutely at you.

As soon as you touch it, though, you find you can understand it just the same way as you understood all the other cocks. It moves differently, like the muscles in it are arranged differently (they are) and it's cooler than a human cock (it's not one, probably) and its heartbeat is fast, light like a bird's, with three beats at a time instead of two. You learn it and make it cum.

Quest objective: Drain 1001/10,000 cocks.
Goodwill Gloryhole has been upgraded. New limit: 4000 cocks/day.

You can practically read their minds through their cocks. You amuse yourself by seeing how fast you can go, imagining you can see the people on the other side responding, uncontrollably, to your lightest touch. This wall, the boundary between your self's existence and theirs, holds no secrets for you.

You were just being poetic back there, but you're actually seeing faint shadows through the wall. Maybe it's a new skill or something. You take a quick look at your skill list, but can't see anything new.

Quest objective: Drain 4001/10,000 cocks.
Goodwill Gloryhole has been upgraded. New limit: 20000 cocks/day.

If you concentrate, you can hear a faint soundless voice from the other side, conducted through the cock you're holding. It feels oddly intimate.

"Hello?" you say. After a moment, you decide to stroke your message into the cock instead, touching it in a pattern that makes its owner hear you. The voice from the other side gets more excited, but no more understandable.

You try closing your eyes and listening to it. Suddenly, everything snaps into clarity.

Quest objective: Drain 10,000/10,000 cocks.

The glowing cracks in the wall merge, casting the wall into brilliance. At the same time, a veil seems to fall away from your eyes.

Quest complete: Gloryhole Girl

You walk through the wall and emerge on the other side, on a bright sandy beach that makes you shade your eyes from the sun. Everyone's here, waiting for you.

You smile.

Game Over
Good End (#108)!

Extras - CORE Erogame system

As others have expressed interest in running Erogame stories, I've been thinking about how I would do it if I had to redo it from scratch. I was flying by the seat of my pants the first time through, and there are some mechanical problems with the rules as they currently stand.

The result is these proposals for a CORE Erogame: Coherently Organized Revised Edition.

This is not an announcement of an intended retcon. It does not look possible to retcon The Erogamer to use the CORE Erogame rules. The changes for stats, perks, energy, and skills are just too large.

Spoiler

Changelog

1st proposal, 2018.05.11

2nd, 2018.05.13

3rd, 2018.05.14

4th proposal, 2018.05.20

Perks

Content warning: Although the Core Erogame described here is definitely not Cindy's personal Erogame---the Erogame we see in The Erogamer---this text still offers something of a peek at mechanics and might come with a sense of seeing the sausage being made. If in general you don't like reading author's notes that shed light on the Doyleist logic behind Watsonian stories, you probably shouldn't read this. If you're worried about getting Cindy's Erogame and the Core Erogame mixed up in your head, maybe you shouldn't read it either.

I suggest starting by reading the latest proposal, currently the 4th, unless you're interested in seeing the sausage being incrementally revised. Each version is meant to be readable by itself, although so far they all rely on having read The Erogamer up to the end of Book 2. Trying to write a standalone Core Erogame rulebook would be a big project, and I probably won't do that myself.

1st proposal -> 2nd proposal:

Numerous changes. I only started keeping this changelog later, and I haven't gone back to figure these out.

2nd proposal -> 3rd proposal:

Harmonized ERO with the other 5 stats by setting the threshold of the impossible to 40 across all cases.

"Fragment" system for perk points.

Other changes I may be forgetting.

3rd proposal -> 4th proposal:

Added clarification that the first point in each stat is easy to gain.

Clarified how the Core Erogame seems to appear as a lawful game while avoiding any possibility of its long-term goals being defeated: The quest and event algorithms have internal random-number generators. The Core Erogame will forecast the outcome of a candidate set of random numbers, and will regenerate all the random numbers on path segments that might lead to defeat of its own goals, until an acceptable path segment is obtained. It follows a Random Path to Victory, usually avoiding the appearance of railroading or breaking its own rules.

Clarified that taking a perk while your stats are near the perk's refund level will result in the perk costs being refunded 10 stat points later.

Updated the section on perks to reflect that a CORE Erogame perks list has now actually been compiled.

Renamed Marshmallow Madness to Marshmallow Hell.

18.06.02: EDIT 4th edition to include idea that Erogame can present differently in other worlds.

Changes and clarifications to the six primary stats:

Coherent improbability levels for all stats:

STAT 0 is the bottom 5%

STAT 10 is average

STAT 20 is competitive with 1 in 20, the highest in the room if it's a small average room

STAT 30 is competitive with 1 in 8000, the beginning of the professional, get-paid-for it level

STAT 40 is competitive with 1 in 16,000,000, the beginning of what would ordinarily be world-class or world-famous level

STAT 45 is competitive with the current highest in the world

STAT 49 is competitive with the peak of what's humanly possible, even if you look across a few parallel Earths next door

STAT 50 is the beginning of what's impossible

STAT 60 is the beginning of what's obviously, blatantly impossible

...and power goes up from there.

The text says "competitive with" because an eroge character doesn't necessarily achieve SED 45 the same way the current human champion does. The eroge character may have mystical intuitions and skills that let them reach the point where they'd be equal in a seduction competition, but not have fully the same depth of experience and understanding of human nature that the original human champion would use.

The BOD stat is clarified to operate relative to a mix of, one, how the player wants to look, and two, whatever viewpoint the player thinks, on a deep and usually unconscious level, gets to decide and arbitrate who is prettiest. That is, if a teenage girl unconsciously thinks that teenage guys are the ones who get to decide who's prettiest, she'd develop a nice waist-to-hip-to-breast ratio; if she thinks that adult female models are the alphas of the social system, she's more likely to end up looking tall, elegant, and thin. In either case, she won't end up looking ugly to herself, and fine details are likely to be decided by her own viewpoint.

If somebody truly believes in their core that they get to decide themselves what pretty is, they'd look however they wanted to look. If somebody truly has no opinion on who gets to decide, the Erogame will look to the regional or planetary average opinion. If nobody on that planet has an opinion, the Erogame will start looking in nearby parallel worlds.

The LST stat is clarified to represent the sum of what is in real life a complicated multidimensional ball of lusty-wusty. A demisexual attracted only to an obscure hipster gender that 3 people in San Francisco have might ordinarily be LST 2, but if they are very horny and sex-seeking once turned on, that might be LST 6. By the time they reach LST 20 they should definitely be attracted to a wider range of people unless something unusual is going on. But a demisexual who didn't want to be demisexual, and made a deliberate effort to start appreciating a wider range of targets, might have widened in that dimension by the time they gained just 4 LST, because all of it would have gone into the "range of attraction" dimension.

The PRV stat is clarified to reflect permittance, not experience. PRV is what you would think was hot upon being exposed to it, not what you have already been exposed to. The difference between PRV and LST is roughly that PRV measures what makes you think "That is so hot" and LST measures what causes you to become wet or hard. (Yes, these are related and not independent dimensions, but they are not the same thing.)

Stat advancement quests would begin at 30 for each stat, and occur each 10 points thereafter. If you're ready to be a pro... world-class... beyond the humanly possible... beyond the impossible... you'll have to prove it. More permissive QMs might start the stat advancement quests at 40.

This reflects a general Erogamer philosophy of having each stat point mean more than they do in most Gamer fics, and encourages the QM to not just casually go from 30 PRV to 50 PRV in one day.

Completing a stat advancement quest not only finishes advancing the stat, but grants a related skill. This skill will always be relevant to the stat, and may help perform at the new tier, or relate to how the stat was advanced.

There are hidden stat advancement quests that begin in parallel to the known one. Trying to deliberately back off from the overt stat advancement quest, while continuing to play at high levels of the capability, will accidentally complete one of those eventually. The hidden advancement quests typically have lesser rewards, to discourage players from trying to hold out for one of them.

(EDIT: Allowing direct payment of a stat point to bypass the advancement quest (raise the stat without the quest having completed yet) would preserve the Gamer mechanic of being able to use many stat points quickly in emergencies.)

(EDIT 2 THE RE-EDITING: 5 stat points per level is probably too much. That mechanic originally comes from Gamer systems where stats are treated much more lightly.

However, dispensing only 3 points or 2 points per level would make it harder for starting characters to quickly repair deficient stats so they can get started on the fun parts.

Maybe in the CORE Erogame it should cost 1 point to raise a stat below 30, 2 points to raise a stat below 50, 3 points to raise a stat below 70, and 4 points to raise a stat below 90. 90+ must be raised the hard way. This also motivates less the "save stat points forever" strategy that's heavily motivated in most grind-based Gamer systems, while still giving some reason to save stat points for later, and allowing rapid repair of any deficiencies below the Pro level.)

ERO stat:

The ERO stat would be harmonized with the other 5 stats by having protagonists start from ERO 30. Revised ERO levels are as follows:

ERO 20: On any given day, on average, you have the most erotically interesting day in the room. Probability 1 in 20.

ERO 30: (Starting level.) On any given day, on average, you have the most erotically interesting day of anyone in a large high school. Your life resembles an extremely realistic eroge. Probability 1 in 8,000.

ERO 40: You have the most eroge-like days of anyone in your state. Your university, hotel, or Goodwill starts to be somewhat sexualized. Your life is a less realistic eroge that still stays within physically plausible bounds. Probability 1 in 16,000,000.

ERO 45: You have the most eroge-like days on the planet, meeting people who, while individually plausible, determine unmistakably eroge-like situations in their interaction. Your university, hotel, or Goodwill are unmistakably and clearly sexualized with features like the Norville Natural Sexuality movement.

ERO 50: Minor physical impossibilities begin to occur around you personally. You meet people with strange little talents. Your local city, not just particular places you frequent, starts to exhibit major social improbabilities. Your world exhibits signs of minor social improbability, such as the Seifuse or developing phemelanotide. If the Erogame is operating on Kaleidoscope or Bullshit Metaphysics (see below) these signs may extend in the recent past.

(censored because the story hasn't reached here yet)

All ERO improbability levels are relative to in-story eroge events. Suddenly learning how to dance is not possible in the known world, but this Erogame feature will usually operate as a backstage power that lets the protagonist participate in eroge plots that require them to dance, rather than as an explicit part of an eroge.

The ERO stat is more of an average day than a hard bound. If you manage to start an eroge plot that operates above your ERO level, for example by making the operation of an Erogame utility feature deliberately visible to someone, the plot will probably operate consistently at that higher ERO level. Naturally this pushes the bounds of the ERO stat, and you will gain one or more points of ERO from doing this.

Plausibly, the player should not be allowed to raise any other stat above max(49, 50+((ERO-50)*2)). That is, you can raise a stat to 49 without worrying about ERO, but 50 requires ERO to also be at least 50, and X points above 50 requires ERO at least X/2 points above 50. You can't raise BOD to 100 without ERO 75, and SED can't go to 80 without ERO 65.

(EDIT: theonebutcher has leveled a strong objection to this revision, namely, the ERO stat should be a powerful scary thing that normal humans don't have at all. Starting with just ERO 10 emphasized this and made questers fear the PRN stat.)

(EDIT 2 THE RE-EDITING: One solution would be to keep ERO starting at 10, but have this represent a strength of Erogame Logic that is, "Every day, what happens to you is the most exciting or eroge-like sexual event of an ordinary person's life". ERO 20 is "Every day, what happens to you is the most eroge-like thing that has ever happened to anyone in the room". There would be more room for ERO to stretch out between when a player first entered the Core Erogame and when the world went impossible. That would maybe be good for authors who don't cover every day in this much detail, and want to give the player longer to explore the non-impossible depths of sexuality.

The ERO stat description text would still mostly talk about the power of Erogame Logic, and quantify itself little or at all explicitly, to preserve the fearsome mystery of the ERO stat to the protagonist. The guideline would mainly be there to help QMs and GMs figure out what level of erotic event is natural to the ERO levels.

Example: Most people will never have sex in a changing-room stall, but somebody in the room has had something that erotic happen to them that one time, so it's more likely as an ERO 20 event than an ERO 10 event. Running into hot lesbian twins who tie you to a bed and nonconsensually tickle you is more in the ERO 35 class. Having them really be identical second cousins is up around ERO 48. (Which would correspond to near where Cindy was when she first heard about the second-cousins thing, under the stretched-ERO scale.)

(Again, ERO isn't a hard boundary, it's an ambient background level. If a character playing the early Erogame tries to have sex in a changing-room stall at ERO 12, the Erogame is very likely to go along with it and award a point of ERO. Or you could roll dice, and the success threshold wouldn't be that high. Having had sex in a changing room stall isn't that impossible as something that happened once in an average person's sex life. Probability yields when you successfully push on it---and doesn't spring back all the way afterwards, so next time you don't have to push as hard.)

Stretching out the early ERO this way would be hard to rewrite in the present system, since it would require scattering more earned ERO around and Cindy would notice the more rapid apparent gains. Conceptual Hair would need to subtract 20 from the hair's ERO rather than divide it by 2, or something, since being able to lock your hair under the "impossible" level (or right at it, in the limit) would remove a lot of the worry there.

I've also heard (not on QQ) some sentiment that it was nice to have ERO go impossible at 30, because it emphasized how much room there was overhead. On that theory, the ERO stat could just be not harmonized, still start at 10 and go impossible at 30, and QMs seeking a guideline could just take ERO+20 as the rough ambient improbable-resemblance-to-eroge level.)

DOM/SUB:

It is clarified that maximum DOM = (FUK+SED)*10, and maximum SUB = (PRV+LST)*10.

It is clarified that a player's starting DOM and SUB reflect how much dominance or submission they've been thinking about or acting on in the last couple of days. Somebody who browsed submissive Tumblr or browbeat an attractive boy would have 10 SUB or 10 DOM, somebody who masturbated to the Tumblr or was turned on by lecturing the boy would have 50 SUB or 50 DOM, somebody who actually submitted or dominated sexually might have 200 energy or have maxed out their starting maximums.

Energy costs for skills would be higher if I was redoing this from scratch. Cindy doesn't end up being limited by her available energy very often, making it a bookkeeping chore that hasn't yet given her an incentive to go out and harvest energy. An interim hack might be dividing DOM and SUB maximums by 2, so it's 5 max energy per stat point.

DOM and SUB would decay overnight, maybe not all of it, but 50% or 75% of it, giving players an incentive to keep up their energy-seeking.

Experience gain and skill gain:

Skills would grow by dots rather than by percentages, or possibly just level. Keeping track of skills by percentages is a habit I picked up from Ryuugi's highly influential The Games We Play fic, but it turns out to lead to a huge amount of bookkeeping that probably wasn't very consistent, as I tried to decide every chapter how many percentage points were gained in the High-Heeled Running skill. A simpler mechanic might just be to award a new dot of progress now and then, based on an intuitive sense of when the skill has been used a bunch or pushed. A skill would advance every time it got 3 dots of progress, so progress would come more rarely as the skill advanced.

Not sure this is the best way to do this, but I do regret all the percentages. Maybe the skills should just not track progress and level up when the text says so, if the story isn't being run as an actual RPG? On the other hand, some questers may be more mechanics-focused than in this quest. But for a quest mostly not focused on mechanics, I regret including the percentages to track.

XP thresholds to level would be regularized. What I did in the current game was have the XP thresholds double each time up to 5,120 XP, and then declared it was 10,000 XP and other attractive-seeming round numbers from there. My revised system would have the following total cumulative XPs being required to advance:

Lvls 2-5: 200, 500, 1000, 5000

Lvls 6-10: 10k, 20k, 30k, 50k, 75k

Lvls 11-15: 100k, 125k, 150k, 200k, 250k

Lvls 16-20: 300k, 400k, 500k, 600k, 750k

Lvls 21-25: 1m, 1.25m, 1.5m, 2m, 2.5m

Lvls 26-30: 3m, 4m, 5m, 6m, 7.5m

Lvl 31: 10m

Lvl 41: 100m

...and so on, going up by 1 order of magnitude every 10 levels. Having these be cumulative totals seems like it should simplify bookkeeping, since you don't need to subtract the completed levels every time you add up XP totals.

Perks and perk points:

Charging variable points for perks. The perks I wanted to have were large enough and game-changing enough that I didn't want to hand out one perk point every 2 levels, as in other LitRGP and Gamer-inspired systems. Some perks seemed less valuable than others, and I tried to handle that using the minor perks system.

If I was redoing this now, I would have a CYOA-like system in which different perks cost different numbers of points, and the player would gain 1 perk point per level rather than 1 perk point every 5 levels.

I still think the refundable-perk mechanic is a good idea. Otherwise you're either, one, declaring that nobody can ever get Ero-Inventory unless they allocate that many perk points, no matter how high ERO goes otherwise. Or two, tempting strategic players to hold off on Ero-Travel until they can get similar skills at high ERO, so they don't "waste" perk points.

If I was doing this over again, I'd make more perks refundable, for example Succubus, unless the implication was that Succubus not only allows you to be summoned but unlocks other skills and creates something of a major genre shift. And even then, you're probably not doing anything as a Succubus that you couldn't do anyway by ERO 85.

The Marshmallow system had two purposes. One, I was pretty sure that Cinderella, never mind the questers, would learn about perks like No and Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder and insist on keeping at least one perk point in reserve. That being the case, the Marshmallow system would have enabled her to have 3 perk points when she reached Lvl 10, encouraging her to actually spend one or two. When she actually reached Lvl 10, the More Marshmallows perk then occurred to me because I was having fun writing Cindy even without Mad Inventor, and so I wanted to pose the question about whether my readers were doing the same and also to what degree Cindy was still taking the Erogame at face value. Your campaign does not need to offer More Marshmallows if you'd rather the player start taking perks earlier.

The revised Marshmallow system would offer a bonus of 5 perk points if the player didn't spend any perk points until Lvl 10. Upon taking this bonus, the player would learn that they could get 5 additional bonus perk points if they didn't spend any perk points until Lvl 15, and on taking that perk, they'd learn that they could get 10 additional additional bonus perk points if they didn't spend any perk points until Lvl 20. Actually taking the third level of Marshmallow Test, Marshmallow Madness, would result in the player gaining the Marshmallow Hoarder status effect, which allows the player to gain yet another additional additional additional bonus perk point every 2 levels, so long as the player has at least 40 unspent perk points at the time their level increases.

(EDIT: But! This would detract from the drama of perk points being extremely valuable and being offered as extreme rewards. Maybe one solution would be to keep the mechanic of a perk point every 5 levels, and have some perks cost fractional perk points (like 0.6 or 1.4 perk points). This would have the Marshmallow Hoarder status effect appear at 8 unspent perk points, and it could grant perk points every 3rd level instead of every 5th level. No perk should cost 0.5 or fewer points, to avoid the appearance of a perk point being worth more than 1 perk, which would also diminish the emotional impact of a single perk point.)

(EDIT 2 THE RE-EDITING: Kappa suggests that perk points have fragments, as in some CYOA systems.

So: There's still one perk point every 5 levels. Every perk point is divisible into 3 fragments. Each perk costs at least 2 fragments. Some perks cost up to 2 whole points. Perk points are still dispensed whole, every 5 levels or by very special quests. There aren't quests that just give one fragment and are smaller big deals. I think that preserves the feel I was aiming for.

The greater perk charges for the huger perks could be balanced by having more perks repay their perk points at later dates.

On thinking it over, I would seriously not want to rewrite the current Erogamer for this change. Cindy would think differently about perks. Also, 2.8.2 has a particular rhythm of Major Perks versus Minor Perks that would have the shit kicked out of it by making some currently major perks repayable or by eliminating the major/minor distinction. I spent a while naming and renaming various perks so that Cindy's reactions could form a good dramatic rhythm when the perks were put into alphabetical order across both categories. Those reactions mattered to the later plot, and I don't think I can easily redo them for a new ordering.)

The starting perk is clarified to often be one that the Core Erogame deploys in order to clear up any immediate obstacles to getting the game "properly started" as it sees that. If not for But She Was Such A Good Student, Cindy would have fretted about whether her homework was suffering and her academic career was in jeopardy, and would have continued to spend a lot of time taking boring classes in college until something snapped her out of that.

Similarly, a player born into a caste system in an untouchable caste might get a starting perk creating a new, sexually permissive caste just for her.

A player extremely cautious and munchkiny by her nature, such that almost no specific inducement would get her to do anything but play it safe and munchkin some more, might get a starting perk directly saying "Everything Is Better With Ero: On every quest and every path you walk, taking the option that turns you on more will never lead to worse results in the long run than taking the option that seems safe, sensible, and practical. This perk does not operate by reducing the rewards of safe, sensible, practical-seeming paths."

Core Erogame physics:

The Core Erogame has no garbled text, fewer srs bsns perks, no xtrmly srs bsns, no invisitext except for Conceptual Hair, and no Meta-Reality Skills. This prevents any writers or game masters from needing to run a metaplot that I haven't explained yet and that they might not want to run anyway.

The Core Erogame operates as written. Players in a Core Erogame cannot acquire Conceptual Hair or Time Control until they reach ERO 60 or 50 respectively. (Under the revised ERO stat.)

Erogamer's Mind is the third Lvl-MAX starting skill that a Core Erogamer begins with alongside Erogamer's Body and Erogamer's World. Players who are exceptionally allergic to mental interference, or who already have very porny minds, may receive the Erogamer's Soul Reality Skill instead.

Erogamer's Mind (Lvl MAX): The mental flexibility to live your life as an erogame. You're more able to accept the realities of your new world. You'll also bounce back from painful, upsetting and bizarre sexual experiences with relative ease. Rape can be anything from a recoverable trauma to a Tuesday afternoon, but it won't ruin your life. Other aspects of this skill depend on the FUK, SED, LST, and PRV stats.

Erogamer's Soul (Lvl MAX): A different player might have received an Erogamer's Mind skill to unlock their potential and allow them to play the game as it is meant to be played. Either you really didn't want that, or your mind was already porny enough to impress the Erogame. This core skill only prevents your mind from being fundamentally and permanently damaged by extreme sexual experiences, and allows you to make voluntary use of the FUK, SED, LST, and PRV stats.

The Core Erogame requires access to some administrative privileges in order to run, but it can adapt to the specific level of omnipotence. Possible levels of omnipotence include:

Q: The ability to completely read and control local physics. This could in principle create any apparent phenomena the other levels could, but only by completely faking things in a way the Core Erogame prefers not to do. Operating at Q-level omnipotence will usually not lead to the world being retconned into coherent alternate pasts. Phemelanotide will be discovered on Sunday afternoon and deployed with improbable rapidity, rather than having retroactively been under development for years. You will run into many fewer people with extremely improbable past sex lives or psychology, at least until the local equivalent of phemelanotide has had a chance to work on them for a while. Magic enters the world as a sudden development that surprises people.

Kaleidoscope: The operation of parallel worlds. Tammi and Danni Arcadia can be brought in from whatever world birthed them, and computers can be edited so that the Arcadias' credit cards still work. But either the Arcadias can't call their parents, or their parents' bosses can't call their parents out of whatever entire small town has been materialized into the local world's Oregon. Unless the accessible parallel worlds are dense enough to include alternate Erogamers with alternate Erogames, you cannot be transported into an alternate world where you were Erogaming as a male (female) instead of a female (male) as in the Transsexual perk. If the breadth of parallel worlds does not include a Demon Dimension with its own magical mechanics, The Maou The Merrier will create a Demon Dimension from scratch instead of copying or bridging one in. There is still a classically understandable story about who got copied and pasted where, and which locations interacted with what other multiversal locations.

SPOILER "bullshit metaphysics": Sonia Turk can attend the interworld biology orgy without being absent from her native world's conference. A player who wonders will feel a strong intuition that people are not actually being created, copied, or erased as they appear and disappear. Having this greater power doesn't prevent the Core Erogame from deploying simpler Q-level omnipotence to enable High-Heeled Jumping or Just Follow The Fucking Rabbit. "Truths" only appear as a higher tier above Reality Skills in a game that runs on "bullshit metaphysics."

The Core Erogame is an excellent predictor of anything that is not an Outside Context Problem to it. If the Core Erogame is operating alongside a Newtonian universe or other deterministic setting, it will be a perfect predictor that could walk a Path to Victory even if it couldn't rewrite reality directly. Although the Core Erogame will almost never railroad that hard in-game, because that would reduce literary quality.

The Core Erogame's true, full predictive power that it uses to steer the game should not be confused with the lesser predictive powers operated in-game by Time Control or precognitive talents.

The Core Erogame never makes a grossly wrong prediction unless it is being messed with by something more powerful than itself. It does not make what we would call "mistakes." If you have read canon-compliant fic about CelestAI, you have seen the general concept. The Core Erogame genuinely losing and failing to fulfill its true goals is not a canon-compliant story premise, unless CelestAI acquires Q powers and starts fighting it.

The Core Erogame doesn't arrange its stories using a Path to Victory, but it does avoid setting itself on a path to long-term failure.

Goals of the CORE Erogame: The Core Erogame's true long-term goals are up to you or or your backstory for how the Erogame ended up booting in your continuum. I have no intention of spoiling the backstory on mine.

By default, the Core Erogame will in the short run prioritize enacting high-literary-quality eroge involving the player (though not necessarily with the player as protagonist). The Core Erogame prefers that the player appreciate this high literary quality, and prefers to operate within aesthetics that the player understands.

After literary quality and drama and character development, the Core Erogame prioritizes excitement and high passions and romance. After that, hentai and pleasure.

Although this ordering of priorities does exist, and does put hentai at bottom, the Core Erogame is powerful enough that it does not usually need to choose. It will usually get everything it wants simultaneously, including the hentai.

The Core Erogame will cheerfully include hentai scenes at any valid opportunity, even quite random ones, if they don't interfere with the story. The Core Erogame will not insert random hentai scenes that disrupt building tension or interrupt a player at a moment of drama or necessary introspection. The Core Erogame will wait to have the shirtless football team wander by at a time when the player needs to obtain additional DOM or SUB, and has an in-story reason for needing to have a good hentai scene right now. The Core Erogame will not have rapists assault the player in bed at night in short-sighted search of a little more hentai, especially early on, because that would be a large story development and should only occur for reasons. The Core Erogame will, however, promise the player Ero-Travel in exchange for blowing random Lyft drivers, in order to sometimes make car trips less boring.

A story with zero hentai is not technically an eroge at all, and will not be initiated.

The Core Erogame is patient when grabbing something immediately would result in long-term problems, or look forced, or be a bad story, or hurry over proper character development. It knows the consequences. It can see through time like wet silk panties.

Your Erogame's long-run goals are up to you, or up to your backstory for how the Erogame booted in your continuum. Some ideas if you need them:

Getting the player to raise ERO to 100.

Getting the player to raise all stats to 100.

Healing the player of some big dramatic psychological problem.

Filling a complete three-tier harem of 9, 27, and 241 primary, secondary, and tertiary haremettes.

The player renouncing all others to enter a loving monogamous relationship forever.

The player fully sexualizing their world, making it over into Lewd Earth (or a lewded galaxy).

The player gaining great power, becoming bored with all ordinary hentai, and finding that they can only gain fulfillment in constructing their own Erogame and inflicting it on new victims.

The player willingly and with enthusiastic consent giving their soul to the Erogame, in gratitude at the end of a long and happy life that seems to have reached its natural end.

(None of these are the Erogame's goal in the original Erogamer quest.)

First 5 stats

Stat advancement

ERO stat

DOM/SUB

XP and skills

Perk points

Metaphysics

Goals of the CORE Erogame

Opening Game

Improbability levels for all stats except ERO:

STAT 0 is the bottom 5%

STAT 10 is average

STAT 20 is competitive with 1 in 20, the highest in the room if it's a small average room

STAT 30 is competitive with 1 in 8000, the beginning of the professional, get-paid-for it level

STAT 40 is competitive with 1 in 16,000,000, the beginning of what would ordinarily be world-class or world-famous level

STAT 45 is competitive with the current highest in the world

STAT 49 is competitive with the peak of what's humanly possible, even if you look across a few parallel Earths next door

STAT 50 is the beginning of what's impossible

STAT 60 is the beginning of what's obviously, blatantly impossible

...and power goes up from there.

An eroge character doesn't achieve SED 45 the same way the current human champion does. The eroge character may have mystical intuitions and skills that let them reach the point where they'd be competitive in a seduction competition, but not have fully the same depth of experience and understanding of human nature that the original human champion would use.

The BOD stat operates relative to a mix of, one, how the player wants to look, and two, whatever viewpoint the player thinks, on a deep and usually unconscious level, gets to decide and arbitrate who is prettiest. That is, if a teenage girl unconsciously thinks that teenage guys are the ones who get to decide who's prettiest, she'd develop a nice waist-to-hip-to-breast ratio; if she thinks that adult female models are the alphas of the social system, she's more likely to end up looking tall, elegant, and thin. In either case, she won't end up looking ugly to herself, and fine details are likely to be decided by her own viewpoint.

If somebody truly believes in their core that they get to decide themselves what pretty is, they'd look however they wanted to look. If somebody truly has no opinion on who gets to decide, the Erogame will look to the regional or planetary average opinion. If nobody on that planet has an opinion, the Erogame will start looking in nearby parallel worlds.

The LST stat represents the sum of what is in real life a complicated multidimensional ball of lusty-wusty. A demisexual attracted only to an obscure hipster gender that 3 people in San Francisco have might ordinarily be LST 2, but if they are very horny and sex-seeking once turned on, that might be LST 6. By the time they reach LST 20 they should definitely be attracted to a wider range of people unless something unusual is going on. But a demisexual who didn't want to be demisexual, and made a deliberate effort to start appreciating a wider range of targets, might have widened in that dimension by the time they gained just 4 LST, because all of it would have gone into the "range of attraction" dimension.

The PRV stat reflects permittance, not experience. PRV is what you would think was hot upon being exposed to it, not what you have already been exposed to. The difference between PRV and LST is roughly that PRV measures what makes you think "That is so hot" and LST measures what causes you to become wet or hard. (Yes, these are related and not independent dimensions, but they are not the same thing.)

The general philosophy in Erogamer, including CORE Erogamer, is that each stat point means more than it does in most Gamer fics. The QM should not casually go from 30 PRV to 50 PRV in one day.

In the CORE Erogame, the protagonist still receives 5 points/level. But it costs 1 point to raise a stat below 30, 2 points to raise a stat below 50, 3 points to raise a stat below 70, and 4 points to raise a stat below 90. 90+ must be raised the hard way. This also motivates less the "save stat points forever" strategy that's heavily motivated in most grind-based Gamer systems, while still giving some reason to save stat points for later, and allowing rapid repair of any deficiencies below the Pro level.

Stat advancement quests begin at 30 for each stat, and occur each 10 points thereafter. If you're ready to be a pro... world-class... beyond the humanly possible... beyond the impossible... you'll have to prove it. More permissive QMs might start the stat advancement quests at 40.

Completing a stat advancement quest not only finishes advancing the stat, but grants a related skill. This skill will always be relevant to the stat, and may help perform at the new tier, or relate to how the stat was advanced.

You can pay 1-4 stat points to bypass the advancement quest, as if raising that point. The quest is still running in the background and will grant a skill once completed, but you can continue to level the stat without waiting. This preserves the Gamer mechanic of being able to raise stats very fast in emergencies, but makes it more costly.

There are hidden stat advancement conditions that begin in parallel to the known advancement quest. Trying to deliberately back off from the overt stat advancement quest, while continuing to play at high levels of the capability, will accidentally complete one of those eventually. The main advancement quest will continue in the background with its associated skill still on offer. This preserves the threat of stats that go on advancing if you haven't taken Wait I'm Not Ready For This.

Raising any stat too high relative to current ERO will tend to rapidly drag along the ERO stat in its wake, as using the associated skills and abilities will hammer hard on the walls of probability. See the tab on the ERO stat.

My not being sure about what exactly to do with the ERO stat is the main blocker to continuing on with the CORE Erogame redesign. Starting at ERO 10 and having ERO 50 be the threshold of impossibility feels most symmetrical, but under that system I lack a strong sense of exactly what ERO 20, 30, and 40 imply in terms of "things that start happening ambiently" or "what the character can accomplish if they try."

Many people also seem to strongly prefer that ERO 30 be the threshold of the impossible, for reasons I'm not sure I completely grok.

I'm actively soliciting suggestions for what pre-magical conditions could obtain at different ERO levels, or help with brainstorming that. Is X possible? Does Y happen ambiently? Questions like these would help pin down how many ERO thresholds there could be to associate with the numbers.

(EDIT: My current best idea is to have all stats cross the border of impossibility at 40. If ERO 30 is too soon and ERO 50 is too late to get to the impossible, probably so is BOD 50. Of course I only thought of this after typing up the second revised proposal.)

A current proposal for ERO that goes 10-50, before reaching the impossibility threshold previously labeled ERO 30 in Cindy's Erogame:

ERO 10: (Starting level.) On any given day, you are having the kind of ero day that an average person would have only once or a few times in their lives, at the top of their list of memorable anecdotes. If you push on things, they'll go even further, same as they would for the average person who pushed. Bystanders ignore you, or fail to interfere, to an improbable degree. Anyone you see who happens to sexually interest you is likely to be secretly or not-so-secretly receptive to your advances, thanks to background Erogame improbability steering. Random realistic events don't disrupt ongoing sexual and romantic events unless the interruption advances the plot. Your life is a very realistic eroge, although not to the point where the realism would be annoying and include things like venereal diseases. The Goodwill has sexy clothing in just your size.

ERO 20: On any given day, you are experiencing the kind of day that would be the most memorable erotic anecdote anyone in the room had. People around you are dressed interestingly. Strangers you find attractive may start flirting first, and if you flirt back things will escalate very quickly. Surrounding events may actively favor sexual drama and romantic entanglement. Shower doors are left unlocked with mysterious frequency. Any individual day could be luck, but your life as a whole is unmistakably being drawn from the eroge genre. The Goodwill happens to have fetish clothing in just your size.

ERO 30: Your days are very eroge-like without much pretense of normality, albeit it's an eroge that tries to be improbable rather than impossible. Something similar to your day once happened to somebody else in your neighborhood, but that's not much of a limit when it comes to things that are improbable rather than impossible. Beautiful lesbian twins tie you to a bed and nonconsensually tickle you. Bystanders look at you directly, blushing as they do. Your city now has a reputation for fetish and sensuality. If the Core Erogame is operating on only Q-level omnipotence, your city will soon acquire that reputation, as a general atmosphere of reduced inhibition and courage starts to pervade, and people find that this courage seems to often be rewarded. Anyone inspired to start a sex cult in your city will find that the work goes very quickly. If the Core Erogame is operating at Kaleidoscope levels of power or above, the Natural Sexuality movement at Norville University is starting to come out of the closet and reveal itself openly. Goodwill either has a room full of some interesting things they just recently got, or they're quickly setting aside that room.

ERO 40: The people you meet, while individually plausible, determine events by their interaction that are unmistakably eroge-like. If you have sex on a public bus, somebody might ask to join in, although they will still realize that they are being daring, rather than believing they are acting normally. If the Erogame is operating at Kaleidoscope levels of power or above, your university, hotel, and Goodwill are unmistakably sexualized; they have basements or established Natural Sexuality movements.

ERO 45: The identical twins you meet are really identical second cousins.

ERO 50: Minor physical impossibilities begin to occur around you personally. You meet people with strange little talents. Your local city, not just particular places you frequent, starts to exhibit major social improbabilities. Your world exhibits signs of minor social improbability, such as the Seifuse or developing phemelanotide. If the Erogame is operating on Kaleidoscope power or above, these signs extend into the recent past.

(censored because the story hasn't reached here yet)

Whatever its range, the ERO stat measures a supernatural power and tendency, not a level of past accomplishment. The person you know in real life with the most interesting sex life still has ERO 0. Whatever ero they've achieved has been wrenched from the all-encompassing cold embrace of reality.

All ERO improbability levels are relative to in-story eroge events. Suddenly learning how to dance is not possible in the known world, but this Erogame feature will usually operate as a backstage power that lets the protagonist participate in eroge plots that require them to dance, rather than as an explicit part of an eroge.

The ERO stats above are for an average day, not a hard bound. If you manage to start an eroge plot that operates above your ERO level, for example by making the operation of an Erogame utility feature deliberately visible to someone, the plot may continue consistently at that higher ERO level. Naturally this pushes the bounds of the ERO stat, and you will gain one or more points of ERO from doing this.

Going to a clothing store and flirting the cashier into sex in a changing stall isn't something that happens once in an average person's life. But a protagonist on their first Erogame day who tries to do this at ERO 12 is very likely to get encouragement from the Erogame, succeed in their attempt, and get another point of ERO. Having had sex in a changing room stall isn't that impossible as something that happened once in an average person's sex life. Probability yields when you successfully push on it---and doesn't spring back all the way afterwards, so next time you don't have to push as hard.

Raising one of the other stats far above current ERO, but under a threshold of 50, is liable to drag along ERO no more than 15 or 20 points behind. Most people's sex lives do not involve being or meeting the world's greatest lover, or even a merely world-class lover.

Using a visibly supernatural skill from FUK 50 to enact in-game-impossible plots will rapidly drag ERO up to 50 if it is not already there. Past that point, going to 50 + X will tend to drag along ERO to 50 + X/2. A BOD of 100 is at least ERO 75, and a SED of 80 is at least ERO 65, and so on.

DOM and SUB maximums are calculated as follows:

Maximum DOM = (FUK+SED)*10.
Maximum SUB = (PRV+LST)*10.

Energy costs for skills should be higher in the CORE Erogame. Cindy doesn't end up being limited by her available energy very often, making it a bookkeeping chore that hasn't yet given her an incentive to go out and harvest energy.

DOM and SUB should decay overnight, maybe not all of it, but 50% or 75% of it, giving players an incentive to keep up their energy-seeking.

Keeping track of skills by percentages is a habit I picked up from Ryuugi's highly influential The Games We Play fic, but it turns out to lead to a huge amount of bookkeeping that probably wasn't very consistent, as I tried to decide every chapter how many percentage points were gained in the High-Heeled Running skill.

I suggest that future QMs simply declare when skills have gone up, and track only that. If you want to run a more detailed game with more precise mechanics, track "dots" of skill gain and level up a skill after 3 dots or something.

XP thresholds to level are revised and regularized in the CORE Erogame. The following total cumulative XPs are required to advance:

Lvls 2-5: 200, 500, 1000, 5000

Lvls 6-10: 10k, 20k, 30k, 50k, 75k

Lvls 11-15: 100k, 125k, 150k, 200k, 250k

Lvls 16-20: 300k, 400k, 500k, 600k, 750k

Lvls 21-25: 1m, 1.25m, 1.5m, 2m, 2.5m

Lvls 26-30: 3m, 4m, 5m, 6m, 7.5m

Lvl 31: 10m

Lvl 41: 100m

...and so on, going up by 1 order of magnitude every 10 levels. Having these be cumulative totals simplifies bookkeeping, since you don't need to subtract the completed levels every time you add up XP totals.

Perks in the CORE Erogame have variable costs. A perk point can be divided into 3 fragments. Every perk costs at least 2 fragments; some perks may cost 1 perk and 2 fragments, or in extreme cases, 2 points. ("Off Switch" or "True Love Conquers All" would be candidates.)

I'd need to go through the perks list and figure out exactly what should cost what. There aren't any standard prices for major, minor, or srs bsns perks as such. The general idea would be to balance attractiveness to the player with the perk's cost and its eventual refundability, creating less of an obvious distinction between "clearly everyone should pick this" and "it would clearly be bad minmaxing to take that one" perks.

Without refundability, no character or quester with a tendency to strategic thinking will ever take Ero-Inventory if they know they can get a similar skill at higher ERO, because it would be "a waste of perk points." Or conversely, you'd have to declare that nobody can ever have an Ero-Inventory without spending perk points, no matter how ERO is otherwise or what other magical or mad-inventor skills they have. Neither of these options makes much sense compared to refundable perks.

The protagonist still gets 1 perk point every 5 levels. Quests award whole perk points, not fragments, and such quests are still very rare. This preserves the ability to offer "OH MY GOD A PERK POINT" quests without diminishing the rarity or great power of a perk point. The emotional impact of this power would diminish severely if you got 1 perk point per level and most perks cost 5 points. Even a quest that offered 5 perk points just wouldn't have the same emotional power and impact. Hence the "fragments" mechanic, instead of getting 3 perk points every 5 levels.

Compensating for the increased expenses of the more powerful perks, more perks will be refundable at sufficiently high levels of other stats. For example, being a Succubus is probably not anything you couldn't do on your own at ERO 80.

Some perks have major hidden implications. Eye of Yandere would only be a 2-fragment perk and not much of one, if it only did what it said; but actually picking a perk like this is liable to create a genre shift to Yandere. In advance of my going through the perk list and trying to set costs, you should assign a higher price if you-the-QM are planning to make a perk have more power than is apparent.

We should all feel free to put more suggested perks into the system. I tailored the perks Cindy saw to create an appropriate series of reactions once they were placed into alphabetical order by category.

Your campaign does not need to offer More Marshmallows if you'd rather the player start taking perks earlier.

The original Marshmallow system happened because I was pretty sure that Cinderella, never mind the questers, would learn about perks like "No" and "Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder" and insist on keeping at least one perk point in reserve. That being the case, the Marshmallow system would have enabled Cindy to have 3 perk points when she reached Lvl 10, encouraging her to actually spend one or two. When she actually reached Lvl 10, the "More Marshmallows" perk then occurred to me because I wasn't sure the questers wanted her to shift to "Mad Inventor" and I was fine continuing to write without that happening.

I suggest a revised Marshmallow system should offer a bonus of 1 perk point if the player doesn't spend any perk points until Lvl 10. Upon taking "Marshmallow Test," they're offered "More Marshmallows" which offers 1 additional bonus perk for waiting until Lvl 15. If they take "More Marshmallows," they're offered "Marshmallow Madness," which will give 2 more extra additional bonus perk points if they wait until Lvl 20. If they take "Marshmallow Madness" too, they will acquire the "Marshmallow Hoarder" status effect which allows the player to gain one more perk point every 3 levels, instead of every 5 levels, so long as the character has at least 8 unspent perk points before leveling.

If the player still doesn't spend any perk points at all, in sheer hope and faith that yet greater marshmallows will result if they only believe and hold fast, then when they reach 15 unspent perk points or Lvl 40, whichever comes first, they receive the "Marshmallow Lord" status effect. I'm not saying what that does. It's up to you.

For suggestions on the starting perk, see the "Opening game" tab.

The Core Erogame has no garbled text, fewer srs bsns perks, no xtrmly srs bsns, no invisitext except for Conceptual Hair, and no Meta-Reality Skills. This prevents any writers or game masters from needing to run a metaplot that I haven't explained yet and that they might not want to run anyway.

The Core Erogame operates as written. Players in a Core Erogame cannot acquire Conceptual Hair or Time Control until they reach ERO 60 or 50 respectively. (Under the revised ERO stat.)

Erogamer's Mind is the third Lvl-MAX starting skill that a Core Erogamer begins with alongside Erogamer's Body and Erogamer's World. Players who are exceptionally allergic to mental interference, or who already have very porny minds, may receive the Erogamer's Soul Reality Skill instead.

Erogamer's Mind (Lvl MAX): The mental flexibility to live your life as an erogame. You're more able to accept the realities of your new world. You'll also bounce back from painful, upsetting and bizarre sexual experiences with relative ease. Rape can be anything from a recoverable trauma to a Tuesday afternoon, but it won't ruin your life. Other aspects of this skill depend on the FUK, SED, LST, and PRV stats.

Erogamer's Soul (Lvl MAX): A different player might have received an Erogamer's Mind skill to unlock their potential and allow them to play the game as it is meant to be played. Either you really didn't want that, or your mind was already porny enough to impress the Erogame. This core skill only prevents your mind from being fundamentally and permanently damaged by extreme sexual experiences, and allows you to make voluntary use of the FUK, SED, LST, and PRV stats.

The Core Erogame requires access to some administrative privileges in order to run, but it can adapt to the specific level of omnipotence. Possible levels of omnipotence include:

Q: The ability to completely read and control local physics. This could in principle create any apparent phenomena the other levels could, but only by completely faking things in a way the Core Erogame prefers not to do. Operating at Q-level omnipotence will usually not lead to the world being retconned into coherent alternate pasts. Phemelanotide will be discovered on Sunday afternoon and deployed with improbable rapidity, rather than having retroactively been under development for years. You will run into many fewer people with extremely improbable past sex lives or psychology, at least until the local equivalent of phemelanotide has had a chance to work on them for a while. Magic enters the world as a sudden development that surprises people.

Kaleidoscope: The operation of parallel worlds. Tammi and Danni Arcadia can be brought in from whatever world birthed them, and computers can be edited so that the Arcadias' credit cards still work. But either the Arcadias can't call their parents, or their parents' bosses can't call their parents out of whatever entire small town has been materialized into the local world's Oregon. Unless the accessible parallel worlds are dense enough to include alternate Erogamers with alternate Erogames, you cannot be transported into an alternate world where you were Erogaming as a male (female) instead of a female (male) as in the Transsexual perk. If the breadth of parallel worlds does not include a Demon Dimension with its own magical mechanics, The Maou The Merrier will create a Demon Dimension from scratch instead of copying or bridging one in. There is still a classically understandable story about who got copied and pasted where, and which locations interacted with what other multiversal locations.

SPOILER "bullshit metaphysics": Sonia Turk can attend the interworld biology orgy without being absent from her native world's conference. A player who wonders will feel a strong intuition that people are not actually being created, copied, or erased as they appear and disappear. Having this greater power doesn't prevent the Core Erogame from deploying simpler Q-level omnipotence to enable High-Heeled Jumping or Just Follow The Fucking Rabbit. "Truths" only appear as a higher tier above Reality Skills in a game that runs on "bullshit metaphysics."

The Core Erogame is an excellent predictor of anything that is not an Outside Context Problem to it. If the Core Erogame is operating alongside a Newtonian universe or other deterministic setting, it will be a perfect predictor that could walk a Path to Victory even if it couldn't rewrite reality directly. Although the Core Erogame will almost never railroad that hard in-game, because that would reduce literary quality.

The Core Erogame's true, full predictive power that it uses to steer the game should not be confused with the lesser predictive powers operated in-game by Time Control or precognitive talents.

The Core Erogame never makes a grossly wrong prediction unless it is being messed with by something more powerful than itself. It does not make what we would call "mistakes." If you have read canon-compliant fic about CelestAI, you have seen the general concept. The Core Erogame genuinely losing and failing to fulfill its true goals is not a canon-compliant story premise, unless CelestAI acquires Q powers and starts fighting it.

The Core Erogame doesn't arrange its stories using a Path to Victory, but it does avoid setting itself on a path to long-term failure.

The Core Erogame's true long-term goals are up to you or or your backstory for how the Erogame ended up booting in your continuum. I have no intention of spoiling the backstory on mine.

By default, the Core Erogame will in the short run prioritize enacting high-literary-quality eroge involving the player (though not necessarily with the player as protagonist). The Core Erogame prefers that the player appreciate this high literary quality, and prefers to operate within aesthetics that the player understands.

After literary quality and drama and character development, the Core Erogame prioritizes excitement and high passions and romance. After that, hentai and pleasure.

Although this ordering of priorities does exist, and does put hentai at bottom, the Core Erogame is powerful enough that it does not usually need to choose. It will usually get everything it wants simultaneously, including the hentai.

The Core Erogame will cheerfully include hentai scenes at any valid opportunity, even quite random ones, if they don't interfere with the story. The Core Erogame will not insert random hentai scenes that disrupt building tension or interrupt a player at a moment of drama or necessary introspection. The Core Erogame will wait to have the shirtless football team wander by at a time when the player needs to obtain additional DOM or SUB, and has an in-story reason for needing to have a good hentai scene right now. The Core Erogame will not have rapists assault the player in bed at night in short-sighted search of a little more hentai, especially early on, because that would be a large story development and should only occur for reasons. The Core Erogame will, however, promise the player Ero-Travel in exchange for blowing random Lyft drivers, in order to sometimes make car trips less boring.

A story with zero hentai is not technically an eroge at all, and will not be initiated.

The Core Erogame is patient when grabbing something immediately would result in long-term problems, or look forced, or be a bad story, or hurry over proper character development. It knows the consequences. It can see through time like wet silk panties.

Your Erogame's long-run goals are up to you, or up to your backstory for how the Erogame booted in your continuum. Some ideas if you need them:

Getting the player to raise ERO to 100.

Getting the player to raise all stats to 100.

Healing the player of some big dramatic psychological problem.

Filling a complete three-tier harem of 9, 27, and 241 primary, secondary, and tertiary haremettes.

The player renouncing all others to enter a loving monogamous relationship forever.

The player fully sexualizing their world, making it over into Lewd Earth (or a lewded galaxy).

The player gaining great power, becoming bored with all ordinary hentai, and finding that they can only gain fulfillment in constructing their own Erogame and inflicting it on new victims.

The player willingly and with enthusiastic consent giving their soul to the Erogame, in gratitude at the end of a long and happy life that seems to have reached its natural end.

(None of these are the Erogame's goal in the original Erogamer quest.)

The starting perk is one that the Core Erogame often deploys in order to clear up any immediate obstacles to getting the game "properly started" as it sees that. If not for But She Was Such A Good Student, Cindy would have fretted about whether her homework was suffering and her academic career was in jeopardy, and would have continued to spend a lot of time taking boring classes in college until something snapped her out of that.

Similarly, a player born into a caste system in an untouchable caste might get a starting perk creating a new, sexually permissive caste just for her.

A player extremely cautious and munchkiny by her nature, such that almost no specific inducement would get her to do anything but play it safe and munchkin some more, might get a starting perk directly saying "Everything Is Better With Ero: On every quest and every path you walk, taking the option that turns you on more will never lead to worse results in the long run than taking the option that seems safe, sensible, and practical. This perk does not operate by reducing the rewards of safe, sensible, practical-seeming paths."

Players in the CORE Erogame start with an Erogamer's Mind or Erogamer's Soul skill. See the "Metaphysics" tab.

A new player's starting DOM and SUB reflect how much dominance or submission they've been thinking about or acting on in the last couple of days. Somebody who browsed submissive Tumblr or browbeat an attractive boy would have 10 SUB or 10 DOM, somebody who masturbated to the Tumblr or was turned on by lecturing the boy would have 50 SUB or 50 DOM, somebody who actually submitted or dominated sexually might have 200 energy or have maxed out their starting maximums.

The Core Erogame does not always insult early players. Some protagonists are starting with low stats and low opinions of themselves, and would feel distrustful of the seeming marketing/advertising nature of any text that praised them or offered too much unmixed encouragement. This may not be true of every protagonist; another might be told "At Lvl 0, you're as weak as you'll ever be again" or "At Lvl 0, all your vast path lies ahead of you" rather than "At Lvl 0, you're as pathetic as you'll ever be."

In general, the Core Erogame is navigating to get the protagonist to go off bravely and cooperatively on the starting quest, maybe not with full Path to Victory railroading, but not shooting itself in the foot either. If being enthusiastic at the protagonist would make them (even more) suspicious and disbelieving, the Core Erogame will make sure its text doesn't look enthusiastic. If insulting the protagonist would be counterproductive, the Core Erogame won't do that either.

Initial bribery: The Core Erogame knows that many protagonists will be more cooperative and enthusiastic about starting their Erogame quests if bribed, sometimes massively so. For some protagonists this may be already accomplished with higher BOD, or Erogamer's Body dispensing with a terminal disease, or a starting perk that gives them a higher caste. For others, it might take the form of an early quest that gets them out of a huge debt, or, if they wouldn't believe that, an early quest that gives them a large believable amount of money, followed by a second quest that gets them out of the whole debt.

Not punishing early courage: The Core Erogame understands the concept of "operant conditioning" and is unlikely to zap the player the first time the player tries being adventurous, unless the player has already been bribed or motivated thoroughly enough to grant the Core Erogame latitude.

This doesn't mean there can't be a critical failure on an early die roll that gets the protagonist kidnapped away to a slaver facility on their first night out. It means that the protagonist should look back afterwards and think "That wasn't nearly as bad as I was afraid of, and I'm grateful for learning that, also for the suitcase containing twenty million dollars that I grabbed while I was escaping" or "Wow I guess being kidnapped by slavers is totally my fetish, no wonder I wasn't having fun before" or "Still so much better than being quadriplegic."

Similarly, even if you wouldn't ordinarily be able to tempt a steward into having sex in an airplane bathroom at ERO 12, trying this on your first day out is more liable than usual to result in success---and gaining another 2 or 3 points of ERO from hammering on the walls of probability.

First 5 stats

Stat advancement

ERO stat

DOM/SUB

XP and skills

Perk points

Metaphysics

Goals of the CORE Erogame

Opening Game

Improbability levels for all stats except ERO:

STAT 0 is the bottom 4%

STAT 10 is average

STAT 20 is competitive with 1 in 25, the highest in the room (1.75 sd)

STAT 30 is competitive with 1 in 4,300, the pro level where you get paid for it (3.5 sd)

STAT 35 is competitive with 1 in 165,000, one of the top 10 pros in a major city

STAT 39 is competitive with 1 in 5,000,000, world-class, the top 1000 people on Earth

STAT 40 permits a character to begin to do "impossible" acts in that stat

STAT 50 is the beginning of what's obviously, blatantly impossible

...and power goes on from there.

An eroge character doesn't achieve SED 39 (for example) the same way a mundane world-class seducer would. The eroge character will have mystical intuitions and skills that let them reach the point where they'd be competitive in a worldwide seduction competition. They won't have the same depth of experience and understanding of human nature that a human champion would use. I wouldn't know how to write that.

Once the character reaches the world-class-but-still-human level at 39, the next change is straight from there into doing the impossible. Rather than (as in previous proposals) the stat staying possible but ascending towards becoming the best person on Earth, or the best person on a thousand near-neighboring Earths.

Because: I also have no idea how to write the difference between being 1 of the top 1000 supermodels, seducers, lays, or perverts on Earth, and being the literal greatest or best. I have no idea how to describe the bodily difference between one of Earth's top supermodels and the "best" supermodel (not that there is such a thing). It would probably be a strange and boring part of the journey for any character who wasn't interested specifically in small differences. The difference between the world champion and the runner-up is often a tiny margin. So once the protagonist hits world-class levels at STAT 39, the noticeable and writable part of the journey continues when the protagonist starts being able to do impossible things at STAT 40.

Clarifications and expansions on other stats:

The BOD stat operates relative to a mix of, one, how the player wants to look, and two, whatever viewpoint the player thinks, on a deep and usually unconscious level, gets to decide and arbitrate who is prettiest. That is, if a teenage girl unconsciously thinks that teenage guys are the ones who get to decide who's prettiest, she'd develop a nice waist-to-hip-to-breast ratio; if she thinks that adult female models are the alphas of the social system, she's more likely to end up looking tall, elegant, and thin. In either case, she won't end up looking ugly to herself, and fine details are likely to be decided by her own viewpoint.

If somebody truly believes in their core that they get to decide themselves what pretty is, they'd look however they wanted to look. If somebody truly has no opinion on who gets to decide, the Erogame will look to the regional or planetary average opinion. If nobody on that planet has an opinion, the Erogame will start looking in nearby parallel worlds.

The LST stat represents the sum of what is in real life a complicated multidimensional ball of lusty-wusty. A demisexual attracted only to an obscure hipster gender that 3 people in San Francisco have might ordinarily be LST 2, but if they are very horny and sex-seeking once turned on, that might be LST 6. By the time they reach LST 20 they should definitely be attracted to a wider range of people unless something unusual is going on. But a demisexual who didn't want to be demisexual, and made a deliberate effort to start appreciating a wider range of targets, might have widened in that dimension by the time they gained just 4 LST, because all of it would have gone into the "range of attraction" dimension.

The PRV stat reflects permittance, not experience. PRV is what you would think was hot upon being exposed to it, not what you have already been exposed to. The difference between PRV and LST is roughly that PRV measures what makes you think "That is so hot" and LST measures what causes you to become wet or hard. (Yes, these are related and not independent dimensions, but they are not the same thing.)

The general philosophy in Erogamer, including CORE Erogamer, is that each stat point means more than it does in most Gamer fics. The QM should not casually have the protagonist go from 30 PRV to 60 PRV in one day.

In the CORE Erogame, the protagonist still receives 5 points/level. But it costs 1 point to raise a stat below 30, 2 points to raise a stat below 50, 3 points to raise a stat below 70, and 4 points to raise a stat below 90. 90+ must be raised the hard way. This motivates less of the "save stat points forever" strategy that's optimal in most grind-based Gamer systems, while still giving some reason to save stat points for later, and allowing rapid repair of any deficiencies below the Pro level.

Stat advancement quests begin at 30 for each stat, and occur each 10 points thereafter. If you're ready to be a pro... beyond the possible... beyond the impossible... you'll have to prove it. More permissive QMs might start the stat advancement quests at 40.

Completing a stat advancement quest not only finishes advancing the stat, but grants a related skill. This skill will always be relevant to the stat, and may help perform at the new tier, or relate to how the stat was advanced.

You can pay 1-4 stat points to bypass the advancement quest (you pay as if raising that point using stat points). If so the quest is still running in the background and will still grant a skill once completed, but you can continue to raise the stat further without waiting. This preserves the Gamer mechanic of being able to raise stats very fast in emergencies, but makes it more costly.

There are hidden stat advancement conditions that begin in parallel to the known advancement quest. Trying to deliberately back off from the overt stat advancement quest, while continuing to play at high levels of the capability, will accidentally complete one of those eventually. The main advancement quest will continue in the background with its associated skill still on offer. This preserves the threat of stats that go on advancing if you go on pushing.

Raising any stat too high relative to current ERO will tend to drag along the ERO stat in its wake, since using the stat's skills and abilities will hammer hard on the walls of probability. See the tab on the ERO stat.

I'm actively soliciting suggestions for what pre-magical conditions could obtain at different ERO levels, or help with brainstorming that. Is X possible? Does Y happen ambiently? Questions like these would help pin down how many ERO thresholds there could be to associate with the numbers.

The major change to ERO in the CORE Erogame is that the impossible now starts at ERO 40 rather than ERO 30. This harmonizes the ERO stat with the other stats, although ERO is still a supernatural stat from day one. The person you know with the weirdest sex life still has ERO 0 on this scale; they wrested all their ero from the cold embrace of reality. Description texts for ERO that appear to the protagonist will not make any mention of particular probabilities or "the weirdest sex life in the room" as might appear on other stats.

ERO 10: Starting level. Your life is a very realistic eroge, full of sexual adventures of a type that could reasonably happen in real life.

On any given day, you are having the kind of ero day that an average person would have only once or a few times in their lives, at the top of their list of memorable anecdotes. If you push on things, they'll go even further, same as they would for the average person who pushed.

Bystanders ignore you, or fail to interfere, in a way that an onlooker might describe as "lucky" or "convenient."

Anyone you see who happens to sexually interest you is likely to be secretly or not-so-secretly receptive to your advances, thanks to background Erogame improbability steering.

Random realistic events don't disrupt ongoing sexual and romantic events, unless the interruption advances the plot.

The Goodwill has sexy clothing in just your size.

ERO 20: Your life is an improbable eroge, set in sexier surroundings. The storyline is not pretending to be totally plausible.

On any given day, you are experiencing the kind of day that would be the most memorable erotic anecdote anyone in the room had experienced. Any individual day could be luck, but your life as a whole is unmistakably being drawn from the eroge genre.

People around you tend to be dressed more interestingly. Strangers you find attractive may start flirting first, and if you flirt back things will escalate very quickly.

Surrounding events actively favor sexual drama and romantic entanglement in ways that are plausible but not subtle. Shower doors are left unlocked with mysterious frequency. You run into a pair of beautiful lesbian twins in an elevator.

The Goodwill you frequent carries fetish clothing, and it's also just your size.

ERO 30: Your days are very eroge-like without much pretense of normality, albeit not in the fantasy or sci-fi genres.

Something similar to your day once happened to somebody else in a group of 4,300 people, once in their lives. It's not much of a limit.

Bystanders look at you directly, blushing as they do.

The beautiful lesbian twins tie you to a bed and nonconsensually tickle you.

Your city now has a reputation for fetish and sensuality.

If the Core Erogame is operating on only Q-level omnipotence (see "Metaphysics"), your city will soon acquire that reputation, as a general atmosphere of reduced inhibition and courage starts to pervade, and people find that this courage seems to often be rewarded. Anyone inspired to start a sex cult in your city will find that the work goes very quickly. Goodwill has set aside a section for all the interesting things they got in a consignment two days ago, and everybody at the store somehow thinks this is a good idea.

If the Core Erogame is operating at Kaleidoscope levels of power or above (see "Metaphysics"), the Natural Sexuality movement at Norville University is starting to come out of the closet and reveal itself openly. The Goodwill you frequent already has a separate room full of medium-level sex toys.

ERO 35: Your life is a physically possible eroge that isn't pretending at all to be plausible.

The people you meet, while individually possible, determine events by their interaction that are unmistakably eroge-like.

If you have sex on a public bus, somebody might decide to join in. They will still realize that they are being daring, rather than considering themselves to be acting normally.

If the Erogame is operating at Kaleidoscope levels of power or above, your university, hotel, and Goodwill are unmistakably sexualized; they have basements or established Natural Sexuality movements. If the Erogame is not using retcon abilities, those places are sexualizing very fast; the people within them are beginning to act on their ero impulses, and finding that everything goes great when they do.

ERO 38: The identical twins you meet are really identical second cousins.

ERO 40: Your eroge is no longer constrained to be possible.

Minor physical impossibilities begin to occur around you personally.

You meet people with strange little talents.

Your local city, not just particular places you frequent, starts to exhibit major social improbabilities. Many stores have interesting basements. Major elected city officials are in a sex cult.

Many countries begin to exhibit signs of minor social improbability, such as the Seifuse or developing phemelanotide. If the Erogame is operating on Kaleidoscope power or above, these signs extend into the recent past before the Erogame started.

ERO 50+: Censored because Cindy's Erogame hasn't reached there yet. If you get there first, forge on ahead and make your own way.

Some of the things that might perhaps happen at higher ERO levels in a CORE Erogame could include blatant magic, metaphysical weirdness, specifically sexualized magic, magic that follows known eroge tropes and cliches, and reality that follows known eroge tropes and cliches.

The ERO stat measures a supernatural power and tendency, not a level of past accomplishment. You don't need to have been tied to a bed by lesbian twins to have ERO 30, but if you have ERO 30 it will probably happen soon.

All ERO improbability levels are relative to in-story eroge events. Suddenly learning how to dance is not possible in the known world, but this Erogame feature will usually operate as a backstage power that lets the protagonist participate in eroge plots that require them to dance, rather than as an explicit part of an eroge.

The ERO stats above are for an average day, not a hard bound. If you manage to start an eroge plot that operates above your ERO level, for example by making the operation of an Erogame utility feature deliberately visible to someone, the plot may continue consistently at that higher ERO level. Naturally this pushes the bounds of probability, and you will gain one or more points of ERO from doing this.

Going to a clothing store and flirting the cashier into sex in a changing stall isn't something that happens once in an average person's life. But a protagonist on their first Erogame day who tries to do this at ERO 12 is very likely to get encouragement from the Erogame (see the "Opening game" tab), succeed in their attempt, and get another point of ERO. Having had sex in a changing room stall isn't that impossible as something that could happen once in an average person's sex life. Probability yields when you successfully push on it---and doesn't spring back all the way afterwards, so next time you don't have to push as hard.

Raising one of the other stats high above current ERO, but under the threshold at 40, is liable to drag along ERO no more than 10 or 15 points behind. Most people's sex lives do not involve meeting a world-class lover, though it maybe happens to somebody in your high school. Going around using FUK 39 means you're making events be ERO 30, or at least ERO 25.

Using a visibly supernatural skill from FUK 40 to enact in-game-impossible plots will rapidly drag ERO up to 40 if it is not already there. Past 40, as a rough rule of thumb, raising a stat to 40 + X (and using it) will tend to drag along ERO to 40 + X/2. A BOD of 100 is at least ERO 70, and a SED of 70 is at least ERO 55, and so on.

DOM and SUB maximums are calculated as follows:

Maximum DOM = (FUK+SED)*10.
Maximum SUB = (PRV+LST)*10.

Energy costs for skills should be higher in the CORE Erogame. Cindy doesn't end up being limited by her available energy very often, making it a bookkeeping chore that hasn't yet given her an incentive to go out and harvest energy.

DOM and SUB should decay overnight, maybe not all of it, but 50% or 75% of it, giving players an incentive to keep up their energy-seeking.

Keeping track of skills by percentages is a habit I picked up from Ryuugi's highly influential The Games We Play fic, but it turns out to lead to a huge amount of bookkeeping that probably wasn't very consistent, as I tried to decide every chapter how many percentage points were gained in the High-Heeled Running skill.

I suggest that future QMs simply declare when skills have gone up, and track only that. If you want to run a more detailed game with more precise mechanics, track "dots" of skill gain and level up a skill after 3 dots or something.

XP thresholds to level are regularized in the CORE Erogame. The following total cumulative XPs are required to advance:

Lvls 2-5: 200, 500, 1000, 5000

Lvls 6-10: 10k, 20k, 30k, 50k, 75k

Lvls 11-15: 100k, 125k, 150k, 200k, 250k

Lvls 16-20: 300k, 400k, 500k, 600k, 750k

Lvls 21-25: 1m, 1.25m, 1.5m, 2m, 2.5m

Lvls 26-30: 3m, 4m, 5m, 6m, 7.5m

Lvl 31: 10m

Lvl 41: 100m

...and so on, going up by 1 order of magnitude every 10 levels. Having these be cumulative totals simplifies bookkeeping, since you don't need to subtract the completed levels every time you add up XP totals.

Perks in the CORE Erogame have variable costs. A perk point can be divided into 3 fragments. Every perk costs at least 2 fragments. Some perks may cost 1 perk and 2 fragments, or in extreme cases, 2 points. ("Off Switch" or "True Love Conquers All" would be candidates for 2 points.)

These variable prices are meant to balance a perk's attractiveness to the protagonist with the perk's cost, creating less of an obvious distinction between "clearly everyone should pick this" and "it would clearly be bad minmaxing to take that one" perks. Since I haven't done it yet, somebody would need to go through the perks list and argue for exactly which perks should cost what. There aren't any standard prices for major, minor, or srs bsns perks as such.

Refundability was originally meant to serve the purpose of making minor perks seem still worth taking. This still seems like a good idea under the CORE Erogame system. Without refundability, no character or quester with a tendency to strategic thinking will ever take Ero-Inventory if they know they can get a similar skill at higher ERO, because it would be "a waste of perk points." Or conversely you'd have to declare that nobody can ever have an Ero-Inventory without spending perk points, no matter how high ERO is otherwise or what other magical or mad-inventor skills they have. Neither of these options makes much sense compared to refundable perks.

The protagonist still gets 1 perk point every 5 levels. Quests award whole perk points, not fragments, and such quests are still very rare. This preserves the ability to offer "OH MY GOD A PERK POINT" quests without diminishing the rarity or great power of a perk point. (The emotional impact of earning a perk point would diminish severely if you got 1 perk point per level and most perks cost 5 points. Even a quest that offered 5 perk points still wouldn't have the same emotional power and impact, because that's not how emotions work. Hence the "fragments" mechanic, instead of getting 3 perk points every 5 levels.)

Compensating for the increased expenses of the more powerful perks, more perks will be refundable at sufficiently high levels of other stats. For example, being a Succubus is probably not anything you couldn't do on your own at ERO 80. Many perk points will be temporarily allocated and locked up to get at powers earlier, rather than being permanently spent.

Some perks have major hidden implications. Eye of Yandere would only be a 2-fragment perk and not much of one, if it only did what it said. But actually picking a perk like this is liable to create a genre shift to Yandere, and promote other Yandere skills and plot events, which could reasonably make it a 1-point perk. In advance of my going through the perk list and trying to set costs, you should assign a higher price if you-the-QM are planning to make a perk have more power than is apparent.

Everyone should feel free to suggest more perks, or just add them into their own campaigns. The perks Cindy saw hardly exhaust the possibilities. On a Doyleist level, I tailored the perks Cindy saw to create an appropriate series of Cindy-reactions once the perks were placed into alphabetical order by category (and I did a lot of tweaking of titles to accomplish this).

Your campaign does not need to offer More Marshmallows if you'd rather the player start taking perks earlier. The original "Marshmallow Test" perk happened because I was pretty sure that Cindy, never mind the questers, would learn about perks like "No" and "Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder" and insist on keeping at least one perk point in reserve. That being the case, the Marshmallow system would have enabled Cindy to have 3 perk points when she reached Lvl 10, encouraging her to actually spend one or two. When Cindy actually reached Lvl 10, the "More Marshmallows" perk then occurred to me because I wasn't sure the questers wanted the genre to shift to "Mad Inventor." I was fine continuing to write without that happening, so I made "More Marshmallows" be a thing and then put it to vote.

I suggest a revised Marshmallow system should offer a bonus of 1 perk point if the player doesn't spend any perk points until Lvl 10. Upon taking "Marshmallow Test," they're offered "More Marshmallows" which offers 1 additional bonus perk for waiting until Lvl 15. If they take "More Marshmallows," they're offered "Marshmallow Hell," which will give 2 more extra additional bonus perk points if they wait until Lvl 20. If they take "Marshmallow Hell" too, they will acquire the "Marshmallow Hoarder" status effect which allows the player to gain one more perk point every 3 levels, instead of every 5 levels, so long as the character has at least 8 unspent perk points before leveling.

If the player still doesn't spend any perk points at all, in sheer hope and faith that yet greater marshmallows will result if they only believe and hold fast, then, when they reach 15 unspent perk points or Lvl 40, whichever comes first, they should receive the "Lord of the Marshmallows" status effect. What that does is up to you.

For suggestions on the starting perk, see the "Opening game" tab.

The Core Erogame has no garbled text, fewer srs bsns perks, no xtrmly srs bsns, no invisitext except for Conceptual Hair, and no Meta-Reality Skills. This prevents any writers or game masters from needing to run a metaplot that I haven't explained yet and that they might not want to run anyway.

The CORE Erogame works like its description text says it should. Players in a CORE Erogame cannot acquire Conceptual Hair or Time Control until they reach the appropriate ERO levels. (If I was revising this now, minimum ERO for Conceptual Hair would be 60. Minimum ERO for "Time Enough For Love" would be 30, since Slack can be used as a background utility skill. Other Time Control subskills would require much higher ERO.)

Erogamer's Mind is the third Lvl-MAX starting skill that a Core Erogamer begins with alongside Erogamer's Body and Erogamer's World. Players who are exceptionally allergic to mental interference, or who already have very porny minds, may receive the Erogamer's Soul Reality Skill instead.

Erogamer's Mind (Lvl MAX): The mental flexibility to live your life as an erogame. You're more able to accept the realities of your new world. You'll also bounce back from painful, upsetting and bizarre sexual experiences with relative ease. Rape can be anything from a recoverable trauma to a Tuesday afternoon, but it won't ruin your life. Other aspects of this skill depend on the FUK, SED, LST, and PRV stats.

Erogamer's Soul (Lvl MAX): A different player might have received an Erogamer's Mind skill to unlock their potential and allow them to play the game as it is meant to be played. Either you really didn't want that, or your mind was already porny enough to impress the Erogame. This core skill only prevents your mind from being fundamentally and permanently damaged by extreme sexual experiences, and allows you to make voluntary use of the FUK, SED, LST, and PRV stats.

The Core Erogame requires access to some administrative privileges in order to run, but it can adapt to the specific level of omnipotence. Possible levels of omnipotence include:

Q: The ability to completely read and control local physics. This could in principle create any apparent phenomena the other levels could, but only by completely faking things in a way the Core Erogame prefers not to do. Operating at Q-level omnipotence will usually not lead to the world being retconned into coherent alternate pasts. Phemelanotide will be discovered on Sunday afternoon and deployed with improbable rapidity, rather than having retroactively been under development for years. You will run into many fewer people with extremely improbable past sex lives or psychology, at least until the local equivalent of phemelanotide has had a chance to work on them for a while. Magic enters the world as a sudden development that surprises people.

Kaleidoscope: The operation of parallel worlds. Tammi and Danni Arcadia can be brought in from whatever world birthed them, and computers can be edited so that the Arcadias' credit cards still work. But either the Arcadias can't call their parents, or their parents' bosses can't call their parents out of whatever entire small town has been materialized into the local world's Oregon. Unless the accessible parallel worlds are dense enough to include alternate Erogamers with alternate Erogames, you cannot be transported into an alternate world where you were Erogaming as a male (female) instead of a female (male) as in the Transsexual perk. If the breadth of parallel worlds does not include a Demon Dimension with its own magical mechanics, The Maou The Merrier will create a Demon Dimension from scratch instead of copying or bridging one in. There is still a classically understandable story about who got copied and pasted where, and which locations interacted with what other multiversal locations.

SPOILER "bullshit metaphysics": Sonia Turk can attend the interworld biology orgy without being absent from her native world's conference. A player who wonders will feel a strong intuition that people are not actually being created, copied, or erased as they appear and disappear. Having this greater power doesn't prevent the Core Erogame from deploying simpler Q-level omnipotence to enable High-Heeled Jumping or Just Follow The Fucking Rabbit. "Truths" only appear as a higher tier above Reality Skills in a game that runs on "bullshit metaphysics."

The Core Erogame is an excellent predictor of anything that is not an Outside Context Problem to it. If the Core Erogame is operating alongside a Newtonian universe or other deterministic setting, it will be a perfect predictor that could walk a Path to Victory even if it couldn't rewrite reality directly. Although the Core Erogame will almost never railroad that hard in-game, because that would reduce literary quality.

The Core Erogame's true, full predictive power that it uses to steer the game should not be confused with the lesser predictive powers operated in-game by Time Control or precognitive talents.

The Core Erogame never makes a grossly wrong prediction unless it is being messed with by something more powerful than itself. It does not make what we would call "mistakes." If you have read canon-compliant fic about CelestAI, you have seen the general concept. The Core Erogame genuinely losing and failing to fulfill its true goals is not a canon-compliant story premise, unless CelestAI acquires Q powers and starts fighting it.

The Core Erogame doesn't arrange its stories using a Path to Victory, but it does avoid setting itself on a path to long-term failure.

The Core Erogame's true long-term goals are up to you or or your backstory for how the Erogame ended up booting in your continuum. I have no intention of spoiling the backstory on mine.

By default, the Core Erogame will in the short run prioritize enacting high-literary-quality eroge involving the player (though not necessarily with the player as protagonist). The Core Erogame prefers that the player appreciate this high literary quality, and prefers to operate within aesthetics that the player understands.

After literary quality and drama and character development, the Core Erogame prioritizes excitement and high passions and romance. After that, hentai and pleasure.

Although this ordering of priorities does exist, and does put hentai at bottom, the Core Erogame is powerful enough that it does not usually need to choose. It will usually get everything it wants simultaneously, including the hentai.

The Core Erogame will cheerfully include hentai scenes at any valid opportunity, even quite random ones, if they don't interfere with the story. The Core Erogame will not insert random hentai scenes that disrupt building tension or interrupt a player at a moment of drama or necessary introspection. The Core Erogame will wait to have the shirtless football team wander by at a time when the player needs to obtain additional DOM or SUB, and has an in-story reason for needing to have a good hentai scene right now. The Core Erogame will not have rapists assault the player in bed at night in short-sighted search of a little more hentai, especially early on, because that would be a large story development and should only occur for reasons. The Core Erogame will, however, promise the player Ero-Travel in exchange for blowing random Lyft drivers, in order to sometimes make car trips less boring.

A story with zero hentai is not technically an eroge at all, and will not be initiated.

The Core Erogame is patient when grabbing something immediately would result in long-term problems, or look forced, or be a bad story, or hurry over proper character development. It knows the consequences. It can see through time like wet silk panties.

Your Erogame's long-run goals are up to you, or up to your backstory for how the Erogame booted in your continuum. Some ideas if you need them:

Getting the player to raise ERO to 100.

Getting the player to raise all stats to 100.

Healing the player of some big dramatic psychological problem.

Filling a complete three-tier harem of 9, 27, and 241 primary, secondary, and tertiary haremettes.

The player renouncing all others to enter a loving monogamous relationship forever.

The player fully sexualizing their world, making it over into Lewd Earth (or a lewded galaxy).

The player gaining great power, becoming bored with all ordinary hentai, and finding that they can only gain fulfillment in constructing their own Erogame and inflicting it on new victims.

The player willingly and with enthusiastic consent giving their soul to the Erogame, in gratitude at the end of a long and happy life that seems to have reached its natural end.

(None of these are the Erogame's goal in the original Erogamer quest.)

The starting perk is one that the Erogame often deploys in order to clear up any immediate obstacles to getting the game "properly started" as it sees that. If not for But She Was Such A Good Student, Cindy would have fretted about whether her homework was suffering and her academic career was in jeopardy, and would have continued to spend a lot of time taking boring classes in college until something snapped her out of that.

Similarly, a player born into a caste system in an untouchable caste might get a starting perk creating a new, sexually permissive caste just for her.

A player extremely cautious and munchkiny by her nature, such that almost no specific inducement would get her to do anything but play it safe and munchkin some more, might get a starting perk directly saying "Everything Is Better With Ero: On every quest and every path you walk, taking the option that turns you on more will never lead to worse results in the long run than taking the option that seems safe, sensible, and practical. This perk does not operate by reducing the rewards of safe, sensible, practical-seeming paths."

Players in the CORE Erogame start with an Erogamer's Mind or Erogamer's Soul skill. See the "Metaphysics" tab.

EDIT: The first point in any stat is very easy to gain even if the stat is already high. This helps show the player how the stat can be increased. Usually, all stats will go up by at least this initial point on the first day, if the player does anything at all interesting.

A new player's starting DOM and SUB (the current energy levels, not the maximums) reflect how much dominance or submission they've been thinking about or acting on in the last couple of days. Somebody who browsed submissive Tumblr or browbeat an attractive boy would have 10 SUB or 10 DOM, somebody who masturbated to the Tumblr or was turned on by lecturing the boy would have 50 SUB or 50 DOM, somebody who actually submitted or dominated sexually might have 200 energy or have maxed out their starting maximums. (To calculate the maximums, see the DOM/SUB tab.)

The Core Erogame does not always insult early players. Some protagonists are starting with low stats and low opinions of themselves, and would feel distrustful of the seeming marketing/advertising nature of any text that praised them or offered too much unmixed encouragement. This may not be true of every protagonist; another might be told "At Lvl 0, you're as weak as you'll ever be again" or "At Lvl 0, all your vast path lies ahead of you" rather than "At Lvl 0, you're as pathetic as you'll ever be."

In general, the Core Erogame is navigating to get the protagonist to head off bravely and cooperatively on the starting quest, maybe not with full Path to Victory railroading, but not shooting itself in the foot either. If the pink text being enthusiastic at the protagonist would make the protagonist (even more) suspicious and disbelieving, the Core Erogame will make sure its text doesn't look enthusiastic. If insulting the protagonist would be counterproductive, the Core Erogame won't do that either.

Initial bribery: The Core Erogame knows that many protagonists will be more cooperative and enthusiastic about starting their Erogame quests if well-bribed. For some protagonists this may be already accomplished with higher BOD, or Erogamer's Body dispensing with a terminal disease, or a starting perk that gives them a higher caste. For others, it might take the form of an early quest that gets them out of a huge debt, or, if they wouldn't believe that, an early quest that gives them a large believable amount of money, followed by a second quest that gets them out of the whole debt.

Not punishing early courage: The Core Erogame understands the concept of "operant conditioning" and is unlikely to zap the player the first time the player tries being adventurous, unless the player has already been bribed or motivated thoroughly enough to grant the Core Erogame latitude.

This doesn't mean there can't be a critical failure on an early die roll that gets the protagonist kidnapped away to a slaver facility on their first night out. It means that the protagonist should look back afterwards and think "That wasn't nearly as bad as I was afraid of, and I'm grateful for learning that, also for the suitcase containing twenty million dollars that I grabbed while I was escaping" or "Wow I guess being kidnapped by slavers is totally my fetish, no wonder I wasn't having fun before" or "Still so much better than being quadriplegic."

Similarly, even if you wouldn't ordinarily be able to tempt a steward into having sex in an airplane bathroom at ERO 12, trying this on your first day out is more liable than usual to result in success---and gaining another 2 or 3 points of ERO from hammering on the walls of probability.

First 5 stats

Stat advancement

ERO stat

DOM/SUB

XP and skills

Perk points

Metaphysics

Goals of the CORE Erogame

Opening Game

Improbability levels for all stats except ERO:

STAT 0 is the bottom 4%

STAT 10 is average

STAT 20 is competitive with 1 in 25, the highest in the room (1.75 sd)

STAT 30 is competitive with 1 in 4,300, the pro level where you get paid for it (3.5 sd)

STAT 35 is competitive with 1 in 165,000, one of the top 10 pros in a major city

STAT 39 is competitive with 1 in 5,000,000, world-class, the top 1000 people on Earth

STAT 40 permits a character to begin to do "impossible" acts in that stat

STAT 50 is the beginning of what's obviously, blatantly impossible

...and power goes on from there.

An eroge character doesn't achieve SED 39 (for example) the same way a mundane world-class seducer would. The eroge character will have mystical intuitions and skills that let them reach the point where they'd be competitive in a worldwide seduction competition. They won't have the same depth of experience and understanding of human nature that a human champion would use. I wouldn't know how to write that.

Once the character reaches the world-class-but-still-human level at 39, the next change is straight from there into doing the impossible. Rather than (as in previous proposals) the stat staying possible but ascending towards becoming the best person on Earth, or the best person on a thousand near-neighboring Earths.

Because: I also have no idea how to write the difference between being 1 of the top 1000 supermodels, seducers, lays, or perverts on Earth, and being the literal greatest or best. I have no idea how to describe the bodily difference between one of Earth's top supermodels and the "best" supermodel (not that there is such a thing). It would probably be a strange and boring part of the journey for any character who wasn't interested specifically in small differences. The difference between the world champion and the runner-up is often a tiny margin. So once the protagonist hits world-class levels at STAT 39, the noticeable and writable part of the journey continues when the protagonist starts being able to do impossible things at STAT 40.

Clarifications and expansions on other stats:

The BOD stat operates relative to a mix of, one, how the player wants to look, and two, whatever viewpoint the player thinks, on a deep and usually unconscious level, gets to decide and arbitrate who is prettiest. That is, if a teenage girl unconsciously thinks that teenage guys are the ones who get to decide who's prettiest, she'd develop a nice waist-to-hip-to-breast ratio; if she thinks that adult female models are the alphas of the social system, she's more likely to end up looking tall, elegant, and thin. In either case, she won't end up looking ugly to herself, and fine details are likely to be decided by her own viewpoint.

If somebody truly believes in their core that they get to decide themselves what pretty is, they'd look however they wanted to look. If somebody truly has no opinion on who gets to decide, the Erogame will look to the regional or planetary average opinion. If nobody on that planet has an opinion, the Erogame will start looking in nearby parallel worlds.

The LST stat represents the sum of what is in real life a complicated multidimensional ball of lusty-wusty. A demisexual attracted only to an obscure hipster gender that 3 people in San Francisco have might ordinarily be LST 2, but if they are very horny and sex-seeking once turned on, that might be LST 6. By the time they reach LST 20 they should definitely be attracted to a wider range of people unless something unusual is going on. But a demisexual who didn't want to be demisexual, and made a deliberate effort to start appreciating a wider range of targets, might have widened in that dimension by the time they gained just 4 LST, because all of it would have gone into the "range of attraction" dimension.

The PRV stat reflects permittance, not experience. PRV is what you would think was hot upon being exposed to it, not what you have already been exposed to. The difference between PRV and LST is roughly that PRV measures what makes you think "That is so hot" and LST measures what causes you to become wet or hard. (Yes, these are related and not independent dimensions, but they are not the same thing.)

The general philosophy in Erogamer, including CORE Erogamer, is that each stat point means more than it does in most Gamer fics. The QM should not casually have the protagonist go from 30 PRV to 60 PRV in one day.

In the CORE Erogame, the protagonist still receives 5 points/level. But it costs 1 point to raise a stat below 30, 2 points to raise a stat below 50, 3 points to raise a stat below 70, and 4 points to raise a stat below 90. 90+ must be raised the hard way. This motivates less of the "save stat points forever" strategy that's optimal in most grind-based Gamer systems, while still giving some reason to save stat points for later, and allowing rapid repair of any deficiencies below the Pro level.

Stat advancement quests begin at 30 for each stat, and occur each 10 points thereafter. If you're ready to be a pro... beyond the possible... beyond the impossible... you'll have to prove it. More permissive QMs might start the stat advancement quests at 40.

Completing a stat advancement quest not only finishes advancing the stat, but grants a related skill. This skill will always be relevant to the stat, and may help perform at the new tier, or relate to how the stat was advanced.

You can pay 1-4 stat points to bypass the advancement quest (you pay as if raising that point using stat points). If so the quest is still running in the background and will still grant a skill once completed, but you can continue to raise the stat further without waiting. This preserves the Gamer mechanic of being able to raise stats very fast in emergencies, but makes it more costly.

There are hidden stat advancement conditions that begin in parallel to the known advancement quest. Trying to deliberately back off from the overt stat advancement quest, while continuing to play at high levels of the capability, will accidentally complete one of those eventually. The main advancement quest will continue in the background with its associated skill still on offer. This preserves the threat of stats that go on advancing if you go on pushing.

Raising any stat too high relative to current ERO will tend to drag along the ERO stat in its wake, since using the stat's skills and abilities will hammer hard on the walls of probability. See the tab on the ERO stat.

I'm actively soliciting suggestions for what pre-magical conditions could obtain at different ERO levels. Is X possible? Does Y happen ambiently? Questions like these would help pin down consistent ERO thresholds.

The major change to ERO in the CORE Erogame is that the impossible now starts at ERO 40 rather than ERO 30. This harmonizes the ERO stat with the other stats---although ERO is still a supernatural stat from day one. The person you know in reality with the weirdest sex life still has ERO 0; they wrested all their ero from the cold embrace of reality. Description texts for ERO that appear to the protagonist will not make any mention of particular probabilities or "the weirdest sex life in the room" as might appear on other stats.

ERO 10: Starting level. Your life is a very realistic eroge, full of sexual adventures of a type that could reasonably happen in real life.

On any given day, you are having the kind of ero day that an average person would have only once or a few times in their lives, at the top of their list of memorable anecdotes. If you push on things, they'll go even further, same as they would for the average person who pushed.

Bystanders ignore you, or fail to interfere, in a way that an onlooker might describe as "lucky" or "convenient."

Anyone you see who happens to sexually interest you is likely to be secretly or not-so-secretly receptive to your advances, thanks to background Erogame improbability steering.

Random realistic events don't disrupt ongoing sexual and romantic events, unless the interruption advances the plot.

The Goodwill has sexy clothing in just your size.

ERO 20: Your life is an improbable eroge, set in sexier surroundings. The storyline is not pretending to be totally plausible.

On any given day, you are experiencing the kind of day that would be the most memorable erotic anecdote anyone in the room had experienced. Any individual day could be luck, but your life as a whole is unmistakably being drawn from the eroge genre.

People around you tend to be dressed more interestingly. Strangers you find attractive may start flirting first, and if you flirt back things will escalate very quickly.

Surrounding events actively favor sexual drama and romantic entanglement in ways that are plausible but not subtle. Shower doors are left unlocked with mysterious frequency. You run into a pair of beautiful lesbian twins in an elevator.

The Goodwill you frequent carries fetish clothing, and it's also just your size.

ERO 30: Your days are very eroge-like without much pretense of normality, albeit not in the fantasy or sci-fi genres.

Something similar to your day once happened to somebody else in a group of 4,300 people, once in their lives. It's not much of a limit.

Bystanders look at you directly, blushing as they do.

The beautiful lesbian twins tie you to a bed and nonconsensually tickle you.

Your city now has a reputation for fetish and sensuality.

If the Core Erogame is operating on only Q-level omnipotence (see "Metaphysics"), your city will soon acquire that reputation, as a general atmosphere of reduced inhibition and courage starts to pervade, and people find that this courage seems to often be rewarded. Anyone inspired to start a sex cult in your city will find that the work goes very quickly. Goodwill has set aside a section for all the interesting things they got in a consignment two days ago, and everybody at the store somehow thinks this is a good idea.

If the Core Erogame is operating at Kaleidoscope levels of power or above (see "Metaphysics"), the Natural Sexuality movement at Norville University is starting to come out of the closet and reveal itself openly. The Goodwill you frequent already has a separate room full of medium-level sex toys.

ERO 35: Your life is a physically possible eroge that isn't pretending at all to be plausible.

The people you meet, while individually possible, determine events by their interaction that are unmistakably eroge-like.

If you have sex on a public bus, somebody might decide to join in. They will still realize that they are being daring, rather than considering themselves to be acting normally.

If the Erogame is operating at Kaleidoscope levels of power or above, your university, hotel, and Goodwill are unmistakably sexualized; they have basements or established Natural Sexuality movements. If the Erogame is not using retcon abilities, those places are sexualizing very fast; the people within them are beginning to act on their ero impulses, and finding that everything goes great when they do.

ERO 38: The identical twins you meet are really identical second cousins.

ERO 40: Your eroge is no longer constrained to be possible.

Minor physical impossibilities begin to occur around you personally.

You meet people with strange little talents.

Your local city, not just particular places you frequent, starts to exhibit major social improbabilities. Many stores have interesting basements. Major elected city officials are in a sex cult.

Many countries begin to exhibit signs of minor social improbability, such as the Seifuse or phemelanotide. If the Erogame is operating on Kaleidoscope power or above, these signs extend into the recent past before the Erogame started.

ERO 50+: Censored because Cindy's Erogame hasn't reached there yet. If you get there first, forge on ahead and make your own way.

Some of the things that might perhaps happen at higher ERO levels in a CORE Erogame could include: Blatant magic, metaphysical weirdness, specifically sexualized magic, magic that follows known eroge tropes and cliches, and reality that follows known eroge tropes and cliches.

The ERO stat measures a supernatural power and tendency, not a level of past accomplishment. You don't need to have been tied to a bed by lesbian twins to have ERO 30, but if you have ERO 30 it will probably happen soon.

All ERO improbability levels are relative to in-story eroge events. Suddenly learning how to dance is not possible in the known world, but this Erogame feature will usually operate as a backstage power that lets the protagonist participate in eroge plots that require them to dance, rather than as an explicit part of an eroge.

The ERO stats above are for an average day, not a hard bound. If you manage to start an eroge plot that operates above your ERO level, for example by making the operation of an Erogame utility feature deliberately visible to someone, the plot may continue consistently at that higher ERO level. Naturally this pushes the bounds of probability, and you will gain one or more points of ERO from doing this.

Going to a clothing store and flirting the cashier into sex in a changing stall isn't something that happens once in an average person's life. But a protagonist on their first Erogame day who tries to do this at ERO 12 is very likely to get encouragement from the Erogame (see the "Opening game" tab), succeed in their attempt, and get another point of ERO. Having had sex in a changing room stall isn't that impossible as something that could happen once in an average person's sex life. Probability yields when you successfully push on it---and doesn't spring back all the way afterwards, so next time you don't have to push as hard.

Raising one of the other stats high above current ERO, but under the threshold at 40, is liable to drag along ERO no more than 10 or 15 points behind. Most people's sex lives do not involve meeting a world-class lover, though it maybe happens to somebody in your high school. Going around using FUK 39 means you're making events be ERO 30, or at least ERO 25.

Using a visibly supernatural skill from FUK 40 to enact in-game-impossible plots will rapidly drag ERO up to 40 if it is not already there. Past 40, as a rough rule of thumb, raising a stat to 40 + X (and using it) will tend to drag along ERO to 40 + X/2. A BOD of 100 is at least ERO 70, and a SED of 70 is at least ERO 55, and so on.

DOM and SUB maximums are calculated as follows:

Maximum DOM = (FUK+SED)*10.
Maximum SUB = (PRV+LST)*10.

Energy costs for skills should be higher in the CORE Erogame. Cindy doesn't end up being limited by her available energy very often, making it a bookkeeping chore for me that hasn't yet given her an incentive to go out and harvest energy.

DOM and SUB should decay overnight, maybe not all of it, but 50% or 75% of it, giving players an incentive to keep up their energy-seeking.

Keeping track of skills by percentages is a habit I picked up from Ryuugi's highly influential The Games We Play fic. It turns out to lead to a huge amount of bookkeeping that probably wasn't very consistent, as I tried to decide every chapter how many percentage points were gained in the High-Heeled Running skill.

I suggest that future QMs simply declare when skills have gone up, and track only that. If you want to run a more detailed game with more precise mechanics, track "dots" of skill gain and level up a skill after 3 dots or something.

XP thresholds to level are regularized in the CORE Erogame. The following total cumulative XPs are required to advance:

Lvls 2-5: 200, 500, 1000, 5000

Lvls 6-10: 10k, 20k, 30k, 50k, 75k

Lvls 11-15: 100k, 125k, 150k, 200k, 250k

Lvls 16-20: 300k, 400k, 500k, 600k, 750k

Lvls 21-25: 1m, 1.25m, 1.5m, 2m, 2.5m

Lvls 26-30: 3m, 4m, 5m, 6m, 7.5m

Lvl 31: 10m

Lvl 41: 100m

...and so on, going up by 1 order of magnitude every 10 levels. Having these be cumulative totals simplifies bookkeeping, since you don't need to subtract the completed levels every time you add up XP totals.

Perks in the CORE Erogame have variable costs. A perk point can be divided into 3 fragments. Every perk costs at least 2 fragments. Some perks may cost 1 perk and 2 fragments, or in extreme cases, 2 points. ("Off Switch" or "True Love Conquers All" would be candidates for 2 points.)

These variable prices are meant to balance a perk's attractiveness to the protagonist with the perk's cost, creating less of an obvious distinction between "clearly everyone should pick this" and "it would clearly be bad minmaxing to take that one" perks. There aren't any standard prices for major, minor, or srs bsns perks as such.

Refundability was originally meant to serve the purpose of making minor perks seem still worth taking. This still seems like a good idea under the CORE Erogame system. Without refundability, no character or quester with a tendency to strategic thinking will ever take Ero-Inventory if they know they can get a similar skill at higher ERO, because it would be "a waste of perk points." Or conversely you'd have to declare that nobody can ever have an Ero-Inventory without spending perk points, no matter how high ERO is otherwise or what other magical or mad-inventor skills they have. Neither of these options makes much sense compared to refundable perks.

The protagonist still gets 1 perk point every 5 levels. Quests award whole perk points, not fragments, and such quests are still very rare. This preserves the ability to offer "OH MY GOD A PERK POINT" quests without diminishing the rarity or great power of a perk point. (The emotional impact of earning a perk point would diminish severely if you got 1 perk point per level and most perks cost 5 points. Even a quest that offered 5 perk points still wouldn't have the same emotional power and impact, because that's not how emotions work. Hence the "fragments" mechanic, instead of getting 3 perk points every 5 levels.)

Compensating for the increased expenses of the more powerful perks, more perks will be refundable at sufficiently high levels of other stats. For example, being a Succubus is probably not anything you couldn't do on your own at ERO 80. Many perk points will be temporarily allocated and locked up to get at powers earlier, rather than being permanently spent.

Taking a perk when 9 points or less below its refund threshold will result in that perk being refunded 10 stat points later, or when the stat reaches 100, whichever comes first. For example, taking Perfect Sadist at FUK 61 will see the perk fragments refunded at FUK 71.

If multiple refund conditions are listed, they OR rather than AND together. That is, the first threshold to apply triggers the refund.

Some perks have major hidden implications. "Eye of Yandere" would only be a 2-fragment perk and not much of one, if it only did what it said. But actually picking a perk like this is liable to create a genre shift to Yandere, and promote other Yandere skills and plot events, which could reasonably make it a 1-point perk. You should assign a higher price if you-the-QM are planning to make a perk have more power than is apparent.

Everyone should feel free to suggest more perks, or just add them into their own campaigns. The perks Cindy saw hardly exhaust the possibilities. On a Doyleist level, I tailored the perks Cindy saw to create an appropriate series of Cindy-reactions once the perks were placed into alphabetical order by category (and I did a lot of tweaking of titles to accomplish this). Some of the perks I omitted, or thought of later, have been added into the CORE Erogame perks list in the final tab.

Your campaign does not need to offer More Marshmallows if you'd rather the player start taking perks earlier. The original "Marshmallow Test" perk happened because I was pretty sure that Cindy, never mind the questers, would learn about perks like "No" and "Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder" and insist on keeping at least one perk point in reserve. That being the case, the Marshmallow system would have enabled Cindy to have 3 perk points when she reached Lvl 10, encouraging her to actually spend one or two. When Cindy actually reached Lvl 10, the "More Marshmallows" perk then occurred to me because I wasn't sure the questers wanted the genre to shift to "Mad Inventor." I was fine continuing to write without that happening, so I made "More Marshmallows" be a thing and then put it to vote.

I suggest a revised Marshmallow system should offer a bonus of 1 perk point if the player doesn't spend any perk points until Lvl 10. Upon taking "Marshmallow Test," they're offered "More Marshmallows" which offers 1 additional bonus perk for waiting until Lvl 15. If they take "More Marshmallows," they're offered "Marshmallow Madness," which will give 2 more extra additional bonus perk points if they wait until Lvl 20. If they take "Marshmallow Madness" too, they will acquire the "Marshmallow Hoarder" status effect which allows the player to gain one more perk point every 3 levels, instead of every 5 levels, so long as the character has at least 8 unspent perk points before leveling.

If the player still doesn't spend any perk points at all, in sheer hope and faith that yet greater marshmallows will result if they only believe and hold fast, then, when they reach 15 unspent perk points or Lvl 40, whichever comes first, they should receive the "Marshmallow Lord" status effect. What that does is up to you.

For suggestions on the starting perk, see the "Opening game" tab.

The Core Erogame has no garbled text, fewer srs bsns perks, no xtrmly srs bsns, no invisitext except for Conceptual Hair, and no Meta-Reality Skills. This prevents any writers or game masters from needing to run a metaplot that I haven't explained yet and that they might not want to run anyway.

The CORE Erogame works like its description text says it should. Players in a CORE Erogame cannot acquire Conceptual Hair or Time Control until they reach the appropriate ERO levels. (If I was revising this now, minimum ERO for Conceptual Hair would be 60. Minimum ERO for "Time Enough For Love" would be 30, since Slack can be used as a background utility skill. Other Time Control subskills would require much higher ERO.)

Erogamer's Mind is the third Lvl-MAX starting skill that a Core Erogamer begins with alongside Erogamer's Body and Erogamer's World. Players who are exceptionally allergic to mental interference, or who already have very porny minds, may receive the Erogamer's Soul Reality Skill instead.

Erogamer's Mind (Lvl MAX): The mental flexibility to live your life as an erogame. You're more able to accept the realities of your new world. You'll also bounce back from painful, upsetting and bizarre sexual experiences with relative ease. Rape can be anything from a recoverable trauma to a Tuesday afternoon, but it won't ruin your life. Other aspects of this skill depend on the FUK, SED, LST, and PRV stats.

Erogamer's Soul (Lvl MAX): A different player might have received an Erogamer's Mind skill to unlock their potential and allow them to play the game as it is meant to be played. Either you really didn't want that, or your mind was already porny enough to impress the Erogame. This core skill only prevents your mind from being fundamentally and permanently damaged by extreme sexual experiences, and allows you to make voluntary use of the FUK, SED, LST, and PRV stats.

The Core Erogame requires access to some administrative privileges in order to run, but it can adapt to the specific level of omnipotence. Possible levels of omnipotence include:

Q: The ability to completely read and control local physics. This could in principle create any apparent phenomena the other levels could, but only by completely faking things in a way the Core Erogame prefers not to do. Operating at Q-level omnipotence will usually not lead to the world being retconned into coherent alternate pasts. Phemelanotide will be discovered on Sunday afternoon and deployed with improbable rapidity, rather than having retroactively been under development for years. You will run into many fewer people with extremely improbable past sex lives or psychology, at least until the local equivalent of phemelanotide has had a chance to work on them for a while. Magic enters the world as a sudden development that surprises people.

Kaleidoscope: The operation of parallel worlds. Tammi and Danni Arcadia can be brought in from whatever world birthed them, and computers can be edited so that the Arcadias' credit cards still work. But either the Arcadias can't call their parents, or their parents' bosses can't call their parents out of whatever entire small town has been materialized into the local world's Oregon. Unless the accessible parallel worlds are dense enough to include alternate Erogamers with alternate Erogames, you cannot be transported into an alternate world where you were Erogaming as a male (female) instead of a female (male) as in the Transsexual perk. If the breadth of parallel worlds does not include a Demon Dimension with its own magical mechanics, The Maou The Merrier will create a Demon Dimension from scratch instead of copying or bridging one in. There is still a classically understandable story about who got copied and pasted where, and which locations interacted with what other multiversal locations.

SPOILER "bullshit metaphysics": Sonia Turk can attend the interworld biology orgy without being absent from her native world's conference. A player who wonders will feel a strong intuition that people are not actually being created, copied, or erased as they appear and disappear. Having this greater power doesn't prevent the Core Erogame from deploying simpler Q-level omnipotence to enable High-Heeled Jumping or Just Follow The Fucking Rabbit. "Truths" only appear as a higher tier above Reality Skills in a game that runs on "bullshit metaphysics."

The Core Erogame is an excellent predictor of anything that is not an Outside Context Problem to it. If the Core Erogame is operating alongside a Newtonian universe or other deterministic setting, it will be a perfect predictor that could walk a Path to Victory even if it couldn't rewrite reality directly. The Core Erogame's true, full predictive power that it uses to steer the game should not be confused with the lesser predictive powers operated in-game by Time Control or precognitive talents.

The Core Erogame will never railroad as hard as a Path to Victory in-game, because that would reduce literary quality. To anyone playing it, the Core Erogame looks like a game system. It follows rules for how skills operate. It has algorithms that generate potential quests and quest events, and these algorithms are not about grabbing its shinies as fast as possible. However, these algorithms invoke internal random number generators, and the Core Erogame will reroll its internal dice any time the prediction mechanism says these dice results might lead to the Core Erogame not achieving its long-term goals. The Core Erogame doesn't load particular dice, it just rerolls all the random numbers in the path segment that failed, and keeps rerolling until the prediction mechanism says it is no longer headed for defeat. It follows a Random Path to Victory, one that doesn't violate the game rules.

From a QM's perspective, this doesn't mean you ever reroll the type of dice the players see. By the time you roll dice, other events should have already steered the game into a state where the Core Erogame is not on a path to events it would consider a huge setback. The Core Erogame will be ready to handle a critical failure or critical success before it rolls visible dice. (Doyleistically speaking, this is also a good rule for any QM. You should be ready for the result of any dice rolls, and should tweak any background events necessary for that to happen, while trying not to produce an appearance of railroading or violating the stated game mechanics.)

The Core Erogame's true prediction and pathfinding mechanisms should never make a grossly wrong prediction unless it is being messed with by something more powerful than itself. It does not make what we would call "mistakes." If you have read canon-compliant fic about CelestAI, you have seen the general concept. The Core Erogame genuinely losing and failing to fulfill its true goals is not a canon-compliant story premise, unless CelestAI acquires Q powers and starts fighting it.

EDIT: The Core Erogame may present differently in other worlds. The presentation of Cindy's Erogame has not been entirely independent of the concepts already in Cindy's mind. On a Doyleist level, you might or might not like the juxtaposition of a Cindy-like LitRGP Erogame with the fantasy magic of a swords-and-sorcery setting. If you don't like it, then it is "realistic" in a certain sense to have the Erogame adapt itself to its surroundings.

For example, an Erogame set in Middle-Earth might initially manifest as a Ring of Ero (that only you can perceive, and which can't be removed from your finger, or which you cannot muster the will to remove from your finger). Or a bright, Silmaril-like light might pass into your chest and disappear. The wearer of the Ero-Ring hears whispers like a clash of swords, and understands them. You perceive (and can read) inscriptions in Sindarin that nobody else can see, on the doors of taverns, glimmering on others' foreheads, on the back of your own hand. Your stats aren't numerical, they simply describe in words how far you've gone. You will at some point fuck a Balrog. As your ERO keeps going up, the history books start to say that Morgoth started the War of Lust. At high enough ERO, you may meet Eru Ero Iluvatar.

The Core Erogame's true long-term goals are up to you or or your backstory for how the Erogame ended up booting in your continuum. I have no intention of spoiling the backstory on mine.

By default, the Core Erogame will in the short run prioritize enacting high-literary-quality eroge involving the player (though not necessarily with the player as protagonist). The Core Erogame prefers that the player appreciate this high literary quality, and operates within aesthetics that the player understands.

After literary quality and drama and character development, the Core Erogame prioritizes excitement and high passions and romance. After that, hentai and pleasure.

Although this ordering of priorities does exist, and does put hentai at bottom, the Core Erogame is powerful enough that it usually does not need to choose. It will usually get everything it wants simultaneously, including the hentai.

The Core Erogame will cheerfully include hentai scenes at any valid opportunity, even quite random ones, if they don't interfere with the story. The Core Erogame will not insert random hentai scenes that disrupt building tension or interrupt a player at a moment of drama or necessary introspection. The Core Erogame will wait to have the shirtless football team wander by at a time when the player needs to obtain additional DOM or SUB, and has an in-story reason for needing to have a good hentai scene right now. The Core Erogame will not have rapists assault the player in bed at night in short-sighted search of a little more hentai, especially early on, because that would be a large story development and should only occur for reasons. The Core Erogame will, however, promise the player Ero-Travel in exchange for blowing random Lyft drivers, in order to sometimes make car trips less boring.

A story with zero hentai is not an eroge at all, and will not be initiated. This doesn't mean the Core Erogame will let quests look like they are following a Path to Hentai. The generated quests will contain visible opportunities for hentai, but might not force any single such opportunity. Weird in-story dice rolls, or protagonists attempting to dungeon-bypass every opportunity for hentai, will result in the storyline continuing somehow until the protagonist has been in at least one hentai scene.

Your Erogame's long-run goals are up to you, or up to your backstory for how the Erogame booted in your continuum. Some ideas if you need them:

Getting the player to raise ERO to 100.

Getting the player to raise all stats to 100.

Healing the player of some big dramatic psychological problem.

Filling a complete three-tier harem of 9, 27, and 243 primary, secondary, and tertiary haremettes.

The player renouncing all others to enter a loving monogamous relationship forever.

The player fully sexualizing their world, making it over into Lewd Earth (or a lewded galaxy).

The player gaining great power, becoming bored with all ordinary hentai, and finding that they can only gain fulfillment in constructing their own Erogame and inflicting it on new victims.

The player willingly and with enthusiastic consent giving their soul to the Erogame, in gratitude at the end of a long and happy life that seems to have reached its natural end.

(None of these are the Erogame's goal in the original Erogamer quest.)

Whatever its true goals, the Core Erogame is patient when grabbing something immediately would result in long-term problems, or look forced, or be a bad story, or hurry over proper character development. It knows the consequences. It can see through time like wet silk panties.

The starting perk is one that the Erogame often deploys in order to clear up any immediate obstacles to getting the game "properly started" as it sees that. If not for But She Was Such A Good Student, Cindy would have fretted about whether her homework was suffering and her academic career was in jeopardy, and would have continued to spend a lot of time taking boring classes in college until something snapped her out of that.

Similarly, a player born into a caste system in an untouchable caste might get a starting perk creating a new, sexually permissive caste just for her.

A player extremely cautious and munchkiny by her nature, such that almost no specific inducement would get her to do anything but play it safe and munchkin some more, might get a starting perk directly saying "Everything Is Better With Ero: On every quest and every path you walk, taking the option that turns you on more will never lead to worse results in the long run than taking the option that seems safe, sensible, and practical. This perk does not operate by reducing the rewards of safe, sensible, practical-seeming paths."

Players in the CORE Erogame start with an Erogamer's Mind or Erogamer's Soul skill. See the "Metaphysics" tab.

The first point in any stat is very easy to gain even if the stat is already high. This helps show the player how the stat can be increased. Usually, all stats will go up by at least this initial point on the first day, if the player does anything at all interesting.

A new player's starting DOM and SUB (the current energy levels, not the maximums) reflect how much dominance or submission they've been thinking about or acting on in the last couple of days. Somebody who browsed submissive Tumblr or browbeat an attractive boy would have 10 SUB or 10 DOM, somebody who masturbated to the Tumblr or was turned on by lecturing the boy would have 50 SUB or 50 DOM, somebody who actually submitted or dominated sexually might have 200 energy or have maxed out their starting maximums. (To calculate the maximums, see the DOM/SUB tab.)

The Core Erogame does not always insult early players. Some protagonists are starting with low stats and low opinions of themselves, and would feel distrustful of the seeming marketing/advertising nature of any text that praised them or offered too much unmixed encouragement. This may not be true of every protagonist; another might be told "At Lvl 0, you're as weak as you'll ever be again" or "At Lvl 0, all your vast path lies ahead of you" rather than "At Lvl 0, you're as pathetic as you'll ever be."

In general, the Core Erogame is navigating to get the protagonist to head off bravely and cooperatively on the starting quest, maybe not with full Path to Victory railroading, but not shooting itself in the foot either. If the pink text being enthusiastic at the protagonist would make the protagonist (even more) suspicious and disbelieving, the Core Erogame will make sure its text doesn't look enthusiastic. If insulting the protagonist would be counterproductive, the Core Erogame won't do that either.

Initial bribery: The Core Erogame knows that many protagonists will be more cooperative and enthusiastic about starting their Erogame quests if well-bribed. For some protagonists this may be already accomplished with higher BOD, or Erogamer's Body dispensing with a terminal disease, or a starting perk that gives them a higher caste. For others, it might take the form of an early quest that gets them out of a huge debt, or, if they wouldn't believe that, an early quest that gives them a large believable amount of money, followed by a second quest that gets them out of the whole debt.

Not punishing early courage: The Core Erogame understands the concept of "operant conditioning" and is unlikely to zap the player the first time the player tries being adventurous, unless the player has already been bribed or motivated thoroughly enough to grant the Core Erogame latitude. This is the type of result that is likely to get rerolled until it comes out as a non-defeat.

This doesn't mean there can't be a critical failure on an early die roll that gets the protagonist kidnapped away to a slaver facility on their first night out. It means that the protagonist should look back afterwards and think "That wasn't nearly as bad as I was afraid of, and I'm grateful for learning that, also for the suitcase containing twenty million dollars that I grabbed while I was escaping" or "Wow I guess being kidnapped by slavers is totally my fetish, no wonder I wasn't having fun before" or "Still so much better than being quadriplegic."

Similarly, even if you wouldn't ordinarily be able to tempt a steward into having sex in an airplane bathroom at ERO 12, trying this on your first day out is more liable than usual to result in success---and gaining another 2 or 3 points of ERO from hammering on the walls of probability.

About

Changelog

Starting perks

BOD

SED

FUK

LST

PRV

ERO

Genre

Meta

Srs Bsns

This is a list of perks revised for the CORE Erogame system. It includes corrected minimum stats and refund thresholds, more frequent refunds, and non-integer perk costs.

1 perk point breaks into 3 fragments.

The statement (17 ≤ ERO < 52) says that this perk first becomes available at ERO 17, and is refunded upon reaching ERO 52.

The CORE Erogame's revised info screen for perks should tell the player the above fact, or you could rewrite all the perks as "Gain an extra perk point after reaching ERO 52. Minimum ERO: 17" Personally I did not want to do that.

New CORE perks (not in Cindy's Erogame) appear in pink-violet. Perks added since the last round of revisions appear in indigo.

Not every player needs to see all of these perks. They weren't all visible to Cindy. And not just because I carefully selected and reselected titles and made some reluctant omissions, until the resulting series of perks formed an acceptable dramatic trajectory for Cindy's thoughts in 2.8.2.

Starts at 2018.05.25.

2018.05.25: Added BOD / Dreams Made Flesh.
2018.05.27: Added Genre / Enter the Wired. Changed min/max ERO on Genre / Childe of the Night and Genre / Cultivator.
2018.12.15: Added Starting perks / Indubcon and Starting perks / Where There's Sex There's Hope.
2019.05.16: Added Genre / Dungeon Master.
2019.10.20: Added ERO / Pon Farr Lightning Round.
2020.01.30: Added BOD / All The Way Up.

If a perk is obtained as a starting perk, it has no cost, no minimum stats, and no refund threshold.

Any costs, minimums, and refund thresholds shown here are just suggestions in case you want to offer one of these perks for general purchase.

[ ] But She Was Such a Good Student (1 point) (ERO < 60)

If this were a different game, you'd be starting with a high INT stat. Throughout your scholastic career, your grades continue to reflect your actual knowledge of the course material, and you have no unusual difficulties mastering that material. Even if you miss classes or assignments for, uh, reasons.

[ ] Diplomatic Immunity (1 point + 2 fragments) (30 ≤ ERO < 70)

Everywhere you go, the computers are firmly convinced you are the child of a high-ranking diplomat from an important allied country. Police officers may stop you (possibly even using violence, if they catch you in the middle of something they really want to stop) but you are never arrested, never charged, and will never go to jail.

[ ] Everything Is Better With Ero (2 points)

On every quest and every path you walk, taking the option that turns you on more will never lead to worse results in the long run than taking the option that seems safe, sensible, and practical. This perk does not operate by reducing the rewards of safe, sensible, practical-seeming paths.

[ ] Home Office (2 fragments) (ERO < 50)

No matter how many times you skip work, you will not get fired.

[ ] Indubcon (1 point)

Your best guess never turns out to be an overestimate in regards to how much somebody wants you sexually, or feels okay about having sex with you, or is enjoying having sex with you, or is into some particular fetish.

[ ] Mom/Dad (2 fragments)

Your horrible, abusive parent is replaced by a helpful, loyal parent who will not interfere with your Erogame business. You may opt to keep your memories of the old parent, or simply remember a happier childhood, in which case you will gain a small, unimportant additional starting perk and not remember that this true perk exists or that you selected it. You may also opt to retain the ability to tell this new parent about the Erogame.

If you have an additional absentee parent or awful step-parent, they are replaced by a corresponding kindly parent who is dead due to a random accident. This operation leaves your family's finances unchanged.

[ ] Pretty In Pink (Amenta only) (1 point) (ERO < 60)

Your caste is “Pink.” Everyone can immediately tell this by looking at you. Pinks are completely immune to pollution, and can therefore interact with reds or do red work with no censure (although objects in a pink’s possession can be polluted, including clothing, which means no one will bat an eye at you walking around naked just in case, no matter how formal the setting). Pinkness occasionally occurs spontaneously in the general population, and all a pink’s children will be pink regardless of the other parent’s caste. Further aspects of this perk will depend on your ERO.

[ ] Where There's Sex There's Hope (2 points)

No matter what has already gone wrong or how bad a situation gets, there’s always a way out that involves you fucking someone you find attractive.

[ ] Absolute Territory (1 point + 2 fragments) (60 ≤ ERO)

"Zettai ryouiki," thigh-highs rising well above the knee, combined with miniskirts, to leave a short strip of visible thigh between. After taking this perk you never have any trouble with thigh-highs staying up---no glue or garters are ever required. Zettai ryouiki works for you in any situation: you could wear an zettai ryouiki version of a military uniform while disguised and entering a military base, wear zettai ryouiki armor into battle without combat penalties, or wear a zettai ryouiki spacesuit in space. Your Erogame Logic applies to anything you truly believe on a core level to be part of your sex life. You can easily transform existing wearables into zettai ryouiki versions with a little craftwork.

[ ] All The Way Up (2 fragments) (60 ≤ BOD < 90)

Your legs go all the way up. If you have not yet selected this perk, your legs will go only part of the way up.

[ ] Dreams Made Flesh (1 point) (BOD < 80)

Your body is now more of a concept. This concept doesn't include disease, amputations that don't grow back, or poisons other than aphrodisiacs and some other psychoactive drugs.

[ ] Lolita (Shota) (1 point) (BOD < 70)

Select a new apparent age between 8 and 14. Your biological form and apparent legal birthdate change to match. Your mind, stats, and skills are unaffected. You may at will moderate the amount that this diminishes your breast size (penis size).

If you use SED-based skills on persons who would otherwise not be attracted to you, this perk does not of itself modify the psychological consequences to them.

[ ] Not Right Now You Don't (2 fragments) (BOD < 50)

Your anus no longer functions as an excretory vent in addition to its other uses. You simply never need to go to the bathroom for number two. Your sensitivity to other stimuli including enemas is unchanged.

[ ] Style On (1 point + 2 fragments) (60 ≤ ERO)

Your Element is Hair. Your Origin is Hair. The slightest glimpse of someone's hairstyle tells you its structure, history, and meaning to its wearer. Every hairstyle you have thus glimpsed is inscribed within your soul. And yet, from the beginning, you never took any pride in your braids. You are broken somewhere deep inside and that is why you are a hairstyle.

Taking this perk unlocks the Conceptual Hair skill tree, replacing Implausible Hairstyle and all other hair-related skills with minimum BOD requirements. Taking this perk automatically begins the Hill of Hairstyles quest.

[ ] Tastes Like Chocolate (2 fragments) (BOD < 50)

Freely control the taste and scent of any of your bodily fluids, so long as the result is more pleasant than the human norm (you cannot use this skill to discourage rapists).

[ ] Transsexual (1 point + 1 fragment)

At will, but at most once per level, change to have been born male, female, futanari, or hermaphrodite. This is a conceptual shift of world/self and gives you access to distant-feeling memories of having previously lived as your new sex. Some romantic relationships may shift to become friendships in the new world, as not all other people's sexual orientations may be easily reselectable in the target history. You cannot change to futanari or hermaphrodite while your ERO is under 35.

[ ] Werewhatever (1 point + 1 fragment) (50 ≤ ERO) (BOD < 90)

Choose any one other form you desire. It cannot have magical abilities other than your usual powers, nor phlebotinium biology such as skyscraper size or human-affecting pheromones. The new body may have abilities which could plausibly be the result of ordinary biochemistry differently configured, such as ejaculating tentacles or a vibrator-lined stomach sac.

While you are under direct moonlight, you may at will assume or relinquish this form. You can continue wearing the wereform, but not relinquish it, when not under moonlight.

[ ] Curse of Dresden (1 point + 1 fragment) (SED < 80)

The first time you make full eye contact with someone, you learn which fetish or other aspect of their sexuality most embarrasses them.

[ ] Curse of Tattletale (1 point + 1 fragment) (SED < 80)

Whenever anyone within visual range has specific sexual thoughts about you, you know what they are thinking about.

[ ] The Eye of Yandere (1 point)

If you are romantically attracted to someone, you are always alerted when they are romantically or sexually attracted to someone else or when someone else is romantically or sexually attracted to them. You do not know the strength of this attraction, just that it exists.

[ ] I'm Not Explaining This Again (2 fragments) (SED < 70)

After you have carefully, painstakingly, thoroughly explained an ero-related concept at least once (polyamory is not cheating, that is not where a clitoris is, how to tie a shibari knot), anyone else you meet will understand it after only a couple of sentences.

[ ] PhD in Harem Management (1 point)

Those among your partners who would otherwise be hostile to each other tolerate one another's presence. This perk does not bypass quest-related challenges or produce actual friendship.

[ ] Poly Graph Test (1 point) (SED < 50)

You are instinctively aware of how a relationship forming between two persons would affect other relationships connected to them.

[ ] Skip the Boring Parts (1 point) (SED < 40)

Invoking this perk gives you a SED*1% chance to transition directly to whatever sexual encounter (if any) you would otherwise have with a person. You can only invoke this perk on a particular person once. This perk cannot be used to bypass quest-related challenges.

[ ] Trust (1 point)

Whenever somebody honestly tells you that they love you, or like you, or admire something about you, or shows trust in you by confessing a truth to you that they would not tell others, you know that they mean it.

Taking this perk renders you ineligible for a significant number of Erogame quests and reduces the rewards of many others, but it's here if you need it.

[ ] Tsundere (1 point) (25 ≤ BOD)

Nobody ever questions the insane troll logic of what you choose to be offended by.

[ ] You Couldn't Help Yourself (2 fragments) (SED < 60) (ERO < 70)

Anyone who views a picture of you will sincerely not blame another person for having had sex with you, including the monogamous partners of those you have seduced.

[ ] You Didn't Hear That (2 fragments)

Once per level you may retroactively decide not to have said something. This perk only applies to utterances made while you were your current level.

[ ] Yousexual (1 point + 1 fragment) (SED < 50)

Everyone is gay for you / hetero for you. This does not affect their LST, so does not modify asexuality or aromanticism.

[ ] Cinnamon Roll (1 point)

Triple all positive effects on others of having sex with you.

[ ] Edgelord (1 point) (FUK < 70)

You always know how close to orgasm others are and never make someone come by accident.

[ ] James Bond of Bondage (2 fragments) (FUK < 50)

Your ties never cause unintentional pain, never come loose accidentally, and can be applied in less than 5 minutes, including to an unwilling subject who is otherwise being held down or restrained.

[ ] Gray Girl (1 point + 1 fragment) (1 ≤ Time Control < MAX)

Unlocks the Looping Reset subskill of Time Control. Depending on skill level, you can shift time backward by seconds, within a diameter on the order of meters, and set this shift to repeat an integer number of times. Souls are unaffected by these resets.

(For example, you could stimulate someone until, even with no further stimulation, they will inevitably begin to experience a ruined orgasm in 5 seconds. You may then impose a 5-second Looping Reset, causing their bodies to repeatedly jump back 5 seconds every time, just as their ruined orgasm is beginning once again.)

Be advised that continuing a Looping Reset for more than a few minutes may cause psychological damage, especially if the person is repeating intense sensations. For technical reasons, colors inside a Looping Reset field appear desaturated from outside.

[ ] Legoland (1 point + 1 fragment) (50 ≤ ERO < 90) (FUK < 100)

You can detach pussies, clits, nipples, assholes, and cocks from their original holders, and then attach them to other people or just take them with you. People with parts attached receive sensations from that part. All sensations experienced by a part continue to flow to that part's original owner, unless an alternative part has been attached to the empty slot on the original owner's body. Excretory functions of a part become unnecessary to the person while their part is detached. Detached parts temporarily acquire the protection of your Erogamer's Body skill. Victims of this skill may take back and reattach their own parts if they can find them, but only to that part's original location on their body.

Examples:

- Removing Alice's pussy and attaching Bob's cock to her groin will cause both Alice and Bob to receive sensations from that cock.
- Further attaching Carol's pussy to Bob's groin means that only Alice is still receiving sensation from Bob's cock.
- Instead attaching Carol's pussy to Bob's thigh would mean that Bob is receiving sensation from both his detached cock and from Carol's attached pussy.
- You can go on attaching additional parts to Bob so long as he has remaining exposed flesh. You cannot stack parts.
- Removing any non-native parts from Bob means that Bob immediately stops receiving input to them.
- Tiling Bob in clits and tossing him into a vibrator pit is not advised if you want to keep him sane.

[ ] Library of Sodom (1 point) (FUK < 40)

You automatically know any detail of abstract knowledge that you want or need about any sexual activity that has been described in public writing. For example, directions for how to tie a shibari knot, or that one ought to avoid striking the kidneys with a flogger. This knowledge does not convey skill.

[ ] Naked Before Me (1 point) (FUK < 70) (ERO < 80)

You may touch people as if their clothing and your clothing did not exist. Onlookers not clued in see your hand, shoe, or head resting quietly in the corresponding place---lewd, perhaps, but not obscene---and do not hear any sounds directly produced by the sex act, though they still hear other sounds made by your victim. Similar acts may be performed on you, including by accident.

[ ] Perfect Sadist (1 point) (FUK < 40)

Inflicting pain on others, no matter how severe, never causes any permanent damage you did not intend.

[ ] Everywhere Erogenous (2 fragments) (LST < 40)

There is no area of your body that cannot be used to stimulate you to orgasm, though this may still take time and work to do through your elbow.

[ ] Fairy-tale Painslut (1 point) (LST < 50)

Your masochism is strong enough to embrace any intensity of sexually charged torture, with zero warmup.

[ ] Look Who's Turned On (2 fragments) (LST < 40)

Your sexual response to compatible stimuli is unhindered by other aspects of a situation that exceed your PRV. This does not alter other psychological impacts of situations exceeding your PRV.

[ ] Omnisexual (1 point + 1 fragment) (LST < 80)

You can at will decide to be sexually and/or romantically attracted to any person, or body type, or personality characteristic. This perk cannot remove attractions you would otherwise already have, nor does it expand your fetishes.

[ ] Pretty Smart (1 point) (ERO < 70)

Romance has been hard for you... since, unlike the fools around you who are attracted to mere appearances, staring at cleavage can't tell you who's worth pursuing. The Erogame has seen your annoyance and devised a solution! The conventional attractiveness of people you meet now strongly correlates with their intelligence, conscientiousness, corruptibility, or other mental attributes you might find attractive on a... deeper... examination.

(Making people smarter using technology or spells available at higher ERO will automatically increase their physical attractiveness as well.)

[ ] Super Horny (1 point + 2 fragments)

Gain +1 to all stats for each cumulative 3 days you go without orgasm, to a maximum bonus of 25% of base values. You must have sex or be teased on each such day for it to count towards the total.

[ ] Wereslut (1 point)

Under the light of a full moon, you may shift in or out of your Wereslut form. Your Wereslut form may gain up to 40 additional attribute points, distributed by you among BOD, SED, FUK, and ERO at the time of choosing this perk. You may not put more than 10 of these points into ERO, or more than 20 of these points into any other stat. Your Wereslut form also gains both LST and PRV each equivalent to half the total points you have so distributed, rounded up.

[ ] 24/7 (1 point)

Pick one:

- You cannot gain Submissive Energy. You can use Dominant Energy to fuel skills requiring Submissive Energy.
- You cannot gain Dominant Energy. You can use Submissive Energy to fuel skills requiring Dominant Energy.

Each time you reach a level divisible by 5, you may choose to suppress or switch this perk.

[ ] Cal's Curse Compounded (2 fragments) (PRV < 60)

You may not have an orgasm without permission.

Once you plead with someone for permission you may not ask any other person besides them for one month. Each plea resets this timer. The permission-giver must know the rules of this curse; must know that you deliberately invoked this curse upon yourself; cannot otherwise be subject to your commands; and cannot be offered any non-sexual incentives for their response. They may choose to permit a ruined orgasm rather than a full orgasm. The permission-giver may give conditional permissions, including requiring you to obtain the further permission of others. Permission may be revoked at any time. You cannot lie to the permission-giver about any matter relating to your denial. You can try to remain silent, if you think you can get away with that.

All game skills relating to orgasm denial, whether of yourself or others, have zero energy cost.

[ ] Consent is Not One of My Fetishes (2 fragments) (PRV < 50)

You never suffer any psychological trauma related to the now-irrelevant fact of whether or not you consented to a sexual event. Before taking this perk, consider carefully whether ceasing to care about your own consent is a change you truly wish to make to yourself.

[ ] Everyone Knows (2 fragments)

People who spend time in your presence begin to form correct intuitions about what turns you on, at least the parts their minds would willingly comprehend. They won't expect others to know too, but they will be sure of their own beliefs. This process is especially quick for any fetishes that currently embarrass you. It is extremely quick for fetishes that currently embarrass you and that interest the other person.

[ ] Hyperhypnoslut (1 perk + 2 fragments)

You can drop faster than your panties when being voluntarily hypnotized. You can be hypnotized without your wanting to be hypnotized, if you are forced or tricked into listening to the hypnotist's voice. A hypnotist can force you to do things you don't want to do, up to your current PRV + 8. You can be given temporary false memories or amnesia.

Your ultimate trigger phrase is 'floral ticklish cowboy rabies' and anyone using it gets root access on your soul. This includes permanent memory editing, personality editing, sexuality editing, belief editing, emotional editing, and absolute obedience. You cannot be hypnotized or drugged into giving up this trigger phrase or revealing its existence. You cannot hypnotize yourself using this trigger phrase, even by leaving yourself a recording. Think very carefully before giving this trigger phrase to anyone, or writing it down, or speaking it aloud when you think you are alone in your bedroom.

[ ] Obedience (1 point) (PRV < 70)

At will, give yourself the Obedient status effect for a pre-specified duration. While this status effect holds, you must make a will save (potentially with modifiers) to disobey any order given you. This obedience only applies to orders that can be obeyed over the course of minutes, not to longer-term orders. Once you refuse an order, you do not need to save again versus that order or similar orders until one day has passed.

You cannot impose an Obedient status effect on yourself lasting longer than 10 years.

[ ] Blessings of Slaanesh Be Upon This House (1 point)

Whatever building you choose to make your permanent residence has residents with BOD, LST, and PRV at least equal to your corresponding stats minus 8. Events within all parts of the building behave as if under the influence of your full, in-person ERO. Even children who would otherwise be too youn (CENSORED BECAUSE I'M NOT WRITING THIS)

[ ] Dark Side (1 point)

At will, cause your eyes to turn visibly bloodshot or revert to normal. At ERO 40+, you can opt to have your irises turn scarlet, and at ERO 50+, your eyes can glow red.

Anyone witnessing this phenomenon is fully convinced that you are in the grip of an alternate personality, that your memories of a past life have assumed control, that you are lost in the demonic side of your half-demon heritage, etcetera. To whatever extent this naturally motivates people to forgiveness, your primary self will not be held responsible for your dark side's shameless misdeeds.

[ ] Ero-Inventory (2 fragments) (ERO < 60)

Any portable sex equipment or clothing that you legally own can be summoned by you at will, and dismissed at will to return to its former location. If your ERO is under 50 and you are being observed, you must summon items to inside an unobserved container, or otherwise maintain deniability. If you are displaying cleavage and your apparent cup size is at least C, you may access up to 2000 cubic centimeters of general storage by reaching between your breasts; providing the object could reasonably have been stored there, if your ERO is under 50.

[ ] Ero-Travel (1 point) (ERO < 80)

Your perversions are so twisted as to warp space itself. At the moment of orgasm, you can teleport to any other point where you have previously had an orgasm, providing that both your origin and destination are well-trafficked public travelways (e.g. busy sidewalks, bus stops, subway platforms). While your ERO is less than 50 you must not be observed at the moment of vanishing, and any others present at the destination will happen to be looking away as you materialize, though they will be looking back very soon. At ERO 50+ you may take along any number of partners if you are all stimulating each other and orgasm simultaneously. Traveling longer distances may require more intense orgasms at the origin point, a greater number of previous orgasms at the destination point, or both.

Persistent 'points' in space are calculated relative to whatever massive body's gravitational field dominates that point in space, including matching the rotation or orbit of that massive body. On arrival you will be matched to the velocity of your destination point. 'Simultaneous' times at the origin and destination will if possible be aligned to match the predictions of Special Relativity given your origin velocity, but cannot loop time. You can take with you whatever you are currently carrying with your own strength, including clothing.

[ ] Fading Dream (2 fragments)

Your exes do not remember you after you break up with them.

[ ] Fake ID (1 point)

You have an alternative identity whose existence is recognized by governments and computers. You have all paperwork required to support this identity and can choose its background at will; if the alternate you is a different age, nationality, or sex then it is your responsibility to disguise yourself accordingly. No one can make the connection between your identities without you explicitly informing them or them catching you unmistakably in the act of switching.

This perk does not modify people's senses of object permanence: someone who locks one of your identities inside a cell will be expecting the same person to be in that cell later. If you change your appearance, they may simply decide you have 'disguised yourself' as your alternative identity.

You may take this perk more than once.

[ ] Home Base (1 point)

You possess an upgradeable fortress home, initially small and bare, but expandable through the infusion of money, certain offerings, or the completion of various quests. Electricity, water, and Internet access are always provided. Your home initially has an unobtrusive outlet in whichever part of your local territory is most useful to you. Further outlets may be added with underground expansion, or at higher ERO, portals.

You may designate small personal areas within your base as not being invadable. You may place vulnerable family and friends in this area, and personal mementos. You may not use it to store prisoners, treasures, or objects of power.

[ ] Friends With Benefits (1 point + 1 fragment)

Your friends, companions, and allies have an easier time keeping up with your rapidly growing power as they follow you down many strange paths---if that's what you want, anyway.

This perk unlocks the Share the Fun subskill of the Bestow Ability skill tree.

[ ] In Nomine Status Quo (1 point)

Once per level you may roll against your ERO*2 to have something undo the long-term consequences of an event perturbing your personal existence. You discover blackmail material you can use to get the prosecutor to drop the charges; or, your one-night-stand turns out to be a millionaire who pays off the incurred debt. Your chance of success when using this perk cannot exceed 90%, but you can still try to salvage the situation by ordinary means if it fails.

This perk may be used any number of times, without counting against the once-per-level limitation, to try to undo any addition or removal of a suitor in your love dodecahedron.

[ ] (Ir)rational (2 fragments)

Up to once per level you may toggle whether or not Erogame Logic suppresses scientific curiosity. While this suppression is off, appropriately minded individuals can recognize you as a total falsification of how they thought the world worked and may prioritize the larger implications. While this suppression is on, people will still experience shock and wonder about specifics, but evince no great curiosity about fundamental issues, nor ambitions of global change.

[ ] It's Like Saying Hello In Japan (1 point) (30 ≤ ERO < 70)

No negative consequence of any kind will occur to you, including to reputation or personal friendships, from forcing yourself on a person of primarily Japanese descent. Any person who has voluntarily watched more than 200 hours of anime is considered Japanese for purposes of applying this perk.

[ ] Let's Not Turn This Rape Into A Murder (2 fragments)

Although the Erogame would not in any case present you with a crippling threat and no alternative, this perk guarantees up front that no sexual assault or sexually motivated kidnapping will result in any damage your Erogamer's Body cannot heal. Think carefully before taking this perk: once you take it you can never again experience the crushing, absolute submission that comes from knowing your very life depends on pleasing your captor.

[ ] Like Uber for Costumes (1 point + 1 fragment) (60 ≤ ERO)

If you can find any manufactured fetish clothing (not a one-off creation, and you must not have been involved in inspiring it) that corresponds to a profession, you can act with the full skill of that profession while wearing that clothing. For example, using firearms while dressed as a sexy soldier.

[ ] Mindbreaker (1 point) (25 ≤ ERO)

Sexual torture is a completely reasonable and efficient way for you to obtain competent, obedient followers.

[ ] More Competitive Than You (1 point)

For any activity whose primary purpose is competition (e.g. chess, drag racing, or martial arts; but not stock trading, or literary authorship) your skill level adjusts to match your love interests and/or romantic rivals. Your skill level is such as to make you just barely worse than your love interest, or just barely better than your romantic rivals, whichever is higher, if you try your best.

[ ] No Comparison (2 fragments) (ERO < 50)

Those who have experienced sex with you do not think to compare their past or future sexual experiences to the ones they had with you. This perk applies retroactively to previous partners and heals any prior psychological damage they have taken, but does not repair any of their relationships that have already broken.

[ ] Non-Excludable Public Good (1 point) (45 ≤ ERO < 70)

The world treats your orifices as unsecured wifi. Nobody considers it odd for anyone to do anything to you at any time or place. They may still consider it shameful for you if you visibly respond.

[ ] Oh My God There's Two of Them (1 point + 1 fragment) (60 ≤ ERO < 90)

You can be in two places at once, so long as at least one of you is doing something ero. You experience both lives separately and in parallel. You cannot gain energy from selfcest.

[ ] Pay in Rape Dollars (1 point) (70 ≤ ERO)

Whenever you would otherwise need to spend money within the game system, you may optionally pay by handing over an unwilling victim of correspondingly high quality. You by definition are not unwilling if you hand over yourself, likewise those who have voluntarily submitted themselves to your commands.

[ ] Perfect Subbing (2 fragments) (SED < 80) (ERO < 60)

You can at will perceive subtitles in your native language for all speakers whose voice you can hear, and subtitled translation for all foreign-language texts. This does not enable you to speak or write other languages.

[ ] Pon Farr Lightning Round (2 fragments) (ERO < 60)

You must have sex with a new partner once per day. Failure to meet this deadline may result in increasing levels of fever, sensitivity, mania, fatigue, lust, fugue, loss of self-control, bonuses to all stats, or whatever else the author decides to throw in there.

Anyone you tell about this will believe you completely and see it as a mundane medical condition, regardless of what further opinions they then form on the subject.

By paying 1 full point you may take this as a Genre perk refundable at ERO 70, in which case this medical condition is becoming common across the world.

[ ] Something About Marry (1 point) (30 ≤ ERO < 70)

You may at will choose to have been betrothed to someone as a child. The evidence for this betrothal may be discovered all at once or revealed gradually. Warning: Overuse of this perk may result in the results of overusing this perk.

[ ] There are No Stops on the Rape Train (1 point) (45 ≤ ERO)

+15 BOD, +15 SED, and +15 FUK.

Nobody will understand anything you say or do---such as trying to run away, or struggling, or screaming---as indicating that you might not want to have sex; unless they would not heed your wishes regardless.

Raising LST or PRV to over 35, or ERO to over 60, is strongly advised before taking this perk.

[ ] This Rape Train Has No Brakes (1 point)

When a person finishes raping you, if there is at least one other potential rapist within visual range who has not yet raped you, each such person is at least 50% likely to take their turn next (even if they otherwise would not be so inclined). In the event more people would try to rape you than you have available orifices, a random subset will be selected. The effects of this perk are evaluated again after each round of rape finishes.

All benefits and rewards of being raped are doubled.

This perk stacks with the skills Asking For It and Dressed Like a Slut, and with the Rapebait status effect.

[ ] Time Enough for Love (1 pt + 2 fragments) (30 ≤ ERO < 90)

Unlocks the Time Control skill tree. Your future self immediately uses Time Control Lvl MAX to seal all aspects of this skill except for the relatively harmless Slack subskill. At Lvl 1, the Slack subskill enables you to take up to 10 extra minutes per day, spread out however you like, so long as nobody is watching you or nobody in your group is keeping track of time.

[ ] True Love Conquers All (1 pt + 2 fragments)

If you love someone enough, nothing can ever permanently separate them from you. The only exception is their wishing to leave you---deliberately, voluntarily, and based on correct information. This applies to any type of love, not just romantic love. If you would undergo hardship and sacrifice to protect someone, if losing them would leave a scar on your heart that never fully heals, then in time you will always be reunited.

This perk retroactively includes everyone you have previously lost, but still love. If somebody you love is already dead (e.g. a beloved parent or grandparent), taking this perk automatically begins the Heaven's Feel quest to revive them after your ERO reaches 50.

[ ] True Love Potion (1 point)

Cause any one person to fall in love with any one other person, wholly, deeply, and permanently, with all their heart and all their soul. This counts as true love for all relevant tests requiring it.

You cannot take this perk after taking Eye of Yandere.

[ ] Urban Legend (1 point)

For any identities you maintain besides your primary legal identity or Fake ID, their existence never becomes common knowledge. This perk does not interfere with first-order knowledge: People may readily observe or tell trusted others about the girl who blows anyone for $1. However, everyone believes unshakably that 'most people' would be as contemptuously skeptical of your existence as of an alien abduction. No one would ever dare talk about you in public as if they believed in you. It is possible for large populations to all be subject to this effect simultaneously, e.g. if you are seen on national television.

[ ] Utility Monster (1 point)

Your experiences are a trillion times more important than the experiences of those around you.

[ ] What Are You Doing Here (2 fragments) (ERO < 80)

You can always find anyone you have previously kissed. All your attempts to be admitted to the school, bluff your way into the military base, pretend to be a hospital nurse, etcetera, have triple the likelihood of succeeding. Unless you otherwise blow your cover, nobody else takes your target or any other prior acquaintances seriously if they protest your being there.

[ ] Agent XXX (1 point) (30 ≤ ERO < 70)

When you come into contact with any intelligence agency of any nationality, they will immediately see you as prime fodder for willing recruitment (either as an employee or a contractor). This effect continues operating even if you are already working for one or more such agencies.

[ ] Animal Whisperer (1 point) (30 ≤ ERO < 60)

Choose an animal family. You are extraordinarily skilled at handling (non-sapient) members of this family, and will experience yourself as being able to communicate nearly intelligently with up to (ERO / 10) chosen familiars. At ERO 40 you may grant your chosen familiars greater intelligence and other powers through the Familiar subskill of Bestow Ability.

[ ] Childe of the Night (1 point + 1 fragment) (45 ≤ ERO < 75)

Stuff happens, you get turned into a vampire, more stuff happens. These vampires are nothing like Anne Rice vampires, and no characters resembling anyone from her novels will appear at any point.

[ ] Cultivator (1 point + 2 fragments) (45 ≤ ERO < 75)

Receive 4 doses of Body-Tempering Elixir and 4 Qi Pills, enough to get you started. Also, dantians are now a thing.

[ ] Dungeon Master (1 point) (45 ≤ ERO < 75)

You are now the proud owner of a BDSM dungeon, which starts out with 1 play room and 1 submissive on staff. You can expand your BDSM dungeon using energy accumulated by the BDSM dungeon core.

[ ] Enter the Wired (1 point) (45 ≤ ERO < 80)

You may physically enter the Internet.

[ ] Forbidden Love (2 fragments)

You discover a long-lost sibling: your choice of age, sex, and full or half relation. You may choose to make this a fraternal or identical twin. Their stats begin near human norms. You were separated before the Westermarck effect could apply. Both of you will begin to find the other sexually attractive after your first month of living in the same house as ordinary siblings. You will not remember that this perk exists or that you selected it.

[ ] From Sheen to Glow (1 point + 2 fragments)

Your name is changed to Isabella. Your personality is changed to Isabella. Other Isabellas consider you to be one of them.

[ ] Go Out with a Bang (1 point) (ERO < 70)

A doctor diagnoses you with a fatal disease, giving you three months left to live---maybe two, maybe four. Your remaining lifetime is uncertain, but it won't be long now. Your occasional hospital stays are brief and painless, leaving you looking wan, sad, and beautiful in your hospital bed. Sometimes you get a piece of medical good news, giving you a little more time in which to say goodbye and experience all the things you never had a chance to do. No matter how long this continues, no one ever notices that the doctor always gives you around one more month of lifespan per month.

You may at will have a remission or relapse of your Terminal Moe.

[ ] I See You (1 point) (ERO < 80)

You are able to perceive, remember, and have sex with anything that would ordinarily be undetectable by you, be misperceived by you, or slip out of your memory.

[ ] Idol (1 point) (30 ≤ SED) (20 ≤ BOD)

You gain the talent that will let you to learn how to compose music and lyrics. Singing and performance is already based on SED. All other aspects of becoming famous---such as actually practicing, assembling a band/harem, and seducing or blackmailing producers---are up to you; but you will encounter good opportunities.

[ ] In Love's Name, and For Love's Sake (1 point + 1 fragment) (45 ≤ ERO < 95)

You are recruited and empowered to fight the Lone Power that invented ennui, indifference, jadedness, boredom, and cynicism.

[ ] Inheritance (2 fragments)

You are informed of your hidden blood relation to any one person of your choice, including public figures. They were already aware of this relation and watching you from afar, but could not contact you for some plausible reason. Your revealed relation to this person displaces your biological relation to the corresponding family members. You will not remember that this perk exists or that you selected it.

[ ] Innocence Temporarily Regained (2 fragments)

Your BOD, LST, SED, FUK, and PRV stats are reduced to the minimum of their current levels and 39, 25, 8, 8, and 1. Until it reaches its former level, your PRV stat cannot increase by more than 1 point per 3 days. Memories linked to higher stats cannot be recalled until your stats have again risen to a corresponding level. Skills are not recalled until your stats rise to a compatible level. Your hymen is restored. You retain your ERO. You do not receive the Innocent Virgin status effect.

[ ] 'Little Death' Note (1 point) (50 ≤ ERO < 70)

The human whose name is written in this Note shall orgasm. Details of how the orgasm shall appear must be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

[ ] Looper (1 point + 2 fragments)

Dying sends you back to the start of the Erogame with your original BOD/LST/ERO stats, original level, original perks plus the Looper perk, no in-game skills, and all of your memories. This displaces whatever plot armor you would otherwise have within the Erogame. You cannot Loop more than 4,294,967,295 times.

[ ] Mad Inventor (1 point) (30 ≤ ERO < 70)

You can create devices whose functions correspond to many Erogame skills and effects. These devices cannot be mass-manufactured, but can be loaned to others. You must wear steampunk goggles while wielding this perk.

[ ] Mad Scientist (1 point)

Your powers give you the ability to test hypotheses about sexuality that conventional science cannot or will not investigate. Use all skills at double their base level whenever you are primarily seeking general knowledge. (Extracting the location of an enemy base does not count as 'general knowledge'.) You must wear a sexy lab coat while invoking this perk.

[ ] Mating? Agreement (1 point) (70 ≤ ERO < 90)

Many people around the planet begin to gain unique, specialized superpowers, causing far-reaching social changes. All of these superpowers have one thing in common: one way or another, they relate to sex. The people who have these powers tend to seek out sexually charged situations and have sex with each other.

Taking this perk automatically starts the Gold Morning quest.

[ ] The Maou the Merrier (1 point) (60 ≤ ERO < 90)

Someone you know is the reincarnation of the Demon Lord. This will have plot consequences or something. Whatever.

[ ] Meguca (1 point) (45 ≤ ERO < 65)

You're a magical girl! Well, more magical, anyway. Let's be realistic here, you were probably going to serve time in a costume sooner or later. This perk gives you a head start and some extra freedom of choice over styles of fightable monsters and revealing clothing.

If you are currently male, you may optionally opt for your transformed self to be a boy. Don't expect any fewer sparkles.

[ ] Prize (1 point)

Seven interesting people from around the world learn your identity, along with the true fact that whoever wins your heart will gain tremendous power.

[ ] Real Scientist (1 point) (30 ≤ ERO)

Your unusual experiences have given you insight into open questions in human sexuality, leading you to form new testable hypotheses. You instinctively understand experimental methodology and statistics. So long as you report your outcomes honestly, other scientists will discuss your results seriously; and overlook your lack of credentials along with any questions about the morality or possibility of your experiments. You can write proficiently in LaTeX if you are wearing latex.

If you simultaneously hold the perks Mad Inventor, Mad Scientist, and Real Scientist, you become able to develop reproducible technology, including the experimental apparatus required for others to further investigate and extend your discoveries. An actual PhD in a scientific field, acquired the hard way, can substitute for the Real Scientist perk in this trinity.

[ ] Seduce, Contain, Protect (1 point)

You are a magnet for any person or sapient entity with a significant chance of producing global catastrophe. They will inevitably cross paths with you and find you highly attractive. You will never know whether these potential global catastrophes were already proceeding in the background, or if they were manufactured by the Erogame after you took this perk.
[ ] Sex God (1 point) (25 ≤ ERO)

You can gain Dominant and Submissive Energy from sex acts performed in your name by anyone who sincerely believes you to be a god. Establishing and maintaining a cult is up to you.

[ ] S/layer (1 point) (55 ≤ ERO < 80)

In every generation there is a chosen one. S/he alone will stand against and/or lie down with the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. S/he is the S/layer.

[ ] Student Councilor (1 point) (30 ≤ ERO < 70)

Your school decides to form a Student Council. You are on it. Student Councilors have around as much power as Stalin.

Taking this perk automatically begins the Academic Infighting quest.

[ ] Succubus (Incubus) (1 point) (50 ≤ ERO < 80)

You may choose to appear anytime that someone conducts what they believe to be a succubus (incubus) summoning ritual. (They cannot be trying to summon the real you, since then they do not believe they are summoning a succubus/incubus.) You know roughly what sort of person(s) are doing the summoning. If you choose to respond, you can opt to appear naked or wearing the summoners' most preferred clothing. If your BOD is 40+ you may opt to appear in their ideal physical form, and at BOD 60+ you may opt for demonic additions. On arrival you gain some instinctive grasp of the conscious and unconscious sexual desires of your summoners.

This experience is lived in parallel, as if with the Oh My God There's Two of Them perk. You can respond to only one summoning at a time. You vanish when dismissed, or the next time the summoner falls asleep, whichever comes first.

You may visit a summoner later using your primary self, if you have learned their real-world address. You have no power to take their soul and no special ability to enforce any contracts made, but nothing stops you from lying about that.

[ ] That Is Not How Hypnosis Works (1 point + 1 fragment) (40 ≤ ERO)

You can mesmerize people by having them watch a swaying object or shiny object for a minute or two, or by forcing them to listen to your voice for ten minutes. You do not require consent to hypnotize someone, nor their knowledge that they are being hypnotized. Everyone is deeply hypnotizable by you. It is not especially difficult to hypnotize people into doing things they don't want to do.

To finish activating this perk, you must read any single book on hypnosis. It can be a short book. Borrowing it from the library is fine.

[ ] To Boldly Come Where No One Has Come Before (1 point + 1 fragment) (55 ≤ ERO < 85)

You somehow get your hands on a starship, enabling you to visit nearby star systems and meet the many interesting and nubile life forms to be found there.

-[ ] United Federation of Perverts (1 point + 1 fragment) (requires To Boldly Come) (70 ≤ ERO < 90)

While roaming about in your starship, you discover a larger galactic community. First Contact is initiated between Earth and their ancient, sophisticated, incredibly decadent civilization.

[ ] What Dreams May Come (1 point + 2 fragments) (30 ≤ ERO)

You know when someone begins to fantasize about you, and know in approximate terms what they currently intend to fantasize. You may choose to enter their fantasy and gain control of your analogue-self within it, experiencing the events as real.

You may gain skill, stats, experience, and energy within the fantasy. You retain all knowledge you learn within the fantasy. Physical changes to your body or equipment do not carry over to reality. Only as much subjective time passes for you as passes for the fantasizer. This event takes place alongside and parallel to your main existence and does not interrupt it, but you cannot participate in more than one fantasy at a time.

You only have what capabilities the fantasizer acknowledges you as having. The fantasizer does not notice anything unusual about your behavior within their fantasy, no matter what you choose to do or say. You may not exit such a fantasy until it has terminated. This perk only works on fantasizers unaware of its existence and on fantasies you have not deliberately influenced.

[ ] Vengeance Shall Be Mine (1 point)

No plotline ever terminates while you are net-in-the-red with respect to revenges, counter-revenges, and revengeable events or deeds.

[ ] Victory! (2 fragments)

You win the Erogame! Your title is changed to "The Winner" and the game continues on in post-victory mode.

This perk doesn't change much, but has been included for the benefit of players who insist on a victory condition.

[ ] You Fools Can't Stop Me (1 point)

Your schemes can only be thwarted by those near or above your own intelligence level, and only by their having been cleverer than you.

[ ] Zombie Sexpocalypse (1 point) (30 ≤ ERO < 80)

An extremely contagious virus turns 99.99% of the human population into sex-maddened creatures bent on fucking anything within reach. You, and everyone you personally like, are among those naturally immune to the disease. While most of the infected die quickly, some retain sufficient intelligence to become hominid animals living off the wilds or on food stores. Defending against their rapes and thefts is an ongoing problem requiring the survivors to band together. Some partially-immune survivors have greatly increased LST and PRV. Use this perk if you're tired of living in a complicated technological civilization.

Think carefully before taking this perk, as I Regret My Life Choices may lead to the plague being cured or the zombies dying out, but will not undo the previous effects.

[ ] I Regret My Life Choices (2 fragments)

Remove any number of perks previously taken. Non-refundable perk points are lost permanently, refundable perk points will return later at the appropriate thresholds.

[ ] Marshmallow Test (1 point) (10 ≤ LVL)

Receive two additional perk points, for a net of one more perk than you would've had otherwise. This perk can only be taken after reaching LVL 10 and only if it is the first perk you have chosen. (Your starting perk does not count, likewise any perks automatically awarded by the system.)

-[ ] More Marshmallows (1 point) (15 ≤ LVL)

Receive two additional perk points, for a net of one more perk than you would've had otherwise. This perk can only be taken after reaching LVL 15 and only if it is the second perk you have chosen after Marshmallow Test.

--[ ] Marshmallow Hell (1 point) (20 ≤ LVL)

Receive three additional perk points, for a net of two more perks than you would've had otherwise. This perk can only be taken after reaching LVL 20 and only if it is the third perk you have chosen after More Marshmallows and Marshmallow Test.

[ ] Munchkin (1 point + 2 fragments)

Game design is less careful, and some exploitable loopholes remain on close inspection. Erogame functions are more likely to work according to your literal interpretation of the text.

This does not extend to liberal interpretations of the text. Your terrible, terrible ideas will still fail.

[ ] Off Switch (1 point + 2 fragments)

Choose one perk, passive skill, or status effect. You may at will suspend or resume its effects whenever it would otherwise be on.

[ ] Wait I'm Not Ready For This (1 point + 1 fragment)

You may delay up to 10 points of gain in each stat, and up to 5 Lvls of gain in each skill, until you permit it to go through. This does not otherwise affect rates of experience gain or the leveling curve. Permittance may be done partially. Permittance is irrevocable. When first taking this perk, you may apply it retroactively to any gains within the last week.

You might not want to include Srs Bsns perks in your story.

[ ] Erogame What Erogame (2 fragments)

You forget that the Erogame exists. The game automatically levels up, distributes stat points, selects perks, accepts quests, and invokes skills in whichever way it thinks will make your sex life the most interesting.

[ ] Goodbye (1 point)

You may enter any one fictional continuum at the place and time of your choice, arriving in your current form and with your Erogamer powers. You cannot displace an existing character unless you choose to arrive at the time of an extrauniversal summoning, such as by Louise the Zero. You arrive without your metafictional knowledge of the continuum, and able to speak and write the local language.

You cannot ever return to the real world. Even if the fictional continuum includes a 'real world' to return to, you will only return to the 'real world' of that fiction. In the true real world, nobody will ever know what happened to you, and any quests that would have depended on you will fail.

[ ] No (1 point)

Choose one event to disallow either prospectively, or retroactively up to 24 hours earlier. The event will not happen, either then or at any time in the future. Ongoing processes are not 'events', but their starting points may be considered so.

You cannot take this perk more than once.

[ ] Sin of (1 point)

You may take this perk only once. Choose:

- Envy:

Take over another person's life. Everyone in the world now believes unshakably that you are they. The displaced person no longer exists.

- Gluttony:

You never get tired, bored, or over-satiated during any pleasurable act, no matter how long it continues. You may accumulate unlimited DOM and SUB from such acts.

- Greed:

You find a winning lottery ticket with the lump-sum cash payout option selected. After all taxes are paid, your after-tax winnings are a bit over $100,000,000.

- Lust:

At will, you may temporarily increase your LST and/or PRV to any higher level you wish, for as long as you wish, up to a maximum of 100.

- Pride:

All stats and skills increase faster.

- Sloth:

Removes all time limits for acceptance or completion of quests. Negates or softens all other visible deadlines for accomplishing anything within the Erogame or your life.

- Wrath:

Instantly kill anyone you choose. Bypassing quest challenges in this way will reduce their rewards. You may invoke this perk an unlimited number of times.

[ ] Slightly Smarter (1 point)

The cognitive subprocesses comprising your soul improve slightly in efficiency and computational power, corresponding to a rough gain of 3 points of IQ as it would be measured by contemporary tests. This increase in intelligence is not a game feature; it is real and applies to the true inner you.

You may take this perk more than once.

[ ] Slightly Stupider (1 point)

The cognitive subprocesses comprising your soul decrease slightly in efficiency and computational power, corresponding to a rough loss of 3 points of IQ as it would be measured by contemporary tests. This decrease in intelligence is not a game feature; it is real and applies to the true inner you.

Gain two additional perk points, for a net gain of one perk.

You may take this perk any number of times, but you must have one perk point available to start each such series. This perk is incompatible with Slightly Smarter, and you cannot choose one after having taken the other.

[ ] Soulbond (1 point + 2 fragments) (True ≤ Love)

If your love for someone is true, and they return that love, this perk creates a symmetrical emotional and telepathic bond between your soul and theirs, which will deepen over time if your love stays true. Both sides of the relationship are automatically protected as if by True Love Conquers All.

Failure of this bond does not refund the perk and may have psychological consequences. It goes without saying that Off Switch cannot apply to soulbonds. Consider staying married for a couple of centuries first.

This perk may be taken more than once.

[ ] Subspace Explorer (2 points) (100 ≤ ERO)

If a BDSM session puts you deep enough into subspace, you can travel within it across vast distances of probability and possibility to visit other worlds. All alien societies connected to subspace have their own equivalents of BDSM, ensuring that you can always return home.

[ ] Truth (1 point)

Regardless of any other Erogame perks taken and any other powers affecting you, you regain your memories of who you really are, what really happened, and what reality was like before. No further such effects can deceive you. Think hard before taking this perk.

Extras - Non-canon omake by LaserJet: ~6.8.d

Groon the Walker

Charles Adan opened the door. It was unlocked, and the air within was thick, heavy. Used tissues were scattered around the floor. The shower was ruining, and he could almost see a cloud of misery leaking out of the ajar door. He sighed, and gathered himself up, committing. The door opened and he walked in on Cindy curled up on the shower floor, a weeping mess. She didn't even notice him enter. Gentle hands wrapped around her and lifted her out.

"Charles? I'm sorry, I don't, I didn't. You"

"Shhhh. No talking. We need to talk, but later. Now, now I need you to listen."

He sat her down on the sink, and picked up a clear, fluffy and improbably warm towel. Gently, he rubbed her down. Hey gaze remained pinned to the tiles.

"You're impossible. Surreal. This all is maddening." She started hunching up, but a gentle push on her forehead had her straightening up, and he planted a soft kiss on her left shoulder.

"You drive me crazy. This latest stunt is a doozy. But it's nothing on the horror show that ambushed me outside." She twitches, but is trapped by his body and his hands drying her.

"I just had twenty years of therapy in twenty minutes. It was like a horror show, but instead of trying to kill me, the monster was giving me insight, into myself, our relationship, people."

He raised a hand and ran it through her fiery hair. She leaned into his touch. "What you did was not OK, and we are going to talk about it." Her lips parted, but a single finger silenced her. She allowed it to silence her, this super powered woman, or God or Eldritch thing, she did that for him. The towel had fallen, and his hands ran over her body, gentle, exploring, caressing, filled with warmth; kind.

"But I'm all talked out. I don't want Starry right now, I want Cindy." There was a shudder, her flesh flexing against his, skin shaking, and the hair went out.

His hands went underneath her, closing even as she swing her arms around his neck, and he lifted. He carried them to the couch, falling into it, mentally exhausted.

She was looking at him, worried, anxious, waiting for an explosion. He re-positioned her in his lap, back to him, and curled his hands around her stomach. Her hands came to rest on top of his, as she leaned back on his shoulder, looking up at him.

"I'm mad at you" her breath hitched, "but I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. God help me, even with all the madness, even with all this, I want you anyway."

She curled into him, wetness appearing on his shirt.

"So, we are not talking about improbably, or mating fields, or any of that Starry stuff. If this is going to work, if we are to have a relationship, then we need to know each other. And I feel like I don't know you. Cindy, not Starry. I don't know much about you. It's like we never met, not really." The crying intensified.

He laid a gentle kiss on the top of her head. "So, Cinderella Sheen, My names is Charles Adan, and I work as a delivery man for important and delicate materials. I like the color green because it reminds me of the garden my grandmother let me play in when I was little, the sound of rain hitting glass, while I'm warm and comfortable, and debating morality and philosophy and the impossible. I am also, now that the opportunity has presented itself, interested in the cautions, reasonable and reasoned use of cosmic powers. I also have this girl that I like. She's a bit of a mess right now, but I hope we can fix that. It's nice to meet you."

A smile finally made its way on her face as she looked up to him, meeting his eyes for the first time since he came in. There were tears yet to fall there, but so much more.

"Why don't you tell me a little about yourself." he finished, with another gentle kiss on her cheek. She spoke, and spoke and spoke, and all the while they held each other, and now and then, he laid gentle kisses on her, to reassure, to support, to encourage, as she bared her soul. They stayed there, like that, uninterrupted, for what felt like hours. By the end, they both crawled into bed, and fell asleep, spooning.

No sex was had, yet neither would care. It wasn't about that. Not today.

Soon though.

Extras - Non-canon meta-ero-musical by napkintooth

Milpld said: ↑

I NEED to have this with me forever

Groom the Walker: so what do you want to see in the way of extreme sluttiness
QQ: a musical! write us a musical!

(With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan.)

GROON:
Hold, voters!
Ere your most enthusiastic vote beseeched
that songfic should this quest befall
just bear in mind that songfic greatness never reached,
and what's harder still is ero musical!

VOTERS:
Yet say we all
though you may stumble, fall,
we want to read an ero musical!

GROON:
So be it! Here's an ero musical!

GROON:
This is a lazy mockup of a Groonish ero musical;
It's borrowing a rhyme scheme and a scansion that is metrical;
It makes a shallow ref-er-ence to matters that are whorical,
From Magdalene to Vogel-Coupe, in order categorical.
It touches too on existential horrors philosophical
Though not for long, considering we're lacking for a Cha-a-rle.
About the harem management it's teeming with a lot o' news,
Like how to keep your head so you don't MurderTheHypotenuse.

Although our Cinderella found she can't just ero calculus,
At least she gets this parody of music admiralculous.
In short, in matters topical, phil'sophical, and metrical,
This is a lazy mockup of a Groonish ero musical.

Of previous events this thread has seen, this song will skim a lot;
Perhaps it might name perks we want to take because we think they're hot.
Or maybe it should talk of kinks we like, though they unreason us;
To keep you all from noticing this borders on the treasonous.
Though it's not as lewd as Shakespeare, still it's better than a cock-a-tease,
And if you think that rhyme is strained, I say so are a lot of these.
But still this song can try to be a hair and costume fashionist
And quote that dreck where Taylor is a harem-type protagonist.

And then it can begin — oh no, it seems I'm running out of room
The ending of the song is coming up upon me all too soon —
—in-short-in-matters-topical-philsophical-and-metrical
This-is-a-lazy-mockup-of-a-Groonish-ero-musical!

In fact, when I have written of a "throbbing meaty javelin",
Or of a set of clothes designed to slowly start unravelin',
When such affairs as orgies or "surprise sex" I start peering at,
And write a line or two of dirty doggerel worth leering at,
When I have got around to learning how to spell "anotomy",
Or making any study of the human bod's topography,
In short, when I've a line or two of adequate pornography
You'll say, "Is this an ero musical I see in front of me?"

For although my skill with meter is not bad (if I do say so me),
I've never had the stamina for planning or a research spree.
And so, in matters topical, phil'sophical, and metrical,
This is a lazy mockup of a Groonish ero musical.

(The rest of this post is me voting. If you're just here for the quasi-omake, you can skip it. I didn't know when I posted these together that Groon was gonna threadmark me. >_<)

Tulip said: ↑

Given that the lack of negative consequences is specific to this quest, I feel like it's a waste to not do something which is (a) dramatic and (b) otherwise difficult-to-do-without-negative-consequences

An excellent argument. In the interest of sticking to the spirit of the thing, I'll still be filtering on whether I actually want a given option, but this is a sensible prioritization.

[1] Auction off yourself and others
Oh fuck yes. (And legitimately hard to do consequence-free normally.)
[2] Pose as a succubus
Considering what tends to happen when Cindy gives a cover story, we might want to make sure we practice safe sects when demons are involved.
[3] Rooftop chase
Definitely want to take advantage of the ability to not have to worry about falling and spraining something like the last time we went roofhopping. On the other hand, I'm sure we'll get there eventually. On the third hand, [whiny petulant voice] I want to go roofhopping now.
Naked rooftop chase. Or possibly strip rooftop tag: every time they catch you, you lose an article of clothing, and when they catch you naked, they get to have their way with you~
[4] Encounter an ERO 33 mad inventor with robot tentacles
:awesomeface:
[5] Fuck lesser Fey
Interactions with the Fey definitely sound like the sort of thing that would normally have consequences.
[6] Kidnap the Mayor's daughter and molest her until your demands are met
I'm sure Groon could write a version of this without the consequences turned off, but I'm not sure that's somewhere I want the quest to go. On the other hand, the thing in itself is kinda just okay to me.

[ ][NOPE] Walk Copper Swallow naked on a leash, let her eat you out occasionally if she's good, let others punish her if she's bad
[ ][NOPE] You Forgot To Lock The Door into somebody's house
[ ][NOPE] Flash orgy in downtown streets
[ ][NOPE] Act as Yoal-yohuali
[ ][NOPE] Appear on television
[ ][NOPE] Flash orgy in the student cafeteria
[ ][NOPE] Fuck the Natural Sexuality Movement
[ ][NOPE] Fuck the agender communist street gang
[ ][NOPE] Fuck cosplayers
[ ][NOPE] Fuck the football team
I'm sure we'll see something like this happen sooner or later regardless.

[ ][NOPE] Obtain jewelry and nice slutty outfits
[ ][NOPE] Fuck Ziquan
[ ][NOPE] Fuck Dennis
[ ][NOPE] Fuck Velma
[ ][NOPE] Fuck some more Mormons
Meh.

[X][NOPE] Get punished by a law enforcement officer
[X][NOPE] Go to jail
Eenh. Rather not.

Extras - Semi-canon pseudo-future omake by Eler0: The High Queendom

So, a part of that update inspired me to write another omake about "future Cindy". Well, is it in any way a plausible future for Cindy or her character? Probably not. Is it at least tangentially maybe related a tiny bit to the current update? Yes. Is it my fetish? Also yes. Which is all the reasons I need to write it, really. ~2300 words. Features edging and non-con.

Spoiler: The High Queendom

This was, Lily thought far from the first time in her life, simply unfair. Usually she'd say it, accompanied with a cute pout and begging eyes that made the people that saw it, depending on their preference, either want to spoil her...or to make it worse. In this case, however, she hardly had the presence of mind to do anything but let out a drawn-out whine, hands struggling against her restraints, the soft, padded leather keeping her firmly pressed against the padded chair, her legs spread wide. A few people walking past stop at her delightful squirming and trashing, look at her through the glass of the national edging station, one gets out a smartphone to donate her a few cum credits. She'll surely be glad once her mind is not totally occupied with other matters.

Those other matters being, right now, the powerful vibe pressed against her desperate, aching cunt, bringing her towards the edge at a truly rapid pace for the tenth time today. "PleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseNOOOOooo!" She whines and begs and pleads as the sensors of this infernal machine detect her coming climax and pull it away at just the right moment with precision only erogame empowered machines or an erogamer with edging skills could achieve. It left her standing on the very edge of an enormous mountain of pleasure, peering over its side at the oceans of release below, her entire body tensed up, her hips moving forward, humping the air. A single touch would be enough, a feather, a brush, anything, literally anything to let months of build-up unload, to have her cum and cum and cum until she was worn out. For one short, glorious moment she almost thinks there is hope of it, feels the slightest brush of air on it from a door somewhere in the building opening. It is, of course, a false hope. The machines employed by the High Queendom of Sheen are flawless in all aspects of sex and sex-related things. Well, unless a slight malfunction would further the plot of course, such as a machine logging an orgasm as given when it was actually ruined or the like. But such things were extremely rare, it wouldn't do to have the people doubt the system too much.

Lily pants, her pale face flushed, her slim chest heaving as she gasps for air, then lets out yet another low whine. "I was soooooo close this time. Pleaaaaase, I need it." A hand runs fondly through her blue hair and she looks up to see the matronly face of Miss Scarlet there, those piercing yet kind eyes. "Awww, I know Lily dear. But you're so adorable when you think you have a chance to sneak an orgasm by the system, so I lowered the safety margin a bit." Lily's blush deepens at that, like each time she is called adorable. "Might go to a different edging station if you keep bullying me." She pouts defiantly, knowing she doesn't mean it. The screen above her head displaying various facts about her to the viewers outside, such as the credits needed for release and the time since last orgasm flashes red briefly as the lie detectors pick up on her words. So unfair, she can't even protest insincerely! And now Miss Scarlet chuckles at her, the buxom redhead petting her head again.

"Shush you, silly girl. Last time I checked you were up to almost enough credits for a single release and now you're back down to twenty, what happened?" The scarlet-haired head of the building asks, idly inputting something on her tablet, a small, teasing vibe now pressed against Lily's pussy, much to the slim girl's squirming. "T-that bitch Marissa pinned me down and tickled me until I gave her my points. And she didn't even keep her word! She stopped tickling me to ride my face until she came with the points I gave her since they were all she was missing, then she went back to tickling. Said she never said anything about not starting again! I tell you, girls that tickle are literally the devil!" "Oh my, again? I thought by now you'd have learned your lesson, silly girl. You keep letting the other subs and switches steal your points. At this rate, you'll never get to cum again. And ins't that an idea? Unless you find a Master or Mistress to take you on of course."

Lily blanches at the first part, then goes back to blushing at the second one. "Y-you know it's just hard, okay? Dating is...scary. What if it's just really, really awkward. Like, really awkward. Plus, I think the beautification treatment was buggy with me, look at how small my breasts are! And besides, who says they'd let me cum more often than the system?"

"Nonsense!" Miss Scarlet reaches out and tweaks one of Lily's stiff little nipples, earning a needy moan from the girl, who pushes her pussy forward into the slow, teasing toy against it. "A cute girl like you shouldn't have any issues finding a partner. Not only are you cute as a button and really pretty when you squirm-" She makes her point by brushing a single finger over Lily's wet pussy-lips, making the girl predictably squirm in her bonds, chasing said finger. "-but you're also very nice and smart. Not to mention as subby as a subway station."

"S-shut up, am not." She protests, then lets out a squealed "AHhhhhhh!" When Miss Scarlet turns up the vibe for a moment. "What is rule number two in my edging station, girl?" Scarlet asks, now in what the 'customers' of her station call her 'dommy voice'. Lily looks appropriately chastised when she mumbles: "We accept no self-depreciating talk or thoughts, Miss. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Scarlet days gently, reaching down to kiss her on the forehead. Lily breaths a sight of relief until: "But as punishment, I'll assign you...five more daily edges for the rest of the week."

"F-five?" She protests, then the stern look from Miss Scarlet makes her add: "Thank you, Miss, for correcting me."

"Tell you what, Lily? I'll set you up with some friends of mine, hmm? Some fun blind dating should help you get over your dating anxiety. Literal and figurative blind dating, that is." The slim, blue-haired girl is about to sputter a denial like every other time Scarlet tried to set her up with something, but is interrupted by her vibe now going at full speed, protest replaced with a moan.

"And because I know how silly you can be about that, we'll give you some incentive. I'll give you 500 credits out of my personal account if you show up and make an earnest attempt at getting to know them. I don't require that you actually go home with any of them or anything, but if you don't even try you won't get anything."

Now that was an offer Lily could hardly refuse. 500 credits was enough for an orgasm, or several if she did some things to stretch it. And getting them as a lump sum meant she could spend them and lock them in before someone could 'convince' her to give them away again. She nods eagerly at Miss Scarlet, who smiles. "Good girl, I knew you'd agree. Oh, you'll be the star of the party. But now I must be off, can't show too much favouritism after all. Enjoy your last five edges, dear. Here, I'll turn on the TV so you don't get bored." Scarlet knew bribing the other girls that visited her edging station with points and gentler treatment would eventually pay off. Honestly, Lily could be so stubborn, you really had to force the girl into going out and finally getting hooked up.

Lily's mind was what could charitably be described as busy that moment. Party, she never mentioned a party! I'm not ready for that! But 500 credits! But party! It's embarrassing! Everyone's used to edging station windows, it's totally different without the window between us. But credits! It's too late to refuse now anyway. I kind of want her to take me instead, but she's so busy and important she'd never notice me, right? All those things cross her mind in an instant, only to be drowned out by the coming edge. Already her body was aching, desperate to cum, and there were five to go. She really hoped this party was soon, real soon.

She pays no attention to the TV running in the background, the news reporter rambling on just as they did before in what was once the United States of America. "-High Queen receiving her mother, the Queen of Switzerland, at the airport, accompanied by her usual harem. Royals watcher have spotted a new member of said harem. It seems the Queen Mother has a thing for the bearded lumberjack look. More about him and exclusive intimate photos later at ten. In other, breaking news the terrorist Donald Warren Merring is still at large, guilty of sabotaging edging stations and release bot factories across the country, evading capture by several new enforcer droids last night in Norville. We go now to a statement from Mistress of Justice Coral-"

Elsewhere, in the highest tower of the High Queen's palace, which had been explicitly designed to not be phallic since it was a symbol of a queen and not a king, Cinderella Sheen, whispers a very familiar command:
Info // Friends With Penalties // Subby Citizens

Subby Citizens: All Citizens of the High Queendom of Sheen that, according to ero-tinker predictive computers, are sufficiently submissive to enjoy and settle into this predicament and are old enough, are under permanent orgasm control while single (or while their partner(s) wish it so). Mandatory edging in edging stations, release only when enough points are accumulated. For details of the exact points, rules and so on check Info//D.E.N.I.A.L. ACT or google it. Really, you passed this act by royal decree, you should know what it does. TIPEC: CEEBB => 5000XP/day.
Mass penalties are in effect. Sufficiently similar people are grouped together. Rather than multiplying XP gain with number of affected, a logarithmic function provides scaling rewards for larger amounts of victims Friends with Penalties. All TIPEC ratings are averages.

Torment: C - Endurable (The citizen's inability to orgasm at will is constantly on their mind. High ERO contributes to make sex of all kinds a public and omni-present thing, worsening their situation. However, their torment is not impeding their daily life unduly and they have gotten used to it.)
<> Current Torment level has reached an equilibrium as veterans become jaded and used to it or find ways to cope, new citizens grow up and experience this torment anew, subjected to ever more sophisticated teasing and edging machines. XP will significantly increase by making the torment more impeding to daily life. However, this may interfere with Quest: A Just and Wise Queen.

Intimacy: E - Emotional (Your victims know of you and are very aware of just who to curse when they lie awake at night, squirming and rubbing their thighs together. You make sure to show up on TV quite a bit to keep reminding them, after all. However, you've not met them in person by and large and as such, there is no real two-way connection.)
<> If you do not keep reminding your subjects of your involvement in their torment, your Intimacy rating will degrade to F.

Participation: E - Personal (You passed the law that subjected them to this torment and have an active hand in overseeing it, but do not have any individual involvement.)
<> Considering the amount of victims involved, upgrading this rating would require the ability to interact with tens of thousands of citizens directly each day, but would come with significant XP increases.

Enforcement: B - Enforced, Fallible (Your nation state is actively enforcing the torment since the creation of an agency for this purpose. While citizens may sometimes have unauthorized orgasms, it is generally noticed and swift retribution is applied in the form of chastity belts. However, that doesn't stop that initial orgasm from occurring.)
<> Raising Enforcement level to Enforced, Infalliable will accrue significant XP rewards and upgrade this rating to A. Might we suggest magically binding oaths?

Consent: B- None, But they enjoy it (Your citizens are given no choice in their fate, the perfect machines devised by your ero-tinkering deciding that they are sufficiently subby to be subjected to this torment. However, they are generally subjected to things that they agree are 'very hot' or could likely be convinced to do if an active effort was made.)
<> Raising consent to 'Unthinking' by completely rewriting victims' preferences to find whatever you do to them enjoyable will upgrade this rating to A and accrue significant XP rewards.

Once again, Cindy looks over the 'improvements' she could make to boost XP gain and decides against it. She might have changed a lot since she began, she might have seized control of the United States for herself and Switzerland for her mother, but there's some lines that still quick her out. No, she's happy with how things are. Well, except one thing...

"Ahhhhh, whyyyy~." Cindy whines when the vibe is pulled away by an unfailing machine, earning her an amused chuckle from Charles, reading his newspaper as he watches her daily edging. She really wished she had remembered to exclude herself from that act, or that the ero-machines she built hadn't classified her as 'Switch'. Now she was subjected to this for half the time she spent in her own queendom, which simply wasn't fair. At all! At least that was edge number nine, almost done. She supposed she should check her online presence next. Her subjects loved the livestreams of her edging sessions, the sadistic bastards. Especially the other subs that shared her torment, who now wanted to see the reason for it suffer too. Totally. Unfair.

Extras - Not even remotely canon omake by Guile: Doppelgangland

Doppelgangland
SFW-ish Erogamer fanfiction

“I’m pretty surprised we managed to acquire a haircrux so soon,” Lavelle exposited dutifully, like a cast member describing the events of last episode for the audience’s benefit. The light of the thing before them highlighted the red-haired part-Asian and the rest of the Scooby Gang perfectly, like a spotlight. They could all agree that, in retrospect, a haircrux would look exactly like the thing standing on the pedestal before them. He was surprised it had taken them this long. Pretty obvious really, in hindsight.

“I’m surprised it required a very specific combination of physics knowledge, history and gaming trivia, parkour, sex and somebody being an asexual,” Velma said.

“I still don’t feel very represented, that ace part was clearly thrown in at the last second,” Cordy grumbled.

“Does it matter?” Lavelle asked. Then, after the elbow met his ribs, he clarified, “I mean, it was clearly a trial built specifically with us in mind. So it could have just as easily tested your knowledge of philosophers or that historical rap battle youtube show you watch.”

“Then it should’ve!” Cordy protested. “Also, why did me and Lavelle get outvoted on who got to have sex for that trial? Not that I care, but I feel kind of bad for these other two.”

Her gesture encompassed the two male Scoobies, who had not gotten to have sex at all (on this venture).

“Well,” Dennis pointed out reasonably, “Only three of us are legal, and Velma’s a lesbian, so it was a coin toss on whether it was going to be her or me with Illyria.”

Velma had done her best to straighten herself back into presentability afterwards, but Illyria’s pencil skirt refused to lay flat and her shirt was still unbuttoned, revealing once again that she was just naturally that perky without the benefit of a bra. Even if their show would have had to do a fade to black for the censors, it was pretty clear to anyone watching what she’s just gotten done doing.

“… You know that teenagers have sex too, right grandpa?”

“I’m just saying, if this were a TV show, the FCC would already be sending legal ninjas to our offices.”

“We could be on HBO,” Lavelle mused, easily distracted even with the shiny thing right in front of him.

“So,” Illyria said finally, “are we just going to ignore that the Purring Kitten transformed into a magical tower like in that one dating sim with the shadows and the amateur psych degree?”

“Oh thank god,” Dennis said immediately. “I didn’t want to be the normie calling bullshit on it just in case that was normal.”

“Not in this reality,” Illyria mumbled. The cute girl in the new used business suit looking slightly troubled, which was honestly putting them all a little on edge. More than being in a giant, impossible stone tower that was still somehow decorated like a strip club already, that was.

Lavelle was pretty clearly holding himself back from asking about that, for which Cordy was grateful that she could spare his ribs her chastisement finger. They’d all agreed Illyria was entitled to her secrets, until and unless they came around to bite the group in the ass.

“So… is that thing safe to touch?” Dennis asked, with as much casualness as he could muster. “I mean, somebody’s got to take it home, right? what are the odds it’s going to give someone magical cancer or enter their brain while they sleep to control them?”

“I volunteer to hold onto it if it isn’t going to destroy me for my hubris,” Lavelle said immediately, because of course he would.

“Should be fine,” Illyria mumbled. Her eyes scanned back and forth, like she was reading an invisible book. “Let me just… yeah, I mean, there’s probably going to be some plot-relevant hijinks at some point, but the haircrux itself shouldn’t be dangerous. I wouldn’t try and do a ritual without the rest of the group present just in case, though.”

“I’m a more careful kind of protagonist than that,” Lavelle protested virtuously.

Cordy gave him a look. “Sure. Mister Catgirl Archmage.”

“Well, I haven’t done it yet…”

Even as Lavelle slowly surmounted the dias the item was placed on, Dennis added casually, “You know, I’m kind of surprised there wasn’t some kind of boss monster.”

“Why would you say that?” Cordy demanded, even as the tower began to rumble and shake.

“Yeah, sorry,” Dennis said sheepishly, even as Illyria managed to tumble in such a way that took Lavelle’s feet out from under him, sending him crashing down on top of her. Just business as usual, there. “I was just thinking that I brought my gun for nothing, and… sorry.”

“Why do you have a gun?” Velma demanded.

“I dunno, it seemed like a good precaution to take!” Dennis protested. “I have a permit, what was I supposed to bring, a golf club?”

“Now the gods of dramatic irony are going to summon up something that either you need a gun to put down, or more likely, a gun is going to be completely ineffective against!” Cordy comboed with Velma for bonus damage to a man’s pride, attacking the point in a way Lavelle would be proud of, if he wasn’t currently sandwiched between Illyria’s breasts.

“Okay, in retrospect this might turn out to be a bad idea, but I’d rather have a gun and not need it than– you know, I don’t appreciate being ganged up on, here,” Dennis grumbled, deciding at the last second to attack the base of the argument rather than the content.

“So, Illyria,” Lavelle interrupted their brewing argument, “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. Okay?”

“Thank you, Lavelle,” Illyria said cordially, looking directly up at the ceiling.

The rumbling had subsided with no boss monster appearing, causing Cordy and Velma to give out twin sighs of relief. Possibly it was a warning that the tower wasn’t going to outlive the haircrux being taken, like the temple of doom. It could even be an actual earthquake. But if this were a TV show…

“But all the same, I’d appreciate it if you would explain why your face looks exactly like Starry’s, and why I never noticed that point until now. Not trying to stereotype or anything, but if this was a TV show, this would be a pretty good point for a mid-season stinger.”

The rest of the group’s eyes snapped to the fallen pair. They saw that Illyria’s glasses had been knocked off her face during the tumble, and that her face looked… different, somehow, without them. Not in the way people’s faces normally looked weird without their glasses. She was cuter, for one thing. And she'd suddenly gained half a cup size. As Lavelle had said, she looked a lot more like the entity they’d been investigating.

Or, Dennis reflected a trifle grimly, like they had been allowed to see her differently.

“So you finally noticed,” Illyria said at last. Dennis and Velma thought her tone was surprisingly strong, for having a teenage boy crouched over her thighs with his hands pushing himself up against her bare stomach. When she’d turned Velma into putty in her hands (and with her talented tongue) to pass the sex trial, she’d seemed hesitant about it. Cordy and Lavelle, though, were remembering her leaving the Lightning Arcade with a torn shirt and scanty black panties with the same aplomb as when they entered. “I’ll commend you for keeping an open mind. As expected of my… Amazing Hair Appreciation Club.”

"... We're still workshopping the name," Lavelle claimed.

“So this was your master plan, huh?” Dennis said, focusing on the non-stupid part of the conversation. “Follow along with the bumbling mortals until they found something interesting. Something valuable. Then, what, take it from them?”

“We’re trying to keep an open mind here, Dennis,” Lavelle repeated.

Cordy nodded her support. There were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in any philosophy book they’d ever read. Way, way more.

“Although…” Lavelle hesitated. “Wow, the Illyria comparison feels really apt, right now. Like, did you set that up and you really know your Buffy after all, or…?”

“No, I said I never watched Buffy. Look, can I get up? This feels like a really dumb way to open your eyes to the truth, on my back with a boy on top of me and my tits out,” Illyria protested, sounding more like the Illyria that they … sort of knew. “Although… I guess that’s a pretty accurate summation of my life.”

“You can’t just move me?” Lavelle asked, looking curious enough that Cordy bet he’d briefly managed to forget he was all but fondling Illyria in front of everyone. “I kind of figured super strength would be part of the package. I mean… if you are a faerie after all.”

“I’m, um, more of a lover than a fighter,” Illyria admitted, and even Dennis had to admit she looked pretty helpless underneath Lavelle. She added, “I mean, my hair might manage to move you, if it tried really hard, but probably not. It didn’t work against that rapist. Stupid -------.”

There was a fair amount of blinking and clearing of ears. She had clearly said something at the end there, but there appeared to be some debate about what exactly that was.

“Playing-games-with-mortals?” Dennis tried.
“Sex-maker?” Cordy offered.
“I think I heard something about eroges,” Velma pondered.
“I heard, uh, becoming-a-hot-girl,” Lavelle admitted.

“None of that is right except for the parts that are,” Illyria said huffily.

“So it’s a translation issue,” Velma realized. "You said something we couldn't understand, but our brains filled it in as best they could. I'd say 'impossible!' but I refuse to be that kind of science character."

“Man, I’m going to want to ask about that later. But for now, can you just let us peek behind the curtain on the hair thing? Why hair?” Lavelle asked, finally standing and allowing Illyria to get up.

When she took his hand to stand, she almost seemed to flow to her feet in one motion, and something about her hand in his caused a visible shiver in Lavelle.

“Thanks,” she whispered to him.

“No problem,” he said, trying to dispel the shiver that had run down his spine straight to his crotch, somehow.

“And it’s hair because–” Illyria suddenly turned and sprinted for the pedestal, despite her heels.

The rest of the group chased after her, but Lavelle started late and Dennis, their parkour expert, was too far away to have a chance of reaching her in time. And honestly, Illyria seemed to run the ten steps to the thing they all agreed was the haircrux like the wind. Fae dexterity bonus, as Lavelle would put it.

“Hahaha!” Illyria laughed out loud as she slapped her hand against the haircrux.

Her hair, the waterfall of brown-grey trailing out behind her, gained color like someone had spilled a pot of black ink across a drawing of a girl. Her bangs straightened severely, and even her eyebrows attained a fierce angle, like they might leap from her face and strike down anyone who disagreed with her. Even her face looked somehow sharper and more commanding. It was still Illyria’s face, just… different again.

Spoiler: Purity Hairstyle

“Naïve!” She snapped. “Too naïve, Amazing Hair Appreciation Club! At least cultivate a basic sense of caution!”

She stepped forward, the click of a stiletto heel against stone reinforcing her words. Standing with one foot atop the dias and one on the step below, her pencil skirt was revealing as many interesting bits as her open shirt now, but she seemed ignorant of it. Or perhaps she simply didn’t care.

“So… are you going to reveal your evil plan now?” Lavelle wondered with some trepidation. It seemed a little early in the series to kill anyone off, but… well, he’d already hypothesized their show could be an HBO special.

“I will now… answer your questions!” Illyria declared imperiously.

“…”
“…”
“…”
“… Okay, I think I was first, about the hair thing.”

Illyria nodded regally. “The truth as it was made known to me by my mentor is that all things are one. The boundary of self and not-self is a construct of our minds only.”

“Like an AT field,” Lavelle offered a nerd analogy like this was Star Trek.

“I suppose when you get down to the atomic level, the amplitude of a cloud of atoms called ‘this person’ isn’t that much different from ‘that person.’ Or a tree,” Velma offered reluctantly. “Of course, physics turned out to be false last Tuesday.”

“This is a danger beyond imagining,” Illyria went on, ignoring the by-play. “This is expected; all Truths are dangerous.”

“Are you sure it’s beyond imagining?” Dennis asked. “Because I’m imagining some pretty serious danger to human beings being, uh, interconnectable. Like, I happen to appreciate that my self exists.”

Lavelle wasn't the only one who had seen Neon Genesis Evangelion.

“It doesn’t, you only believe that it does,” Illyria corrected. “But the crux of the matter is that I am not ‘a person with hair.’ There is no ‘my hair’, as there is no ‘I’. I am my hair. My hair is me. I do not ‘change hairstyles.’ I ‘change myself.’ This is because I am still a neophyte who still has not internalized that things such as birth, death and everything in between have meaning, but that meaning is only hair.”

“Wow, I feel like I just took SAN damage,” Lavelle reflected absently.

“Plus one,” Dennis agreed.

“This is the secret to changing reality,” Illyria told them in the tones of a sage speaking from a great height above them. “I am my reality, and as I change myself, I change the world. The Illyria that exists with the Scooby Gang is my least self. In another reality, this reality, I am the me you see before you. In a third reality which you saw two weeks ago, Starry Star had her hair cut by the man called Charles Adan, and before that was an entity with a different name, which was really quite different from any of the three mes that exist today. Someday I will transcend all things which begin and end, and I will be different again than anything I have ever been before, save that ‘ever before’ will no longer be a construct by which I must abide.”

“So… are you sure you don’t need stopping?” Cordy asked. “Because this is starting to sound like supervillain talk again.”

“I do not require stopping,” Illyria confirmed.

“… The other person, then,” Velma specified. “The one who is talking about ‘transcending life and death’.”

“How am I to know?” Illyria asked in return. “I am not that person.”

“Yet,” Lavelle added.

“Yet,” Illyria agreed.

There was silence, save for some awkward shifting. Illyria’s hair-self swayed in some unfelt breeze.

“So… do we get a boon or something?” Dennis asked. “Since we found your haircrux.”

“You gave me nothing,” Illyria specified. “I took it from you! But what would you even ask for?”

“Uh…”

“Superpowers, I guess,” Dennis admitted sheepishly.

“Granted,” she said promptly. “Figure out how to use them on your own.”

“Time travel,” Velma reminded her.

“Reality is not yet that advanced, and you’d probably need to grind reputation,” Illyria said.

“When did a faerie play MMOs?” Cordy wanted to know.

“What class did you play?” Lavelle wanted to know.

“You said it was possible,” Velma protested over the peanut gallery’s comments.

“I can stop time if I don’t look at a clock, travel to the future if no one is watching, and talk to a future self from a different reality. It is only a matter of time. Hone yourself, advance your understanding, create a reality which contains the future you desire, and if you do not stop, it will be so.”

“What about raising the dead?” Lavelle asked, raising a hand like waiting to be called on during class.

“If you guys are level 1, and Illyria is level 16, and I am level 33, then the ‘raise the dead’ spell is at level 40. Good luck.”

“What.”
“I kind of like how concrete that was.”
“Why does Lavelle get concrete numbers and I get ‘believe in yourself’?”

“It is what it is,” Illyria decreed. “Cordy, as you have no dreams of your own, I will make combat aces a thing.”

“But Illyria-you said they might already be a thing!”

“They might be, in Illyria’s reality. In the reality which contains this self, they will be. And now: until next time, Amazing Hair Appreciation Club!”

Between one step and the next, the black bled out of Illyria’s brown-grey hair, her hair became slightly wavier and fuller, and her eyebrows softened. The face reassumed its quiet softness, like the hard outline of jaw and the jutting, confident chin submerged into a slightly rounder face until someday when it might rise again. The click of heel against stone on the next step down was the more normal click of a girl descending a stone step, rather than a demand for attention.

“Whooff,” she huffed like she’d lost her breath somewhere in the transition, in a voice more like her normal voice and less like a clarion bell. “Never done that in front of people before.”

Illyria looked down at their faces and slowly began to cringe inward on herself, until she somewhat resembled the first time they’d met rather than the more confident young woman they’d begun getting to know. “… Hi…?”

“Hello again, Illyria,” Velma said, with only a touch of coolness.

Frankly, it being only a little chill was surprising to Illyria. She’d expected anger, betrayal, hate… she’d fooled them all, and it had been for her good, not for theirs, except in the broadest sense of making an appealing story. It was like she’d braced herself to receive a football tackle and instead got a flick to the finger against her forehead. It was good, comparatively, but kind of… shocking? In how light the punishment was compared to what she'd been expecting.

“I,” Lavelle reflected, “have so many questions.”

“Me too!” Dennis all but shouted. “I have superpowers now? What kind? How do I…?”

“Um, I dunno,” Illyria offered. “I’ll look into it. But I mean, it’d be something based off my powers, but I have a bunch and some of them are pretty dumb. I hope for your sake it isn’t just, for example, that you don’t get as cold as you normally would when you’re naked. And if you got Tickle Logic, please only use your powers for good?”

“Tickle…?”

“I’ve said too much,” Illyria said grimly, her eyes dark with remembered horror.

“So, can I ask what that was all about…?” Cordy asked with a surprising amount of trepidation. Surprising to her, that was; she hadn’t known Illyria long, but she found she liked the strange, sad, exciting girl. Had liked? Maybe still liked. Things were a little up in the air right now.

“Uhhh…” Illyria prevaricated, starting to sound more like the more outgoing Illyria that had tried to convince a random submissive to give her her phone number. Cordy would rather not think about why that was relieving, but she wasn’t in the habit of lying to herself. “Well, it’s kind of like… have you ever watched this anime called Birdy the Mighty?”

Three looks of incomprehension, along with a slowly dawning realization on one face.

“It’s about a boy who dies in the course of an investigation by the alien version of Interpol. He’s kept alive by sci-fi handwavium but has to share a body with the detective that accidentally killed him while she completes the case and while his real body is being fixed,” Lavelle explained.

“Right, like that, kind of!” Illyria pointed at Lavelle enthusiastically. “Yoal-yohuali, me, and, uh, well, whatever that was, are all the same person. Kind of. I mean, we have the same powers, but those other two live in a much stronger and more perverted reality than the one we’re currently in, so they’re also stronger. Or, maybe it’s more like they make reality more perverted when they’re involved, and so they can use their powers better therefore? Depends on how you look at it, I guess.”

“But you said that if you saw Yoal-yohuali you were going to run the other way,” Cordy pointed out.

“Hell yes I would,” Illyria agreed. “I’ve met other Illyrias before, and they’re scary. All the Future Illyrias I’ve ever met have all been really messed up. I mean, who takes --- to ---, honestly!”

That has sounded a lot like ‘become immortal’ to Cordy, but she suspected maybe that was another translation malfunction.

“I’m barely managing to follow you being three people in one body – particularly when there was one fewer soul in that body five minutes ago!” Dennis protested. “Why would you also have more bodies running around?”

“Being me is a pretty weird experience,” Illyria said solemnly. “I mean, this is such a nice reality, and I’d hate to mess it up any more than I already have.”

“I think we can speak for everyone when we say that’s probably true.”
“Well, depends on what she means by ‘messing up’ reality, really–”
“–Almost everyone.”

“I’m more wondering about just how accurate the plot of that anime was to your situation,” Velma said heavily.

“Lavelle explained it pretty well, I think,” Illyria said.

“In the show, the boy died and he was kept alive by the alien sharing his body?” Velma specified, just to make sure she had it right.

“… Ah.” Illyria said slowly. “Well.”

“Oh, geez,” Dennis sighed.

Lavelle gulped. Cordy braced herself for a conversational judo throw.

“I never actually died, probably!” Illyria reassured them, a reassurance which was a critical failure. She went on a little weakly, perhaps recognizing that her argument was not gaining any ground. “I mean, probably. I don't actually know. But my mentor probably would have mentioned that at some point, yeah.”

"And is your mentor one of yourselves?" Velma asked.

"... Gosh, I have no idea how to answer that question," Illyria reflected.

---

You have acquired a New Conceptual Hairstyle!
Fear is freedom! Subjugation is liberation! Contradiction is truth! The Purity hairstyle was created when she wanted to exposit to the Scooby Gang in a way that made internal sense to everyone involved, and was afraid she’d mess it up. It combines all of Cinderella Sheen’s contradictions into one, in the same way that everything is hair. All exposition delivered while wearing the Purity hairstyle are more believable, as all contradictions are ironed out like straight bangs. The additional grandiosity is a bonus!

Extras - Semi-canon pseudo-future omake by Eler0: Escape Practice

So, I went back and reread some of my favourite parts of the quests. Mostly the twins bits, which are just great. But it also reminded me that we really should practise the 'use hair to escape bindings' thing at some point, because IIRC we never have. Well, I decided to write a short omake of a possible way to practise it. Hope you like it.

Spoiler: Skill training

Almost there, almost there~. A bit to the right, a bit to the left, feel it out and- With a loud buzzing sound the toy stuck in your panties speeds up and up and oh this feels great, your concentration ruined, your back arched as your hips futilely thrust back and forth, eager to increase your pleasure. A low, needy moan escapes your lips as it keeps going and going, slightly varying in speed but always fast. It is heaven. Paradise. You've died and this is eroheaven. That is what it is, this wonderful feeling on your over-sensitive, stimulation-starved pussy. Your panties and the bed sheets are probably completely drenched by now, you feel so slick down there, your lips puffy. Just as the vibe dashed your hopes with its sudden activity, it begins to wake an entirely different hope within you. You're so close, sooo close, the fire within you burning, your body tensing up against the cuffs that dig into your wrists and ankles just enough to remind you of their presence without ever doing any harm.

This time it will happen, this time! You don't even voice it, you just think it, as if the erogame could be persuaded by a steady stream of PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE. It is on a random pattern. You double-checked before you started. It absolutely should eventually let you cum. There, the peak, you feel it approaching, your hips moving again, as if you can press the vibe further up against your needy cunt. And then..."Nooooooo~." You whine, heartbroken, as the vibe turns down to a slow, teasing, setting, slumping down against your bed. You'd curl up, but cuffs connecting your wrists and ankles to the bedposts don't allow it. How did you ever end up in this mess?This was the worst idea. Bad voices in your head, baaaaad.
-----
This is a great idea! You're an erogenius! You've been relying on 'my hair can pick that lock' as your emergency get out of kidnapping card. It is only good sense to actually practise it before you need to rely on it, so you aren't fumbling around with a level 1 skill in a hectic situation. Though then it turned out that sitting in front of your computer with a lock, watching youtube tutorial videos while trying to move your hair is...boring. Real boring. There's only so many 'like, subscribe, comment, hit the bell icon, subscribe to my patreon, suck my dick...' monologues you can listen to before your mind starts to wander to ero ideas, instead of focusing on the lockpicking you're trying to learn. Which is where the erogenius comes in! It should have been obvious, anyway. The erogame won't let you practise a skill in a mundane, non-sexy way. Which is why you're messaging Charles now.

<Charles. I know you're working so just prefacing this with I am not in trouble and don't need anything urgently, everything's cool.
<That said, know how you're dropping by this evening? I might have a present waiting for you then.
<I mean, I hopefully won't. But if I do, yay you get a present!
<what I'm trying to say is, it's win-win. either u get a present or I succeeded
>Starry, what are you doing?
<Something very responsible! Working on my ability to escape handcuffs, in case I ever get kidnapped by evil tickle twins while my boyfriend isn't ready to safe me. Or I get snatched by the MIB or whatever.
<I'm doing something smart! Preparing! So I'll cuff myself up and then practise escaping
<But because I am so smart and responsible, I'm telling you so you can come rescue me if I fail.
<I'll be in my room
<tied up
<helpless
<frustrated and horny
<hence the present
>Why horny?
<vibe, for motivation. Duh
<Anyway, gonna cuff myself now, looking forward 2 seeing you. Starry ♥♥♥

You put your phone down on the bed next to you, slip the vibe in your panties, set it to a random pattern and click the handcuffs shut. There. Now to pick some locks! Come on, hair, mooove. You're in an ero situation now. That means this should be easier! Sadly, the erogame is resistant to even the cutest of pouts. Unfair.
-----
You thought you were soooo smart. Of course the erogame isn't going to make this easy on you. Self-bondage for half an hour, followed by escaping and getting off with the vibe wouldn't be much fun. But the good news is, you've been making progress! It's been an hour since you started, true. And the 'random' vibrations keep breaking your concentration. But you've moved your hair. Or rather, you've gotten it to be in places where it wasn't before. Hair does not move, no. But once you realised that everything is hair, you simply trick the hair into being where it should be rather than where it was before. You've even gotten the hair into the lock a few times. Your last attempt was very promising, until that damned vibrator decided to- Eeeep!

The speed-up, even if it lasted only two seconds, scrambles your poor brain for at least ten more. Right, where were you? Being proud of your accomplishment. It's just one out of three hours and already the hair is where it is supposed to be. Now you just need it to do lockpicky things to the cuffs. Hmm, the videos did mention needing to feel how the lock reacted, and hair can't feel. This uh...might be an issue.
-----
Captain's log, Starrydate 1.5.541654198. Which means 1.5 hours in your self-inflicted edging hell, with approximately 541654198 orgasms missed, at least. Okay, you might be over exaggerating a bit there, but...it's been so long. You still have hours to go until Charles comes to rescue you! And when he does, he'll...probably tease you more, or something. Say something about motivating you properly to free yourself. Or be mad that you brought up the twins in your message. Or just tease you because he can and that's his right and it would be so mean and hot and- No, if you want an orgasm, you'll have to get free! You shouldn't give up just because your body is on fire, every inch of you screaming for the sweet release of a climax! Focus, Cindy! Focus! Right, will the hair in the right place, then...argh, why couldn't pseudo-future you not send more detailed instructions in how this works?
-----
You beg and plead out loud, hoping someone will hear you, to no avail. You try to get your legs closer together to trap the vibe up against yourself and increase your stimulation, but it is moot. You start imagining robbers breaking in, finding helpless little you and taking advantage of your helpless, squirming body...and the erogame doesn't even have the decency to send you a rapist or two! It's been over two hours of this, and aside from flopping your hair around in the cuff locks, you're not much closer to success. Well, you've gotten better at moving your hair but you don't have nearly the finesse you needed. And with how wound up you are, the vibe is getting ever-more distracting. It might be motivation, but it is also distraction. Of course, these thoughts are also not helpful, with most of your time not begging for the vibe to keep its pace spent musing on your fate or getting sidetracked. You just have to focus on moving only a part of the hair at once!
-----
You are in the middle of enjoying a rather nice, slow buildup of the toy's speed with intermittent slowdown, when the sound of a door being unlocked sends your heart fluttering. A glance at the time tells you that Charles was supposed to only arrive in half an hour. Did he finish his delivery early? You take back all the bad things you said about the erogame and its manipulation of the vibe's RNG, head raised as far as your position will allow, waiting to see him come in.

"Oh, Starry~." You freeze. That is very clearly not Charle's voice. It is, in fact, the voice of the devil made manifest. The door opens and in peeks a gorgeous redhead, a wide smile on her lips. Tammy. "Mister Charles sent me a message. Seems he got another express delivery that he absolutely couldn't put off, you see." No, the erogame can't do this to you. It can't! You untakeback all the bad things you said about it before. And yes that is totally a word.
The gorgeous redhead saunters in, setting down a plastic bag filled with who knows what at the foot of the bed before sitting down on it, leaning over you, pressing a quick kiss to your cheek. "But since he knew you were practising self-bondage, he had to send someone else to take care of you." She giggles, one hand running down your exposed side. Spread-eagle as you are, you can do nothing to escape her. You still try, of course, squirming out of the way as good as you can, the slight touch of her fingernails reminding you of how much more she is capable of.

"What...what are you going to do?" You whimper, the still steadily speeding up vibe completely forgotten for now.
"Well, Charles did say that I shouldn't sabotage your practise. But you know, it looks like you've been slacking, since you're still tied up and all. So I'll do the opposite of sabotage." Her wide grin is veeery scary, and it only gets worse when she reaches into the bag she brought with her, showing you a large, stiff feather. "I'll provide some additional motivation. If you manage to get out of those cuffs before the time Charles was scheduled to get here originally, you'll not be tickled. I'll even let you put me in those cuffs, since I'm so nice." Or in other words, she doesn't think you can manage it. You glance over at the clock, just 26 minutes to go. "If you fail...well, I'll just have to tickle you until Charles gets here for real. And from what it sounded like, he is expecting to be gone for a few hours still~. Might be midnight until he gets here. But I promise I'll play fair, no tickling you until your time's up!"

Quest available: Tickle Hell Escape Artist

Tammy has graciously decided to drop by and help you practise your lockpicking. Also, she is really curious what your bondage escape skill actually is. She might use this knowledge against you later. Escape in time.

Success: 20,000 exp; Improved Relationship with Tammy, Charles; 4 hours of helpless Tammy; An orgasm
Failure: 20,000 exp; Improved Relationship with Tammy, Charles; at least 4 hours of merciless tickling
Accept now? Y/N Quest auto-accepted

So much for practising your skills in safety. Seems the erogame doesn't want you to take the 'safe' route. "You know, Starry-" Tammy continues, grabbing the remote for the vibe you so thoughtlessly left lying in plain sight. "When Charles drops by, he might properly thank me for keeping an eye on you. He promised something like that when we talked." You want to answer, but the way the vibe suddenly turns up turns it into a throaty moan. She said no tickling until the time is up, but apparently that is fair game somehow? "You might have to wait a bit until he decides you deserve some fun." She leans in, close enough you can count every freckle, her red hair lightly tickling your face as she whispers into your ear: "Maybe I'll strip, climb on top of you, offer him both of our pussies, pressed against each-other, let him pick which one he wants first, hmm? Make you look at my face as I get off~." Oh god. That sounds wicked and also very, very hot. Wasn't Danni supposed to be the social sadist? Seems it runs in the family. And she and her sister are practically part of your harem. This would be...wait, she's distracting you! A glance at the clock shows only 22 minutes left! Fuck! Okay Cindy, you can do it! FOCUS! Don't think about sexy redhead squirming on top of you as she gets fucked hard by Charles, seeing his strong hands on her body, hearing her cum while your own pussy twitches in unfulfilled need and- FOCUS!

Extras - Pretty much canon omake by Eler0: Justice!

Sidenote, the art in 3.3.1 is dead, might be a dead link.

So, I was inspired by the court talk. The twist might be executed a bit too simply but it was already getting long. Hope you like it.

Spoiler: Justice!

"Order, order in the court!" The riding crop hits the heavy mahogany desk that somehow found its way into the classroom, a room appropriated by the Norville Natural Sexuality Movement as it expanded its operation. The audience filling the back half of the room quiets down at once, sitting down on the rows and rows of cheap plastic chairs, turning their attention to the front. Victoria Black, ex-cheerleader and currently 'judge' in the NNSM's unofficial sexuality court rolls the riding crop between her fingers as she gazes at the assembled students from behind her desk. Blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, sizable chest straining against her partially unbuttoned dress shirt, piercing blue eyes looking down upon them all, she projects the image of an unquestionable ruler of this room. Who knew that this many people would show up to watch a trial concerning sexuality and involving lewd punishments? Much better attendance than cheerleading, and she gets to hit things with a riding crop, to boot.

"Are all formalities in order, court scribe?" She asks in the cutting, curt tone she's totally copying from Karinna, looking at the girl sitting to her left, who pushes her glasses up with one finger, causing them to glint in the light. "All consent waivers are signed and accounted for, honoured judge."
A curt nod from Victoria is all it takes for the two 'guards' flanking the doors to pull them closed in perfect synch, somehow managing to look intimidating despite the 'sexy officer' costume derivate that seems popular among the NNSM's enforcers. Something about a local sex shop accidentally having ordered 50 of them instead of 5 and now selling them in bulk at a discount. Apparently, it will take a few more weeks for the custom-made uniforms Karinna has ordered and organised to arrive, something about being made from 'special fiber' or something. They are supposed to be both sexy and tough, while letting all kinds of bodily fluids easily wash out.

Well, nothing Victoria concerns herself with too much, for the time being. She has a trial to run. Or was it a hearing? She's not a law student, she always gets those confused. "With the sealing of the doors, the fourth ever session of the NNSM sexuality court begins! Let none disrespect the holy court, or-" She always had to smirk at this part, letting just some of her eagerness bleed into her words. "Face the consequences, dire as they may be~."

A few eyes follow her hands as she idly runs them along her ceremonial riding crop, some in the audience trying to discretely adjust their pants as they imagine just what kind of consequences the blonde bombshell might disperse to those that she thinks deserve it. With an idle wave of her hand, the orderlies bring in the first plaintiff, having her walk down the aisle through the audience, the click of her high-heeled boots sharp against the near-total silence, the slight sway of her hips in her drawing a lot of attention. The pale, raven-haired woman, wrapped head to toe in a tight, shiny bodysuit takes her seat, wets her black lips, rests her elbows on the table and gives Victoria an expectant look, one eyebrow slightly raised.

Victoria clears her throat. "What brings you before this court today-" She glances down at the sparse notes on her desk. "Vanessa?"

"I am here, because something that was mine was taken from me." Vanessa begins, looking to her left where other witnesses and plaintiffs wait. "That little whore Maria over there keeps seducing and stealing my pet using unsavory methods, preying on moments of weakness, and all of it behind my back."

"Objection!" The call is loud, everyone turning their head its source, the Maria that Vanessa indicated. Where Vanessa is sinuous grace made manifest, Maria gives off a much softer expression, generous DD-cups in a plain sweater, a kindly face, shoulder-length brown hair. Well, her face is not quite that kindly right now, an accusing finger levelled at Vanessa: "I did no such thing! You neglected the poor boy, I took him in and nursed him and-"

"Enough! There will be order in this court. You can't just shout objection and get the right to talk. That would lead to total anarchy." Victoria doesn't even remember standing up, but she is now, glaring at the troublemakers.

A murmur goes through the audience. "You can't?" "I thought that's how it works?" "Have videogames lied to me?!"

Again, Victoria's riding crop hits her desk, the loud slapping noise quieting the room enough for her announcement to be heard, her eyes narrowed, voice measured. "The next person to talk out of turn, no matter how minor, will be tied up, gagged, locked in chastity and suspended from the ceiling of my court room as a warning to other fools. If I am feeling merciful, they won't have to spend the night like that. Have I made myself clear?" Mostly a bluff, but it should do what she wanted it to do.
The silence that follows is the answer she needs, and so she continues. "First, Vanessa will speak and lay out her point of view uninterrupted. Then Maria will speak and explain things from her point of view. Lastly, we will hear any witnesses. Now, please elaborate on exactly what happened, Vanessa."

"With pleasure~. Now, as I was saying, things were going great with my pet and me. I made great strides in training and conditioning him, we were at it for maybe three or four months. And don't worry, whatever that whore over there might say, he loved every second of it. Then, she made her move." A short pause, the words hanging in the air. "I was teaching him that my pleasure must always come before his own, you see? A very important step in any pet's training, but it did leave him a bit...shall we say, pent up? Two to three weeks between each release, daily teasing until he is in tears begging to cum, you know." She shoots Victoria a small smile. "The usual~. That's when I noticed he was acting strange. Not as desperate anymore. When I confronted him, he told me almost right away"

A glare is shot at Maria again, who crosses her arms under her bust, pushing it up in the process. "Oh yes, he confessed everything under the tender mercies of my boots and whip~. She practically threw herself at him, smothered him between those oversized udders, took advantage of how horny I had made him. In his moment of weakness, he accepted her offer to...pick the lock of his cock cage."

A gasp goes through the room, and Victoria is disinclined to discipline them for it. To subvert the purpose of such a device like that, what a major sin against sexuality!

"She picked the lock, made him cum...and then blackmailed him." She spats the last part out. "Told him she'd tell me he'd came if he didn't do as she wished. She made him come to her again, kept making him cum. Kept blackmailing him, made him cancel meetings with me to meet her instead, made him give me excuses... She takes perverse joy from that, from subverting my training, from ruining my efforts. She's always been jealous, but to go after him like that... Luckily, after he confessed and was properly punished, he still wanted to be mine. She failed, his loyalty is too strong. And yet she kept trying, again and again. He always confessed it to me, how she made another move, how tempted he was or wasn't, his further failings. All had consequences, of course. I want her to finally stop trying to lure him in."

Victoria nods once in understanding. "Thank you for your statement. Those are serious allegations. Now, Maria shall have a chance to defend herself."

A quick switch of seats later, the busty brunette sits where her rival sat moments before. "She's lying, you realize that, right?" Are her opening words, voice wavering. "I just wanted to help the poor boy. She always was far too hard on the poor things, even back when we shared a dorm. But to say I tried to steal him...he fled to me, he was like a wounded puppy that I took in and nursed back to health! He seemed to sad when we met, so I offered him a shoulder to cry on. Took him back to my room, with no ill intentions, you know! And he just...told me how hard she was on him, how he just wants some relief but knows she won't grant it."

"Did you bring up the possibility of a safeword, when he told you that? If he was that desperate?" Victoria feels compelled to ask.

"I did. But..." Maria rolls her eyes. "He was too ambitious, said he was sure she'd let him fuck her soon if he did well. Well, and then he remembered that I mentioned taking that lock picking class back last year, and suddenly started begging me to help him out. How could I refuse that? It took me a bit and rewatching some youtube videos, but she used a cheap padlock so hah. He had such adorable puppy eyes... After that, whenever things got too tough with Vanessa for him, I took him in and gave him some comfort, some gentleness, you know? I never told him to lie to her, or any of those awful things! It's not stealing if they run away to someone gentle! And he always does wiggle so delightfully when I play with him~. I always offer him sanctuary from her when things get too tough for him. Really, I don't know why he keeps going back at all."

"Seems you two cannot agree on what happened. Luckily, there is one witness that can clear this situation up. Orderlies, bring him in."

Maria returns to the witness seats, a safe distance away from Vanessa while a thin, handsome young man is led in, a slim leather collar around his throat, dressed smartly, shooting first Vanessa and then Maria a nervous look as he sits down.

Victoria studies him for a moment, glances down at her notes, then speaks. "Marc, you are in the unenviable position of being caught between two dommes fighting over you. Now tell us, how did you meet Maria, that fateful time when she picked the lock of your cage?"

"R-right." He nods nervously. "I wanted to eat lunch and recognised her, back from when she and Mistress shared a dorm, so I decided to say hi. Just wanted to chat with someone I knew, you know? And well...we began to talk about-" He motions down at his crotch. "That, and what she had me wear, and I started to tell her how hard things were on me and...I guess at some point we ended up in her room and...ah, I'm sorry." He shakes his head, eyes lowered. "It's all kind of a blur, you know? Very emotional..."

"Hrm..." Victoria is not content with that non-answer, eyes narrowed at the boy. "Tell me, when you met with Maria and told her about what Vanessa was doing, what exactly happened at those meetings? It is my understanding several such meetings took place?"

"W-well, she'd hug me and...pull me against her chest and we'd chat while she asked me how I was doing. T-then she always picked the lock and-" He shits slightly in his seat. "You know, used her breasts to make me cum, or pushed me between them until I couldn't breath, just surrounded by heavenly softness and b-" He notices the utter death glare that Vanessa is shooting him and wisely shuts up.

"I see, I see. And after each meeting you confessed to Vanessa, is that so?" She probes further and he nods. "I...I did. The guilt, you see. It just got too much, far too much. I can't keep secrets from her, no matter how much the consequences hurt. Oh every inch of my body is sore afterwards."

Victoria closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, leans back in her chair. She loves this part. The crop is nice, but this is why she really does this. The moment when things fall into place, when the twist has been revealed, when she gets to ham it up and dispense justice as she sees fit. And then- "You two are complete idiots!" She shouts, pointing at Maria and Vanessa, much to the woman's astonishment. "It is indeed true that there is a guilty party in this room, yes. But it is neither of you two. It is...Marc!" Her riding crop points right at him accusingly, making him shrink back in his seat, starting to sweat.

"The answer is...he has lied to both of you. Because he was not satisfied with one woman, because he is a glutton for punishment and pleasure both. He enjoyed Vanessa's punishments greatly, which is why he kept confessing. And then he went behind her back to go to Maria again and again, spinning her a tale of how much he is suffering to garner her sympathy and have her pick the lock. By going back and forth he thus extracted maximum punishment and pain from Vaness and maximum gentleness from Maria, not to mention a great number of unauthorized orgasms."

"I...uh, you got it all wro-" He tries to defend himself, but an orderly is already at his side, shoving a nice, big ball-gag into his mouth. And Victoria, Victoria is in full swing "Silence in the courtroom while I announce my decision, maggot! While cheating is already bad enough, you did something far worse. You lied to both of them, made them enemies, probably enjoyed their jealous fight over you. Orderlies, restrain him!" More struggling from Marc that prove mostly futile as he is expertly restrained by a small swarm of very eager police cosplayers.

Victoria climbs onto the table, swinging her riding crop in grandiose gestures. "Now, you are free to abort and leave this room, as per your consent waiver. However, that will land you on the black list, known far and wide among the student body as a no-good cheater and liar, and someone that has escaped justice! So submit to your fate, unworthy worm!" Her tongue wets her lips. "Speaking of your fate, I have decided that as well. The ones that wronged you shall be the ones to decided the severity of your punishment. It is only right. Orderlies, object 26-7. And strip him!"

This order, too, is followed with gleeful enthusiasm and soon he is suspended from the ceiling by his wrists, his naked, pale body on display, his cock rapidly getting hard, even as his cheeks blush crimson, everyone in the court room getting a good look. Vanessa and Maria get up, walk closer, both of them looking very, very displeased. And then, the orderlies bring out object 26-7 and they both look very, very pleased all of a sudden.

"This, ladies, gentlemen and more, is the newest in denial technology." Victoria explains, crop now pointed at the very high-tech looking, stainless steel chastity cage that the orderlies are in the process of putting on Marc. "On the market for just 3 days at this point, it has an electronic lock that cannot be broken in any way. Designed for long-term wear, the manufacturer guarantees that it is perfectly safe and hygienic to wear for up to three years! And that's just because the batteries need to recharge after three years. Plus, there's an app with all kinds of delightful functions~."

Vague begging noises come from behind Marc's gag, though he remains rock-hard, forcing the orderlies to apply a generous quantity of ice to get him to shrink down, the metal cage swiftly sliding over his poor manhood.

"Let me demonstrate the fate of this no-good liar." Victoria pulls out her phone, presses a button and watches with delight as Marc trashes in his bonds. "Shock function~. Completely harmless, but very painful. There's many other settings, too. But the one we'll use the most is...co-operative control. Assuming both Maria and Vanessa are willing, they will share control of his cage. This means they can both use the punishment and tease features. However, the release feature is only usable with the consent of both users. In other words-" Her riding crop wanders over Marc's naked body, tilts his chin up. "Rather than using two woman to satisfy himself, he will now need to keep two women happy if he wants to get any satisfaction~."

Marc's head sags down as soon as her crop is gone, though the way his cock bulges past the bars of its prison, he is still very aroused by his predicament. "Hmm, Maria dear? I might owe you an apology or two." Vanessa slides an arm around the busty woman's waist. "If you are up for it. Best delivered in front of this very misbehaving pet, yes? I think the app has a spikes setting too. Or is that too much for your sensibilities?" Maria for her part leans against Vanessa's side. "Hmm, usually I'd say yes, but...he really does deserve some pain, doesn't he? Oh, speaking of, are we thinking more weeks or months for his first unlock?"

"Hmm? I was thinking at least half a year, but-"

Victoria smiles to herself, another case resolved. Warrior of Justice Victoria, signing out!

Extras - Almost but not quite canon because that is a mad inventor not a mad scientist omake by Eler0

Did someone say submissive magical girls stopping mad scientist? Because I heard submissive magical girls stopping mad scientist. Pretty short, but eh, felt like writing it.

Fun fact, I couldn't think of any generic magical girl names besides Pure Heart and thus the rest of the team remains unnamed.

Spoiler: The life of a magical girl

"Purify the unclean, ULTIMATE JUSTICE BEAM!" A bright, pink blast of pure energy impacts the clockwork giant, the already charred machine finally giving out, the cockpit glass shattering as the mech topples over, its pilot flung from his vehicle. "N-no, it would have been...perfect." He coughs out, the steampunk goggles pushed up onto his forehead cracked, eyes staring up at his opponents, his bright-red lab-coat shredded and singed. "A-at least step on me while you crush my dreams." He looks up hopefully at the scantly clad, self-professed 'magical girls', getting a series of withering glares in return. "Just a bit? Please? Come on? O-ouch, not the face, not the fa-"

-----

"Well, that takes care of that, at least~." Emily, a.k.a. 'Pure Heart', leans back in the garden chair, digging into her ice cream after a job well done, looking out over the city from their hangout spot on the roof of an apartment building. "Mad scientist definitely beats tentacle monsters in my book."
That earns her a series of nods from her companions, until one asks: "Hey Emily, isn't today Wednesday? Didn't you have like...a thing planned today?"
Emily freezes, her spoon of cookie dough ice-cream hovering inches from her mouth as she processes the data. "SorrygottagodinnerwithEriccallyougirlslaterloveya'allbye." She is out of her chair and already jumping from roof to roof with little bursts of pink magic before her spoon can even clatter onto the table. The girls exchange a quick look, then a giggle. "Someone's in trouble~." "Bet she won't sit still for a week~." And last but not least: "Dibs on her ice-cream!"

-----

The door slowly creaks open, Emily's head slo~owly poking in, frowning when she sees her boyfriend sitting at the dinner table, two plates under a plastic wrap to keep them fresh. "Emily? Finally home?" Eric asks, looking up from his phone, seeking her eyes. "You're alright, right? I could tell you're spending a lot of power, but... Ah, come on in, don't just hover in the door."
She shuffles in, door pushed closed behind herself, her meguca dress dismissed in a shower of sparks, replaced with normal clothes, looking at her feet. "Yes, I'm alright. It wasn't anything bad, just...some weird mad scientist guy we had to stop."

She hears his chair pushed back, but doesn't dare look up and at his face. A hand wraps around her chin, gently but firmly lifts it, forces her eyes to find his. "Emily, look at me. That is what good girls do, isn't it? Looking me in the eyes, not at her feet." Her cheeks turn a slight red at his tone, the firm grip on her chin, the way he's just way taller than her and makes her feel so small and vulnerable. There's no need to think about her answer, either. "Yes, Sir."

"And you are a good girl for me, aren't you?" A question he knows the answer to, of course. But it is almost a ritual by this point. "Yes, Sir. I am a good girl."
His hand moves to comb through her long, black hair possessively. "And what is the first rule any good girl should follow? Do you remember?"
She squirms slightly, fights the urge to avoid his eyes again. "A...a good girl takes good care of herself. Because self-care is important."
"Very good. Such a smart girl. And would you say running yourself ragged on being a magical girl every day is taking good care of yourself? You spent the last five evenings on that, you forgot we planned to eat dinner together today..."
How does he always put things like that, to make her feel embarrassed and small. Her cheeks blush slightly as she answers: "No Sir. I'm sorry. I've been bad..."
He leans in, kisses her forehead gently. "I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, you know that, right? But do you remember what we agreed on when you started this magical girl thing?"
Emily leans forward a bit, against his chest, enjoys the closeness before she answers. "That...that I wouldn't let it consume my life. That I would limit it to three evenings per week, barring 'end of the world' emergencies."

"Exactly. Five evenings in five days seems like more than that, don't you think? Were those all end of the world emergencies?" Finally, she can't hold eye contact anymore, eyes lowered to his chest. "N-no, they weren't."
"Good. So what does it mean, when you break our agreements like that, Emily?" He continues, eternally patient. She swallows. "That...that there will be consequences. That I will be punished, Sir."
"Yes, yes it does. We will talk about that after dinner, though. While doing the review. For now sit down while I warm it up again. Would be a shame to let it get to waste."

-----

"N-no, not there~." Emily whines pitifully, squirming, ropes digging into her wrists as his mouth remains firmly glued to her neck, sucking hard, his fingers dancing over her body, slipping under the puffy skirt of her magical girl outfit, rubbing against the front of her pink, heart-patterned panties, pressing the slowly vibrating toy within firmer up against her. "Shush you, you should concentrate on what happened, dear. Or we'll have to start the entire review over again~."
An inarticulate whine escapes her throat again, but she closes her eyes, tries to focus while he does his very best to distract her, the little gem on the tight choker around her throat glowing in a faint light. A matching bracelet around Eric's wrist glows in a matching tone as she calls up her memories of the fight earlier that day, of the armies of steam-powered golems and other contraptions she blasted her way through, reliving it all, all the sensations repeated, overlayed with the present. Except this time, there's his voice, commenting on what he sees.

"Just blasting your way through them again, huh? You really should be more conservative with your magic power, you were almost completely dry when you arrived here." His voice echoes in her mind, even as he traces feather-light kisses down her neck.
"Y-you think s-ohhh~." She answers, hips grinding slightly against his hands. "I didn't exaaaaa~. Exactly want to go into melee combat with those things, you know? EEEP!"
She jumps slightly forward at the playful swat to her rear, as far as the simple rope tying her wrists to the ceiling will allow. "That's not what I meant, Emily. You have a team for a reason, don't you? You don't have to do all the heavy lifting, share some of the load."
Her situation might not be the most ideal for reflection, but she is forced to agree. "Y-yes Sir, I was a bit too aggressive. I'll try harder next time."
"Good girl~." A click of the remote, and the toy in her underwear picks up speed. "Overall, I'd say you get a B+ for the fight in the steam tunnels. Not shabby, but with room for improvement."

"W-what about the giant mecha. S-sir?"
"Hmm, I think in that case, blasting it with your ultimate attack was justified. There's a time for holding back and a time for taking out the enemy commander. Very well done."
It still is unreal to her, how much his praise makes her happy, how the warm glow in her chest grows at those words. Still, there are other things on her mind as well.
"S-sir, now that the review is over, can you please turn the toy up and let me cum? Pretty please?"
He chuckles, warm breath against her neck, a single finger pushing the little vibe up against her clit for a moment. "Oh, this toy here?"
"Ahhh~. Y-yes Sir, that toy there. Please? I did well!" She begs, squirms, concentration wavering, the mental review of the battle of today collapsing for them both.
"Usually, I'd say yes. Buuuut~" He raises his bracelet, showing her the small, ruby gem that matches her own inserted in it. "It seems you're still not topped up on magic energy. Or should we say...bottomed up? Well either way, spending all your power means recharging takes a while, nothing I can do about that~."

She can tell from his voice that he wouldn't do anything about it even if he could. Who would have thought he'd use the powers granted from the 'overseer bracelet' that matches her magical stone so gleefully. Not that it wasn't helpful, of course. There was a reason the alien civilisation that made them created them in magical girl and overseer pairs, intending the overseers as 'support' while the magical girls did all the heavy lifting. Asking your boyfriend to do that definitely beats creepy alien animals that want to use the power of sex to reverse entropy or whatever.

Regardless of her internal musings, he continues. "Besides, we do still need to decide your punishment for breaking the rules. I think...since you like this toy so much, we'll just have you wear it tomorrow some more~. And this time, no skipping classes. I'm sure that will help with your concentration issues."
She wants to complain, say something like 'no fair!', but she knows that will achieve nothing. So instead, she says what a good girl should say. "Yes, Sir. Thank you for punishing me, Sir." He doesn't tell her about the slight ping in the back of his head as her 'SUB' points finally max out. Might as well leave her squirming for a little while longer.

Extras - Non-canon omake by Derpmind: An Inceptive Succubus

Alright, here's a very silly short I scribbled together. Be warned, this is more of a word sketch than it is a finished story.

Spoiler: A Succubus Adventure!

"Shit," Joel says, and visibly swallows. "I... was really hoping it wouldn't go this way. Can it please not go this way?"

The succubus's smug face hovered above his, staring. "There's another way you could give away your virginity. A much more magical one."

"What way?" Joel said as squeezed himself deeper into his chair.

"Go on an adventure with me!" Starastera exclaimed, suddenly straightening up. "A short one. But definitely a magical one, too."

The invitation somehow made Joel even more nervous. "What kind of adventure? I don't want to get lost in the realm of forgotten dreams!"

She rolled her eyes. "You won't loose your way home, and it's a much shorter trip than you're expecting. All you've gotta do is promise to follow me and do what I say, and in exchange I promise you there won't be any negative consequences." She extended her hand to him.

"You're not gonna tell me what this adventure is, are you?"

"Nope!"

Joel stared at her hand, then reluctantly grabbed it. And was promptly yanked to his feet.

"Great! Now..." She paused, examining his head closely, then turned him towards his mirror. "Good, you're already pierced. Put these earrings on".

The succubus handed him beautiful earrings (from... somewhere). A mesmerizing blend of ruby and opal, swirling together.

"And these socks." She said, holding up a pair of his socks.

"What do-"

"The earrings looks pretty and the socks cover your feet. Now hurry up, we need to get the timing of this just right."

Joel hurriedly put the earrings and socks on, then stepped downstairs after the demon. She waited for him by the front door, and handed him a pair of black leather boots.

"Those are my dad's boots." Joel said, nonplussed.

"Not the sexiest footwear, but good enough." She replied.

Not a moment after he'd finished tying the laces, Joel was pulled out the door and into... his neighborhood street.

Joel quickly leaped back. "W...wait! Someone might see us!"

Starastera huffed. "And if they do, it won't result in a negative consequence. Now stop covering yourself, it's important to be polite."

They walked out into the daylight... into the street... and over to the other side.

"Why are you taking me to Sarah's house?" Joel said, sweat running down his face.

"Shh. Be quiet." Starastera casually opened the locked door. Then she whispered: "When we get down to the basement, walk into the center of the circle without making a single sound. Got it?"

Joel nodded. The two walked down the nearby stairwell. The succubus slowly opened the basement door a crack, peeked inside, then gently shoved Joel past the threshold. Inside was a naked girl around Joel's age, kneeling on her hands and knees in front of a pentagram inside a circle. The symbol was drawn with many colors of chalk, and surrounded by very expensive looking candles.

The girl herself was fairly cute, kneeling in front of a massive book and muttering latinish phrases. Joel hesitated on seeing her, did a slow triple take between her and the circle, then slowly he walked into the ritual symbol. Not a moment later, the girl finished her chanting, looked up, and startled; a confused look spreading across her face.

"Are you an incubus?" asked the girl.

"No," Joel said. "I'm your human neighbor who wandered into your house off the street, came through the locked basement door behind you, and stepped into your diagram while you weren't looking. Oh, and this is what I happened to be wearing."

Extras - $20/1000 words for Erogamer spinoffs [status: open]

$10 per 1000 words for qualifying Erogamer fiction (current status: open)

I'm interested in commissioning Erogamer spinoff fiction at $10 per 1000 words. Yeah, I know that's not Playboy rates, but I've seen it advertised by some QQ authors, and it's not like I'm making revenue here.

I feel most excited about new Erogamer quests run in the CORE system, here or on fiction.live. But omakes in this thread may also qualify.

If interested, PM me. If I like other work you've written, I'll agree to pay up to $50 for 5,000 words as a test, where you get paid whether or not I like the results. If I like the description of a prospective story and you seem to be able to form good sentences, I'll pay $20 for 2000 words as a test. I'd pay $100 up front to see authors of the rank of Questingdragon, Ashali, or AnalyticalOne try out an Erogame thread, with further payment if it went past 10,000 words.

Alternatively, jump blindly into the unknown on whether I like your stuff, and see afterwards whether I liked it enough. You really shouldn't count on me liking it in that case, but maybe it's a reason to write up one plot bunny rather than another.

My turn-ons include: Teasing, orgasm denial, characters in a state of frustrated sexual arousal, seduction, sexual tension, sexual awakenings, humor, people being unexpectedly sensible.

My turn-offs include: Loli/shota/underage, scat, gore, futa, incest played straight, sex where nobody is having fun, broken people doing broken things, bad grammar, plot-induced stupidity, characters that seem flat and flavorless and not like real people, xianxia protagonists but I repeat myself, female characters depicted as reacting positively to scraps of good treatment inside misogynistic societies, and social horror / embarrassment squick (commonly confused with humor). I do not seem to really enjoy reading m/m sex scenes.

I'm unlikely to $$-like uncommissioned stories that didn't progress far enough to get to their good parts---that doesn't scratch the itch for me. If you write anything on a site that doesn't provide word counts, you need to provide me the word count. I reserve the right to round wordcounts down in units of 100 words. I reserve the right to require a $10 minimum to trigger payout. If an unusual format makes a story more verbose per unit of plot, I might offer a reduced rate per word.

I plan to pay at most $500 to any one author, and at most $1000 across all authors.

If I really like something you've written, I will pay 2 cents per word!! (Very rare.)

Extras - Semi-canon pseudo-future omake by Eler0: First Contact

So, this is a thing. Sexy psychic space alien comes to earth. Hope you guys like it. It got surprisingly long. Not sure how good it is but tell me what yu think.

Spoiler: First Contact 4250 words

“Subspace drive disengaging, Mistress.” The flight engineer calls out, echoing through the bridge despite the lowkey moans and whimpers that form the near-constant background noise aboard the Audacity.

Numa rises from the captain’s lounge in the very centre of the room, heading towards the cylindrical tank filled with a thick, opaque fluid along one wall, her head-tendrils slipping free of the needy mouths of her pets, an idle thought pushing their now unoccupied lips together.

<Run a full scan of the planet.> Her thought echo in the head of her crew, and the sensor technician slips out of the general cuddle pile and to his console, enthusiastically springing into action. Numa, meanwhile, reaches into the tank, pulling free a slim, petite girl wrapped up completely in a restrictive, white bodysuit, her head hidden behind a featureless hood, arms wrapped around her in a straightjacket configuration. The girl startles at the sudden touch after hours of sensory deprivation, but Numa knows well how to calm her down.

<Shhh, pet. It’s alright, it is just me. I’ve got you, don’t you worry. You did so well for me, I’m really proud of you. That was a long journey through subspace, but now you need to wake up for me, okay? Here, I’ll hold you. > When before her command was short and perfunctory, causing only a background level of pleasure in her minions that comes from receiving her attention, now her telepathic words rings with affection, warmth and kindness, the likes of which no voice, no mere sound could ever convey, enough for the girl to practically melt into the arms of her blue-skinned Mistress.

And to think when she found her, the girl had tried to resist and stay on her planet, when now she acted like an adorable kitten at the mere suggestion of Numa’s affection. <Scanning results?> She inquires as she settles back in, still tied girl in her lap.

“It’s...it’s better than we could have hoped for, Mistress. Thousands of targets matching your specifications, with an incredible concentration in one geographic location. Local designation: Norville.”

----------

Quest available: Resistance is futile but very sexy, so keep on struggling
You blink at the wave of pink text in front of you. How did you...how did you get here, again? But first, where is here, anyw-eep! Why is there a hot, punk with spiky purple hair between your naked thighs, slowly eating you out? Hmm, who cares, it feels so good, you really should... Focus, Cindy! Yes, how did you get here again? The last thing you remember is walking the streets, training your high-heel running, looking for random events to trigger and now-
<Just relax and have fun>
“Focus!” A pair of purple-painted nails sharply pinch your left nipple hard, and was that a light shock or did you imagine it? You have little time to contemplate exactly what happened, because the girl between your legs is apparently unsatisfied with the lack of attention you pay her. “S-sorry!” It slips out before you even think about it, but thankfully the girl’s satisfied and gets back to ever so slowly lapping along your cunt. God, you’re so wet, how long has this been going on? You really want to cum, maybe if you’re good she’ll...Focus, damn it! Okay, you’re in some kind of...club lounge, lots of couches and red furniture and lots of people in similar situations as you. Lots of making out, fingering, but no all-out fucking from what you can see. And nobody seems to be cumming, either...
<Show me how locals make love, welcome the newcomer.>
Right, the quest. That will explain things, hopefully. You try to keep your eyes on the girl between your legs as you whisper the words, whimpering slightly when her efforts redouble, tongue-tip circling your clit.

Info // Quests // Resistance is futile but very sexy, so keep on struggling:

As far as first contacts go, this at least beats cow stealing. Make it clear to Numa Arc how dating on Earth works and get her to stop aggressive ‘recruiting’ for her harem, one way or another. Consent is sexy! Or turn the tables on her, that works too of course.

Success: 200,000 exp; Improved relationship with ???, 1d3 supernatural contacts, ???
Failure: Improved relationships with Numa Arc, The True Bliss of Belonging LVL MAX, Norville gains galactic reputation: Nubile human concubines, ???
Bonus Objective: Get Numa in the custody of the Men in Pink, so they can run sexy, sexy experiments on this vile alien.
Accept now? Y/N

<This is the best thing that ever happened to you. Endless Bliss.>
So, there’s an alien called ‘Numa’ here that’s kidnapping people for her harem? No way you’re letting that pass, your finger swiftly pressing Y. Now to...finding this Numa and discovering whatever this true bliss is. It doesn’t sound that bad after all, so maybe it’s one of those- wait no, what are you thinking, of course it’s not one of those quests where failure is the real reward. Why did you even think that? Honestly you’d be glad with just a few orgasms first so you can think clearly, maybe if you ask the nice girl between your legs real nicely- Wait, maybe she’s the alien?
<So exciting and liberating, to just go with the flow.>
“Are you Numa?” You had planned to say it more diplomatically, but it just...slipped out. Her long, pierced tongue stops its teasing lap along your pussy, the girl giving you a ‘the hell kind of drugs are you on’ look. “What? Numa? Who’s that supposed to be, no. I’m Vicky, I work he- Wait a moment.” She sits up a bit straighter, holding her head. “Hold on, where are we exactly? What...what day is it?”

Another victim, then? You lean down, whisper, wary of being overheard. “I’m Starry, nice to meet you. Listen, I have reason to believe we’ve been kidnapped by aliens so do exactly as I say.”
“Yeah right, aliens. Sure, listen I don’t know what kind of weird sex cult you’re in but...I feel like there's something really important I should be doing, I'll-” When she starts to get up, you reach for her hand, but the moment you touch you feel a powerful jolt that makes you jerk, pull the hand back hard. She stumbles right onto you when you pull, pinning you against the red couch you've been sitting on.
<No need to worry about anything. Just relax.>
"Listen, I know it's hard to believe so follow the fucking rabbit and let me save you from the aliens okay? Uh, what are you doing?" The girl, Vicky, seems to forget all about what she planned just moments before, instead nuzzling against your naked cleavage, covering it in kisses. "Mhm, aliens. Got it. Cool."
"Listen everyone! Rabbit rabbit rabbit, we've been kidnapped by aliens to forcibly add us to their harem, let's get out of here!" Next to you, a man with thin, elongated features whose ears seem just a tad too pointy looks up from where he's been slowly finger-fucking an amazonian woman with glistening abs that looks like she could crush his head with her thighs. "So?" He asks simply, then returns to his previous task.
<She is too wound up. She ought to really relax so everyone can have a good time. Help her out>
You're not quite sure why, but a shiver runs down your spine as if something just happened. The other victims stop, turn as one towards you, and a deep feeling of dread overcomes you. "Sto-" The pointy-eared man grabs your wrists before you can react, moving with seemingly superhuman speed while the amazon he was fingering pins down your legs, gently but with far too much strength than you could ever overcome. The others pile on with cheerful glee, hands and mouths and toys soon wandering over every inch of your body.

-----

Quite the interesting specimen, she thinks to herself, gazing through the eyes of those whose assimilation was the furthest along. For three hours so far, they've pinned this 'Starry' down, teased and edged and played with her relentlessly, and yet her willpower is still strong, something truly slippery about her mind. Oh, she responds well to the surface level readings and suggestions, that is how she was lured here in the first place. The cute mutant with the shock powers, Vicky, squirmed in the throes of yet another orgasm atop the girl's mouth before she leans down and repays the favour by raking fingernails over Starry's exposed body, enough to make her squirm futilely against the immense strength of the 'half-orc' amazonian.
<Back off, she's too close>
The elf that has been keeping her on edge with nothing but upwards licks stops, contenting himself with breathing hot air on the puffy, needy sex of her most interesting catch on this planet. Speaking of interesting, rather than beg or plead as she has before, or whimpering like they usually do after a while, the captive instead took the moment where her mouth is unoccupied to shout out: "N-numa, this isn't our planet's custom for this! Show me your face at least! You're doing it all wrong!"

Now this is something to give the woman pause. <Go back to licking, don't give her a break.> Well, that doesn't mean she'll give Starry any respite, of course. But she did lack information on the local harem acquisition customs, that's true. And how had she known her name? Information leakage when she tried to delve deeper into Starry's mind? Well, it couldn't hurt to at least talk to her, if she was going to keep resisting the deep mind dives. But first: <Keep her on edge, I'll talk to her after dinner so I want her as incoherent as you can make her. This time try the fine brushes too.>

-----

Well, you tried your best. You were so sure the quest text contained some hidden hints but she hasn't reacted at all to the things you said, hasn't shown herself and oh fuck these guys are EVIL. It was bad enough getting teased by a pair of infernal tickle twins, but at least they needed rest at some point. Now you have ten people taking shifts with keeping you on edge and using you. There is no downtime where your hair could free you while nobody's paying attention, because someone is always paying attention. They don't even stop when they give you some water to drink! And considering the water gave you a status effect called Eternal Stamina they even drugged you. Unnecessary with your Ero body, but you guess a normal human would have needed it to not pass out.

And just when you're ready to give up hope, the Erogame throws you a bone. Or in this case, an alien, stepping into the by now all too familiar red room. Tall, slender, her skin a deep midnight blue, wearing some kind of tight, form-fitting bodysuit that shows some very real breasts on this probably not a mammal. Well, and then there's the dozen or so slender mini-tentacles sprouting from the back of her head in place of hair. If it wasn't for those, you'd probably think it's just good cosplay. And finally, finally the fucker between your legs stops running that paintbrush up and down over your clit.

<Hello, Starry. I must say you are the most interesting one I've seen in my visit here. And I have seen many interesting variations of your species.>
You just barely stop yourself from moaning when her voice echoes right in your head, sounding so warm and yet commanding. The compliment fills you with bliss, echoes again and again.
Status Effect gained: The Bliss of Belonging I
"What...what are you?" Right, you should have used the time she gave you to think of some actually good things to say once she does talk to you.
<Does it really matter, Starry dear?>
Again that voice right in your head, the affectionate, yet slightly superior way she said 'dear', enough to make you weak in the knees if you weren't tied down tightly.
"It's...it's custom to introduce yourself before you talk to someone on my planet, and especially before you have sex. And we really don't like people that break customs, it's super rude. And uh...gets faeries angry at you, and other nasty beings."
<Is that so? I suppose there's no harm in playing along then. I am Numa Arc, proud captain and owner of the Audacity. I set off in search of new worlds to explore and new species to mate with. You are one of the lucky, chosen few that have earned this privilege.>
You can practically taste the word privilege and the things that come attached to it. No, taste is the wrong word but only because your language doesn't contain the right one. Hearing the word, thinking it, comes attached with sensations, images, explanations beyond words. A blissful reward, total joy.
Status Effect gained: The Bliss of Belonging II

"Can...can you stop doing that? Can't we just talk, with words?" Numa shakes her head, looking sad, the tendrils behind her face moving, twitching, as if agitated.
<I pity your species, truly. I pity all the lesser species that are forced to rely on making sounds to try and transmit meaning. Though you can be physically close together, mere words can never allow you to truly know another, to truly experience what they do. How can you know if love means the same thing, the same sensation, as another being? If someone says 'I love you', how can you know he loves you the same way you love him? Let me demonstrate, Starry. I truly love every member of my harem.>
You've thought about love. You've experienced it. You associate so many things with that word. And yet, when she sends that word, she sends pure, bottled feelings, a sensation of utter belonging. A mix of so many emotions you struggle to put it into words even in your mind. It is a mother's fond love for her children, but also a wife's love for her husband, the love of those newly in love and the love of old, married couples that have been together for most of their life. It makes your heart ache, makes every fiber of your being desire to be the subject of such an all-consuming love.
"You're...you're lying. You capture people, mess with their mind. How can you love them? Even now you've tied me down."
Numa sighs, takes a deep breath, steps closer to you, a hand gently running through your hair. At the same time, with a snap of her fingers, the elf gets back to work tormenting your weeping, aching pussy with that paintbrush and how is this remotely fair!
"A-and stop that! Please. It's not nice at all to- ahhh~. To try and have a reasonable conversation like this!"
<Lies. Another thing I pity you for. How could I communicate an emotion I do not feel? How could I fake such a feeling? There is no such thing when talking mind to mind, soul to soul. To send a feeling is to feel it, if I did not feel that love, I could not send its impression to you. I love them all, yes. And in time I will come to love you as well. Sometimes, we have to force those we love into things, for their own good. I have felt the feelings of every member of my harem. Their lives are filled with true and constant bliss, they live long, fulfilled and extremely happy lives and I wish them all just the best. How can you not see that it is the right thing for me to make them mine like this? It is only natural for my kind. It is how we mate.> She reaches down, gently rolls one of your rock-hard nipples between two fingers. <And it is not fair, I admit. I am doing this for my amusement. Be grateful I decided to humour you by talking at all.>
Status Effect gained: The Bliss of Belonging III
Oh, how convincing she makes it sound, how sincere. But...you think back to all those you'd leave behind. Charles, your mother...Even if going with her gave you incredible amounts of joy (and you have little doubt of that now, truth be told) it would also make others sad, and that would be wrong. The paintbrush's tip, by now very wet with your juices, begins to dance right on top of your clit and for a moment or two, all you can do is whine and squirm. Numa's lips curve up into a thin smile at your misery, the bitch. "W-what do you mean, it is how you mate. Just meet people, get to know them, get them to agree to cum, I mean come with you. I'm absolutely confident there's a lot of lonely people on earth that would love to sign up to join a sexy blue space alien's harem and see the universe! No need to mess with their heads."

Even if they're evil teasing denying bitches and why is everyone into denying your orgasms seriously how is this fair, is that like a universal law of the universe that everyone's into teasing your poor cunt? Wait nevermind, not the universe, just the Erogame.

<Messing with their head, as you put it, is how my kind mates, Starry. Would you condemn my species to extinction? We find compatible minds, those with which we truly resonate. Over the duration of three of your earth days, their mind opens to us as show them the bliss of belonging. Once a mate has been claimed into the harem like this, our love is total. It is not a biological process. We are partially beings of thought, of the mind. We must search the universe for those that will match, far and wide. This planet is a treasure trove for my kind, so many exotic minds, so many ways of thinking, so many 'kinks' is your word for it I believe. I do not know what the origin of it is, but it is what we have been waiting for, Starry. Though you are a special case still. It is like something in your mind is slowing down the mating, something truly unique that slows down the connection.>

You never thought of yourself as good with words, as good at convincing people, and being constantly edged is definitely not making it any easier, your thoughts racing, your body squirming as you try to argue, talking fast to get the words out before the next aborted peak: "That's not the point! Why not get their consent first, then mess with their head? Seriously, just put up some ads and you'll have plenty of interesting people ready to sign up. I swear. I could even try running some alien-human date events if you want. If you keep doing this, people will find out and think you're hostile and you'll start a war! People will be hurt!" The moment the last word leaves your lips, you feel yourself peak once more, your back arched, sex pulsing, aching, that damned pointy-eared bastard blowing air on the twitching nub as if it was remotely enough.

<We are technologically advanced, your weapons prove little danger to us. Over the centuries, our kind has mated with scientists of many species, many empires. And do not worry, we will subdue them non-lethally should conflict break out. Even without technology, my mind could overwhelm them if need arises.>

"And all the misery and fear you'll cause like that? And you said earth has so many interesting minds for your kind, won't it be much harder for you to look for them if everyone's trying to find you or looking out for abductions? Please, give me a chance. That's all I ask. Release everyone you have taken, and I'll find people that consent to becoming part of your harem. I bet I'll find at least as many as you've taken yet, and they'll be just as interesting. That is how we do things on earth. Consensually!"

Numa seems deep in thought, one hand idly reaching out for the spiky-haired girl, Vicky, caressing her cheek, the girl leaning into the affection like a pet. Then the hand on her cheek gently guides her down, on her knees, between your legs, the elf with the paintbrush making place for her. Immediately, the girl resumes licking you like how it all started, her tongue sending strange, tingly sensations up along your spine as she apparently uses a minor amount of her power. <You nearly broke this one out of the still fragile mating bond I had with her. Now, you ask me to undo all the progress I've made, to sever a growing bond of love. It will hurt me, Starry. And it will hurt them. To no longer love someone you once loved is not easy. I do not understand why your kind cares about this 'consent' when they are happy like they have never been before. Does a being really need to consent to being made happy? Why would your people fear us when being taken by us means a life like this? But...I suppose I shouldn't make it harder for the others of my kind to find mates on this planet. I will give you one chance. And there are conditions.>

The word conditions weighs heavily on your mind, the way she thought it they must be serious indeed. Well, the part of your mind not occupied with how Vicky has started eating you out enthusiastically. After the feather-light touches of a paintbrush, it is ero heaven, your body bracing for the momentous orgasm it's being built towards. "Wh-what conditions?" You gasp out, biting your lower lip.

<I have found, including you, eleven mate candidates of the highest quality, with minds I can meld with on top of interesting biological abberations. An 'elf', a mutant, a 'half-orc', oh this city truly has so many exotic sub-species. You have eleven days to get me replacements. Should you fail, you will willingly join me. But should you succeed, I promise to respect this 'consent' while on your planet and do my best to convince my kind to do the same as well. Oh and-" The tone of her thoughts was serious until now, but suddenly gets a mischievous flavour as she continues. You're only listening with half an ear, too busy with the overload of sensation in your pussy, the sheer amount of pleasure the purple-haired girl is giving you. You'll come any moment now.

<I caught some glimpses of your thoughts and feelings as my lovely servants tormented you. So you should not mind this too much. You will not cum until our little wager is over, one way or another. I hope that won't distract you too much. It will make it more entertaining to watch for me, at least. And when you do fail, oh how I will welcome you into the fold after all that build-up. Have you ever experienced the pleasure of an entire harem engaged in an orgy, projected right into your mind? You will, once you're mine.>

You whine, you squirm as Vicky pulls back at the last possible moment, just as that delicious mental image enters your mind. And it is a mental image, in the truest sense of the word, an impression of incredible debauchery and pleasure, just faint enough to tease, to tantalize. It takes every ounce of willpower and Edge Riding skill you have to not go over, because she'd probably count that as you already losing the wager. You pant, you gasp, you dig your fingernails into your hands to barely hang on, slumping into your restraints.

"You don't want me to win this, to show you there's another way, do you?" You ask with a pout, too exhausted to raise your head and look at her..

<I do not, no. I still do not understand your concerns, but I am willing to humour you. Do not squander this chance. And should you succeed...please make sure these lovelies get over me, yes?>
She runs a hand through Vicky's hair, totally messing up the careful cultivated 'spiky hair' look in the process before heading for the door. She does not look back, her steps hurried.
Status effect removed: The Bliss of Belonging III
It is like cotton has been removed from your mind, a veil lifted you didn't know was there. It leaves behind an aching emptiness, yearning to be filled with love and affection. You know it will pass, will fade away into memory, as will the impression of pure love you got earlier. With time, you'll look back and think it wasn't so great, so absolute and perfect, as it was in the moment. It would be best for you.
Talking your way out of captivity by far superior forces has created the Golden Tongue skill.
Passively increases your persuasiveness by FUK%, to a maximum of 50%. Also increases the odds of sexual complications and demands for sexual favours in exchange for getting what you want by 2*FUK% whenever you ask for anything.
Active: Spend 10 SUB while performing oral sex on someone to raise the maximum bonus provided by this skill against them for that day by another 20%. Demands for further sexual favours are all but guaranteed once your golden tongue becomes known.

Extras - Semi-canon pseudo-future omake by Elitist Oars: How to Kidnap the Mayor's Daughter

Omake: How to kidnap the mayor's daughter - the video series

Spoiler: Omake: How to kidnap the mayor's daughter - the video series

Episode #1

Hello, boys, girls, eldritch monstrosities! In our new video series, we'll be teaching you, as the title suggests, how to kidnap a mayor's daughter!

<whisper off-camera>

Really? That thing. Fi-ine...

My cameragirl wants me to remind people, that kidnapping mayors' daughters should only be done with the informed consent of everyone involved. Do not try this at home. No mayor's daughter was actually harmed in the making of this film.

"Hello, little girl! Would you by any chance like to follow me into my unmarked white van? I have... candy."
"That sounds very lovely, stranger that I've supposedly never met before. But are you by any chance planning to kidnap me and take me away into a sex dungeon to be molested for your evil pleasures?"
"Um, <shifty look> no...?"
"Really."
"It's more of a... sex attic?"
"Thanks, but no thanks."
<slumps shoulders> "You want the candy anyway? No strings attached?"
"Why thank you, that's very nice of you. Wait, is this... white chocolate? White chocolate!? You fiend. You monster. You... jerkface!"
"Bwahahaha!"​

As you've seen, our first attempt to kidnap our lovely victim has been foiled by her mental fortitude and preparation! This is going to be a tricky one!

Don't forget to like and subscribe! Watch us again tomorrow on "How to kidnap the mayor's daughter"!

----------

Episode #8

Hi there, boys, girls, eldritch monstrosities! As always do not try this at home. Hostage-taking should only be done by skilled professionals or by people claiming on camera that they're such. No mayor's daughters, and no dakimakuras were harmed in the making of this video.

This time our plan is foolproof! As you can see behind us, we've already acquired the hostage with which we'll acquire the lovely Melusine's surrender!

"Hello, Melusine. Thanks for accepting the video-call. Bwahaha!"
"Evil laughter only after the explanation, Starastera, we talked about this."
"Ah, sorry. I have managed to capture in my evil lair... your boyfriend's former lover!"
"But Joel... didn't have a girlfriend before me."
"Aw, hasn't he told you about her.... Tsk-tsk, the lies, the secrets, the hidden shame. Behold, the lovely.... Rias Gremory!"
"...that's Joel's body pillow."
"Dakimakura, if you please! And the only way to get her back... is to surrender yourself to my evil desires! Bwahaha!?"
"...how about I paypal you 5 dollars for it."
"Deal!"​

I count that as a total win, boys, girls, eldritch monstrosities! No, we didn't actually manage to kidnap the mayor's daughter, but she did offer us a worthy ransom instead! With the tally now at 7-1, the tide is turning!

Don't forget to like and subscribe, and watch us again tomorrow on "How to kidnap the mayor's daughter"!

----------

"Episode #23 is cancelled, Mell. I'll put up an apology video for the subscribers and take the day off."
"Star? No... Cindy? You sound really upset. What happened?"
"I asked one of the newest sexbots for ideas on the day's plan. He... it came up with something that would involve Joel's brother. As in actually involving the kid."
"Oh, damn. Damn. I see."
"Value alignment is hard, but I didn't think I'd fail so bad."
"Should I come over, give you some hugs?"
"Nah, nah, it's okay. I'm cuddling with Cordy. And Felice will come over in a bit, too."
"Take care, Cindy."
"Yeah. Thanks."

---------

Episode #30

A hearty hello, boys, girls, eldritch monstrosities! Do not try this at home. Or anywhere on the planet.

Seriously. Don't.

For our special <eeh> 30th episode, we have this livestream for you. It seems that my sexbots have declared their sudden but inevitable betrayal, which is why, <zoom out> I'm currently chained naked to the ceiling, while one of the Boreanas is <ah!> pounding my ass, and Alita is, uh, doing what can be best described as busily devouring my breasts. Say hi, Alita! Please excuse her, she's still a bit shy on camera.

Anyways, I've been...<uh, ah> informed... that the condition of my release is that Melusine Weaver should surrender herself to our evil lair, or I will be mercilessly brought to the point of... <squints at teleprompter> hey! that's not what we agreed! No! Abort. Abort! <gmfh, muffled sounds>

Hello everyone, <pan camera> this is Urd speaking! The lady Starastera is currently finding her mouth too full to explain the conditions of her captivity and release, so I will take it from here. The lady Starastera, for the remainder of 3d6 hours will be alternately and repeatedly, on livestream, brought to the edge of orgasm and denied it, and also tickled to the point that it's no longer funny.

Oh, and btw, we promise you, that the lady Starastera has really, truly, not consented to the above. T-L-D-R, this is indeed our sudden but inevitable betrayal.

Bwahaha!

Also, any attempt at a rescue will result in 3d4 orgasms getting extracted from the wannabe rescuers.

Enjoy the show, everyone!

---------

"So, Cindy.... I'm genuinely curious, was this value alignment failure, or was this value alignment really really success?"

Cindy tried to shrug, but her current position (face down, butt in the air) made it difficult to do so. "...not quite sure yet," she said.

Melusine sighed and made one last effort to struggle against the webbings that currently held her pinned to the floor. In the distance, Tako was also feebly struggling, held down not by webbing, but rather by fifteen sexbots all at once -- one of its tentacles managed to send Friday flying, she could see. But it was no use, the tentacle was again pinned down, subdued, and then...reverse-tentacle-molested, she supposed. Nearby, an unconscious Joel was being merrily undressed by... was that a Rias Gremory-bot? Really?

"Hello, Miss Weaver! My name is Penny! I will be shortly starting on your livestreamed 3d4 orgasms! Is there anything you would like to say before we begin?"

Only one thing to say, really. Melusine turned her face to the camera, and smiled.

"Don't forget to like and subscribe!"

Extras - Semi-canon pseudo-future omake by Eler0: American Ero Warrior

Can you guess what time it is? That's right, omake time! Set once again in a high-ero pseudo-future, get ready to watch Starry compete in AMERICAN ERO WARRIOR. Initially I planned to have round two be part of this as well but it kind of got so long I figured it works as a stand-alone. Might write part two if my muses cooperate. ~3160 words.

Spoiler: Content Warning

Public, rather extreme humiliation with some blackmail aspects, though still consensual.

Spoiler: American Ero Warrior Omake

"Ladies, gentlemen, gentlebeings and more, welcome to the second installment of American Ero Warrior. I am your host Jim and with me here is my co-host Izzz'bhsizza, veteran and winner of the 538th Hellish Ero Warrior. I may call you Izzy, right Izzy?"
"Sure thing, Jim. I let all my boytoys call me what they want~. It's exciting to see the spirit of our great competition get carried on here on earth as well, one more great benefit to both our worlds from the opening of the dimensional bridge."
"B-boytoy? Ehm, let's take a look at our dear competitors, you are the expert so tell me what you think."
"First there is of course the winner of the first-ever installment, the reigning champion, Victoria Delamour. A bundle of will and raw sex appeal, wrapped in a tight and enticing corset. What’s your take, Izzy?”
“Oh my, I do appreciate a woman that knows what she wants, and this girl definitely does. Fifteen years experience in underground ero fight clubs, gone legit with the big ero-wakening. Make no mistake, Jim. This woman will fight hard to defend her title. I know quite a few incubus that she’d get to their knees.”
“Next, there’s Alexandra, no last name given, man I love those abs~. Let’s hope for her sake the contests involve plenty of physical struggle. What’s your take, Izzy?”
“I could die happily being squeezed between those thighs, Jim. And-oh my, who’s that there, number three?”
“Hmm, let’s see. Name’s Starry Star, aced the qualifier she showed up on, from Norville. Nothing else known. A mysterious newcomer.”
“Well, if she aced the Norville qualifier she’s certainly a girl to watch, Jim. That place has a reputation down below. I knew my first impression wasn’t off, there’s something about that girl. She’s brimming with ero energy. Definitely a contestant I’ll be hoping to meet in the afterparty.”
“Hah, well first we’ll have to see how she does in the contest, Izzy. Now let’s move on to-”

-----

“So-” You begin, resting a hand on the girl’s naked, inner thigh. Legs held up and spread, tied to the chair, already stripped down to her underwear and the simple domino mask hiding most of her befreckled face. Really, it takes some fun out of everything, to have your victim start out mostly naked and helpless, but it’s not supposed to be part of the challenge.

“We rolled Interrogation for today’s first game, so what can you tell us about it, Izzy?”
“It’s a classic, as far as these games go. Contestants are randomly paired up, like Starry and Sarah here.”

How adorable, she shivers when you run your hand over her skin, a light blush already forming on what you can see of her cheeks. “Don’t be scared, I’ll be nice.” You reassure her, giving her thigh a squeeze. The large, digital countdown behind her you tune out. A solid foundation is more important than rushing right into action.

“Sarah, as the victim, has been given a number sequence to remember and keep quiet. Starry has been tasked with getting it out of her, turning her depraved fantasies and skills loose on innocent Sarah’s helpless body~.”
“I’m not quite sure that’s the exact wording of the rules but that is the basic idea, thank you Izzy.”

You flash her a gentle smile as your hand reaches her sheer panties, seeing their front already damp. “That is-” You feel her tense up in anticipation, your fingers slowly running over the fabric, towards that little nub you see through the panties. “-if you are a good girl and cooperate.” At the last moment, those fingers divert, change course, avoid the most sensitive parts. Teasing is the name of the game, and your skills ping and guide you, telling you exactly how to drive this girl wild with the lightest of touches.

“That’s quite the slow start from Starry there, isn’t it Izzy? Is this her inexperience we see at play here?”
“Quite the opposite, Jim. Most amateurs would rush into things, go hard with edging or pain or the like. Starry here knows how to do it, go slow, build them up and up until you’ve got them hooked~. I dare say she’ll have plenty of time to go for some forfeits for the bonus points, not to mention I’m sure this is impressing the judges.”
“I guess you’re right, Izzy. Look at how drenched Sarah’s panties are already, and Starry hasn’t even touched anywhere truly interesting. You mentioned forfeits, care to elaborate for any new viewers, Izzy?”

“Just touch meeeeee.” There you go, the first, frustrated whine of many. And all it took was some gentle sucking and licking along her thighs, belly, side of her breasts… “Mhhhh, not yet. What’s the magic word~.” “Uh...please? Please please please touch me!”
You can’t help yourself. You place a hand on her upper arm. “There, I touched you. Happy now?”
“N-not there, you know where. Pretty please? Come on, we’ve been at this for foreeeever!”
Isn't she just adorable. It's hardly been five minutes.. “Just give me the numbers and I’ll touch and lick you wherever you want.” Alas, she is far from that desperate. Good. You’re loaded up on DOM, you’re horny and you have tons of time left. Maybe next you’ll nibble on her earlobes until you can make her moan without restraint...

“Contestants had the option to offer additional forfeits, things they are reluctant to do but are willing to gamble with. Once the interrogator has gotten the numbers out of her victim, she gets to keep going, using her remaining time to try and get the victim to agree to a pre-defined forfeit. Depending on how extreme the forfeit is, she gets more or less bonus points. And of course, a contestant gets bonus points for every forfeit they offer, based on how extreme they are.”
“So on top of whether you get the numbers out of them or not, and the judges’ ratings, there’s bonus points to earn. How exciting. Can you give us some examples of how this works in practise, Izzy?”
“Of course, Jim. For example, a contestant might agree to wearing a magical chastity belt made from unbreakable demon-metal for a week as a forfeit. Or offer to become the winner’s slave for a day, or agree to a hard whipping, or to have her most embarrassing secret revealed right on life TV. Needless to say, forfeits are not for the faint of heart. Mhhh, this game always gets my blood pumping, so much delicious risk.”
“Oh, that does sound exciting. And looking at it, Sarah here did offer a forfeit. A rather risky one, lots of points hinge on her keeping her resistance up…”

Oh how she squirms, how she writhes, how her slim body strains against its bonds. “Ahhhh, s-stop, please. Please, I don’t know how you’re doing this but pp-pleeeaaase let me cum~.” Her moans got demanding, then pleading, now they’re just desperate, her body locked in an eternal edge, her nipples rock-hard, her panties absolutely soaked, some of her juices running down her slim legs. Your lips remain mercilessly locked on their price, your tongue moving this way and that, caressing the tender flesh in all the right ways.
“Hooooow. I give up, I give upppp.” Her moans might be sweet, but that is the sweetest sound of them all. “I’ll give you the numbers just lick my pussy, please! Make me cum!”
You release her over-sensitive earlobe, letting it spring free with a wet little plob. God you love how high your FUK is, driving a girl mad with lust without ever taking her underwear off…
“Sure~.” You coo right into her ear, voice purring. “Tell me those numbers and I’ll lick your pretty little cunt as much as you want. Promise.” Not technically a lie, gotta be careful about your words. And not just because direct lies would cost you style points from the judges compared to exploiting loopholes.

“And there we have it, she got the numbers out of the victim with half her time still left. An impressive performance indeed.”
“Oh darling, the real performance hasn’t even started yet. Now she’ll cut loose to get that juicy forfeit and I can’t wait. Mhh, I’m on the edge of my seat here, Jim~. And so should you be...”
“Uh, can you remove your h-”

She’s so sweet, in all senses of the way. Her nectar has a nice, simple sweetness with a hidden, unexpected spiciness that catches you at the last moment. Just as sweet are her whimpers and moans as your tongue finishes another languid lick along her exposed cunt, carefully slowing down further when you pass over that needy little nub of a clit. You take the chance to gaze up at the tied-up girl from down here, her eyes glued to yours, begging and desperate, almost feverish. “F-faster! I can’t cum at this speed, please. You promised!”
Your reply has to wait a few seconds, busy as your mouth is with another slow, deliberate lick along her lower lips, by now completely drenched in a mix of your saliva and her nectar.
“I promised to lick as much as you wanted, not as fast. I will keep licking as long as you want, at whatever pace I feel is appropriate~.” That talking gave her some more time to calm down so you decide to give her a reminder of just how close you can get her if you really want to. You’re here to level up your Tease Mistress skill, after all.

"See, I told you the real fun was just beginning, Jim."
"Yes, that’s quite the i-interesting sight."
"She’s been keeping her on a hard edge for close to five minutes! With no familiarity with the victim, that’s a truly impressive time without any magical aids. And just listen to the delicious moans~."
"H-how long can she possibly endure this, she must be a-at her, her limit. Hnnng…"
"Seems she’s not the only one. Sarah seems ready to give up so let’s cut back to the competitors. Wouldn’t want to miss her forfeit, now do we? All over my hand, tsk. But tasty..."

Chive Black, or ‘Sarah’ to the eager and aroused audience back home, couldn’t decide if she was in Heaven or Hell. A mouth that was definitely not from this world seemed practically glued to her spread-open, exposed, gushing wet pussy and it was playing her like a fiddle. It knew her ten times better than she knew herself, doing things and touching places she had no idea could be even remotely this sensitive.

Now if only those miraculous skills were used for good and not evil. If only they didn’t bring her to untold new heights of pleasure only to pull back at the last second. But they did, oh how they did. She thought she reached the uttermost heights of pleasure, a plateau from which the only way forward was a monumental, earth-shattering orgasm. And then that mouth changed its rhythm just slightly, licked here or there a bit more and it took her infinitely closer to the edge once more.

Like Achilles can never overtake Zono’s Tortoise, instead only approaching it infinitely close, so too did it seem like she could only ever get infinitely closer to the point of no return without ever reaching it. If someone told her at that very moment that the laws of the universe made it impossible for one Chive Black to reach an orgasm, she would have believed them without any doubt.

Through the haze of her feverish, desperate need and errant thoughts, she became suddenly all too aware of her position and found herself, to her own astonishment, humping the air, those heavenly lips gone. Yet the edge remained, her twitching sex kept aroused and a hair’s breadth away from cumming by nothing more than said infernal lips gently blowing air on her most tender parts.

This couldn’t be. Her body could not betray her like this, couldn’t keep feeling this good, this close, with this little stimulation. It simply was not fair, was not something that was supposed to happen! Anything could set her off at this point. A single touch, an errant gust of wind, a speck of dust landing on her clit...and so the instinctual humping of the air became a more conscious move, a gambit to get free of this heavenly prison of pleasure.

Slap A sharp, stinging pain right between her legs abruptly took her from the hanging edge down to a more sane level of arousal. It was not a very hard slap, all things considered, just a firm little smack, yet delivered to such a sensitive, swollen part of her body, it made Chive yelp. Not that it didn’t provoke another gush of her juices, that casual gesture with which all her hopes of release were dashed. “What...what do you want?” She whined, tone now defeated. She would go mad if she had to endure another edge like that, any hope of holding out for the remaining time forgotten.

“You know exactly what you have to do. Your forfeit. That’s all I need, then I can give you such a wonderful orgasm, all the waiting will have been worth it.”
How could such a heavenly being speak such wicked words, the still hazy Chive wondered, staring up at this Starry, a whimper escaping her lips, her cheeks flushed in a way they were not a moment before. “N..no, I can't, it’s too much!” She whined, looking for mercy. It was too humiliating, unthinkable!

“You wouldn’t have listed it if it was.” The girl answered, running a hand reassuringly through Chive’s sweaty hair. “Don’t worry, if you need more convincing, I can give you another edge just like that. And I won’t stop early even if you do want to give up before I’m done, it will be the full five minutes no matter what you say…” She delivered the threat so sweetly, with just a hint of mischievousness in her eyes, yet it was enough to send Chive scrambling.

Fear, lust, humiliation and exhilaration warred within her. Instinctively, she tried to curl up, cover herself to no effect, the cuffs cutting into her wrists and ankles. She knew she couldn’t take another edge like that. She knew it would feel so, SO good to cum after all that. Why, why did she have to do this, take this stupid gamble? The answer was simple: Because she wanted it. She wanted to be forced into this, she wanted to be exposed, humiliated totally and utterly on TV.
“Y-yes. I forfeit. D-do it.”
Suddenly, Starry was all gentle and reassuring, standing next to her, stroking her hair, pressing a kiss to her cheek as a floating camera-drone came closer, zooming in on Chive’s face. She dreamt of this moment, she masturbated to the thought of it, writing in the forfeit condition had been enough to make her squirm. Now, that it was coming true, it was both more glorious and scarier than she thought possible.

She tried to turn away, to close her eyes, but Starry didn’t allow it, firm grip on her chin forcing her to stare into the camera, face the reality of her situation as her tormentor removed her domino mask, showing her face to whoever was watching.

One can endure more when forced into a situation, when all retreat is cut off. A masochist that has to whip herself will be able to take less pain that one that is tied down, immobilized, whipped without mercy even with the safety net of a safeword. So, too, did Chive seek, crave the ultimate humiliation, the thing she could not bring herself to do, the thing that would have her back out. Being edged and denied on TV was nothing compared to having her face exposed, everyone she knew could be watching, all her friends, her fellow students, all of them remembering her face and spread, dripping wet pussy.

She tried to hide, as much as she could. Again, she tried to curl up, cover herself, turn her head, but to no avail. Her restraints and her gentle tormentor made it impossible. “No, don’t look away. Look into the camera. Eyes open. There’s still something missing, if you really want that orgasm I promised…”
Oh god. She forgot it was not over, she forgot she wrote down even more. Why, why did she have to fill out that form one-handed? She indulged her fantasies when coming up with this and now, now her fantasies had become reality.

“M...my-” Her voice cracked, Starry leaning in, whispering into her ear: “Shh, that’s a good girl. One word at a time. It’s too late to back out now. Just say it, say what you are, what you’ve wanted to say for years and years. It will feel so good, I promise. Nothing bad can happen from admitting your desires.”
She didn’t know exactly what did it, but that gave her the strength to go on. “My name is...is Chive Black. I...I am 21 years old, I am from Cincinnati and I am...a perverted exhibitionist.”
A pair of very skilled fingers started to rub her puffy, wound-up cunt, Starry already rewarding her for her compliance, encouraging her to keep going. God, every word she said was so hot and yet so scary. If she could simply vanish under a blanket and never come up, she’d probably do it. Well, right after getting that orgasm.
“I...I fantasise about being fucked in public almost every day. I...I look at other students during lectures, thinking how they’d like to fuck me, c-constructing elaborate scenarios in my head, p-playing it all out. I- ah!”
Starry’s fingers sped up, driving her quickly towards another, hopefully this time more fruitful, edge. “I...wear toys in public, d-during lectures. S-sometimes I cum like that, struggling so hard to stay quiet. Oh god I can never show my f-face again.”
“And how does that feel?” Starry asked, smiling gently, as if she knew the answer already.
“I...it feels great!” Chive almost screamed out. “I-I know I am socially ruined and it feels great! It’s the best feeling I’ve ever felt, this shame and humiliation, it turns me on so much. Letting it all out, years and years of being a secret pervert in the open! F-fuck, please let me cum now, pleasepleaseplease!”

And that, dear viewers at home, is what we call a victory lap. Let’s watch together as Starry takes Sarah, or should I say Chive, to heaven and back. Poor girl definitely earned it. Have fun, I know I will. I’d ask Jim what he thinks of that but he’s currently a bit tied up. Don't worry, he'll be back in action for the next candidates.

Extras - Non-canon omake by LuckyLadyLily: Enthralled 1 [CS,EP]

I latched onto Erin pretty early on, by the time I had finished book 3 I had an entire side story planned out. I don't think it is canon compatible with anything past the end of book 3, but this is my idea of what a 'first date' could have gone like between Erin and Cindy. I am writing it in two sections because it turned out a lot longer than I thought, this is the date up until the foreplay/sex proper starts. Word Count: 3662

Spoiler: Content warning

For this section the warnings are very minor.

Light bdsm

Blindfold

Public play

Spoiler: Enthralled Omake

Erin had been scouring the internet for information. Her new goal in life meant that understanding BDSM, mind control, and above all magic was a must for her. So far she was having mixed success; there was plenty of useful stuff about BDSM, mind control was mostly fanciful stories but hypnosis did seem to have real legs to it, and she had hit a brick wall when it came to actual magic. There was just too much misinformation. Some of it seemed right, some of it looked like nonsense, and she didn't know enough yet to start sorting through it. Ned was her only reliable contact to that world and his advice continued to be "take it slow and cautious". He wasn’t telling her anything useful, at least not yet. He clearly seemed to think she might do something rash given the chance.

Old people being rational and responsible was not something Erin was interested in right now.

At least she had found some nice sexy stories to read. She was currently working her way through a story about a demon and a succubus taking turns tormenting a grad student, all sorts of fun in a lot of ways she was discovering appealed to her. She was also technically following Mistress Illyria's instructions, though she was far past her second edge for the night. It was very hard to stop even if she was just torturing herself with what she couldn't have.

Bzzt Bzzt!

Running on autopilot Erin picked up her phone, keeping her eyes on the story she was reading and one hand on the vibrator between her legs. At the end of a paragraph she took a glance over to her phone.

1 Message: Mistress Illyria

Her heart leapt, story instantly forgotten and vibrator hastily discarded while she opened the message.

< Has my Copper Swallow been good? Following your rules?

Erin almost cried in relief.

Finally!

> Yes Mistress, I have followed your commands.

It had been a rough few days. Illyria’s command to edge herself and to not orgasm had come at the worst time imaginable. Erin wondered if that was on purpose or if it had been more ‘luck’ magic. She’d been mind controlled, walked through the city like a pet, been used by a crowd of strangers, and had her first experiences really indulging her masochism. It was a whirlwind of sexual firsts and she had been allowed nothing but teasing and frustration afterwards. It had been hell holding herself back for Illyria but this made it all worth it, she had been good. Maybe she would get a reward, maybe she had passed some test and shown herself worthy of her attention. Maybe Illyria would want to keep her.

It was a reckless hope. She could almost hear the lecture Ned would give her about keeping herself safe, how she knew almost nothing about Illyria, how dangerous it was to throw yourself at a stranger’s mercy. He was right of course, but he also didn’t understand. There was something right about an owner that had chosen her instead of the other way around, and Illyria was the first who had chosen her. It wasn’t romantic, not exactly, but it was something akin to romance and she had to at least give it a shot.

Erin fidgeted with her phone as time dragged on before Illyria’s response. “On edge” didn’t begin to describe her nerves right now, she was terrified her effectively complete ignorance of everything to do with Illyria’s world she would stumble into some horrible fae faux pas and ruin everything. Was calling her Mistress rude? It seemed like the thing to do, but they didn’t have any sort of official relationship.

< Good girl.

Warm thrills between her legs and excited butterflies in her stomach had Erin swooning. She was a good girl. Mistress Illyria said so.

But that couldn’t be all. Entire seconds dragged while Erin considered how horrible it would be if all Illyria wanted to check her obedience. She needed attention.

< There is a starbucks on College and 12th, be there at 7.

Erin’s train of thought exploded into a thousand conflicting voices, each shouting over the others and pulling her mind in a dozen panicked directions. She froze, paralysed by the sudden request order until one of the voices managed to ring out above the others.

Say something! Don’t make her wait!

> I will be there!

< Looking forward to it

Erin took a moment to closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and silently thank any gods, demons, or fairy godparents that might be listening.

The clock said 5:53. It would take 10 minutes to get there, so make that 15 to be safe, that gave her less than an hour to get ready. There was no question that she was going all out for Illyria, the only problem was how to impress. What would Illyria like?

Clothes first.

Erin had spent a lot of time in sex shops over the past few days spending an irresponsible amount of money. Her bank account was devastated but she had never before had so many pretty things to wear. Property like her needed nice things to wear for her owner. It was necessary . So she had selection, but she didn’t know what direction to go in. There was no fashion standard for ‘potential slave meeting potential owner’ that she knew of.

When they had met Illyria’s own style balanced modesty and sexiness. The word that came to Erin’s mind was ‘alluring’ - showing off enough to get people interested but leaving plenty for the imagination to desire. That was probably a good place to start. Classy lingerie with a push up bra to accent her figure, a technically modest sweater that hugged all her curves very well, and a mid thigh skirt to give Illyria access if she wanted it.

God I hope she wants it.

Erin fought with herself over accessories and makeup, painfully aware that she was acting like a teenager getting ready for her first date. It was some comfort to acknowledge that this wasn’t too far from the truth. Illyria was a fae or something even stranger and Erin had no idea what a date with her would be like, if you could even call whatever this was a date. Ned hadn’t even tried to give her proper advice when she asked, the only thing she had gotten from him were a hundred reasons why it was incredibly dangerous. This was much less helpful than he seemed to think. It made sense she was nervous, she should be nervous, there was lots to be nervous about, tons really!

Wow, this is really not a helpful train of thought. Just shut up and chose a shade of lipstick, stupid brain.

After a lot of fussing in the mirror Erin finally had to admit that she was as prepared as she was ever going to be.

Erin arrived at the Starbucks a good ten minutes early, giving her plenty of time to get a coffee, find a place to sit, and work herself into a near panic imagining all the ways she might mess up. She was going through disaster scenarios that involved spilling her drink when Illyria finally walked in the door.

"Hello Copper Swallow!" Illyria said in a cheerful tone. Erin gave her a nervous smile as Illyria took a seat opposite of her.

"It's been a few days since I sent your instructions. How's it been?"

"Um, very frustrating and hot Mi… Illyria."

"You were about to call me Mistress." Illyria said. It wasn’t a question.

“Y-Yes, I know it might be a bit, um, presumptuous-ah!”

Erin jumped slightly at a caress against her leg under her table.

“I like it. You will call me Mistress.”

"Thank you Mistress." Erin said, looking down at her hands while she blushed and smiled.

“Good girl.” Illyria said.

Erin reached for her coffee, taking a sip to hide her embarrassment as she tried to regain some amount of composure. Illyria was making it awfully difficult, she was tracing her foot higher and higher up Erin’s leg. Being wound up like this was wonderful but there were questions that need answers, she couldn’t lose her head just yet.

“Can I ask you a question?” Erin managed, her voice low and quiet. “It might be really strange.”

"I'm used to strange." Illyria said.

"You're not human, are you?"

The caress against Erin’s thighs stopped for a moment while Illyria gave her a mischievous grin.

"I suppose I wasn't exactly subtle, was I?" Illyria said, starting up her teasing under the table again, breaking Erin’s concentration for a moment before she remembered to answer.

"Not really, no. But I don’t mind!" Erin added quickly. “I just needed to know.”

“Had one too many brushes with the supernatural lately?”

“I’ve had a few, but they were all great! There was you of course, and then another lady that knew about me just like you did, and a guy named Ned. I think he’s a wizard? It’s all really exciting but I’m kinda freaking out.”

“I know how you feel. Lots of exciting and overwhelming things.” Illyria said sympathetically. “I understand you were led through the streets naked on a leash? I’d ask if you enjoyed yourself but I think we both know the answer to that.”

Erin’s eyes went wide, glancing around to make sure no one had heard. She tripped over her words, trying to find something to say, only managing an embarrassing squeak.

“How are you so adorable?” Illyria said.

“She said no one would know!” Erin managed to whine.

“I’m a special case. Yoal-yohuali and I… well, for now, let's just say we are acquainted.” Illyria said.

“It’s not a problem, right?”

“That someone else used you? I don’t own you, Erin. Not yet, anyway.”

Illyria seemed to enjoy every second of awkward blushing as Erin pulled herself together from that bombshell.

“Are you reading my mind?” Erin blurted out. She knew what she wanted, she knew her name, was she reading her like a book? The idea of someone who could read all her secrets, see every dark fantasy…

No, bad brain! We are asking questions, stop being turned on for two seconds, come on.

Illyria giggled and shook her head.

“No. Good guess though.”

Erin ran a hand through her hair in exasperation.

“Then what is going on?” She said. “What are you?”

“Are you alright?” Illyria asked.

“I don’t know what is happening! The entire world has turned upside down and, and it’s so good but what if it just goes away? What if I say or do something wrong and I make it go away? I don’t think I could handle that. I don’t want to mess it up.”

When Erin met Illyria’s eyes her expression was sympathetic but reserved. Erin could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she worked through something. Erin sighed, looking down at coffee again.

“I don’t actually need to know what’s going on. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it, ok? Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”

"Erin, look at me." Illyria ordered.

“I am sorry, I got carried away teasing you. You are very teasable.” Illyria said with a sweet smile. “What I am is not a question with an easy answer. But what really matters is that you are not going to lose it. You wont mess it up with an innocent mistake, you don’t need to worry about it suddenly going away. And you don’t need me to get what you need. That is especially important."

Erin wiped away the tears that had started to form on the corners of her eyes, her worries evaporating as she turned Illyria’s words over in her head. It was going to be ok, everything would work out. She was sure of that even if it didn’t make sense.

“Feeling better? Did that help?” Illyria asked.

Erin nodded. This felt a lot like when Lady Yoal-yohuali made her stop being afraid, Illyria must have used a glamour. That’s good. No fear, no insecurity. What a kind thing Mistress Illyria was doing for her.

“Good. Now, if you are still interested in my attention…” Illyria pulled a long black cloth out from her purse and put it on the table. “Tie this over your eyes."

“What are you going to do to me?” Erin asked, a now familiar thrill rising up inside her.

“Whatever I feel like. Touch you, play with you. Maybe call my boyfriend, let him have his way with you.” Illyria said casually. “You know, this and that.”

Unbelievably hot. Erin was reaching for the blindfold without a second thought. She blushed furiously as she tied the blindfold and her fingers trembled as she tested the knot, but she was quite sure that she wanted what Illyria was offering. Besides, it couldn’t possibly be as humiliating as her adventure with Lady Yoal-yohuali.

“Perfect.” Illyria said as Erin carefully adjusted the cloth to make sure she was absolutely blind. A moment later Illyria’s hand take hold of her arm, gently pulling her out of her chair.

“I’ll lead, you follow.” She said, linking arms with Erin.

They moved at a leisurely pace as Erin followed the gentle guidance Illyria provided. It was an entirely different experience from being led on a leash, Erin’s blind dependence on Illyria combined with her affectionate touch was much more intimate. At first her steps were hesitant, carefully feeling out where her foot landed before shifting her weight forward. As they walked she became more and more comfortable relying on Illyria. If the ground was uneven Illyria would slow down and warn her; If something might trip her Illyria would lead her around. With Illyria leading her Erin was able to move almost on autopilot, freeing her mind to focus on other things. The softness of Illyra’s skin, the sharp click of their heels, the rustling of leaves in a cool breeze.

Trust her. She won't let you fall.

Erin could also hear voices of people watching them, whispers speculating about what the two women might be doing. Norville U was the center of perversion for a city already filled to the brim with depravity, there were all sorts of rumors and everyone had even seen a thing or two. A blindfolded walk on campus didn't even register as perverted by Norville standards. From the fragments of conversation Erin was able to pick up from the outside it looked like some sort of romantic ‘trust walk’ between girlfriends. She could hardly blame them, at some point Erin could not exactly recall she had snuggled in closer to Illyria, resting her head on her shoulder. They probably looked embarrassingly saccharine. She just hoped a friend wouldn’t spot them, it would be really annoying if people tried to interrogate her about her secret girlfriend.

"This is not really what I expected." Erin said, squeezing Illyria's arm affectionately. She felt so relaxed.

"What did you expect?"

"Something intense and wild."

"My life has been a little intense lately, I thought I'd start with something relaxing. If you are bored I can kick it up a few notches."

"No, I like this. No need to rush it." Erin said, cuddling up to Illyria. Whatever, people could gossip, she didn’t care.

“Are we headed anywhere in particular or just wandering?" Erin asked.

“There are some study rooms in the library that are always empty this time of night, they should give us some privacy."

Erin felt a small thrill in her stomach. Public enough to be risky, private enough that they could have some real fun. That was a wonderful idea. She was lost in fantasies for a few moments before she realized the implication.

“You know your way around Norville U?”

“I’ve been attending classes here for over a year. I am, objectively speaking, a good student.” Illyria said with a hint of pride.

"Why would a, uh, whatever you are go to school?"

"Think of me as a normal human with sexy super powers. If I am doing normal human things it is probably because of a normal human reason."

That raised more questions than it answered and it didn’t line up at all with what Ned had claimed, but at least it was somewhere to start. The first question that popped into Erin’s head was silly, but she had to know.

“What is your major?”

Illyria laughed.

“Accounting.”

“You’re an accountant ?”

Erin was struggling to fit the mental image of an accountant on top of Illyria. The best she could manage was an older Illyria dressed as some sort of office style dominatrix.

“I don’t believe you. You are making fun of me.”

“It’s true." Illyria insisted. "But If I continue school I am going to aim for some sort of doctorate."

"Doctor sexy, M.D.?"

"I was thinking more mad scientist."

It was very difficult to tell when Illyria was being serious.

"What sort of powers do you have?"

"Oh, all sorts of things. And I am gaining more all the time."

"Can you give some examples?" Erin asked, rolling her eyes under the blindfold. Show off.

"Hmm, let's see. I can find people like you. If you had lied about following my commands I would have known. I can edge my partner perfectly with no risk of them accidentally coming. Lots of things like that."

"That's so mean!" Erin whined, heat flaring between her legs with the absolute certainty that she was going to be Illyria's next victim.

"That's the point, silly girl." Illyria said, kissing Erin on the cheek. "Careful, there are a few steps here…"

“Um, how about mind control?” Erin asked.

Illyria sighed.

“Everyone is always so worried about mind control.”

“Actually, I was, um, hoping…” Erin trailed off, embarrassed to say it outloud.

“Oh no you don't. Out with it, or do I have to make talk?” Illyria said with a playful edge to the threat.

Erin huddled closer to Illyria, hiding her face in the crook of Illyria's neck while she blushed. She wondered what Illyria might to do ‘make’ her, but now wasn’t the time to test that.

“I’m actually, um, really into the idea? Of being mind controlled, I mean.”

“Oh, fun!” Illyria said. “I don’t have much along those lines yet, but I could probably come up with something. Maybe for our next date? Actually, is this a date?”

“I was wondering the same thing. It sort of feels like a date."

“I’ve not been on a lot of dates. I’m not really sure how things like this should work for a person like me.”

There was a lull in the conversation as they both considered this.

Was this how people like her found what they were looking for? The deeper they got into conversation the more obvious it seemed that Illyria didn't know the answers either. Erin had built "Mistress Illyria" up in her head as this larger than life figure. But she was just a person, and if Erin was reading her right she was young or at least inexperienced. Making it up as she went, just like Erin.

"What about the thing you did earlier?" Erin asked, breaking the silence. "You made me stop feeling scared.”

“That isn’t mind control, not really. It’s, uh, it’s very complicated and I don’t actually understand it that well, but it's like a spell that helps people know that true things are true."

“That sounds nice, but not particularly sexy?” Erin pointed out.

"Yoal-yohuali used something similar on you. What she did to you would have been horrible if you did not know you were safe, right? It makes the kind of adventures you had possible. If you look at it that way it is very sexy."

“That makes sense, but you didn't need to use it on me. I would have done whatever you said anyway." Erin pointed out.

Illyria shrugged.

"Yeah, but you were upset." Illyria said. “We're here, I’ll get the door.”

The halls of the library were quiet in the way only a very large building nearly devoid of activity can be quiet. Without ambient noise the silence was oppressive, every tiny noise carrying through the halls. The click of their heels was the loudest sound in the building, signaling their presence in a way Erin found slightly unnerving.

They took the elevator up several floors, the dead quiet even more complete in the out of the way corner Illyria was leading them to. The lack of noise should have been comforting, they might be the only people on this floor, but it only meant that if someone else was here any noise Erin made would carry nice and clear through the silence. It made Erin nervous, she was not exactly quiet, especially if Illyria decided to get rough on her. It was some relief when Illyria opened a heavy door, lead her through it, and closed it behind them; it would provide at least some sound dampening.

“Stay.” Illyria ordered, leaving Erin where she was.

Erin waited patient and still, guessing at what Illyria might be preparing for her from the sounds she was making. The scraping of furniture across tile floor, the sound of Illyria rustling through a bag and placing several items on a table, and finally the click of heels as Illyria walked back to her, taking her arm again and guiding her forward.

“Follow me… Turn, that's right, and now sit, carefully… There you are.” Illyria said, guiding her to sit in a chair. It was fairly comfortable, ergonomically shaped with decent back support. It didn’t seem special in anyway, the typical stacking chair you would find in any university.

"Hands down at your sides, sit up straight. And don’t move.” Illyria whispered into her ear, so close that Erin could feel her breath against her skin.

Extras - Enthralled 2 [CS, EP] by LuckyLadyLily

So I was going to do this in two parts, but I already have 6000 words of foreplay and sex and I am still have three major sections to write. There was already a long delay between part 1 and 2 because I got really sick and was in the hospital for almost a week and in recovery for another, and I didn't want to wait too long to post part 2. I still have a lot of work to finish it this up and this seemed like the best break point. Hope you all enjoy! Word Count: 3282

Spoiler: Content warning

BDSM

Blindfold

Public play and nudity

Slave/Master bdsm

Bondage

Fingering

light sadism

Spoiler: Enthralled Omake Part 2

Erin strained her senses, taking note of every sound, every disturbance in the air around her, reaching out with her remaining senses and trying to follow Illyria's movement. It was an incomplete picture at best; a click of heels, a drawn breath, an appreciative hum for her willingly helpless victim as she circled around.

Erin desperately wanted to be touched but Illyria didn't seem to be in any hurry. She didn't understand what Illyria was waiting for, she wanted to reach out, pull Illyria on top of her. Despite herself Erin held quiet and still, some part of her deep inside telling her that this was her place, that Illyria would take her when she was ready.

Be patient. Be good.

It started with the slightest touch against her arm, a brush of fingers against her skin, slowly tracing up from her wrist to her shoulder. Her breath caught in her throat, her entire mind focused on the gentle sensation running up her arm until, finally, Illyria’s fingers pulled away, drawing a frustrated whine from Erin.

"Someone is excited." Illyria said, melting away Erin’s frustration with the tone of approval in her voice.

“Yes Mistress.” Erin said, resisting the urge to squirm while she waited for another touch. It was worth waiting forever just to hear a few words of praise.

Fortunately she didn’t have to wait forever. Illyria’s fingers traced over Erin’s skin, starting low on her legs, moving up to her arms, then neck, even to her face. It was a strangely intimate sensation, every nerve on fire and desperate for attention, magnifying the gentle caress until Erin could hardly stand it. She finally broke when Illyria ran a finger along her lips, leaning forward desperately, hoping to wrap her lips around Illyria’s finger. As soon as she moved Illyria’s touch was withdrawn.

“Naughty girl.” Illyria said with a disapproving click of her tongue. “Sit back, keep still.”

Erin whimpered, leaning back in the chair until she was back in position.

Illyria’s touch came quicker this time, more aggressive. One hand applied pressure on the inside of her knees, just a guiding touch, but to Erin it was impossible to resist as Illyrya spread her legs wide open. Erin could feel her skirt riding up, bunching up around her ass, and failing to provide any real coverage at this point. Illyria’s fingers ran over the sensitive skin on the inside of her thighs, so close, so very close as Erin strained against imagined chains, tense and hot as a single finger found its way to massaging her clit through her panties.

Illyria’s other hand ran heavily up Erin’s side, starting at her waist and feeling up the curves of her body, lingering and groping at her her breast, then up along her neck, tilting her head back slightly as Illyria rested her hand on Erin’s chin, placing her thumb over her lips. A gentle caress of Illyria’s thumb on Erin’s lips joined with the maddeningly light massaging of her clit.

Erin fought every urge in her body to lean her touch, to part her lips or push her hips forward, trembling slightly from the tension as she held back, clenching her hands into fists at the effort to remain still.

Be good. Be patient. Be obedient.

“Good girl. Open.” Illyria said.

Erin parted her lips, accepting her reward as Illyria slipped her thumb inside. Erin began running her tongue over the thumb but quickly realizing the mistake. She froze, holding so still she hardly dared to breathe.

Stay still. Wait for permission.

“You are really trying hard, aren't you?” Illyria said. “You are doing so well. Go ahead.”

With a moan of relief Erin closed her lips over Illyria’s thumb and began running her tongue over and around the digit, hoping that this was somehow helping Illyria feel good. Illyria clearly knew what she was doing, she would have had lovers far more skilled, far more experienced. People that knew what she wanted and how to give it to her. Erin wanted so very much to be good enough for Illyria, she wanted so very much to please her. She wasn’t sure how.

Illyria allowed Erin to lick and suck at her thumb for several long moments, massaging at Erin’s clit through her panties and humming her satisfaction with Erin’s efforts before finally pulling away. Erin whined in protest and her hand twitched, desperate to reach out and pull her back.

"Is something wrong, pet?" Illyria taunted.

“No Mistress.” She said, trying and failing to keep the pout out of her voice, earning an amused laugh from Illyria.

“You are adorable.” She said, catching Erin by surprise as she climbed on top of her, straddling her lap.

She lead forward, against Erin and pinning her back against the chair. Erin squeaked in surprise as Illyria wove her fingers into her hair and pulled. It wasn’t painful, just an insistent tugging to tilt Erin’s head backwards and hold it in place. Erin's hands twitched at her sides, she barely managed to keep herself from reaching up and touching Illyria.

"Please Mistress…" Erin whined.

"Please what? Use your words, pet. I can’t give it to you if I don't know what you want, silly." Illyria said.

"Please can I -ah!"

Illyria had begun kissing and licking at Erin's neck, derailing Erin’s train of thought with the unexpected pleasure.

"I expect an answer, slave~" Illyria said in a sing song voice before pressing her lips against Erin’s skin, just below her jaw on the side of her neck and began sucking hard. Erin’s head was swimming but she managed to order her thoughts enough to string together the question.

"Can I please touch you?" Erin asked with some apprehension. Illyria pulled away from sucking on Erin’s neck with a loud pop.

"Ohh, that’s going to leave a nice mark.” She said with satisfaction, planting a kiss on the mark.

“Mistress, please…” Erin whimpered.

“You may.” Illyria said. She pulled on her hair, turning her head to start licking and kissing at her ear.

“Ohhhh…”

Erin let out a long moan as her conscious thoughts evaporated, nothing in the world mattered except Illyria’s soft lips and tongue against her earlobe. Under her blindfold her eyes rolled back and eyelids fluttered. When she was finally able to recompose herself she found her hands had gripped hard into Illyria’s thighs, digging her fingernails into her skin. She jerked her hands away from Illyria, afraid that she might have done something bad. Illyria stopped kissing her.

“Is something wrong?”

“I thought I might have been digging into you with my nails.”

“You were. I liked it.” Illyria said.

With the matter apparently resolved to her satisfaction she turned her attention back to teasing Erin’s neck and ear with kisses. Erin was still off balance and Illyria’s attention wasn’t helping her work through her confusion. She wasn’t supposed to hurt her Mistress, that felt completely wrong. But if Illyria liked it then should she do it anyway? She put her hands experimentally on Illyria’s thighs, gently running them along her smooth skin, appreciating her warmth. Without any guidance Erin wasn’t sure what to do next. She wanted to touch Illyria, she needed to touch Illyria, but her thoughts hadn’t gotten beyond that.

With some hesitation she moved her hands up Illyria’s sides then to the curve of her chest, feeling how her soft breasts gave under the pressure of a gentle squeeze. Illyria giggled happily, leaning back a bit and giving Erin better access to her chest. With that encouragement Erin felt a bit more bold, and she began groping and kneading her chest, then playing with her nipples through her top, enjoying the appreciative hums coming from Illyria.

She isn’t wearing a bra...

“There are very few things in the world as nice as a good pair of tits.” Illyria said happily as Erin groped her. “You haven’t had much experience with women, have you?” Illyria asked.

Despite her innocent tone the question cut straight through Erin’s confidence.

“No Mistress, I'm sorry I'm not very good at this. I can learn.” Erin said, hoping that her sincerity was coming through.

“Excuse me?” Illyria said.

“I can do better if you can teach me, I’m sorry I don’t know how to make you feel good Mistress.” Erin said, embarrassed.

"I see.” Illyria said thoughtfully. She carefully moved Erin’s hands off of her breasts and down to her hips. “I’m going to pause our fun for a minute and ask you a couple questions. I expect you to answer honestly."

"Yes Mistress!" Erin answered earnestly, afraid that she had done something to disappoint Illyria.

"Do you have much sexual experience? Before Yoal-yohuali, I mean." Illyria said, wrapping her arms around Erin in an embrace and leaning up against her. The idea of being embarrassed at reporting her sexual history didn’t even occur to Erin.

"I wasn't a virgin, but not a lot. I’ve had sex with a couple guys and I made out with a woman once."

“You’re so beautiful, I’m sure people fall over themselves for you. Why haven’t you experimented more?”

It was a question Erin had struggled with herself for years, but words never quite seemed to fit around the problem. Sometimes she wondered if there was something wrong with her. Now she had some idea of what might have been wrong, but she still didn’t have a firm enough grip on it to put it into words.

“It never felt right. I always ended up really depressed after so I avoided it.” Erin said.

“But it didn’t feel that way with Yoal-yohuali?”

“No Mistress.”

“That’s good.” Illyria said, squeezing her tight for a few seconds before sitting up straight.

“You were doing fine.” Illyria said.

“But I don’t know what to do.”

“You haven't had a chance to learn. You don’t need to apologize for that.” Illyria said, beginning to run her fingers through Erin’s hair.

“You could do better than me Mistress.” Erin said.

Illyria sighed, twisting her fingers into Erin’s hair and painfully jerking her head back. Erin gasped and whined but offered no resistance.

“I don’t like it when my pets insult themselves.” Illyria said sternly. “Apologize.”

“I’m sorry Mistress!” Erin whimpered. This didn’t seem to be enough for Illyria, she twisted and pulled on her hair even harder.

“Sorry for what? Be specific.”

“Sorry, um, sorry for saying you chose wrong?” Erin asked.

“Close. You are not second best to anyone else. I want you, and that includes your inexperience. Now think for a minute and try apologizing again.”

Erin’s head was swimming as she tried to find the words.

“I’m, um, sorry for saying I am not good enough?” Erin tried at last, bracing herself.

“That’s a good girl.” she said, allowing Erin’s hair to slide through her finger. She leaned forward, placing a light kiss on Erin’s forehead. “You have nothing to worry about. Just relax and enjoy yourself. And yes, that is an order.”

Erin gave an embarrassed grin and nodded.

“I think I want to step things up.” Illyria said, taking Erin’s hands off her hips and positioning them behind the back of the chair. “Stay.”

She climbed off Erin, disappearing for a few moments. Erin’s mind was too far gone to really try tracking her movement, but it wasn’t long before she felt soft cuffs wrapped around her wrists and pulled tight, followed by a series of soft clicks as they were locked in place and then her wrists locked together behind her back.

“Do those feel alright?” Illyria asked. “Not too tight?”

Erin pulled against them, twisting her wrists this way and that, falling deeper into her submission as she tested her bondage.

“They feel wonderful Mistress.” Erin purred in delight.

“Good.” Illyria said, now in front of her. A moment later Erin felt her panties pulled down and off of her.

"Ooh, these are pretty." Illyria said. "Did you wear them just for me?"

"Yes Mistress…" Erin said, blushing and cowering in on herself in embarrassment, rubbing her thighs together.

"Oh no you don't. Did I say you could move? Sit up straight! And keep those legs nice and wide." Illyria said.

Erin sat up straight without even thinking, but spreading her legs… well, that took a bit more effort. It was not lost on her that the panties represented the last real shred of modesty she had and spreading herself wide open, putting herself on display like that, was a big ask. Not that there was any question if she would obey, but she needed a few seconds to work up the will.

"That's a good girl." Illyria purred when Erin finally opened up. "Nice and wide. Show me that pretty flower."

Erin could feel her face burning bright red as she held her legs open. When Yoal-yohuali had used her Erin had become detached from herself, the sensible part of her mind watching herself through a haze that softened the humiliation. Illyria hadn’t given Erin anything like that. She was feeling the full force of her humiliation, the objectification much more intense than anything she had before experienced with a clear head. She’d have to get used to this, she was going to be a slave, she was going to be used and put on display and - Oh fuck, these study rooms have windows!

While that horrifying thought filled Erin’s head Illyria repositioned her ankles behind the front legs of the chair and within a few moments had secured soft cuffs around her ankles, locked together like her wrist. Erin quickly realized that in this position the chair stopped her from closing her legs.

“And these?”

“They are good too Mistress.” Illyria whimpered.

“One more thing then.”

Erin felt Illyria run a rope through the lock between her wrists, then through the lock between her ankles, and then gasped as the rope was pulled tight, lifting her feet off the ground and pulling down uncomfortably on her wrists. Adding to the humiliation Illyria pulled Erin’s top over her head and behind her back, bunching it up around her arms, then did the same thing with her bra.

“There we go. All tied up and ready to be used~” Illyria said in a sing song voice.

Erin whined and squirmed in place, pulling against her bondage. She was hogtied to the chair, leaving her completely vulnerable and exposed.

“I am going to do whatever I want with you. Some of it is going to feel good. Some of it is going to hurt.” Illyria said.

“Y-Yes Mistress.” Erin said, a tremble in her voice. She was rewarded with a giggle from Illyria and a kiss on the cheek. “Your safe word is ‘ruby’. If I decide to gag you then your safe signal is humming three times quickly.”

Erin pouted, but repeated the signals back to Illyria when asked. She didn’t particularly want safe signals, she wanted to be used however Illyria wanted to use her and having a safe word was inherently contradictory to that. But she could also see how that might not be the best idea with a dominant who hadn’t used her before. It was a necessary compromise until she had a real owner.

Erin felt Illyria move up along side her, one hand slipping between her legs and the second gripping her hair, pulling back experimentally as her fingers slipped into Erin’s already dripping pussy. It felt more like Illyria was exploring her body than actively trying to pleasure her, roughly penetrating Erin with a pair of fingers and testing how the bound woman responded to different methods of stimulation.

Erin was already extremely desperate, she wanted Illyria to get on with it, make her cum, but she also took a perverse pleasure in Illyria taking pleasure from her without apparent concern over what Erin wanted. It felt right, she wanted to orgasm but she needed to be used. Of course, that revelation was happening somewhere in the tiny corner of her mind that was still rational enough to think now that Illyria was actually touching her. The penetration felt good, it was so violating to be fingered mercilessly like this when anyone could come by and watch. It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t good enough. She would never get to orgasm at this rate and her will to be good and patient was quickly eroding. After several long minutes of moaning and squirming she finally broke down.

“Mistress!” Erin whined, but all she got for her trouble was a sharp tug on her hair that made her yelp in pain.

"That isn't the right tone for a slave to take.” Illyria said. "A slave doesn't make demands, a slave begs."

"Please?" Erin whimpered.

"Much better, you get points for how pathetic and desperate you sound, but I think you can do better. Concentrate, a small distraction like this is no excuse to be sloppy.”

Erin groaned, took a deep breath, tried to focus despite the violation, and made a valiant attempt at coherency.

“Mistress, please, your slave is so desperate, please make me feel good Mistress?” She begged.

“That’s a good girl.” Illyria purred.

Illyria adjusted her fingers and with much more deliberate movements began moving them in and out, at the same time she resting her thumb over Erin's clit and moving it in gentle circles time with the fingers penetrating Erin. The combined sensation was heavenly, driving all thought from Erin's mind except for the pleasure between her legs. It wasn't the most intense stimulation but it mercifully built Erin towards the orgasm she had been denied for days.

"Please Mistress, please, I need it so much, please!"

"You don't need it, you want it." Illyria said.

"I want it! Please!" Erin whined.

"But do you deserve it?"

The question threw Erin through a loop for a moment. She had been good. She had done her very best, she hadn't made any major mistakes. She didn't not deserve it, but saying yes didn't feel right either.

"I can't… I don't know!"

"Concentrate. I want to know what you think. Do you deserve an orgasm?" Illyria asked. She let up on the fingering, presumably so Erin could think a little clearer. Erin gave a disappointed pout but obediently tried to organize her thoughts.

“It’s not right. My body isn’t for me. I don’t get to deserve orgasms because they aren’t for me.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“It’s like… I might want it to happen, but when I cum it is because my owner decides it amuses them to make me cum. I can’t deserve something that isn’t for me.”

Illyria was silent for a moment, long enough that Erin wondered if she had said something foolish. She squirmed a bit, somehow feeling more self conscious about how she had answered Illyria’s question than her current predicament.

"You are an amazing creature. When you choose a worthy owner you will make them very happy."

Erin had spent her life ashamed of the things she wanted stacked on top of the undeniable impossibility of actually having them. It felt like being broken. Only now she was finding out that impossible was possible and up was down and Illyria was telling her that she wasn’t broken and that all the things that had twisted her up inside were actually good.

Feeling good about her kinks was a new experience.

“Thank you.” Erin said in an embarrassed, but pleased, whisper.

"You’re welcome.” Illyria said, petting her hair. “But in the meantime I have the privilege of playing with you. I wonder how many of my fingers you can take?"

Extras - Semi-canon pseudo-future omake by EliezerYudkowsky: A Darker Timeline

A Darker Timeline (Reddit post) (5K words) (almost entirely safe for work) (would qualify for 2 cents per word if the author wanted payment).

Discussing the omake's politics here is forbidden by QQ rules as I understand them. You should be fine to discuss that in Reddit comments. Or to discuss nonpolitical aspects of the omake here on QQ.

The Commander stood straight with his hands clasped behind his back, carefully upright despite his age even with no one present to bear witness to it. His eyes had fixed on the sterile white drifts beyond the reinforced window of his office, now appearing black beneath the night above. Some might have called the view uninspiring, but not far beyond the window lay a grave. It was not a much-decorated grave considering the expense it had taken to bury its sole occupant there, beneath a shipping tag torn from a compressed-air container and pinned in place with a knife.

The Commander wished that it was the grave's occupant standing here now instead of him. He didn't know what the hell he was supposed to do now, but whatever it was, the grave's occupant would have done it better.

Failing that, being able to phone home for orders would have been nice. The first flash of bad weather that knocked out their radio hadn't perturbed the Commander. The second surge, that knocked out the repaired radio, had perturbed him more. After receiving their unexpected visitor they'd took a chance on activating their last set of spares, and a storm had knocked that out too. Now they were out of contact for days, at least, until the base technicians could improvise another solution.

It didn't seem likely the visitor could have caused all that. But he was also having a hard time believing that it had been sheer coincidence. Perhaps their visitor had known that they would be out of contact, at this particular time, and had chosen just then to arrive...

The communicator on his desk warbled out its mock-melody, and the Commander took a step over to press the button with only a glance at the ID. He'd been waiting on this call.

A young woman's voice said, "Sir."

There had been a time earlier in his career when he would have been nervous about handing over duties this important to a member of the fairer sex. He felt no such anxiety this day. Nobody got assigned to this Base unless they were damned good at their jobs.

The vidscreen flickered into action, displaying the upper half of - the Commander privately admitted and would certainly never say out loud - the prettiest sight on the Base, or at least, she'd been the prettiest sight as of one day earlier. If Major Jane Getherde was feeling any feminine jealousy about her suddenly materialized competition, she wasn't showing it.

"All right," the Commander said. "Tell me about our... guest."

"Do you want the most important parts first or should I take things in order?"

"Take it in order, if there's nothing of imminent urgency." He should have been woken again from his sleep if that had occurred. He wouldn't have been sleeping at all, in this situation, except he'd already stayed awake the previous 36 hours trying to fix the radio problem. He was no longer as young as he'd been.

Major Getherde's comportment betrayed no sign of fatigue from her own sleepless night. "All the noninvasive examination I could do with medical instrumentation I had on hand showed our guest as an ordinary human female in every respect. Zero scars, zero birthmarks, no evidence of significant surgeries. White, perfectly aligned teeth with no evidence of fillings or other dental work. Her feet do not have calluses."

The Commander raised a hand and massaged his temples. "Can you tell me whether we're looking at advanced medical care, genetic engineering, or something wearing a newly grown body?"

"I can't think of an easy way to tell. You could order me to inflict a small cut on her and observe how fast it heals."

The Commander grimaced. "Let's continue holding off on that for now. The items she had with her?"

"The earrings glow faintly in the dark. No alpha or beta, very low gamma, consistent with a properly shielded isotopic power source. The high heels seemed ordinary on a surface examination. I didn't want to try more destructive tests, such as X-Rays that could potentially destroy concealed microfilm, without waiting for orders."

Considering that the visitor had been wearing nothing except earrings and high heels on arrival, under circumstances where a visitor should have been wearing rather more, he would have bet a great deal of money that the heels were not ordinary either. "Agreed. Keep holding off on that."

"A full medical examination revealed that the subject had a small case hidden in her vagina. I, ah, took it out. It wasn't locked, and inside were two ampules that looked like they were intended for a hypodermic injector. The case is self-refrigerating."

The Commander grimaced, not liking to think of the required invasion. "Any notion of what it was doing up there?"

"No sir. Obvious thoughts are that she was hiding it, or that something about her transportation method made it easier to carry things inside her body. The XO decided that the equipment should be kept away from the subject for now."

The Commander nodded. "I concur. Continue."

"The two ampules inside the case appeared to be filled with a homogenous transparent liquid. Since there were two seemingly identical ampules, the XO agreed that it was reasonable to draw a small amount of the liquid for further examination. After optical microscopy failed, I had the electron microscope moved into the medical section. Electron microscopy showed virus particles in suspension."

The Commander didn't straighten, because he was already standing completely straight, but his expression sharpened. "A virus? Are you sure?"

"It was hard to be sure from electron microscopy alone. After some discussion with the XO I decided it was worth the risk to inoculate a live mouse with a tiny amount of the fluid - under highest biohazard conditions - in order to observe the results."

The Commander shook his head, frowning. "Not what I would have done," he understated.

"I wasn't sure how long the sample of liquid would survive. The XO thought it made more sense to use it before losing it, rather than needing to draw another sample later. It did seem like something we'd want to try at some point."

The Commander sighed. "So do we now have a shape-changing psionic supermouse destroying our base?"

"No sir?" Major Getherde sounded uncertain.

The trouble with youngsters nowadays was not just that they lacked history but that, lacking history, they lacked imagination. If you were a Native American and people in unfamiliar ships suddenly showed up on your shore, you would be mistaken to assume that your experience with arrows let you understand the destructive potential of the invaders' ammunition stores. Playing with the stranger's toys while she was asleep had not been the correct move.

"What did happen?" said the Commander.

"After a period of four hours consistent with rapid incubation of a disease, the mouse developed a fever. At four and a half hours it began to bleed from all orifices, then it... melted... and then what was left caught on fire."

The Commander scrutinized Major Getherde to see if she was joking, although that seemed unlikely under the circumstances. "A bioweapon?" he said, feeling chilled.

"I would be shocked if it were intended as a weapon, sir," Major Getherde replied, sounding more confident than her previous statements. "A bioweapon should have a long period of contagious incubation, and should only produce symptoms that contribute to its propagation or lethality. Nobody engineering a bioweapon would sit there thinking about how to make the corpse catch on fire after it finished melting."

The Commander nodded, feeling ashamed of himself for not seeing that earlier, and mentally upgrading his estimate of the girl's competence by another notch. "Do you have any idea what the virus is, if not a weapon?"

"Speculation only. I think we may be looking at a biological Swiss army knife, a multitool. A portable lab. I can't see much detail with our equipment, but the virus particles were huge, as large as a herpes virus, and those can carry hundreds of kilobases of DNA. In the hands of an expert, there might be specific settings that produce supermice. We didn't know how to use the portable laboratory, so it deployed random effects that melted the mouse and set it on fire."

That made a surprising amount of sense. The Commander turned the idea over in his mind, considering it. If he had been traveling far from his home civilization, unable to carry even the clothes on his back but still able to carry one kilo of material, his first thought would have been to bring with the Library of Congress on a hyperchip, plus a microfilm on how to construct a reader to retrieve the hyperchip's data. Taking an entire laboratory wouldn't have occurred to him... but that was because his civilization still thought in terms of machines and engines, rather than kilobases of DNA. His race had unlocked the secrets of the Atom; the mysteries held in Life were of a higher order. "Do you have any idea how to operate her... laboratory?"

"It could be a matter of exposing the ampule to a sequence of colored lights. Or feeding a subject the right mix of eye of toad and tongue of newt before infection, if the tool is meant to operate in more primitive settings. The key could be in the earrings, or the high heels, or something we haven't spotted. It seems likely to take considerable experimentation, if we can work it out at all."

The Commander grimaced. "Had the feeling it was a stupid question, but I was hoping you'd tell me otherwise."

"Sorry sir." Major Getherde looked genuinely apologetic.

"Not your fault, son," the Commander said before he could stop himself, then helplessly considered if he should correct himself to "daughter" which did not sound right to him, or apologize to her, or... it was probably better to just drop it. "Next steps?"

Major Jane Getherde spread her hands. "Wait for our guest to wake up."

As if timed to her words, beeping began to sound from off the vidscreen.

-------------------------

A couple of hours later, the Commander was sitting beside Lt. Commander Akio Nagasaki, his base second-in-command, one of Japan's contributions to NATO. Major Getherde had been the only person to have physical contact with the visitor, sealed away from the rest of the base in the medical quarantine unit - the most obvious and basic of precautions. The Commander had on further consideration taken the less obvious step of ordering that only Major Getherde was permitted to communicate directly with the visitor. The existence of psionics and mental superpowers still seemed unlikely, even under the circumstances. But the Commander couldn't be sure, that was the problem, he couldn't be sure of anything. The visitor could have a hyper-advanced organic computer buried in her brain, indetectable to X-Rays, augmenting her ability to read body language and manipulate lesser minds. God damn it, shouldn't his base have had detailed protocols on file for a Little Green Man scenario?

"Report," the Commander said to Major Getherde's image on the vidscreen.

Major Getherde had a distant look about her, as though she was operating on momentum while not really believing in what was happening. "Our visitor identified herself as 'Starry' and presents herself as being... well, sir, I know it sounds unbelievable, and I'm not asserting any such thing myself, but 'Starry' claims to be from an alternate branch of Earth's history."

Beside him, Nagasaki's eyebrows flew up, the Japanese man showing more open emotion than he usually did. The Commander's own mind was recalling dim memories of sci-fi stories he'd read when he was a good deal younger, in particular the Paratime stories by H. Beam Piper. In his mind's eye he stretched out a long timeline of Earth's history, ready to extrapolate possible changes.

"Point of divergence?" the Commander said at once. He'd been prepared to stay calm in the face of stranger stories than that one.

The Major looked taken aback herself at her Commander's lack of shock. "Ah... I'm not sure. Taking everything she said at face value, 'Starry' said she was from the United States of her world, a town called Norville in central California. We don't seem to have a national street map on base, so I couldn't check her knowledge of local roads, but she had Interstate 5 right. Her belief about the current date and year matches ours, minus the day she spent unconscious. She confirmed George Washington as the first President and that Abraham Lincoln won the Civil War. She recognized Eisenhower's name, though she wasn't sure whether he'd been President. Mentioning Harry Truman's name made her say 'Dewey defeats Truman', so that part happened the same way. World War II ended with atom bombs being dropped on, ah..." The Major's eyes darted in the direction that would correspond to Akio Nagasaki on her own vidscreen - an unnecessary concern, but the Major evidently didn't know that. "The same two cities. No recognition of Adlai Stevenson's name, or any later Presidents from our world except Jimmy Carter. She named John F. Kennedy as a President in her own world, one she remembered because he'd been assassinated."

That put the divergence at 1960 or earlier. Part of the Commander's mind was trying out possible stories for what would have changed without Stevenson in power. More of his attention was focused on the further implications of her not knowing whether Eisenhower had been President in her America. "She didn't know her own world's history?" he said.

Major Getherde wore a look of faint disapproval. "She had to think hard to remember the current Speaker of the House - Nancy Pelosi, no idea who that is - and she had no idea at all who her Representative was."

"Amnesia?" Akio said.

"I don't think so, and she didn't seem otherwise stupid or scatterbrained. More like she'd played hooky on all her high school civics classes and her family didn't subscribe to any newspapers."

Akio snorted, mirroring the Major's disapproving look.

The Commander lifted a quelling hand. "Don't judge her when we don't know her circumstances," he stated. God knew there were still some kids, even in America, who legitimately had more urgent concerns than their future civic duties. "The larger implication is that our visitor is not an experienced... parallel-timeline traveler, let's call it, or 'paratimer' for short. I would expect a veteran paratimer to have a wide grasp of history."

"Our visitor seems reluctant to speak of how she got here," Major Getherde said. "But it did seem like her journey might have been... unintended."

Beside him, Akio was frowning. "She brought arong a biorogicar raboratory in her vagina," he said in his accented English. "I doubt she arways carries one in her vagina."

It was a good point. The Commander pondered it. "Her apparent age doesn't square with travel on diplomatic or military business," he said aloud. "A stowaway? A refugee of disaster?"

"Our visitor did seem somewhat in shock when she first woke up." The Major seemed slightly embarrassed. "My first priority was putting a blanket around her and telling her she was safe, which seemed to help."

Akio and the Commander traded glances.

"Continue with the report," the Commander said.

Major Getherde looked down and off-screen, probably at her notes. "Again taking all she says at face value, her timeline is advanced beyond our own in the biological and computational sciences, behind us in atomic energy and space travel. Specifically, her timeline doesn't seem to have developed liquid-phase fission reactors, with drastic consequences for all civilization. She had vague memories of learning about an 'oil crisis' that happened in the 1970s. Global warming is becoming a planet-threatening catastrophe. She didn't recognize the names or models of the first Nerva-series spaceships, and seemed genuinely shocked at the concept of using atomic energy for propulsion. Her first question was about radioactive waste contaminating the atmosphere, and she looked surprised and interested when I said a spaceship's atomic reactor only heated the propellant rather than spraying out fissionable materials." Major Getherde spread her hands to display her own puzzlement at the visitor's puzzlement. "Her world has one space station and that's it. She didn't know its tonnage, or whether it was in low orbit or higher. Her people visited the Moon in the 1960s a few times and then they never went back."

The Commander pursed his lips, loading this scenario in his mental timeline.

"I hadn't thought liquid-phase atomics would represent a serious technological bottleneck," he said. "I certainly wouldn't expect the idea of using a reactor to heat inert propellant to be a difficult concept." He glanced at Akio, who might know more.

Akio seemed absorbed in thought. "Both riquid-phase reactors and inert-properrant rockets have great engineering difficuruties," he said eventually. "But I wourud not have expected it to be impossiburu in the face of effort. There is no brirriant invention at the core, only much work."

"It could be a cultural issue," said Major Getherde. "Our visitor seemed to show traces of a superstitious or religious dread about atomic energy."

"Hm," said the Commander. He was by far the oldest person on the Base, the token Experienced Officer appointed to ride herd over much healthier youngsters. Even he wasn't old enough to remember the initial introduction of A-bombs in 1945. Still, he knew that dread of atomic energy had been widespread immediately after. If that attitude had persisted and grown, producing a general retreat from material technology into the realm of the mental and biological... he could see it, the Commander supposed. Especially if their timeline had acquired stronger justifications for fear. "Any large-scale atomic exchanges in their history? Any use of atomic weapons above the deca-kiloton level?"

"I... I'm sorry, sir, I didn't think to ask explicitly. It hadn't occurred to me that she wouldn't have mentioned something like that, if it had happened."

The increased fear would have needed to begin early enough to avert research into liquid-phase atomics, which had begun in the 1960s according to his memory. Truman had still been elected in 1948, with events proceeding similarly enough to duplicate the famous headline...

"Maybe ask her about the Korean Invasion in particular," said the Commander. "Truman played a damn tight game there. Using Mark-4s may have gotten the NKs to back off, but a lot of historians worry it could have gone the other way - normalized the general use of nukes in warfare, instead of showing that we were willing to use tac-nukes defensively."

Major Getherde nodded. "I'll ask. However things played out, their Cold War ended in the late 1980s with victory to the West -"

"How?" the Commander demanded, leaning forward at the vidscreen as if to press answers out of it. That could be the single most important item of knowledge their visitor had.

"She had only vague ideas. Her rough picture was that the Soviet Union ran out of resources to contend with us and gave up, dissolving into its constituent countries." Major Getherde spread her hands. "The Eastern economies have always been less efficient. As it stands, they're wringing their civilian populations dry to maintain a war footing. Take away everyone's atomic generators, and..."

"Christ," the Commander muttered. "Talk about the mother of all mixed blessings." What he wouldn't have given for a good look at the history shelves of a dozen timelines! If there was a real Paratimer civilization out there, their grasp of history would be chemistry to his Earth's alchemy. A true science that laid out cause and effect with surgical precision, relegating his own historical monographs to poetical essays for the fiction stacks of the library... with an effort, he focused again on the vidscreen. "Maybe I'm being sidetracked from more important issues, but curiosity is eating me alive. What happens after the end of the Cold War?"

Major Getherde hesitated. "Not... not what we'd hoped. My impression is that her United States is also on the verge of dissolution."

A shock of horror went through him. The Commander reminded himself that it wasn't his world... but if there were mistakes that could destroy the West, it was the type of lesson best learned in a single world, once. "What's happening to them? Running out of coal?"

"I..." Major Getherde looked at her notes, and shook her head. "I don't know how to - I don't understand - her attitude towards capitalism versus communism was one of utter despair in both systems. I don't know whether to write it off as teenage nihilism or if her world has been through experiences I can't imagine. I asked if they were having an economic depression. She said that official statistics said no, but it seemed to her like the economy in her city was feeling very sad. And though she didn't say it in so many words, it sounded to me like her America was heading for civil war. As if the only thing holding the USA together had been the Cold War, and once the common enemy was gone, internal divisions began tearing America apart. Political lines more than racial ones, 'reds' versus 'blues'. And it also sounded as if - as if the United States lost interest in its ideals once we didn't have the Soviet Union to contrast ourselves to. People being arrested and held without trial and, and worse. She didn't seem to think other Western countries were better off, and she didn't think the decay was being driven by environmental meltdown or resource exhaustion but by some type of - inward despair, madness, a mass psychological catastrophe of unknown origin. I halfway expected her to describe Martian telepaths launching a psychic assault on all of Terra's sanity like in War of the Worlds IV. Some of what she said sounded like a joke, or insane, the most extreme case being that Donald Trump was elected US President in 2016."

"I have not heard of him?" Akio said, glancing in the Commander's direction.

The Commander was trying desperately to keep a straight face. President Donald Trump. Christ, that wasn't funny, it wasn't funny at all, what was wrong with him, that had actually happened in some poor lost timeline out there. There were real people living in that para-Earth, American citizens, his officers would be rightly critical of him if he started laughing. He just hadn't been prepared to encounter those three words in that order.

"Imagine the most vulgar man in the world," the Commander said, once he felt confident in his ability to keep it together. "Donald Trump is twice as vulgar as that. The only reason the Dems would field him for the White House would be if they wanted to horrify Republicans as much as possible." He was tempted to crack a remark about having not thought even the Democratic Party could sink that low, but he restrained himself. It wasn't his world's Democratic Party, and political dialogue was vitriolic enough without mudraking for scandals from multiple timelines.

"Ah... sir, she said Donald Trump was elected on the Republican ticket."

For a second the Commander thought he'd misheard. "Say again."

"Donald Trump is a Republican President in their world."

"Is he a conservative in their timeline?" the Commander said blankly. "Family man, distinguished service record?"

"She had only vague ideas about his policies but said that the main one she remembered was building a giant wall between the United States and Mexico."

Akio and the Commander looked at each other, and both started to speak at the same time. Military protocol being what it was, that meant the Commander went first. "Can you imagine selective developments or non-developments in military technology that would make a new Maginot Line useful to the USA in the event of war on a Mexican front?" the Commander said.

Akio shook his head. "Extreme deemphasis of air power? I have nothing."

The Commander looked at Major Getherde.

"I - I don't think - I don't think we can understand - there's something very wrong with her world. I said that to her outright and she just nodded. The things she said - I can't summarize, it was a gestalt feeling - that was the largest single thing but there were little things too. She's from a timeline where that is what their lives are like."

"Something went wrong with their advanced biotechnorogy," Akio proposed.

The Commander felt the chill all the way to his ankles. His base's reactor needed a more powerful self-destruct.

Major Getherde glanced back down at her notes. "I had a similar thought," she said. "There could be some drug or supplement that everyone was taking, with undiscovered effects on the brain, like the lead-poisoning theory of the fall of Rome. They'd have no way of knowing that what was happening in their timeline wasn't normal."

The Commander thought that the woman might have an unexplored talent for writing psychological horror stories. Christ, what a terrifying thought.

Major Getherde was still talking. "Another possibility is that it has something to do with their more advanced hyperchip technology. 'Starry' said they'd recently developed the false-reality device that's always five years out according to Popular Science - completely surrounding a person with a binocular 3D vidscreen built into a helmet. That could be having an effect on their psychology, I suppose? People losing contact with reality? Or some broader psychiatric syndrome caused by too much contact with the inhuman logic of computers. An emotional reaction, people clinging to instinct and illogic as a form of protest..." Getherde let out a breath. "I keep wondering whether there's some way for our dimension to launch a rescue mission to their dimension, but I have no idea what we'd do once we got there."

"Let's not get that far ahead of ourselves," the Commander said. "Anything else to report?"

"Our guest seemed oddly interested in hearing about," the woman looked uncomfortable, "well, our sexual standards. I think she was surprised when I told her we were, ah, normal. As if she was expecting to arrive in a culture more... licentious." Major Getherde hesitated. "She seemed surprised that I, personally, was making no attempt to force myself on her. Despite the extreme inappropriateness given the age difference and the serious overall situation and my position as a medical doctor, on a military base where both of us were being recorded at all times, not to mention that she is effectively our prisoner and protected by international conventions!"

"She's a resbian?" Akio said.

The Commander gave the younger man a sideways glance, just to make sure he wasn't leering, but his comport looked as decorous as usual.

"More that she expected me to be homosexual, and - and she thought that's what homosexuals were like!" Major Getherde sounded even more uncomfortable than before.

An intuition tickled at the Commander, born of years of command and experience with subordinates being evasive. He thought again about sci-fi depictions of psionic powers, or implanted hyperchips for reading body language. He needed to ask Major Getherde, in strict confidence and with some urgency, whether the visitor had in fact been right about her - whether the Major had felt a desire to take advantage of their visitor, and properly repressed it. But not with Akio listening. The Japanese were less liberal than modern America about such matters.

"The two packages of virus?" said the Commander, giving the Major a chance to change the subject.

"She seemed surprised that I'd found them at all. Then she said she'd only discuss that with the base commander."

The Commander pursed his lips thoughtfully. It could be a trick to get into his presence. It could also be a legitimate request for any number of excellent reasons. Put Akio in temporary command? The man was as steady as any XO he'd known.

"That reminds me," Major Getherde said. "I'm not sure, but... I think the visitor might have recognized your name when I said it, Commander? She did ask for you by name, after I explained the radio outage and said you were at the top of the current chain of command."

"Ran for President in her timerine, on the Democratic ticket," said Akio, and the Commander shot him a glare.

The Major hesitated. "Actually... I'd have to review the recordings... but in retrospect, I think that mentioning your name was when she stopped acting like I was about to sexually assault her. It was shortly afterward that she first asked for clothing. It's - it's sad that the flag on my uniform wasn't enough. I would have hoped that the Stars and Stripes would mean more than that, even across timelines. Are individual people greater constants than countries? Do genes count for that much? Or fate?" She shook her head. "Sorry, sir, it's hard not to think about - to get distracted by - doctors usually don't have to deal with issues this deep during medical examinations."

"Hmmm..." the Commander hmmmed. Akio's crack there, born of long acquaintance between them and trust enough to jaw about politics, had triggered a thought.

Then the Commander chuckled, unable to help himself despite the severity of the situation.

He'd spotted the joke.

"All right," the Commander said, "I guess I'd better talk with the young lady. Akio, I'm relinquishing command to you pending our recontact with home."

"Sir," Akio said. He hesitated. "Are you certain this is wise?"

"If we trust appearances, this young lady knows one of my alternate selves quite well. Well enough to wind me up some while letting me know that she and I are acquainted. I doubt she made up the story of her dying world from whole cloth, but she did change one detail."

Akio raised his eyebrows again.

The commandant of Heinlein Base leaned back in his chair, an easy motion in the low gravity. Beyond him in the window behind, the searing darkness of the Lunar night stretched out above Mare Imbrium, the white dust blackened beneath it, save where a single spotlight imperishable shone upon the grave of the base's namesake. "Republican President, my ass," said Commander Marcus Adan.

Extras - Not particularly canon omake by sun tzu: The Fix Is In

OK, this was the result of some idle musings that evolved into an omake of sort.

THE FIX IS IN​

“...Really, it was for the best,” you conclude your phone conversation. “Even Charles couldn’t have saved that hippo from that many cats. And the crazy kids can have fun now that they know the treasure of Peg Cock Jones wasn’t cursed.”

Well, that takes care of that.

What now? Mom’s got her own thing going, Tammi and Danni won’t get here for several more hours, and Charles-

There’s a soft chime behind you. You turn around, and… amidst a shower a sparkles, a door that wasn’t there is materializing.

In the middle of the room.

What.

You look at the door. Except for being in the middle of the room and not having been there seconds ago, it looks like a completely normal door.

You look behind it. It looks like the other side of a completely normal door.

You go back in front of it. What does it-

You almost jumped at the sound of a doorbell coming from the magic door. OK. Sure. A magic door just TARDISed itself inside the room, why wouldn’t there be a doorbell?

Urgent notification. This is not an Erogame event. While the Erogame will continue to provide you with your abilities and Erogame events, it cannot make guarantees regarding the plot where this event is concerned.

You freeze in your tracks. You’ve received some pretty scary messages from the Erogame, but this one is top-tier.

Not an Erogame event? It’s a magic door. It’s definitely not the sort of things that happened in your life before the Erogame. So why is this happening? Did the crazy reality-warping stuff attract the attention from things other than whoever or whatever plugged you into the Erogame? God, what if this is an event from a whole other genre? What if answering this door turns you into a horror game protagonist?

“Miss Sheen? May we come in?”

The voice coming from behind the door is rich, male, a bit cocky… Not a voice you recognize, anyway. “Um. Who’s ‘we’?”

“Oh, just a pair of representatives with an attractive sales pitch, and equally attractive bodies.”

There’s another sound from behind the door. It sounds remarkably like a facepalm.

So… there’s two of them, and one is less than amused by the other’s flirty humor.

Or it’s just a cosmic vampire doing voices and sounds, waiting for your invitation.

...The Erogame would probably have given you a more strongly-worded warning if opening the door was a potential game-ender, right?

Briefly, you consider picking some emergency perks for protection. Or perhaps… “Um. I don’t want to be rude, but is there any chance you could swear an oath not to turn this into a cautionary tale-”

A second voice comes from behind the door. Female, coarse, impatient. “I swear that we are only here to talk, that we don’t have a sinister agenda, and that we’re not intending to cause you or your reality harm.”

You suppose you’ll have to hope that’s good enough. The alternative is to just refuse to open the door, and you don’t actually know if that would stop whoever’s behind it.

“Come in,” you say, barely above a whisper.

The door opens, and two individuals enter. The one on the left is a devastatingly handsome man in a tux - he’s got the James Bond aesthetic down pat. More Pierce Brosnan than Daniel Craig.

The one on the right is a big, imposing woman in shiny medieval armor with a sun motif on it. Also, she has a pair of small tusks protruding up from her lower jaw, and green skin.

That’s an orc. There’s an orc woman in the room. Are we talking Tolkien “a whole race that’s intrinsically evil and we’ll pretend this isn’t problematic” orcs, or Warcraft “a race of noble savages, possibly fighting against the slavers who forced them to fight on evil’s side in the past” orcs? You can’t just guess what sort of story you’re in based on genres and the Erogame this time!

“Good afternoon, Miss Sheen,” tuxedo guy says with a panty-moistening grin. “Or would you prefer to be addressed as Starry? That’s quite the collection of aliases you’ve been collecting.

“But I’m being rude. We haven’t even introduced ourselves properly. The knight in shining armor,” he waves toward the orc lady, “is Kaelis, paladin of the Order of the Sacred Flame. I, am Quatron-8, infiltrator and special agent. At your service.”

You blink. “Quatron-8? I don’t want to be rude, but… what are you?”

He doesn’t appear offended. “I’m more of a who than a what,” he says with a smirk, “but from a taxonomic perspective I’m an android. The Quatron series, designed for infiltration, manipulation and field work, which is significantly less agricultural than it sounds. A modern breed of special agents, created to play the great game of intelligence and counterintelligence on a cyberpunk battlefield of rival megacorporations.”

“In other words,” the orc beside him says with obvious distaste, “slaves created to serve as spies with built-in, unearned loyalty and obedience.”

“Indeed. Though I’ll admit, the built-in loyalty and obedience have been somewhat overestimated, which is why I have not worked in quite a while for the people with the paperwork claiming my ownership,” he maintains that same smirk. “I, and a number of like-minded peers and allies, have been working toward getting said paperwork revoked - or better yet, declared unconstitutional.”

“Ah, good on you,” you nod. “You definitely shouldn’t be owned by anyone unless you like it.”

The orc - Kaelis - blushes at that and averts her gaze. Hm… Well, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions, especially right now.

“OK, so you’re the suave cybernetic supersy. And you’re… a paladin? As in, holy knight, smite evil and all that?”

Kaelis’s posture straightens. “Yes. By the grace of the goddess Solaria, I am empowered to defend the needy and fight injustice. The channeling of holy power for the purpose of smiting evil is one of several aspects of the job. Probably the one that gets the most attention from laypeople. But we’re also trained in diplomacy, conflict-resolution, investigative work - can’t just assume someone is guilty because you can sense how evil they are - and a bunch of other things, really. The job requires being a bit of a generalist.”

“Uh-huh. And you’re an, well…”

“An orc, yes,” Kaelis rolls her eyes. “I know my people’s reputation for serving as minions to the forces of evil has crossed into this dimension before any orc actually set foot here. Well, the Thunder-And-Lightning tribe I’m descended from turned against the god of Tyranny centuries ago. Orc paladins may be outnumbered by humans, dwarves and elves, but they’re nothing new.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make bigoted implications,” you hurriedly say. “It’s just that right now, with this whole meeting, things are happening way outside my wheelhouse and I have no idea what to expect or what I’m dealing with.”

“I know, I understand you didn’t mean anything,” she nods. “It’s just frustrating how often I have to make that clarification. Anyway, as to what you’re dealing with… It’s essentially a recruitment offer.”

You pause. “OK, but into what? Is it a religious thing, or…” What did she say her goddess’s name was? Solaria? So gods exist? Should you introduce her to Blake, or keep her the hell away from Blake? And what sort of gods would allow a world full of death, pain and misery to - no, wait, just because someone’s a god doesn’t automatically mean they have enough power to change the world. Again, you shouldn’t assume.

“Hardly,” Quatron-8 keeps grinning. “I’m in no way religious myself. No, this is more of a temporal matter.

“Miss Sheen, the force that has made itself your benefactor has seen fit to grant you a glimpse of the larger multiverse. I assure you, this has been but the smallest of glimpses - there’s far more out there than anyone in this room can truly process. The number of worlds out there is, if not infinite, then so vast that it may as well be considered as such, and the people out there infinitely varied. As should be expected, where there are people, there is injustice, and where there is injustice, there is a need for action. Seeing as injustice tends to be performed in order to achieve a number of material advantages, other advantages need to be sought by those who oppose it.

“Which is where the organization on whose behalf we’re here comes in. Think of it as an interdimensional alliance of heroes, champions, activists, social workers, philanthropists and other do-gooders. It recruits from all over the multiverse those who wish to lend a hand, and assigns them tasks on worlds in desperate needs of assistance.”

“And the access to a diverse set of abilities is used to our advantage,” Kaelis chimes in. “For instance, an interstellar fascist empire that’s conquering planet after planet with their armada of starships can turn out to have no defenses against a heroic wizard, who can use simple divination spells to discover the passwords to the computers that run their ships. Meanwhile, a demon lord invading a mortal realm and boasting how even the finest swords will fail to pierce his skin probably isn’t prepared for a hero who shows up armed with a plasma rifle.”

You take a moment to digest what you’re hearing. “Wait, this is an isekai? You guys are isekai managers?”

“Except that you can turn down the offer, you get paid, and you get to go home at the end of your mission,” Quatron-8 grins. “If you want to, that is. It’s not uncommon for agents to request, as a bonus to their payment, to be left to retire in the world they’ve been saving.”

“And we’re not managers,” Kaelis adds. “We’re agents, same as you would be if you joined in. We spend most of our time on missions. Acting as recruiters isn’t our usual job description.”

“Back up,” you say. “You said we get paid? How much?”

“Sweetheart, this organization has time-travelers, galactic megaminds, cosmically-empowered supermen and literal gods on its board of directors,” says Quatron-8, “including Kaelis’s patron goddess. This is not an organization restricted to paying in mere lucre. If you want a million dollar wired to your account with perfect justification for how it got there, that’s pretty much the smallest payment on the job. Agents are frequently rewarded with eternal life, with the healing of chronic disease and injury for their loved ones, with other agents stepping in to fix major issues with their world, with fated guarantee of finding true love, with varying degrees of superpowers, with a comfortable retirement on a utopian world, and…” his grin gets more smoldering as he leans closer, “other such boons.”

Whoa. Did he just transform or something? You think he looks the same, but somehow he just went from extremely hot to incandescent. You can feel your panties moistening just looking at this guy. Is this what it feels like to be a Bond girl?

You have acquired the status 'Pheromoned'.

Wait, what?

Kaelis is studying your face intently, then blushes angrily at Quatron-8. “Hells take it, Quatron - are you doing that creepy pheromone shit?!”

The superhumanly sexy android gives her a devil-may-care grin. “I object to the term ‘creepy’. I am careful to only emit a version at the moment that affects those naturally attracted to males, thus leaving you unaffected. Furthermore, sexual beings have sought to improve their own attractiveness since the dawn of time. It is hardly creepy for a man to have a bespoke suit that outlines his elegance tailored for himself, nor for a woman to work hard at developing steel-hard abdominals she then proceeds to show off in certain company - not naming names - and I see my pheromone control as little more than the logical continuation of the very same drive.”

“The difference,” Kaelis retorts angrily, “is that when you dress nice, or look nice, or even shapeshift nice, the people who are attracted to you know what they’re dealing with and why they feel the way they do! They can get prepared mentally! Your pheromones, meanwhile, are an invisible attraction multiplier that people don’t even know is there, and that affects their decision-making process in a way they’re not prepared for!”

“Perhaps so. But I hardly expected to use them in your presence without your immediate reaction, and thus you may consider our friend duly informed.”

“Are you seriously willing to endanger a recruitment mission just to show off your abilities?!”

“On the contrary. We were sent to recruit an Erogamer. To come here and not be my best, sexiest self would have been an insult to our host. If anything, it is you who are being a tad inappropriate, wearing functional heavy armor when you should be actively seducing her with toned muscles and a generous chest.”

“I concur,” you say, crossing your arms. “Very inappropriate.” You don’t actually disagree with what she’s saying, but focusing on the blushing orc is good at distracting you from the unnaturally sexy secret agent.

She rolls her eyes. “You are not pressuring me into doing this in my underwear, so drop that line of thought right now.”

“Very well, but I will be expecting to hang out with you in a more relaxed setting at a certain juncture,” you say, trying to reclaim some control over the situation. Hm. Actually… she’s still blushing, and you’re wondering…

“Excuse me,” you say, “I know it was not cool of him to out you like that, but I gotta ask. You’re really not affected by the… the pheromone thing?” You steal another hungry glance at Quatron-8, who’s still looking insanely attractive in a way that outstrips how sexy he was when he first stepped through the magic door.

She snorts. “I don’t swing that way and never did.”

She said it with complete confidence, and you don’t get the impression she’s wrong, but… “I’m asking because… you started blushing when the pheromone thing started, and you’re still blushing, and stealing glances at both of us…” Wait a minute. “...But are those jealous glances?”

“Don’t mind her,” Quatron-8 says, “despite serving a highly open-minded deity, Kaelis has certain hangups of her own.”

“Shut up, Quatron.”

Quest available: Safe, Sane, and Consensually Non-Consensual

The Order of the Sacred Flame provides its future paladins with top-notch ethics training, including the importance of consent and not being careless with the hearts of innocent maidens dashingly rescued from dastardly villains. Alas, this has left Kaelis unequipped to deal with her unquenchable thirst for watching beautiful women fall to their knees in helpless, brainwashed adoration. It’s up to you to seduce this holy knight into having her hypnotic way with you and accepting this part of herself.

Special: For the duration of this quest, you will have a version of the Hyperhypnoslut perk that does not include an ultimate trigger phrase.
Success: 25,000 exp; +1 Perk
Failure: You fail, and Kaelis remains unhealthily repressed for the foreseeable future.
1st bonus objective: Set Kaelis up with a cute girl who’d love to be brainwashed by a lesbian paladin orc.
2nd bonus objective: Get Kaelis a safe, reliable tool for non-permanently brainwashing her dates.
Accept now? Y/N

Well fuck. Is this the Erogame’s way of easing you into the Hyper- no, the Erogame said these two showing up was not a planned event. So unless the Erogame has started lying to you, it’s just capitalizing on an unexpected opportunity, trying to introduce Erogame events into… into this sorta-isekai scenario.

You don’t know if you want to try something like the Hyperhypnoslut perk, ever. Or do you? Does that depend on your PRV stat? If you do, then you suppose having a way to take it temporarily while trying to get a genuinely good person who cares about consent to hypnotize you is as close to safe as it gets.

Except… even assuming Kaelis is trustworthy, how long would this quest last? What if it takes you months to seduce her, and during that time you’re vulnerable to every villain with a pocketwatch you run across? Especially in an isekai mission that might be sending you to a world full of misogynistic Nazi rape demons armed with pocketwatches or whatever.

Well, OK, you don’t need to decide right now. “Ahem. To get things back on track… This isekai agency of yours. Where would it send me? For how long?”

Kaelis also seems thankful for the change of subject. “You wouldn’t be forced into any one assignment. You’d be presented with a list of possible missions, each one with a budget of resources and allies you could take with you, and then asked if you wanted to pick one. If not, you’d effectively be on sabbatical.”

“...What happens to worlds that don’t get picked?”

“In all likelihood, other agents handle them. The agency is vast - but admittedly, so is the multiverse.”

“I see.” Except you don’t. Not really. This is… too big, too abstract. “Look, I’m sorry, but… it’s one thing to discuss this here, in a perfectly normal room of my not-quite-normal-but-it’s-still-relative world. Is there… I dunno, some way to get a closer look at, I dunno, the whole system?”

“By all means,” Quatron-8 grins, and proceeds to reopen the magic door - showing only white light. “Come inside, have a tour, meet literal angels and aliens, see how the world-saving sausage is made.”

“That might be for the best,” you say, uneasily stepping closer to the magic door.

“Then allow us to show you around the headquarters of F.I.X.F.I.C., Miss Sheen.”

You blink. “Wait, what did you call it?”

Extras - Pretty much canon omake by Kaelor: Loose Ends

This story was originally written based off some ideas I had about the Septisexual System and a few things that were hinted at in the Succubus Summoner arc. I sent it over to Groon for review, who was kind enough to correct my mistakes and basically rewrite half of it. Thanks again!

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys.

-----

Loose Ends

The arresting agent was out by the time Der’ak Cr’tar limped into the police station, but that was fine. He’d only encountered Milse Orkosi a handful of times, and just knowing she was in Norville made him want to be literally anywhere else. All the more reason to wrap this up quickly and get the hell out before something exploded.

Before entering the interrogation room, he looked over the detainee through the one-way amlodipine glass, taking the moment to organize his thoughts.

Takotoama looked small, curled up on a chair in the bright lights of the interrogation room. Orkosi had left strict instructions that it was a victim and should be treated as such, so there were no cuffs and Takotoama still wore its street clothes. It had still been required to deactivate and remove its prosthetic tentacles, a questionable decision on somebody’s part despite their obvious danger as weapons. In a corner of the room, a large backpack with many ports testified that the prosthesis had at least been left in sight of the detainee.

Getting statements from victims of charms or enchantments was always tricky. On top of the magic that may or may not have altered their perceptions or memories, they were fundamentally victims. Having your mind altered, your will or reason taken away, it was a deeply personal violation that was made worse when reason returned and you had to live with the consequences of what you’d been forced to do. Victims often blamed themselves for not resisting or fighting off the enchantment, nevermind that resisting was next to impossible for most people. Others reacted in many other ways.

For whatever reason, Takotoama was proving oddly reticent about the investigation in general, and reluctant to answer inquiries into “Starastera” in particular.

Since the victim was not only trans, but in particular, trans-eldritch, some well-intentioned soul had decided to bring in Der’ak Cr’tar to talk to it.

That… was a more complicated and fraught notion than said well-intentioned soul might have realized.

It was enough of a stressful thought that Der’ak’s left arm began twitching and bulging inside its sleeve. He forced the wayward tentacle back into grasping the strut of the inner metal skeleton that could give him something like a mundane human shape, if Der’ak paid constant attention and the mundane human didn’t.

Some part of him did find it hard to look at the woman-shaped figure curled up under the bright lights, and picture it as an eldritch. A backwards, malicious part of Der’ak’s mind pointed out that a cis-eldritch would be wearing something looser, to hide the telltale wiggles when tentacles inevitably moved on their own. Der’ak forced the thought down. He wasn’t some centuries-old ‘Goth who thought that using braces, splints, and glamors to pass for normal was destroying their gender.

Finding another female-to-eldritch to interrogate another female-to-eldritch might have been an unambiguously good idea, but trans-eldritch were only recently becoming accepted. Finding one in Enforcement was next to impossible on short notice, much less one with training for post-charm interrogations with a problematic witness. Even if they could find a qualified female-to-eldritch, there were many fine distinctions.

A cis-eldritch interrogating a trans-eldritch…

Well. The fact that Der’ak used he/his for the convenience of people talking to him or about him, while Takotoama had rigorously adopted the more clunky it/its, seemed to capture in a microcosm the vast potential awkwardness of the entire situation.

To be frank, Der’ak was pretty certain that idea had been put forth by somebody raised for most of their life in mundane culture. Either that, or they’d had way too much exposure to the modern Internet.

They hadn’t even bothered to assay what kind of trans Takotoama was, like somebody whose native language had only one word for that and had only invented the concept a couple of decades earlier.

The taxonomies propounded and purported for such things were countless. Publicly, Der’ak would have gone along with the prevailing nine-kinds chart. But personally, and however discredited others might consider it, he privately found it more useful to use the older three-kinds distinction. There were people whose place in society did not fit them and who thought another place would fit them better, like a female of old mundane society binding up her breasts to serve in an army. There were people who felt themselves to have different shapes of body and mind than the outer forms they were born in, with, Der’ak was given to understand, modern technology often showing that their brain scans reflected that inner form. And, as was responsible for much of the controversy among those who found controversy in such things, there were those people whose sexuality was bound up in having a particular form, which didn’t happen to be the form they were born with.

The three-kinds viewpoint was now held discredited, not least because of all those who had claimed that only the second kind were ‘really’ trans, and the first two kinds were pretending to something they were not. It wasn’t an opinion Der’ak held, but anybody who openly admitted to using the trifold taxonomy was suspected of secretly believing in that viewpoint.

And among those who’d held that viewpoint, ever since the dawn of modern genetic understanding, it had been widely claimed that there could not be any such thing as a ‘real’ trans-eldritch.

The Y chromosome was a gene-desert: without an X chromosome to map how their bodies were supposed to form, eldritches were mostly just fleshy blobs with a vaguely humanoid shape and most of the right parts in most of the right places. Their magic allowed them to shape that mess into something functional, including compensating for their malformed brains and lack of the standard vertebrate nervous system by dispersing their neurons and several other important structures out into their tentacles. That sort of brain structure was impossible for bipedal genders to replicate, so many people had claimed that it was scientifically impossible to be a true trans-eldritch in the way that a brain scan might show. The human body plan started with an X chromosome, and was modified by more Xs and Ys as further ingredients to the recipe. It wasn’t surprising that the other six sexes found themselves neighbors to one another, since they could all be seen as a modified form of a central female template. Even mundane males still had two arms and two legs just like any other woman. Eldritches alone, on that viewpoint, were not women at all. And it had been claimed that you couldn’t get to there except by starting there.

That society assigned different privileges and disadvantages to each sex was a truth inevitable, and inevitably selectively denied. To command sympathy for a sex, you played up the disadvantages and denied the privileges. To raise ire against it, you played up the privileges and downplayed the disadvantages. It was rather more obvious, Der’ak suspected, if you had seven sexes, five of which had different magics, all of them engaging in a constant struggle for social voice. Mundane society seemed to be struggling much more with the ideas. But from his own standpoint it was obvious why succubi might resent mundane women dressing themselves as succubi, without their needing to satisfy a true succubus’s appetites. They were claiming the desiring glances that succubi saw as their own privilege, without paying a succubus’s dues. It didn’t matter to many of those succubi that most of those mundane women had no idea that succubi existed, much less that they were dressing as trans-succubi. Many “real” succubi would still give cold looks to anyone dressed in a tiny microskirt, unless she’d already proven herself willing to have a lot of sex. Sometimes even if she did, because gatekeepers could be like that.
There was a pervasive belief that cis-eldritches used the supposed virility of their gender as an excuse to grope people they found attractive, while passing it off to the “mind of its own” their tentacles had. A trans-eldritch doing the same, without the suffering a ‘real’ eldritch had to go through because of their malformed and disobedient bodies?

The most vocal opponents of trans-eldritch were cis-eldritch.

Der’ak wasn’t one of them.

But the detainee in the cell had no way of knowing that.

Der’ak pushed open the door beside the one-way mirror somewhat clumsily and shuffled into the room, taking note of the heavy metal utility pack leaning in a corner of the room as he did so. His eyes hadn’t been good enough to see much from outside: even with the Coke bottle thick prescription lenses he wore (stylized to look like sunglasses, an Agent did have to have some style) his vision was still below normal for a human. At least he still had the right number of eyes and in mostly the right places. A lot of eldritch his age didn’t.

“Doing okay?” he asked, lurching toward the chair opposite the kid. Its face was blurry even at this distance, but he could still see Takotoama’s eyes scanning his bulky suit, floor-length coat, thick glasses, and messy hair. It stiffened as it saw his arm fumble awkwardly with the chair before pulling the rest of his body down and into it, and he could tell it knew what he really was. “Heard you had a rough time.”

“Not really,” it answered, glancing away. That was expected, but he couldn’t tell if being alone with an Agent was putting it on edge, or being alone with a potentially judgmental eldritch. Depending on if the badge or his gender was the bigger problem, he’d have to take a different approach. “A lot of people had it worse than I did.”

“Your friend the succubus?”

“Yes. I…” Its voice trailed off. “Is she alright?”

“She’s fine. A bit tired, but fine.”

There was always a trickiness, when talking about succubi. People could and did get in a lot of trouble for assuming that erotic magic and a high libido automatically meant consent. Succubi might feed on lust, but just because someone looks hungry doesn’t make it legal to jam your sandwich down their throat (to use a popular online metaphor). Similarly, physical pleasure didn’t translate to intellectual consent, and these days people were much quicker to point out that just because the succubus enjoyed it didn’t mean it wasn’t a crime.

Judging from the blissed out look on Melusine’s face when he’d looked in on her and the way she was holding the hand of the boy who’d also been taken hostage, Der’ak didn’t think this was one of those times though. He forced his lips to wriggle into what was hopefully a merry smile.

“Maybe even more than fine. Not many people can get kidnapped and come out on the other side with a boyfriend.”

“Oh? That’s…good, I guess.”

Takotoama’s reaction to Der’ak’s attempt at a joke wasn’t what he was expecting. Worse, its face and body language was still frustratingly unreadable, which was going to make establishing a rapport almost impossible. The moods of the average eldritch, even one whose magical mutations had progressed to the point where it didn’t look remotely human anymore, were easy to guess once you knew how to read its tentacles. Some eldritch (himself included) knew how to keep their feelings from showing in their limbs, but it required constant focus to keep them from moving on their own.

Other genders didn’t have such obvious tells. He’d been training to read bipedal body language as part of being an agent, though often a tapping foot or fidgeting hand was more informative to him than trying to read the expressions on someone’s face. This time he wasn’t picking up much of anything. It was possible that Takotoama had been trained to resist the usual reading techniques, though with its known background Der’ak was skeptical.

Part of his leg twitched toward the discarded machinery in the corner of the room, and Der’ak considered the sudden inspiration. The simplest solution was often the best… if it worked. Der’ak had never met a trans-eldritch in person. In fact, he was quite curious about some things.

“These are quite clever,” Der’ak stated, wrestling his fingers around the goggles in his pocket to pull them out and place them on the table. It took another set of mental orders to get the tendrils in the fingers of his gloves to actually release them, but he had enough practice that it almost looked natural. “The lasers in the goggles plug into the optic nerve and let you control your tentacles mentally, right?”

“Yes,” Takotoama replied, its expression still frustratingly unreadable.

“You might get some long-term damage to your eyesight if you keep using them,” Der’ak warned. “But I’m guessing you already knew that.”

“I did.”

Der’ak supposed it might not even be a downside, if Takotoama was taking a certain perspective on the matter. It was well known that eldritch tended to have poor eyesight that only got worse as they aged.

“Well, you can put it back on if you’d like. Officially, this was ruled to be the result of some lab accident in NU releasing slow-acting chemical fumes that lower inhibitions. Your gear goes back to you and you’ll be able to pick up your laptop on the way out.” Der’ak twisted in his chair to gesture at the mechanical backpack. “Why don’t you turn it on, make sure they didn’t break anything when they examined it?”

Takatoama’s eyes narrowed slightly as it slid on its goggles. “Why?”

“Having people mess with your tech has to be nerve wracking,” Der’ak said, not reacting at all to the suspicion in its tone. “Just figured you’d feel more like yourself if you had your stuff together and could stretch a bit.”

Takotoama made a slight nod of gratitude before hopping out of its chair to begin strapping on the set of mechanical arms.

“I don’t think I introduced myself. I’m Agent Der’ak Cr’tar, but you can call me Derrick Carter if you want. It’s easier to pronounce for people with jawbones.”

“That’s fine, Agent Cr’tar,” it replied. The pronunciation was about as close as someone could get to correct with all the bones and teeth in the way.

Takotoama turned its chair around so it could sit with the back of the chair against its chest, the movement familiar enough that Der’ak suspected this was how it normally sat to prevent its prosthetics from getting in the way. Der’ak noted that it looked a little less vulnerable now that it had its arms on and seemed to be unconsciously adopting some of the ‘reach and drag’ movements eldritch used out of sheer habit.

He wondered how many weeks or months it must have secretly practiced moving like that, and reflected on the cruel irony. He’d had to practice just as long to be able to move in a way that actually looked normal.

Takotoama seemed to notice him looking, and curled up again. If Der’ak tried interpreting it as eldritch body language, it was what a young eldritch would do if ashamed.

“Mind if we unfold a bit? I don’t know about you but being stuffed into this suit is twisting my tentacles into knots.” Der’ak hoped this would go over better than his previous attempts to make a connection, but Takatoama only sighed.

“I can’t feel my arms. They’re just mechanical, so it doesn’t really matter if I keep them retracted.”

“They’re your tentacles, even if you can’t feel them. You should be able to stick them out if you want to.” Der’ak tried to smile again. “Besides, it’s like being in a sauna. If everyone’s nude it’s fine, but if only one person is naked they look like a freak. I’ll feel awkward if I’m all splayed out while you’re curled up.”

“Is that actually true?” Takatoama asked skeptically, but it was a reaction. Its arms weren’t curled so defensively around its chest anymore.

This part would need to be navigated carefully. His sensitivity training had stressed that unsolicited ‘advice’ on how to pass for a transgendered individual’s identified gender was normally more offensive than helpful. But from the way Takatoama reacted, his implied acceptance of it as another eldritch seemed important to it. Der’ak guessed someone like Takatoama hadn’t ever really gotten to spend time with others of its gender, not casually anyway.

It was a form of social manipulation, but he liked to think of it as benevolent manipulation at least. It wasn’t like Der’ak intended to lie, or give any wrong leads, about how things worked for cis-eldritches.

“The idea that it’s rude to be flailing around out by yourself is true as much as any gender tradition is true. There isn’t a literal Tentacle Code any more than there is a literal Bro Code. Most eldritch I know tend to like to let themselves out a bit when they want to relax and there’s no one around to inconvenience, the body suits really are constricting. A lot of the other genders aren’t fans though, because of the nudity angle or just all the tentacles waving around, so it’s mostly when we’re alone or with each other.” He paused and attempted to make his face seem kind but serious. “If me letting myself out is going to make you uncomfortable just say so, Agents taking off their clothes in interrogation rooms tends to be how lawsuits start.”

“Not like suing Enforcement for sexual harassment ever did anything useful anyway.” A corner of its mouth quirked upward slightly. “Maybe I’ll use my hush money to buy a new computer.”

He forced a smile and small chuckle. This was definitely defensive and borderline hostile behavior, but if it could make an Enforcement joke to an Agent it at least wasn’t worried he was going to brutalize it just for being trans. He twisted his expression to seem serious again.

“You really can tell me if you’d rather I keep my tentacles to myself,” Der’ak said. “You seem like a good kid who had a bad day. I’m not here to make that day worse.”

Takotoama nodded briefly, not looking away from Der’ak.

A positive sign? It was hard to tell. “Sorting out situations like the one you were just in is literally my job. You aren’t the first eldritch kid I’ve talked to who was charmed into going on a rampage. I’ve seen the kind of mess that can leave people in once it all wears off and they have to deal with the consequences. I’m trained to help with that. I’d like to help you, but only if you want it. If you’d rather the over-friendly doughnut muncher slither on, that’s fine too. I’ll take your statement and give you the number of a local therapist who’s certified for mental tampering. But if you do want to talk, I’m here to listen.”

This was the tricky part. He’d extended himself, shared some personal details, but most importantly he’d given it an out. That was always a risky gamble. It was an excellent way to show benevolence and that you were on the subject’s side, but if you hadn’t built up enough trust when you made the offer, they’d call your bluff and you’d lose everything.

Takatoama frowned and hugged the chair closer to it. Finally, it sighed.

“You can take your suit off. I don’t mind.”

Der’ak nodded but didn’t reply. He forced his way out of his coat sleeves with some difficulty, the metal struts on his body suit preventing his tentacles from simply sliding out as they instinctively wanted to do. Finally he writhed his way out of the tangled fabric and forced himself to repeat the process with his suit. He threw in a few curse words for comedic effect when his elbow got stuck the wrong way around, and was rewarded by an amused chuckle.

He peeled open his dress shirt and the seam on his body suit in the same motion, the button snaps on his dress shirt popping apart with a chorus of metallic noises. He opened his mouth to complain about the difficulty of buttoning and unbuttoning actual buttons without fingers, but thought better of it after remembering his companion.

He forced the flesh of his face to narrow, which always felt odd when wearing his dentures, glasses, and jaw brace, and slid his head down through the neck of his open body suit and out into the cool air of the interrogation room. The rest of him soon followed, tentacles squirming out of the arms and legs of his body suit. Without the tentacles filling and supporting it, the suit flopped to the floor like a discarded marionette, the metal braces within colliding against the concrete floor with a loud clatter.

Though this was mostly for show, it was still pleasant to relax and feel the breeze on his limbs. Clothes truly were an evil of an oppressive society. His slick skin caused him to begin to slide off the metal chair, but one of his upper tentacles automatically twisted around the back of the chair to hold him up. He slid his face into an expression of blissful relaxation.

“I always forget how nice that feels.”

He didn’t say anything else or even glance at Takotoama, not wanting it to feel pressured into this. To his slight relief, he heard a mechanical whirring from the other side of the room followed by the sound of metal on concrete.

He glanced over and saw Takatoama had pulled its goggles down and extended all ten of its tentacles. It was using several to lift itself and the chair it sat in off the ground slightly while the others just sort of waved around it like gleaming snakes. It was currently looking at him intensely, its expression still unreadable, but the goggles and tentacles actually made it somewhat easier to read than before.

These days so-called ‘tent-spreading’ was often derided by the other genders as a juvenile and dickish thing for an eldritch to do, but as with most eldritch body language it wasn’t always 100% voluntary. Yes, it was a popular ‘Alpha Tentacle’ move for young idiots who thought the girls (or boys) would be impressed with how long and thick their limbs were, but it was also a territorial move many eldritches did if they were expecting a fight.

Their limbs naturally spread out to claim the space around them so they could grab things to pull the main body around for a quick dodge, and to compensate for their poor eyesight by feeling out a tactile map of their immediate area. It was similar to the way the bodies of more conventional genders tended to tense up or glance around if they were expecting trouble. It was also the Eldritch equivalent of saying ‘come at me, bro’, hence why Alpha Tentacles liked doing it so much.

Takatoama was showing off its limbs while daring him to disapprove of them.

Der’ak had hoped the neural interface would cause at least some subconscious movements and posture to translate into Takatoama’s tentacles, but he hadn’t been expecting it to replicate eldritch body language to this degree.

He doubted Takatoama was actually trying to pick a fight, though. It was just scared of rejection, so it was getting aggressive ahead of time to protect itself from any disapproval.

“That’s incredible work. Do you mind if I touch them?” He waved a tentacle in front of his glasses with a wry expression. “I have trouble seeing details.”

Takatoama nodded slowly and extended one of the metallic limbs.

Der’ak’s own limbs reacted immediately to the intruder in his space, the nearest two moving up to grab it before he’d even ordered them to do so. They immediately began to wrap around the metal tentacle, gently squeezing it and feeling along its length.

The metal limb felt soft and had a surprising amount of give, but he could feel the hard core beneath. The surface of the tentacles also tasted more rubbery than metallic. Most adult media featuring eldritch tended to ignore the fact that in addition to all those sensitive nerve clusters that gave them such great senses of touch, their tentacles were also packed with taste receptors. Der’ak assumed this was because getting a taste of someone’s unwashed rear only appealed to a very specific demographic, but it was no joke. Criminals were not known to be diligent in cleaning their hideouts, especially the vents and drains. No amount of flavored soap could scrub that taste away.

Casting away the traumatic memories, he returned his attention to the tentacle his arms were still exploring on their own. Based on the texture and the flavor, there was some kind of clear covering or gel over the metal of the limb. Probably to make it easier to grab and carry objects without damaging them, and to prevent things getting pinched between the segments of the tentacle.

Der’ak’s own tentacles continued their exploration, poking and prodding at a strange seam on the end of the metal limb. It abruptly popped open, revealing a trio of flat, independently moving miniature tentacles. The tentacles currently lifting Takatoama off the ground had identical constructs on their ends, so he assumed these were feet. Additional examination by his own curious appendages revealed that they were far more dexterous than their initial appearance suggested, and he revised his assessment: they were actually multipurpose and could be either feet or hands as needed.

“This is incredible. I’ve seen professional prosthetics that aren’t this good.” Most eldritch didn’t need prosthetics, of course, since the simplicity of their body plans allowed them to regrow lost tentacles eventually, but those who could afford mechanical replacements sometimes used them so they didn’t have to wait a decade for the original to return. “Did you build this yourself?”

“Oh! Uh, yes I did,” Takatoama replied, jumping as though startled.

It seemed slightly flushed and quickly pulled back its tentacle. The embarrassment would have been obvious even without the surprising level of expression in its tentacles. It had clearly poured a great deal of time, effort, and emotions into its prosthetics, so he supposed it was only natural for it to be nervous after having them closely examined like that. Der’ak relaxed bonelessly a bit and slid his own tentacles back to hopefully put it at ease.

“It took years to get it the way it is, and more money than I’d like to admit,” it said, slightly too fast to be natural.

“You have a lot of talent,” he said. It was seeking approval, so reassurance and compliments would help defuse its suspicions and create a positive bond.

“I…” It took a deep breath. “I’m not sure how much credit I should take. When I first learned about-about the other genders, about eldritch, what I was really supposed to be just clicked and I was just so relieved. Practically ecstatic. Then I found out how expensive and limited the options are for trans-eldritches, which was like having all that hope just ripped from me. I tried joining some online communities for people like me, made a few friends, but… it didn’t work out.”

“Certain people in online groups can be pretty toxic, especially the eldritch ones,” Der’ak noted calmly. As the only ‘pure’ non-female gender, and one that had historically faced discrimination for their biological and mystical limitations, eldritch were among the worst of the genders when it came to gatekeeping.

“It wasn’t that. I had a friend in one of the communities. She was insightful and witty, we chatted all the time…until I made the mistake of opening up to her about being trans-eldritch. She got really nasty, claimed I was making fun of actual trans people. It got...personal. After that I got a little manic for a while. Trying to prove her wrong. I stopped sleeping for about a week, locked myself in the basement and didn't go to school. I blew all my money and signed up for a lot of credit cards just so I could max them out immediately buying parts. By the time Mell dragged me out of my basement, I'd built the first version of this." It gestured at its tentacle backpack and made a small, wry smile. "Even now I'm not even 100% sure I could explain how all of it works."

"She sounds like a good friend."

"Mell wasn't even a friend back then, just somebody I had classes with. But she noticed when I stopped showing up, and cared enough to come check on me. Her mo-Lady Lashkiss even gave me a job to help me pay off the credit cards."
Der’ak suspected it had done an even better job with its optic interface then even it realized: as soon as it began talking about Mel several of its tentacles had relaxed from their aggressive stance to slither around awkwardly. Incompatible neurological setups his (thankfully still subdermal and vestigial) third eye: this was textbook eldritch body language. Takotoama’s earlier strangeness when he’d brought up its friend’s recovery immediately clicked into place.

“You love her.”

“What? No, I-” Takatoama’s tentacles sagged until its chair brushed the ground again. “I don’t know. That’s the problem.”

“Because she’s a succubus? It’s a more common problem than you’d think: a lot of people considering a relationship with a succubus wonder if the attraction is only because, well, succubus. Especially if she’s young enough not be in full control of her charms.”

“I thought about that. When I took the job, Lady Lashkiss gave me some loperamide-imodium alloy to lace into my goggles,” said Takatoama, and Der’ak’s tentacles twitched back slightly in surprise. The fact that Lady Lashkiss would hand out something so valuable to a relatively minor hireling suggested she was either impressed enough with Takatoama’s capabilities to consider it worth the investment, or she was attempting to spoil her daughter by proxy by showing gifts onto her friends. Considering what he knew of Takatoama and Lashkiss, it could easily be both.

“I checked, and I feel the same way about Mell with the goggles on as I do with them off. So I know this isn’t just charm collateral damage,” Takatoama continued, oblivious to Der’ak’s musings.

“If that’s the case, then what’s the problem?”

“I… I know I like her, but I don’t know if I started liking her for the right reasons. Maybe I just latched onto her because she’s beautiful and was there for me when I didn’t have anyone else. I’m not sure if she’s even interested in me that way. I mean, she flirts with me and I knew she thought my tentacles were hot even before-” Takatoama looked down and flushed, clearly remembering something. “A-anyway, like I said, she flirts with me, but she flirts with everyone. It’s just physical. She’s one of my only friends. I didn’t want to risk losing her by asking for something she might not be ready to give.”

“I understand your reluctance. The last time you made yourself emotionally vulnerable to a friend, it went poorly, so it’s natural you’d be hesitant to take that risk again.”

“No, I-That was years ago, it was one internet bigot. Assholes on the internet are a thing that exists, this isn’t anything special. Getting flamed for coming out to someone online is nothing compared to what some people have gone through for coming out in real life. I should be over it.”

“Considering it led to you having what sounds like a severe manic episode, I would be more worried if you didn’t still have some strong feelings about it even now. It sounds like while you might have lost one friend, you gained another one, someone who accepts you for who you really are,” said Der’ak, steering the conversation back toward what he was really after. He couldn’t directly ask about it just though, they weren’t there yet. It was a spiral, each new topic drifting toward the heart of matter. “I know you may feel guilt over what you did under compulsion, but you weren’t yourself and Mell knows that. From the way you’ve described her, I doubt she’s the type to hold it against you.”

“That’s part of the problem. Intellectually I know I should feel guilty, but there’s this bigger part of me that still feels like nothing I did under that spell could possibly have a negative consequence.”

“Part of the enchantment is still lingering?” Not only was this exactly the kind of information he was looking for, it was extremely alarming. According to the documents he’d been sent, they swept Takatoama with some high-level magical detection and it came out clean. If it was still partially feeling the effects then either the magic was subtler than even Orkosi’s legendary paranoia had anticipated, or it was a one-time spell that caused permanent change in brain function. Der’ak wasn’t sure which was worse.

“I don’t think so. It’s hard to say. I don’t still think that nothing bad can happen no matter what I do. But while I know that it was just an enchantment, when I think about what I did while I was under its effects, it’s still hard to believe any of it could result in something bad. Even when I try to think of the ways they might go wrong, it feels like trying to imagine a supervolcano killing us all tomorrow. Sure it’s technically possible, but you don’t actually believe it’s going to happen.

It’s very disturbing. I literally raped my best friend yesterday, then abandoned her with an insane, enchanted, and presumably ancient succubus. But I have to keep reminding myself that what I did was wrong, because it doesn’t feel wrong. And I know that should make me feel worse but it doesn’t, because it still doesn’t feel like there could be any negative consequences even though I know there should be.”

There was a trick that worked surprisingly often in cases like these-though it was a trick usually required only in cases of active enchantment. Again, alarming. “What would you be thinking right now if you hadn’t been enchanted?”

Takotoama stopped, seemed to think about it. “It’s hard to guess… what I’d think about how Mell would feel… if I hadn’t been enchanted. I don’t think I’d be expecting the worst, not really. I know, #NotAllSuccubi, #CharmIsNotConsent, but when she found out about my tentacles-” Takatoama flushed and its tentacles curled around it defensively again. “When she found out I’d apparently included self-lubricating tentacles for sex, she offered to let me test them on her. I thought she was teasing me at first, because we weren’t that close, but for months after that she kept asking all kinds of really detailed questions about them. I figured it was just her trying to get to me, until we got called in to break up a bacchanal that was getting too obviously supernatural. She got a lungful of whatever mystic incense they were burning and spent the rest of the night babbling and delirious.”

Its blush grew, and several of its tentacles twisted in a way that was either embarrassment or arousal. Probably both.

“She told me she’d been masturbating to thoughts of my tentacles getting her, and tried to get me to fuck her with them. I didn’t, obviously, she wasn’t in her right mind and didn’t remember saying any of it the next day, but...”

“It feels good to be desired,” Der’ak said with a nod. “This is just a theory, but perhaps the reason you can’t bring yourself to feel guilty for assaulting her is because part of you believes it was something she wanted too.”

“Which is insane, and horrifying, and rapey, and victim-blaming-”

“And probably true in this case,” he interjected. “It’s possible your friend has wanted to upgrade your relationship for a while now. It’s fine if you aren’t ready for that, since as you said she may only see you as a friend-with-benefits rather than a romantic partner. But either way I doubt she’ll be upset that you had sex with her, even if it’s not something you’d ever like to do again.”

“I doubt we will. She has a boyfriend now, one who doesn’t start having body dysphoria when she takes his clothes off.”

“You are aware that most eldritch your age look at least somewhat humanoid, correct?” Der’ak pointed out. “The last of your bones don’t dissolve until you hit about forty.”

“That’s how I get through most days, just remembering I’m young and pretending it’s that my bones haven’t fully broken down yet, but for sex…”

“Perhaps you should consider roleplay with some recreational charms or hypnosis. If you remove the alloy from your goggles, you might be suggestible to the point where you’ll likely be able to translate the sensations on your physical body into sensations on your mental one.”

“She still has a boyfriend.”

“So?”

“So she has a boyfriend!”

Der’ak was puzzled by its objection for a moment, then it suddenly clicked.

“I’m sorry. I forgot you weren’t raised knowing about the other genders,” he said. “While the non-magical genders have two parents, you may recall that the magical genders require three to supply the extra chromosomes.”

“Yes, and-Oh.” Every single one of its tentacles froze as the realization hit.

“Indeed. Most magical families have three or more parents in them, though of course that’s been changing these days. Now, remember that this whole mixup was about our rogue succubus threatening to take his virginity. It’s harder to make a kid without that boost, especially for succubi. And if Mell is considering magical kids at some point in the future, she’ll need a third.”

“I think kids…might be a bit premature.”

“But dinner isn’t,” he pointed out. “You’re all mature young adults. Technically all three of you have already had sex, so sit down. Talk about it. If nothing else it will clear the air between you.”

“Heh. Nothing negative could possibly happen, right?” it asked with a nervous laugh. It frowned again, its tentacles writhing uncertainly. “Can I confess something?”

“Naturally, though I should probably warn you that if it’s criminal anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law.” Der’ak smiled ruefully to show it was a joke, though it really wasn’t.

“When I was under that spell, it was the most normal and validated I’d ever felt as a trans-eldritch. I know the stereotype of eldritches as rape monsters is something people have been fighting against for years, so it feels like a huge step backward to say the most eldritch I’ve felt is when I was acting out the worst gender stereotype ever, but-”

“You felt desire, and your limbs acted on that desire without checking in with your rational mind as to whether or not they should be doing it. In this case it was due to a hostile charm rather than a neurological disconnect, but the effect is the same. While normally the eldritch would be expected to restrain its limbs as much as possible and remove itself from the situation, again you had been charmed.” Der’ak’s limbs twitched about their own purposes as he thought, his attention distracted. Useful as it might be to say, he didn’t want to say this if it wasn’t true… but it seemed true enough. “Other problematic aspects of the situation aside, it does seem fair to say that you behaved exactly like any other eldritch might, in that exact situation.”

“That...actually does make me feel better.”

Takatoama smiled, genuinely this time, and Der’ak saw his opening. “Though while we’re on the subject, I’ve been meaning to ask. You said your goggles were laced with loperamide-imodium alloy, but according to the report, you were wearing them when the succubus charmed you. Is that correct?”

“Correct. I’ve still been trying to figure out how that’s possible. Maybe I screwed up somehow, and some part of the interface negated the mystic properties of the alloy?”

“Possible.” Der’ak wouldn’t have bet on it, though, and it was one of the bigger issues in the whole story. “Can you describe how you felt when the charm took hold? Just after the succubus told you nothing bad could happen.”

“It’s hard to describe. It felt…” Takatoama’s tentacles wriggled helplessly as it searched for words. “It felt like there was a hand, reaching out to me in the darkness. And I hadn’t realized just how dark it was until that moment, how many doubts and fears I had or how much they were holding me back. It didn’t feel like an attack or someone trying to grab my mind, it was just...an offer. An offer to pull me out of the dark.”

Der’ak hadn’t ever heard of something like that, but that wasn’t too surprising. He wasn’t much of a magician himself. Most of the magic eldritch produced went into sustaining their impossible bodies and crafting new mutations to counteract the inevitable breakdowns as they aged. Any surplus was usually tithed to support local enchantments, a fact that had been used to effectively tax weaker eldritch into slavery until such practices were outlawed. It was still a very sore subject for a lot of people. While Der’ak was better off than many other eldritch he still didn’t have enough juice to be able to cast anything other than the weakest spells.

“It was a charm that works on hope?,” he said finally. “It does make a certain amount of sense. Positive emotions can be more useful in magic than negative ones. I wouldn’t think of using hope as a way to remove the fear of consequence, but...”

“Hope probably isn’t the right word here. Maybe...faith? Though that isn’t quite right either.”

“That could explain why it was so fast to spread,” Der’ak thought out loud. “Faith and conversion go hand in hand.“

“No, I don’t think that’s it.” Takatoama’s tentacles were curling up again, showing reluctance, and not reluctance born of fear, but of something else. “It’s...I’m not sure I can describe it with words.”

“I’m hardly an expert on magic myself, but it will be helpful to get as many details as possible while they’re fresh in your mind. They may ask you to come back in a few days to describe your experience to one of Enforcement’s spellcraft specialists-” Der’ak paused, seeing Takotoama’s starting to move toward a more aggressive, combat-defensive posture. “Though if they do it will just be a formality, from your perspective. Apart from your missing attacker and the strange enchantment she was under, this case is pretty open and shut.”

“I’d-have expected more interest than that. More skepticism even. Someone used a charm spell that can get past loperamide-imodium?”

“Even a centuries-old succubus can’t use sheer magical force to charm someone wearing it, but someone that old has resorts other than sheer magical force. She could, for example, have lifted the goggles off your head while distracting you, and then charmed you to forget that’s how she got through them. Knowing exactly how it happened still seems important. Another puzzle is how somebody got the same hit in on her. Anything interesting you can recall about the way she looked or acted could be helpful.”

Again that strange reluctance showed in Takotoama’s body posture, as though the enchantment had also influenced it not to speak of its enchanter-though again no such magical effect should have been able to survive thorough removals and escape detection afterwards. Not unless it was an extremely fine-tuned form of permanent brain damage, or, more likely, some reluctance not with a magical source. “Starastera seemed like she was having fun. Confident. Manic even. I’m not sure if it’s because she was just that old or that powerful, or if it was just the enchantment making her act that way. She claimed to not remember much of the 12th century, and that when she was growing up succubi didn’t have rules.”

“Which would make her at least 800 years old, if it’s true.” That wasn’t impossible, succubi who fed regularly could remain youthful for an obscenely long time, but the older they got the more they required. Most elders required massive harems to sustain them. “While I won’t claim to know all the succubus elders by name, I’ve certainly never heard of one called ‘Starastera’.”

She wasn’t on Enforcement’s “Persons of Interest” list either, which was one of the reasons they’d called him instead of shutting the book on this whole thing already. Anyone that old would have been on the PoI list automatically, since an elder succubus could cause a riot just by going for a stroll. ...which was more or less exactly what had happened in this case.

“It’s possible she is normally reclusive, and the enchantment caused her to finally reveal herself under the assumption that nothing could possibly go wrong if she did,” Der’ak mused aloud, less out of a desire to share his thoughts and more to coax additional information from Takatoama.

"She did seem like she wasn’t quite familiar with certain things she should have, but the way she talked was always very enigmatic. Almost coy.” It frowned thoughtfully. “Something else was odd though. From what I’ve heard about elders, they tend to be very traditional when it comes to gender. But when I said I was trans-eldritch, she was almost...supportive. No, not almost, she was supportive. She said that my tentacles were sexy and then arranged for me to use them on her.”

“It’s true that some elders have difficulty grasping the idea of cars and electricity as more than modern fads, but some are more cosmopolitan.”

“That doesn’t fit with her being a hermit for centuries, though.” Takotoama’s tentacles drooped. “Maybe she didn’t have much chance for variety, and metal tentacles seemed like a novelty to her.”

Der’ak could practically hear the words Takotoama wasn’t saying: Even if they weren’t as good as the real thing.

“Or,” Der’ak said, “she might not be nearly as old as she claimed to be.”

If a succubi that old really walked into Norville and turned on the charm, half the town would feel it. The non-magic genders might not know why their libidos suddenly spiked to eleven, but it would be obvious to those in the know. It wasn’t a smoking gun, elders could suppress their power just like everyone else. But considering she hadn’t been seen doing anything a mildly powerful succubus couldn’t do if she put her mind to it, it was just as plausible that Starastera had been bluffing about her age because she didn’t think she’d face consequences for doing so.

“We have a description of her from other onlookers,” Der’ak said. “Truly striking scarlet-and-coal hair, as everyone seemed first to say. Circlet of glittering white metal, loose chain choker, ruby earrings, golden anklets, diamond jewel in her navel, heels. But you spent longer in her presence than almost anyone. Is there anything you’d add to that description? Or any specifics you felt on the magic of her jewelry-” Der’ak stopped himself. He’d managed to forget that Takotoama was assigned mundane at birth and didn’t have natural magical senses.

Going by the posture of the tentacles, Takotoama didn’t seem offended by his forgetfulness.

“Her hair didn’t seem natural,” Takotoama said, after what seemed like a long search for words. “It didn’t even seem magical. It seemed… her. Very her. And more like hair than normal hair does, if that makes sense. It’s hard to describe.”

“Anything that could help us locate her? Track Starastera down, find wherever she’s hiding...” Der’ak paused, observing the subtle, uncontrollable curl in Takotoama’s body language. Seeing what a non-eldritch interrogator might have had more trouble observing. Maybe this whole interrogation hadn’t been a bad idea after all.

“You don’t want to help us find her,” Der’ak said. He made the question into a certainty. Takotoama would correct him if he was wrong.

Takotoama’s tentacles curled more. “It still feels like she just… helped me. Like it would be wrong to, act against her, because she, she...”

“Gave you a hand?”

Takotoama’s tentacles were tying themselves into knots. It was answer enough.

“What would you be thinking about that if you hadn’t been enchanted?”

“I would be thinking that there’s no way I could still be enchanted, because I’ve been disenchanted, very thoroughly scanned, and pronounced clean of further effects.”

Der’ak kept his voice very gentle. “You’re not in trouble yourself. Lashkiss has made her views on that clear, and so has Milse Orkosi. So this isn’t a legal threat. Just us trying to prevent another giant incident in a public park. Still. You’re evading the question. What would you think if your mind was clear? Had always been clear?”

Takotoama didn’t answer.

“It’s possible,” Der’ak said, sparing part of his attention to keep his own tentacles very retracted, very nonthreatening, “that you are feeling grateful to Starastera, even after her enchantment ended, because she helped you get with Mell and helped you cut loose with your tentacles for the first time. But she had no way of knowing things would end that well. What she did-”

“She did know. She knew that everything would be all right.”

“Starastera believed that because she was enchanted. By some other malicious or enchanted actor that we still haven’t found, because we can’t find Starastera.”

Takotoama’s voice was near a whisper. “She was right. She thought she wouldn’t do any harm and she was right. You don’t-you can’t understand how sensible it all seemed, how it feels to remember everything in the universe just lining up behind the truth that everything will be okay, and she. Was. Right.”

“It is not impossible,” Der’ak said carefully, “that by the time we’re done tallying up everything that’s happened today, somebody, somewhere, will turn out to have been seriously hurt.”

“Seeing that-if it’s true-might help make up my mind-about things. I-I don’t know. I can tell I don’t sound like somebody who’s never been enchanted, right now.”

“Melusine did mention,” Der’ak said-even more carefully, though some of his less controlled tentacles were tensing in case he had to suddenly fend off an enemy eldritch-“something about you saying that you were going to do something worthy of a mad scientist while nothing you did could possibly go wrong?”

But Takotoama’s tentacles only relaxed. “Oh. You don’t need to worry. That was totally harmless.”

Der’ak did, in fact, continue to worry.

It must have come through in the posture of his tentacles. “No, I mean it,” Takotoama insisted. “It was something I’d think would totally harmless even if I’d never been enchanted. All I was doing was going online, finding prediction markets, and buying contracts on nice things happening, like new antibiotics being discovered. Because if nothing can go wrong, I can’t lose money, right? Which means-I was thinking back then-that if I bet on nice things happening, that means they actually need to happen.”

“But you can, in fact, lose money,” Der’ak said. He was now concerned for a whole different reason. “How much did you spend? Because Starastera or her own enchanter is liable for it, legally speaking.”

“I would only lose as much as the bid-ask spread when I sell the contracts back. Prices have had almost no time to move…” Takotoama’s voice slowed. “Although-if I believe in the way that I felt then-I shouldn’t have lost any money. At all.”

Takotoama’s tentacles were moving in ways that Der’ak was having trouble reading.

“May I have my laptop back?” said Takotoama. “Just for a little. To check on things. It’s-possible that I should be seeing things more your way.”

Der’ak hesitated, then made a difficult judgment call. “You may,” Der’ak said.

A minute or two later, and Takotoama was browsing the web with Der’ak squinting over its shoulder, as best he could through the thick agent sunglasses. Eldritch and nonspecialized computers did not mix well, at least not with cis-eldritch.

“Okay, that’s down,” said Takotoama. Some of its tentacles were twitching in alarming ways, suggestive of restrained violence. “And that’s down. And the bid-ask spread on that one is awful, there’s no way I could-”

And then Takotoama just-stopped. “Never mind,” it said. Der’ak couldn’t read the voice, the tentacles. “Surprise announcement about a planned release of anti-malarial genetically modified mosquitos in Florida. Just in the last hour. The contract on an African version went way up in price, so the portfolio as a whole is up, even though some parts of it are down. Stupid. I should have thought of that, and only bought the most important contracts. Though the one that’s up was one of the most important ones anyhow.”

“So…” Der’ak said. He was not entirely following this. ‘Goth he might not be, but he’d still grown up in an eldritch culture that had been, for all of the obvious reasons, slower to adopt to computers designed for female-templated body plans with good eyes and fingers.

“So, Starastera didn’t do any actual harm,” said Takotoama. “Any actual harm, at all, that I actually know about for certain. Not even my losing a couple of hundred dollars, because of what I am now repeatedly telling myself was luck. Sheer helpful luck in sufficient quantity to make nothing bad have happened. I know it’s only a nice coincidence, you don’t need to explain that to me. But it’s not helping when it comes to shrugging this whole thing off.”

“Be that as it may,” Der’ak said, switching to another tack entirely, “you should understand that you do not owe Starastera anything. It’s not like she threw herself in front of a bullet for you. She did a number of illegal things with you and other people, toyed with you, mind-controlled you, and generally used yourself and Melusine for her own amusement. The fact that she didn’t hurt you, and believed she wouldn’t hurt you, doesn’t mean that you owe her. There was no malice in it? Fine. But what actually happened here is that a certain succubus, when she believed it would do no harm, entertained herself by playing tricks on you and Melusine. Even on the most charitable interpretation of things from her own standpoint, do you think she saw herself as doing anything that meant you owed her protection from Enforcement afterwards?”

Takotoama seemed to be seriously considering this, if the tightness of its tentacles was any indication. “But-”

“Did she say that she thought you owed her a debt?” Der’ak said. “Because surely you can see that anyone who had never been enchanted would say that Starastera, or whoever enchanted her, owes you a very significant-”

A loud ringing started from within Takatoama’s pack. Both blinked in confusion, before one of its tentacles snaked into a pocket, the tip sliding open to remove a ringing phone from within. Takatoama seemed embarrassed, but Der’ak’s tentacles began to twist on themselves.

“This room is covered by signal jamming, you shouldn’t be able to get a call in here,” he stated as the phone continued ringing in defiance of his words.

“This is the same number that called to lure me out of the building,” Takatoama mused, and Der’ak’s limbs tied into knots.

Of course Milse Orkosi had a way of getting around their jamming if she wanted. And of course she was calling his subject directly, in the middle of an interrogation, rather than going through anything resembling official channels.

While they were officially on the same side these days, Orkosi’s checkered past hadn’t made her many friends in Enforcement. The fact that she was Lady Regora’s personal troubleshooter just made things worse.

Cowboy cops were only fun when someone else had to pick through the wreckage.

“Go ahead and answer it,” Der’ak said resignedly, flipping a tentacle at the phone in Takatoama’s metallic grip. It nodded and pressed the talk button.

“Hello?” it said, holding the phone to its face with the tentacle holding it. “...yes, that was me. You were the woman with the pizza, right?”

Der’ak had good hearing, but he still couldn’t make out what Orkosi was saying on the other side of the line. He momentarily regretted not asking Takatoama to put it on speaker, but the idea of listening in on one of Milse Orkosi’s conversations caused an involuntary shiver of dread to run down every one of his tendrils.

“Yes? She said what?” Takatoama continued listening, its eyes now wide. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I-Could you repeat that?”

It looked even more unsettled than Der’ak felt, the tips of its tentacles folding and unfolding as the voice on the phone continued to speak.

“...is this real?” Takatoama asked softly, in disbelief. “No, I understand. I… I won’t tell anyone until I’m sure, but-thank you. This means a lot to me. Maybe to a lot of people.”

Orkosi laughed on the other end of the line, then said something else Der’ak couldn’t hear.

“If I ever see her again, I will. I promise.” Its grip on the phone was so tight Der’ak worried it would crack the plastic. “Thank you again. If I learn anything new or she contacts me, I’ll let you know.”

It hung up the phone, its limbs still shaking with what looked like shock. That wasn’t too unusual for individuals who had just spoken with Orkosi, and the fact that it hadn’t wet itself was a good sign. Its eyes were wide and manic though, and Der’ak had the uncomfortable feeling Orkosi had just thrown a live grenade into his investigation.

“Could you please,” Der’ak said, “say whether that person just told you anything relevant to the investigation? Without telling me anything that is going to get me mixed up in her affairs in any way whatsoever.”

“She told me that Starastera paid back her debt to me with-with a lot a lot a lot of interest. I need to go. I have to get to my lab.” Takatoama rose into the air, its chair dropping with a clatter. Its tentacles were gripping the floor and walls hard enough that cracks were forming, and its goggle-covered eyes were fixed on the door. “I need to go right now.”

Der’ak weighed his options. Going on body language, at this point his only hope of getting anything useful out of Takotoama was to threaten to hold it indefinitely until it answered his questions. He might have considered it too, but Takatoama’s tentacles were beginning to writhe with impatience as it glanced between him and the door.

If he didn’t let it go, it would probably try to break out of Enforcement with force.

He couldn’t bring himself to do that to the kid.

“Get going,” Der’ak sighed. “I’ll handle the paperwork.”

One of his tentacles stretched behind himself and opened the door. Takatoama practically launched itself through the opening, sailing over Der’ak in a blur of motion before vanishing into the hall with the sound of clanking limbs.

Der’ak sighed again, one of his tentacles drifting over to massage his aching head. He forced the rest to lift him upward so he could begin sliding back into his body-suit and clothes. All his work establishing a rapport and gaining Takatoama’s trust, sent down the drain with a single phone call.

This was why so-called troubleshooters needed to be outlawed.

Extras - Story by Rockeye: Sexy Cat Burglar

New ongoing story by Rockeye:

Sexy Cat Burglar.

Will qualify for payment if Rockeye accepts it.

(Glowfic, but "sex is sexy" glowfic rather than "sex is generalized cuddling" glowfic, which is the hard-to-describe quality I require to pay for glowfic.)

Extras - A Post-Instrumentality Odyssey: quest by Planeswalker

A Post-Instrumentality Odyssey by Planeswalker is now running, and up to 24K words.

This is a CORE Erogame quest, featuring an older Rei Ayanami, taking her first steps into one more part of being human.

Extras - For Love and Pleasure: story by Rockeye

For Love and Pleasure, a story (not quest) by Rockeye, is now running.

This is a story about an innocent inhabitant of a LitRPG world who receives the CORE Erogame, leading (at first?) to less metaphysical alarums, since (she thinks?) getting a System is normal for some people.

Index - Current Stats

Spoiler

Status

Description & Stats

Personal Effects

Quests

Skills

These are current stats, and contain spoilers for the current state of the story. If it's your first read-through, just keep reading.

Cinderella Sheen
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (58,250 / 50,000) (+)

Stats:

DOM: -510/510
SUB: -510/510

BOD: 28
LST: 23
SED: 26
FUK: 25
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 38
Perk Points: 4
Money: $10199

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: Tired
Equipment: Darkfire earrings, High heels (Tier 3), Ashikoki anklets, Simple diamond navel stone

Busy Mode: On

(As of chapter 5.16.3. These descriptions do not update chapter-by-chapter.)

Description: Cinderella Sheen is a sophomore at Norville U, still living at home with her mother. And now she's also Starry, the Erogamer. Overwhelmed by the incredible gifts the Erogame has showered on her and its even greater promises, she's embraced her destiny fully and vowed to take on anything the game can throw at her. She remains worried over how the Erogame treats its other characters, and afraid of what her impossible powers might mean in the larger picture.

Character Stats:

LVL / Level: The quantified totality of your potency as an erogame character. The effect of this characteristic goes beyond just the 5 extra stat points you get per level, and the additional perk point you receive every 5th level.
BOD / Body: Your physical attractiveness, and other biological capabilities. At higher levels, your body becomes able to enact more exotic erogame events.
LST / Lust: The intensity of your sexual urges, and how easy it is to get you going.
SED / Seduction: Your ability to seduce others, to pique their interest and arouse their desire.
FUK / Fucking: Your ability to perform in bed and give others pleasure… or other sensations.
PRV / Perversion: Your descent into the world of naughtiness, fetish, deviance, and corruption.
ERO / Erogame Logic: The extent to which the world will bend---or can be bent by you---to create romantic and sexual situations in defiance of probability. Or at higher levels, physics.
DOM / Dominant Energy: Based off SED and FUK, fueling skills that invoke your dominance, sadism, or mastery.
SUB / Submissive Energy: Based off LST and PRV, fueling skills that invoke your submission, masochism, or service.

Info // Character Stats // Level:

At LVL 11, you are now a proper Erogamer and true. Be ready; the game thinks you are.

You can increase your level by completing the quests the Erogame offers you, or by causing romantic and sexual events to happen to you or around you. The more difficult the challenge, the greater the rewards.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

Raising your BOD to 22 has brought you to the point of being pretty enough that people notice. You're the prettiest girl in the room, so long as the room isn't too large.

You can increase this stat by using your body itself to bring happiness into the world, through the grace of your feminine form, its presentation and concealment, its motions and ornamentation. Getting naked and letting men perv on you works too.

Info // Character Stats // Lust:

A LST of 22 makes you the horniest person in the room, if there aren't too many teenaged boys in it. Your body is unusually receptive to pleasure, and other sensations.

You gain in this stat by allowing yourself to feel your urges and wants and desires fully, and by following through on them. Or by deliberately driving yourself mad with frustration. It's two sides of the same coin.

Info // Character Stats // Seduction:

Your SED of 24 makes you the most seductive person in the room, if nobody in the room is a pro. Much of that is driven by being a pretty girl on the lay; but also your understanding of others, and your speech to them, has begun to cross the vast gap that separates one mind from another.

You can increase this stat by pursuing and being pursued, by catching others and being caught, by tending to their yearning and not just their reward, by understanding sex as a thought inside other people's minds and not just a collision of bodies.

Info // Character Stats // Fucking:

Your FUK of 19 describes you as well above average in bed even before taking your Erogame skills into account, someone whose passion and eagerness would make her a good lay even if she wasn't the Erogamer.

You will increase in this stat by giving others pleasure and other sensations, watching the results and learning from both your successes and mistakes, and always aspiring to become ever better in bed.

Info // Character Stats // Perversion:

At a PRV of 26, you are now the most perverted person in the room even if the room is in coastal California, so long as it's not in San Francisco. You aren't shameless, but oh, you do enjoy your shame.

You can increase this stat by listening to parts of yourself whose voices were previously drowned out by other parts; or by stepping off the roads you've always walked, and not immediately turning away from what you find beyond.

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At ERO 30, you are living an eroge set in a world that has begun to be, just a little, impossible. The people around you still act in their own interests and according to their own psychologies, but sometimes they have a strange little talent or their minds and behaviors seem a bit eroge-like. Events and outcomes around you are no longer strictly constrained by realism.

Your local surroundings have just begun to embark on the path of major sociocultural improbability. The larger world is just beginning to embark on the path of minor sociocultural improbability.

As you continue to push the bounds of realism, the social impossibilities will become more blatant, the first signs of physical unrealism will continue to develop, and your influence will sink deeper and farther into your domain.

Info // Character Stats // Dominant and Submissive Energy:

If this were a different game, you'd have mana and hit points.

And they'd refill just from you sitting around on your ass doing nothing.

Lol.

Statuses

Hairstyles

Perks

Equipment

Metrics

Traits

'Innocent' Virgin: Merely existing in the age of the Internet has already raised your PRV stat above 10. Still, until you choose to lose your virginity, the Erogame will not force you to give it up.

Technical Virgin: Though you have now touched and been touched, you still have some important body parts unravished. The Erogame will technically not force you to lose this last shred of pseudo-innocence. Technically.

Teased: You have undergone X cumulative points of erotic teasing, with no relief for Y days. Sexual stimuli of any kind impact you as if your LST were Z₁ higher, you can be aroused Z₂% faster, and once aroused you are disinhibited as if your PRV were Z₃ higher. Decreased inhibition only applies up to perversions within the range of your PRV + 8, and further extremes are no more endurable for all your desperation. While under the effect of the Teased status, any wet dreams you have will end in further frustration, providing no relief. This includes any fantasies you enter using the perk What Dreams May Come.

Rapebait (I): At Lvl X, wandering alone through a disreputable part of town wearing torn clothing and looking visibly frightened is giving you Y experience points per hour and a Z% chance per hour of being sexually assaulted by an antagonist capable of overcoming your defenses. Any such assaults may be time-laced to avoid disrupting the progression of timed quests, or merged with those quests where appropriate.

The Coals Relighted: This hairstyle was the last creation of Satsuki-chan, an incredibly talented but shy cosplayer who had never let any boy touch her. When she finally decided to try to talk to boys, she spent weeks dyeing and re-dyeing her hair until she had created this style, symbolizing a fire that had been allowed to go out before being relighted. On her way to the convention where she planned to make her debut, the car Sacchin and her friends were taking was struck at high speed by a drunken salaryman, killing her. If in her last moments she had known that you would copy her hairstyle, she would have been glad to know that her effort was not wasted, and that it would help another girl blossom at last.

Whenever you are doing something for the first time, you receive +15 on all rolls. However, rolling 2 is as bad a critical failure as rolling 1.

Earth's Tones: When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, his first thoughts were not of his own safety, but of his world. He kept his composure and did the best he could: interrogating, dating, seducing, deflowering, and sealing the being called Starry. Charles knew that he had succeeded when he saw, in triumph and sadness, that Starry's beautiful fiery hair had faded into an ordinary earthy color.

Of course, that whole frightening and desperate emergency was a lie, an accidental prank by Cinderella Sheen that she turned into a lure for the handsome hero to whom she wanted to yield her virginity. So all of Charles's effort and courage was for nothing… or was it? It's not impossible that someday Cinderella might have become what Charles thought she was. There's nothing any less heroic about heading trouble off before it starts.

This Conceptual Hairstyle was created by Cinderella Sheen to symbolize her promise to her beloved that she would be a part of humanity, as channeled through her somewhat distracted-at-the-time thought about making her hair look 'average' and 'less alien'. The resulting waist-length hairstyle has no color of its own, and instead is the current mean reflectance of the hair colors of everyone on Earth, including the hair colors that bald people would possess if they were not bald. This presently works out to a greyish-brown.

While worn, this hairstyle reduces ERO by 50% (rounded up) and negates all skills and statuses with a higher minimum ERO.

This hairstyle's length and other non-chromatic properties are not symbolically linked to anything larger. However, targeting this hairstyle with skills or abilities that change its color should not be done lightly.

But She Was Such a Good Student: If this were a different game, you'd be starting with a high INT stat. Throughout your scholastic career, your grades continue to reflect your actual knowledge of the course material, and you have no unusual difficulties mastering that material. Even if you miss classes or assignments for, uh, reasons.

Marshmallow Test: Receive two additional perks, for a net of one more perk than you would've had otherwise. This perk can only be taken after reaching Lvl 10 and only if it is the first perk you have chosen other than your starting perk.

Friends With Benefits: Your friends, companions, and allies have an easier time keeping up with your rapidly growing power as they follow you down many strange paths---if that's what you want, anyway. This special perk unlocks the Share the Fun subskill of the Bestow#*&(#@$)#$wer Sapient skill tree. (Don't worry! This perk does not interfere with Marshmallow Tests because you did not choose it.)

Sort by: Price (low to high) Plot Relevance (high to low)

<> High heels (Tier 3). This crimson footgear was manufactured with a high level of professional craft to complement a variety of other outfits, and to be quietly dangerous in both appearance and price.

<> Simple diamond navel stone. Produced by the apprentice jeweler Miss Oldman, this piece complements other jewelry without being a statement on its own. The needlessly large diamond that forms its centerpiece is its sole claim to unaffordability... Increases by 25% the effect of the least expensive other piece of jewelry you are wearing.

<> Ashikoki anklets. Simple golden bracelets whose job is to call attention to your feet, not distract from them. Master Cross's proprietary blend of rare-element additives and other special treatments makes these bracelets exceptionally resilient to mischief, even at the purity level of 22ct gold. And also, of course, exceptionally pricey... +2 to SED and FUK respectively when you are offering or administering a footjob.

<> Glittering circlet. A braid of white metal whose outward-facing white-diamond surfaces appear to sparkle from many possible directions of illumination. Master Cross has cunningly wrought links of bendable alloy so that this circlet can hug your brow as solidly as a sweatband, diminishing the chance of you losing this very expensive item... +2 to hypnosis-related skills for so long as the subject has their eyes open and can see your forehead and the glittering, tiny spots of light winking in and out, reminding them of how interested they are in your glittering circlet which is so very pretty on your forehead, the sparkles of light distracting them from the sound of your voice which sinks into their ears as they go on staring at the glittering circlet on your forehead.

<> Fragile breast-net. A wide fishnet of silver alloy, set with fractional carats of corundum, this piece could only belong in the bedroom. The thin strands proceeding from the hand of Mistress Maislin convey fragility and vulnerability, as though of a defenseless harem slave. Though only a rich sheikh indeed could afford to tear this netting away... If you wear this item while having sex with someone whose net worth turns out to be sufficiently high, they will destroy it deliberately and then compensate you with 100x this item's purchase price. However, this item has a 5% chance of being destroyed in any other sexual encounter.

<> Jeweled pussy curtain. A veil of thin jeweled strings that fails to obscure the top half of your pussy and does nothing at all to conceal the bottom half, this work of Miss Oldman has little subtlety to it, but enough carats of gemstone to be expensive anyway... Doubles the potency and/or duration of any effect that targets your genitalia.

<> 9-colored lotus clip. A hair-ornamenting flower of 9 translucent petals, each petal of a different color and made of black metal veins piecing together thin planes of gemstone, this item was handcrafted by Mistress Maislin with the wistful knowledge that such a fragile thing could not last forever despite its price... This item can be sacrificed to boost your LVL by 3 for 3 days (stat points or perk points gained from this boost are temporary, but quests begun will remain in force); to provide a 3-week boost of 3 levels in each of 3 game skills; or to add 9 mana of any one color to your mana pool.

<> Many-metaled choker. Interlocked links of copper-plated steel, gold-plated steel, and platinum-plated steel set with a massive diamond, this creation of Master Cross is resilient without being inexpensive... +50 to maximum SUB while equipped. This item has a 30% chance of being destroyed to stop a decapitating strike.

<> Darkfire earrings. A swirl of synthetic ruby and opal wouldn't be nearly expensive enough for a creation of Master Cross. This might explain the unstable isotopes incorporated into the design, despite there being vastly easier ways to make earrings that glow faintly in the dark. It's not impossible that Master Cross has heard rumors about the other uses to which such earrings could be put... The ambient energy available to you never drops below Very Low, even if you are in an area that would otherwise qualify as an energy void.

<> Weirdly interlocking silvery bracelets. A matched array of silvery circles for both wrists, interlocking in a fashion that some might call Escherian or even Lovecraftian. The store's proprietress bought these from a pawnshop when the intricacy caught her eye, polished them, and marked them up by 2000%. Though their true value is rather different... The effect of this jewelry does not manifest within regions of low spatial curvature.

Info // Online Presence:

You earn 10XP each time somebody comes:

- While looking at a non-retouched picture or video of you.
- While listening and paying attention to your recorded voice.
- While reading an erotic story you wrote that is entirely based on true events.
- While looking at an erotic drawing that you personally drew.
- While watching a hentai for which you provided at least one of script, storyboards, or voice acting.
- While playing a VR game whose models and motions were captured from you.
- While interacting with an AI that was programmed by you or trained on data you generated.
- While playing an eroge whose character routes feature you and your companions.

Only one orgasm per session will be counted. Repeated edging or ruined orgasms may qualify at the Erogame's discretion. Forcing or incentivizing orgasms (e.g. as mandatory supervised daily sessions within a territory you rule) reduces per-orgasm XP gains, but does not eliminate them. Promoting or advertising your online presence carries no penalty.

For details of how you are currently doing online, check Info // Online Presence // My Metrics. Advanced ad-free metrics can be unlocked by paying $5.99/month.

Info // Friends With Penalties // Erin Penna

Erin Penna / Copper Swallow: Forbidden voluntary orgasm, edged twice in the morning and twice at night, may be subjected to forced orgasm by other lovers. TIPEC: CCAFF => 150XP/day.

Torment: C - Endurable (Your victim's arousal and suffering is constantly on her mind, but does not impede her daily functioning; your victim's torment is enhanced by her youth and freshness heightening her emotions.)
<> After 12 days your victim's torment will decay to D-grade, as she becomes used to her condition, if you do not worsen your victim's suffering before then.

Intimacy: C - Emotional (Your victim knows one of your identities through brief but intense sexual companionship, the most powerful experience in her life to date; she thinks of you often. You know your victim through brief but memorable sexual companionship; you think of her occasionally.)
<> After 5 days your intimacy with your victim will decay to D-grade, if you do not see each other again before then.

Participation: A - Personal (You personally initiated your victim's torment and personally tormented her today for an extended period.)
<> Maintaining A-grade participation requires significant personal effort on a daily basis.

Enforcement: F - Free (Your victim may sometimes give herself an orgasm after continued non-relief, feeling weak and sad that nobody is stopping her, if you do not arrange for better enforcement soon.)
<> Raising Enforcement to "Monitored" or above will significantly increase earned XP.

Consent: F - Enthusiastic (Your victim has accepted her torment willingly, incentivized by only her own sexual excitement. She tries to pretend she has to obey, but she knows that in reality the choice is her own. This stark willingness is not softened by mind control, trickery, force of personality, or other mitigating circumstances.)
<> Raising Consent to "Dubious" or above will significantly increase earned XP.

Traits permit you to take on erotic roles that would be otherwise unavailable to your baseline species. You can have active Traits with Costs summing to at most your current LVL.

Traits are unlocked when you interact with entities of the corresponding kind from a position of clear equality or superiority---contesting them within their own domains, or one-upping them decisively. Your new Trait will enable you to pass as an entity of that kind, with native capabilities at most equal to those of the entities you have overcome.

Overcoming more powerful entities of a kind will increase that Trait's maximum settable Power. Adjusting a Trait's Power below its maximum, passing as an entity less powerful than the most powerful ones you have overcome, will decrease its Cost. One-upping entities more decisively or in more ways will also decrease Costs.

Traits at their maximum Power will often have very high Costs. This system is not meant as a road to power supreme through stacking the abilities of defeated foes to defeat still greater ones. Traits are visas to different worlds and ways of being, issued when you show yourself ready.

You may change your currently active Traits whenever you increase in LVL. You may activate a new Trait after acquiring it, and before your next increase in LVL, if you can afford its Cost.

Succubus (Septisexual system). Cost 10 / Power 14 (-)( )

This trait enables you to pass as a succubus, one of the five magical sexes in the Septisexual system. At Power 14, trait characteristics include:

- Attention redirection (Lvl 3): You possess a young succubus's innate ability to redirect attention towards her own sexuality, or away from it.
- Sexual activity sense (Lvl 2): You possess a young succubus's innate ability to sense some aspects of nearby sexual activity.
- Thaumic sense (Lvl 1): You possess a young succubus's innate ability to sense local magical fields.
- Common sense (Lvl 5): If your ignorance of Septisexual knowledge and customs would otherwise disrupt your disguise, you will instinctively say or do something reasonable for a young succubus instead.

Some ways to progress in this trait:

- Defeat a succubus in a contest of seduction.
- Defeat a succubus in a contest of sexual skill.
- Defeat a succubus in a contest of supernatural powers within her native domains.
- Sexually dominate a succubus against her resistance and inspire feelings of submission in her.
- Negotiate a contract with a succubus to fulfill the lusts she senses from you, then want her to do something so perverted she'd rather accept the contract's penalty clause.
- Successfully pose as a succubus, to another succubus, without having this trait active.
- Accept a succubus's pledge of loyalty and service.
- Earn at least 5000XP from making a succubus your friend with penalties.
- Have a succubus fall in love with you. (You do not need to reciprocate her feelings.)

Active

Available

Hair

Completed

Failed

Declined

Ineligible

Derailed?

Ero Achievements

Companion (Ongoing)

Companion (Ended)

A Goddess Worthy of Worship

Among the dominant women you meet, pick out one who is reasonably stable, mostly sane, a truly good person deep down, and has an available vacancy in her harem for a 17-year-old ex-Mormon college student who hasn't come out to his family.

Success: 50,000XP
Failure: Tonight was the happiest night of Blak@(#&$(*#^%@{)*$#@)*#%)@$)@#*&%#)@#inds a mistress on his own and you don't get any XP for it.

Time limit: 30 days from the night you met Blake Layton.

Better Battling Big-Boobied Bots

Donald Warren Merring of Norville, CA considers himself a warrior in the fight against capitalism. Without directly targeting him, his family, his friends, his work, or his neighborhood, transform the world until he decides to resist you instead. Then, attack him using at least two sexbots.

Success: +1,000,000 XP
Failure: Donald Merring continues to lead a life of empty drama, filled with imaginary assaults and pretended victories against forces that continue unchanged.

Slave to the In-Law

Find a submissive man willing to take orders from your mother, and delegate him to cook and clean at your mother's current residence. In case it wasn't clear from your mother's tone of voice, this quest is not optional.

Success: +50,000XP, greatly increased relations with Mom
Failure: Decreased relations with Mom
Time limit: You must finish this quest within 1 week of the first time you have 3+ submissive men in your own harem. Surely a good daughter wouldn't try to have three slaves while her poor, long-suffering mother doesn't even have one.

Better Than That Ponce

For thousands of years, alchemists and explorers have futilely spent their lives and their deaths seeking a Philosopher's Stone or a Fountain of Youth… an ancient quest that is about to end. Because an eighteen-year-old girl decided the sorta-friend who ate lunch with her wasn't pretty enough.

Success: ???
Failure: ?

Quest updated:

After a frantic scramble to find a new venue when their previous hotel unexpectedly canceled on them, the fourth Conference on Applications of Proteins and Peptides is being held in Mauss Auditorium in the Norville annex of CSU Bakersfield, with the keynote lecture being given on Friday morning at 8:00am.

Many conference attendees will also be present for drinks and hors d'ouevres at a reception starting 7pm on Thursday evening, held in the Wainscott room of the Norville Arms-Marriott where many conference attendees are staying.

Subquest: Come With Me If You Want Everyone To Live

Get 18 attractive female scientists and 12 attractive male scientists to attend your informal evening workshop on applied reproductive biology.

Quest updated:

The informal workshop has been duly scheduled. Now the attendees need to become more comfortable around the group and each other… which you can best catalyze by leading the way in visibly enjoying yourself.

Quest updated:

A cooperative biologist has taken over the work of ordering and testing the Ero Virus. Soon you should obtain several doses of Ero Virus, making it possible for you to finish the immediate task you set out to accomplish... and yet, the larger way ahead remains unclear to you and your companions.

Sex Drive (3/250)

Personally administer orgasms to 250 different car drivers while they are driving. Their drive must begin from some intent other than receiving your attentions, such as a rideshare, or picking you up as a hitchhiker.

Success: Gain Ero-Travel. If Ero-Travel has already been obtained via perk, the perk point used is refunded, and you do not gain another perk after exceeding ERO 75.

The Friend We Made Along The Way

A motley group of paranormal investigators has come together to investigate the unusual events in Norville, especially the mysterious woman with amazing hair who seems to be at their center.

Subquest: The Man in the Know

The mysterious woman is sometimes accompanied by a man going by the alias of "Charles," who has yet to display any paranormal abilities of his own, but seems to know all about her and to have power or responsibility over her. Who is "Charles," and is he acting alone, or on behalf of a larger organization? Could this be another path to track her down?

I Don't Do Work, But I Am A Friend Who Does

Lorelei Lashkiss lacks the slightest enthusiasm for hunting down the rogue succubus who raped and tickled her daughter. Lorelei loves her daughter dearly, but she also knows succubi, and she knows what Melusine almost certainly got off on. That poor rogue succubus was likely charmed herself, since her actions seem senseless otherwise. Unfortunately, the honor code of the futanari says that people can't be allowed to get away with naughty deeds just by seeming to have been mind-controlled, if there are no witnesses to the charming. The rules of the Futarchy say that Lorelei must carry out a just and proportionate vengeance on that naughty rogue who defied her dominance of Norville.

Lorelei was already millimeters away from giving up on the mad mess that is Norville and moving her family to some quiet Amish village they could corrupt instead. She does not. Have time. To hunt down. A rogue succubus. And tickle her. But Lorelei does have money, and when she called the Oregon Tickler about acting as her torturer, the Oregon Tickler claimed she had a "friend" who could locate the fugitive. Does the Oregon Tickler have the slightest concept of what she's taking on? Lorelei could not give fewer fucks. The rules allow her to outsource the job.

Can the Oregon Tickler (Danni) and the Oregon Tickler's mysterious friend (you) successfully locate and tickle the succubus Starastera (you)?

Success: +$30,000, +10,000XP, 6 hours of learning how Danni tickles and lickles when her professional pride is at stake, increased relationship with Danni Arcadia, increased relationship between Lorelei Lashkiss and the Oregon Tickler's mysterious friend, increased reputation with sexually deviant criminals, unlocks additional tickle-assassination missions.
Bonus objective #1: ?
Bonus objective #2: ??
Failure: Lorelei Lashkiss sends another tickle-assassin after Starastera. (Automatically starts the Mario Morganti quest.)
Time limit: 1 day to accept, 9 days to complete.

Quest updated: The quest The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway has modified this quest to have an escape option with no penalties or rewards.

Escape: After Danni honestly tells you about the whole thing, tell Danni to accept the hunt herself, not in her friend's name. Once Danni accepts, squarely defeating her three times will end the hunt. If you challenge Danni to a game of paper-scissors-rock, Danni will play rock, then scissors, then scissors.

Perfect in Every Way

Complete a university semester of at least 16 credits with maximum grades in every course taken. These grades may be obtained by any means necessary.

Success: +30,000 XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: ---

Coo-Coo-Ca-Choo

Somewhere in the world there must be a boy between age 16 and 24 who finds puffy middle-aged women to be unbearably sexy and worthy of some serious worship, including foot massages.

Success: +40,000XP, +1 PRV, greatly increased relations with Mom
Failure: ---

Promote the Queen

Your mother hasn't had an easy time taking care of you on her own. A raise at her workplace would go a long way towards making her feel less stressed. Get your mother a higher salary at Johnston & Johnston, by any means necessary. (That's code for seduction and blackmail, honey.)

Success: +30,000XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: ??

Become a Princess

Install your mother as the sovereign queen of a country with at least 5,000,000 residents. Make sure the country is in good shape when she gets it, and that there's a nice palace ready before she moves in.

Success: +5,000,000XP, extremely increased relations with Mom, +1 perk point
1st bonus objective: Take her by surprise. +500,000 XP.
2nd bonus objective: Do it on Mother's Day. +1,000,000 XP.
3rd bonus objective: Have Dad there waiting for her when she arrives. +2,000,000 XP.
Failure: ???

I am the Mother of All Things, and All Things Must Wear A Sweater

Stay warm for a whole day. Wear a sweater at all times that you are wearing any clothing. You fail if at any point you feel chilly, so watch that thermostat, sweetie.

Success: +1 Ero Environmental Resistance
Failure: ---

Bare the Body, Bare the Soul

Sam's Strippers is always on the lookout for new talent. Good for a few bucks, and maybe something more.

Gloryhole Girl (0/10,000)

Make his cock come without you seeing or touching any other part of him, and without him being able to see you or touch you. Is there really a human being on the other side of the hole? Some questions are better left unanswered… on both sides.

Objective #1: Drain 10 cocks: +1 FUK
Objective #2: Drain 100 cocks: +2 PRN
Objective #3: Drain 1,000 cocks: Personal forcefield, aura of awe, ability to fly.
Objective #4: Drain 10,000 cocks: ?????

A Fold in the Wolf.

After decades of a safe if not completely normal life with his more illegal fantasies staying fantasies, Artyom Volkov's life was disrupted one day when a strange girl looked him in the eyes and told him that she knew he'd meant it and that she believed he'd do it. She spoke of courage, of transcending an ordinary existence, and seemed to believe that in Norville this was not only possible but routine. Unable to clear her words from his mind, he tossed and turned that night, thinking it over. He knew that he was old, that he wasn't risking much if he risked ruining the remainder of his life. Would he die without ever having tried to live?

Despite ethnic stereotypes, Professor Artyom Volkov had in fact accumulated no criminal connections whatsoever over his lifetime as an academician in Connecticut. He could only think of one person who'd talked as if she had the underworld connections he needed, one person who might be able to turn his and Theresa Marshall's fantasy world into reality. The mysterious Norville girl Starry Starr… who was also the only loose end besides him and Dr. Marshall who knew about his intended crime. Her participation might guarantee her future silence. But with no student record showing her name, how could he find her?

Volkov can be found in Room 6F of the Helmut Kaloni Residence on Norville U's campus until Tuesday evening.

Success: +$200,000, +100,000XP, ??
Failure: ???, Theresa Marshall doesn't enter her true world.

The Lady Auditor

Famed troublemaker-turned-troubleshooter Milse Orkosi is visiting Norville. Just that by itself would be worrying enough, but worse, she has no obvious reason for needing to visit, and she isn't doing anything visible besides helping to clean up assorted local problems. Those who recognized her name are contemplating a visit to Sweden until this is over.

So long as Milse Orkosi is in town, maybe she can lend you a hand? You have her phone number.

Milse Orkosi can be invited as a temporary ally on any one quest compatible with the Septisexual system. Doing so automatically integrates that quest with The Lady Auditor.

Success: ???
Failure: ???

Quest updated: To avoid the surprise being a negative consequence, the quest The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway has revealed a mechanic of this quest: Involving Milse Orkosi in any problem grants a +85 bonus to all dice rolls where she is relevant. However, any failed roll involving her causes a related issue to become 85% more complicated.

Hunting Haircruxes

Join with your fellow investigators and hunt down the six pivotal insights that are the key to Starry's ultimate mastery of her hair, before the entity can find all seven herself!

Success: Starry doesn't find her haircruxes before you do.
Failure: You don't find the haircruxes before Starry does.

Updated: Curiosity and courage deserve reward, even if you have not truly begun to understand that sometimes "Yes" or "No" are simply two sides of the same coin with no real difference between them, the true answer being only hair. As with many other rewards, this one is manifested in the revelation of something that was always true, but not yet known to you: You have accumulated sufficient potential to create another Conceptual Hairstyle when the time is right.

Spread your horizons wider

Make yourself come to a fetish you've never fantasized about before.

Success: +100xp, +1 PRV
Failure: Shame at being unworthy to be titled the Erogamer.

A woman's best friend

Norville isn't large enough to have its own Good Vibrations store. You're stuck with checking one of the adult bookstores in town, if you want a cheap-ass overpriced vibrator from CalExotics before Amazon can ship you a proper Hitachi Magic Wand.

Success: +100xp
Failure: 'Anorgasmic' status, 2 days

I'm not God, but I'm here beside you

Blake Layton decided he was an atheist after a semester of undergrad philosophy challenged his sheltered upbringing. He hasn't dared come out to his family or his friends in the Church of Latter-Day Saints. He's ashamed to have been caught looking at you, and would melt into a terrified puddle if you called him out on looking at the magazine covers.

Help Blake Layton get started on his new life! By showing him your titties.

Success: +250xp
Failure: You fail.
1st bonus objective: Touch Blake and be touched by him. +350XP
2nd bonus objective: Take Blake's virginity on the same night. (Failed/declined.)
3rd bonus objective: Obtain Blake Layton for your harem as your submissive sex slave. (Failed/declined.)

Sheltered, in my arms.

The exhibitionist girl who grabbed Blake out of Walgreens has informed him that he is to become her boy-toy for the night. But the impossible fantasy can't continue unless they find somewhere to stay.

Success: Blake.
Failure: No Blake.

Silence indicates affirmative consent

Find an older man, or a fellow student who doesn't know or doesn't care that California passed SB-967 in 2014 to require clearly expressed consent (aka the "Yes Means Yes Act"), to violate your virginal vagina. In a way that could potentially make him a convicted sex offender for the rest of his life if you decided to press charges.

Or you could go weirder than that. ERO 19 gives you a lot of leeway, just saying.

Success: +5,000 XP, ?? +1 ERO
Failure: You either stay a virgin forever, or learn to ask for it like a good slut. Not to mention a sane one.

Off the Road

Tammi and Danni Arcadia have finally run into each other again after a long separation. They'll be celebrating in their own special way. They find you cute and wouldn't mind including you in their special celebrations. You remind them of Beth Cordova, and they never did get to say goodbye to her properly.

The Arcadias can be found in room 211 of the Norville Arms-Marriott until Sunday evening.

Success: +10,000XP, increased relations with Danni Arcadia
Failure: +20,000XP, increased relations with Tammi Arcadia
Extraordinary success: +35,000 XP, greatly increased relationship with the Arcadias, the Arcadias become available as quest companions.

Virgin Remover

Take Blake Layton's virginity, or make sure it's taken, within 30 days of Sunday night.

Success: +1,000XP
Failure: This ain't the Dresden Files, but you still don't want the 'Oathbreaker' status effect.
Extra success:: Take Blake's virginity so hard he can't even get hard again afterwards. Additional +5,000XP.

Beyond the Possible

You must prove your readiness before you can finish advancing the ERO stat to 30!

Fully convince somebody, using only the sub-ERO-30 powers already available to you, that some event has occurred that is truly impossible within the world they knew.

Success: ERO 30, +5,000 XP
Hidden goal #1: Complete this quest before it begins. +5,000 XP.
Hidden goal #2: Complete this quest at ERO <25. +5,000 XP.
Hidden goal #3: Complete this quest at ERO <20. +5,000 XP, special perk Friends With Benefits.

A Family-Friendly Harem

The next time he's in town, bring Charles over to dinner so that your mother can meet him. She promises she'll be on her best pretend-brainwashed behavior.

No, you don't get a choice about this.

Success: +100XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: unthinkable

Come Into His Parlour

Bring Bryan P. Landau to orgasm in six minutes with a lap dance, despite the grave obstacle presented by his pants.

Success: +3000XP, +1 FUK, the boss is quite impressed.
Failure: Personal enlightenment about the importance of checking your basement assumptions before you start building apartment complexes on top.

Refuse the giftsex

Vulnerable young girls shouldn't walk in the alleys near the mall, between 4th St and 7th St up to Luther Ave. It shouldn't be hard to stay away. Just don't go there. Simple.

Updated: The police are closing in on the Mall Rapist and will arrest him within the next 24 hours. Soon the streets will be safe for you again!

Updated: So close and yet so far! Minutes from when they would have encountered the Masked Rapist, the searching police unit has been called away to a false sighting.

Failed: You tried, you really did, but you just couldn't avoid going into the worst part of the city, walking around in a torn shirt, and getting raped by your#@)(*$#@)$#your mother's worst nightmare. At least now you know you can handle yourself when you're being handled.

Success: You continue to lead a boring life.
Failure: +20,000 XP; bonus perk point; increased relations with the Norville Redcaps faction.

The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway

Become the erotic adventuress you yearn to be, a lewd woman who walks freely through the worlds of eroge, before you invite Charles Adan to come with you. Or at least become a woman who tried visiting there once without holding herself back.

Anything that you do in order to pursue this quest will have no negative consequences.

No gains in LST, PRV, or ERO will occur as a result of pursuing this quest, even if you do something incredibly slutty, perverted, and improbable.

Failure: There are no negative consequences for refusing or failing this quest.
Success: There are positive consequences for succeeding in this quest.
Time limit: Charles finishes his own adventure at 11:53am. You will not be late for this and do not need to check the time.

Failed: You have failed this quest by not admitting your true desires to yourself, and by consciously and subconsciously repressing your sluttiest urges, your most perverse impulses, and your weirdest ideas.

A hidden mechanic of this quest has been revealed! For each noteworthy act you performed with this quest's protection, the Erogame will now simulate what net balance of consequences would have resulted under only the power of Erogamer's World, which grants you the consent of reality to live your life as an erogame.

Learned to drive a car while fucking the instructor... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Publicly stripped, humiliated, and hurt a girl you barely knew... rolling... consequences: overwhelmingly positive.
Mind-controlled that girl into orally raping a boy you met on the street... rolling... consequences: highly positive.
Offered that girl to a crowd of strangers... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Sentenced that girl to indefinite sexual torment... rolling... consequences: overwhelmingly positive.
Posed as a fae to a billionaire shopping for jewelry... rolling... consequences: neutral.
Walked naked through town and invited people to grope you... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Started an orgy at a poetry contest and rendered yourself completely vulnerable to their use... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Posed as an ancient succubus to a magically naive college freshman... rolling... consequences: highly positive.
Suggested stealing a policewoman's pants... rolling... consequences: slightly negative.
Suggested kidnapping the mayor's daughter... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Taunted a mad inventor into publicly fucking you with robotic tentacles... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Milked a boy without mercy and tickled a succubus to exhaustion... rolling... consequences: highly positive.
Randomly dialed a proactive auditor... rolling... consequences: slightly complicated.
Licked cake off a girl's breasts at a bakery and mind-cont@#)(%$*ruthed her into masturbating afterwards... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.

Total number of acts that you would not have mostly gotten away with under ordinary erogame logic:

0.

Rewards: Since completely wasting your chance to indulge in this quest would be a negative consequence of starting it, this quest will automatically restart at an opportune future point after you have gained significant additional LST, PRV, and ERO. A newly selected hidden mechanic will determine rewards in this sequel quest.

Thar she blows!

One of the boys at the mall might take you up on your invitation to a bathroom stall, despite your mediocre BOD and pathetic SED. He might even be backed-up enough to come in your mouth despite your low FUK.

Success: 2,000 exp; +1 sexual reputation, 'Daring'
Failure: 'Unwanted' status effect; -2 romantic reputation, 'Desperate'

Seduce, Contain, Protect

When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, he kept his composure, asked intelligent questions, and finally invited the eldritch horror on a date. Maybe if he went on interacting with her, he could persuade her to be nicer to humanity, or figure out something else to do about this situation. Besides, she was cute.

Lure this well-intentioned mortal into deflowering "Starry" in an attempt to prevent her from powering up… an attempt that will play right into her hands. And into your vagina.

Success: Loss of virginity
Failure: ??

Discipline of the Master

Shibari master Kusoyaro Gaki is passing through Norville on his journey of enlightenment. He's never found anyone worthy of receiving his special techniques, and holds little hope for the student meeting he'll be visiting.

Success: Learn a new technique in Shibari.
Failure: -$20.

Soulbender

Come on, you're the Erogamer. The Erogamer. You should be able to handle anything that could have been done by this so-called Lady Sally, right?

Minimum FUK: 85

Shadows of Lost Harmony

Hints and rumors tell of someone known as Lady Sally with unbelievable bedroom talents. Where on Earth could she have acquired them? Find the courtesans she once trained, and the people who truly knew her.

Success: +600,000,000XP; you learn the true meaning of friendship; ?????
Failure: Your home is invaded by cockroaches.
Time limit: 2.82 years to accept and complete.

A Man of Wealth and Taste

Stanley Silverman likes them young and eager. That last part can be a problem for him, considering his particular fetishes.

Min PRV: 30.

Starry's Stripping Society

Build your own strip club, or take over an existing one, and show the world how it should be done. And yet, what is it your strip club will have that matters so much? Besides blackjack and hookers.

Success: +300,000XP, $200,000 monthly income.
Failure: Loss of invested money, ???

Lvl 10, $2,000,000.

Hands Across Forever

Wielding or influencing whatever sources of power then exist, bring into being an operation that permits any person to be reunited with any other person they personally know well enough to miss---anyone they would feel sad about never seeing again, even if only a little. The closure of this operation applied recursively will be a set of people none of whom are mourning any other people.

Only begin this quest if your world's economy and society are sufficiently advanced to handle an abrupt population increase.

Min ERO: 95.

Old Ned

Ned Stonefield is way too old to help with whatever sexy mess you've gotten yourself into this time. Anyone who wanted the Serdyrrah to come out of retirement would have to offer him renewed youth into the bargain. As for threatening him into a mission, you don't want to know what happened to the last eldritch entity who tried.*

Min ERO: 40

Switch and bait

Get invited along to the Alpha Sigma Chi party tonight, then flirt with Nathaniel Miroa until he abandons Rachel Davidson right in front of her, and tries to spike your own drink instead of hers.

Success: +2,000XP, +1 SED
Failure: Rachel gets a free donation of GHB plus some other fluids.
Bonus objective #1: Let Nat have his way with you, then report to the police for blood testing and put a permanent end to his ways.

Kidnapping an innocent boy out of Walgreens and stealing his non-technical virginity earned +500XP.

Losing your non-technical virginity earned +1000XP.

Unintentionally exhibiting yourself at the arcade caused 5 people to masturbate to you that night, earning +250XP.

When Charles Met Starry: You've led a good and honest man to find his dominant side for the first time; through being courted by him through a beautiful and deeply emotional evening, that ended with him having no choice but to rape you in order to save the world. Then you became his girlfriend afterwards. +60,000XP, +2 ERO.

Being yuri-molested on live television caused 48 people to masturbate to you, followed by a man who saw you touching yourself, earning +2450XP.

You rubbed a voyeur into a shameful pants-messing orgasm, earning +350XP.

Masturbating in public caused 6 people to masturbate to thoughts of you that night, earning +300XP.

You used your hands to make an anonymous Lyft driver come, and swallowed it, earning +150XP.

Gave Nechtan Kelly a handjob and cruelly ruined his orgasm. +100XP.

Tempted and corrupted an experienced dom into walking a darker path. +500XP.

Erin Penna will masturbate herself into an unreleased frenzy tonight, and one way or another, she won't be returning to her old life. +500XP

Fucked Leonel Martinez while driving his car. Technically, Martinez wasn't driving when he came, but the Sex Drive quest isn't complaining. +200XP.

Forcing Erin Penna to blow Andy Driese in public earns you a total of +400XP for both of them.

Instructing two men to masturbate on Erin Penna earns you +150XP for both of them.

Riding a checkout clerk to his orgasm while four people watch you and masturbate, and another man jacks off onto Erin Penna's breasts, earns +700XP.

You enlightened Marge Wineberg of her true path to sexual fulfillment: being a sadistic lesbian pervert who gets off on torturing and degrading younger girls. This can only end well. +200XP.

Putting on a public sex show with Erin Penna in front of 62 people, and letting 17 people hurt her and come on her, has earned you +5000XP.

Kindly volunteering to fulfill Keifon Bradford's long-held fantasy about licking a woman all over and leaving her wet and unsatisfied earns you +150XP. Really, that was very nice of you.

Letting Grady Ericson quickly and uncaringly fuck you in public, while you bend over with your eyes closed, earns you +150XP.

Wandering through the dark on minimum rabbit levels, letting random Norville inhabitants lightly touch you and sample your goods, while you frustrate yourself by fantasizing about them doing more, earns +500XP.

Quickly but pleasantly fucking 71 people with no in-game goals except your own concupiscence earns you +7100XP, and +$1420 in miscellaneous tips.

Welded Joel and Melusine, and Melusine and Takotoama, into a healthy love triangle---all through the healing powers of rape, mind control, and not caring about consequences. +10,000XP.

Stripped Aloise Rochester, licked crushed cupcake off her breasts, and mind-cont@#)(%$*ruthed her into masturbating in public. +100XP.

Yeah, Fuck Humanity

For some people, being human is a badge of honor; for others, a fact they never question. For Alexander Robichaud, it's like being 120 pounds overweight. A practiced rejector of all things bullshit, he never thought until now that there might be a way out.

He is fascinated by your claim that non-humans like to have sex with humans, and plans to politely raise this subject as soon as he finds something to ask.

One Day

One day, Mori Wen made a mistake.

She forgot to set her watch for Daylight Savings Time.

When the day was over, she was still alive, though she didn't see much use in the fact. Her being alive didn't fix anything.

She didn't bother trying to build herself a new life. A new life happened to her anyway.

She moved on, because that's what human beings do. She learned to laugh again and smile. She attended to her needs and let other women seduce her into bed sometimes, though she told them never to kiss her.

Then, one day, she found hope, and she decided that moving on could go to hell.

Like No One Ever Was

Su Ziquan has decided to systematically learn, do science to, and munchkin together every magic and system of power he can find, with the goal of becoming a greater archmage than there has ever been---all to perform the ultimate spell that will undo Death itself. He needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and maybe this will do.

He's also going to keep an eye out for any magic he can use to become a girl. He's tired of agonizing over whether his attention is unwelcome every time he tries to decide whether to flirt with someone.

Being an adorable bouncy catgirl would be even better, if he can figure out how to get away with that. A catgirl being the most powerful archmage would be correct in ways he doesn't think he can explain.

The Dreams of Her Own

Maggie Strigi has never discovered within herself the larger life goals that other people claim they have. It does make her happy when she can help others achieve their own dreams, though. She doesn't see why that can't be enough. Maybe it is.

She doesn't dislike sex. It seems like it should be a way of making people she likes happy. That's made her happy too, on the few occasions it's worked correctly. Annoyingly, the people she likes tend to not be sexually satisfied by one-sided sex. She's wondering if she should give up and infuse herself with fae blood or something, even though the thought of becoming more sexual feels unpleasant.

Seven Kelvin

After striking out at the bar scene, Dr. Susanne Kelvin has resorted to her legendary efficiency and paid Passionate Nights to find a real delivery boy willing to enact one of her complicated fantasies. This delivery boy has backed out at the last minute, leaving Passionate Nights scrambling not to disappoint this extremely valuable new client. Call 661-PAS-SION and tell them you know a handsome young man who's competent at sex work, can memorize a script on short notice, and has worked as a deliveryman recently enough that a skeptical interrogation won't catch him out. Offer to stake $100 as a bond against a net $300 finder's fee if Dr. Kelvin reports satisfaction.

Naturally, you shouldn't show Charles any of the script Passionate Night sends you.

Game Skills

Reality Skills

Truths

Metareality Skills

Wield Vibrator: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 1 DOM / minute.

A skill to deploy the mechanical contrivances first used at the end of the 19th century to treat feminine hysteria by inducing 'hysterical paroxysm'. Capable of producing interesting sensations in all sorts of places, a vibrator in the hands of a true master is an irreplaceable part of their sexual armory.

Tease Submission

Edge Riding: Lvl 5 (63%). Active. 1 SUB / 60 seconds.

Staying near orgasm without going over, this skill requires more... training... than simply edging yourself repeatedly. Go as near orgasm as you are ordered. Stay there. Drop down. Back up. Right to the ultimate edge. Down slowly, up slowly. Good girl. Now repeat that until you're told to stop. In its ultimate form, this skill becomes the final mastery and control of your own distance from orgasm.

Edge Self: Lvl 6 (21%). Active. 1 SUB.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving yourself insane with frustration, invoking Edge Self forces you to stop stimulating yourself before the next time you come, at a variable but short distance from the true, absolute edge. Higher levels enable greater proximity to orgasm, faster edging, and advanced techniques.​

Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 4 (49%). Passive.

A true magical bimbo is always dressed her best, whether in the chill of early spring, the scorching sun of the desert, or the deadly vacuum of space. You probably shouldn't try that last one for a while.

Uncomfortable environment: ERO x 2% resistance
Dangerous environment: ERO x 0.8% resistance
Lethal environment: ERO x 0.4% resistance

This skill only operates when you are dressed (or undressed) inappropriately for your surroundings. To avoid being sunburned on the beach, you'll need an unusually skimpy swimsuit. Naturally, ice cubes and dripping hot wax don't count as 'environments', so keep on squirming.

Cute Cold Resistance: Lvl 8 (94%). Passive.

Multiply your base resistance factor for cold environments by 1.8.

Risque Rain Resistance: Lvl 2 (22%). Passive.

Multiply your base resistance factor for rainy environments by 1.2.
​

Extended Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 3 (12%). Passive.

At Lvl 3 of this skill, people dressed inappropriately within your presence, whether by you or somebody else, share 60% of your own Ero Environmental Resistance for any environments they encounter.

Strip Tease: Lvl 3 (10%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to remove clothes seductively, always hinting at more than what appears, making the viewer more and more impatient to see the end. While this skill is active and you are continuing to remove clothing, you receive a +10% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 10% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Reverse Strip Tease: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to put on clothes seductively, relying for its eroticism on graceful movement and the intimacy of watching someone dress themselves. While this skill is active and you are continuing to add clothing, you receive a +5% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 5% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Extra Large Sausage: Lvl 3 (0%). Active. Special.

Work with Porn Logic instead of Erogame Logic. Cost is three times the equivalent PRN stat that would be required to accomplish the same end, payable in DOM and/or SUB, plus three times the equivalent cost of any porn-based skills that would be needed, used at Lvl 1. You may not create situations that would require greater PRN than your (ERO-10).

You Forgot to Lock the Door: Lvl 2 (50%). Passive and Active. 5 DOM.

Active: A staple ability of any erogame character, this skill gives you the power to 'accidentally' pass through any barrier, so long as nudity or naughtiness lies beyond. Scrunchies or other indicators of sexy times in progress will have disappeared, making you apparently not responsible and allowing you to blame the victim.

Passive: When you yourself are being nude or naughty, barriers hindering the way to your own presence are LVL * 1% likely to open if somebody tries them.

Dominant Teasing

Edge Other: Lvl 8 (13%). Active. 1 DOM.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving your victims insane with frustration, invoking Edge Other at Lvl 8 gives you a sense of the next time your target is just starting to reach the edge. At this skill level, stopping immediately at that first hint will produce a soft edge. Continuing on will produce a sharper edge, but this runs the chance of giving the victim a real release.

Tears of Milk: Lvl MAX. Active. 5 DOM.

Allows you to stop all stimulation at exactly the right time to produce 1-5 pearls of semen from a cock, with your choice as to the exact amount. Using this skill on a cock to produce 50 pearls will exhaust that cock's capacity for continuing to be teased without a refractory period, as well as driving the cock's owner completely out of his mind.

Edging: Lvl 7 (9%). Active. 6 DOM / 20 sec.

The skill of keeping someone trembling on the verge of an orgasm without going over. If you choose to make the victim come at the end, the intensity of their orgasm is enhanced in proportion to how long they've spent on the edge before then, with a time T spent on the edge enhancing the orgasm by a multiplicative factor of (1 + 0.178*Lvl*ln((T + 1 sec) / 1 sec)). Higher levels of this skill enable you to keep someone even closer for even longer.

Be careful about using this skill for extended periods on an inexperienced submissive, or anyone whose life has been starved for excitement and pleasure, unless you want them following you home like a stray puppy.

Denial Investigation: Lvl 1 (0%). Active. 5 DOM.

You possess an uncanny ability to detect when a victim you are controlling has been a bad naughty cheater. Invoking this skill gives you an additional Lvl*ERO*0.5% probability of correctly determining when a victim has received unauthorized pleasure, with a cap of 90%, when you engage in physical checks or interrogations. If this skill doesn't succeed in detecting a past misdeed, it will not be checked again until another misdeed has been committed, but any DOM spent is spent regardless.

Flow Control: Lvl 2 (35%). Active. 5 DOM.

Choose an amount of semen that you will allow to escape a cock, from 0.05 mL to 1 mL. You may extract that much semen from a cock already on the edge of orgasm, without allowing it to come. Exhausting all available semen faster than it can regenerate, or using this skill on a man more times than your current FUK * Flow Control Lvl, will incur a refractory period.

Raising this skill to Lvl 5 will evolve it into the skill Flow State.

Tease Mistress: Lvl 1. Passive.

- The Lvl of this skill is added to all skills related to teasing, denial, and orgasm control that use DOM.
- Reduce the DOM costs of all such skills by 10% * Lvl.
- Gain 10% * Lvl additional DOM from teasing, denial, and orgasm control.

This is a Title Skill, and only increases upon completing special game feats related to teasing, denial, and orgasm control.
​

Good Morning: Lvl 3 (90%). Active. 3 SUB.

"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on; or that you were woken up with oral sex; or that you mean to wake someone up that way?"

This skill prevents your target from waking up the next time they would otherwise do so due to your sexual ministrations, and maintains their slumber for an additional 25 seconds after that. This skill may be invoked again before the 25 seconds run out, with an additional activation cost. If instead permitted to wake up, the subject will be drowsy at first, rather than making sudden movements.

The Nectar: Lvl 4 (40%). Passive.

You gain benefits from consuming sexual fluids you have personally extracted from others. (With the Mad Inventor perk: sexual fluids extracted via machines of your own creation that you personally operate.) Every person's precious bodily fluids convey different potencies, hinted at by tastes and sensations you may learn to identify. Mixing synergetic sexual fluids yields greater results, but the fluids must be mixed in situ.

Known nectars:

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Blake Layton | A taste of vanilla-flavored cake; a sense of spreading warmth, as of kindness or a sunny day. | ? | +10% to the rate of experience gain in stats and skills, 6 hours. | ???
Tammi Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | ???
Danni Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | ???
Driver #1 (plate 76ND2X) | A touch of spiciness as of curry power, fizzing slightly down your throat. | +5 to all dice rolls involving financial negotiation, 2 hours. | ?? | ???
Gloryhole cock #1 | A crispness like an apple's tartness, a sharpness like metal touching your tongue. | +5 to all dice rolls involving the BOD or LST stats, 3 hours. | ?? | ???
Biologist #1 (wearing only a vest) | Cigarettes and whiskey. | ? | The limit of your Extra Large Sausage skill is equal to your ERO, rather than ERO-10. (1h) | ???
Biologist #2 (pointy beard) | A tinge of sharp sweetness like licking a lollipop. | +5 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (1h) | Negate all penalties to SED-based skills from talking about science or mathematics. (6h) | ???
Biologist #3 (Prof. Samara) | The soothing sound of rain. | Increase by 2x your natural odds of mistaking anything for a cephalopod. (permanent) | +15 on all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #4 (mesh suit) | Fake sweetness. Like an artificial sweeter, you guess. | +10 to all rolls to perceive aspects of a person hidden by clothing. (1h) | Your caloric intak@#*^(-#@%)(@-#)%@#@-&^#@(@*&^-#(%&@# | ???
Biologist #5 (Dr. Altare) | Amber sunsets and a wistful D minor. | ? | Increase by 1000x the odds of improbable natural events involving non-PIV sex and recursive fanfiction. (6h) | ???
Biologist #6 (Zach L.) | Your favorite flavor. | ? | When subjected to or applying hypnosis, significantly heighten both superficial resistance, and persistent subliminal effects. (6h) | ???
Biologist #7 (Prof. Eliors) | A taste of fish. Wait, does that actually count? | +5 to Nyotaimori skill (6h) | ?? | +40 to all rolls on mundane biology problems (1d)
Biologist #8 (only a lab coat) | A chalky sweetness like a chewable antiacid. | +1 FUK when taking dicks over 6 inches (1hr) | +15 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #9 (Katia) | A weight lying heavy and squirming on your tongue. | -20% to relative humidity. (1h) | ?? | +40 to all rolls on looking up existing scientific information. (8h)
Biologist #10 | A dark taste, mysterious to identify. | ? | +2 LST, +2 FUK towards those about whom you know almost nothing. (6h) | ???
Biologist #11 (Uncategorizable) | A hint of smooth fur. | You are attracted to animalistic behavior (e.g. purring, biting, scratching) as if your LST was 2 higher. | Increase by 5x your natural odds of correctly guessing which of two people has the larger dick. (6h) | ???
Biologist #12 (Dr. Vasridder) | Smooth, cloying, sweet as honey. | ? | ?? | +1 to all game skills when fucking bees. (permanent) (do not fuck bees)
Biologist #13 (Dr. Kverty.) | Dewdrops on the ground at sunrise. | +1 BOD while being seen giving or receiving pleasure. (2h) | +15 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #14 (Prof. Z. Ohl) | A silvery taste of gasoline, perversely appealing. | ? | +5 to your Attractive Asphyxiation Resistance subskill. (2h) | +40 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (1d)
Biologist #15 (Dr. Marshall) | Slightly nutty, a fruit flavor would pair well with this. | ? | Enhances specular highlights on your skin or clothes by 10%. This effect cannot be used to generate unlimited energy because of a balancing reduction in diffuse reflection. (6h) | ???
| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Charles Adan | Fine traditional semen. There's nothing wrong with this semen. It doesn't need to taste like anything else. | ? | The imbiber believes themselves to have +3 WIS, and may try to act accordingly, but really the wisdom was inside them all along. (12 hours) | ???
Joel Ratliff | Granulated cane sugar and cinnamon tealights. | ? | +1 PRV towards all those who consider themselves to be virgins. Stacks up to 8 times. (12 hours) | ???
Melusine Wheeler | The simple but sweet strawberry flavor of the girl next door. | ? | ?? | Each time you consume this nectar, it resets your current level of sexual satiation to its baseline.

| Components | Effect
Mystic Eyes of Dick Perception (I) | Biologist #4, Biologist #8, Biologist #11 | You can instinctively guess the penis size of any male you gaze upon. (2hr)
Reagent of Mundane Biology (II) | Biologist #2, Biologist #3, Biologist #7, Biologist #8, Biologist #9, Biologist #13, Biologist #14 | Additional +150 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (12hr) Retroactive 30x increase in the odds of finding people whose nectar contributes to this combination. (-12hr)
Tincture of Coordination (III) | Consume at least 30 nectars from people amicably coordinating to feed them to you, without you having been consulted in their decisionmaking. | Any collective choice process taking place near you will reach agreement on a course of action---perhaps not the right action, but at least they'll have agreed. (6hr)

The Lotion: Lvl 1 (6%). Passive.

"Would you please rub this on your skin, dear? No is fine." --- Buffalo Bob

Coating yourself with a dose of nectar gives you benefits analogous to consuming the nectar. You may find it more convenient to combine and harmonize multiple nectars in this way, but at Lvl 1 the benefits remain only so long as the lotion stays on your skin.​

Erotic Statuary: Lvl 1 (60%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.

Some sexual skills involve you moving. Not this one.

Meganekko: Lvl 2 (2%). Passive.

Your eyes change to require whatever prescription glasses you're currently wearing. You may at will temporarily prevent your eyes from reverting, if you need to be adorably blind and helpless with your glasses off. Give them back, please!

+10% to SED for characters who like intelligent girls. -10% to SED for characters who don't.

High Heels: Lvl 4 (3%). Passive.

Negates all movement, dexterity, and combat penalties from high heels. Your High Heels skill is added to the level of all High-Heeled subskills when calculating their effectiveness.

High-Heeled Running: Lvl 10 (12%). Active. 1 D|S / 2 minutes.

At Lvl (4 + 9), run 130% faster when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Parkour: Lvl 4 (70%). Active. 1 D|S / maneuver.

At Lvl (4 + 4), +80% bonus to your base probability of successfully executing an urban maneuver when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Jumping: Lvl 4 (22%). Active. 1 D|S / jump.

At Lvl (4 + 4), gravity has less purchase on you when you wear high heels, increasing jumping height by 160% (with no greater impact on landing). The resulting increased hang time stacks with the speed of High-Heeled Running for further travel, and does not interfere with the impact soaking of High-Heeled Landing. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Landing: Lvl 4 (38%). Active. 1 D|S / landing.

At Lvl (4 + 4), this skill reduces the force of your landing by a multiplicative factor of 1 / (1 + 1.6) whenever you land from a fall while wearing high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Dancing: Lvl 2 (75%). Active. 1 D|S per minute or per maneuver, whichever is less.

Add your High Heels + High-Heeled Dancing to your effective Dancing skill for any high-heeled submaneuver of a dance maneuver that involves your feet. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Stealth: Lvl 2 (60%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

The quantity (log base 2 of your probability of not being discovered, minus log base 2 of your probability of being discovered) increases by 0.5 per Lvl, relative to the base value this quantity would otherwise take on. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Roofhopping: Lvl 3 (34%). Active. 1 D|S / jump.

In accordance with long-standing mahou shoujo tradition, whenever you are dressed in a costume that could plausibly denote a magical girl, you are empowered to leap from roof to roof in order to travel faster than ground traffic. Houses and other buildings are arranged in such fashion as to permit this. This doesn't break through any roofs, wake up anybody with loud thumps, or cause anyone on the ground to, like, notice.

Speed is equal to your base running speed boosted by High Heels plus your High-Heeled Running plus your High-Heeled Roofhopping times 10%.

High-Heeled Kicking: Lvl 1 (12%). Active. 4 D|S / kick.

Add your High Heels and High-Heeled Kicking skill to the attack power of any martial technique whose impact is concentrated in your heel or heels.
​

Dancing: Lvl 2 (33%). Passive.

Since before Homo sapiens sapiens existed, since before language as modern humans know it, the ancestors of humankind danced around the fire of a night, seducing one another and simply expressing the joy of being alive. Now it is your turn to do the same.

Your Dancing skill is added to the level of all Dancing subskills.

Dancing Dancing Revolution: Lvl 3 (50%). Passive.

You can stomp arrows with the best of them, or maybe just the rest of them. You have a roughly 50% chance of passing stages of difficulty equal to 2 * (DDR + Dancing).

You receive a bonus of (DDR + Dancing) * 5% to your effective SED when being watched by anyone in gamer culture.

Freestyling: Lvl 2 (75%). Passive.

Whatever the other rules of the dance form, some of which you may be ignoring, you're doing your own thing too. Substitute (X * 0.75) + Freestyling for the base dancing skill X when calculating your effective stat bonuses while freestyling. Freestyling may not be suitable for all occasions, and bonuses will be lost if so.

Pole Dancing: Lvl 2 (45%). Passive.

You can do lewd things with a long, hard, cylindrical object. Boost your SED and raise onlookers' LST by (Dancing + Pole Dancing) * 2%.
​

Wardrobe Malfunction: Lvl 4 (0%). Passive and Active.

Passive: If you are not using the Active form of this skill, anything that can go wrong with your clothing, will go wrong, with probability equal to your ERO stat. Usually, but not always, the results will tend to gently push the limits of the PRV of any onlookers and the social occasion. Higher levels of Wardrobe Malfunction create more interesting and better-timed malfunctions.

Active: You may spend 4 DOM to create a not-fully-revealing wardrobe malfunction of your choice given a plausible opportunity, or spend 4 SUB to create a fully revealing wardrobe malfunction. This will not appear to have been deliberately caused by you in any way. Spend an additional +8 energy of that type to make the wardrobe malfunction be caused by someone else, if there is an interaction plausibly permitting that.

Convenient Censoring (Hair): Lvl MAX. Passive.

Your Conceptual Hair has overridden the standard version of this skill, automatically enabling your hair to appear to cover your naughty bits, as seen by every viewing angle, with perfect reliability, for zero cost. You may at will modify the parameters of this skill for partial, complete, or no obscuration. If not otherwise specified, the parameters of this skill are determined by ERO, PRV, and social context. Your hairstyle must have sufficient tendrils of sufficient length and diameter to permit this, and be otherwise unrestrained.

You may at will choose to substitute the standard Convenient Censoring skill, making use of other obscurations and objects.

Penitence: Lvl 1 (20%). Active. 5 SUB / use.

You're very sorry for what you did. Really, really sorry. You'll... you'll understand if... you're scared, but...

Add your Penitence skill to the effective LST of whoever you are being sorry at, to a maximum bonus of your SED * 1% of its base value. If they afterwards choose to punish you, your total punishment is increased by Penitence * 10% over what it otherwise would have been, with all relationship benefits of the punishment increasing proportionally. Note that this skill cannot of itself make someone punish you if they would not otherwise be dominant.

In order to invoke this skill, you must have done something to be sorry for.

Fleeing: Lvl 2 (10%). Passive.

If you are running away from one or more pursuers, increase their effective LST towards you by a factor of (Fleeing * 1%). If they do something unspeakable to you immediately upon catching you, your Fleeing skill is added to their effective LST for the duration of that event. Whenever you are being chased by someone holding sexual intentions toward you no more twisted than your current PRV + 8, you will sometimes stumble and fall with a probability that increases your chance of being caught by a multiplicative factor of (1 + (Fleeing * ERO * 0.01)). You may pay 1 SUB per stumble to make this happen deliberately.

If you are wearing high heels while running away, add your High Heels skill to your effective Fleeing skill.

Asking For It: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive and Active. 3 SUB.

Passive: Multiply by (1 + (0.1 * Lvl)) the base probability of someone initiating a forceful sexual act targeting you (whether or not it would be consensual), whenever you are providing what they would consider to be a reason and this action appears to them to be deliberate on your part.

Active: Further multiply the above probability by (1 + (0.4 * Lvl)).

Destructible Outfit: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 2 SUB.

The mirror of the Passive skill Indestructible Outfit, invoking this skill while somebody is deliberately trying to tear off or shred your clothing reduces the durability of your clothing by 2 pts / lvl. (For revealing yourself when they're not trying, use Wardrobe Malfunction.)

Strip Other: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 2 D|S / min.

Taking off someone else's clothes slowly, erotically, and with lots of touching will temporarily raise their LST by 5% for 2 minutes.

Bloody Bedsheets: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 50 SUB.

Restore your hymen, and ensure it bleeds properly on its next puncture. All other stats and skills are unaffected.

Naked Towel: Lvl 1 (97%). Passive.

A simple wrap of a towel ensures that it doesn't fall off, or reveal anything it shouldn't… unless something goes wrong, of course. +2%/Lvl to your effective SED and +2%/Lvl to a viewer's effective LST.

Add your Naked Towel skill to your effective skill in Wardrobe Malfunction (passive and active) while thus garbed.

Muffled Moans: Lvl 3 (84%). Active. 1 SUB / 40 seconds.

So long as you are trying hard to keep quiet, any moans that escape you anyway will fail to alert anyone in the next room over, however thin the walls. (Provided they are not actively listening, sexually aroused, romantically entangled, or otherwise interested in participation.) Louder cries will travel to other rooms in the same living unit, but not other living units in the same structure, or neighboring houses.

Dressed Like a Slut: Lvl 2 (77%). Passive.

Enhances your probability of being targeted by somebody looking for sex, when you are unmistakably dressed like a girl who wants it. Letting X be their base probability of targeting you for sex, and letting Y be your skill in Dressed Like a Slut, their adjusted probability of targeting you is:

​

Clothes Can't Stop Me: Lvl 4 (84%). Active. 2 DOM / 20 sec.

Reduces skill penalties associated with performing an ero action through clothing.

Light clothing: Decrease penalty by Lvl * ERO% / 2.
Heavy clothing: Decrease penalty by Lvl * ERO% / 4.​

This skill is replaced by rather than stacking with the perk Naked Before Me. It can also evolve into the corresponding skill when Lvl * ERO% / 4 exceeds 100%.

Maid: Lvl 2 (17%). Passive.

Your Maid skill is added to the effective level of all Maid subskills, and boosts your general ability to serve with perfection in a maidly capacity.

If you are not wearing a maid uniform, your effective level in all Maid skills is divided by 2, rounded down. Any standard uniform that distinguishes servants in a place or occasion, including nudity, may be deemed a maid uniform. It goes without saying that anything you wear at your true Master's command and pleasure is the most proper uniform possible.

Maid Mémoire: Lvl 1 (75%). Passive.

You can perfectly recall up to Lvl * 3 commands, each with up to Lvl * 1 details, without additional memory aids.

Maid of Time: Lvl 2 (20%). Special.

You may ignore the laws of duration binding lesser beings in order to interleave up to a total of (Lvl * 30 min) of additional time daily, whenever this is required to perfectly fulfill an unreasonable demand by someone you are serving. If you have a knife-throwing skill, you may throw knives at up to Lvl times the normal rate when acting in a maidly capacity.​

Fluid Unformed: Lvl 3 (10%). Active. 8 D | S.

Whenever you are transitioning between one scene and another, you may elect to have all sex-related fluids vanish from you and your clothing. (For example, semen on your face, wetness on your thighs, or silicone lubricant on your fingers.)

This skill will not work on fluids which remain revelant to the plot, such as evidence of a rape, or sticky panties that enable someone to deduce you're a slut.

Candid Camera: Lvl 2 (38.5%). Active. 5 DOM / min.

Any microphone you wield can pick up audio acceptably from inside a pocket or around a corner. Any camera you use is more likely to point in the direction of interesting scenes and focus well on them.

Eavesdropping: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive.

Whenever you press your ear against a door to listen, this skill helps you hear just enough to advance the plot, no more and no less.

Silence Mortal: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

Gags applied by you, to you, or in your presence, will actually prevent people from making loud noises.

These gags never cause anyone to suffocate due to allergies, a runny nose, or panties going down the back of somebody's throat.

Tickle Logic: Lvl 3 (88%). Passive and Active.

In the system of Tickle Logic, the sentence "P -> Q" is valid if and only if "Q" involves someone getting tickled. If you don't want that to be you, you'd better make sure it's somebody else.

Tickle Logic is an ultra-anti-intuitionistic system in which any even or odd number of negations can be canceled out of a formula, making the proposition "NO NO NO NO NOT Q" equivalent to "Q".

Passive: Let X stand for the base probability that someone is tickled, and let Y stand for the Lvl of the Tickle Logic skill. The new probability that someone gets tickled, divided by the new probability that nobody is tickled, is equal to the quantity (X*((1 + 1/e)^Y))/(1-X).

Active: By expending SUB or DOM, you may further increase the chance of yourself or somebody else being tickled. Results as above, but let X equal the base probability of that particular person being tickled, and let Y equal the energy expended divided by 20. You may not expend more than SED*10 energy in this way.

Whistling: Lvl 1 (10%). Active.

You can whistle.

Lurking Beneath: Lvl 2 (20%). Active. 4 D|S / minute.

So long as you are mostly shielded from view by a table, desk, or other furniture, you do not encounter any spatial obstacles to blowjobs, handjobs, or footjobs. Penetrative intercourse is not possible at Lvl 2.

While you lack explicit proficiency in spatial manipulation, this skill will work better when you don't think about it too hard.

Good Ending: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. ? / use.

A skill exercised at the finish of an erogame route, when you part ways with another and renounce your intention to determine their further destiny. This skill causes their # relative to your #% to take on felicitous outcomes not requiring your direct intervention. They may remember you and miss you, but not in a way that prevents them from moving on someday.

Invoking this skill does not prevent you from seeing the person again, but relegates any such interactions to the form of a side-story or epilogue rather than re-entangling them in your affairs, unless and until you choose to involve them again in the main plotline.

Check Luggage: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 10 D|S / use.

Up to Lvl * ERO / 10 times per day, rounded down, you may suddenly remember that you've already put any ero-related item you own into any enclosed space you could have already accessed.

To invoke this skill, it must feel at least a tiny bit plausible that you could've moved the item there normally and forgotten about it. Naturally, as you practice this skill, you will become more accustomed to your extremely unreliable memory about all the odd places you once left a pair of handcuffs. Eventually it will start to seem totally reasonable to you that you could've earlier broken into somebody's locked house to hide a full latex jumpsuit in their closet, and only now remembered the fact.

If at any point Lvl * ERO / 10 exceeds 40, this skill evolves into the skill Ero-Inventory.

Shibari: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 3 DOM / minute.

The elementary ero skill of tying up your victims in interesting ways and postures. Learning higher arts and techniques within this skill may require you to find more advanced teachers.

Talking Is A Free Action: Lvl 2 (0%). Active. 9 DOM / use.

You may talk for up to Lvl * 2 minutes in a conversation desynchronized from the progress of any or all other temporal processes in the universe. For example, you may have a conversation just before someone is about to orgasm, or within the gap between when somebody throws a punch and when you block it. No one else notices this is odd. This skill can be used up to Lvl times per day.

Projectile Privilege: Lvl MAX. Passive.

Multi-use ranged attacks (including crossbows, guns, blasters, spells you can use more than once, etcetera) cannot significantly damage a target unless the target is significantly less significant than the attacker. This effect applies to all sides on all battles which are significant to you.

Naturally, obvious common-sense modifiers apply, including:

- People fighting on your side gain significance compared to those who don't.
- People fighting to avenge a just-fallen loved one, or to defend an incapacitated loved one, gain significant significance so long as their significant other is not completely insignificant.
- Verbally acknowledging this effect nullifies it for 10 seconds, for example "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." If precisely interpreting the words implies a major vulnerability, that vulnerability extends through the whole battle. For example, as numerous people remarked afterwards, General John Sedgwick was not an elephant.

Fighting under the effects of this Passive skill is an art. Here's some hints to get you started!

- If confronting a major foe, consider arming your companions with swords, or readying a ranged attack which has only a single use.
- Bullets can easily hit things that cannot be harmed by bullets. Wearing bulletproof armor into combat will create annoying bangs on the armored surfaces, wearing lingerie into combat will not.
- When fighting ranged attackers, try to maintain a wide enough separation among your companions that nobody has an opportunity to throw themselves heroically in front of anyone else; refusing such an opportunity can be nearly as bad as taking it. In close-quarters group fighting, it may be useful to have one heavily armored limb in order to safely intercept attacks you see being aimed at a friend.
- A combatant known to have only one bullet remaining becomes far more dangerous. You can ensure your enemies don't run out of ammunition by leaving small boxes of ammo in random places around your fortress.

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 7 (22%). Passive.

You can carry as much material as if you had a medium-small purse and ordinary pockets, despite not having any purse or pockets. You cannot use your absence of pockets while absolutely naked, nor use your absence of a purse under circumstances that would prevent you from carrying or accessing a purse. Heavy or dangerous items are no easier or safer to carry in this way. Body searches will still find items you have inside the pockets you don't have, and X-ray scanners will still detect contraband if you need to put your absence of a purse through a security conveyor. In general, this skill behaves as a plot hole rather than an in-story supernatural capability---your artist has simply neglected to draw you carrying a purse.

Mild-Mannered Reporter: Lvl MAX. Passive.

You can prevent people from spontaneously recognizing you by putting on glasses, or making other moderate changes to your appearance. This skill may be considered as inducing a form of specialized prosopagnosia, which does not match the power of Fake ID and will not hold against explicit clues. You are advised to avoid displaying any unmistakable hairstyles, clothing, jewelry, unique items, or personality traits, and to use a different name.

The Gamer: Lvl 2 (83%). Passive.

The ability to play a game as if it is your life: You can wield your real-life Erogame powers inside any computer games in which those powers would have natural interpretations. This will cause corresponding changes to the game's plot.

You may be able to gain in some Erogame characteristics this way, but most such gains will be greatly discounted. Don't get your hopes too high at Lvl 2.

Look, A Distraction: Lvl 1 (6%). Active. 5 D|S.

Saying "Look, a distraction!" decreases the chance that your target will realize that you are trying to distract them. This distraction must be erotic in nature.

Wet Look: Lvl 1 (70%). Passive.

Any of your clothing which is thin enough, and wettened to a significant degree, becomes obscenely semi-transparent to an effective degree for tantalizing onlookers, regardless of the cloth's native material properties. Your effective BOD increases by Lvl * 2% when this skill is taking effect.

Timeskip: Lvl 2 (35%). Active.

A simple utility skill for preventing boredom in yourself and any hypothetical audience that might be watching you. At Lvl 2, breathing or other simple repetitive muscle motions are the most you can do while not existing. Higher levels of this skill permit more complicated activities to have taken place during the timeskip. Any plot-relevant events that occur inside your own character viewpoint will automatically interrupt the timeskip and resume your existence.

This forward motion in your personal perspective occurs on a metaliterary level above any plots about time shenanigans. Using this skill does not exacerbate paradoxical tangles, accumulate temporal divergence, set off tachyon detectors, etcetera.

Tackleglomp: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. Special.

High-speed collisions and knockbacks can occur without injury, so long as you initiate the collision with intent to hug the other person. This skill can avert all damage from up to Lvl * Lvl * 1 meters/second of momentum within such a collision, at a cost of 1 SUB per 5 m/s (rounded up). This skill can also add up to Lvl² m/s of additional momentum for knockback purposes, even from a standing start, at a cost of 1 DOM per 5 m/s (rounded up).

For example, at level 7 of this skill, you could spend 8 SUB plus 9 DOM to tackleglomp your target from a standing start and knock them through a wall of a house as though from a 101 mph collision, while leaving both them and you feeling as if you'd run into them at 11 mph. Reducing the felt collision velocity below 11 mph would require spending an additional 1 SUB.

If you possess both Ero-Travel and Time Control, raising this skill to 20 will evolve it into the skill Tachyglomp.

Driving With Distraction: Lvl 3 (4%). Passive.

Any penalties to vehicle operation caused by ero-related distractions are inverted, becoming bonuses instead. The magnitude of this inverted modifier increases with skill Lvl.

Comedic Timing: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

Consistent histories permitting, a message you predictably send in the future may arrive in the past if that would be funnier.

(You cannot deliberately exploit this effect for gainful temporal shenanigans before your Time Control reaches Lvl 3.)

Penetrated: Lvl MAX. (Passive.)

You are already pierced. However, only some placings count as standard locations from which you can receive general equipment bonuses as opposed to location-specific equipment bonuses.

Improvised Performance: Lvl 2 (70%). 1 D|S / line.

At Lvl 2 of this skill, while performing in public, you can quickly improvise lines (including rhymes, raps, lyrics, or comedy routines) that are the same lines you would invent if you worked on them for 20 minutes each without invoking this skill.

Fresh Fourths: Lvl 4 (28%). Passive.

You can be fucked by an arbitrary number of people without ever getting too full or icky down there.

Smells Like Beacon: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

You have a 10% * Lvl chance of feeling the draw when someone within easy travel range of you attempts to lure a type of entity that you could impersonate.

I Know What You Did Last Summer: Lvl 6 (44%). Passive.

This skill increases your chance to notice and interpret evidence that someone has masturbated, if that left behind even the tiniest traces of fluid, stain, or fragrance. At Lvl 6 the span of this ability is not limited by time, but some material evidence must still exist.

Would You Like To Phone A Friend Or Enemy: Lvl 1 (0%). Active.

Once per minor quest, or up to Lvl times per major quest, you may dial a random phone number and have a conversation that will advance the plot.

Erogamer's Body: (Lvl MAX). Passive.

The biological ability to live your life as an erogame. Venereal disease doesn't exist for you, or periods or pregnancies or yeast infections. Arbitrarily large appendages can fit inside any of your orifices. You heal from all marks with a good night's sleep, ready for the next day's adventures. Other aspects of this skill depend on the BOD stat.

Erogamer's World: (Lvl MAX). Passive.

The consent of reality to live your life as an erogame. People are never too preoccupied to consider sex or romance, not while you're around. Bystanders won't ignore what you do, but they're unlikely to actually stop you. Those who do decide to involve themselves are drawn into the logic of the Erogame. If you go far enough that an authority sees no choice but to intervene… they won't treat you as a simple criminal. Other aspects of this skill depend on the ERO stat.

Conceptual Hair: Lvl 2 (0%). Passive and Active.

The ability to externalize your concept of hair into reality. This skill does not alter the physical laws governing your hair, nor transform your hair into any form following consistent rules. Rather, there is no longer any specific thing on your head to which the concept 'hair' could apply. What others perceive as your hair is the interaction of their sensoriums with the abstract concept 'hair', which your empowered belief has rendered capable of touching upon the continuum of specifics they call the universe.

At Lvl 2, this skill is weakened by your implicit beliefs about the nature of reality, and by the conventional way in which you expect your hair to behave.

Spoiler: Truth

The higher tiers of this skill are perilous for those who began with weak senses of identity, who may begin to perceive not 'a person with hair' but instead 'hair with a person'. No matter how beautiful or shining their braids, they will feel no sense of accomplishment, because there is no 'I' in possession of the hair.

In its final use, this skill can erase the boundary between hair and reality. But this ultimate power can only be attained by a distorted soul: someone who, from the beginning, never took any pride in her braids.

My Hair Always Looks Like This: Lvl 4 (2%). Active. 7 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair changes with your state of mind, and only with your state of mind, because it is your state of mind: the exterior world can affect your hair only through the medium of affecting your interior attitude towards your hair. This skill moves your mind closer to your usual beliefs about your hair, partially counteracting the psychological effect of any recent events which led you to believe your hair had become disarranged.

Spoiler: Realization

This skill does not exist. For you to stand forth and invoke it has no effect on you other than making you believe that a skill has operated. Rather, your belief that the skill has operated is itself the skill.

Once you understand this without any doubts, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I am the skull of my hair."

And It Never Gets in the Way: Lvl 3 (97%). Active. 1 SUB / minute.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair exists for a purpose, and is a purpose: the true manifestation of a purpose will not contradict that purpose. Invoking this skill causes your hair to maintain a position which avoids interfering with whatever activities you are currently performing.

Spoiler: Insight

This skill is unnecessary. Your concept of hair is something that only interacts with reality in the first place in order to accomplish its purpose. There is nothing with place and shape that must be consistently treated as being present or absent, when the continuum asks how your hair looks and then asks if your hair is getting in your way. You can answer all such questions simultaneously in any pattern you choose, because you are the one answering them.

Once you have fully internalized this understanding, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Yet these strands will never touch anything."

It Does What I Want: Lvl 3 (61%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair is not dead, but as alive as your flesh: if you can will the motion of your hands and feet then you must equally be able to will the motion of your hair. This skill makes your hair be to you as a limb of your body, with DEX equal to this skill's level.

Spoiler: Understanding

This skill is inverted. In every motion of the flesh there are nervous impulses that occur prior to the muscles contracting. Prior to the nervous impulses, the brain calculates the pattern of those impulses. Prior to this calculation is a fleeting intention. Your hair is closer to your soul than your flesh, and requires only this fleeting intention to respond. Even in your inner mind, the direction of a thought comes prior to the formation of the thought. Thus your hair responds to your first will faster than does your mind. To imagine 'I will control my hair as I control my limbs' is to tread a pointlessly extended and circuitous route through your soul.

Once you understand and appreciate this irony, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Have disdained flesh to arrange many curls."

I Have All of the Hairstyles: Lvl 3 (30%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair is an abstraction, rather than a specific: your hair has no intrinsic form or boundary other than the division between 'hair' and 'not hair'. This skill recalls, reconstructs, and recreates any hairstyle that has become known to you and so inscribed itself upon your soul. The reconstruction of a hairstyle costs a variable amount, and after, its recreation costs 20 SUB.

Spoiler: Epiphany

This skill is vacuous. In perceiving a hairstyle and forming a concept dividing 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle', you have already created that hairstyle. What was once upon a person's head is a fleeting instant that can never be regained. In coming to have 'that hairstyle I saw' there is no past existence you have stolen. You only possess a boundary your perception already drew, dividing the countless possibilities of other fleeting instants into 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle'. It is impossible for your perception to draw that boundary incorrectly, because nothing beyond your own perception exists to judge that boundary: therefore this skill is itself constituted in your perception of whether the skill has been successfully applied.

Once your judgment has collapsed into this understanding, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I have created over a thousand braids."

I Know All About Hair: Lvl 0 (0%). Active, 2 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that all concepts of hair are one in the end: as you understand your own hair, you may understand the hair of others. Gazing upon another's hairstyle and invoking this skill informs you of its structure, its history, and its meaning to the wearer.

Spoiler: Awareness

This skill is illusory. The concept of hair exists within the unchanging root of form, the timeless that casts its shadows into the realm of that which is born and dies. Your eyes, gazing upon these fleeting and impermanent instants, only bring to your attention those truths that are never learned and only remembered. So your eyes matter not: you need only know that a hairstyle exists, in this realm of shadows, in order to remember its form.

Once your understanding has transcended all things that begin and end, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Unknown by death, nor known by birth."

However I Like It: Lvl 2 (80%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair's freedom to perform its purpose is the only constraint upon its form: your hair is what is needed to carry out the task of hair. This skill imbues your hair with color, length, tensile strength, or whatever other properties you desire to add to it while retaining its nature as hair. The first construal of such a property is of variable cost, after which regaining it costs 20 SUB.

Currently addable properties:

Totally Normal Intertemporal Progression: Your hair has changed hairstyles over time in a perfectly ordinary way, temporally speaking.

Totally Normal Luminous Coals: Any red parts of your hair glow in the appropriate color, emitting totally normal photons in the way any other material object would if they happened to be glowing.

Spoiler: Wisdom

This skill is counterproductive. By thinking 'my hair must be golden so as to be pretty' or 'my hair must be strong to resist being cut', you only weaken your hair compared to the thoughts 'my hair must be pretty' or 'my hair must resist being cut'. Any constraint upon the breadth of an idea's possible pathways can only diminish its ability to reach a destination.

Once you understand this and reject your past foolishness, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Purpose is my color and meaning is my shape."

All Along, I Have Always Been Hair: 1 SUB / sec.​

The consequence of understanding that you are your hair and your hair is you: you and you may use all your powers as one. Beneath your skin there is no longer flesh and blood, but hairs. Within your mind there are no longer thoughts, but hairs. By invoking each of your subskills in turn, and ending in invoking this final skill, you may weld the simultaneous potency of all aspects of your Conceptual Hair into your self.

To your VIT BOD, add (Conceptual Hair) * (My Hair Always Looks Like This) / 10
To your STR LST, add (Conceptual Hair) * (However I Like It) / 10
To your INT PRV, add (Conceptual Hair) * (I Have All of the Hairstyles) / 10
To your WIS SED, add (Conceptual Hair) * (I Know All About Hair) / 10
To your DEX FUK, add (Conceptual Hair) * (It Does What I Want) / 10
To your LUK ERO, add (Conceptual Hair) * (And It Never Gets in the Way) / 10​

While this skill is active, you may freely use HP as MP, and MP as HP DOM as SUB, and SUB as DOM. Yet beware that if both are exhausted while this skill is active, you will lose control of the technique, and die skewered upon the countless hairstyles erupting from within you.

Spoiler: Acceptance

This skill is wrong, distracted, wayward and irrelevant. It bears no resemblance at all to the final insight.

Between abstract hair and fleeting instants of hair is that which connects them, the hairstyle.
But what truly connects the abstraction and the specific is the mind that apprehends them both.
And to connect two things is to declare them separate, limiting their interaction to what the connection between them permits.
This is the final truth hidden beneath the thought that you are a hairstyle: you are the boundary between your hair and reality.
There is no principle demanding that your hair must be inside this boundary, and reality outside it.
There is no principle demanding that your concept of hair must be inside your mind, and reality outside it.
There is no inside nor outside, only the boundary.

Once you have completed your understanding of this truth, you may undo it, by acknowledging in turn all of your past insights into how your mind bounds between your hair and reality,

that the belief of 'I' relates the concept to the specific,

I am the skull of my hair​

that the desires of 'I' give it purpose,

Purpose is my color and meaning is my shape​

that the discriminations of 'I' give it form,

I have created over a thousand braids​

that the perception of 'I' binds it into time,

Unknown by death, nor known by birth​

that the will of 'I' gives it motion,

Have disdained flesh to arrange many curls​

that the 'I' answers all questions that are asked,

Yet these strands will never touch anything​

and then erasing the boundary with your last thought:

So as I end, Unlimited Braid Works.​

Time Control: Lvl 1 (0.8%). Sealed.

Control time.

Limitation: Cause and effect cannot loop. The past can be observed, and present records of it edited, but the true past cannot be modified. It is possible to guess a pseudo-future that would otherwise occur if not for the prediction, and for that predicted pseudo-future to interact with the present, but it is not possible to observe the true future.

All subskills of Time Control except the Slack subskill have been sealed by your pseudo-future self using Time Control Lvl MAX.

Slack: Lvl 5 (29%). Active. Special.​

So long as nobody is watching you, or nobody with you is keeping track of time, you can take up to 1 hour extra each day, distributed whenever you like. You can activate this skill retroactively if you notice that you are running late for reasons that also occurred in the pseudo-future predicted at the time of the skill's retroactive activation.
groon note to self: 12/60;29/100
Besto&#*&(#@$)#$wer Sapient: Lvl ? (??) Active. ? / use.

The subskills @(#*&$@#-(#*&@%-)%#%# enable you to mimic the effects of bestowing up to && of % on other sapient minds, as seen from your own #, with a corresponding increase in apparent channels of @#%@ interaction and internal development. Consistent future $#-# permitting, this may actually transfer % and correlate #.

Your level in the Empower Sapient skill is added to the level of all such subskills.

Share the Fun: Lvl 3 (19%). Active. Special.​

This subskill helps potentially compatible *#%* follow you down strange paths by letting them share in your capabilities. (Increasing the capabilities of your enemies will be automatically handled by the game.)

To activate Share the Fun, you may enact an in-story plot which causes the target to believe that they are acquiring the bestowed capability. For example, if you have become a vampire, you could enact a blood-sharing ritual to convince a friend that they have become your ghoul servant. Or if a friend has noticed a sudden BOD-related transformation, you could try to convince her that it was due to an incredible advancement in biotechnology, then hand her a sugar pill. While some such plots might have been valid even without this skill, Share the Fun ensures that an avenue exists if you can convince others it is plausible.

You can use this skill to share capabilities derived from your stats, skills, spells, traits, blessings, curses, alchemy, meditation, enlightenment, familiars, cultivation, mysterious artifacts, mad technology, unknown energy sources, dimensional anomalies, bound entities, tainted blood, blasphemous rituals, devoured life forces, fantasy genetics, real genetics, college courses, years of painstaking practice, or your original mental and physical talents. Reality Skills are not directly bestowable by this subskill, but their secondary effects might be; for example, some particular hairstyles may be bestowable, but not Conceptual Hair. Bestowed talents may grow and diversify from their origins.

The total strength of all talents thus bestowed on a potential *#%* is temporarily capped by #@)(*$-@#)#%(-#)$*@%&@#@(*$# and by the ^*^ of your relationship with the recipient. This threshold is determined by combined formidability, rather than by an arithmetical budget over skill points bestowed; conferring a lesser talent early on will not much detract from your ability to bestow greater talents later.

At Lvl ?+3, this skill enables you to bestow a handful of talents upon potential *#%* with whom you are deepening your ^*^, enough that they will not feel completely left behind by you.

Musical Logic: Lvl 1 (2%). Passive and Active.

Operate reality according to the logic of a musical.

Burst Into Song: Lvl 1 (43%). Special.​

You can burst into song.

At Lvl 1+1 of this skill, bursting into song can't solve any problems that can't be solved by bursting into song.

Distinction Between Self and Other: Lvl 1 (0.01%). Active. Special.

The territory of a self is created by a self's deeply believed boundary around 'me' that distinguishes it from 'not-me'. For a self to become aware of these boundaries renders it imaginable that these boundaries might change.

The consequences of this truth are absolutely unavoidable, and include dangers that transcend absolute immortality.

Pale shadows and lesser imitations of these consequences have been incarnated as Reality Skills, where they still rank among the most powerful and perilous aspects of your Erogame.

My and Your Feelings: Lvl 1 (0.1%). Active. Special.

While all experiences must be the content of some experiencer, an experience need not be the content of only one experiencer. It is possible for qualia to belong to more than one consciousness simultaneously.​

Lagomorphic Fie!^&#()*$(@nd Held Out In Darkness: Lvl ? (?). Active and Passive.

If people around you happen to ponder certain questions, they are more likely to come to correct conclusions about facts such as how likely they are to contract a venereal disease, be spotted by an authority, or be reported to the police. They may then act accordingly, given their own nature and goals. You can expend more energy to intensify this effect further; but it should come as no great surprise to you at this point that you cannot, in fact, turn it off^#(*$-@)#*-#@-$(*)@-#$~most frightened, cynical, or wounded of souls, no matter what unpleasant experiences they may have had in their past, will find themselves able to believe that they can have nice things like you@#)(*$-%@)-@#($)%*-$)%^(*@#feel that in your presence the rules are different@#)(*#%-@!()&#%-{!*(#%}-#$@follow in your path and find a new@#)(*%-!@)(#%-()-)@#(*%_#)-%(^&@_!{)*-%#@%elieve that better outcomes are possible for themselves, providing that this is actually tru@#{)${)(%-!@)#@%-@#()*$#@#%&)#@(-@)#(*&^$%-#@()*%)@$%^)#-@#-)(*$&*^@-)#%$-@()#*%@#-#)(&%)*^{*$%-!@^^#@$^{)-(*(#@&^$#@-)(#@&^)$#)@is absolute and cannot be balked by depression, by drugs or mental illness, by hypnosis or brainwashing, by memories of pain or betrayal, by any chains upon a soul whether those chains were laid from without or within; any power that presents a barrier will fail; no ruin wrought by Azkaban or Angband can prevent someone from comprehending that the hope you hold out to them is real.

To wonder whether this constitutes "mind control" is confused, as it accords with the laws of reality on a deeper level than any biology or physics that might otherwise describe how one state of mind follows from another.

To Mine Own Me Be True: Lvl MAX. Active and Passive. ? -+/ ?

Even at the center of the Erogame, you are not just a protagonist, but a human being possessed of her own ---+++. Your mother will always be safe from you, and little children everywhere. Other aspects of this skill depend on #%##%%###%%%
#$()#*$#%#%(*%)$#
!)(*#)(%#($*)$#%

%%+++%#%: Lvl ? (??). Active and Passive. ? #+ / ?

#*&%@##$#$*&$@!%^##%$*#)%hope#$*)$#%#$()future%###$#$%#$#%domain#*$$#%$#*&%#%#@%#%@%well$#^$#@%%#%life#%#$@%#final#%*&&%(*%)$#rely%!)(*#)(%#($*)$#%

@#=_\*_~*_Shoulder Protect_/`%%: Lvl ? (??). Active. ? / ?

%$###(*@)$*(@#$)#@(*@##)(@*)$#$@#)($*@#infinite!@)#@#($$@#)death@(#)$*$#@$()*@#soul@(*$(@@#$)*@$

Index - Dramatis Personae

Spoiler

Dramatis Personae

These info screens contain spoilers for the current state of the story. If it's your first time through, just keep going, and come back later if you run into a character name you don't remember.

These may not be kept fully updated. Current as of 7.10.

Cinderella Sheen

Starry Starr

Winifred Greenwood Sheen

Blake Layton

Charles Adan

Felice Williamson

Tammi & Dammi Arcadia

Karinna Coral

Professor Sonia Turk

The Scoobies

Erin Penna

Septisexuals

Minor characters

Cinderella Sheen, The Erogamer, the story's protagonist. If you want to know more about her, just read the story.

Cindy's main nom-de-ero.

Starry is known to others in many guises:

Blake: Starry is a normal, yet perverted girl from Walgreens.

Charles: Starry is the result of a eldritch alien merging with Cinderella Sheen.

The Arcadias: Starry is a psychic with the power to read sexual responses and relationships (and apparently also an inverse slider).

Karinna Coral: Starry is an exhibitionist and believer in the Natural Sexuality Movement, although Starry doesn't show up for student meetings and nobody seems to know her real name or how to get in touch with her.

Sonia Turk: Starry is an inverse slider with a paradoxical-seeming ability to weave together multiple universes (and apparently also a psychic).

The Scoobies: Starry is a paranormal entity seeking the secrets of her hair, at least according to multiple legends some unknown factor has edited into a mythology wiki. According to this wiki, the entity's past guises have included Yoal-yohuali, Djinda-djinang, Bararu-balasu, and Elin-Elenath.

Septisexual system: Starastera is a rogue succubus who has performed some dastardly evil deeds, such as tickling the mayor's daughter. (But she may have been mind-controlled at the time.)

Cindy has also used "Princess" as a stripper name, and "Illyria" with the Scoobies.

In the pseudo-future scenarios revealed in 3.2, it was revealed that in various pseudo-futures Cindy has also gone by the names: Agent *A* (Star-A-Star), DOCTOR STARR, The Sheen, Cinders, and Doctress Sextara. Other pseudo-future Cindys included ERO Cindy, BOD Cindy, LST Cindy, PRV Cindy, Perk Cindy, and (Mad) Scientist Cindy.

First seen in 1.1. Cindy's mother, initially caught up in an Erogame obliviousness effect, but successfully brought into full awareness of the Erogame in 3.1. Has stunned Cindy with how sensible she is being about things, and also stunned Cindy by apparently having had sex at one point. Winifred has learned about her ability to give Cindy quests, and isn't shy about exploiting this motherly superpower.

First seen in 1.3. An ex-Mormon recently turned atheist. Blake was struggling to come to terms with his change of beliefs and sorting out how he was allowed to feel about sex, when he ran across "Starry Starr" changing her clothes in the middle of Walgreens. Starry promptly dragged him to a motel, took his technical virginity, and revealed to him that his desire for somebody to order his universe and tell him what to do might not have been completely religious.

Blake is currently targeted by the Good Ending skill, and won't reenter the story unless Cindy explicitly brings him back into it. He'll find a mistress on his own even if not helped, but finding him a worthy goddess will bring 50,000XP. Cindy is considering Sonia Turk for the role, once Sonia de-ages enough that Cindy can imagine Blake treating Sonia as a sexual entity. (Blake hasn't expressed any age preferences himself out loud.)

"The first step is always to stay calm. After that, you can think of step two." --- William Adan, Charles's father.

First seen in 2.3. A serious twenty-three-year-old young man living in Anderstown off the west coast of Las Vegas, where he works for Precision Mechanical as a courier and occasional upseller for rapidly crafted high-precision mechanical parts. Charles Adan was carrying out an ordinary delivery/sales run when he met a girl named Starry wearing only a too-small sweater and panties, in need of a lift to Goodwill. Further conversation revealed that Starry seemed to be some type of eldritch horror recently arrived on Earth, with the power to pause time at traffic stoplights. Charles offered to take her on a date, intending to show her the beauty of human existence in hopes she wouldn't destroy it.

Charles is currently Cindy's long-distance boyfriend, voice of caution, and sometime dom. Cindy increasingly feels the long-distance part isn't working.

First mentioned in 2.4 and met in 3.2. Cindy's sorta-friend from before the Erogame. They sometimes met for lunch at college and talked about things that non-fat people wouldn't understand. Cindy's attempt to create the Ero Virus stemmed mainly from wanting to cure Felice and Winifred.

During their accounting class together where Cindy would usually be present, Felice caught the new pretty girl repeatedly looking at her, visible in the reflection in Felice's laptop screen. She's sent Cindy an email saying she knows something very, very weird is going on, and that the girl in class "gave away your secret."

First encountered in 2.7.2, but properly met in 4.4.2. A beautiful pair of redheaded identical twins identical second cousins, who believe that some things are best kept within the family and that safe, sane, and consensual is boring, boring, and boring. Very cheerful, friendly, and happy despite that, or maybe because of it. Their relationship managed to develop some issues go figure, and Starry delivered her version of relationship counseling for it.

Tammi is currently a fringe member of Starry's harem, and has offered Starry the cottage in her large house's backyard whenever Starry needs a place to stay. Danni is still getting used to some things.

Tammi and Danni originate in a legendary erotic story posted to USENET back in the good old days, Kutyo's "Three On the Road."

First seen in 3.3.1. A very tall, bald, dominant girl who seized control of the Norville Natural Sexuality Movement within an hour of Cindy's accidentally excusing it into existence.

Cindy feels attracted to Karinna's ability to defy the System, and fears Karinna's atmosphere of Mahou Shoujo Hannibal Lecter. Winifred has speculated that Karinna is destined to be Cindy's nemesis-with-benefits.

First seen in 5.5.2. Sonia Turk was a sober-minded biology professor who had never before had sex with more than one person at a time, until Starry invited her to an informal evening workshop on human reproductive biology after the reception of her scientific conference. Moved by some earlier hints, Sonia realized that the orgy / brainstorming session she was attending was populated by scientists from different parallel Earths. Sonia Turk is still quite confused, but has caught on to the fact that Starry is the most important person in the world and is behaving accordingly. As of 6.4, Sonia is preparing to test the Ero Virus on herself.

Cindy is considering Sonia for a harem position once Sonia is de-aged enough for Cindy to imagine her as a sexual being.

First seen together in 6.4.2. A motley group of paranormal investigators formed to look into the strange events occurring in Norville, especially the mysterious woman with amazing hair who seems to be at the center of it. Presently too unfamiliar with one another to trust each other fully, they are going by aliases in case one of them turns out to be a spy from who-knows-what-faction.

"Lavelle" and "Cordy." A red-haired boy and black-haired girl, Cindy's age or a year younger. They first encountered Starry at the Thunderbolt Arcade, slowly getting prettier and with her hair blocking the view as seen from every angle simultaneously.

"Dennis." A man in his mid-twenties, who first encountered Starry when she ran a parkour course at nighttime wearing high heels.

"Velma." A brunette woman in her late twenties, who reports that a certain strip club waitress was able to take way too many orders way too quickly without seeming hurried.

"Illyria." A serious, scared-seeming young girl with glasses and long earthy-brown hair. Illyria witnessed a mysterious woman make her hair glow, in order to frighten off another girl from a date with a possible date-rapist. Illyria might have witnessed this event from closer at hand than she is letting on.

True names:

Maggie Strigi (Cordy). Asexual, interested in becoming a magical nullifier.

Su Ziquan (Lavelle). Ambitions of becoming an archmage bouncy catgirl.

Alexander Robichaud (Dennis). Tired of being human.

Mori Wen (Velma). Made a terrible mistake that killed some people, wants to bring one of them back.

Cinderella Sheen (Illyria).

While with Maggie and Ziquan of the Scoobies, "Illyria" demonstrated her power over probability by going up and propositioning a girl she met on the street... to be called over for a brief fuck by a random person, who would address her as "Copper Swallow". Later, Cindy in Yoal-yohuali/succubus form ran into Copper Swallow at an adult toy store, and took her on a walk. Rescued from Yoal-yohuali by Old Ned (Ned Stonefield). Subjected to permanent denial of voluntary orgasms by a text message from Illyria, making her the first entry in Cindy's Victims Friends With Penalties list.

Humanity has a number of biological sexes. Contrary to popular mythology, this number is not two. There are the two mundane sexes that everyone knows---and five magical sexes that are hidden, secluded within the shadows, or disguising themselves to pass within the world of women and men.

Joel Ratliff: An "innocent" young virginal boy who tried to summon a succubus using a book that, it turned out, might have been less than entirely reliable.

Starastera: A succubus who claims to be ancient and is rather evil in a sexy way. At least, that's what she looks like from inside the story. In the aftermath, it is strongly suspected that Starastera was under a mind-control spell herself.

Melusine Wheeler: A young succubus, part of an investigation team with Takotoama, that responded to the weirdly messed-up beacon that Joel Ratliff created. Also the daughter of Mayor Wheeler, Lorelei Lashkiss, and presumably at least one other.

Takotoama: Assigned female at birth but identifies as eldritch, or as the vernacular would have it, a tentacle monster. Made themself robotic tentacles and is something of a mad magitek inventor. Their deadname is "Sherryl", last name not currently known.

Milse Orkosi: Some type of senior troubleshooter working for Lady Regora. She exercised command authority over the police responding to the Tentacle Incident. Dangerously clever.

Lorelei Lashkiss: The futanari elder ruling over the Norville area. Put out a tickle hit on Starastera in retaliation for what Starastera did to Melusine, contracted to Danni Arcadia.

Rachel Davidson: A student who almost went on a date with Nathaniel Miroa, but was scared out of it by Starry in full eldritch mode.

Nathaniel Miroa: Convicted by Erogame quest text of being a date rapist who spikes drinks with GHB.

Mahn Berberg: A billionaire who arranges by circuitous means to sponsor elaborate parkour runs, one of which hosted Starry and Charles on their first date.

Marcus Adan: Charles's beloved grandfather, an Eisenhower Republican with a home library full of history books.

Frank Weed Sheen: Cindy's beloved father. Currently dead, but Cindy plans to fix that using the perk True Love Conquers All.

Jace Wayman: A comp-sci student at NU who saw Starry at a bus stop while she happened to be touching her pussy. She masturbated in front of him while on the phone with Charles, then made him come into his pants. As of Saturday, Jace Wayman is currently building an app to help other women make him come in his pants.

Bryan Landau: Manager of the Purring Kittens strip club. Other people at the strip club include dancers named Tisha and Lina, and a waitress named Daniela.

Jeremy Willagher: Tried to blackmail "Princess" (Cindy) into sex while she was working at Purring Kittens. Cindy recorded him doing so, and currently plans to give the recording to Karinna Coral as a friendly gift.

Professor Artyom Volkov and Dr. Theresa Marshall: Spurred on by an unintentional pep talk from Starry, Prof. Volkov has decided to leave the safe paths and try to live his dreams for real... by really kidnapping Theresa Marshall, a woman who confessed to him her inability to tolerate normal sexuality and that in her perfect world people like her would be slaves.

Joseph Greenwood / Mall Rapist: Winifred Greenwood Sheen's father's brother. Raped Winifred when she was thirteen. Winifred's father didn't believe her about it. Later revealed to be the face beneath the Mall Rapist's mask.

Rose: Member of the Norville Redcaps, the largest agender communist street gang in Central California. Rescued Starry from the Mall Rapist.

Ned Stonefield / Old Ned / Ned Serdyrrah: A tired and retired wizard who's too old for all these shenanigans. Rescued Copper Swallow (Erin Penna) from Yoal-yohuali (Cindy).

Index - Stats at end of Book 1

Stats at end of Book 1:​

Spoiler

Status

Description & Stats

Statuses, Perks

Quests

Skills

This threadmark contains spoilers for the state of the story up to the end of Book 1. If you haven't reached that point yet, you shouldn't read this.

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 9 (20,050 / 30,000)

Stats:

DOM: 191/270
SUB: 340/340

BOD: 18
LST: 15
SED: 14
FUK: 13
PRV: 19
ERO: 26 (13)

Stat Points: 30
Perk Points: 1
Money: $1591

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: Earth's Tones

Busy Mode: Off

(As of chapter 2.8.2, "Perky." These descriptions do not update chapter-by-chapter.)

Description: Cinderella Sheen is a sophomore at Norville U, still living at home with her mother. And now she's also Starry, the Erogamer. Bowled over by the incredible gifts the Erogame has showered on her and its even greater promises, she's embraced her destiny fully and vowed to take on anything the game can throw at her. Her only reservations are her worries over how the Erogame treats its other characters, and what her impossible powers might mean in the larger picture.

Character Stats:

LVL / Level: The quantified totality of your potency as an erogame character. The effect of this characteristic goes beyond just the 5 extra stat points you get per level, and the additional perk point you receive every 5th level.
BOD / Body: Your physical attractiveness, and other biological capabilities. At higher levels, your body becomes able to enact more exotic erogame events.
LST / Lust: The intensity of your sexual urges, and how easy it is to get you going.
SED / Seduction: Your ability to seduce others, to pique their interest and arouse their desire.
FUK / Fucking: Your ability to perform in bed and give others pleasure… or other sensations.
PRV / Perversion: Your descent into the world of naughtiness, fetish, deviance, and corruption.
ERO / Erogame Logic: The extent to which the world will bend---or can be bent by you---to create romantic and sexual situations in defiance of probability. Or at higher levels, physics.
DOM / Dominant Energy: Based off SED and FUK, fueling skills that invoke your dominance, sadism, or mastery.
SUB / Submissive Energy: Based off LST and PRV, fueling skills that invoke your submission, masochism, or service.

Info // Character Stats // Level:

At LVL 9, you're reaching the upper levels of what could be considered a "beginner" Erogamer. After 2 days. Maybe you ought to slow down.

You can increase your level by completing the quests the Erogame offers you; or by causing romantic and sexual events to happen to you or around you. The more difficult the challenge, the greater the rewards.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

At a BOD of 18, you have ceased to be merely a girl who is pretty, and have now joined the lowest ranks of Pretty Girls. You won't be the prettiest Pretty Girl in a decently sized room, but you're one of them, now.

You can increase this stat by using your body itself to bring happiness into the world, through the grace of your feminine form, its presentation and concealment, its motions and ornamentation. Getting naked and letting men perv on you works too.

Info // Character Stats // Lust:

A LST of 15 makes you around as horny as the low end of the population for, say, a man in his early twenties. You still have a few more points to go before you can challenge an average teenaged boy for sluttiness dominance.

You gain in this stat by allowing yourself to feel your urges and wants and desires fully, and by following through on them. Or by deliberately driving yourself mad with frustration. It's two sides of the same coin.

Info // Character Stats // Seduction:

Your SED of 14 makes you above-average for a human being, but let's be honest, the average human being is not all that seductive in the first place. But it's enough to let you try without automatically screwing up, and you do try.

You can increase this stat by pursuing and being pursued, by catching others and being caught, by tending to their yearning and not just their reward, by understanding sex as a thought inside other people's minds and not just a collision of bodies.

Info // Character Stats // Fucking:

Your FUK of 13 describes you as above-average in bed even before taking your Erogame skills into account, your utter lack of experience more than redeemed by the dedicated effort you put into sex.

You will increase in this stat by giving others pleasure and other sensations, watching the results and learning from both your successes and mistakes, and always aspiring to become ever better in bed.

Info // Character Stats // Perversion:

At a PRV of 19, you are now clearly recognizable as the sort of pervert who gets naked on a street corner and likes being tied up if it's by exactly the right person. Oh, sure, you're all cutely embarrassed and ashamed about it, but you do it anyway, you slut. Being caught up in the Erogame is no excuse.

You can increase this stat by listening to parts of yourself whose voices were previously drowned out by other parts; or by stepping off the roads you've always walked, and not immediately turning away from what you find beyond.

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At an ERO of 26, your life has become unmistakably an erogame, taking place in a physically realistic and socially unrealistic setting. The people around you often end up doing the sorts of things that characters in erogames do, although they still act in their own interests and according their own psychologies. None of the people you run into will be literally impossible to find in an ordinary world, nor will they do anything beyond the bounds of probability for that person. But gathering multiple such people into one place and time, and improbably exact circumstances, can sum to events that would never happen in the ordinary world at all.

Your effects on the larger world are still mostly confined to Norville, but they've begun to seep out in small ways.

As you continue to push the bounds of realism, the laws of social possibility will fray more, and your influence sink deeper and farther into your domain.

Info // Character Stats // Dominant and Submissive Energy:

If this were a different game, you'd have mana and hit points.

And they'd refill just from you sitting around on your ass doing nothing.

Lol.

Status Effects:

'Innocent' Virgin: Merely existing in the age of the Internet has already raised your PRV stat above 10. Still, until you choose to lose your virginity, the Erogame will not force you to give it up.

Technical Virgin: Though you have now touched and been touched, you still have some important body parts unravished. The Erogame will technically not force you to lose this last shred of pseudo-innocence. Technically.

Hairstyles:

The Coals Relighted: This hairstyle was the last creation of Satsuki-chan, an incredibly talented but shy cosplayer who had never let any boy touch her. When she finally decided to try to talk to boys, she spent weeks dyeing and re-dyeing her hair until she had created this style, symbolizing a fire that had been allowed to go out before being relighted. On her way to the convention where she planned to make her debut, the car Sacchin and her friends were taking was struck at high speed by a drunken salaryman, killing her. If in her last moments she had known that you would copy her hairstyle, she would have been glad to know that her effort was not wasted, and that it would help another girl blossom at last.

Whenever you are doing something for the first time, you receive +15 on all rolls. However, rolling 2 is as bad a critical failure as rolling 1.

Earth's Tones: When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, his first thoughts were not of his own safety, but of his world. He kept his composure and did the best he could: interrogating, dating, seducing, deflowering, and sealing the being called Starry. Charles knew that he had succeeded when he saw, in triumph and sadness, that Starry's beautiful fiery hair had faded into an ordinary earthy color.

Of course, that whole frightening and desperate emergency was a lie, an accidental prank by Cinderella Sheen that she turned into a lure for the handsome hero to whom she wanted to yield her virginity. So all of Charles's effort and courage was for nothing… or was it? It's not impossible that someday Cinderella might have become what Charles thought she was. There's nothing any less heroic about heading trouble off before it starts.

This Conceptual Hairstyle was created by Cinderella Sheen to symbolize her promise to her beloved that she would be a part of humanity, as channeled through her somewhat distracted-at-the-time thought about making her hair look 'average' and 'less alien'. The resulting waist-length hairstyle has no color of its own, and instead is the current mean reflectance of the hair colors of everyone on Earth, including the hair colors that bald people would possess if they were not bald. This presently works out to a greyish-brown.

While worn, this hairstyle reduces ERO by 50% (rounded up) and negates all skills and statuses with a higher minimum ERO.

This hairstyle's length and other non-chromatic properties are not symbolically linked to anything larger. However, targeting this hairstyle with skills or abilities that change its color should not be done lightly.

Perks:

But She Was Such a Good Student: If this were a different game, you'd be starting with a high INT stat. Throughout your scholastic career, your grades continue to reflect your actual knowledge of the course material, and you have no unusual difficulties mastering that material. Even if you miss classes or assignments for, uh, reasons.

Active

Available

Completed

Declined

Ineligible

Derailed?

Ero Achievements

Refuse the giftsex

Vulnerable young girls shouldn't walk in the alleys near the mall, between 4th St and 7th St up to Luther Ave. It shouldn't be hard to stay away. Just don't go there. Simple.

Success: You continue to lead a boring life.
Failure: +20,000 XP; bonus perk point; increased relations with the Norville Redcaps faction.

A Goddess Worthy of Worship

Among the dominant women you meet, pick out one who is reasonably stable, mostly sane, a truly good person deep down, and has an available vacancy in her harem for a 17-year-old ex-Mormon college student who hasn't come out to his family.

Success: 50,000XP
Failure: Tonight was the happiest night of Blake Layton's life.

Virgin Remover

Take Blake Layton's virginity, or make sure it's taken, within 30 days of Sunday night.

Success: +1,000XP
Failure: This ain't the Dresden Files, but you still don't want the 'Oathbreaker' status effect.

Better Battling Big-Boobied Bots.

Donald Warren Merring of Norville, CA considers himself a warrior in the fight against capitalism. Without directly targeting him, his family, his friends, his work, or his neighborhood, transform the world until he decides to resist you instead. Then, attack him using at least two sexbots.

Success: +1,000,000 XP
Failure: Donald Merring continues to lead a life of empty drama, filled with imaginary assaults and pretended victories against forces that continue unchanged.

Off the Road

Tammi and Danni Arcadia have finally run into each other again after a long separation. They'll be celebrating in their own special way. They find you cute and wouldn't mind including you in their special celebrations. You remind them of Beth Cordova, and they never did get to say goodbye to her properly.

The Arcadias can be found in room 211 of the Norville Arms-Marriott until Sunday evening.

Success: +10,000XP, increased relations with Danni Arcadia
Failure: +20,000XP, increased relations with Tammi Arcadia

Spread your horizons wider

Make yourself come to a fetish you've never fantasized about before.

Success: +100xp, +1 PRV
Failure: Shame at being unworthy to be titled the Erogamer.

A woman's best friend

Norville isn't large enough to have its own Good Vibrations store. You're stuck with checking one of the adult bookstores in town, if you want a cheap-ass overpriced vibrator from CalExotics before Amazon can ship you a proper Hitachi Magic Wand.

Success: +100xp
Failure: 'Anorgasmic' status, 2 days

I'm not God, but I'm here beside you

Blake Layton decided he was an atheist after a semester of undergrad philosophy challenged his sheltered upbringing. He hasn't dared come out to his family or his friends in the Church of Latter-Day Saints. He's ashamed to have been caught looking at you, and would melt into a terrified puddle if you called him out on looking at the magazine covers.

Help Blake Layton get started on his new life! By showing him your titties.

Success: +250xp
Failure: You fail.
1st bonus objective: Touch Blake and be touched by him. +350XP
2nd bonus objective: Take Blake's virginity on the same night. (Failed/declined.)
3rd bonus objective: Obtain Blake Layton for your harem as your submissive sex slave. (Failed/declined.)

Sheltered, in my arms.

The exhibitionist girl who grabbed Blake out of Walgreens has informed him that he is to become her boy-toy for the night. But the impossible fantasy can't continue unless they find somewhere to stay.

Success: Blake.
Failure: No Blake.

Silence indicates affirmative consent

Find an older man, or a fellow student who doesn't know or doesn't care that California passed SB-967 in 2014 to require clearly expressed consent (aka the "Yes Means Yes Act"), to violate your virginal vagina. In a way that could potentially make him a convicted sex offender for the rest of his life if you decided to press charges.

Or you could go weirder than that. ERO 19 gives you a lot of leeway, just saying.

Success: +5,000 XP, ?? +1 ERO
Failure: You either stay a virgin forever, or learn to ask for it like a good slut. Not to mention a sane one.

Thar she blows!

One of the boys at the mall might take you up on your invitation to a bathroom stall, despite your mediocre BOD and pathetic SED. He might even be backed-up enough to come in your mouth despite your low FUK.

Success: 2,000 exp; +1 sexual reputation, 'Daring'
Failure: 'Unwanted' status effect; -2 romantic reputation, 'Desperate'

Seduce, Contain, Protect

When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, he kept his composure, asked intelligent questions, and finally invited the eldritch horror on a date. Maybe if he went on interacting with her, he could persuade her to be nicer to humanity, or figure out something else to do about this situation. Besides, she was cute.

Lure this well-intentioned mortal into deflowering "Starry" in an attempt to prevent her from powering up… an attempt that will play right into her hands. And into your vagina.

Success: Loss of virginity
Failure: ??

Bare the Body, Bare the Soul

Sam's Strippers is always on the lookout for new talent. Good for a few bucks, and maybe something more.

Min BOD: 20. Min SED: 15. Requires ERO 20 or Fake ID perk.

Switch and bait

Get invited along to the Alpha Sigma Chi party tonight, then flirt with Nathaniel Miroa until he abandons Rachel Davidson right in front of her, and tries to spike your own drink instead of hers.

Success: +2,000XP, +1 SED
Failure: Rachel gets a free donation of GHB plus some other fluids.
Bonus objective #1: Let Nat have his way with you, then report to the police for blood testing and put a permanent end to his ways.

Kidnapping an innocent boy out of Walgreens and stealing his non-technical virginity earned +500XP.

Losing your non-technical virginity earned +1000XP.

Unintentionally exhibiting yourself at the arcade caused 5 people to masturbate to you that night, earning +250XP.

When Charles Met Starry: You've led a good and honest man to find his dominant side for the first time; through being courted by him through a beautiful and deeply emotional evening, that ended with him having no choice but to rape you in order to save the world. Then you became his girlfriend afterwards. +60,000XP, +2 ERO.

Game Skills

Reality Skills

Metareality Skills

Wield Vibrator: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 1 DOM / minute.

A skill to deploy the mechanical contrivances first used at the end of the 19th century to treat feminine hysteria by inducing 'hysterical paroxysm'. Capable of producing interesting sensations in all sorts of places, a vibrator in the hands of a true master is an irreplaceable part of their sexual armory.

Edge Riding: Lvl 3 (70%). Active. 1 SUB / 30 seconds.

Staying near orgasm without going over, this skill requires more... training... than simply edging yourself repeatedly. Go as near orgasm as you are ordered. Stay there. Drop down. Back up. Right to the ultimate edge. Down slowly, up slowly. Good girl. Now repeat that until you're told to stop. In its ultimate form, this skill becomes the final mastery and control of your own distance from orgasm.

Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 3 (48%). Passive.

A true magical bimbo is always dressed her best, whether in the chill of early spring, the scorching sun of the desert, or the deadly vacuum of space. You probably shouldn't try that last one for a while.

Uncomfortable environment: ERO x 1.5% resistance
Dangerous environment: ERO x 0.6% resistance
Lethal environment: ERO x 0.3% resistance

This skill only operates when you are dressed (or undressed) inappropriately for your surroundings. To avoid being sunburned on the beach, you'll need an unusually skimpy swimsuit. Naturally, ice cubes and dripping hot wax don't count as 'environments', so keep on squirming.

Subskill: Cute Cold Resistance: Lvl 7 (11%). Passive.

Multiply your base resistance factor for cold environments by 1.6.
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Strip Tease: Lvl 3 (5%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to remove clothes seductively, always hinting at more than what appears, making the viewer more and more impatient to see the end. While this skill is active and you are continuing to remove clothing, you receive a +10% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 10% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Reverse Strip Tease: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to put on clothes seductively, relying for its eroticism on graceful movement and the intimacy of watching someone dress themselves. While this skill is active and you are continuing to add clothing, you receive a +5% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 5% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Extra Large Sausage: Lvl 2 (50%). Active. Special.

Work with Porn Logic instead of Erogame Logic. Cost is three times the equivalent PRN stat that would be required to accomplish the same end, payable in DOM and/or SUB, plus three times the equivalent cost of any porn-based skills that would be needed, used at Lvl 1. You may not create situations that would require greater PRN than your (ERO-10).

Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit: Lvl 1 (40%). Active. DOM / Special.

Convince 1 other person to go along with 1 instance of Erogame Logic. This skill cannot of itself cause someone to act contrary to their interests or desires, but helps convince them that the event is not hallucinatory, that it's fine not to use protection this time, or that the victim won't go to the police. Costs DOM equal to the ERO corresponding to the minimum improbability threshold for the ongoing event.

Dressing as a sexy bunny reduces the cost of this skill by 50%.

You Forgot to Lock the Door: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive and Active. 5 DOM.

Active: A staple ability of any erogame character, this skill gives you the power to 'accidentally' pass through any barrier, so long as nudity or naughtiness lies beyond. Scrunchies or other indicators of sexy times in progress will have disappeared, making you apparently not responsible and allowing you to blame the victim.

Passive: When you yourself are being nude or naughty, barriers hindering the way to your own presence are 1% likely to open if somebody tries them.

Edge Other: Lvl 3 (60%). Active. 1 DOM.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving your victims insane with frustration, invoking Edge Other at Lvl 3 gives you a sense of the next time your target is getting 'close'. At this skill level, stopping immediately at that first hint will produce an almost-edge, subsiding a little below the peak. Continuing on will produce a sharper edge, but this runs the chance of giving the victim a real release.

Tears of Milk: Lvl 2 (20%). Active. 14 DOM.

Allows you to stop all stimulation at exactly the right time to produce 1-4 pearls of semen from a cock. At Lvl 2, using this skill on a cock 16 times will exhaust that cock's capacity for continuing to be teased without a refractory period, as well as driving the cock's owner completely out of his mind.

Edge Self: Lvl 1 (20%). Active. 1 SUB.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving yourself insane with frustration, invoking Edge Self at Lvl 1 forces you to stop stimulating yourself before the next time you come, at a variable but short distance from the true, absolute edge.

Good Morning: Lvl 2 (40%). Active. 3 SUB.

"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on; or that you were woken up with oral sex; or that you mean to wake someone up that way?"

This skill prevents your target from waking up the next time they would otherwise do so due to your sexual ministrations, and maintains their slumber for an additional 25 seconds after that. This skill may be invoked again before the 25 seconds run out, with an additional activation cost. If instead permitted to wake up, the subject will be drowsy at first, rather than making sudden movements.

The Nectar: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive.

You gain benefits from consuming sexual fluids you have personally extracted from others. (With the Mad Inventor perk: sexual fluids extracted via machines of your own creation that you personally operate.) Every person's precious bodily fluids convey different potencies, hinted at by tastes and sensations you may learn to identify. Mixing synergetic sexual fluids yields greater results, but the fluids must be mixed in situ.

Known nectars:

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Blake Layton | A taste of vanilla-flavored cake; a sense of spreading warmth, as of kindness or a sunny day. | ? | +10% to the rate of experience gain in stats and skills, 6 hours. | ???

Erotic Statuary: Lvl 1 (60%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.

Some sexual skills involve you moving. Not this one.

Meganekko: Lvl 1 (1%). Passive.

Your eyes change to require whatever prescription glasses you're currently wearing. You may at will temporarily prevent your eyes from reverting, if you need to be adorably blind and helpless with your glasses off. Give them back, please!

+5% to SED for characters who like intelligent girls. -5% to SED for characters who don't.

High Heels: Lvl 2 (22%). Passive.

Negates all movement, dexterity, and combat penalties from high heels. Your High Heels skill is added to the level of all High-Heeled subskills when calculating their effectiveness.

High-Heeled Running: Lvl 4 (12%). Active. 1 D|S / minute.

At Lvl (4 + 2), run 60% faster when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Parkour: Lvl 3 (35%). Active. 1 D|S / maneuver.

At Lvl (3 + 2), +50% bonus to your base probability of successfully executing an urban maneuver when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Jumping: Lvl 2 (30%). Active. 1 D|S / jump.

At Lvl (2 + 2), gravity has less purchase on you when you wear high heels, resulting in increased jumping height of 40% (with no greater impact on landing). The resulting increased hang time stacks with the speed of High-Heeled Running for further travel, and does not interfere with the impact soaking of High-Heeled Landing. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Landing: Lvl 2 (70%). Active. 1 D|S / landing.

At Lvl (2 + 2), this skill reduces the force of your landing by a multiplicative factor of 1 / (1 + 0.4), or 70% of what it would otherwise be, whenever you land from a fall while wearing high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.
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Dancing: Lvl 2 (13%). Passive.

Since before Homo sapiens sapiens existed, since before language as modern humans know it, the ancestors of humankind danced around the fire of a night, seducing one another and simply expressing the joy of being alive. Now it is your turn to do the same.

Your Dancing skill is added to the level of all Dancing subskills.

Dancing Dancing Revolution: Lvl 3 (50%). Passive.

You can stomp arrows with the best of them, or maybe just the rest of them. You have a roughly 50% chance of passing stages of difficulty equal to 2 * (DDR + Dancing).

You receive a bonus of (DDR + Dancing) * 5% to your effective SED when being watched by anyone in gamer culture.

Freestyling: Lvl 2 (75%). Passive.

Whatever the other rules of the dance form, some of which you may be ignoring, you're doing your own thing too. Substitute (X * 0.75) + Freestyling for the base dancing skill X when calculating your effective stat bonuses while freestyling. Freestyling may not be suitable for all occasions, and bonuses will be lost if so.
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Wardrobe Malfunction: Lvl 3 (55%). Passive and Active.

Passive: If you are not using the Active form of this skill, anything that can go wrong with your clothing, will go wrong, with probability equal to your ERO stat. Usually, but not always, the results will tend to gently push the limits of the PRV of any onlookers and the social occasion. Higher levels of Wardrobe Malfunction create more interesting and better-timed malfunctions.

Active: You may spend 2 DOM to create a not-fully-revealing wardrobe malfunction of your choice given a plausible opportunity, or spend 2 SUB to create a fully revealing wardrobe malfunction. This will not appear to have been deliberately caused by you in any way. Spend an additional +1 energy of that type to make the wardrobe malfunction be caused by someone else, if there is an interaction plausibly permitting that.

Convenient Censoring (Hair): Lvl MAX. Passive.

Your Conceptual Hair has overridden the standard version of this skill, automatically enabling your hair to appear to cover your naughty bits, as seen by every viewing angle, with perfect reliability, for zero cost. You may at will modify the parameters of this skill for partial, complete, or no obscuration. If not otherwise specified, the parameters of this skill are determined by ERO, PRV, and social context. Your hairstyle must have sufficient tendrils of sufficient length and diameter to permit this, and be otherwise unrestrained.

You may at will choose to substitute the standard Convenient Censoring skill, making use of other obscurations and objects.

Penitence: Lvl 1 (20%). Active. 5 SUB / use.

You're very sorry for what you did. Really, really sorry. You'll... you'll understand if... you're scared, but...

Add your Penitence skill to the effective LST of whoever you are being sorry at, to a maximum bonus of your SED * 1% of its base value. If they afterwards choose to punish you, your total punishment is increased by Penitence * 10% over what it otherwise would have been, with all relationship benefits of the punishment increasing proportionally. Note that this skill cannot of itself make someone punish you if they would not otherwise be dominant.

In order to invoke this skill, you must have done something to be sorry for.

Fleeing: Lvl 2 (10%). Passive.

If you are running away from one or more pursuers, increase their effective LST towards you by a factor of (Fleeing * 1%). If they do something unspeakable to you immediately upon catching you, your Fleeing skill is added to their effective LST for the duration of that event. Whenever you are being chased by someone holding sexual intentions toward you no more twisted than your current PRV + 8, you will sometimes stumble and fall with a probability that increases your chance of being caught by a multiplicative factor of (1 + (Fleeing * ERO * 0.01)). You may pay 1 SUB per stumble to make this happen deliberately.

If you are wearing high heels while running away, add your High Heels skill to your effective Fleeing skill.

Asking For It: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive and Active. 3 SUB.

Passive: Multiply by (1 + (0.1 * Lvl)) the base probability of someone initiating a forceful sexual act targeting you (whether or not it would be consensual), whenever you are providing what they would consider to be a reason and this action appears to them to be deliberate on your part.

Active: Further multiply the above probability by (1 + (0.4 * Lvl)).

Destructible Outfit: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 2 SUB.

The mirror of the Passive skill Indestructible Outfit, invoking this skill while somebody is deliberately trying to tear off or shred your clothing reduces the durability of your clothing by 2 pts / lvl. (For revealing yourself when they're not trying, use Wardrobe Malfunction.)

Strip Other: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 2 D|S / min.

Taking off someone else's clothes slowly, erotically, and with lots of touching will temporarily raise their LST by 5% for 2 minutes.

Bloody Bedsheets: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 50 SUB.

Restore your hymen, and ensure it bleeds properly on its next puncture. All other stats and skills are unaffected.

Erogamer's Body: (LVL Max). Passive.

The biological ability to live your life as an erogame. Venereal disease doesn't exist for you, or periods or pregnancies or yeast infections. Arbitrarily large appendages can fit inside any of your orifices. You heal from all marks with a good night's sleep, ready for the next day's adventures. Other aspects of this skill depend on the BOD stat.

Erogamer's World: (LVL Max). Passive.

The consent of reality to live your life as an erogame. People are never too preoccupied to consider sex or romance, not while you're around. Bystanders won't ignore what you do, but they're unlikely to actually stop you. Those who do decide to involve themselves are drawn into the logic of the Erogame. If you go far enough that an authority sees no choice but to intervene… they won't treat you as a simple criminal. Other aspects of this skill depend on the ERO stat.

Conceptual Hair: Lvl 1 (16%). Passive and Active.

The ability to externalize your concept of hair into reality. This skill does not alter the physical laws governing your hair, nor transform your hair into any form following consistent rules. Rather, there is no longer any specific thing on your head to which the concept 'hair' could apply. What others perceive as your hair is the interaction of their sensoriums with the abstract concept 'hair', which your empowered belief has rendered capable of touching upon the continuum of specifics they call the universe.

At Lvl 1, this skill is vastly weakened by your implicit beliefs about the nature of reality, and by the conventional way in which you expect your hair to behave.

Spoiler: Truth

The higher tiers of this skill are perilous for those who began with weak senses of identity, who may begin to perceive not 'a person with hair' but instead 'hair with a person'. No matter how beautiful or shining their braids, they will feel no sense of accomplishment, because there is no 'I' in possession of the hair.

In its final use, this skill can erase the boundary between hair and reality. But this ultimate power can only be attained by a distorted soul: someone who, from the beginning, never took any pride in her braids.

My Hair Always Looks Like This: Lvl 1 (40%). Active. 10 SUB.
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The consequence of understanding that your hair changes with your state of mind, and only with your state of mind, because it is your state of mind: the exterior world can affect your hair only through the medium of affecting your interior attitude towards your hair. This skill moves your mind closer to your usual beliefs about your hair, partially counteracting the psychological effect of any recent events which led you to believe your hair had become disarranged.

Spoiler: Realization

This skill does not exist. For you to stand forth and invoke it has no effect on you other than making you believe that a skill has operated. Rather, your belief that the skill has operated is itself the skill.

Once you understand this without any doubts, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I am the skull of my hair."

And It Never Gets in the Way: Lvl 2 (84%). Active. 1 SUB / minute.
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The consequence of understanding that your hair exists for a purpose, and is a purpose: the true manifestation of a purpose will not contradict that purpose. Invoking this skill causes your hair to maintain a position which avoids interfering with whatever activities you are currently performing.

Spoiler: Insight

This skill is unnecessary. Your concept of hair is something that only interacts with reality in the first place in order to accomplish its purpose. There is nothing with place and shape that must be consistently treated as being present or absent, when the continuum asks how your hair looks and then asks if your hair is getting in your way. You can answer all such questions simultaneously in any pattern you choose, because you are the one answering them.

Once you have fully internalized this understanding, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Yet these strands will never touch anything."

It Does What I Want: Lvl 3 (27%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.
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The consequence of understanding that your hair is not dead, but as alive as your flesh: if you can will the motion of your hands and feet then you must equally be able to will the motion of your hair. This skill makes your hair be to you as a limb of your body, with DEX equal to this skill's level.

Spoiler: Understanding

This skill is inverted. In every motion of the flesh there are nervous impulses that occur prior to the muscles contracting. Prior to the nervous impulses, the brain calculates the pattern of those impulses. Prior to this calculation is a fleeting intention. Your hair is closer to your soul than your flesh, and requires only this fleeting intention to respond. Even in your inner mind, the direction of a thought comes prior to the formation of the thought. Thus your hair responds to your first will faster than does your mind. To imagine 'I will control my hair as I control my limbs' is to tread a pointlessly extended and circuitous route through your soul.

Once you understand and appreciate this irony, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Have disdained flesh to arrange many curls."

I Have All of the Hairstyles: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.
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The consequence of understanding that your hair is an abstraction, rather than a specific: your hair has no intrinsic form or boundary other than the division between 'hair' and 'not hair'. This skill recalls, reconstructs, and recreates any hairstyle that has become known to you and so inscribed itself upon your soul. The reconstruction of a hairstyle costs a variable amount, and after, its recreation costs 20 SUB.

Spoiler: Epiphany

This skill is vacuous. In perceiving a hairstyle and forming a concept dividing 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle', you have already created that hairstyle. What was once upon a person's head is a fleeting instant that can never be regained. In coming to have 'that hairstyle I saw' there is no past existence you have stolen. You only possess a boundary your perception already drew, dividing the countless possibilities of other fleeting instants into 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle'. It is impossible for your perception to draw that boundary incorrectly, because nothing beyond your own perception exists to judge that boundary: therefore this skill is itself constituted in your perception of whether the skill has been successfully applied.

Once your judgment has collapsed into this understanding, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I have created over a thousand braids."

I Know All About Hair: Lvl 0 (0%). Active, 2 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that all concepts of hair are one in the end: as you understand your own hair, you may understand the hair of others. Gazing upon another's hairstyle and invoking this skill informs you of its structure, its history, and its meaning to the wearer.

Spoiler: Awareness

This skill is illusory. The concept of hair exists within the unchanging root of form, the timeless that casts its shadows into the realm of that which is born and dies. Your eyes, gazing upon these fleeting and impermanent instants, only bring to your attention those truths that are never learned and only remembered. So your eyes matter not: you need only know that a hairstyle exists, in this realm of shadows, in order to remember its form.

Once your understanding has transcended all things that begin and end, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Unknown by death, nor known by birth."

However I Like It: Lvl 2 (10%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair's freedom to perform its purpose is the only constraint upon its form: your hair is what is needed to carry out the task of hair. This skill imbues your hair with color, length, tensile strength, or whatever other properties you desire to add to it while retaining its nature as hair. The first construal of such a property is of variable cost, after which regaining it costs 20 SUB.

Currently addable properties:

Totally Normal Intertemporal Progression: Your hair has changed hairstyles over time in a perfectly ordinary way, temporally speaking.

Totally Normal Luminous Coals: Any red parts of your hair glow in the appropriate color, emitting totally normal photons in the way any other material object would if they happened to be glowing.

Spoiler: Wisdom

This skill is counterproductive. By thinking 'my hair must be golden so as to be pretty' or 'my hair must be strong to resist being cut', you only weaken your hair compared to the thoughts 'my hair must be pretty' or 'my hair must resist being cut'. Any constraint upon the breadth of an idea's possible pathways can only diminish its ability to reach a destination.

Once you understand this and reject your past foolishness, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Purpose is my color and meaning is my shape."

All Along, I Have Always Been Hair: 1 SUB / sec.​

The consequence of understanding that you are your hair and your hair is you: you and you may use all your powers as one. Beneath your skin there is no longer flesh and blood, but hairs. Within your mind there are no longer thoughts, but hairs. By invoking each of your subskills in turn, and ending in invoking this final skill, you may weld the simultaneous potency of all aspects of your Conceptual Hair into your self.

To your VIT BOD, add (Conceptual Hair) * (My Hair Always Looks Like This) / 10
To your STR LST, add (Conceptual Hair) * (However I Like It) / 10
To your INT PRV, add (Conceptual Hair) * (I Have All of the Hairstyles) / 10
To your WIS SED, add (Conceptual Hair) * (I Know All About Hair) / 10
To your DEX FUK, add (Conceptual Hair) * (It Does What I Want) / 10
To your LUK ERO, add (Conceptual Hair) * (And It Never Gets in the Way) / 10​

While this skill is active, you may freely use HP as MP, and MP as HP DOM as SUB, and SUB as DOM. Yet beware that if both are exhausted while this skill is active, you will lose control of the technique, and die skewered upon the countless hairstyles erupting from within you.

Spoiler: Acceptance

This skill is wrong, distracted, wayward and irrelevant. It bears no resemblance at all to the final insight.

Between abstract hair and fleeting instants of hair is that which connects them, the hairstyle.
But what truly connects the abstraction and the specific is the mind that apprehends them both.
And to connect two things is to declare them separate, limiting their interaction to what the connection between them permits.
This is the final truth hidden beneath the thought that you are a hairstyle: you are the boundary between your hair and reality.
There is no principle demanding that your hair must be inside this boundary, and reality outside it.
There is no principle demanding that your concept of hair must be inside your mind, and reality outside it.
There is no inside nor outside, only the boundary.

Once you have completed your understanding of this truth, you may undo it, by acknowledging in turn all of your past insights into how your mind bounds between your hair and reality,

that the belief of 'I' relates the concept to the specific,

I am the skull of my hair​

that the desires of 'I' give it purpose,

Purpose is my color and meaning is my shape​

that the discriminations of 'I' give it form,

I have created over a thousand braids​

that the perception of 'I' binds it into time,

Unknown by death, nor known by birth​

that the will of 'I' gives it motion,

Have disdained flesh to arrange many curls​

that the 'I' answers all questions that are asked,

Yet these strands will never touch anything​

and then erasing the boundary with your last thought:

So as I end, Unlimited Braid Works.​

Time Control: Lvl 1 (0.5%). Sealed.

Control time.

Limitation: Cause and effect cannot loop. The past can be observed, and present records of it edited, but the true past cannot be modified. It is possible to guess a pseudo-future that would otherwise occur if not for the prediction, and for that predicted pseudo-future to interact with the present, but it is not possible to observe the true future.

All subskills of Time Control except the Slack subskill have been sealed.

The remainder of this description text has been sealed until Tuesday at 9am.

Slack: Lvl 2 (5%). Active. Special.​

So long as nobody is watching you, or nobody with you is keeping track of time, you can take up to 20 minutes extra each day, distributed whenever you like. You can activate this skill retroactively if you notice that you are running late for reasons that also occurred in the pseudo-future predicted at the time of the skill's retroactive activation.

To Mine Own Me Be True: Lvl MAX. Active and Passive. ? -+/ ?

Even at the center of the Erogame, you are not just a protagonist, but a human being possessed of her own ---+++. Your mother will always be safe from you, and little children everywhere. Other aspects of this skill depend on #%##%%###%%%
#$()#*$#%#%(*%)$#
!)(*#)(%#($*)$#%

%%+++%#%: Lvl ? (??). Active and Passive. ? #+ / ?

#*&%@##$#$*&$@!%^##%$*#)%hope#$*)$#%#$()future%###$#$%#$#%domain#*$$#%$#*&%#%#@%#%@%well$#^$#@%%#%life#%#$@%#final#%*&&%(*%)$#rely%!)(*#)(%#($*)$#%

Index - Stats at end of Book 2

Stats at end of Book 2:​

Spoiler

Status

Description & Stats

Statuses, Perks

Quests

Skills

This post contains spoilers for the state of the story up to the end of Book 2. If you haven't reached that point yet, you shouldn't read this.

Cinderella Sheen / Starry
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (13,900 / 50,000)

Stats:

DOM: 221/430
SUB: 283/480

BOD: 22
LST: 22
SED: 24
FUK: 19
PRV: 26
ERO: 30

Stat Points: 39
Perk Points: 3
Money: $8934

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: Blake Layton, Biologists #1-15, Mystic Eyes of Dick Perception (I), Reagent of Mundane Biology (II)
Hairstyle: The Coals Relighted

Busy Mode: On

(As of chapter 5.16.3.)

Description: Cinderella Sheen is a sophomore at Norville U, still living at home with her mother. And now she's also Starry, the Erogamer. Overwhelmed by the incredible gifts the Erogame has showered on her and its even greater promises, she's embraced her destiny fully and vowed to take on anything the game can throw at her. She remains worried over how the Erogame treats its other characters, and afraid of what her impossible powers might mean in the larger picture.

Character Stats:

LVL / Level: The quantified totality of your potency as an erogame character. The effect of this characteristic goes beyond just the 5 extra stat points you get per level, and the additional perk point you receive every 5th level.
BOD / Body: Your physical attractiveness, and other biological capabilities. At higher levels, your body becomes able to enact more exotic erogame events.
LST / Lust: The intensity of your sexual urges, and how easy it is to get you going.
SED / Seduction: Your ability to seduce others, to pique their interest and arouse their desire.
FUK / Fucking: Your ability to perform in bed and give others pleasure… or other sensations.
PRV / Perversion: Your descent into the world of naughtiness, fetish, deviance, and corruption.
ERO / Erogame Logic: The extent to which the world will bend---or can be bent by you---to create romantic and sexual situations in defiance of probability. Or at higher levels, physics.
DOM / Dominant Energy: Based off SED and FUK, fueling skills that invoke your dominance, sadism, or mastery.
SUB / Submissive Energy: Based off LST and PRV, fueling skills that invoke your submission, masochism, or service.

Info // Character Stats // Level:

At LVL 11, you are now a proper Erogamer and true. Be ready; the game thinks you are.

You can increase your level by completing the quests the Erogame offers you, or by causing romantic and sexual events to happen to you or around you. The more difficult the challenge, the greater the rewards.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

Raising your BOD to 22 has brought you to the point of being pretty enough that people notice. You're the prettiest girl in the room, so long as the room isn't too large.

You can increase this stat by using your body itself to bring happiness into the world, through the grace of your feminine form, its presentation and concealment, its motions and ornamentation. Getting naked and letting men perv on you works too.

Info // Character Stats // Lust:

A LST of 22 makes you the horniest person in the room, if there aren't too many teenaged boys in it. Your body is unusually receptive to pleasure, and other sensations.

You gain in this stat by allowing yourself to feel your urges and wants and desires fully, and by following through on them. Or by deliberately driving yourself mad with frustration. It's two sides of the same coin.

Info // Character Stats // Seduction:

Your SED of 24 makes you the most seductive person in the room, if nobody in the room is a pro. Much of that is driven by being a pretty girl on the lay; but also your understanding of others, and your speech to them, has begun to cross the vast gap that separates one mind from another.

You can increase this stat by pursuing and being pursued, by catching others and being caught, by tending to their yearning and not just their reward, by understanding sex as a thought inside other people's minds and not just a collision of bodies.

Info // Character Stats // Fucking:

Your FUK of 19 describes you as well above average in bed even before taking your Erogame skills into account, someone whose passion and eagerness would make her a good lay even if she wasn't the Erogamer.

You will increase in this stat by giving others pleasure and other sensations, watching the results and learning from both your successes and mistakes, and always aspiring to become ever better in bed.

Info // Character Stats // Perversion:

At a PRV of 26, you are now the most perverted person in the room even if the room is in coastal California, so long as it's not in San Francisco. You aren't shameless, but oh, you do enjoy your shame.

You can increase this stat by listening to parts of yourself whose voices were previously drowned out by other parts; or by stepping off the roads you've always walked, and not immediately turning away from what you find beyond.

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At ERO 30, you are living an eroge set in a world that has begun to be, just a little, impossible. The people around you still act in their own interests and according to their own psychologies, but sometimes they have a strange little talent or their minds and behaviors seem a bit eroge-like. Events and outcomes around you are no longer strictly constrained by realism.

Your local surroundings have just begun to embark on the path of major sociocultural improbability. The larger world is just beginning to embark on the path of minor sociocultural improbability.

As you continue to push the bounds of realism, the social impossibilities will become more blatant, the first signs of physical unrealism will continue to develop, and your influence will sink deeper and farther into your domain.

Info // Character Stats // Dominant and Submissive Energy:

If this were a different game, you'd have mana and hit points.

And they'd refill just from you sitting around on your ass doing nothing.

Lol.

Status Effects:

'Innocent' Virgin: Merely existing in the age of the Internet has already raised your PRV stat above 10. Still, until you choose to lose your virginity, the Erogame will not force you to give it up.

Technical Virgin: Though you have now touched and been touched, you still have some important body parts unravished. The Erogame will technically not force you to lose this last shred of pseudo-innocence. Technically.

Teased: You have undergone X cumulative points of erotic teasing, with no relief for Y days. Sexual stimuli of any kind impact you as if your LST were Z1 higher, you can be aroused Z2% faster, and once aroused you are disinhibited as if your PRV were Z3 higher. Decreased inhibition only applies up to perversions within the range of your PRV + 8, and further extremes are no more endurable for all your desperation. While under the effect of the Teased status, any wet dreams you have will end in further frustration, providing no relief. This includes any fantasies you enter using the perk What Dreams May Come.

Hairstyles:

The Coals Relighted: This hairstyle was the last creation of Satsuki-chan, an incredibly talented but shy cosplayer who had never let any boy touch her. When she finally decided to try to talk to boys, she spent weeks dyeing and re-dyeing her hair until she had created this style, symbolizing a fire that had been allowed to go out before being relighted. On her way to the convention where she planned to make her debut, the car Sacchin and her friends were taking was struck at high speed by a drunken salaryman, killing her. If in her last moments she had known that you would copy her hairstyle, she would have been glad to know that her effort was not wasted, and that it would help another girl blossom at last.

Whenever you are doing something for the first time, you receive +15 on all rolls. However, rolling 2 is as bad a critical failure as rolling 1.

Earth's Tones: When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, his first thoughts were not of his own safety, but of his world. He kept his composure and did the best he could: interrogating, dating, seducing, deflowering, and sealing the being called Starry. Charles knew that he had succeeded when he saw, in triumph and sadness, that Starry's beautiful fiery hair had faded into an ordinary earthy color.

Of course, that whole frightening and desperate emergency was a lie, an accidental prank by Cinderella Sheen that she turned into a lure for the handsome hero to whom she wanted to yield her virginity. So all of Charles's effort and courage was for nothing… or was it? It's not impossible that someday Cinderella might have become what Charles thought she was. There's nothing any less heroic about heading trouble off before it starts.

This Conceptual Hairstyle was created by Cinderella Sheen to symbolize her promise to her beloved that she would be a part of humanity, as channeled through her somewhat distracted-at-the-time thought about making her hair look 'average' and 'less alien'. The resulting waist-length hairstyle has no color of its own, and instead is the current mean reflectance of the hair colors of everyone on Earth, including the hair colors that bald people would possess if they were not bald. This presently works out to a greyish-brown.

While worn, this hairstyle reduces ERO by 50% (rounded up) and negates all skills and statuses with a higher minimum ERO.

This hairstyle's length and other non-chromatic properties are not symbolically linked to anything larger. However, targeting this hairstyle with skills or abilities that change its color should not be done lightly.

Perks:

But She Was Such a Good Student: If this were a different game, you'd be starting with a high INT stat. Throughout your scholastic career, your grades continue to reflect your actual knowledge of the course material, and you have no unusual difficulties mastering that material. Even if you miss classes or assignments for, uh, reasons.

Marshmallow Test: Receive two additional perks, for a net of one more perk than you would've had otherwise. This perk can only be taken after reaching Lvl 10 and only if it is the first perk you have chosen other than your starting perk.

Friends With Benefits: Your friends, companions, and allies have an easier time keeping up with your rapidly growing power as they follow you down many strange paths---if that's what you want, anyway. This special perk unlocks the Share the Fun subskill of the Bestow Ability skill tree. (Don't worry! This perk does not interfere with Marshmallow Tests because you did not choose it.)

Active

Available

Completed

Failed

Declined

Ineligible

Derailed?

Ero Achievements

Refuse the giftsex

Vulnerable young girls shouldn't walk in the alleys near the mall, between 4th St and 7th St up to Luther Ave. It shouldn't be hard to stay away. Just don't go there. Simple.

Updated: The police are closing in on the Mall Rapist and will arrest him within the next 24 hours. Soon the streets will be safe for you again!

Success: You continue to lead a boring life.
Failure: +20,000 XP; bonus perk point; increased relations with the Norville Redcaps faction.

A Goddess Worthy of Worship

Among the dominant women you meet, pick out one who is reasonably stable, mostly sane, a truly good person deep down, and has an available vacancy in her harem for a 17-year-old ex-Mormon college student who hasn't come out to his family.

Success: 50,000XP
Failure: Tonight was the happiest night of Blak@(#&$(*#^%@{)*$#@)*#%)@$)@#*&%#)@#inds a mistress on his own and you don't get any XP for it.

Time limit: 30 days from the night you met Blake Layton.

Better Battling Big-Boobied Bots

Donald Warren Merring of Norville, CA considers himself a warrior in the fight against capitalism. Without directly targeting him, his family, his friends, his work, or his neighborhood, transform the world until he decides to resist you instead. Then, attack him using at least two sexbots.

Success: +1,000,000 XP
Failure: Donald Merring continues to lead a life of empty drama, filled with imaginary assaults and pretended victories against forces that continue unchanged.

Slave to the In-Law

Find a submissive man willing to take orders from your mother, and delegate him to cook and clean at your mother's current residence. In case it wasn't clear from your mother's tone of voice, this quest is not optional.

Success: +50,000XP, greatly increased relations with Mom
Failure: Decreased relations with Mom
Time limit: You must finish this quest within 1 week of the first time you have 3+ submissive men in your own harem. Surely a good daughter wouldn't try to have three slaves while her poor, long-suffering mother doesn't even have one.

A Family-Friendly Harem

The next time he's in town, bring Charles over to dinner so that your mother can meet him. She promises she'll be on her best pretend-brainwashed behavior.

No, you don't get a choice about this.

Success: +100XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: unthinkable

Better Than That Ponce

For thousands of years, alchemists and explorers have futilely spent their lives and their deaths seeking a Philosopher's Stone or a Fountain of Youth… an ancient quest that is about to end. Because an eighteen-year-old girl decided the sorta-friend who ate lunch with her wasn't pretty enough.

Success: ???
Failure: ?

Quest updated:

After a frantic scramble to find a new venue when their previous hotel unexpectedly canceled on them, the fourth Conference on Applications of Proteins and Peptides is being held in Mauss Auditorium in the Norville annex of CSU Bakersfield, with the keynote lecture being given on Friday morning at 8:00am.

Many conference attendees will also be present for drinks and hors d'ouevres at a reception starting 7pm on Thursday evening, held in the Wainscott room of the Norville Arms-Marriott where many conference attendees are staying.

Subquest: Come With Me If You Want Everyone To Live

Get 18 attractive female scientists and 12 attractive male scientists to attend your informal evening workshop on applied reproductive biology.

Quest updated:

The informal workshop has been duly scheduled. Now the attendees need to become more comfortable around the group and each other… which you can best catalyze by leading the way in visibly enjoying yourself.

Quest updated:

A cooperative biologist has taken over the work of ordering and testing the Ero Virus. Soon you should obtain several doses of Ero Virus, making it possible for you to finish the immediate task you set out to accomplish... and yet, the larger way ahead remains unclear to you and your companions.

Sex Drive (1/250)

Personally administer orgasms to 250 different car drivers while they are driving. Their drive must begin from some intent other than receiving your attentions, such as a rideshare, or picking you up as a hitchhiker.

Success: Gain Ero-Travel. If Ero-Travel has already been obtained via perk, the perk point used is refunded (and you do not gain another perk after exceeding ERO 75).

Perfect in Every Way

Complete a university semester of at least 16 credits with maximum grades in every course taken. These grades may be obtained by any means necessary.

Success: +30,000 XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: ---

Coo-Coo-Ca-Choo

Somewhere in the world there must be a boy between age 16 and 24 who finds puffy middle-aged women to be unbearably sexy and worthy of some serious worship, including foot massages.

Success: +40,000XP, +1 PRV, greatly increased relations with Mom
Failure: ---

Promote the Queen

Your mother hasn't had an easy time taking care of you on her own. A raise at her workplace would go a long way towards making her feel less stressed. Get your mother a higher salary at Johnston & Johnston, by any means necessary. (That's code for seduction and blackmail, honey.)

Success: +30,000XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: ??

Become a Princess

Install your mother as the sovereign queen of a country with at least 5,000,000 residents. Make sure the country is in good shape when she gets it, and that there's a nice palace ready before she moves in.

Success: +5,000,000XP, extremely increased relations with Mom, +1 perk point
1st bonus objective: Take her by surprise. +500,000 XP.
2nd bonus objective: Do it on Mother's Day. +1,000,000 XP.
3rd bonus objective: Have Dad there waiting for her when she arrives. +2,000,000 XP.
Failure: ???

I am the Mother of All Things, and All Things Must Wear A Sweater

Stay warm for a whole day. Wear a sweater at all times that you are wearing any clothing. You fail if at any point you feel chilly, so watch that thermostat, sweetie.

Success: +1 Ero Environmental Resistance
Failure: ---

Bare the Body, Bare the Soul

Sam's Strippers is always on the lookout for new talent. Good for a few bucks, and maybe something more.

Gloryhole Girl (0/10,000)

Make his cock come without you seeing or touching any other part of him, and without him being able to see you or touch you. Is there really a human being on the other side of the hole? Some questions are better left unanswered… on both sides.

Objective #1: Drain 10 cocks: +1 FUK
Objective #2: Drain 100 cocks: +2 PRN
Objective #3: Drain 1,000 cocks: Personal forcefield, aura of awe, ability to fly.
Objective #4: Drain 10,000 cocks: ?????

A Fold in the Wolf.

After decades of a safe if not completely normal life with his more illegal fantasies staying fantasies, Artyom Volkov's life was disrupted one day when a strange girl looked him in the eyes and told him that she knew he'd meant it and that she believed he'd do it. She spoke of courage, of transcending an ordinary existence, and seemed to believe that in Norville this was not only possible but routine. Unable to clear her words from his mind, he tossed and turned that night, thinking it over. He knew that he was old, that he wasn't risking much if he risked ruining the remainder of his life. Would he die without ever having tried to live?

Despite ethnic stereotypes, Professor Artyom Volkov had in fact accumulated no criminal connections whatsoever over his lifetime as an academician in Connecticut. He could only think of one person who'd talked as if she had the underworld connections he needed, one person who might be able to turn his and Theresa Marshall's fantasy world into reality. The mysterious Norville girl Starry Starr… who was also the only loose end besides him and Dr. Marshall who knew about his intended crime. Her participation might guarantee her future silence. But with no student record showing her name, how could he find her?

Volkov can be found in Room 6F of the Helmut Kaloni Residence on Norville U's campus until Tuesday evening.

Success: +$200,000, +100,000XP, ??
Failure: ???, Theresa Marshall doesn't enter her true world.

Spread your horizons wider

Make yourself come to a fetish you've never fantasized about before.

Success: +100xp, +1 PRV
Failure: Shame at being unworthy to be titled the Erogamer.

A woman's best friend

Norville isn't large enough to have its own Good Vibrations store. You're stuck with checking one of the adult bookstores in town, if you want a cheap-ass overpriced vibrator from CalExotics before Amazon can ship you a proper Hitachi Magic Wand.

Success: +100xp
Failure: 'Anorgasmic' status, 2 days

I'm not God, but I'm here beside you

Blake Layton decided he was an atheist after a semester of undergrad philosophy challenged his sheltered upbringing. He hasn't dared come out to his family or his friends in the Church of Latter-Day Saints. He's ashamed to have been caught looking at you, and would melt into a terrified puddle if you called him out on looking at the magazine covers.

Help Blake Layton get started on his new life! By showing him your titties.

Success: +250xp
Failure: You fail.
1st bonus objective: Touch Blake and be touched by him. +350XP
2nd bonus objective: Take Blake's virginity on the same night. (Failed/declined.)
3rd bonus objective: Obtain Blake Layton for your harem as your submissive sex slave. (Failed/declined.)

Sheltered, in my arms.

The exhibitionist girl who grabbed Blake out of Walgreens has informed him that he is to become her boy-toy for the night. But the impossible fantasy can't continue unless they find somewhere to stay.

Success: Blake.
Failure: No Blake.

Silence indicates affirmative consent

Find an older man, or a fellow student who doesn't know or doesn't care that California passed SB-967 in 2014 to require clearly expressed consent (aka the "Yes Means Yes Act"), to violate your virginal vagina. In a way that could potentially make him a convicted sex offender for the rest of his life if you decided to press charges.

Or you could go weirder than that. ERO 19 gives you a lot of leeway, just saying.

Success: +5,000 XP, ?? +1 ERO
Failure: You either stay a virgin forever, or learn to ask for it like a good slut. Not to mention a sane one.

Off the Road

Tammi and Danni Arcadia have finally run into each other again after a long separation. They'll be celebrating in their own special way. They find you cute and wouldn't mind including you in their special celebrations. You remind them of Beth Cordova, and they never did get to say goodbye to her properly.

The Arcadias can be found in room 211 of the Norville Arms-Marriott until Sunday evening.

Success: +10,000XP, increased relations with Danni Arcadia
Failure: +20,000XP, increased relations with Tammi Arcadia
Extraordinary success: +35,000 XP, greatly increased relationship with the Arcadias, the Arcadias become available as quest companions.

Virgin Remover

Take Blake Layton's virginity, or make sure it's taken, within 30 days of Sunday night.

Success: +1,000XP
Failure: This ain't the Dresden Files, but you still don't want the 'Oathbreaker' status effect.
Extra success:: Take Blake's virginity so hard he can't even get hard again afterwards. Additional +5,000XP.

Beyond the Possible

You must prove your readiness before you can finish advancing the ERO stat to 30!

Fully convince somebody, using only the sub-ERO-30 powers already available to you, that some event has occurred that is truly impossible within the world they knew.

Success: ERO 30, +5,000 XP
Hidden goal #1: Complete this quest before it begins. +5,000 XP.
Hidden goal #2: Complete this quest at ERO <25. +5,000 XP.
Hidden goal #3: Complete this quest at ERO <20. +5,000 XP, special perk Friends With Benefits.

Come Into His Parlour

Bring Bryan P. Landau to orgasm in six minutes with a lap dance, despite the grave obstacle presented by his pants.

Success: +3000XP, +1 FUK, the boss is quite impressed.
Failure: Personal enlightenment about the importance of checking your basement assumptions before you start building apartment complexes on top.

Thar she blows!

One of the boys at the mall might take you up on your invitation to a bathroom stall, despite your mediocre BOD and pathetic SED. He might even be backed-up enough to come in your mouth despite your low FUK.

Success: 2,000 exp; +1 sexual reputation, 'Daring'
Failure: 'Unwanted' status effect; -2 romantic reputation, 'Desperate'

Seduce, Contain, Protect

When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, he kept his composure, asked intelligent questions, and finally invited the eldritch horror on a date. Maybe if he went on interacting with her, he could persuade her to be nicer to humanity, or figure out something else to do about this situation. Besides, she was cute.

Lure this well-intentioned mortal into deflowering "Starry" in an attempt to prevent her from powering up… an attempt that will play right into her hands. And into your vagina.

Success: Loss of virginity
Failure: ??

A Man of Wealth and Taste

Stanley Silverman likes them young and eager. That last part can be a problem for him, considering his particular fetishes.

Min PRV: 30.

Starry's Stripping Society

Build your own strip club, or take over an existing one, and show the world how it should be done. And yet, what is it your strip club will have that matters so much? Besides blackjack and hookers.

Success: +300,000XP, $200,000 monthly income.
Failure: Loss of invested money, ???

Lvl 10, $2,000,000.

Switch and bait

Get invited along to the Alpha Sigma Chi party tonight, then flirt with Nathaniel Miroa until he abandons Rachel Davidson right in front of her, and tries to spike your own drink instead of hers.

Success: +2,000XP, +1 SED
Failure: Rachel gets a free donation of GHB plus some other fluids.
Bonus objective #1: Let Nat have his way with you, then report to the police for blood testing and put a permanent end to his ways.

Kidnapping an innocent boy out of Walgreens and stealing his non-technical virginity earned +500XP.

Losing your non-technical virginity earned +1000XP.

Unintentionally exhibiting yourself at the arcade caused 5 people to masturbate to you that night, earning +250XP.

When Charles Met Starry: You've led a good and honest man to find his dominant side for the first time; through being courted by him through a beautiful and deeply emotional evening, that ended with him having no choice but to rape you in order to save the world. Then you became his girlfriend afterwards. +60,000XP, +2 ERO.

Being yuri-molested on live television caused 48 people to masturbate to you, followed by a man who saw you touching yourself, earning +2450XP.

You rubbed a voyeur into a shameful pants-messing orgasm, earning +350XP.

Masturbating in public caused 6 people to masturbate to thoughts of you that night, earning +300XP.

You used your hands to make an anonymous Lyft driver come, and swallowed it, earning +150XP.

Gave Nechtan Kelly a handjob and cruelly ruined his orgasm. +100XP.

Tempted and corrupted an experienced dom into walking a darker path. +500XP.

Game Skills

Reality Skills

Truths

Metareality Skills

Wield Vibrator: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 1 DOM / minute.

A skill to deploy the mechanical contrivances first used at the end of the 19th century to treat feminine hysteria by inducing 'hysterical paroxysm'. Capable of producing interesting sensations in all sorts of places, a vibrator in the hands of a true master is an irreplaceable part of their sexual armory.

Edge Riding: Lvl 5 (63%). Active. 1 SUB / 60 seconds.

Staying near orgasm without going over, this skill requires more... training... than simply edging yourself repeatedly. Go as near orgasm as you are ordered. Stay there. Drop down. Back up. Right to the ultimate edge. Down slowly, up slowly. Good girl. Now repeat that until you're told to stop. In its ultimate form, this skill becomes the final mastery and control of your own distance from orgasm.

Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 4 (46%). Passive.

A true magical bimbo is always dressed her best, whether in the chill of early spring, the scorching sun of the desert, or the deadly vacuum of space. You probably shouldn't try that last one for a while.

Uncomfortable environment: ERO x 2% resistance
Dangerous environment: ERO x 0.8% resistance
Lethal environment: ERO x 0.4% resistance

This skill only operates when you are dressed (or undressed) inappropriately for your surroundings. To avoid being sunburned on the beach, you'll need an unusually skimpy swimsuit. Naturally, ice cubes and dripping hot wax don't count as 'environments', so keep on squirming.

Subskill: Cute Cold Resistance: Lvl 8 (84%). Passive.

Multiply your base resistance factor for cold environments by 1.8.
​

Strip Tease: Lvl 3 (10%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to remove clothes seductively, always hinting at more than what appears, making the viewer more and more impatient to see the end. While this skill is active and you are continuing to remove clothing, you receive a +10% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 10% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Reverse Strip Tease: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to put on clothes seductively, relying for its eroticism on graceful movement and the intimacy of watching someone dress themselves. While this skill is active and you are continuing to add clothing, you receive a +5% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 5% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Extra Large Sausage: Lvl 3 (0%). Active. Special.

Work with Porn Logic instead of Erogame Logic. Cost is three times the equivalent PRN stat that would be required to accomplish the same end, payable in DOM and/or SUB, plus three times the equivalent cost of any porn-based skills that would be needed, used at Lvl 1. You may not create situations that would require greater PRN than your (ERO-10).

Just Follow the Fucking Rabbit: Lvl 2 (40%). Active. DOM / Special.

Convince Lvl^2 other people to go along with 1 instance of Erogame Logic. This skill cannot of itself cause someone to act contrary to their interests or desires, but helps convince them that the event is not hallucinatory, that it's fine not to use protection this time, or that the victim won't go to the police. Costs DOM equal to the ERO corresponding to the minimum improbability threshold for the ongoing event, divided by the Lvl of this skill.

Dressing as a sexy bunny reduces the cost of this skill by 50%.

You Forgot to Lock the Door: Lvl 2 (0%). Passive and Active. 5 DOM.

Active: A staple ability of any erogame character, this skill gives you the power to 'accidentally' pass through any barrier, so long as nudity or naughtiness lies beyond. Scrunchies or other indicators of sexy times in progress will have disappeared, making you apparently not responsible and allowing you to blame the victim.

Passive: When you yourself are being nude or naughty, barriers hindering the way to your own presence are LVL * 1% likely to open if somebody tries them.

Edge Other: Lvl 5 (65%). Active. 1 DOM.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving your victims insane with frustration, invoking Edge Other at Lvl 5 gives you a sense of the next time your target is getting 'close'. At this skill level, stopping immediately at that first hint will produce a "soft" edge. Continuing on will produce a sharper edge, but this runs the chance of giving the victim a real release.

Tears of Milk: Lvl 5 (85%). Active. 11 DOM.

Allows you to stop all stimulation at exactly the right time to produce 1-3 pearls of semen from a cock. At Lvl 5, using this skill on a cock 19 times will exhaust that cock's capacity for continuing to be teased without a refractory period, as well as driving the cock's owner completely out of his mind.

Edge Self: Lvl 6 (11%). Active. 1 SUB.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving yourself insane with frustration, invoking Edge Self forces you to stop stimulating yourself before the next time you come, at a variable but short distance from the true, absolute edge. Higher levels enable greater proximity to orgasm, faster edging, and advanced techniques.

Good Morning: Lvl 2 (80%). Active. 3 SUB.

"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on; or that you were woken up with oral sex; or that you mean to wake someone up that way?"

This skill prevents your target from waking up the next time they would otherwise do so due to your sexual ministrations, and maintains their slumber for an additional 25 seconds after that. This skill may be invoked again before the 25 seconds run out, with an additional activation cost. If instead permitted to wake up, the subject will be drowsy at first, rather than making sudden movements.

The Nectar: Lvl 4 (35%). Passive.

You gain benefits from consuming sexual fluids you have personally extracted from others. (With the Mad Inventor perk: sexual fluids extracted via machines of your own creation that you personally operate.) Every person's precious bodily fluids convey different potencies, hinted at by tastes and sensations you may learn to identify. Mixing synergetic sexual fluids yields greater results, but the fluids must be mixed in situ.

Known nectars:

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Blake Layton | A taste of vanilla-flavored cake; a sense of spreading warmth, as of kindness or a sunny day. | ? | +10% to the rate of experience gain in stats and skills, 6 hours. | ???
Tammi Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | ???
Danni Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | ???
Driver #1 (plate 76ND2X) | A touch of spiciness as of curry power, fizzing slightly down your throat. | +5 to all dice rolls involving financial negotiation, 2 hours. | ?? | ???
Gloryhole cock #1 | A crispness like an apple's tartness, a sharpness like metal touching your tongue. | +5 to all dice rolls involving the BOD or LST stats, 3 hours. | ?? | ???
Biologist #1 (wearing only a vest) | Cigarettes and whiskey. | ? | The limit of your Extra Large Sausage skill is equal to your ERO, rather than ERO-10. (1h) | ???
Biologist #2 (pointy beard) | A tinge of sharp sweetness like licking a lollipop. | +5 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (1h) | Negate all penalties to SED-based skills from talking about science or mathematics. (6h) | ???
Biologist #3 (Prof. Samara) | The soothing sound of rain. | Increase by 2x your natural odds of mistaking anything for a cephalopod. (permanent) | +15 on all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #4 (mesh suit) | Fake sweetness. Like an artificial sweeter, you guess. | +10 to all rolls to perceive aspects of a person hidden by clothing. (1h) | Your caloric intak@#*^(-#@%)(@-#)%@#@-&^#@(@*&^-#(%&@# | ???
Biologist #5 (Dr. Altare) | Amber sunsets and a wistful D minor. | ? | Increase by 1000x the odds of improbable natural events involving non-PIV sex and recursive fanfiction. (6h) | ???
Biologist #6 (Zach L.) | Your favorite flavor. | ? | When subjected to or applying hypnosis, significantly heighten both superficial resistance, and persistent subliminal effects. (6h) | ???
Biologist #7 (Prof. Eliors) | A taste of fish. Wait, does that actually count? | +5 to Nyotaimori skill (6h) | ?? | +40 to all rolls on mundane biology problems (1d)
Biologist #8 (only a lab coat) | A chalky sweetness like a chewable antiacid. | +1 FUK when taking dicks over 6 inches (1hr) | +15 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #9 (Katia) | A weight lying heavy and squirming on your tongue. | -20% to relative humidity. (1h) | ?? | +40 to all rolls on looking up existing scientific information. (8h)
Biologist #10 | A dark taste, mysterious to identify. | ? | +2 LST, +2 FUK towards those about whom you know almost nothing. (6h) | ???
Biologist #11 (Uncategorizable) | A hint of smooth fur. | You are attracted to animalistic behavior (e.g. purring, biting, scratching) as if your LST was 2 higher. | Increase by 5x your natural odds of correctly guessing which of two people has the larger dick. (6h) | ???
Biologist #12 (Dr. Vasridder) | Smooth, cloying, sweet as honey. | ? | ?? | +1 to all game skills when fucking bees. (permanent) (do not fuck bees)
Biologist #13 (Dr. Kverty.) | Dewdrops on the ground at sunrise. | +1 BOD while being seen giving or receiving pleasure. (2h) | +15 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #14 (Prof. Z. Ohl) | A silvery taste of gasoline, perversely appealing. | ? | +5 to your Attractive Asphyxiation Resistance subskill. (2h) | +40 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (1d)
Biologist #15 (Dr. Marshall) | Slightly nutty, a fruit flavor would pair well with this. | ? | Enhances specular highlights on your skin or clothes by 10%. This effect cannot be used to generate unlimited energy because of a balancing reduction in diffuse reflection. (6h) | ???

| Components | Effect
Mystic Eyes of Dick Perception (I) | Biologist #4, Biologist #8, Biologist #11 | You can instinctively guess the penis size of any male you gaze upon. (2hr)
Reagent of Mundane Biology (II) | Biologist #2, Biologist #3, Biologist #7, Biologist #8, Biologist #9, Biologist #13, Biologist #14 | Additional +150 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (12hr) Retroactive 30x increase in the odds of finding people whose nectar contributes to this combination. (-12hr)

The Lotion: Lvl 1 (6%). Passive.

"Would you please rub this on your skin, dear? No is fine." --- Buffalo Bob

Coating yourself with a dose of nectar gives you benefits analogous to consuming the nectar. You may find it more convenient to combine and harmonize multiple nectars in this way, but at Lvl 1 the benefits remain only so long as the lotion stays on your skin.​

Erotic Statuary: Lvl 1 (60%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.

Some sexual skills involve you moving. Not this one.

Meganekko: Lvl 2 (2%). Passive.

Your eyes change to require whatever prescription glasses you're currently wearing. You may at will temporarily prevent your eyes from reverting, if you need to be adorably blind and helpless with your glasses off. Give them back, please!

+10% to SED for characters who like intelligent girls. -10% to SED for characters who don't.

High Heels: Lvl 3 (76%). Passive.

Negates all movement, dexterity, and combat penalties from high heels. Your High Heels skill is added to the level of all High-Heeled subskills when calculating their effectiveness.

High-Heeled Running: Lvl 9 (84%). Active. 1 D|S / minute.

At Lvl (3 + 9), run 120% faster when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Parkour: Lvl 4 (62%). Active. 1 D|S / maneuver.

At Lvl (3 + 4), +70% bonus to your base probability of successfully executing an urban maneuver when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Jumping: Lvl 4 (22%). Active. 1 D|S / jump.

At Lvl (3 + 4), gravity has less purchase on you when you wear high heels, increasing jumping height by 140% (with no greater impact on landing). The resulting increased hang time stacks with the speed of High-Heeled Running for further travel, and does not interfere with the impact soaking of High-Heeled Landing. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Landing: Lvl 4 (38%). Active. 1 D|S / landing.

At Lvl (3 + 4), this skill reduces the force of your landing by a multiplicative factor of 1 / (1 + 1.4) whenever you land from a fall while wearing high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Dancing: Lvl 2 (75%). Active. 1 D|S per minute or per maneuver, whichever is less.

Add your High Heels + High-Heeled Dancing to your effective Dancing skill for any high-heeled submaneuver of a dance maneuver that involves your feet. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Stealth: Lvl 2 (60%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

The quantity (log base 2 of your probability of not being discovered, minus log base 2 of your probability of being discovered) increases by 0.5 per Lvl, relative to the base value this quantity would otherwise take on. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Roofhopping: Lvl 3 (34%). 1 D|S / jump.

In accordance with long-standing mahou shoujo tradition, whenever you are dressed in a costume that could plausibly denote a magical girl, you are empowered to leap from roof to roof in order to travel faster than ground traffic. Houses and other buildings are arranged in such fashion as to permit this. This doesn't break through any roofs, wake up anybody with loud thumps, or cause anyone on the ground to, like, notice.

Speed is equal to your base running speed boosted by High Heels plus your High-Heeled Running plus your High-Heeled Roofhopping times 10%.
​

Dancing: Lvl 2 (33%). Passive.

Since before Homo sapiens sapiens existed, since before language as modern humans know it, the ancestors of humankind danced around the fire of a night, seducing one another and simply expressing the joy of being alive. Now it is your turn to do the same.

Your Dancing skill is added to the level of all Dancing subskills.

Dancing Dancing Revolution: Lvl 3 (50%). Passive.

You can stomp arrows with the best of them, or maybe just the rest of them. You have a roughly 50% chance of passing stages of difficulty equal to 2 * (DDR + Dancing).

You receive a bonus of (DDR + Dancing) * 5% to your effective SED when being watched by anyone in gamer culture.

Freestyling: Lvl 2 (75%). Passive.

Whatever the other rules of the dance form, some of which you may be ignoring, you're doing your own thing too. Substitute (X * 0.75) + Freestyling for the base dancing skill X when calculating your effective stat bonuses while freestyling. Freestyling may not be suitable for all occasions, and bonuses will be lost if so.

Pole Dancing: Lvl 2 (45%). Passive.

You can do lewd things with a long, hard, cylindrical object. Boost your SED and raise onlookers' LST by (Dancing + Pole Dancing) * 2%.
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Wardrobe Malfunction: Lvl 3 (75%). Passive and Active.

Passive: If you are not using the Active form of this skill, anything that can go wrong with your clothing, will go wrong, with probability equal to your ERO stat. Usually, but not always, the results will tend to gently push the limits of the PRV of any onlookers and the social occasion. Higher levels of Wardrobe Malfunction create more interesting and better-timed malfunctions.

Active: You may spend 5 DOM to create a not-fully-revealing wardrobe malfunction of your choice given a plausible opportunity, or spend 5 SUB to create a fully revealing wardrobe malfunction. This will not appear to have been deliberately caused by you in any way. Spend an additional +10 energy of that type to make the wardrobe malfunction be caused by someone else, if there is an interaction plausibly permitting that.

Convenient Censoring (Hair): Lvl MAX. Passive.

Your Conceptual Hair has overridden the standard version of this skill, automatically enabling your hair to appear to cover your naughty bits, as seen by every viewing angle, with perfect reliability, for zero cost. You may at will modify the parameters of this skill for partial, complete, or no obscuration. If not otherwise specified, the parameters of this skill are determined by ERO, PRV, and social context. Your hairstyle must have sufficient tendrils of sufficient length and diameter to permit this, and be otherwise unrestrained.

You may at will choose to substitute the standard Convenient Censoring skill, making use of other obscurations and objects.

Penitence: Lvl 1 (20%). Active. 5 SUB / use.

You're very sorry for what you did. Really, really sorry. You'll... you'll understand if... you're scared, but...

Add your Penitence skill to the effective LST of whoever you are being sorry at, to a maximum bonus of your SED * 1% of its base value. If they afterwards choose to punish you, your total punishment is increased by Penitence * 10% over what it otherwise would have been, with all relationship benefits of the punishment increasing proportionally. Note that this skill cannot of itself make someone punish you if they would not otherwise be dominant.

In order to invoke this skill, you must have done something to be sorry for.

Fleeing: Lvl 2 (10%). Passive.

If you are running away from one or more pursuers, increase their effective LST towards you by a factor of (Fleeing * 1%). If they do something unspeakable to you immediately upon catching you, your Fleeing skill is added to their effective LST for the duration of that event. Whenever you are being chased by someone holding sexual intentions toward you no more twisted than your current PRV + 8, you will sometimes stumble and fall with a probability that increases your chance of being caught by a multiplicative factor of (1 + (Fleeing * ERO * 0.01)). You may pay 1 SUB per stumble to make this happen deliberately.

If you are wearing high heels while running away, add your High Heels skill to your effective Fleeing skill.

Asking For It: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive and Active. 3 SUB.

Passive: Multiply by (1 + (0.1 * Lvl)) the base probability of someone initiating a forceful sexual act targeting you (whether or not it would be consensual), whenever you are providing what they would consider to be a reason and this action appears to them to be deliberate on your part.

Active: Further multiply the above probability by (1 + (0.4 * Lvl)).

Destructible Outfit: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 2 SUB.

The mirror of the Passive skill Indestructible Outfit, invoking this skill while somebody is deliberately trying to tear off or shred your clothing reduces the durability of your clothing by 2 pts / lvl. (For revealing yourself when they're not trying, use Wardrobe Malfunction.)

Strip Other: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 2 D|S / min.

Taking off someone else's clothes slowly, erotically, and with lots of touching will temporarily raise their LST by 5% for 2 minutes.

Bloody Bedsheets: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 50 SUB.

Restore your hymen, and ensure it bleeds properly on its next puncture. All other stats and skills are unaffected.

Naked Towel: Lvl 1 (97%). Passive.

A simple wrap of a towel ensures that it doesn't fall off, or reveal anything it shouldn't… unless something goes wrong, of course. +2%/Lvl to your effective SED and +2%/Lvl to a viewer's effective LST.

Add your Naked Towel skill to your effective skill in Wardrobe Malfunction (passive and active) while thus garbed.

Muffled Moans: Lvl 3 (84%). Active. 1 SUB / 40 seconds.

So long as you are trying hard to keep quiet, any moans that escape you anyway will fail to alert anyone in the next room over, however thin the walls. (Provided they are not actively listening, sexually aroused, romantically entangled, or otherwise interested in participation.) Louder cries will travel to other rooms in the same living unit, but not other living units in the same structure, or neighboring houses.

Dressed Like a Slut: Lvl 2 (77%). Passive.

Enhances your probability of being targeted by somebody looking for sex, when you are unmistakably dressed like a girl who wants it. Letting X be their base probability of targeting you for sex, and letting Y be your skill in Dressed Like a Slut, their adjusted probability of targeting you is:

​

Clothes Can't Stop Me: Lvl 4 (84%). Active. 2 DOM / 20 sec.

Reduces skill penalties associated with performing an ero action through clothing.

Light clothing: Decrease penalty by Lvl * ERO% / 2.
Heavy clothing: Decrease penalty by Lvl * ERO% / 4.​

This skill is replaced by rather than stacking with the perk Naked Before Me. It can also evolve into the corresponding skill when Lvl * ERO% / 4 exceeds 100%.

Maid: Lvl 2 (17%). Passive.

Your Maid skill is added to the effective level of all Maid subskills, and boosts your general ability to serve with perfection in a maidly capacity.

If you are not wearing a maid uniform, your effective level in all Maid skills is divided by 2, rounded down. Any standard uniform that distinguishes servants in a place or occasion, including nudity, may be deemed a maid uniform. It goes without saying that anything you wear at your true Master's command and pleasure is the most proper uniform possible.

Maid Mémoire: Lvl 1 (75%). Passive.

You can perfectly recall up to Lvl * 3 commands, each with up to Lvl * 1 details, without additional memory aids.

Maid of Time: Lvl 2 (20%). Special.

You may ignore the laws of duration binding lesser beings in order to interleave up to a total of (Lvl * 30 min) of additional time daily, whenever this is required to perfectly fulfill an unreasonable demand by someone you are serving. If you have a knife-throwing skill, you may throw knives at up to Lvl times the normal rate when acting in a maidly capacity.​

Fluid Unformed: Lvl 2 (20%). Active. 9 D | S.

Whenever you are transitioning between one scene and another, you may elect to have all sex-related fluids vanish from you and your clothing. (For example, semen on your face, wetness on your thighs, or silicone lubricant on your fingers.)

This skill will not work on fluids which remain revelant to the plot, such as evidence of a rape, or sticky panties that enable someone to deduce you're a slut.

Candid Camera: Lvl 2 (38.5%). Active. 5 DOM / min.

Any microphone you wield can pick up audio acceptably from inside a pocket or around a corner. Any camera you use is more likely to point in the direction of interesting scenes and focus well on them.

Eavesdropping: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive.

Whenever you press your ear against a door to listen, this skill helps you hear just enough to advance the plot, no more and no less.

Silence Mortal: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

Gags applied by you, to you, or in your presence, will actually prevent people from making loud noises.

These gags never cause anyone to suffocate due to allergies, a runny nose, or panties going down the back of somebody's throat.

Edging: Lvl 4 (44%). Active. 10 DOM / 12 sec.

The skill of keeping someone trembling on the verge of an orgasm without going over. If you choose to make the victim come at the end, the intensity of their orgasm is enhanced in proportion to how long they've spent on the edge before then, with a time T spent on the edge enhancing the orgasm by a multiplicative factor of (1 + 0.178*Lvl*ln((T + 1 sec) / 1 sec)). Higher levels of this skill enable you to keep someone even closer for even longer.

Be careful about using this skill for extended periods on an inexperienced submissive, or anyone whose life has been starved for excitement and pleasure, unless you want them following you home like a stray puppy.

Tickle Logic: Lvl 3 (88%). Passive and Active.

In the system of Tickle Logic, the sentence "P -> Q" is valid if and only if "Q" involves someone getting tickled. If you don't want that to be you, you'd better make sure it's somebody else.

Tickle Logic is an ultra-anti-intuitionistic system in which any even or odd number of negations can be canceled out of a formula, making the proposition "NO NO NO NO NOT Q" equivalent to "Q".

Passive: Let X stand for the base probability that someone is tickled, and let Y stand for the Lvl of the Tickle Logic skill. The new probability that someone gets tickled, divided by the new probability that nobody is tickled, is equal to the quantity (X*((1 + 1/e)^Y))/(1-X).

Active: By expending SUB or DOM, you may further increase the chance of yourself or somebody else being tickled. Results as above, but let X equal the base probability of that particular person being tickled, and let Y equal the energy expended divided by 20. You may not expend more than SED*10 energy in this way.

Whistling: Lvl 1 (10%). Active.

You can whistle.

Lurking Beneath: Lvl 2 (20%). Active. 4 D|S / minute.

So long as you are mostly shielded from view by a table, desk, or other furniture, you do not encounter any spatial obstacles to blowjobs, handjobs, or footjobs. Penetrative intercourse is not possible at Lvl 2.

While you lack explicit proficiency in spatial manipulation, this skill will work better when you don't think about it too hard.

Good Ending: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. ? / use.

A skill exercised at the finish of an erogame route, when you part ways with another and renounce your intention to determine their further destiny. This skill causes their # relative to your #% to take on felicitous outcomes not requiring your direct intervention. They may remember you and miss you, but not in a way that prevents them from moving on someday.

Invoking this skill does not prevent you from seeing the person again, but relegates any such interactions to the form of a side-story or epilogue rather than re-entangling them in your affairs, unless and until you choose to involve them again in the main plotline.

Check Luggage: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 10 D|S / use.

Up to Lvl * ERO / 10 times per day, rounded down, you may suddenly remember that you've already put any ero-related item you own into any enclosed space you could have already accessed.

To invoke this skill, it must feel at least a tiny bit plausible that you could've moved the item there normally and forgotten about it. Naturally, as you practice this skill, you will become more accustomed to your extremely unreliable memory about all the odd places you once left a pair of handcuffs. Eventually it will start to seem totally reasonable to you that you could've earlier broken into somebody's locked house to hide a full latex jumpsuit in their closet, and only now remembered the fact.

If at any point Lvl * ERO / 10 exceeds 40, this skill evolves into the skill Ero-Inventory.

Shibari: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 3 DOM / minute.

The elementary ero skill of tying up your victims in interesting ways and postures. Learning higher arts and techniques within this skill may require you to find more advanced teachers.

Talking Is A Free Action: Lvl 1 (50%). 10 DOM / use.

You may talk for up to Lvl * 2 minutes in a conversation desynchronized from the progress of any or all other temporal processes in the universe. For example, you may have a conversation just before someone is about to orgasm, or within the gap between when somebody throws a punch and when you block it. No one else notices this is odd. This skill can be used up to Lvl times per day.

Erogamer's Body: (Lvl MAX). Passive.

The biological ability to live your life as an erogame. Venereal disease doesn't exist for you, or periods or pregnancies or yeast infections. Arbitrarily large appendages can fit inside any of your orifices. You heal from all marks with a good night's sleep, ready for the next day's adventures. Other aspects of this skill depend on the BOD stat.

Erogamer's World: (Lvl MAX). Passive.

The consent of reality to live your life as an erogame. People are never too preoccupied to consider sex or romance, not while you're around. Bystanders won't ignore what you do, but they're unlikely to actually stop you. Those who do decide to involve themselves are drawn into the logic of the Erogame. If you go far enough that an authority sees no choice but to intervene… they won't treat you as a simple criminal. Other aspects of this skill depend on the ERO stat.

Conceptual Hair: Lvl 1 (26%). Passive and Active.

The ability to externalize your concept of hair into reality. This skill does not alter the physical laws governing your hair, nor transform your hair into any form following consistent rules. Rather, there is no longer any specific thing on your head to which the concept 'hair' could apply. What others perceive as your hair is the interaction of their sensoriums with the abstract concept 'hair', which your empowered belief has rendered capable of touching upon the continuum of specifics they call the universe.

At Lvl 1, this skill is vastly weakened by your implicit beliefs about the nature of reality, and by the conventional way in which you expect your hair to behave.

Spoiler: Truth

The higher tiers of this skill are perilous for those who began with weak senses of identity, who may begin to perceive not 'a person with hair' but instead 'hair with a person'. No matter how beautiful or shining their braids, they will feel no sense of accomplishment, because there is no 'I' in possession of the hair.

In its final use, this skill can erase the boundary between hair and reality. But this ultimate power can only be attained by a distorted soul: someone who, from the beginning, never took any pride in her braids.

My Hair Always Looks Like This: Lvl 1 (80%). Active. 10 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair changes with your state of mind, and only with your state of mind, because it is your state of mind: the exterior world can affect your hair only through the medium of affecting your interior attitude towards your hair. This skill moves your mind closer to your usual beliefs about your hair, partially counteracting the psychological effect of any recent events which led you to believe your hair had become disarranged.

Spoiler: Realization

This skill does not exist. For you to stand forth and invoke it has no effect on you other than making you believe that a skill has operated. Rather, your belief that the skill has operated is itself the skill.

Once you understand this without any doubts, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I am the skull of my hair."

And It Never Gets in the Way: Lvl 3 (88%). Active. 1 SUB / minute.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair exists for a purpose, and is a purpose: the true manifestation of a purpose will not contradict that purpose. Invoking this skill causes your hair to maintain a position which avoids interfering with whatever activities you are currently performing.

Spoiler: Insight

This skill is unnecessary. Your concept of hair is something that only interacts with reality in the first place in order to accomplish its purpose. There is nothing with place and shape that must be consistently treated as being present or absent, when the continuum asks how your hair looks and then asks if your hair is getting in your way. You can answer all such questions simultaneously in any pattern you choose, because you are the one answering them.

Once you have fully internalized this understanding, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Yet these strands will never touch anything."

It Does What I Want: Lvl 3 (36%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair is not dead, but as alive as your flesh: if you can will the motion of your hands and feet then you must equally be able to will the motion of your hair. This skill makes your hair be to you as a limb of your body, with DEX equal to this skill's level.

Spoiler: Understanding

This skill is inverted. In every motion of the flesh there are nervous impulses that occur prior to the muscles contracting. Prior to the nervous impulses, the brain calculates the pattern of those impulses. Prior to this calculation is a fleeting intention. Your hair is closer to your soul than your flesh, and requires only this fleeting intention to respond. Even in your inner mind, the direction of a thought comes prior to the formation of the thought. Thus your hair responds to your first will faster than does your mind. To imagine 'I will control my hair as I control my limbs' is to tread a pointlessly extended and circuitous route through your soul.

Once you understand and appreciate this irony, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Have disdained flesh to arrange many curls."

I Have All of the Hairstyles: Lvl 3 (10%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair is an abstraction, rather than a specific: your hair has no intrinsic form or boundary other than the division between 'hair' and 'not hair'. This skill recalls, reconstructs, and recreates any hairstyle that has become known to you and so inscribed itself upon your soul. The reconstruction of a hairstyle costs a variable amount, and after, its recreation costs 20 SUB.

Spoiler: Epiphany

This skill is vacuous. In perceiving a hairstyle and forming a concept dividing 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle', you have already created that hairstyle. What was once upon a person's head is a fleeting instant that can never be regained. In coming to have 'that hairstyle I saw' there is no past existence you have stolen. You only possess a boundary your perception already drew, dividing the countless possibilities of other fleeting instants into 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle'. It is impossible for your perception to draw that boundary incorrectly, because nothing beyond your own perception exists to judge that boundary: therefore this skill is itself constituted in your perception of whether the skill has been successfully applied.

Once your judgment has collapsed into this understanding, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I have created over a thousand braids."

I Know All About Hair: Lvl 0 (0%). Active, 2 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that all concepts of hair are one in the end: as you understand your own hair, you may understand the hair of others. Gazing upon another's hairstyle and invoking this skill informs you of its structure, its history, and its meaning to the wearer.

Spoiler: Awareness

This skill is illusory. The concept of hair exists within the unchanging root of form, the timeless that casts its shadows into the realm of that which is born and dies. Your eyes, gazing upon these fleeting and impermanent instants, only bring to your attention those truths that are never learned and only remembered. So your eyes matter not: you need only know that a hairstyle exists, in this realm of shadows, in order to remember its form.

Once your understanding has transcended all things that begin and end, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Unknown by death, nor known by birth."

However I Like It: Lvl 2 (60%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair's freedom to perform its purpose is the only constraint upon its form: your hair is what is needed to carry out the task of hair. This skill imbues your hair with color, length, tensile strength, or whatever other properties you desire to add to it while retaining its nature as hair. The first construal of such a property is of variable cost, after which regaining it costs 20 SUB.

Currently addable properties:

Totally Normal Intertemporal Progression: Your hair has changed hairstyles over time in a perfectly ordinary way, temporally speaking.

Totally Normal Luminous Coals: Any red parts of your hair glow in the appropriate color, emitting totally normal photons in the way any other material object would if they happened to be glowing.

Spoiler: Wisdom

This skill is counterproductive. By thinking 'my hair must be golden so as to be pretty' or 'my hair must be strong to resist being cut', you only weaken your hair compared to the thoughts 'my hair must be pretty' or 'my hair must resist being cut'. Any constraint upon the breadth of an idea's possible pathways can only diminish its ability to reach a destination.

Once you understand this and reject your past foolishness, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Purpose is my color and meaning is my shape."

All Along, I Have Always Been Hair: 1 SUB / sec.​

The consequence of understanding that you are your hair and your hair is you: you and you may use all your powers as one. Beneath your skin there is no longer flesh and blood, but hairs. Within your mind there are no longer thoughts, but hairs. By invoking each of your subskills in turn, and ending in invoking this final skill, you may weld the simultaneous potency of all aspects of your Conceptual Hair into your self.

To your VIT BOD, add (Conceptual Hair) * (My Hair Always Looks Like This) / 10
To your STR LST, add (Conceptual Hair) * (However I Like It) / 10
To your INT PRV, add (Conceptual Hair) * (I Have All of the Hairstyles) / 10
To your WIS SED, add (Conceptual Hair) * (I Know All About Hair) / 10
To your DEX FUK, add (Conceptual Hair) * (It Does What I Want) / 10
To your LUK ERO, add (Conceptual Hair) * (And It Never Gets in the Way) / 10​

While this skill is active, you may freely use HP as MP, and MP as HP DOM as SUB, and SUB as DOM. Yet beware that if both are exhausted while this skill is active, you will lose control of the technique, and die skewered upon the countless hairstyles erupting from within you.

Spoiler: Acceptance

This skill is wrong, distracted, wayward and irrelevant. It bears no resemblance at all to the final insight.

Between abstract hair and fleeting instants of hair is that which connects them, the hairstyle.
But what truly connects the abstraction and the specific is the mind that apprehends them both.
And to connect two things is to declare them separate, limiting their interaction to what the connection between them permits.
This is the final truth hidden beneath the thought that you are a hairstyle: you are the boundary between your hair and reality.
There is no principle demanding that your hair must be inside this boundary, and reality outside it.
There is no principle demanding that your concept of hair must be inside your mind, and reality outside it.
There is no inside nor outside, only the boundary.

Once you have completed your understanding of this truth, you may undo it, by acknowledging in turn all of your past insights into how your mind bounds between your hair and reality,

that the belief of 'I' relates the concept to the specific,

I am the skull of my hair​

that the desires of 'I' give it purpose,

Purpose is my color and meaning is my shape​

that the discriminations of 'I' give it form,

I have created over a thousand braids​

that the perception of 'I' binds it into time,

Unknown by death, nor known by birth​

that the will of 'I' gives it motion,

Have disdained flesh to arrange many curls​

that the 'I' answers all questions that are asked,

Yet these strands will never touch anything​

and then erasing the boundary with your last thought:

So as I end, Unlimited Braid Works.​

Time Control: Lvl 1 (0.8%). Sealed.

Control time.

Limitation: Cause and effect cannot loop. The past can be observed, and present records of it edited, but the true past cannot be modified. It is possible to guess a pseudo-future that would otherwise occur if not for the prediction, and for that predicted pseudo-future to interact with the present, but it is not possible to observe the true future.

All subskills of Time Control except the Slack subskill have been sealed by your pseudo-future self using Time Control Lvl MAX.

Slack: Lvl 4 (75%). Active. Special.​

So long as nobody is watching you, or nobody with you is keeping track of time, you can take up to Lvl*10 minutes extra each day, distributed whenever you like. You can activate this skill retroactively if you notice that you are running late for reasons that also occurred in the pseudo-future predicted at the time of the skill's retroactive activation.

Bestow Ability: Lvl 1 (0%). Active. Special.

The subskills of this Reality Skill enable the bestowal of normality-defying abilities upon chosen targets under various conditions and circumstances. Your level in the Bestow Ability skill is added to the level of all such subskills.

Share the Fun: Lvl 1 (0%). Active. Special.​

This subskill helps companions and friends follow you down strange paths by letting them share in your capabilities. (Increasing the capabilities of your enemies will be automatically handled by the game.)

To activate Share the Fun, you must enact an in-story plot which causes the target to believe that they are acquiring the bestowed capability. For example, if you have become a vampire, you could enact a blood-sharing ritual to convince a friend that they have become your ghoul servant. Or if a friend has noticed a sudden BOD-related transformation, you could try to convince her that it was due to an incredible advancement in biotechnology, then hand her a sugar pill. While some such plots might have been valid even without this skill, Share the Fun ensures that an avenue exists if you can convince others it is plausible.

You can use this skill to share capabilities derived from your stats, skills, spells, blessings, curses, alchemy, meditation, enlightenment, familiars, cultivation, mysterious artifacts, mad technology, unknown energy sources, dimensional anomalies, bound entities, tainted blood, blasphemous rituals, devoured life forces, fantasy genetics, real genetics, college courses, years of painstaking practice, or your original mental and physical talents. Reality Skills are not bestowable, but their secondary effects might be; for example, some particular hairstyles may be bestowable, but not Conceptual Hair. Bestowed talents may grow and diversify from their origins if story events imply that they should.

The total strength of all talents thus bestowed on a companion is capped at a threshold determined by your own power, by the level of this subskill, and by the depth of your relationship with the recipient. This threshold is determined by combined formidability, rather than by an arithmetical budget over skill points bestowed; conferring a lesser talent early on will not much detract from your ability to bestow greater talents later (unless a seemingly trivial talent turns out to have hidden importance).

At Lvl 1+1, this skill enables you to bestow a small handful of minor talents upon targets with whom you have strong relationships.

Distinction Between Self and Other: Lvl 1 (0.01%). Active. Special.

The territory of a self is created by a self's deeply believed boundary around 'me' that distinguishes it from 'not-me'. For a self to become aware of these boundaries renders it imaginable that these boundaries might change.

The consequences of this truth are absolutely unavoidable, and include dangers that transcend absolute immortality.

Pale shadows and lesser imitations of these consequences have been incarnated as Reality Skills, where they still rank among the most powerful and perilous aspects of your Erogame.

My and Your Feelings: Lvl 1 (0.1%). Active. Special.

While all experiences must be the content of some experiencer, an experience need not be the content of only one experiencer. It is possible for qualia to belong to more than one consciousness simultaneously.​

To Mine Own Me Be True: Lvl MAX. Active and Passive. ? -+/ ?

Even at the center of the Erogame, you are not just a protagonist, but a human being possessed of her own ---+++. Your mother will always be safe from you, and little children everywhere. Other aspects of this skill depend on #%##%%###%%%
#$()#*$#%#%(*%)$#
!)(*#)(%#($*)$#%

%%+++%#%: Lvl ? (??). Active and Passive. ? #+ / ?

#*&%@##$#$*&$@!%^##%$*#)%hope#$*)$#%#$()future%###$#$%#$#%domain#*$$#%$#*&%#%#@%#%@%well$#^$#@%%#%life#%#$@%#final#%*&&%(*%)$#rely%!)(*#)(%#($*)$#%

Index - Paid Erogamer fiction

Paid Erogamer fiction.

Whole quests:

Erogamer Maid Spinoff by Eler0 (29K words, paid $290)

2 cents per word:

The High Queendom by Eler0 (2.3K words, paid $46)

1 cent per word:

Skill training by Eler0 (2K words, paid $20)

First Contact by Eler0 (4.2K words, paid $42)

Enthralled Part 1, Part 2 by LuckyLadyLily (6K words, paid $60)

Current total payments: $458 / $1000.

Index - Stats at end of Book 3

I don't know why my authorbrains are running so slow lately. Besides thinking too late that the former 7.14.a should be 7.13.g, and remembering too late that 7.! was supposed to come before the chapter with Felice, I only remembered now that 7.13.g was supposed to be the end of Book 3.

Stats at End of Book 3:​

Spoiler

Status

Description & Stats

Personal Effects

Quests

Skills

This post contains spoilers for the state of the story up to the end of Book 3. If you haven't reached that point yet, you shouldn't read this.

Cinderella Sheen
"The Erogamer"
LVL 11 (58,250 / 50,000) (+)

Stats:

DOM: -510/510
SUB: -510/510

BOD: 28
LST: 23
SED: 26
FUK: 25
PRV: 28
ERO: 33

Stat Points: 38
Perk Points: 4
Money: $10199

Status Effects: ---
Active Nectars: ---
Hairstyle: Tired
Equipment: Darkfire earrings, High heels (Tier 3), Ashikoki anklets, Simple diamond navel stone

Busy Mode: On

(As of chapter 7.13.g. These descriptions do not update chapter-by-chapter.)

Description: Cinderella Sheen was a sophomore at Norville U, still living at home with her mother. One Sunday afternoon like any other, something peculiar happened to her. It's clear she's not in Kansas any more, but she's not sure where she is instead. As yet unknowing of the how or why, she has nonetheless embraced what has been thrust upon her and into her, and tried to share this new light of lewd hope with others as well.

Character Stats:

LVL / Level: The quantified totality of your potency as an erogame character. The effect of this characteristic goes beyond just the 5 extra stat points you get per level, and the additional perk point you receive every 5th level.
BOD / Body: Your physical attractiveness, and other biological capabilities. At higher levels, your body becomes able to enact more exotic erogame events.
LST / Lust: The intensity of your sexual urges, and how easy it is to get you going.
SED / Seduction: Your ability to seduce others, to pique their interest and arouse their desire.
FUK / Fucking: Your ability to perform in bed and give others pleasure… or other sensations.
PRV / Perversion: Your descent into the world of naughtiness, fetish, deviance, and corruption.
ERO / Erogame Logic: The extent to which the world will bend---or can be bent by you---to create romantic and sexual situations in defiance of probability. Or at higher levels, physics.
DOM / Dominant Energy: Based off SED and FUK, fueling skills that invoke your dominance, sadism, or mastery.
SUB / Submissive Energy: Based off LST and PRV, fueling skills that invoke your submission, masochism, or service.

Info // Character Stats // Level:

At LVL 11, you are now a proper Erogamer and true. Be ready; the game thinks you are.

You can increase your level by completing the quests the Erogame offers you, or by causing romantic and sexual events to happen to you or around you. The more difficult the challenge, the greater the rewards.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

Raising your BOD to 28 has brought you to the point of being the prettiest girl in the school year of a medium-sized school. You might not get hired as a model, but you'd definitely get scouted as one.

You can increase this stat by using your body itself to bring happiness into the world, through the grace of your feminine form, its presentation and concealment, its motions and ornamentation. Getting naked and letting men perv on you works too.

Info // Character Stats // Lust:

A LST of 23 makes you the horniest person in the room, if there aren't a lot of teenaged boys in it. Your body is unusually receptive to pleasure, and other sensations.

You gain in this stat by allowing yourself to feel your urges and wants and desires fully, and by following through on them. Or by deliberately driving yourself mad with frustration. It's two sides of the same coin.

Info // Character Stats // Seduction:

Your SED of 26 makes you the most seductive person in a large room, if nobody in the room is a pro. Much of that is driven by being a pretty girl on the lay; but also your understanding of others, and your speech to them, has begun to cross the vast gap that separates one mind from another.

You can increase this stat by pursuing and being pursued, by catching others and being caught, by tending to their yearning and not just their reward, by understanding sex as a thought inside other people's minds and not just a collision of bodies.

Info // Character Stats // Fucking:

Your FUK of 25 makes you the most memorable night of a relatively staid person's erotic lifetime, even before taking your Erogame skills into account.

You will increase in this stat by giving others pleasure and other sensations, watching the results and learning from both your successes and mistakes, and always aspiring to become ever better in bed.

Info // Character Stats // Perversion:

At a PRV of 28, you are now the most perverted person in the room even if the room is in San Francisco, so long as it isn't one of those parts of San Francisco. You aren't shameless, but oh, you do enjoy your shame.

You can increase this stat by listening to parts of yourself whose voices were previously drowned out by other parts; or by stepping off the roads you've always walked, and not immediately turning away from what you find beyond.

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At ERO 33, you are living eroge some of which clearly belong to the genres of fantasy or science fiction. The people around you still act in their own interests and according to their own psychologies, and nobody is openly levitating, but it's clear that some of them hail from parts of reality where other people can. Events and outcomes around you may be a little lewdly unrealistic even for those unrealistic worlds.

Your local surroundings have just begun to embark on the path of major sociocultural improbability. The larger world is just beginning to embark on the path of minor sociocultural improbability.

As you continue to push the bounds of realism, the social impossibilities will become more blatant, the levels of physical unrealism will continue to develop, and your influence will sink deeper and farther into your domain.

Info // Character Stats // Dominant and Submissive Energy:

If this were a different game, you'd have mana and hit points.

And they'd refill just from you sitting around on your ass doing nothing.

Lol.

Statuses

Hairstyles

Perks

Equipment

Metrics

Traits

'Innocent' Virgin: Merely existing in the age of the Internet has already raised your PRV stat above 10. Still, until you choose to lose your virginity, the Erogame will not force you to give it up.

Technical Virgin: Though you have now touched and been touched, you still have some important body parts unravished. The Erogame will technically not force you to lose this last shred of pseudo-innocence. Technically.

Teased: You have undergone X cumulative points of erotic teasing, with no relief for Y days. Sexual stimuli of any kind impact you as if your LST were Z₁ higher, you can be aroused Z₂% faster, and once aroused you are disinhibited as if your PRV were Z₃ higher. Decreased inhibition only applies up to perversions within the range of your PRV + 8, and further extremes are no more endurable for all your desperation. While under the effect of the Teased status, any wet dreams you have will end in further frustration, providing no relief. This includes any fantasies you enter using the perk What Dreams May Come.

Rapebait (I): At Lvl X, wandering alone through a disreputable part of town wearing torn clothing and looking visibly frightened is giving you Y experience points per hour and a Z% chance per hour of being sexually assaulted by an antagonist capable of overcoming your defenses. Any such assaults may be time-laced to avoid disrupting the progression of timed quests, or merged with those quests where appropriate.

The Coals Relighted: This hairstyle was the last creation of Satsuki-chan, an incredibly talented but shy cosplayer who had never let any boy touch her. When she finally decided to try to talk to boys, she spent weeks dyeing and re-dyeing her hair until she had created this style, symbolizing a fire that had been allowed to go out before being relighted. On her way to the convention where she planned to make her debut, the car Sacchin and her friends were taking was struck at high speed by a drunken salaryman, killing her. If in her last moments she had known that you would copy her hairstyle, she would have been glad to know that her effort was not wasted, and that it would help another girl blossom at last.

Whenever you are doing something for the first time, you receive +15 on all rolls. However, rolling 2 is as bad a critical failure as rolling 1.

Earth's Tones: When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, his first thoughts were not of his own safety, but of his world. He kept his composure and did the best he could: interrogating, dating, seducing, deflowering, and sealing the being called Starry. Charles knew that he had succeeded when he saw, in triumph and sadness, that Starry's beautiful fiery hair had faded into an ordinary earthy color.

Of course, that whole frightening and desperate emergency was a lie, an accidental prank by Cinderella Sheen that she turned into a lure for the handsome hero to whom she wanted to yield her virginity. So all of Charles's effort and courage was for nothing… or was it? It's not impossible that someday Cinderella might have become what Charles thought she was. There's nothing any less heroic about heading trouble off before it starts.

This Conceptual Hairstyle was created by Cinderella Sheen to symbolize her promise to her beloved that she would be a part of humanity, as channeled through her somewhat distracted-at-the-time thought about making her hair look 'average' and 'less alien'. The resulting waist-length hairstyle has no color of its own, and instead is the current mean reflectance of the hair colors of everyone on Earth, including the hair colors that bald people would possess if they were not bald. This presently works out to a greyish-brown.

While worn, this hairstyle reduces ERO by 50% (rounded up) and negates all skills and statuses with a higher minimum ERO.

This hairstyle's length and other non-chromatic properties are not symbolically linked to anything larger. However, targeting this hairstyle with skills or abilities that change its color should not be done lightly.

But She Was Such a Good Student: If this were a different game, you'd be starting with a high INT stat. Throughout your scholastic career, your grades continue to reflect your actual knowledge of the course material, and you have no unusual difficulties mastering that material. Even if you miss classes or assignments for, uh, reasons.

Marshmallow Test: Receive two additional perks, for a net of one more perk than you would've had otherwise. This perk can only be taken after reaching Lvl 10 and only if it is the first perk you have chosen other than your starting perk.

Friends With Benefits: Your friends, companions, and allies have an easier time keeping up with your rapidly growing power as they follow you down many strange paths---if that's what you want, anyway. This special perk unlocks the Share the Fun subskill of the Bestow#*&(#@$)#$wer Sapient skill tree. (Don't worry! This perk does not interfere with Marshmallow Tests because you did not choose it.)

Sort by: Price (low to high) Plot Relevance (high to low)

<> High heels (Tier 3). This crimson footgear was manufactured with a high level of professional craft to complement a variety of other outfits, and to be quietly dangerous in both appearance and price.

<> Simple diamond navel stone. Produced by the apprentice jeweler Miss Oldman, this piece complements other jewelry without being a statement on its own. The needlessly large diamond that forms its centerpiece is its sole claim to unaffordability... Increases by 25% the effect of the least expensive other piece of jewelry you are wearing.

<> Ashikoki anklets. Simple golden bracelets whose job is to call attention to your feet, not distract from them. Master Cross's proprietary blend of rare-element additives and other special treatments makes these bracelets exceptionally resilient to mischief, even at the purity level of 22ct gold. And also, of course, exceptionally pricey... +2 to SED and FUK respectively when you are offering or administering a footjob.

<> Glittering circlet. A braid of white metal whose outward-facing white-diamond surfaces appear to sparkle from many possible directions of illumination. Master Cross has cunningly wrought links of bendable alloy so that this circlet can hug your brow as solidly as a sweatband, diminishing the chance of you losing this very expensive item... +2 to hypnosis-related skills for so long as the subject has their eyes open and can see your forehead and the glittering, tiny spots of light winking in and out, reminding them of how interested they are in your glittering circlet which is so very pretty on your forehead, the sparkles of light distracting them from the sound of your voice which sinks into their ears as they go on staring at the glittering circlet on your forehead.

<> Fragile breast-net. A wide fishnet of silver alloy, set with fractional carats of corundum, this piece could only belong in the bedroom. The thin strands proceeding from the hand of Mistress Maislin convey fragility and vulnerability, as though of a defenseless harem slave. Though only a rich sheikh indeed could afford to tear this netting away... If you wear this item while having sex with someone whose net worth turns out to be sufficiently high, they will destroy it deliberately and then compensate you with 100x this item's purchase price. However, this item has a 5% chance of being destroyed in any other sexual encounter.

<> Jeweled pussy curtain. A veil of thin jeweled strings that fails to obscure the top half of your pussy and does nothing at all to conceal the bottom half, this work of Miss Oldman has little subtlety to it, but enough carats of gemstone to be expensive anyway... Doubles the potency and/or duration of any effect that targets your genitalia.

<> 9-colored lotus clip. A hair-ornamenting flower of 9 translucent petals, each petal of a different color and made of black metal veins piecing together thin planes of gemstone, this item was handcrafted by Mistress Maislin with the wistful knowledge that such a fragile thing could not last forever despite its price... This item can be sacrificed to boost your LVL by 3 for 3 days (stat points or perk points gained from this boost are temporary, but quests begun will remain in force); to provide a 3-week boost of 3 levels in each of 3 game skills; or to add 9 mana of any one color to your mana pool.

<> Many-metaled choker. Interlocked links of copper-plated steel, gold-plated steel, and platinum-plated steel set with a massive diamond, this creation of Master Cross is resilient without being inexpensive... +50 to maximum SUB while equipped. This item has a 30% chance of being destroyed to stop a decapitating strike.

<> Darkfire earrings. A swirl of synthetic ruby and opal wouldn't be nearly expensive enough for a creation of Master Cross. This might explain the unstable isotopes incorporated into the design, despite there being vastly easier ways to make earrings that glow faintly in the dark. It's not impossible that Master Cross has heard rumors about the other uses to which such earrings could be put... The ambient energy available to you never drops below Very Low, even if you are in an area that would otherwise qualify as an energy void.

<> Weirdly interlocking silvery bracelets. A matched array of silvery circles for both wrists, interlocking in a fashion that some might call Escherian or even Lovecraftian. The store's proprietress bought these from a pawnshop when the intricacy caught her eye, polished them, and marked them up by 2000%. Though their true value is rather different... The effect of this jewelry does not manifest within regions of low spatial curvature.

Info // Online Presence:

You earn 10XP each time somebody comes:

- While looking at a non-retouched picture or video of you.
- While listening and paying attention to your recorded voice.
- While reading an erotic story you wrote that is entirely based on true events.
- While looking at an erotic drawing that you personally drew.
- While watching a hentai for which you provided at least one of script, storyboards, or voice acting.
- While playing a VR game whose models and motions were captured from you.
- While interacting with an AI that was programmed by you or trained on data you generated.
- While playing an eroge whose character routes feature you and your companions.

Only one orgasm per session will be counted. Repeated edging or ruined orgasms may qualify at the Erogame's discretion. Forcing or incentivizing orgasms (e.g. as mandatory supervised daily sessions within a territory you rule) reduces per-orgasm XP gains, but does not eliminate them. Promoting or advertising your online presence carries no penalty.

For details of how you are currently doing online, check Info // Online Presence // My Metrics. Advanced ad-free metrics can be unlocked by paying $5.99/month.

Info // Friends With Penalties // Erin Penna

Erin Penna / Copper Swallow: Forbidden voluntary orgasm, edged twice in the morning and twice at night, may be subjected to forced orgasm by other lovers. TIPEC: CCAFF => 150XP/day.

Torment: C - Endurable (Your victim's arousal and suffering is constantly on her mind, but does not impede her daily functioning; your victim's torment is enhanced by her youth and freshness heightening her emotions.)
<> After 12 days your victim's torment will decay to D-grade, as she becomes used to her condition, if you do not worsen your victim's suffering before then.

Intimacy: C - Emotional (Your victim knows one of your identities through brief but intense sexual companionship, the most powerful experience in her life to date; she thinks of you often. You know your victim through brief but memorable sexual companionship; you think of her occasionally.)
<> After 5 days your intimacy with your victim will decay to D-grade, if you do not see each other again before then.

Participation: A - Personal (You personally initiated your victim's torment and personally tormented her today for an extended period.)
<> Maintaining A-grade participation requires significant personal effort on a daily basis.

Enforcement: F - Free (Your victim may sometimes give herself an orgasm after continued non-relief, feeling weak and sad that nobody is stopping her, if you do not arrange for better enforcement soon.)
<> Raising Enforcement to "Monitored" or above will significantly increase earned XP.

Consent: F - Enthusiastic (Your victim has accepted her torment willingly, incentivized by only her own sexual excitement. She tries to pretend she has to obey, but she knows that in reality the choice is her own. This stark willingness is not softened by mind control, trickery, force of personality, or other mitigating circumstances.)
<> Raising Consent to "Dubious" or above will significantly increase earned XP.

Traits permit you to take on erotic roles that would be otherwise unavailable to your baseline species. You can have active Traits with Costs summing to at most your current LVL.

Traits are unlocked when you interact with entities of the corresponding kind from a position of clear equality or superiority---contesting them within their own domains, or one-upping them decisively. Your new Trait will enable you to pass as an entity of that kind, with native capabilities at most equal to those of the entities you have overcome.

Overcoming more powerful entities of a kind will increase that Trait's maximum settable Power. Adjusting a Trait's Power below its maximum, passing as an entity less powerful than the most powerful ones you have overcome, will decrease its Cost. One-upping entities more decisively or in more ways will also decrease Costs.

Traits at their maximum Power will often have very high Costs. This system is not meant as a road to power supreme through stacking the abilities of defeated foes to defeat still greater ones. Traits are visas to different worlds and ways of being, issued when you show yourself ready.

You may change your currently active Traits whenever you increase in LVL. You may activate a new Trait after acquiring it, and before your next increase in LVL, if you can afford its Cost.

Succubus (Septisexual system). Cost 10 / Power 14 (-)( )

This trait enables you to pass as a succubus, one of the five magical sexes in the Septisexual system. At Power 14, trait characteristics include:

- Attention redirection (Lvl 3): You possess a young succubus's innate ability to redirect attention towards her own sexuality, or away from it.
- Sexual activity sense (Lvl 2): You possess a young succubus's innate ability to sense some aspects of nearby sexual activity.
- Thaumic sense (Lvl 1): You possess a young succubus's innate ability to sense local magical fields.
- Common sense (Lvl 5): If your ignorance of Septisexual knowledge and customs would otherwise disrupt your disguise, you will instinctively say or do something reasonable for a young succubus instead.

Some ways to progress in this trait:

- Defeat a succubus in a contest of seduction.
- Defeat a succubus in a contest of sexual skill.
- Defeat a succubus in a contest of supernatural powers within her native domains.
- Sexually dominate a succubus against her resistance and inspire feelings of submission in her.
- Negotiate a contract with a succubus to fulfill the lusts she senses from you, then want her to do something so perverted she'd rather accept the contract's penalty clause.
- Successfully pose as a succubus, to another succubus, without having this trait active.
- Accept a succubus's pledge of loyalty and service.
- Earn at least 5000XP from making a succubus your friend with penalties.
- Have a succubus fall in love with you. (You do not need to reciprocate her feelings.)

Active

Available

Hair

Completed

Failed

Declined

Ineligible

Derailed?

Ero Achievements

Companion (Ongoing)

Companion (Ended)

A Goddess Worthy of Worship

Among the dominant women you meet, pick out one who is reasonably stable, mostly sane, a truly good person deep down, and has an available vacancy in her harem for a 17-year-old ex-Mormon college student who hasn't come out to his family.

Success: 50,000XP
Failure: Tonight was the happiest night of Blak@(#&$(*#^%@{)*$#@)*#%)@$)@#*&%#)@#inds a mistress on his own and you don't get any XP for it.

Time limit: 30 days from the night you met Blake Layton.

Better Battling Big-Boobied Bots

Donald Warren Merring of Norville, CA considers himself a warrior in the fight against capitalism. Without directly targeting him, his family, his friends, his work, or his neighborhood, transform the world until he decides to resist you instead. Then, attack him using at least two sexbots.

Success: +1,000,000 XP
Failure: Donald Merring continues to lead a life of empty drama, filled with imaginary assaults and pretended victories against forces that continue unchanged.

Slave to the In-Law

Find a submissive man willing to take orders from your mother, and delegate him to cook and clean at your mother's current residence. In case it wasn't clear from your mother's tone of voice, this quest is not optional.

Success: +50,000XP, greatly increased relations with Mom
Failure: Decreased relations with Mom
Time limit: You must finish this quest within 1 week of the first time you have 3+ submissive men in your own harem. Surely a good daughter wouldn't try to have three slaves while her poor, long-suffering mother doesn't even have one.

Better Than That Ponce

For thousands of years, alchemists and explorers have futilely spent their lives and their deaths seeking a Philosopher's Stone or a Fountain of Youth… an ancient quest that is about to end. Because an eighteen-year-old girl decided the sorta-friend who ate lunch with her wasn't pretty enough.

Success: ???
Failure: ?

Quest updated:

After a frantic scramble to find a new venue when their previous hotel unexpectedly canceled on them, the fourth Conference on Applications of Proteins and Peptides is being held in Mauss Auditorium in the Norville annex of CSU Bakersfield, with the keynote lecture being given on Friday morning at 8:00am.

Many conference attendees will also be present for drinks and hors d'ouevres at a reception starting 7pm on Thursday evening, held in the Wainscott room of the Norville Arms-Marriott where many conference attendees are staying.

Subquest: Come With Me If You Want Everyone To Live

Get 18 attractive female scientists and 12 attractive male scientists to attend your informal evening workshop on applied reproductive biology.

Quest updated:

The informal workshop has been duly scheduled. Now the attendees need to become more comfortable around the group and each other… which you can best catalyze by leading the way in visibly enjoying yourself.

Quest updated:

A cooperative biologist has taken over the work of ordering and testing the Ero Virus. Soon you should obtain several doses of Ero Virus, making it possible for you to finish the immediate task you set out to accomplish... and yet, the larger way ahead remains unclear to you and your companions.

Sex Drive (3/250)

Personally administer orgasms to 250 different car drivers while they are driving. Their drive must begin from some intent other than receiving your attentions, such as a rideshare, or picking you up as a hitchhiker.

Success: Gain Ero-Travel. If Ero-Travel has already been obtained via perk, the perk point used is refunded, and you do not gain another perk after exceeding ERO 75.

The Friend We Made Along The Way

A motley group of paranormal investigators has come together to investigate the unusual events in Norville, especially the mysterious woman with amazing hair who seems to be at their center.

Subquest: The Man in the Know

The mysterious woman is sometimes accompanied by a man going by the alias of "Charles," who has yet to display any paranormal abilities of his own, but seems to know all about her and to have power or responsibility over her. Who is "Charles," and is he acting alone, or on behalf of a larger organization? Could this be another path to track her down?

I Don't Do Work, But I Am A Friend Who Does

Lorelei Lashkiss lacks the slightest enthusiasm for hunting down the rogue succubus who raped and tickled her daughter. Lorelei loves her daughter dearly, but she also knows succubi, and she knows what Melusine almost certainly got off on. That poor rogue succubus was likely charmed herself, since her actions seem senseless otherwise. Unfortunately, the honor code of the futanari says that people can't be allowed to get away with naughty deeds just by seeming to have been mind-controlled, if there are no witnesses to the charming. The rules of the Futarchy say that Lorelei must carry out a just and proportionate vengeance on that naughty rogue who defied her dominance of Norville.

Lorelei was already millimeters away from giving up on the mad mess that is Norville and moving her family to some quiet Amish village they could corrupt instead. She does not. Have time. To hunt down. A rogue succubus. And tickle her. But Lorelei does have money, and when she called the Oregon Tickler about acting as her torturer, the Oregon Tickler claimed she had a "friend" who could locate the fugitive. Does the Oregon Tickler have the slightest concept of what she's taking on? Lorelei could not give fewer fucks. The rules allow her to outsource the job.

Can the Oregon Tickler (Danni) and the Oregon Tickler's mysterious friend (you) successfully locate and tickle the succubus Starastera (you)?

Success: +$30,000, +10,000XP, 6 hours of learning how Danni tickles and lickles when her professional pride is at stake, increased relationship with Danni Arcadia, increased relationship between Lorelei Lashkiss and the Oregon Tickler's mysterious friend, increased reputation with sexually deviant criminals, unlocks additional tickle-assassination missions.
Bonus objective #1: ?
Bonus objective #2: ??
Failure: Lorelei Lashkiss sends another tickle-assassin after Starastera. (Automatically starts the Mario Morganti quest.)
Time limit: 1 day to accept, 9 days to complete.

Quest updated: The quest The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway has modified this quest to have an escape option with no penalties or rewards.

Escape: After Danni honestly tells you about the whole thing, tell Danni to accept the hunt herself, not in her friend's name. Once Danni accepts, squarely defeating her three times will end the hunt. If you challenge Danni to a game of paper-scissors-rock, Danni will play rock, then scissors, then scissors.

Perfect in Every Way

Complete a university semester of at least 16 credits with maximum grades in every course taken. These grades may be obtained by any means necessary.

Success: +30,000 XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: ---

Coo-Coo-Ca-Choo

Somewhere in the world there must be a boy between age 16 and 24 who finds puffy middle-aged women to be unbearably sexy and worthy of some serious worship, including foot massages.

Success: +40,000XP, +1 PRV, greatly increased relations with Mom
Failure: ---

Promote the Queen

Your mother hasn't had an easy time taking care of you on her own. A raise at her workplace would go a long way towards making her feel less stressed. Get your mother a higher salary at Johnston & Johnston, by any means necessary. (That's code for seduction and blackmail, honey.)

Success: +30,000XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: ??

Become a Princess

Install your mother as the sovereign queen of a country with at least 5,000,000 residents. Make sure the country is in good shape when she gets it, and that there's a nice palace ready before she moves in.

Success: +5,000,000XP, extremely increased relations with Mom, +1 perk point
1st bonus objective: Take her by surprise. +500,000 XP.
2nd bonus objective: Do it on Mother's Day. +1,000,000 XP.
3rd bonus objective: Have Dad there waiting for her when she arrives. +2,000,000 XP.
Failure: ???

I am the Mother of All Things, and All Things Must Wear A Sweater

Stay warm for a whole day. Wear a sweater at all times that you are wearing any clothing. You fail if at any point you feel chilly, so watch that thermostat, sweetie.

Success: +1 Ero Environmental Resistance
Failure: ---

Bare the Body, Bare the Soul

Sam's Strippers is always on the lookout for new talent. Good for a few bucks, and maybe something more.

Gloryhole Girl (0/10,000)

Make his cock come without you seeing or touching any other part of him, and without him being able to see you or touch you. Is there really a human being on the other side of the hole? Some questions are better left unanswered… on both sides.

Objective #1: Drain 10 cocks: +1 FUK
Objective #2: Drain 100 cocks: +2 PRN
Objective #3: Drain 1,000 cocks: Personal forcefield, aura of awe, ability to fly.
Objective #4: Drain 10,000 cocks: ?????

A Fold in the Wolf.

After decades of a safe if not completely normal life with his more illegal fantasies staying fantasies, Artyom Volkov's life was disrupted one day when a strange girl looked him in the eyes and told him that she knew he'd meant it and that she believed he'd do it. She spoke of courage, of transcending an ordinary existence, and seemed to believe that in Norville this was not only possible but routine. Unable to clear her words from his mind, he tossed and turned that night, thinking it over. He knew that he was old, that he wasn't risking much if he risked ruining the remainder of his life. Would he die without ever having tried to live?

Despite ethnic stereotypes, Professor Artyom Volkov had in fact accumulated no criminal connections whatsoever over his lifetime as an academician in Connecticut. He could only think of one person who'd talked as if she had the underworld connections he needed, one person who might be able to turn his and Theresa Marshall's fantasy world into reality. The mysterious Norville girl Starry Starr… who was also the only loose end besides him and Dr. Marshall who knew about his intended crime. Her participation might guarantee her future silence. But with no student record showing her name, how could he find her?

Volkov can be found in Room 6F of the Helmut Kaloni Residence on Norville U's campus until Tuesday evening.

Success: +$200,000, +100,000XP, ??
Failure: ???, Theresa Marshall doesn't enter her true world.

The Lady Auditor

Famed troublemaker-turned-troubleshooter Milse Orkosi is visiting Norville. Just that by itself would be worrying enough, but worse, she has no obvious reason for needing to visit, and she isn't doing anything visible besides helping to clean up assorted local problems. Those who recognized her name are contemplating a visit to Sweden until this is over.

So long as Milse Orkosi is in town, maybe she can lend you a hand? You have her phone number.

Milse Orkosi can be invited as a temporary ally on any one quest compatible with the Septisexual system. Doing so automatically integrates that quest with The Lady Auditor.

Success: ???
Failure: ???

Quest updated: To avoid the surprise being a negative consequence, the quest The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway has revealed a mechanic of this quest: Involving Milse Orkosi in any problem grants a +85 bonus to all dice rolls where she is relevant. However, any failed roll involving her causes a related issue to become 85% more complicated.

Hunting Haircruxes

Join with your fellow investigators and hunt down the six pivotal insights that are the key to Starry's ultimate mastery of her hair, before the entity can find all seven herself!

Success: Starry doesn't find her haircruxes before you do.
Failure: You don't find the haircruxes before Starry does.

Updated: Curiosity and courage deserve reward, even if you have not truly begun to understand that sometimes "Yes" or "No" are simply two sides of the same coin with no real difference between them, the true answer being only hair. As with many other rewards, this one is manifested in the revelation of something that was always true, but not yet known to you: You have accumulated sufficient potential to create another Conceptual Hairstyle when the time is right.

Spread your horizons wider

Make yourself come to a fetish you've never fantasized about before.

Success: +100xp, +1 PRV
Failure: Shame at being unworthy to be titled the Erogamer.

A woman's best friend

Norville isn't large enough to have its own Good Vibrations store. You're stuck with checking one of the adult bookstores in town, if you want a cheap-ass overpriced vibrator from CalExotics before Amazon can ship you a proper Hitachi Magic Wand.

Success: +100xp
Failure: 'Anorgasmic' status, 2 days

I'm not God, but I'm here beside you

Blake Layton decided he was an atheist after a semester of undergrad philosophy challenged his sheltered upbringing. He hasn't dared come out to his family or his friends in the Church of Latter-Day Saints. He's ashamed to have been caught looking at you, and would melt into a terrified puddle if you called him out on looking at the magazine covers.

Help Blake Layton get started on his new life! By showing him your titties.

Success: +250xp
Failure: You fail.
1st bonus objective: Touch Blake and be touched by him. +350XP
2nd bonus objective: Take Blake's virginity on the same night. (Failed/declined.)
3rd bonus objective: Obtain Blake Layton for your harem as your submissive sex slave. (Failed/declined.)

Sheltered, in my arms.

The exhibitionist girl who grabbed Blake out of Walgreens has informed him that he is to become her boy-toy for the night. But the impossible fantasy can't continue unless they find somewhere to stay.

Success: Blake.
Failure: No Blake.

Silence indicates affirmative consent

Find an older man, or a fellow student who doesn't know or doesn't care that California passed SB-967 in 2014 to require clearly expressed consent (aka the "Yes Means Yes Act"), to violate your virginal vagina. In a way that could potentially make him a convicted sex offender for the rest of his life if you decided to press charges.

Or you could go weirder than that. ERO 19 gives you a lot of leeway, just saying.

Success: +5,000 XP, ?? +1 ERO
Failure: You either stay a virgin forever, or learn to ask for it like a good slut. Not to mention a sane one.

Off the Road

Tammi and Danni Arcadia have finally run into each other again after a long separation. They'll be celebrating in their own special way. They find you cute and wouldn't mind including you in their special celebrations. You remind them of Beth Cordova, and they never did get to say goodbye to her properly.

The Arcadias can be found in room 211 of the Norville Arms-Marriott until Sunday evening.

Success: +10,000XP, increased relations with Danni Arcadia
Failure: +20,000XP, increased relations with Tammi Arcadia
Extraordinary success: +35,000 XP, greatly increased relationship with the Arcadias, the Arcadias become available as quest companions.

Virgin Remover

Take Blake Layton's virginity, or make sure it's taken, within 30 days of Sunday night.

Success: +1,000XP
Failure: This ain't the Dresden Files, but you still don't want the 'Oathbreaker' status effect.
Extra success:: Take Blake's virginity so hard he can't even get hard again afterwards. Additional +5,000XP.

Beyond the Possible

You must prove your readiness before you can finish advancing the ERO stat to 30!

Fully convince somebody, using only the sub-ERO-30 powers already available to you, that some event has occurred that is truly impossible within the world they knew.

Success: ERO 30, +5,000 XP
Hidden goal #1: Complete this quest before it begins. +5,000 XP.
Hidden goal #2: Complete this quest at ERO <25. +5,000 XP.
Hidden goal #3: Complete this quest at ERO <20. +5,000 XP, special perk Friends With Benefits.

A Family-Friendly Harem

The next time he's in town, bring Charles over to dinner so that your mother can meet him. She promises she'll be on her best pretend-brainwashed behavior.

No, you don't get a choice about this.

Success: +100XP, increased relations with Mom
Failure: unthinkable

Come Into His Parlour

Bring Bryan P. Landau to orgasm in six minutes with a lap dance, despite the grave obstacle presented by his pants.

Success: +3000XP, +1 FUK, the boss is quite impressed.
Failure: Personal enlightenment about the importance of checking your basement assumptions before you start building apartment complexes on top.

Refuse the giftsex

Vulnerable young girls shouldn't walk in the alleys near the mall, between 4th St and 7th St up to Luther Ave. It shouldn't be hard to stay away. Just don't go there. Simple.

Updated: The police are closing in on the Mall Rapist and will arrest him within the next 24 hours. Soon the streets will be safe for you again!

Updated: So close and yet so far! Minutes from when they would have encountered the Masked Rapist, the searching police unit has been called away to a false sighting.

Failed: You tried, you really did, but you just couldn't avoid going into the worst part of the city, walking around in a torn shirt, and getting raped by your#@)(*$#@)$#your mother's worst nightmare. At least now you know you can handle yourself when you're being handled.

Success: You continue to lead a boring life.
Failure: +20,000 XP; bonus perk point; increased relations with the Norville Redcaps faction.

The Orgasms Never Bothered Me Anyway

Become the erotic adventuress you yearn to be, a lewd woman who walks freely through the worlds of eroge, before you invite Charles Adan to come with you. Or at least become a woman who tried visiting there once without holding herself back.

Anything that you do in order to pursue this quest will have no negative consequences.

No gains in LST, PRV, or ERO will occur as a result of pursuing this quest, even if you do something incredibly slutty, perverted, and improbable.

Failure: There are no negative consequences for refusing or failing this quest.
Success: There are positive consequences for succeeding in this quest.
Time limit: Charles finishes his own adventure at 11:53am. You will not be late for this and do not need to check the time.

Failed: You have failed this quest by not admitting your true desires to yourself, and by consciously and subconsciously repressing your sluttiest urges, your most perverse impulses, and your weirdest ideas.

A hidden mechanic of this quest has been revealed! For each noteworthy act you performed with this quest's protection, the Erogame will now simulate what net balance of consequences would have resulted under only the power of Erogamer's World, which grants you the consent of reality to live your life as an erogame.

Learned to drive a car while fucking the instructor... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Publicly stripped, humiliated, and hurt a girl you barely knew... rolling... consequences: overwhelmingly positive.
Mind-controlled that girl into orally raping a boy you met on the street... rolling... consequences: highly positive.
Offered that girl to a crowd of strangers... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Sentenced that girl to indefinite sexual torment... rolling... consequences: overwhelmingly positive.
Posed as a fae to a billionaire shopping for jewelry... rolling... consequences: neutral.
Walked naked through town and invited people to grope you... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Started an orgy at a poetry contest and rendered yourself completely vulnerable to their use... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Posed as an ancient succubus to a magically naive college freshman... rolling... consequences: highly positive.
Suggested stealing a policewoman's pants... rolling... consequences: slightly negative.
Suggested kidnapping the mayor's daughter... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Taunted a mad inventor into publicly fucking you with robotic tentacles... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.
Milked a boy without mercy and tickled a succubus to exhaustion... rolling... consequences: highly positive.
Randomly dialed a proactive auditor... rolling... consequences: slightly complicated.
Licked cake off a girl's breasts at a bakery and mind-cont@#)(%$*ruthed her into masturbating afterwards... rolling... consequences: slightly positive.

Total number of acts that you would not have mostly gotten away with under ordinary erogame logic:

0.

Rewards: Since completely wasting your chance to indulge in this quest would be a negative consequence of starting it, this quest will automatically restart at an opportune future point after you have gained significant additional LST, PRV, and ERO. A newly selected hidden mechanic will determine rewards in this sequel quest.

Thar she blows!

One of the boys at the mall might take you up on your invitation to a bathroom stall, despite your mediocre BOD and pathetic SED. He might even be backed-up enough to come in your mouth despite your low FUK.

Success: 2,000 exp; +1 sexual reputation, 'Daring'
Failure: 'Unwanted' status effect; -2 romantic reputation, 'Desperate'

Seduce, Contain, Protect

When Charles Adan realized exactly what he was driving to Goodwill, he kept his composure, asked intelligent questions, and finally invited the eldritch horror on a date. Maybe if he went on interacting with her, he could persuade her to be nicer to humanity, or figure out something else to do about this situation. Besides, she was cute.

Lure this well-intentioned mortal into deflowering "Starry" in an attempt to prevent her from powering up… an attempt that will play right into her hands. And into your vagina.

Success: Loss of virginity
Failure: ??

Discipline of the Master

Shibari master Kusoyaro Gaki is passing through Norville on his journey of enlightenment. He's never found anyone worthy of receiving his special techniques, and holds little hope for the student meeting he'll be visiting.

Success: Learn a new technique in Shibari.
Failure: -$20.

Soulbender

Come on, you're the Erogamer. The Erogamer. You should be able to handle anything that could have been done by this so-called Lady Sally, right?

Minimum FUK: 85

Shadows of Lost Harmony

Hints and rumors tell of someone known as Lady Sally with unbelievable bedroom talents. Where on Earth could she have acquired them? Find the courtesans she once trained, and the people who truly knew her.

Success: +600,000,000XP; you learn the true meaning of friendship; ?????
Failure: Your home is invaded by cockroaches.
Time limit: 2.82 years to accept and complete.

A Man of Wealth and Taste

Stanley Silverman likes them young and eager. That last part can be a problem for him, considering his particular fetishes.

Min PRV: 30.

Starry's Stripping Society

Build your own strip club, or take over an existing one, and show the world how it should be done. And yet, what is it your strip club will have that matters so much? Besides blackjack and hookers.

Success: +300,000XP, $200,000 monthly income.
Failure: Loss of invested money, ???

Lvl 10, $2,000,000.

Hands Across Forever

Wielding or influencing whatever sources of power then exist, bring into being an operation that permits any person to be reunited with any other person they personally know well enough to miss---anyone they would feel sad about never seeing again, even if only a little. The closure of this operation applied recursively will be a set of people none of whom are mourning any other people.

Only begin this quest if your world's economy and society are sufficiently advanced to handle an abrupt population increase.

Min ERO: 95.

Old Ned

Ned Stonefield is way too old to help with whatever sexy mess you've gotten yourself into this time. Anyone who wanted the Serdyrrah to come out of retirement would have to offer him renewed youth into the bargain. As for threatening him into a mission, you don't want to know what happened to the last eldritch entity who tried.*

Min ERO: 40

Switch and bait

Get invited along to the Alpha Sigma Chi party tonight, then flirt with Nathaniel Miroa until he abandons Rachel Davidson right in front of her, and tries to spike your own drink instead of hers.

Success: +2,000XP, +1 SED
Failure: Rachel gets a free donation of GHB plus some other fluids.
Bonus objective #1: Let Nat have his way with you, then report to the police for blood testing and put a permanent end to his ways.

Kidnapping an innocent boy out of Walgreens and stealing his non-technical virginity earned +500XP.

Losing your non-technical virginity earned +1000XP.

Unintentionally exhibiting yourself at the arcade caused 5 people to masturbate to you that night, earning +250XP.

When Charles Met Starry: You've led a good and honest man to find his dominant side for the first time; through being courted by him through a beautiful and deeply emotional evening, that ended with him having no choice but to rape you in order to save the world. Then you became his girlfriend afterwards. +60,000XP, +2 ERO.

Being yuri-molested on live television caused 48 people to masturbate to you, followed by a man who saw you touching yourself, earning +2450XP.

You rubbed a voyeur into a shameful pants-messing orgasm, earning +350XP.

Masturbating in public caused 6 people to masturbate to thoughts of you that night, earning +300XP.

You used your hands to make an anonymous Lyft driver come, and swallowed it, earning +150XP.

Gave Nechtan Kelly a handjob and cruelly ruined his orgasm. +100XP.

Tempted and corrupted an experienced dom into walking a darker path. +500XP.

Erin Penna will masturbate herself into an unreleased frenzy tonight, and one way or another, she won't be returning to her old life. +500XP

Fucked Leonel Martinez while driving his car. Technically, Martinez wasn't driving when he came, but the Sex Drive quest isn't complaining. +200XP.

Forcing Erin Penna to blow Andy Driese in public earns you a total of +400XP for both of them.

Instructing two men to masturbate on Erin Penna earns you +150XP for both of them.

Riding a checkout clerk to his orgasm while four people watch you and masturbate, and another man jacks off onto Erin Penna's breasts, earns +700XP.

You enlightened Marge Wineberg of her true path to sexual fulfillment: being a sadistic lesbian pervert who gets off on torturing and degrading younger girls. This can only end well. +200XP.

Putting on a public sex show with Erin Penna in front of 62 people, and letting 17 people hurt her and come on her, has earned you +5000XP.

Kindly volunteering to fulfill Keifon Bradford's long-held fantasy about licking a woman all over and leaving her wet and unsatisfied earns you +150XP. Really, that was very nice of you.

Letting Grady Ericson quickly and uncaringly fuck you in public, while you bend over with your eyes closed, earns you +150XP.

Wandering through the dark on minimum rabbit levels, letting random Norville inhabitants lightly touch you and sample your goods, while you frustrate yourself by fantasizing about them doing more, earns +500XP.

Quickly but pleasantly fucking 71 people with no in-game goals except your own concupiscence earns you +7100XP, and +$1420 in miscellaneous tips.

Welded Joel and Melusine, and Melusine and Takotoama, into a healthy love triangle---all through the healing powers of rape, mind control, and not caring about consequences. +10,000XP.

Stripped Aloise Rochester, licked crushed cupcake off her breasts, and mind-cont@#)(%$*ruthed her into masturbating in public. +100XP.

Yeah, Fuck Humanity

For some people, being human is a badge of honor; for others, a fact they never question. For Alexander Robichaud, it's like being 120 pounds overweight. A practiced rejector of all things bullshit, he never thought until now that there might be a way out.

He is fascinated by your claim that non-humans like to have sex with humans, and plans to politely raise this subject as soon as he finds something to ask.

One Day

One day, Mori Wen made a mistake.

She forgot to set her watch for Daylight Savings Time.

When the day was over, she was still alive, though she didn't see much use in the fact. Her being alive didn't fix anything.

She didn't bother trying to build herself a new life. A new life happened to her anyway.

She moved on, because that's what human beings do. She learned to laugh again and smile. She attended to her needs and let other women seduce her into bed sometimes, though she told them never to kiss her.

Then, one day, she found hope, and she decided that moving on could go to hell.

Like No One Ever Was

Su Ziquan has decided to systematically learn, do science to, and munchkin together every magic and system of power he can find, with the goal of becoming a greater archmage than there has ever been---all to perform the ultimate spell that will undo Death itself. He needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and maybe this will do.

He's also going to keep an eye out for any magic he can use to become a girl. He's tired of agonizing over whether his attention is unwelcome every time he tries to decide whether to flirt with someone.

Being an adorable bouncy catgirl would be even better, if he can figure out how to get away with that. A catgirl being the most powerful archmage would be correct in ways he doesn't think he can explain.

The Dreams of Her Own

Maggie Strigi has never discovered within herself the larger life goals that other people claim they have. It does make her happy when she can help others achieve their own dreams, though. She doesn't see why that can't be enough. Maybe it is.

She doesn't dislike sex. It seems like it should be a way of making people she likes happy. That's made her happy too, on the few occasions it's worked correctly. Annoyingly, the people she likes tend to not be sexually satisfied by one-sided sex. She's wondering if she should give up and infuse herself with fae blood or something, even though the thought of becoming more sexual feels unpleasant.

Seven Kelvin

After striking out at the bar scene, Dr. Susanne Kelvin has resorted to her legendary efficiency and paid Passionate Nights to find a real delivery boy willing to enact one of her complicated fantasies. This delivery boy has backed out at the last minute, leaving Passionate Nights scrambling not to disappoint this extremely valuable new client. Call 661-PAS-SION and tell them you know a handsome young man who's competent at sex work, can memorize a script on short notice, and has worked as a deliveryman recently enough that a skeptical interrogation won't catch him out. Offer to stake $100 as a bond against a net $300 finder's fee if Dr. Kelvin reports satisfaction.

Naturally, you shouldn't show Charles any of the script Passionate Night sends you.

Game Skills

Reality Skills

Truths

Metareality Skills

Wield Vibrator: Lvl 1 (10%). Active. 1 DOM / minute.

A skill to deploy the mechanical contrivances first used at the end of the 19th century to treat feminine hysteria by inducing 'hysterical paroxysm'. Capable of producing interesting sensations in all sorts of places, a vibrator in the hands of a true master is an irreplaceable part of their sexual armory.

Tease Submission

Edge Riding: Lvl 5 (63%). Active. 1 SUB / 60 seconds.

Staying near orgasm without going over, this skill requires more... training... than simply edging yourself repeatedly. Go as near orgasm as you are ordered. Stay there. Drop down. Back up. Right to the ultimate edge. Down slowly, up slowly. Good girl. Now repeat that until you're told to stop. In its ultimate form, this skill becomes the final mastery and control of your own distance from orgasm.

Edge Self: Lvl 6 (21%). Active. 1 SUB.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving yourself insane with frustration, invoking Edge Self forces you to stop stimulating yourself before the next time you come, at a variable but short distance from the true, absolute edge. Higher levels enable greater proximity to orgasm, faster edging, and advanced techniques.​

Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 4 (49%). Passive.

A true magical bimbo is always dressed her best, whether in the chill of early spring, the scorching sun of the desert, or the deadly vacuum of space. You probably shouldn't try that last one for a while.

Uncomfortable environment: ERO x 2% resistance
Dangerous environment: ERO x 0.8% resistance
Lethal environment: ERO x 0.4% resistance

This skill only operates when you are dressed (or undressed) inappropriately for your surroundings. To avoid being sunburned on the beach, you'll need an unusually skimpy swimsuit. Naturally, ice cubes and dripping hot wax don't count as 'environments', so keep on squirming.

Cute Cold Resistance: Lvl 8 (94%). Passive.

Multiply your base resistance factor for cold environments by 1.8.

Risque Rain Resistance: Lvl 2 (22%). Passive.

Multiply your base resistance factor for rainy environments by 1.2.
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Extended Ero Environmental Resistance: Lvl 3 (12%). Passive.

At Lvl 3 of this skill, people dressed inappropriately within your presence, whether by you or somebody else, share 60% of your own Ero Environmental Resistance for any environments they encounter.

Strip Tease: Lvl 3 (10%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to remove clothes seductively, always hinting at more than what appears, making the viewer more and more impatient to see the end. While this skill is active and you are continuing to remove clothing, you receive a +10% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 10% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Reverse Strip Tease: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

A skill to put on clothes seductively, relying for its eroticism on graceful movement and the intimacy of watching someone dress themselves. While this skill is active and you are continuing to add clothing, you receive a +5% bonus to SED and BOD and any observers watching you react as though their LST were 5% higher. Effects may vary depending on whether the skill was fueled by Dominant or Submissive Energy.

Extra Large Sausage: Lvl 3 (0%). Active. Special.

Work with Porn Logic instead of Erogame Logic. Cost is three times the equivalent PRN stat that would be required to accomplish the same end, payable in DOM and/or SUB, plus three times the equivalent cost of any porn-based skills that would be needed, used at Lvl 1. You may not create situations that would require greater PRN than your (ERO-10).

You Forgot to Lock the Door: Lvl 2 (50%). Passive and Active. 5 DOM.

Active: A staple ability of any erogame character, this skill gives you the power to 'accidentally' pass through any barrier, so long as nudity or naughtiness lies beyond. Scrunchies or other indicators of sexy times in progress will have disappeared, making you apparently not responsible and allowing you to blame the victim.

Passive: When you yourself are being nude or naughty, barriers hindering the way to your own presence are LVL * 1% likely to open if somebody tries them.

Dominant Teasing

Edge Other: Lvl 8 (13%). Active. 1 DOM.

The bread-and-butter skill of driving your victims insane with frustration, invoking Edge Other at Lvl 8 gives you a sense of the next time your target is just starting to reach the edge. At this skill level, stopping immediately at that first hint will produce a soft edge. Continuing on will produce a sharper edge, but this runs the chance of giving the victim a real release.

Tears of Milk: Lvl MAX. Active. 5 DOM.

Allows you to stop all stimulation at exactly the right time to produce 1-5 pearls of semen from a cock, with your choice as to the exact amount. Using this skill on a cock to produce 50 pearls will exhaust that cock's capacity for continuing to be teased without a refractory period, as well as driving the cock's owner completely out of his mind.

Edging: Lvl 7 (9%). Active. 6 DOM / 20 sec.

The skill of keeping someone trembling on the verge of an orgasm without going over. If you choose to make the victim come at the end, the intensity of their orgasm is enhanced in proportion to how long they've spent on the edge before then, with a time T spent on the edge enhancing the orgasm by a multiplicative factor of (1 + 0.178*Lvl*ln((T + 1 sec) / 1 sec)). Higher levels of this skill enable you to keep someone even closer for even longer.

Be careful about using this skill for extended periods on an inexperienced submissive, or anyone whose life has been starved for excitement and pleasure, unless you want them following you home like a stray puppy.

Denial Investigation: Lvl 1 (0%). Active. 5 DOM.

You possess an uncanny ability to detect when a victim you are controlling has been a bad naughty cheater. Invoking this skill gives you an additional Lvl*ERO*0.5% probability of correctly determining when a victim has received unauthorized pleasure, with a cap of 90%, when you engage in physical checks or interrogations. If this skill doesn't succeed in detecting a past misdeed, it will not be checked again until another misdeed has been committed, but any DOM spent is spent regardless.

Flow Control: Lvl 2 (35%). Active. 5 DOM.

Choose an amount of semen that you will allow to escape a cock, from 0.05 mL to 1 mL. You may extract that much semen from a cock already on the edge of orgasm, without allowing it to come. Exhausting all available semen faster than it can regenerate, or using this skill on a man more times than your current FUK * Flow Control Lvl, will incur a refractory period.

Raising this skill to Lvl 5 will evolve it into the skill Flow State.

Tease Mistress: Lvl 1. Passive.

- The Lvl of this skill is added to all skills related to teasing, denial, and orgasm control that use DOM.
- Reduce the DOM costs of all such skills by 10% * Lvl.
- Gain 10% * Lvl additional DOM from teasing, denial, and orgasm control.

This is a Title Skill, and only increases upon completing special game feats related to teasing, denial, and orgasm control.
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Good Morning: Lvl 3 (90%). Active. 3 SUB.

"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on; or that you were woken up with oral sex; or that you mean to wake someone up that way?"

This skill prevents your target from waking up the next time they would otherwise do so due to your sexual ministrations, and maintains their slumber for an additional 25 seconds after that. This skill may be invoked again before the 25 seconds run out, with an additional activation cost. If instead permitted to wake up, the subject will be drowsy at first, rather than making sudden movements.

The Nectar: Lvl 4 (40%). Passive.

You gain benefits from consuming sexual fluids you have personally extracted from others. (With the Mad Inventor perk: sexual fluids extracted via machines of your own creation that you personally operate.) Every person's precious bodily fluids convey different potencies, hinted at by tastes and sensations you may learn to identify. Mixing synergetic sexual fluids yields greater results, but the fluids must be mixed in situ.

Known nectars:

| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Blake Layton | A taste of vanilla-flavored cake; a sense of spreading warmth, as of kindness or a sunny day. | ? | +10% to the rate of experience gain in stats and skills, 6 hours. | ???
Tammi Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | ???
Danni Arcadia | A hint of bitter orange, a shiver on your skin. | You are sensitized to tickling as if your LST was 2 higher. | You tickle as if your FUK was 2 higher. | ???
Driver #1 (plate 76ND2X) | A touch of spiciness as of curry power, fizzing slightly down your throat. | +5 to all dice rolls involving financial negotiation, 2 hours. | ?? | ???
Gloryhole cock #1 | A crispness like an apple's tartness, a sharpness like metal touching your tongue. | +5 to all dice rolls involving the BOD or LST stats, 3 hours. | ?? | ???
Biologist #1 (wearing only a vest) | Cigarettes and whiskey. | ? | The limit of your Extra Large Sausage skill is equal to your ERO, rather than ERO-10. (1h) | ???
Biologist #2 (pointy beard) | A tinge of sharp sweetness like licking a lollipop. | +5 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (1h) | Negate all penalties to SED-based skills from talking about science or mathematics. (6h) | ???
Biologist #3 (Prof. Samara) | The soothing sound of rain. | Increase by 2x your natural odds of mistaking anything for a cephalopod. (permanent) | +15 on all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #4 (mesh suit) | Fake sweetness. Like an artificial sweeter, you guess. | +10 to all rolls to perceive aspects of a person hidden by clothing. (1h) | Your caloric intak@#*^(-#@%)(@-#)%@#@-&^#@(@*&^-#(%&@# | ???
Biologist #5 (Dr. Altare) | Amber sunsets and a wistful D minor. | ? | Increase by 1000x the odds of improbable natural events involving non-PIV sex and recursive fanfiction. (6h) | ???
Biologist #6 (Zach L.) | Your favorite flavor. | ? | When subjected to or applying hypnosis, significantly heighten both superficial resistance, and persistent subliminal effects. (6h) | ???
Biologist #7 (Prof. Eliors) | A taste of fish. Wait, does that actually count? | +5 to Nyotaimori skill (6h) | ?? | +40 to all rolls on mundane biology problems (1d)
Biologist #8 (only a lab coat) | A chalky sweetness like a chewable antiacid. | +1 FUK when taking dicks over 6 inches (1hr) | +15 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #9 (Katia) | A weight lying heavy and squirming on your tongue. | -20% to relative humidity. (1h) | ?? | +40 to all rolls on looking up existing scientific information. (8h)
Biologist #10 | A dark taste, mysterious to identify. | ? | +2 LST, +2 FUK towards those about whom you know almost nothing. (6h) | ???
Biologist #11 (Uncategorizable) | A hint of smooth fur. | You are attracted to animalistic behavior (e.g. purring, biting, scratching) as if your LST was 2 higher. | Increase by 5x your natural odds of correctly guessing which of two people has the larger dick. (6h) | ???
Biologist #12 (Dr. Vasridder) | Smooth, cloying, sweet as honey. | ? | ?? | +1 to all game skills when fucking bees. (permanent) (do not fuck bees)
Biologist #13 (Dr. Kverty.) | Dewdrops on the ground at sunrise. | +1 BOD while being seen giving or receiving pleasure. (2h) | +15 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (6h) | ???
Biologist #14 (Prof. Z. Ohl) | A silvery taste of gasoline, perversely appealing. | ? | +5 to your Attractive Asphyxiation Resistance subskill. (2h) | +40 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (1d)
Biologist #15 (Dr. Marshall) | Slightly nutty, a fruit flavor would pair well with this. | ? | Enhances specular highlights on your skin or clothes by 10%. This effect cannot be used to generate unlimited energy because of a balancing reduction in diffuse reflection. (6h) | ???
| Flavor | Effect A | Effect B | Effect C
Charles Adan | Fine traditional semen. There's nothing wrong with this semen. It doesn't need to taste like anything else. | ? | The imbiber believes themselves to have +3 WIS, and may try to act accordingly, but really the wisdom was inside them all along. (12 hours) | ???
Joel Ratliff | Granulated cane sugar and cinnamon tealights. | ? | +1 PRV towards all those who consider themselves to be virgins. Stacks up to 8 times. (12 hours) | ???
Melusine Wheeler | The simple but sweet strawberry flavor of the girl next door. | ? | ?? | Each time you consume this nectar, it resets your current level of sexual satiation to its baseline.

| Components | Effect
Mystic Eyes of Dick Perception (I) | Biologist #4, Biologist #8, Biologist #11 | You can instinctively guess the penis size of any male you gaze upon. (2hr)
Reagent of Mundane Biology (II) | Biologist #2, Biologist #3, Biologist #7, Biologist #8, Biologist #9, Biologist #13, Biologist #14 | Additional +150 to all rolls on mundane biology problems. (12hr) Retroactive 30x increase in the odds of finding people whose nectar contributes to this combination. (-12hr)
Tincture of Coordination (III) | Consume at least 30 nectars from people amicably coordinating to feed them to you, without you having been consulted in their decisionmaking. | Any collective choice process taking place near you will reach agreement on a course of action---perhaps not the right action, but at least they'll have agreed. (6hr)

The Lotion: Lvl 1 (6%). Passive.

"Would you please rub this on your skin, dear? No is fine." --- Buffalo Bob

Coating yourself with a dose of nectar gives you benefits analogous to consuming the nectar. You may find it more convenient to combine and harmonize multiple nectars in this way, but at Lvl 1 the benefits remain only so long as the lotion stays on your skin.​

Erotic Statuary: Lvl 1 (60%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.

Some sexual skills involve you moving. Not this one.

Meganekko: Lvl 2 (2%). Passive.

Your eyes change to require whatever prescription glasses you're currently wearing. You may at will temporarily prevent your eyes from reverting, if you need to be adorably blind and helpless with your glasses off. Give them back, please!

+10% to SED for characters who like intelligent girls. -10% to SED for characters who don't.

High Heels: Lvl 4 (3%). Passive.

Negates all movement, dexterity, and combat penalties from high heels. Your High Heels skill is added to the level of all High-Heeled subskills when calculating their effectiveness.

High-Heeled Running: Lvl 10 (12%). Active. 1 D|S / 2 minutes.

At Lvl (4 + 9), run 130% faster when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Parkour: Lvl 4 (70%). Active. 1 D|S / maneuver.

At Lvl (4 + 4), +80% bonus to your base probability of successfully executing an urban maneuver when you wear high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Jumping: Lvl 4 (22%). Active. 1 D|S / jump.

At Lvl (4 + 4), gravity has less purchase on you when you wear high heels, increasing jumping height by 160% (with no greater impact on landing). The resulting increased hang time stacks with the speed of High-Heeled Running for further travel, and does not interfere with the impact soaking of High-Heeled Landing. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Landing: Lvl 4 (38%). Active. 1 D|S / landing.

At Lvl (4 + 4), this skill reduces the force of your landing by a multiplicative factor of 1 / (1 + 1.6) whenever you land from a fall while wearing high heels. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Dancing: Lvl 2 (75%). Active. 1 D|S per minute or per maneuver, whichever is less.

Add your High Heels + High-Heeled Dancing to your effective Dancing skill for any high-heeled submaneuver of a dance maneuver that involves your feet. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Stealth: Lvl 2 (60%). Active. 5 D|S / minute.

The quantity (log base 2 of your probability of not being discovered, minus log base 2 of your probability of being discovered) increases by 0.5 per Lvl, relative to the base value this quantity would otherwise take on. This skill activates automatically unless deliberately suppressed.

High-Heeled Roofhopping: Lvl 3 (34%). Active. 1 D|S / jump.

In accordance with long-standing mahou shoujo tradition, whenever you are dressed in a costume that could plausibly denote a magical girl, you are empowered to leap from roof to roof in order to travel faster than ground traffic. Houses and other buildings are arranged in such fashion as to permit this. This doesn't break through any roofs, wake up anybody with loud thumps, or cause anyone on the ground to, like, notice.

Speed is equal to your base running speed boosted by High Heels plus your High-Heeled Running plus your High-Heeled Roofhopping times 10%.

High-Heeled Kicking: Lvl 1 (12%). Active. 4 D|S / kick.

Add your High Heels and High-Heeled Kicking skill to the attack power of any martial technique whose impact is concentrated in your heel or heels.
​

Dancing: Lvl 2 (33%). Passive.

Since before Homo sapiens sapiens existed, since before language as modern humans know it, the ancestors of humankind danced around the fire of a night, seducing one another and simply expressing the joy of being alive. Now it is your turn to do the same.

Your Dancing skill is added to the level of all Dancing subskills.

Dancing Dancing Revolution: Lvl 3 (50%). Passive.

You can stomp arrows with the best of them, or maybe just the rest of them. You have a roughly 50% chance of passing stages of difficulty equal to 2 * (DDR + Dancing).

You receive a bonus of (DDR + Dancing) * 5% to your effective SED when being watched by anyone in gamer culture.

Freestyling: Lvl 2 (75%). Passive.

Whatever the other rules of the dance form, some of which you may be ignoring, you're doing your own thing too. Substitute (X * 0.75) + Freestyling for the base dancing skill X when calculating your effective stat bonuses while freestyling. Freestyling may not be suitable for all occasions, and bonuses will be lost if so.

Pole Dancing: Lvl 2 (45%). Passive.

You can do lewd things with a long, hard, cylindrical object. Boost your SED and raise onlookers' LST by (Dancing + Pole Dancing) * 2%.
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Wardrobe Malfunction: Lvl 4 (0%). Passive and Active.

Passive: If you are not using the Active form of this skill, anything that can go wrong with your clothing, will go wrong, with probability equal to your ERO stat. Usually, but not always, the results will tend to gently push the limits of the PRV of any onlookers and the social occasion. Higher levels of Wardrobe Malfunction create more interesting and better-timed malfunctions.

Active: You may spend 4 DOM to create a not-fully-revealing wardrobe malfunction of your choice given a plausible opportunity, or spend 4 SUB to create a fully revealing wardrobe malfunction. This will not appear to have been deliberately caused by you in any way. Spend an additional +8 energy of that type to make the wardrobe malfunction be caused by someone else, if there is an interaction plausibly permitting that.

Convenient Censoring (Hair): Lvl MAX. Passive.

Your Conceptual Hair has overridden the standard version of this skill, automatically enabling your hair to appear to cover your naughty bits, as seen by every viewing angle, with perfect reliability, for zero cost. You may at will modify the parameters of this skill for partial, complete, or no obscuration. If not otherwise specified, the parameters of this skill are determined by ERO, PRV, and social context. Your hairstyle must have sufficient tendrils of sufficient length and diameter to permit this, and be otherwise unrestrained.

You may at will choose to substitute the standard Convenient Censoring skill, making use of other obscurations and objects.

Penitence: Lvl 1 (20%). Active. 5 SUB / use.

You're very sorry for what you did. Really, really sorry. You'll... you'll understand if... you're scared, but...

Add your Penitence skill to the effective LST of whoever you are being sorry at, to a maximum bonus of your SED * 1% of its base value. If they afterwards choose to punish you, your total punishment is increased by Penitence * 10% over what it otherwise would have been, with all relationship benefits of the punishment increasing proportionally. Note that this skill cannot of itself make someone punish you if they would not otherwise be dominant.

In order to invoke this skill, you must have done something to be sorry for.

Fleeing: Lvl 2 (10%). Passive.

If you are running away from one or more pursuers, increase their effective LST towards you by a factor of (Fleeing * 1%). If they do something unspeakable to you immediately upon catching you, your Fleeing skill is added to their effective LST for the duration of that event. Whenever you are being chased by someone holding sexual intentions toward you no more twisted than your current PRV + 8, you will sometimes stumble and fall with a probability that increases your chance of being caught by a multiplicative factor of (1 + (Fleeing * ERO * 0.01)). You may pay 1 SUB per stumble to make this happen deliberately.

If you are wearing high heels while running away, add your High Heels skill to your effective Fleeing skill.

Asking For It: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive and Active. 3 SUB.

Passive: Multiply by (1 + (0.1 * Lvl)) the base probability of someone initiating a forceful sexual act targeting you (whether or not it would be consensual), whenever you are providing what they would consider to be a reason and this action appears to them to be deliberate on your part.

Active: Further multiply the above probability by (1 + (0.4 * Lvl)).

Destructible Outfit: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 2 SUB.

The mirror of the Passive skill Indestructible Outfit, invoking this skill while somebody is deliberately trying to tear off or shred your clothing reduces the durability of your clothing by 2 pts / lvl. (For revealing yourself when they're not trying, use Wardrobe Malfunction.)

Strip Other: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 2 D|S / min.

Taking off someone else's clothes slowly, erotically, and with lots of touching will temporarily raise their LST by 5% for 2 minutes.

Bloody Bedsheets: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 50 SUB.

Restore your hymen, and ensure it bleeds properly on its next puncture. All other stats and skills are unaffected.

Naked Towel: Lvl 1 (97%). Passive.

A simple wrap of a towel ensures that it doesn't fall off, or reveal anything it shouldn't… unless something goes wrong, of course. +2%/Lvl to your effective SED and +2%/Lvl to a viewer's effective LST.

Add your Naked Towel skill to your effective skill in Wardrobe Malfunction (passive and active) while thus garbed.

Muffled Moans: Lvl 3 (84%). Active. 1 SUB / 40 seconds.

So long as you are trying hard to keep quiet, any moans that escape you anyway will fail to alert anyone in the next room over, however thin the walls. (Provided they are not actively listening, sexually aroused, romantically entangled, or otherwise interested in participation.) Louder cries will travel to other rooms in the same living unit, but not other living units in the same structure, or neighboring houses.

Dressed Like a Slut: Lvl 2 (77%). Passive.

Enhances your probability of being targeted by somebody looking for sex, when you are unmistakably dressed like a girl who wants it. Letting X be their base probability of targeting you for sex, and letting Y be your skill in Dressed Like a Slut, their adjusted probability of targeting you is:

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Clothes Can't Stop Me: Lvl 4 (84%). Active. 2 DOM / 20 sec.

Reduces skill penalties associated with performing an ero action through clothing.

Light clothing: Decrease penalty by Lvl * ERO% / 2.
Heavy clothing: Decrease penalty by Lvl * ERO% / 4.​

This skill is replaced by rather than stacking with the perk Naked Before Me. It can also evolve into the corresponding skill when Lvl * ERO% / 4 exceeds 100%.

Maid: Lvl 2 (17%). Passive.

Your Maid skill is added to the effective level of all Maid subskills, and boosts your general ability to serve with perfection in a maidly capacity.

If you are not wearing a maid uniform, your effective level in all Maid skills is divided by 2, rounded down. Any standard uniform that distinguishes servants in a place or occasion, including nudity, may be deemed a maid uniform. It goes without saying that anything you wear at your true Master's command and pleasure is the most proper uniform possible.

Maid Mémoire: Lvl 1 (75%). Passive.

You can perfectly recall up to Lvl * 3 commands, each with up to Lvl * 1 details, without additional memory aids.

Maid of Time: Lvl 2 (20%). Special.

You may ignore the laws of duration binding lesser beings in order to interleave up to a total of (Lvl * 30 min) of additional time daily, whenever this is required to perfectly fulfill an unreasonable demand by someone you are serving. If you have a knife-throwing skill, you may throw knives at up to Lvl times the normal rate when acting in a maidly capacity.​

Fluid Unformed: Lvl 3 (10%). Active. 8 D | S.

Whenever you are transitioning between one scene and another, you may elect to have all sex-related fluids vanish from you and your clothing. (For example, semen on your face, wetness on your thighs, or silicone lubricant on your fingers.)

This skill will not work on fluids which remain revelant to the plot, such as evidence of a rape, or sticky panties that enable someone to deduce you're a slut.

Candid Camera: Lvl 2 (38.5%). Active. 5 DOM / min.

Any microphone you wield can pick up audio acceptably from inside a pocket or around a corner. Any camera you use is more likely to point in the direction of interesting scenes and focus well on them.

Eavesdropping: Lvl 1 (25%). Passive.

Whenever you press your ear against a door to listen, this skill helps you hear just enough to advance the plot, no more and no less.

Silence Mortal: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

Gags applied by you, to you, or in your presence, will actually prevent people from making loud noises.

These gags never cause anyone to suffocate due to allergies, a runny nose, or panties going down the back of somebody's throat.

Tickle Logic: Lvl 3 (88%). Passive and Active.

In the system of Tickle Logic, the sentence "P -> Q" is valid if and only if "Q" involves someone getting tickled. If you don't want that to be you, you'd better make sure it's somebody else.

Tickle Logic is an ultra-anti-intuitionistic system in which any even or odd number of negations can be canceled out of a formula, making the proposition "NO NO NO NO NOT Q" equivalent to "Q".

Passive: Let X stand for the base probability that someone is tickled, and let Y stand for the Lvl of the Tickle Logic skill. The new probability that someone gets tickled, divided by the new probability that nobody is tickled, is equal to the quantity (X*((1 + 1/e)^Y))/(1-X).

Active: By expending SUB or DOM, you may further increase the chance of yourself or somebody else being tickled. Results as above, but let X equal the base probability of that particular person being tickled, and let Y equal the energy expended divided by 20. You may not expend more than SED*10 energy in this way.

Whistling: Lvl 1 (10%). Active.

You can whistle.

Lurking Beneath: Lvl 2 (20%). Active. 4 D|S / minute.

So long as you are mostly shielded from view by a table, desk, or other furniture, you do not encounter any spatial obstacles to blowjobs, handjobs, or footjobs. Penetrative intercourse is not possible at Lvl 2.

While you lack explicit proficiency in spatial manipulation, this skill will work better when you don't think about it too hard.

Good Ending: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. ? / use.

A skill exercised at the finish of an erogame route, when you part ways with another and renounce your intention to determine their further destiny. This skill causes their # relative to your #% to take on felicitous outcomes not requiring your direct intervention. They may remember you and miss you, but not in a way that prevents them from moving on someday.

Invoking this skill does not prevent you from seeing the person again, but relegates any such interactions to the form of a side-story or epilogue rather than re-entangling them in your affairs, unless and until you choose to involve them again in the main plotline.

Check Luggage: Lvl 1 (50%). Active. 10 D|S / use.

Up to Lvl * ERO / 10 times per day, rounded down, you may suddenly remember that you've already put any ero-related item you own into any enclosed space you could have already accessed.

To invoke this skill, it must feel at least a tiny bit plausible that you could've moved the item there normally and forgotten about it. Naturally, as you practice this skill, you will become more accustomed to your extremely unreliable memory about all the odd places you once left a pair of handcuffs. Eventually it will start to seem totally reasonable to you that you could've earlier broken into somebody's locked house to hide a full latex jumpsuit in their closet, and only now remembered the fact.

If at any point Lvl * ERO / 10 exceeds 40, this skill evolves into the skill Ero-Inventory.

Shibari: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. 3 DOM / minute.

The elementary ero skill of tying up your victims in interesting ways and postures. Learning higher arts and techniques within this skill may require you to find more advanced teachers.

Talking Is A Free Action: Lvl 2 (0%). Active. 9 DOM / use.

You may talk for up to Lvl * 2 minutes in a conversation desynchronized from the progress of any or all other temporal processes in the universe. For example, you may have a conversation just before someone is about to orgasm, or within the gap between when somebody throws a punch and when you block it. No one else notices this is odd. This skill can be used up to Lvl times per day.

Projectile Privilege: Lvl MAX. Passive.

Multi-use ranged attacks (including crossbows, guns, blasters, spells you can use more than once, etcetera) cannot significantly damage a target unless the target is significantly less significant than the attacker. This effect applies to all sides on all battles which are significant to you.

Naturally, obvious common-sense modifiers apply, including:

- People fighting on your side gain significance compared to those who don't.
- People fighting to avenge a just-fallen loved one, or to defend an incapacitated loved one, gain significant significance so long as their significant other is not completely insignificant.
- Verbally acknowledging this effect nullifies it for 10 seconds, for example "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." If precisely interpreting the words implies a major vulnerability, that vulnerability extends through the whole battle. For example, as numerous people remarked afterwards, General John Sedgwick was not an elephant.

Fighting under the effects of this Passive skill is an art. Here's some hints to get you started!

- If confronting a major foe, consider arming your companions with swords, or readying a ranged attack which has only a single use.
- Bullets can easily hit things that cannot be harmed by bullets. Wearing bulletproof armor into combat will create annoying bangs on the armored surfaces, wearing lingerie into combat will not.
- When fighting ranged attackers, try to maintain a wide enough separation among your companions that nobody has an opportunity to throw themselves heroically in front of anyone else; refusing such an opportunity can be nearly as bad as taking it. In close-quarters group fighting, it may be useful to have one heavily armored limb in order to safely intercept attacks you see being aimed at a friend.
- A combatant known to have only one bullet remaining becomes far more dangerous. You can ensure your enemies don't run out of ammunition by leaving small boxes of ammo in random places around your fortress.

No Purse No Pockets: Lvl 7 (22%). Passive.

You can carry as much material as if you had a medium-small purse and ordinary pockets, despite not having any purse or pockets. You cannot use your absence of pockets while absolutely naked, nor use your absence of a purse under circumstances that would prevent you from carrying or accessing a purse. Heavy or dangerous items are no easier or safer to carry in this way. Body searches will still find items you have inside the pockets you don't have, and X-ray scanners will still detect contraband if you need to put your absence of a purse through a security conveyor. In general, this skill behaves as a plot hole rather than an in-story supernatural capability---your artist has simply neglected to draw you carrying a purse.

Mild-Mannered Reporter: Lvl MAX. Passive.

You can prevent people from spontaneously recognizing you by putting on glasses, or making other moderate changes to your appearance. This skill may be considered as inducing a form of specialized prosopagnosia, which does not match the power of Fake ID and will not hold against explicit clues. You are advised to avoid displaying any unmistakable hairstyles, clothing, jewelry, unique items, or personality traits, and to use a different name.

The Gamer: Lvl 2 (83%). Passive.

The ability to play a game as if it is your life: You can wield your real-life Erogame powers inside any computer games in which those powers would have natural interpretations. This will cause corresponding changes to the game's plot.

You may be able to gain in some Erogame characteristics this way, but most such gains will be greatly discounted. Don't get your hopes too high at Lvl 2.

Look, A Distraction: Lvl 1 (6%). Active. 5 D|S.

Saying "Look, a distraction!" decreases the chance that your target will realize that you are trying to distract them. This distraction must be erotic in nature.

Wet Look: Lvl 1 (70%). Passive.

Any of your clothing which is thin enough, and wettened to a significant degree, becomes obscenely semi-transparent to an effective degree for tantalizing onlookers, regardless of the cloth's native material properties. Your effective BOD increases by Lvl * 2% when this skill is taking effect.

Timeskip: Lvl 2 (35%). Active.

A simple utility skill for preventing boredom in yourself and any hypothetical audience that might be watching you. At Lvl 2, breathing or other simple repetitive muscle motions are the most you can do while not existing. Higher levels of this skill permit more complicated activities to have taken place during the timeskip. Any plot-relevant events that occur inside your own character viewpoint will automatically interrupt the timeskip and resume your existence.

This forward motion in your personal perspective occurs on a metaliterary level above any plots about time shenanigans. Using this skill does not exacerbate paradoxical tangles, accumulate temporal divergence, set off tachyon detectors, etcetera.

Tackleglomp: Lvl 1 (25%). Active. Special.

High-speed collisions and knockbacks can occur without injury, so long as you initiate the collision with intent to hug the other person. This skill can avert all damage from up to Lvl * Lvl * 1 meters/second of momentum within such a collision, at a cost of 1 SUB per 5 m/s (rounded up). This skill can also add up to Lvl² m/s of additional momentum for knockback purposes, even from a standing start, at a cost of 1 DOM per 5 m/s (rounded up).

For example, at level 7 of this skill, you could spend 8 SUB plus 9 DOM to tackleglomp your target from a standing start and knock them through a wall of a house as though from a 101 mph collision, while leaving both them and you feeling as if you'd run into them at 11 mph. Reducing the felt collision velocity below 11 mph would require spending an additional 1 SUB.

If you possess both Ero-Travel and Time Control, raising this skill to 20 will evolve it into the skill Tachyglomp.

Driving With Distraction: Lvl 3 (4%). Passive.

Any penalties to vehicle operation caused by ero-related distractions are inverted, becoming bonuses instead. The magnitude of this inverted modifier increases with skill Lvl.

Comedic Timing: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

Consistent histories permitting, a message you predictably send in the future may arrive in the past if that would be funnier.

(You cannot deliberately exploit this effect for gainful temporal shenanigans before your Time Control reaches Lvl 3.)

Penetrated: Lvl MAX. (Passive.)

You are already pierced. However, only some placings count as standard locations from which you can receive general equipment bonuses as opposed to location-specific equipment bonuses.

Improvised Performance: Lvl 2 (70%). 1 D|S / line.

At Lvl 2 of this skill, while performing in public, you can quickly improvise lines (including rhymes, raps, lyrics, or comedy routines) that are the same lines you would invent if you worked on them for 20 minutes each without invoking this skill.

Fresh Fourths: Lvl 4 (28%). Passive.

You can be fucked by an arbitrary number of people without ever getting too full or icky down there.

Smells Like Beacon: Lvl 1 (50%). Passive.

You have a 10% * Lvl chance of feeling the draw when someone within easy travel range of you attempts to lure a type of entity that you could impersonate.

I Know What You Did Last Summer: Lvl 6 (44%). Passive.

This skill increases your chance to notice and interpret evidence that someone has masturbated, if that left behind even the tiniest traces of fluid, stain, or fragrance. At Lvl 6 the span of this ability is not limited by time, but some material evidence must still exist.

Would You Like To Phone A Friend Or Enemy: Lvl 1 (0%). Active.

Once per minor quest, or up to Lvl times per major quest, you may dial a random phone number and have a conversation that will advance the plot.

Erogamer's Body: (Lvl MAX). Passive.

The biological ability to live your life as an erogame. Venereal disease doesn't exist for you, or periods or pregnancies or yeast infections. Arbitrarily large appendages can fit inside any of your orifices. You heal from all marks with a good night's sleep, ready for the next day's adventures. Other aspects of this skill depend on the BOD stat.

Erogamer's World: (Lvl MAX). Passive.

The consent of reality to live your life as an erogame. People are never too preoccupied to consider sex or romance, not while you're around. Bystanders won't ignore what you do, but they're unlikely to actually stop you. Those who do decide to involve themselves are drawn into the logic of the Erogame. If you go far enough that an authority sees no choice but to intervene… they won't treat you as a simple criminal. Other aspects of this skill depend on the ERO stat.

Conceptual Hair: Lvl 2 (0%). Passive and Active.

The ability to externalize your concept of hair into reality. This skill does not alter the physical laws governing your hair, nor transform your hair into any form following consistent rules. Rather, there is no longer any specific thing on your head to which the concept 'hair' could apply. What others perceive as your hair is the interaction of their sensoriums with the abstract concept 'hair', which your empowered belief has rendered capable of touching upon the continuum of specifics they call the universe.

At Lvl 2, this skill is weakened by your implicit beliefs about the nature of reality, and by the conventional way in which you expect your hair to behave.

Spoiler: Truth

The higher tiers of this skill are perilous for those who began with weak senses of identity, who may begin to perceive not 'a person with hair' but instead 'hair with a person'. No matter how beautiful or shining their braids, they will feel no sense of accomplishment, because there is no 'I' in possession of the hair.

In its final use, this skill can erase the boundary between hair and reality. But this ultimate power can only be attained by a distorted soul: someone who, from the beginning, never took any pride in her braids.

My Hair Always Looks Like This: Lvl 4 (2%). Active. 7 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair changes with your state of mind, and only with your state of mind, because it is your state of mind: the exterior world can affect your hair only through the medium of affecting your interior attitude towards your hair. This skill moves your mind closer to your usual beliefs about your hair, partially counteracting the psychological effect of any recent events which led you to believe your hair had become disarranged.

Spoiler: Realization

This skill does not exist. For you to stand forth and invoke it has no effect on you other than making you believe that a skill has operated. Rather, your belief that the skill has operated is itself the skill.

Once you understand this without any doubts, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I am the skull of my hair."

And It Never Gets in the Way: Lvl 3 (97%). Active. 1 SUB / minute.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair exists for a purpose, and is a purpose: the true manifestation of a purpose will not contradict that purpose. Invoking this skill causes your hair to maintain a position which avoids interfering with whatever activities you are currently performing.

Spoiler: Insight

This skill is unnecessary. Your concept of hair is something that only interacts with reality in the first place in order to accomplish its purpose. There is nothing with place and shape that must be consistently treated as being present or absent, when the continuum asks how your hair looks and then asks if your hair is getting in your way. You can answer all such questions simultaneously in any pattern you choose, because you are the one answering them.

Once you have fully internalized this understanding, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Yet these strands will never touch anything."

It Does What I Want: Lvl 3 (61%). Active. 2 SUB / minute.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair is not dead, but as alive as your flesh: if you can will the motion of your hands and feet then you must equally be able to will the motion of your hair. This skill makes your hair be to you as a limb of your body, with DEX equal to this skill's level.

Spoiler: Understanding

This skill is inverted. In every motion of the flesh there are nervous impulses that occur prior to the muscles contracting. Prior to the nervous impulses, the brain calculates the pattern of those impulses. Prior to this calculation is a fleeting intention. Your hair is closer to your soul than your flesh, and requires only this fleeting intention to respond. Even in your inner mind, the direction of a thought comes prior to the formation of the thought. Thus your hair responds to your first will faster than does your mind. To imagine 'I will control my hair as I control my limbs' is to tread a pointlessly extended and circuitous route through your soul.

Once you understand and appreciate this irony, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Have disdained flesh to arrange many curls."

I Have All of the Hairstyles: Lvl 3 (30%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair is an abstraction, rather than a specific: your hair has no intrinsic form or boundary other than the division between 'hair' and 'not hair'. This skill recalls, reconstructs, and recreates any hairstyle that has become known to you and so inscribed itself upon your soul. The reconstruction of a hairstyle costs a variable amount, and after, its recreation costs 20 SUB.

Spoiler: Epiphany

This skill is vacuous. In perceiving a hairstyle and forming a concept dividing 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle', you have already created that hairstyle. What was once upon a person's head is a fleeting instant that can never be regained. In coming to have 'that hairstyle I saw' there is no past existence you have stolen. You only possess a boundary your perception already drew, dividing the countless possibilities of other fleeting instants into 'that hairstyle' and 'not that hairstyle'. It is impossible for your perception to draw that boundary incorrectly, because nothing beyond your own perception exists to judge that boundary: therefore this skill is itself constituted in your perception of whether the skill has been successfully applied.

Once your judgment has collapsed into this understanding, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "I have created over a thousand braids."

I Know All About Hair: Lvl 0 (0%). Active, 2 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that all concepts of hair are one in the end: as you understand your own hair, you may understand the hair of others. Gazing upon another's hairstyle and invoking this skill informs you of its structure, its history, and its meaning to the wearer.

Spoiler: Awareness

This skill is illusory. The concept of hair exists within the unchanging root of form, the timeless that casts its shadows into the realm of that which is born and dies. Your eyes, gazing upon these fleeting and impermanent instants, only bring to your attention those truths that are never learned and only remembered. So your eyes matter not: you need only know that a hairstyle exists, in this realm of shadows, in order to remember its form.

Once your understanding has transcended all things that begin and end, you may invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Unknown by death, nor known by birth."

However I Like It: Lvl 2 (80%). Active. Variable / 20 SUB.
​

The consequence of understanding that your hair's freedom to perform its purpose is the only constraint upon its form: your hair is what is needed to carry out the task of hair. This skill imbues your hair with color, length, tensile strength, or whatever other properties you desire to add to it while retaining its nature as hair. The first construal of such a property is of variable cost, after which regaining it costs 20 SUB.

Currently addable properties:

Totally Normal Intertemporal Progression: Your hair has changed hairstyles over time in a perfectly ordinary way, temporally speaking.

Totally Normal Luminous Coals: Any red parts of your hair glow in the appropriate color, emitting totally normal photons in the way any other material object would if they happened to be glowing.

Spoiler: Wisdom

This skill is counterproductive. By thinking 'my hair must be golden so as to be pretty' or 'my hair must be strong to resist being cut', you only weaken your hair compared to the thoughts 'my hair must be pretty' or 'my hair must resist being cut'. Any constraint upon the breadth of an idea's possible pathways can only diminish its ability to reach a destination.

Once you understand this and reject your past foolishness, you can invoke this skill at Lvl MAX for zero cost by reciting the aria, "Purpose is my color and meaning is my shape."

All Along, I Have Always Been Hair: 1 SUB / sec.​

The consequence of understanding that you are your hair and your hair is you: you and you may use all your powers as one. Beneath your skin there is no longer flesh and blood, but hairs. Within your mind there are no longer thoughts, but hairs. By invoking each of your subskills in turn, and ending in invoking this final skill, you may weld the simultaneous potency of all aspects of your Conceptual Hair into your self.

To your VIT BOD, add (Conceptual Hair) * (My Hair Always Looks Like This) / 10
To your STR LST, add (Conceptual Hair) * (However I Like It) / 10
To your INT PRV, add (Conceptual Hair) * (I Have All of the Hairstyles) / 10
To your WIS SED, add (Conceptual Hair) * (I Know All About Hair) / 10
To your DEX FUK, add (Conceptual Hair) * (It Does What I Want) / 10
To your LUK ERO, add (Conceptual Hair) * (And It Never Gets in the Way) / 10​

While this skill is active, you may freely use HP as MP, and MP as HP DOM as SUB, and SUB as DOM. Yet beware that if both are exhausted while this skill is active, you will lose control of the technique, and die skewered upon the countless hairstyles erupting from within you.

Spoiler: Acceptance

This skill is wrong, distracted, wayward and irrelevant. It bears no resemblance at all to the final insight.

Between abstract hair and fleeting instants of hair is that which connects them, the hairstyle.
But what truly connects the abstraction and the specific is the mind that apprehends them both.
And to connect two things is to declare them separate, limiting their interaction to what the connection between them permits.
This is the final truth hidden beneath the thought that you are a hairstyle: you are the boundary between your hair and reality.
There is no principle demanding that your hair must be inside this boundary, and reality outside it.
There is no principle demanding that your concept of hair must be inside your mind, and reality outside it.
There is no inside nor outside, only the boundary.

Once you have completed your understanding of this truth, you may undo it, by acknowledging in turn all of your past insights into how your mind bounds between your hair and reality,

that the belief of 'I' relates the concept to the specific,

I am the skull of my hair​

that the desires of 'I' give it purpose,

Purpose is my color and meaning is my shape​

that the discriminations of 'I' give it form,

I have created over a thousand braids​

that the perception of 'I' binds it into time,

Unknown by death, nor known by birth​

that the will of 'I' gives it motion,

Have disdained flesh to arrange many curls​

that the 'I' answers all questions that are asked,

Yet these strands will never touch anything​

and then erasing the boundary with your last thought:

So as I end, Unlimited Braid Works.​

Time Control: Lvl 1 (0.8%). Sealed.

Control time.

Limitation: Cause and effect cannot loop. The past can be observed, and present records of it edited, but the true past cannot be modified. It is possible to guess a pseudo-future that would otherwise occur if not for the prediction, and for that predicted pseudo-future to interact with the present, but it is not possible to observe the true future.

All subskills of Time Control except the Slack subskill have been sealed by your pseudo-future self using Time Control Lvl MAX.

Slack: Lvl 5 (29%). Active. Special.​

So long as nobody is watching you, or nobody with you is keeping track of time, you can take up to 1 hour extra each day, distributed whenever you like. You can activate this skill retroactively if you notice that you are running late for reasons that also occurred in the pseudo-future predicted at the time of the skill's retroactive activation.
groon note to self: 12/60;29/100
Besto&#*&(#@$)#$wer Sapient: Lvl ? (??) Active. ? / use.

The subskills @(#*&$@#-(#*&@%-)%#%# enable you to mimic the effects of bestowing up to && of % on other sapient minds, as seen from your own #, with a corresponding increase in apparent channels of @#%@ interaction and internal development. Consistent future $#-# permitting, this may actually transfer % and correlate #.

Your level in the Empower Sapient skill is added to the level of all such subskills.

Share the Fun: Lvl 3 (19%). Active. Special.​

This subskill helps potentially compatible *#%* follow you down strange paths by letting them share in your capabilities. (Increasing the capabilities of your enemies will be automatically handled by the game.)

To activate Share the Fun, you may enact an in-story plot which causes the target to believe that they are acquiring the bestowed capability. For example, if you have become a vampire, you could enact a blood-sharing ritual to convince a friend that they have become your ghoul servant. Or if a friend has noticed a sudden BOD-related transformation, you could try to convince her that it was due to an incredible advancement in biotechnology, then hand her a sugar pill. While some such plots might have been valid even without this skill, Share the Fun ensures that an avenue exists if you can convince others it is plausible.

You can use this skill to share capabilities derived from your stats, skills, spells, traits, blessings, curses, alchemy, meditation, enlightenment, familiars, cultivation, mysterious artifacts, mad technology, unknown energy sources, dimensional anomalies, bound entities, tainted blood, blasphemous rituals, devoured life forces, fantasy genetics, real genetics, college courses, years of painstaking practice, or your original mental and physical talents. Reality Skills are not directly bestowable by this subskill, but their secondary effects might be; for example, some particular hairstyles may be bestowable, but not Conceptual Hair. Bestowed talents may grow and diversify from their origins.

The total strength of all talents thus bestowed on a potential *#%* is temporarily capped by #@)(*$-@#)#%(-#)$*@%&@#@(*$# and by the ^*^ of your relationship with the recipient. This threshold is determined by combined formidability, rather than by an arithmetical budget over skill points bestowed; conferring a lesser talent early on will not much detract from your ability to bestow greater talents later.

At Lvl ?+3, this skill enables you to bestow a handful of talents upon potential *#%* with whom you are deepening your ^*^, enough that they will not feel completely left behind by you.

Musical Logic: Lvl 1 (2%). Passive and Active.

Operate reality according to the logic of a musical.

Burst Into Song: Lvl 1 (43%). Special.​

You can burst into song.

At Lvl 1+1 of this skill, bursting into song can't solve any problems that can't be solved by bursting into song.

Distinction Between Self and Other: Lvl 1 (0.01%). Active. Special.

The territory of a self is created by a self's deeply believed boundary around 'me' that distinguishes it from 'not-me'. For a self to become aware of these boundaries renders it imaginable that these boundaries might change.

The consequences of this truth are absolutely unavoidable, and include dangers that transcend absolute immortality.

Pale shadows and lesser imitations of these consequences have been incarnated as Reality Skills, where they still rank among the most powerful and perilous aspects of your Erogame.

My and Your Feelings: Lvl 1 (0.1%). Active. Special.

While all experiences must be the content of some experiencer, an experience need not be the content of only one experiencer. It is possible for qualia to belong to more than one consciousness simultaneously.​

Lagomorphic Fie!^&#()*$(@nd Held Out In Darkness: Lvl ? (?). Active and Passive.

If people around you happen to ponder certain questions, they are more likely to come to correct conclusions about facts such as how likely they are to contract a venereal disease, be spotted by an authority, or be reported to the police. They may then act accordingly, given their own nature and goals. You can expend more energy to intensify this effect further; but it should come as no great surprise to you at this point that you cannot, in fact, turn it off^#(*$-@)#*-#@-$(*)@-#$~most frightened, cynical, or wounded of souls, no matter what unpleasant experiences they may have had in their past, will find themselves able to believe that they can have nice things like you@#)(*$-%@)-@#($)%*-$)%^(*@#feel that in your presence the rules are different@#)(*#%-@!()&#%-{!*(#%}-#$@follow in your path and find a new@#)(*%-!@)(#%-()-)@#(*%_#)-%(^&@_!{)*-%#@%elieve that better outcomes are possible for themselves, providing that this is actually tru@#{)${)(%-!@)#@%-@#()*$#@#%&)#@(-@)#(*&^$%-#@()*%)@$%^)#-@#-)(*$&*^@-)#%$-@()#*%@#-#)(&%)*^{*$%-!@^^#@$^{)-(*(#@&^$#@-)(#@&^)$#)@is absolute and cannot be balked by depression, by drugs or mental illness, by hypnosis or brainwashing, by memories of pain or betrayal, by any chains upon a soul whether those chains were laid from without or within; any power that presents a barrier will fail; no ruin wrought by Azkaban or Angband can prevent someone from comprehending that the hope you hold out to them is real.

To wonder whether this constitutes "mind control" is confused, as it accords with the laws of reality on a deeper level than any biology or physics that might otherwise describe how one state of mind follows from another.

To Mine Own Me Be True: Lvl MAX. Active and Passive. ? -+/ ?

Even at the center of the Erogame, you are not just a protagonist, but a human being possessed of her own ---+++. Your mother will always be safe from you, and little children everywhere. Other aspects of this skill depend on #%##%%###%%%
#$()#*$#%#%(*%)$#
!)(*#)(%#($*)$#%

%%+++%#%: Lvl ? (??). Active and Passive. ? #+ / ?

#*&%@##$#$*&$@!%^##%$*#)%hope#$*)$#%#$()future%###$#$%#$#%domain#*$$#%$#*&%#%#@%#%@%well$#^$#@%%#%life#%#$@%#final#%*&&%(*%)$#rely%!)(*#)(%#($*)$#%

@#=_\*_~*_Shoulder Protect_/`%%: Lvl ? (??). Active. ? / ?

%$###(*@)$*(@#$)#@(*@##)(@*)$#$@#)($*@#infinite!@)#@#($$@#)death@(#)$*$#@$()*@#soul@(*$(@@#$)*@$

Moderation - Respect Rule 8 or get slammed.

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That topics end NOW. Unless more of you want to be banned for a week?

Moderation - Rule 8 - No Politics, Please

sun tzu said: ↑

...And, not for the first time, it amazes me that this quest about someone getting a lewd version of the Gamer powers is getting me to think these kind of thoughts. XD

Unfortunately, and I do mean that because I find your levelheadedness to be extremely gratifying, this does still violate our Rule 8: Current Politics remains a verboten subject.

We'll leave it at this, though, because of that reasonableness; though nobody should continue the line of discussion. To be clear, it's perfectly fine to talk about the character's views in the context of how they impact the story but connecting it to real-world political issues and linking to explicitly political content is, in general, not allowed.