[Beyond Canon] Into the Yukiverse

Mark found himself before a large Japanese castle, the snow 9 inches deep, the light painting the scene in dark reds as the sun sets.

And then he doubled over, as he became she. Mark felt his body twist and warp, bend and fade and reform as magics applied over time were given in seconds, as mind and body deformed like a car crash, quick, violent, painful. His suit became her kimono, his voice cried out in her agony. A terror multiplied as both personas wrestled with their place, with their purpose, with their reality and existence.

As Marika opened her eyes, she realized that all Mark's memories, of the midnights spent working himself to ****, of the kind spirit who brought him financial success, stood by Marika's memories, of the tormentor Yuki, of the Master who only wished her the best. Of Yua, changed from how Mark knew her, and the others, of the fear of the next day and the eliminations that would follow. Of the place she now stood in, so alien, yet so familiar, so particular to her captor. And with that realization, Marika knew true fear.

"You're perfect. Perfectly mine." That blessed god, that cursed devil stood before Marika. "Bowing before your mistress. I would never let those cretins ruin you, consign you to being a failure. An artwork stolen is an artwork saved. My gorgeous work of art, my beautiful otokonoko. Mine." Yuki looks down at Marika with a look of unbridled joy. Truly manic joy, unconstrained by pretense or showmanship, a cruel smile that reveals that one half of the memories was an act, the other the true demonic self, the kind deity revealed for a trap, the monster more devilish than she could have imagined. Fear was Marika's expression, but to Yuki, that was only a sweet taste of new conquest. It only enhanced the experience.

"Where am I? Where did you take me?" Marika struggles to stand, at once alien in this body and intimately familiar. This place, it wasn't the Hotel, not from the season Marika was on. Marika doesn't know it, but this is also not the castle that Ben saw when Yuki offered him the deal, which was a previous set, Yuki's hotel before one of her few blunders almost got her cancelled.

"Oh this? It's the Imperial Palace. I tend to let it settle here, as a sort of holding pattern. But I can make it anything I wish." In a second, Marika was floating above a city, looking down. "Ah, the beginning. The war that brought me from subsistence to greatness." Countless men run across a field, some on horseback, many on foot. The commanders dressed in armor, garish and functional in equal measure.

Then they are in a city, downtown in some vast metropolis. From the characters, Marika can guess this is downtown Tokyo, but no one is around, despite the winter day being quite sunny and otherwise nice. "It truly is amazing, modernity. This place was a backwater when I started, it will grow more and more beyond what it is today. And no, you can't run." The edges of the place blur as incandescent street signs turn to LEDs, as mopeds become ebikes, then become something else entirely. Marika doesn't know what they are, but this is clearly the future, as holograms play on city corners.

And then they are in a forest, a brook frozen over. "This is much like where I was born. Though even that detail is rarely consistent. Some upon the road, others on the tops of mountains." Yuki looks at Marika. "I answered the first question, where you were, but I have not answered the second question. I have taken you to me. You are within." And then they are back at the Imperial Palace. "I am not the Yuki you know. Technically, both of the Yukis you knew were the same, but neither exist anymore. They are within me but as two snow flakes within the glacier, taken, consumed, made whole. I am beyond. A consciousness squirreled away in the folds of space times and realities. Not one, but many, in a way all. The countless variations built into an accretion of common universals. Every snowflake is unique. But all snow is the same in total. And a glacier is the snow built upon itself, until the snow ceases to be snow, to even be ice. Permanent, lasting, endless."

Yuki looks beyond Marika, her eyes in a haze of grandeur. "A host is a puppet, bound by the whims of fate and chance. A bad break here, a poorly aged decision there, and you are gone. Gods slain, eaten, made anew. Products introduced, discontinued, rebranded. To live as a host is to live on a battlefield, all power and glory until the stray arrow makes you but another corpse upon the field." Yuki looks on in contemplation, lost in a moment from her conquest to her own mortality, even for a being over 400 years old.

"But the world is emptiness. Between every atom, there exist vast swaths of empty space. Between every star, aeons of eternity and nothingness. So what if... you could just make a vacation home? But no place is safe in a world of all encompassing deities. No arrow cannot pierce when it is an all-piercing arrow, the battlefield is reality, even surreality. So you don't let one arrow slay you. Countless vacation homes, backups, backups of backups, backups of backups of backups of backups of backups. You'd think that would attract it's own attention, but how big is a mind, a soul, a piece of ethereal nothingness. In the swirl of energy of the universe, a stray atom is no concern, like trying to account not for every grain of sand on a beach, but every grain of sand in a galaxy. So what if a mind could be backed up, stored, built up, in hundreds of multiverses, hidden in the scraps of ice of a meteor belt here, the peak of a mountain there, and on and on and on."

She turns back to Marika, focuses on her. "Now the Yuki you knew is not some hivemind, no. No, this really is like a retirement plan, a place to squirrel away the power and knowledge, to consult and look upon in times of duress. The countless deaths, the transformations that are worse than ****, all the grand victories and the defeats that follow. I am the sum and total, and in a way, every Yuki refuses to acknowledge me as them and vice versa. I am an average, one that is built free of the ups and downs, the whims of the moment cut to the probabilities of common function, an uncanny picture of quintessence. But still they build me, build us. Because while each live their lives victoriously and enjoying every moment, they know that every world is a world of change, and at the end of the day, you invest in stability. In the raging storm, the wooden hut is a palace. Every Yuki is unique. They act independently. But they all know, from some point or in some dream, that I exist, that we are a fallback. That if they fail, they can fallback to me, so long as they are able to be taken in, made one. I have cast out poisons, for no being can afford to not know what it consumes. Some worlds have cast me out, tried to send a poison that will kill the superstructure. But still I exist and will always exist, and as countless Yuki fall to their own hubris, to their own failures, they come to me. And with them, sometimes they bring... offerings."

Yuki holds open her hand and in it, Marika sees light. And then, she is in a building, standing on tatami mats, looking at Yuki. But Yuki is naked, her C cup breasts beautiful on her pale Japanese skin. There are the slight imperfections, the body hair that is untrimmed, the way her skin shimmers as if covered in ice, her age closer to 40s then 30s. But this is not who Yuki pretends to be, this is Yuki as she imagines herself, perfect in her own mind's eye, for that is where she sits.

Marika, for the first time in an age, opens her mouth. "But what am I here for? To... to be your concubine, your lover?" Marika knew that Yuki had always fetishized her, but this was beyond that. Now she was here, with the knowledge that she had taken a form of her from before HH, and her mind from after, made whole again. But what was her ending, what was going to happen now? Was she saved? Damned?

Yuki smiles, that cruel sadistic smile. "I didn't bring you here for your business acumen, that's for sure. But that's the thing, sex, romance, these things are fleeting. What are they in eternity? You are in a mind, you will not age. You are perfectly mine. So where is the conquest, the intrigue? The chase. A man once told me that a romantic comedy is two people growing and self-actualizing into their ideal selves beside each other. I don't know if I buy all of that, especially when one of the two is perfect, but... there is something there. It is the journey, the change, that gives it meaning. And I know a way to make that change."

Marika's tears flow. "No."

A set of paper doors open, 11 women sit kneeling, before as one they bow. "Welcome back Mistress Yuki, our bodies are yours to conquer. Our hearts yearn for your love, for your sculpting touch." They speak in one voice, but the way it wavers, the way it moves is organic, and is real, not ****.

"Tetsuko, approach me." Yuki points, but Tetsuko, doesn't walk, instead appearing next to Marika. "Give our new girl a history lesson."

The woman looks down, her beautiful face clearly scared. Her breasts are more petite than Marika's but her ass is ever so slightly larger. But at the same time there is so much in common from the two, that you could easily tell Yuki had a type.

"I am Tetsuko... I was once..." She looks at Yuki, who nods. "I was once Tetsuya. I was born in the 4th year of Taisho (1917), and I volunteered for the Navy before... before Mistress took me. Made me hers. This would be my 14th competition. I will win. I will become perfect, perfect for Mistress." Marika realizes she speaks in Japanese, and as she feels her own mouth move, she realizes that she too speaks in Japanese, and doesn't have the ability to go back to English.

Another steps forward as Yuki nods. This one is bigger in both breast and ass, though maybe a bit less beautiful, but again, they all share more in common. Each Japanese, each of the same general proportion. Each born male, sculpted to be a woman to fill Yuki's fetish. "I am Himeji. I was once a businessman of a formerly noble family. I was taken in 2009, and this would be my second competition. I... I will win, even if nothing is left of me at the end. I will be perfect."

Yuki waves away the two girls who were once men and they are back on their kneeling platforms, heads bowed. Marika looks shaken to her core, barely able to get out her next words. "And if I win?" Yuki looks at her, before her hands form a black tape. "You will live your victory over and over again. I am told it is a most divine bliss, seeing the turns and twists in your story, only to always win. I give the mercy of not breaking the illusion, even when I take them into my bed again, on finishing they return to their sagas, their myths of success. Each time is new, each time a guaranteed success. As a fate, it is not a terrible one. Every day is a victory, every hard earned fight one that will end in bliss."

A victory to gain the heart of a monster. A victory to suborn themselves, to sell themselves into nothingness. But that, that has to be better. Because the others... they keep fighting. Their hard fights are followed by more hard fights. They keep breaking themselves down, over and over again... and then the next time, they are made anew, and **** to compete all over again. If the winners relive their static wins, the losers seek to finally end the novel tortures inflicted upon them.

The monstrous game is laid bare. An infinite Harem Hotel, one where the only way to escape is to win, where time won't save you. These women are in a fight that doesn't have happy endings, only an end to bad ones. Marika might be here for centuries if she is unlucky. Millennia. As she drops to her knees, Yuki smiles as her showmanship takes control, as she says it for no audience but her own twisted sense of achievement.

"Now, let us begin our 26th season, of Harem Hotel: Art Perfected."