A Date with a Demonic Host

Felix blushed a deep, crimson red when he realized Vizrokoth was admiring his naked body. He instinctively went to cover up, which caused the demon to grab his arms.

"Now Felix, I spent a lot of time crafting that body of yours, I think it's only fair I get to admire my handiwork," Vizrokoth said. "I might have to make you keep your hands behind your head if you keep trying to hide your dick from me tonight."

She then reached out her hand, and Felix, after gulping, took it. Vizrokoth then lead him back to the master suite, to his surprise. The walk there was shorter than Felix remembered, and the stairwell that lead down to the bottom floor of the bunker was missing. Hence, rather than a hallway, there was just two doorways in what felt more like a foyer than a hallway.

"The stairs have been moved to the East Wing," Vizrokoth said, noticing Felix's confusion. "There's less going on there than what I have in mind for you here, especially as unlike other seasons, our shops are just some automated kiosks. When I redesigned things for Castelilise, I decided to move around where the master suite is so that you're a bit more accessible."

The demon smirked when she said the last bit while staring again at his naked body. "That's of course not the only thing made more accessible this week."

Felix sighed at the reality that he was going to be naked for the foreseeable future, and then opened the door to the master suite. He found his room was very different, as not only did the canal enter the room, but it lead straight to his restroom. What was going on?

"Castelilise deserves a chance to sleep with you, but has to sleep underwater, hence, a redesign of the master suite was a necessity." Vizrokoth while taking on the couch, and then patted a spot next to her for Felix.

When he sat down, Vizrokoth put her arm around his neck, and asked, "Felix, do you still think James Smith and Austin White are the reasons you were brought here?"

He paused before answering, and then took a deep breath. The demon was patient with him, but kept staring at Felix to keep him on the task at hand. "Kei Winters showed me otherwise, by showing me how much... Benjamin Winters did."

"Why are you looking so hard for someone to blame?" Vizrokoth asked. "Besides me of course."

"Something drew your attention," Felix said, only avoiding crying because of how drained he already was from the day's events. "There are countless groups of people you could've picked, so you had to have a reason to pick me. Something that made me and those around me interesting enough to be worth ****."

"You're not wrong," Vizrokoth said as she brought Felix into a hug. "I did not pick at random who I would take. But it was a lot more about you Felix than the people around you."

"Then why?" Felix asked. "I'm not that interesti-"

"Oh that's nonsense," Vizrokoth's reply came in sharp, as she laid her head on top of Felix's. "You got into a fight that made everyone view you as a brute, but your interests are more like that of a nerd. However, because you have a math disability, you aren't really smart enough to be a nerd, at least compared to people like Noah. Athletics weren't open to you because a school isn't going to let a troublemaker, real or perceived, join a sports team. All of that together means there isn't really a group for you to belong to, as you aren't a bad kid, but everyone forces you into the mold of one."

Everything boiled down to that damn fight he had with Billy Hughes, and a gaggle of other kids back in middle school. It didn't matter that he had avoided any other incidents because that one fight was messy, and the school's staff hated him for it.

"Of course, those around you were interesting," Vizrokoth said. "Not everyone has a mother who gets sexually harassed by their boss after all. Besides, it's Harem Hotel, which requires a master that has interesting people in their life. And the audience usually cares about the contestants far more than the master, so they were important. But Felix, I chose you in large part because of you."

"So I'm interesting because a fight in middle school ruined my life?" Felix asked. "And because my mother had a boss who didn't understand the word no?"

"Oh Felix, you're too hard on yourself," Vizrokoth moved her chin off of Felix's head, and instead stroked his hair. "There's another very, very important reason I picked you, which is that unlike the season that caused a restriction on wishes* that continues to this day, you enjoy having women dominate you."

The demon whispered the last bit in Felix's ear. His blushing embarrassment made Vizrokoth chuckle. "Don't be ashamed, as we're all about making fantasies coming true here, and that very much includes when the master likes assertive women."

"I'm not a masochist." Felix said, hating how exposed all of his sexual fantasies were to this woman.

"Dear, there's a lot more to that kind of thing than pain," Vizrokoth gently moved Felix out of her lap. "I made sure that, even with so many men in your life, I could get you the kind of women that you fantasize about. Assertive, confident, and most of all, with the kind of monstrous libido that could brush aside your insecurities to move things along."

That made Felix not just blush, but also made him recall every conflicted emotion he had from how Janessa treated him. She made him cum, **** him to feel pleasure when he thought he couldn't, and a part of him did love that. But that couldn't be okay... right?

"I made rule changes just for you, so that no pesky penalties got in the way when it most mattered," Vizrokoth said. "I should warn you that Janessa won't be doing that kind of thing this week, but if she can avoid getting eliminated, I'm sure she'll be more than happy to indulge your fantasies in the future."

Hearing that caused Felix to back away to his bed, **** to change the topic. The demon thankfully took him up on that, but with a topic that was draining all over again.

"Felix, there's another thing I'm here to talk about," Vizrokoth said. "I'm going to tell you about a season that didn't work out. It will both help you understand why I picked you, and why I chose to you through the emotional wringer today..."

Yesterday

Paisley sighed, alone in her office, unsure of where to go from here. She should've been happy, as her version of events of went wrong with Bros to Babes had won out, preventing her from being punished for the show's shortcomings. But as the one whose job it was to fix troubled seasons of Harem Hotel, and who had been so close to getting her own season before this disaster, it was a bitter pill to swallow. Seeing an upstart freelancer get their own season on the bones of Bros to Babes, by promising to do better... that was what made her seeth with rage in her office.

The story Paisley had told was that the season she had just been an assistant on, Bros to Babes, was cancelled for low ratings. She could point to the predictable dips of viewers leaving when they realized most of the show was watching a bunch of traumatized contestants with learned helplessness only make half hearted attempts at avoiding elimination while the master bawled his eyes out at night over contestants who had been eliminated. However, that story was bullshit, on multiple levels.

For one, the season had gotten an ending, not a cancellation. It was an early end at week four rather than the intended summer long season, but it had technically ended. That distinction made a lot of difference for everyone involved, especially the host. The ending wasn't aired, that was saved for an upcoming collector's edition box set of Harem Hotel seasons that ended early, but it still ended. Said early ending had helped pave the way for Vizrokoth's Bunkered Together season, along with a host of other seasons, because the network desperately needed new content. It always did to some extent, but especially when a season got cut early, producers scrambled to get new seasons greenlit.

The real lie at the center of Paisley's story was that while the ratings were low, they hadn't been low enough to, in of themselves, justify an early end. There had been spikes of people watching out of perverse curiosity when the transformations occurred, to see another elimination or for what crazy stunt the host would pull to try to get the show back on track next. These spikes always were just high enough to justify the season continuing, and the season could've in theory gotten all the way through its allocated time that way.

Paisley got up from her chair while ruminating on the past season, and went over her prior successful work. Posters of successful seasons she was an assistant for covered the walls of her office, including ones with problems far harder to salvage than Bros to Babes, at least on the surface. For instance, there was the Bountiful Seas season that she helped transition to being on a pirate ship because she realized they had so many eliminated contestants that they could makeup an entire ship crew with them. Bountiful Seas went from having so many eliminations that it was a miserable slog dragging down the show to a ratings bonanza. That came from a new setting, a master that was invested in his harem without having a horde of eliminated contestants to fuck all the time, a harem that grew to actually like the master from their shared adventures, and a fascinating epilogue as they sailed off into the sunset. That season was why she hadn't worried about hearing there had been a bunch of eliminations on Bros to Babes, that wasn't a new problem for her, and it hadn't gotten as bad as that prior season.

Other posters reminded her that it wasn't the host either. Paisley had worked with hosts who were downright rebellious but she had managed in every case to get their seasons back on track, either by changing the season's tone to better align with the host's preferences, or more drastic measures like folding the host into the harem. For instance, there was Space Fuckers, an extremely crude season set on a spaceship, and that was so perverted that even the master could find it excessive, despite being a pervert himself. The host got sick of it when the master actually became confident enough to embrace the show's perverted tone, so she rebelled by refusing to punish girls when they clearly deserved it in ways that were growing steadily less subtle. However, a slight change in theme, a reminder that her attempts to hide her behavior weren't going to work, and the opportunity for the host to take the master down a peg through a fun contest helped a lot. That contest even got the rest of the harem to get back into the swing of things once the master got some fun humiliation that got him to respect the rest of the group.

That wasn't even the most **** example, as Paisley was reminded by a poster showing a rose surrounded by the silhouettes of gorgeous men illustrated. The Prickly Rose was a season aimed at straight women, with the idea that they would fantasize about being the mistress themselves. Hence, the season had a very heterosexual woman as its mistress, without a hint of bi-curiosity, who had a harem of men, and a very attractive male host. Unfortunately the host and the mistress had a falling out, probably because he treated her like a contestant on a normal Harem Hotel season, trying to push her towards sex, doing flirty stuff with men, etc., It could've been a disaster, but Paisley was able to fix everything by turning him into a contestant, right in front of the mistress as a punishment. After profusely apologizing to her, she got a replacement host that could act as the confident big sister the mistress never had before. The former host turned out to be far better as a contestant, as he was able to get the rest of the harem to better seduce the mistress, and he himself was able to turn his prior pushiness into a kind of tsundere esque redemption arc. The season went onto inspire many knockoffs, some of which were still running, or even in the stages of being greenlit. All in all, it was one of Paisley's proudest accomplishments.

Ever since, Paisley prided herself on ensuring a host was never destroyed, or otherwise sent to a punishment worse than being folded into a harem. Hosts were expensive to create or recruit, even for beings like the producers, and it was foolish to waste them. Her success in turning around The Prickly Rose made the producers side with her, and that promise meant hosts trusted her, even when it was a season flying off the rails. When she saw an old, but well maintained riding crop in her office, she remembered when that trust most came in handy.

The item was from a season called Stud and Mares, which had been careening towards disaster before she had shown up to fix things. The host, perhaps because of coddling the master's squeamishness in regards to punishing contestants, had utterly lost control over the harem. It had gotten to the point where the host was about to eliminate a bunch of girls at once as a hail mary to restore her dominance, even if it meant shattering her relationship with the master, and her producer was breathing down her neck from the show's issues. That was when Paisley showed up, and after some quick examination, chose to become the host's enforcer. She not only disciplined the harem, but did so without doing a single elimination, and ensured the actual host wasn't present for it so the harem wouldn't feel resentful towards her. All it took was a single impromptu session involving breast expansion and a riding crop for them all to be crying for the sweet embrace of their original host. But Paisley didn't stop there, as it wasn't just the harem she chose to fix. She stuck around to ensure the contestants behaved, and to punish the master for not embracing his role through weaponizing his love for certain members. Whenever he was too squeamish, or was playing favorites in a way the audience didn't like, she would come in, and deliver a quick impromptu punishment right in front of him. The punishments were never that harsh, but they were immediate and impossible to avoid. Soon, everyone on Stud and Mares was doing everything the host told them to, and the host's softness was now an asset, as it made the contestants feel safe. It was so successful that the host was still heading seasons to this day, and stuck to the routine of having an assistant deliver punishment so that she could be the kind host nobody wanted to upset.

She put the riding crop back down, having been reassured by it. Paisley was sure it wasn't the host of Bros to Babes that caused the problems, or at least, not for straightforward reasons. The host had done everything the producers told her to do, and, if anything, had been too harsh. The problem was that the host didn't know how to use intimidation, unlike say Yuki, to get the contestants in line, but it really pointed to a deeper problem. A problem so big that, despite that unwavering loyalty to the producers, and a willingness to do anything to please the audience, the season had gone so poorly that the network had to erase everyone's memory of the host's name, including Paisley.

Paisley returned to her desk, and pulled out a group photo of Bros to Babes. The host was a blonde beach babe wearing a bikini, just like the contestants. She was smiling, and hadn't become the angry, bitter, and **** woman she would later. The producers had wanted a fun, sexy host to lead a season that continued the themes, and therefore hopefully the ratings, of Bros to Hoes. By the time Paisley had gotten there, the vision had collapsed to the point where, in a complete reversal of Stud and Mares, she found herself having to assure contestants, and even the master, that it was possible to avoid elimination. But it was all for naught, for a reason she struggled to identify.

It hadn't been her first male-to-female season, so that wasn't the problem. Sure, her prior experience with it was one off contestants in seasons like Space Fuckers, but it hadn't seem so intractable. That master was **** wasn't the problem either, as she had more than dealt with that on Stud and Mares. She studied the photo, looking for any sign of why, in the two weeks she hadn't been there, the season had a runaway attempt, multiple assaults on the master, and only a single contestant from the initial six hadn't been eliminated by the time Paisley showed up.

She put the photo back and slammed the drawer shut. Paisley had a meeting to prepare for with Vizrokoth, over the demon's many deviations from the formula, and some sloppy errors. This initial meeting would just be a check in, but it was quite likely that Paisley would have to be the assistant one more time if she wanted to get her own show. As much as it frustrated her, she would ensure this new season achieved a level of success that would make everyone forget about Bros to Babes...

"There was once a season called Bros to Babes," said Vizrokoth who was laying next to Felix on his bed, maintaining eye contact to the point where it felt like she was staring into his soul. "It was a spinoff of a show called Bros to Hoes, and so just like ours, everyone used to be a guy. Heck, we have Hailey whereas they never deviated from the original premise with any of the contestants."

Felix wasn't quite sure why Vizrokoth was telling him about this, but the mention of Hailey hurt. He understood even less why she was here than before given she didn't fit the way others had into the show's gimmick, at least from what he could see. Why bring someone into this whose biggest crime was ignoring him when people like Billy Hughes had been available?

"Unlike our season, they weren't in a bunker," Vizrokoth said while laying next to Felix. "They were on a beach, a tropical paradise that's the standard template for a Harem Hotel season. There were no monster girls, no dyads to provide another personality, and no strange contests. The most adventurous thing they did initially was swimming for treasure. Everything was set for a laid back season that the network would love."

"Something went wrong?" Felix asked.

"Oh yes," Vizrokoth answered, grinning like a narrator eagerly revealing gruesome details in a horror movie. "The master got attacked, multiple times, because the host didn't understand how much the master was hated by some of his classmates, and how much the contestants hated their own bodies. So she eliminated them, turning one into a giggling beach bimbo and the other into a sexy maid. The host also kept them around as examples of what would happen if people disobeyed."

While she talked, Vizrokoth got up, and tucked Felix into bed like a child. The maternal aspect of what she was doing felt wrong coming from someone like her, but he was powerless to resist. Even if she wasn't an all powerful demon, he was too drained by the events of the day to even think about trying to resist what she was doing, and too scared of the demon from seeing her power beforehand.

"The problem was, rather than serving as examples of what would happen if they failed, the contestants felt like the eliminations were their future if they didn't escape. So after the second challenge, one of the contestants hatched an escape plan and got the only friend of the master to go along with it. That friend of the master had been in the host's good graces for trying to protect the master before, and by being the only person the master trusted on the island, was able to convince the master to participate in this escape plan. The contestant who planned their escape thought that at night, and with a distraction from one of the other contestants, they could escape the island, which they hoped meant escaping the host's grasp. They brought the master to a boat, along with two of the other remaining contestants, and tried to set sail."

Felix already knew was going to happen. Vizrokoth knew what they were doing at all times, and so did the audience. It was something he had known ever since the dating show premise of where they were had been revealed to them. Why would anyone think they could escape the gaze of Harem Hotel?

"As you can guess, judging by the look on your face, the host found out," Vizrokoth said while turning off the lights in the room. "She found out so quickly that their planned distraction never went off, and they never even got the boat into the water. Instead, she teleported them all around a campfire, and eliminated them one by one in front of the master's eyes."

As Vizrokoth spoke, she lit a fire in the palm of her hand. "One contestant, who had spotted the boat and thought their experience as a boy sailing would be enough, was turned into a mermaid, except she was mindlessly loyal to the host, and had all of her memories of being a human removed, whether they were of being a man or a woman. This mermaid went onto assure that any attempt to escape the island by water would never succeed again, because she would spot it, and stop it herself."

Already, this story was dark, and Felix wanted to ask for an early end to it, but he couldn't. The only lights in the room were Vizrokoth's burning eyes, and the fire in her hand. She meant to emulate a campfire story, and had done so very effectively in a way that intimidated him into silence.

"Another contestant, the one who had come up with the plan was turned into a cat girl, with new instincts, an overwhelming libido, and altered memories so that she would never even think to oppose the host again," Vizrokoth said. "By being around the master all the time, and only being capable of speech when the host was around to get details on the master's activities, this catgirl was the perfect spy for the host. Not so much for relaying information, but rather for showing everyone that the host knew what they were doing, and even if she was distracted, she would find out later what they had been doing. This sealed off another avenue of escape."

"Most of all, there was the master's friend, and this was when the host chose to be cruel towards the master," Vizrokoth said while letting the flame in her hand gradually go out. "She was resentful towards him because the master was cowardly, homesick, and never seemed to desire the women around him. A host usually cannot punish a master, so she did the next best thing and eliminated his only friend right in front of him in a way that he wouldn't forget. By a means I will not tell you tonight, because you need to see it, but it broke the master beyond repair."

"Why did you tell me all that? We haven-"

"Never neglect your harem Felix, or your duties as a master," Vizrokoth's answer was unwavering, direct, and far more serious than he was used to hearing. "The rest of the reason you will find out in time..."

*(Author's Note: Yes, this is referencing Shar's season. If you've read Wrynn's excellent Laura Black/Haunted Castle season of Harem Hotel, you'll know what I'm referencing here, and in some other places when I do the flashbacks.)