Chapter 2
by 
Rahne
Who's our lucky master?
Battle Royale!!!
"Deep breath. You're only trying something new. Viewers love new stuff. The producers... they love when the audience is happy." The statuesque woman murmured to her reflection in the green room. For the umpteenth time, she checked that her black suit jacket's enchantment was still in place. Not wearing a shirt underneath it would definitely set the sexualised tone, and show off all the tattoos she'd placed on the exceptionally well-toned body she'd given herself. Messing up that enchantment though? That could definitely screw up the all important first impression. A lot of other hosts had gone for a lot of different appearances, including that one host that went with a lion's head, but "6ft Purple Haired Tattooed Futa" was still pretty fresh territory.
She smiled at that thought. She definitely wanted to do something fresh.
"Hey babe, you're on in 15!"
"Thank you!" She took a deep breath, check and stared at herself in the mirror. "Okay, Rahne: Showtime!"
With a bang, the spotlight hit down onto the stage. "Welcome, one and all, to a brand new series of Harem Hotel! All advertising leading up to this season has not been a lie: we are going off-book in a big way this season! Let's not keep you waiting any longer and introduce our master for the season."
Rahne gestured their perfectly manicured hand up toward the back of the stage, thrusting her arm outwards in a move that would have definitely exposed her tits if her jacket hadn't been enchanted into place. She smiled and congratulated herself on the first of many things to go right for her. The stage lights whipped around, with loud, proclamatory music playing. A throne ascended through the floor, grand in it's gold colour, with an ornate, seven segmented crown built into its backboard. Truly it would have been a grand halo surrounding the head of anyone sitting in the through. However, sheer scale of the throne only served to highlight a clear absence: the throne was empty.
"Yes, you are seeing that correctly: we have NO Master this season! And yes, we did consider sub-titling this season 'Oops! All Harem'," Rahne grinned as she paused for laughter. Who cares that the audience here would fade out of existence once her show started? It was still stressful to stand in front of all of them and the rush of how well it was all going still made her giddy. "But we felt Battle Royale was more appropriate. Let me explain."
"You see, with no Master, the show doesn't really function. We're very aware of that fact. So, without a dedicated master, we'll simply have to choose a master from the contestants selected to be a part of our Harem! Yes, that's right: in addition to the usual prize of a wish, the winning contestant will be walking away with the other six contestants as their Harem!"
"As the contest progresses, the winner of each week's contest will be given the title of Harem Master. The Weekly Harem Master will get a taste of what victory will be like as all of their transformations will be switched to positive, beneficial transformations making it easier for them to rule over their Harem. In addition, all VP earned from sexual acts with anyone other than the Weekly Master will be halved."
"Otherwise, it's really a standard season for the contestants: the best girl poll and various jobs will earn them BP to spend, they'll each have one dedicated date night with the Weekly Master, and any contestant with less than 100 VP by the end of the season, or less than 0 VP by the end of that week's challenge will, of course, receive an elimination transformation.
"Oh, and finally, because even the perverts upstairs have a great idea sometimes, the weekly Harem Master will have their genetalia replaced with a girlcock that, when appropriate, is in line with the victory version of their transformations! So, don't worry you cock obsessed freaks out there: there's still going to be plenty of sex acts you're familiar with!" A round of laughter echoed through the auditorium.
"So, without further ado, let's meet out harem!" Mia was chuffed. Seven and two was her best result yet; and at the regional qualifiers no less! The diminutive brunette had taken a moment to head outside and clean her large, thick glasses. This had been her best Scrabble tournament yet and, with any luck with her tie-breakers, it wouldn't be over yet! The top eight cut would be starting in mere moments. She took a moment and refreshed herself on her two-letter words, particularly the more obscure double vowel ones. The definitions always tripped her up.
Her thumb poked out of the hole she'd worn through her favourite comfy cardigan's wrist, from stressing over the years, as she went over the notes in her phone. Even in her late-20s, she was still usually one of the youngest competitors, and definitely one of the only girls. She'd never been outstanding in school, or particularly poor at it. She had friends, but had never been cool or popular. She'd been in a couple of relationships, but hadn't really thought herself incredibly attractive. She was relatively unremarkable; except for her passion for Scrabble. She had explained it to her friends once:
"Sure having a large vocabulary helps; but what helps more is maths, and what helps most is strategy and controlling the board."
The muffled voice of the tournament organiser interrupted her thoughts as it came in over the tannoy. "Could all players please assemble for the top eight announcement."
Mia resolved to resolve her practice and then head in. She was on the O's anyway.
Specifically, her flash card read "OE: the abbreviation for Oersted, the unit of measurement for magnetic field strength."
If she'd been able to process her thoughts quickly enough, she might have recognised the irony in that as the reality fields around her warped to suck her away into the world of Harem Hotel.
All for the best really, she'd placed 9th anyway.
Kate was fucking pissed.
This used to be her fucking gym. A little sanctuary where she could work out in fucking peace. No prying eyes. No fucking wannabe Instagram models. Definitely no fucking douchebag guys hitting on her. Was she happy for Rod and Kerry that the business the two 50-year-old, reunited high school sweethearts had taken off? Yeah, absolutely. She was fucking stoked. Did that stop her from being grossed out that her favourite rowing machine had a small puddle of sweat on the seat?
Fuck. No.
Still, she was a creature of habit, and she had started packing disinfectant wipes in her gym bag. Soon, the blonde was hammering away on her rowing machine. Hammering might be an understatement. She had felt an immense amount of guilt when she'd broken the bolt on the seat from overuse and Kerry told her the replacement seat was damn near the cost of a brand new machine. But she needed the rowing. She needed the chaos of the drum and bass music in her headphones giving her early onset hearing loss. She needed the escape from the various fucking assholes she worked with. The stupid clients who couldn't tell good design if it fucked them up the ass. The shithead colleagues who repeated her ideas, but louder, and got credit; and the dickstain bosses who listened to them. She loved that she got to be creative for a living, and advertising let her do that.
If pounding a rowing machine for an hour a day was what it took to handle that? Well, maybe it would be worth it.
Rod had heard Kate's machine stop, and went over to where she had been. It was the three-year anniversary of her first signing up to RK Fitness and Rod and Kerry went and got her name engraved in one of the branded steel water bottles the gym sold. However, when he got there, she was already gone. Presumably to hit the showers.
"Strange," he thought as he got to Kate's machine. "She's usually so good at remembering to wipe it down."River was, well, River. It was weird still, remembering to turn around when someone used that name. Weirder still trying to not turning around when someone used their deadname, to not validate that person's choice to not validate River's gender identity. Not at weird as having to get the Deathly Hallows laser removed from their wrist because JK Rowling didn't think they really existed and were just doing it for attention, but weird all the same.
They scratched the back of their head, still getting used to the close cropped, neon blue fade they got last week. Here they were in a coffee shop, when they knew they preferred the coffee at home, just to get used to responding to their new name. River had hoped their new name would act as inspiration. Rivers go with the flow, they take it easy. They're powerful, yet calming; and they always take the most efficient path downhill. River was a ball of anxiety, but hoped the name might be the first step to unwinding.
River fidgeted with the "She/they" pronouns badge on their satchel. They still enjoyed a feminine presentation; they'd gotten too good at make-up in drama club in high school to ever truly let go of that. But this new, very masc' haircut felt good. They smiled, taking a deep breath. Their students had taken it really well; which was mostly to be expected when they taught gender studies at one of their city's universities, but it had been reaffirming all the same. They were having a great day, and would continue to do so if they could remember to get their coffee the first time someone shouted "River" today.
"River? River? Large double-shot iced oat-milk late for River?"
No-one ever picked up that coffee.
Two curly haired bartenders sat outside, a heavy bucket propping open the door that clearly said "Fire Exit. Do Not Obstruct. Do Not Hold Open."
"I don't know why you're so pissed off, Danni." The tall man said.
"What do you mean?" The brunette responded to her co-worker, crushing the cigarette butt underneath the sole of her truly filthy doc martens.
"Danni, we work behind the bar at one of the most legendary music venues in the city. We get to see some of the greatest bands of all time and we get paid to do it."
"We get paid to have a bunch of people who are either already drunk or well on their way there distract us from some of the greatest bands of all time." Danni was never going to actually tell Liam that she took the job to have an in to get her own band up on stage, but that dream had fallen apart immediately when her band broke up two weeks after she started and long before she felt she had enough leverage to ask to perform.
"Way to focus on the negatives."
"Liam, I got spat on tonight because some cunt wanted an entire lime in his drink and I was too bewildered to comprehend that's what he actually said."
"Okay, yeah, that's fucked, but would it kill you to focus on the positives? Just once?"
"Y'know it actually might."
"Ah fuck you, Danni."
"Fuck you too, Liam." The both laughed through the mock hostility.
"And on that note, I've got a double tomorrow, I'm going to go to bed. See you tomorrow, Danni?"
"If you don't, please assume I've been by aliens."
"Will do! Enjoy your probing!" Liam walked off with a wave.
Had he turned around, no more than three seconds after saying that and turning away, Liam would have seen Danni, mid wrangling her wild, untamable curls into a hair-tie, blink out of existence. He then would have questioned whether he'd accidentally cursed his co-worker to an alien probing for the rest of his life. It would have eaten away at him, leading him down a rabbit hole of 4chan conspiracy groups and nut-job theories, damaging his relationships with all of his friends and family.
Luckily for Liam, he just walked to his car and never looked back to see anything out of the ordinary.
Nat had not gone by Natsuki for almost two decades now.
Natsuki was what her parents called her when she was in trouble, or what she was called on official documents. The former hadn't happened for years, ever since the crash, and therefore the latter was the only time it came up.
So her date insisting on calling her Natsuki had made the last hour even less fun that the last time she'd had to go get her license renewed.
He had been blathering on about his own life. Oh, Cabo? It's amazing? Should really go some time? Nat hadn't even cared enough to clarify what continent Cabo was on, let alone the country. He hadn't needed the help to keep talking and the internal guessing game 'Where is Cabo?' the closest she'd had to entertainment all evening. Though, admittedly, the frustration of not knowing and the urge to Google was getting to her.
"So, where in China are your parents from?"
China? China?! He'd made such a big deal about wanting her full name! She'd even said it was Japanese for 'Summer Moon' and he'd still managed to get it just so phenomenally wrong. Dating in your thirties was so impossible, especially as someone of Japanese parentage in a white-majority country. If it wasn't fetishization, it was infantilization, or, in this truly depressing date's mind, just good ol' fashioned stupidity. Nat was yet another day closer to dying her hair or changing up her wardrobe or something to just get out from behind the Asian stereotypes she kept getting landed with. Though, fifteen years of dating as an adult had taught her that even getting a tattoo that just said 'I'm Japanese, you racist' on her forehead wouldn't help when it mattered.
"I would love to tell you all about it; I'm just going to run to the bathroom first."
She collected her purse and phone and headed to the bathroom. Nat was interesting, dammit! As the buyer for the largest chain of pet stores in the country, not only was she able to directly reduce the use of puppy farms and the like, but she also got to spend a good chunk of her time with some of the coolest animals out there. Her current day to day was trying to negotiate the world-first license for import and breeding of the domesticated Silver Fox. This guy could have gotten to cuddle with foxes if he'd played his cards right. Instead, he was going to get ghosted.
She'd barely finished typing up a text to a friend, begging for a phone call in fifteen minutes to stage a bail-out, when the walls of the cubicle folded in on her, ripping her out of reality faster than she could get the air into her lungs to scream.
Yet, even among the terror, Nat's last thought before being whisked away still somehow managed to be 'I still don't know where Cabo is!'
(Turns out it's in Mexico, who knew?)
This was always the moment that made Annie nervous.
She'd managed to cram a test box into her tiny one-bedroom apartment. Sure, she'd made sure that the dirt cheap polycarbonate panels she'd purchased were still rated as bulletproof. They were still cheap enough that she set up her old phone as a camera and went and hid in the other room while performing her weapons test.
Killer-Roo was her pride and joy. The 3lb Beetleweight combat robot had, as of late, suddenly started to really perform well. She'd finally nailed her "kicker", brake-style weapon design and, thanks to advice from fellow competitors, shelled out for some more combat reliable motors. Version 12.7 was the one currently in the box, lying on its head, ready to test whether the weapon would self-right her precious bot, or just get stuck in the wooden floor of her test box, just like it did in the fight that eliminated her from the bracket at last month's meet.
Annie could think of nothing she wanted more than to win the next meet. The cash prize would somewhat justify the cost of the 3D printer, the fancy laptop she bought for modelling and simulations, all the components, and, of course, all the extra shelving she'd had to buy to somehow make it all fit in her tiny apartment; but more important to Annie was the ability to impress her peers with her truly unique weapon design. The "Thagomizer" design was the last true innovation most of the scene had seen, and her "Kicker" was a unique enough weapon that, if it worked well in the lower weight classes, could very easily be scaled up to appear on Battlebots! And there were former and current competitors at her local competition, who all seemed super on board with helping her with her application and to find sponsors if and when Annie could ever get past her perfectionist impulses.
Still, that was ages away. At the moment, she just wanted to test her weapon's self-righting capabilities. With a deep breath, she accelerated the weapon motor. In only a couple of seconds, it was already devastatingly fast, a necessity for quicker, less-than-perfect opportunities. However, it would hit top speed in just under six seconds, well within the ten second pin limit afforded to her by the rules. The weapon motor was whirring away at a pitch that was sonorous to a bot-builder and heart-attack inducing to anyone unfamiliar.
Annie moved her thumb to the weapon trigger, pushed the button and two sounds occurred: The first was a loud bang as the axel affixed chunk of metal that was Killer-Roo's 'kicker' flew out and smacked the floor of her test box, throwing it into the air only for it to land beautifully upon its four tires. The second was a clatter as the rather expensive remote control it's mother was once holding clattered to the ground, as Annie was no-longer on the same plane of existence.
Sigrid had learned long ago that, when you're female and 6'2", you're probably going to have to be the one to do all the asking out if you wanted a date.
That didn't make it any easier.
Easier would be being a lesbian, or, hell, even just bi. All of her queer friends had told her as much. She'd kill it in queer circles. She was a giant blonde that worked as a blacksmith to make props for movies and TV shows. One of her swords was about to be a hero sword, front and centre on a new Amazon Prime show later this year too. Between the muscles and her height, she need only wear a tank-top to be the epitome of a queer femme thirst trap.
Unfortunately, she was straight, and even more unfortunately, she was a good five inches taller than the global average for men. She'd given up on the idea of heels on dates. Sure, her legs looked great, but the number of guys willing to put up with looking upwards to be with her was very short. Thanks toxic masculinity!
So, when she met Jared, from the art department of the show she'd been working on, and didn't have to look downwards to meet his eye? Ooh, it did set her heart a-flutter! Someone who literally stood on even footing for her was incredibly rare. So rare in fact, that she'd literally just blown her shot. Jared had just come by her workshop to pick up the sword, and the ten extras ready to go in case of breakage and the like. His upbeat, relaxed charm had failed to overcome her anxieties and, as such, Jared was now walking back to his car.
Sigrid felt so stupid. She'd even worn that sexy set of lingerie that her best friend had made her buy "just in case", just in case her confessing went even better than she had allowed herself to hope. Here was the rare guy that shared interests with her, and that she wouldn't have to look down at and she couldn't muster up the will to speak.
Sigrid turned and closed the door, the fly-wire screen banging against the doorframe. Had she not turned, she would have seen Jared, looking back at the noise, disappointed Sigrid never said anything that would enable him to let her know how he felt, without feeling like a creepy co-worker.
I mean, she also would have been visible when she compressed down to nothing and blinked out of existence, but the missed connection is cuter!