Michael

Michael felt a small nudge on his temple, at first gentle, then increasingly annoyed as someone pulled him back to consciousness. When in the hell did I pass out? How? He opened his eyes, but the blinding white of the sun bearing down on him slammed them back shut. Spots danced in his vision as he tried to open his eyes again. He threw up his hand to shield himself from the glare, but he still couldn’t see much except the redheaded silhouette looming over him.

"Janet… If I hear one old man joke about passing out during a three-way-" Michael abruptly stopped his joking once his eyes adjusted enough to get a real look. He pushed himself away in the dirt and jumped to his feet, covering himself up as he was still naked from his romp at home plate.

"Who the hell are you?" Michael demanded, finally recognizing that the woman was not his lover Janet. She was young, maybe Janet's age or slightly older, naturally sharing her flaming red hair but with wildly different features.

She blew lip bubbles in response to his question, sounding like a horse. Which made sense, as she was bridled like one. A pony girl!? Michael knew the term from his later and wilder nights on the internet, and the rather exotic fantasies that followed.

Whoever she was, she looked like those fantasies made flesh: She was gagged with a steel bit through her teeth, held in by a leather strap secured around her head that let only her long red ponytail drape down behind her. Her hands were tucked in and secured to a small leather chest strap and bound in small mittens. The effect was to leave her hands totally useless except as to act as support for her large, bare breasts. Most of her was bare, really, outside of the extremely high-heeled leather boots she'd been laced into all the way past her knees. They looked so tight as to be a second skin, and lifted her heel enough that she was nearly Michael’s height and made her feet look like hooves. She was almost completely on display to Michael, but despite that exposure, she didn't seem embarrassed in the slightest. Maybe she dresses like this all the time? She definitely looked as though she did. She was lean and toned in her upper body, clearly an athlete but not visibly chiseled from stone like Luciana by Day. By contrast, her legs and butt were very muscular, with obvious power in the glutes. If she wasn’t going to be embarrassed about being on show, Michael wasn’t going to be embarrassed about being naked himself, or for thoroughly looking her over. He liked what he saw.

She stared at him curiously, her brown eyes reflecting neither the Staff's beaten down resignation or panic, nor a Host's casual arrogance and cruelty. An Onyx black stone collar sat around her neck, so black indeed that it seemed to be swallowing the light around it. A small etching caught Michael's attention, and he leaned in to read it.

"Zoe." He said aloud. She reared her head back and whinnied happily at the sound of her name. "Man, they really did a number on you."

Even as indulgent as he'd been feeling lately, she wasn't in his harem so he declined to touch. Pity, he thought. Might have to pick up one of these outfits for one of my girls.

Speaking of, Michael looked around to see where Janet and Vivian had disappeared to, but a quick glance made it obvious he was the one who had disappeared. He was no longer out on the Hotel's hastily assembled Field of Wet Dreams, he and Zoe had been zipped off to the bottom of a high-walled canyon. The sun was directly overhead and shining down into the ravine, but given how high and narrow it was, they would be in shadow very soon. A small disconnected stagecoach sat nearby, parked against the end of the canyon. In the opposite direction, the canyon split off in multiple directions and even from his vantage he could tell it would continue to split and diverge further down. He swept the entirety of the ridgeline with his eyes, but he could not see the hotel or anything else to orient himself which of the paths to take.

"Great, a maze." He complained out loud. Zoe just pawed the dirt in her boots and shook out her ponytail. Michael reached up to unlatch her bit gag. "Let's get this off of you. I'll bet you know the way out."

Zoe jumped as he touched her gag and pulled back. She scoffed at him, her eyes becoming almost offended.

"Don’t be ridiculous. I'm not gonna hurt you, Zoe, I just need to get this off." He tried to reach for it again, but she jumped back further and snorted angrily. "Come on, girl, we can play the kinky games afterward if you want. I'll put it back- OOF"

Michael tried a third time but Zoe was not having it. When he approached to reach around her head for the clasp to her bit gag, she brought her booted foot up and kicked Michael in the stomach. Her boot caught him right in the belly, hard enough to knock him backwards and off his feet into the dirt again.

"Ohhhh…. god damn that hurt…" He curled up for a moment, bemoaning how bad his abdomen ached, and yet giving silent thanks that she hadn't kicked him in the pills. He got back to his feet, a little farther away this time, brushing the dirt off his bare butt and griping incoherently. For her part, Zoe seemed like she'd forgotten all about it. She was just preening in the sun and enjoying herself. He took another look at the bridle, but Zoe's eyes went narrow in warning.

"Fuck, fine. I'll leave it in then…"

Michael heard the sound of scraping hooves from above, and saw the blonde staff member Celene riding an actual horse down a narrow path with multiple switchbacks to reach them. She wore a set of chaps and a ten-gallon hat, but nothing else. He crossed his arms to wait as she navigated the slope, enjoying how her breasts bounced with each trot. Once down, Celene brought her horse to a stop next to him, and she too gave him an appreciative once-over with her eyes. Then she winked and tipped the wide brim of her cowboy hat.

"Boss."

"Celene. Mind telling me what’s going on?"

As soon as he asked, Celene’s body tensed. “I’m supposed to give you this.” She said seriously, the words coming out flatly and quickly like she was a bad actress rigidly reading a script. She turned to open up a saddlebag. As she twisted in the saddle, Michael noticed that she was impaled on a dildo emerging from the center. Is that what my girls were riding out into the desert? He smiled at that image, only jolted back into reality when Robo-Celene waved a piece of folded paper under his nose.

“A telegram? Is this a Colt thing?” He looked at Celene for confirmation, but she did not seem able to answer. He opened the paper.

BOSS MICHAEL

BOTTOM OF RAVINE

RUBY WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING WHAT DID YOU DO AL HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW I JUST GOT YANKED HERE TOO I THOUGHT YOU DID IT YOU GREASY BASTARD RUBY DO NOT BE A FOOL MY GIRL JANET WAS RAKING IN POINTS BY THE FISTFUL WHY WOULD I INTERRUPT THAT WHAT IS THAT INCESSANT TAPPING AL THE STAFF OVER THERE IS USING THE MORSE CODE TRANSMITTER OH FOR GODS SAKE HE IS TYPING EVERYTHING WE SAY HEY DUMBASS STOP

TAPPING THAT THING BEFORE I SNAP IT OVER YOUR HEAD WHY AM I STUCK WEARING THIS COWBOY HAT AL IT MUST BE PART OF WHAT IS HAPPENING LETS JUST STEP OUTSIDE AND DISCUSS THIS LIKE ADULTS FINE RUBES BUT I STILL THINK THIS IS SOME OF YOUR BULLSHIT

END

“Ok that explained nothing. Figured those two freaks couldn’t pull it together enough to send a coherent message. Got any more of those, written by sane people?” Michael asked, crumpling the telegram up and tossing it in the dirt. Celene looked apologetic, but that was all she could do or say in response. She reached back into her bag and pulled out a second sheet of paper, this one looked as though it had been hastily ripped from a faded notebook and scrawled by hand. Three different hands, actually, Michael could tell it had been added to by multiple people and the rips in the page suggested they’d been fighting over it.

The first text looked the oldest, like it had faded with the page itself. And someone had roughly circled it in pencil. That must have been recent, because it was much darker. Michael faintly smelled whiskey as he read it.

Challenge idea: Get that Master out drivin’ a pony girl. I know a girl who enjoys making them regular girls strong enough to pull a carriage, but she’s not interested in puttin’ em on TV. Waste of effort, my opinion. She’s sittin’ on a gold mine. This could be a real hit. Need to figure out how to make it good competition.

A few lines down, the handwriting changed to a much more feminine style. Just reading it gave him a slight buzzing feeling in the back of his brain. As if he was being stroked like a beloved pet. It was unseemly in its pleasantness.

Michael,

Please disregard our first message. It would appear one of your girls has triggered a challenge round that was not on our schedule. Al and I put all of you to sleep while we attempted to disable it, but the rules do not allow us to abort a challenge once it has begun.

Michael’s jaw dropped and he looked up at Celene for an explanation.

“Asleep?! How long were we out?” He demanded.She held up two fingers and cringed like he was going to explode. “Two days?!”

She shook her head and pointed upwards.

“Two weeks?!”

She nodded solemnly. God, I hope everyone is still ok… He kept reading.

The challenge above was incomplete, so we were **** to pad it out to make it into a viable competition. Since the challenge stub included a role for the Master, you will be a competitor as well. Your goal is to drive the stagecoach back to the Harem Hotel stables, using the provided ponygirl.

Michael looked up from the page at Zoe and to the stage coach behind her.

No damn way. She’s got some damn strong legs, which I can vouch for personally and painfully, but that thing would take at least two horses to pull and four to pull with any speed. They can’t be serious.

We are serious. The ponygirl may look slight, but she will be able to perform the job. If she balks at pulling the coach, you will be provided with a whip to motivate her. Don’t worry, she can handle anything you can dish out. She’ll actually like it.

Your girls will compete as teams. Their goal is the same as yours, to return the coach to the Hotel. They will try to take it from you by whatever means they can. You may feel tempted to negotiate with them. However, only one group can claim the win. If you or the teams try to share the victory, you will all share the defeat.

Inside the coach is a chest of Victory Points and several enchanted items. The winning team will be able to distribute the points and items inside as they see fit. The losing team will be subject to a viewer vote to determine who receives a strike. There will be an additional penalty applied to the losing team, but we won’t tell you what that is for now. It would ruin the surprise.

If you win, Michael, you will be able to distribute all points and items yourself. Good luck.

Michael’s eyes were pulled to the final text on the page, scrawled quick and ugly in a fashion that could only be Al’s doing. Reading it was like the sensation of nails on a chalkboard.

Rubes and I added one last thing. Since we know you’re trying to save all your girls and play the hero, we’ll add a little carrot for you. If you win, nobody gets a strike this round. Will that get your ass movin’, Michael? I added a little extra spice to this note, so you won’t be able tell anyone about that part until the challenge is over.

The notebook page disintegrated into dust in his hands as he finished reading it.

How could he keep me from telling someone, I’m the Boss of the season. He thought. I’ll send Celene to tell the others, then they’ll just let me ride to the finish line.

“Celene, I need you to-” His tongue refused to form the words to finish the instruction. “I want you to- Could you kindly- Damn it.” No matter what he tried, the words to convey his message to Celene just refused to come out. “Hold on, I have an idea,” he said. Michael walked over into the shadow of her horse and knelt down in the sand to draw out his message with his hands. He scraped out the dirt to write the message on the ground, carefully drawing out the words: ‘Let me win and there will be no elimination’ and then stood to point to it.

“Celene, can you read that?” She looked quizzical, but nodded. “Good, now go ride to wherever the girls are and pass along this message.”

She looked down at it again, and back up at him silently, as if to ask why. When he repeated the order, she just shook her head slightly.

“How can you say no? I thought the staff had to follow my orders.” Celene gestured down, so Michael looked at the message again. Where he had thought he was scrawling a warning, instead written in the soil were the words “Nice Try -Al” along with a large and impressively detailed drawing of a penis.

“Oh fuck that guy sideways.” Michael groaned. “Can you at least get me some of my clothes from the hotel?” He asked Celene. She nodded.

“That I can talk about,” she said, startling him with her sudden ability to speak. “I can’t get your clothed, but they sent these for you to wear.” In the opposite saddle bag, she pulled out a pair of jeans and boots, along with a leather vest and a brown ten-gallon hat. The jeans were crazy tight, and the vest over his bare chest seemed worse than wearing nothing.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Michael said, gawping at the ensemble once he’d pulled it on. “I look like a cowboy stripper.”

“Harem Hotel has female viewers too, apparently. You could go naked.” Celene offered with a shrug. “Maybe that’s a strategy.”

“Uh, I’ll take my chances with this.” Michael said, stretching out the legs of the jeans until he reached something resembling comfort. “Anything else?”

Celene bit her lip and thought for a second, and tried to speak a few times before she was able to phrase her thought in a way that would pass whatever magic censors Al had stuck in her brain.

“We’re all rooting for you guys.” She said, and quickly turned to begin riding back up the canyon wall and out. Michael would have loved to follow her up the trail, from up there he was sure the Hotel would be easy to spot and reach. But he would have had to abandon the stagecoach to do it, and now that he knew what was at stake he couldn’t do that.

“I guess the game’s on now. No sense in waiting around.” Michael addressed Zoe. “Sorry about this, but I think you have to pull that wagon.” Michael pointed to the stagecoach behind her. Unexpectedly, Zoe began snorting with delight, jumping up and down and eagerly stomping the dirt. “Wow, I… did not expect that reaction.” Michael said. “But I didn’t expect you to jackknife me with your legs either, so please let me hook you up without doing that again?”

Zoe nodded and quickly trotted over to the front of the wagon.,. Once there, she began twisting her body back and forth and looking at Michael expectantly. Michael regretted accepting the tight jeans once he got a look at her majestic body in motion. It took him a few seconds to realize he shouldn’t be staring at her swinging breasts, but instead the steel hooks bouncing on the sides of her harness along her ribcage.

“Right. Got it.” Michael stepped around her and picked up the chains laying in the sand, connecting them to the hooks so that she could pull the coach. Hanging off the side of the coach, Michael found a long leather strap which he deduced must be the reins. He was going to apologize again for having to connect that, but she looked so happy when he buckled them to the sides of her bit gag that he didn’t bother.

Following a hunch, Michael tried to open the door of the coach, but it was locked tight. Can’t use anything in there, he thought. Might have given me an advantage. He stepped on the provided bar and climbed up into the seat behind her, taking up the reins in his hand. “Go, Zoe.” He gave them a short tug. She snorted to acknowledge his command and began to move. She leaned into the straps hard and dug her boots into the ground. Amazingly, the damned thing moved. This little woman was pulling the whole thing and him all by herself. Albeit, at a snail’s pace that would take him another two weeks to get back to the hotel.

This isn’t gonna work. Michael thought. I’ll never make it there… unless…

As the letter had noted, there was a short whip resting on the bench next to him. One that was just long enough to reach from his seat to Zoe’s backside. He hefted it, letting its length hang down in front of him. It shocked him at how natural he felt when he wielded it. Michael had often fantasized about taking a whip to some of the women in his life - Danica for fun, Vivian in anger, Sarah because it might get her to stop screwing around and close out a project... But he’d never actually done such a thing. Despite always wanting to, he’d never even held one. And here he was getting his first chance on a total stranger.

I need to win this challenge, spare anyone else from a strike or… He didn’t even want to contemplate Danica or Vivian getting their second. But they might if he lost. And all I have to do is give in a little more…

Once again, Michael was faced with the choice to indulge himself to help his women. And once again he took it, the whip slicing through the air and leaving an angry red mark across the girl’s ass, matching her hair in intensity. She yipped and Michael felt a small burst of guilt, and a larger burst of arousal simultaneously.

But… she did move faster.

So he whipped her again.

Author’s Note: Zoe appears with the permission of NaughtyPixie from her excellent branch on sho's The Spiral of a Curse, I can’t recommend all the branches of that story enough. And if you’re reading this, you’re all caught up on my branch and suddenly have the free time to read it!

To recap the rules and the voting, the challenge is a stagecoach robbery. Michael must drive the coach to the hotel, while the two teams must each try to steal it from him or each other.

The winning team gets:

-To distribute all the points inside the coach
-To distribute all the transformation items inside the coach
-Immunity from the strike vote

The losers get no points, and are put up for the strike vote - unless Michael wins, in which case there is no strike vote. There will be an additional punishment revealed at the finale.

Please vote below, assigning each team a score for how likely you think they are to win. If you have any suggestions for TF items to add to the distribution at the end (think: Sarah’s ropes and Vivian’s leash examples), please drop them in the comments, DM me, or add them to the vote.

The vote is closed

Thanks!