Catch the prim and proper Receptionist in a compromised state.

Life began to settle into something of a routine. The three of them took turns being the bad girl for a day. Of course, they still had act as professionals in the field. But bad girls were rarely asked to go on Quests during their time to shine, so it rarely came up. (The first time Eva reacted to a torn sleeve with a guarded withdrawl followed immediately by a Mending spell, Shiroe was so proud he could have nearly burst.)

Occasionally, a good girl would succumb to temptation when it wasn't her turn to be the bad girl. On those occasions, it was only natural that the good girl be punished.

They tried spanking at first. Niki just took it like she barely felt it, Eva yelped and tried to protect her butt, and Amara simply accepted it with the good grace with which she did most things. Unfortunately, it was less than a week before all three of them started getting aroused any time anyone got spanked, and so spanking needed to be labeled a reward rather than a punishment.

So Shiroe sat them each down and had a talk with them, and asked them each what their least favorite sexual thing was that they could still just barely tolerate. He suspected that it wouldn't be long before they developed a taste for these things, too. In fact, he was kind of looking forward to slowly corrupting them, watching them realize that something they only begrudgingly put up with was gradually becoming the highlight of their day, simply because he was the one doing it to them, and he'd made it taboo.

He wondered if one of them would be brave enough to offer something she utterly hated, as a replacement punishment.

But then, one day, he came home to find the farmhouse a disaster, and the women arguing about it and pulling each others' hair like petulant children.

"Cantrip: Discomfort!" A small, nasty-looking black and grey beam shot out from his hand and struck Niki. The energy crawled across her body, and she shivered in what looked like a mixture of mildly irritating pain and vague disgust.

"Discomfort!"

"Discomfort!"

"Ugh! What the fuck?"

"What even was that?"

"I believe that you would wish for me to say 'I do not like this.' "

"You're not supposed to like it. I designed that spell from the ground up to feel as unpleasant and non-sexual as possible. It's the only pain in the world that actually reduces adrenaline. It's like if boredom and disappointment tried to have a kid, but then they stopped halfway through the act. I once said you three didn't need the kind of discipline that comes from punishment, but apparently you've found a way to prove me wrong! Now start talking. What the hell happened here?"

He only half-listened as they each spun their own version of events. He knew that Niki was probably telling the truth, at least as she perceived it. Amara was probably not overtly lying, but she might have seeded her version of events with opportunities for her listener to make an assumption and get the wrong idea. Eva would probably change her version of events several times if cross-examined, only to get more and more frustrated as her story collapsed under pressure.

None of that really mattered, though. Because what they were actually doing was fighting over his affection, in a way that allowed no winners. He needed to nip this thing in the bud before it got worse.

So he stomped around the house, surveying the damage, shooting them each angry looks when it was obvious one of them had been implicated in some aspect of the destruction.

"Enough!" he said finally, taking an eraser to the backboard where they'd started keeping track of who gets to be bad girl on which day. "I'm very disappointed in each of you. Nobody gets to be bad girl until this house is clean and fully repaired. Now... line up for Discomforts. No arguing."

Eva looked like she was going to balk, but all three of them obeyed. When he'd zapped them each once, he stomped over to the least damaged piece of furniture in the room, sat down in it, and started reading his book.

Shiroe pushed his glasses up his nose.

"Get to work. I intend to pay Miss Amellia La Cour a long overdue visit tomorrow, and I expect this place to be in perfect condition by the time I get back. Any objections?"

---

And so, with the dubious blessing of the other women in his life, Shiroe made his way to the flat of Adventurer's Guild receptionist Amellia La Cour.

It was on the upper story of a clean but relatively run-down shop on 6th street. He climbed the wooden steps out in the alleyway that led to the second-story door. He knocked.

"Come on in, the door's open."

He entered to find Amellia curled up on the couch with the Warlock Tirra De Groot. They both looked very different from how he was used to seeing them. Amellia's casual clothes were simple, soft, and baggy, a far cry from the starched uniform she wore at work. A stray lock of hair draped across her face, uncared for. Tirra, meanwhile, looked particularly clean and relaxed. Her hair was done up in curlers. Presumably, this was Amellia's doing. They both sipped some unknown herbal concoction from cheap ceramic mugs. Possibly, this was Tirra's doing.

Shiroe took a moment to appreciate this side of the gap between the people they usually presented to the world, and the people he saw right here before him.

Then he cleared his throat.

"Hmmm?" Amellia lazily opened her eyes to take in the sight of Shiroe standing in her living room with his arms folded.

"Miss La Cour..."

"Eeep!" Amellia leapt up from the couch, almost spilling the dregs in her mug. "How long have you been there!?"

"Would you believe me if I said I were here the entire time?"

"The entire time!? You saw all of that!?" Tirra started cackling and slapping her knee as Amellia scrambled around the room, quickly trying to clean up.

"Actually, that's not true," Shiroe admitted. "I only just got here. Please forgive me for my little joke. But I did say 2:00, did I not?"

"Oh gods... yeah... I'm so sorry... I knew you were coming, I just... lost track of the time... and now the house hasn't even been cleaned, and I--"

But Shiroe placed his hand on hers, halting her mad scramble to pick up womens underwear and old dishes. "It's okay," he said. "Believe me, I've seen worse messes than this. Today, even." Whether it was his touch or his words, this seemed to redden Amellia's face, which only made Tirra laugh harder.

"And Tirra! Always a pleasure. How is Xylyra?"

Now it was Tirra's turn to blush as he mentioned the name of her Patron Succubus. "Oh, you know... she's... amazing, actually. I don't know of any other Warlock that's privileged to have this good of a relationship with their Patron Demon."

"I'm a little surprised you're not with her right now, Tirra."

"Oh, I know. But she said she had to go back to the Demon Realm to take care of some business. But don't worry! I can still feel my connection to her, so in a sense, she's still here with us."

"That's hardly fair," Amellia protested, "How come she gets to be Tirra, but I have to be 'Miss La Cour?' "

"Well you see, Miss La Cour," he murmured, leaning in close behind her, "Tirra did not commit any violations of Guild protocol the other day. Whereas you committed three."

Amellia bit her lip. Her blushing seemed to have gotten a lot worse. "Surely... s-surely it was only two," she stammered.

"Oh really?" he said, placing his hands around her wrists, just to see how she reacted. "I was bluffing. I only saw one." She inhaled sharply, and he slowly moved her wrists, gently pinning them at her sides. "You were spreading rumors about me at work. But what was the other one?"

"Fraternizing with an asshole," Tirra snickered from her cozy nest on the couch.

Amellia struggled to keep a straight face. She failed. "Don't you have enough women in your orbit already?" she asked Shiroe.

"Oh, more than I can handle. Which is why I'm teaching them to handle each other."

"Mmmm-hmmm. Truly, yours is a generosity that knows no bounds." She gestured with her hands while she talked. He let her. Then he wrapped his arms around her from behind, bringing her arms along with his for the ride.

"Do you want me to go?" Tirra asked her host.

"Good question." Amellia turned her head and looked up at Shiroe. "Do I?"

"You're your own person, Tirra,"Shiroe said.

"Then I would love to stay and watch."

Shiroe moved Amellia around a bit more, just to see how pliable she was. She let herself be led every step of the way. So he led her over to a beaten-up old easy chair and sort of poured her into it.

"Unfortunately, any fun we have will have to wait for another day. You're clearly in an altered state of mind, right now. I want you to be capable of resisting me when we play. That way, it'll be more fun when you don't."

"It's all my fault," Tirra said. "She was so nervous about you coming over here. You should have seen her. I thought she could use something to calm her down."

"Ah, couldn't we all."

"That was... what time did you say it was? Two? Holy crap, that was almost an hour ago."

"I'm partly to blame. I shouldn't have built up the pressure so much after she slipped me her address."

"No, no... it's my fault," Amellia said. "She said to take it slowly, but I just about drank the whole thing."

"And what are you going to do differently next time, Miss La Cour?"

"I dunno. A little of this, a little of that. Maybe butt stuff. Maybe not."

"I mean what are you going to do differently the next time you're offered Tirra's special tea?"

Amellia sank deeply into her chair.

"Really... floppy... butt stuff."

"Yeah... she's out of it. Normally, this is where I'd offer to walk her home, but she's already at home."

Amellia gave a thumbs up from the chair.

"What about you, Tirra? Can I walk you home?"

"I'm good. I can hold my own tea, dammit."

Shiroe sat and talked with them for a little while. Eventually, Amellia sat up in the chair and stretched, seemingly starting to come out of it.

"Gods, Tirra, what was in that stuff?"

"Nothing dangerous! As long as you listen to me when I tell you to pace yourself."

"Did I just sleep through the entire date?"

"I'm afraid so. He was a perfect gentleman, though. He didn't even draw on your face or anything."

"To be fair, that's only because I didn't think of it. So you'd better watch yourself, next time, or you'll wake up with some new reading material for the next time you look in a mirror."

"There isn't going to be a next time."

"Fair enough. For the record, though, you could have just told me 'no.' "

"NO, I DO want there to be a next time! I just mean next time I won't take any strange drinks from Tirra, no matter how nervous I get."

"Oh, that's good to hear. Why were you nervous?"

"I don't know..."

"I mean, you're higher level than me. I'm pretty sure you can take me in a fight."

"Seriously, this time. What was in that stuff, Tirra? And why'd it make me so hungry?"

"Conjure Basic Rations."

"...holy shit, are those muffins?"

---

By the time early evening rolled around, Amellia was starting to look a lot more sober, and Tirra was starting to look like a Warlock again. Which is to say, the new luxurious springy curls in her hair absolutely clashed with everything else she had going on, which somehow only made her look even more unkempt, but in a cool way. They both walked happily, holding hands with Shiroe and swinging their arms as they walked him home.

"So this is your house?"

"I like the cobblestone!"

"Yep. I'm actually impressed. The outside looks back to normal."

"Back to normal?"

"What happened?"

"What do you think happened? I turned my back for half a second, and the hopeless hotties started fighting about something."

"Uh-oh!"

"Oh dear."

"Would you mind if I kissed you ladies goodnight?"

"I'm game."

"Is that a good idea? What if they see us?"

Shiroe thought he detected peripheral movement in the curtains inside one of the windows. He made a show of ignoring it.

"Actually, I'm hoping that they will see us. It will reinforce the idea that when they act out like this, they don't get what they want. And hopefully, it will also teach them that even if I go away and spend my time with other women, I'll always come back to them, so they don't need to fight over me."

"Wow."

"Holy shit."

"That's terrible."

"Isn't it, though?"

"It hits hard."

"Utterly devastating."

"I kind of hate to admit that I'm a little turned on by it, though."

"I know, right? What the fuck is up with that?"

"Maybe we're just terrible people."

"Maybe people, in general, are terrible."

"Most assuredly, they are. But we love them anyway. Do you two want to kiss me or not?"

"You're too tall. Bend down a little."

Shiroe bowed gracefully to the ladies, and they each kissed him on one cheek. He made a point of waving goodbye to them, then opened the door to the house.