Endgame, Part 9: Catharsis

Behind the Scenes, Some Time Ago

“What have you planned for stopping Harper, Beckie?”

Beckie, thoroughly brain-addled after the effects of her mermaid memory eating spree had been eroded away by (Brain) Pop Survey, is openly masturbating to Matlock while waiting for her next Heidi provided femcum snack. She loosely focuses towards the sound from her once and current producer, Mr. C. She strains, trying to read the note she wrote to herself back before her brain turned mushy. Reading is hard. “Oh, I already got a dream team of guest stars. How many Soul Contract Transfers do you think the brat can survive in rapid succession? One? Two? Three? She won’t survive seven of them. She’ll be dead before Phase 3.”

“And if your ‘Dream Team’ fails?” the Producer snidely asks.

Mmmm. Andy Griffith is taking off his seersucker coat. Yummy. Wait, Mr. C said something... “What was that?”

The television turns off. “I said, idiot, what happens if your ‘Dream Team’ fails?”

“Then the mermaids finish off a weakened brat.”

“And if they fail?”

“I wing it?”

The producer turns off his feed (with closed captioning for the psychically impaired) of the final challenge set. The one Beckie convinced him to empower in an attempt to redeem herself. Obviously, the oblex was promoted well beyond her capabilities when she was given a season to Host. He may need to intervene.

Beckie Petersen, Now

I should have been informed that the brat is dead by now? What’s taking so long? Mmmm, Dick Van Dyke is especially yummy looking right now. What’s another episode to jill off to?

Harper

Harper returns to the hub, this time to gather the troops and lead the charge against whatever Beckie came up with. She is happy that two of them seem ready. Honey is hovering in the air, javelin quiver strapped to one of her lower arms. Nyadia is stretching, giving her new flail a couple of practice swings. “It’s been a while since I trained with a flail. It’s different from a basic mace. It takes coordination.”

Harper gives the two of them a nod, smiling. Glitterdust, as seeming to be the case when she isn’t watching MtF porn or being actively engaged, is in a world of her own.

“AH-TEN-SHUN!” That spooks the dragon-girl out of her nap. Harper continues, “Okay, I got all of the other girls out of their binds, now it’s my turn to face the music. I’m bringing you all. I don’t have any idea what we’re going to be facing, but you three are my backup. If Beckie somehow figured out a way to drop me, I need you to pick me back up. Be smart, stay safe. One thing before we go...”

Harper pulls out her spellbook and flips to the Gift of the Protectors page. “Sign here. First one of us that drops gets a free ‘ignore dying’ trigger.”

Just like last night, Nyadia does not exactly have a steady hand; she’s out of practice with even the most basic of writing. She looks embarrassed. Something to work on once we get out of here. Honey signs without comment. Glitter looks excited as she signs, “You want to make sure I stay alive, MY Harper?”

“Yes, Glitter. We need to work on ‘us’ and we can’t do that if you’re dead.”

Three walk and one hovers into the nightmare portal at the middle of the hub room. On the other end, it’s all cyberpunk sewers, flooded with cold seawater to the point of being at Harper’s waist (or where Glitterdust’s navel would be). Honey can barely hover above the surface of the water without hitting the ceiling. The room is illuminated with strips of neon light tubes (and Nyadia’s fur). Between being a light source and the one with the big shield, Nyadia insists on taking the lead. So, Nyadia was the one targeted by the first ambush. 6 spears, dripping with venom, thunk into Nyadia’s tower shield, as the lazzorkat bellows, “Incoming!”

Harper takes a beat to notice the mermaids attacking. Their eyes seem... dead? Mind control! “Glitter, break Beckie’s influence on them! Everyone, non-lethal attacks! We aren’t killing them unless we absolutely have to!”

Harper feels Glitter cast a spell, ending her draconic chanting with an... interesting command, “Hey, fish, go back to the set and masturbate thinking about how big and sexy a dragon I am! You’ve earned a break!”

Three of the mermaids instantly start to swim past them, the other three following soon thereafter.

Mr. C

Mr. C is extremely frustrated. “Of course the brain-dead oblex screwed up securing her minions’ loyalty. She is absolutely hopeless. To be outwitted by a mortal that did not even know about magic a month ago? It is insulting. I need to prepare for the inevitable.”

The producer gets on the phone to call forth a squad of troops, grabs his scythe and his armor, then girds himself for war. This Harper has shown signs of reasonableness. Perhaps if she is overwhelmed, she will submit. It’s certainly the only way to turn this shitshow of a season into a halfway decent profit.

Nyadia

When the party finally exited the tunnels, they enter a large space, still half-flooded with seawater. It soaks her leg fur, past her new greaves. Floating in the middle of the room is a mermaid seeming to slam her arm into a hole she should not wish to fist. Nyadia is confused.

Mistress Harper is not. She whispers just loud enough to be heard, “Glitter, Honey, hold the hardest hitting nuke spell you got for an ooze, following up my spell. Nyadia, get ready to charge. We get lucky, we can drop her before she’s even aware that we’re here. If not, I’m right behind you. Moment of truth. I believe in all of you.”

Nyadia can really only follow the chants of Honey, as Glitterdust and Mistress Harper both cast spells in tongues Nyadia doesn’t comprehend. The sea elf’s spell hits first, and it looks devastating. A ball of light fills the room in golden rays, evaporating a large chunk of water in the room as the mermaid starts to fall apart into muck. Glitterdust follows it up with a scream that reverberates in the room, shattering glass tubes and leaving the mermaid wobbling like congealed fat. Honey follows up with a (frankly rather foul) spell that seems to drain the mermaid of vitality.

It’s still up, after all that? Nyadia runs, censer flail spinning. The first hit was solid, but not enough. The second, Nyadia summons all of the power the Argent Dancer blessed her with and the mermaid splatters into jellied goo throughout the room. With a pant, she roars. Job’s done. Time to go...

Mr. C

Mr. C collapses the illusion of the set, displaying the full glory of the cyclopean architecture of Minauros. Large glass-less windows in the stonework shows polluted ice smashing into the fetid swamp outside. The smell of rot and pollution fill the air. Behind his producer glamour, he smirks. Now, to scare the brat into submitting to me.

That’s when Mr. C notices that Harper is unaffected by the Hotel Time Stop magic. That is disconcerting.

“Hello, Mr. O’Connor. It is about time we met. Mr. C.”

“It’s Missus, not Mister. I presume you were the first producer of this shitshow of a season?”

“And it is obvious I made a mistake by backing Beckie over you. I aim to rectify that now. Sign here.” Mr. C manifests his usual Host contract, holding out a pen. I’ll steal this one away from that disappointing nepo baby; I’m sure, once I finish molding the brat, she’ll make a perfect replacement Host for Binky.

And the brat knocks the pen away. “I don’t sign things without reading them. I don’t sign things without my lawyer present to advise me. And I certainly don’t sign things for people hiding behind masks.”

Mr. C’s ichor boils. This brat would deny me so readily? “Call your lawyer then. He can read it and tell you it is a perfectly adequate contract.”

“My lawyer is back there.” The brat points to one of her harem members, some sort of bug creature. Mr. C allows the bug to join the conversation by unfreezing time for it. It hovers next to the brat, asking, “Why are you conversing with that producer?”

“He wants to steal me away from Ms. E. Still hasn’t dropped the producer mask so I don’t know what I would be dealing with. I presume there are multiple poison pills in the contract. Check it for me please, Honey.”

The insect buzzes and snags the contract. “It’s in Infernal, which is not a good sign.” Mr. C sighs, then produces a Common translation of the contract. The bug grabs it and starts to read, highlighter in hand. Mr. C watches as the bug seems to highlight half of the clauses in the contract. She stops on page 6 and hands the results back. “The highlighted portions would be problematic to my client, and, given the number of phrases needing adjustment, it is not a good use of our time for me to continue to evaluate this draft. It would take some extensive negotiations before my client would be interested in breaking the contract she has already signed with Ms. E.”

The brat has scooped up the idiot’s corpse in a large Mason jar as the bug worked. Hearing her answer, she screws the jar shut tight and replies, “Sounds like a hard ‘No’ from me, Mr. C. If you would be so kind as to let us get back to our set, we’d like to finish up the season and move on.”

“I have invested much in this season and would like a return on said investment. You will agree to these terms while still breathing or you will agree as a corpse. Choose.”

“Honey, back here.” The brat has some sense, calling her bug back. Once the bug can have the illusion of being safely behind the brat, the sea elf asks, cracking her neck, “We one v oneing this, Mr. C?”

“You act like this is even going to be a fair fight. Cute.” With a snap of his fingers, 10 barbed devils surround the foursome and Mr. C draws his scythe. This should be sufficient.

Glitterdust

One second, Nyadia is roaring over a dead Beckie, the next, the foursome is surrounded by a bunch of barbed devils and there is a fuzzy image of a large entity with a scythe. The entity has flames lick around its body, then starts to chant in devil. The goddess Harper’s body stiffens for a moment, only for her to disappear.

Harper appears behind the entity, shining silver with flames of blue flowing across her body, her sword slicing huge blows into the thing. Bursts of flames hit the goddess, but she bears through it. The entity swings it’s scythe, only for the goddess to dodge out of the way.

The devils are going to be a problem. Glitterdust growls out in draconic, then lets out a psychic scream. One one of the devils were stunned.

“Glitter, you got permission to go dragon!”

Oh, MY Goddess, I love you! Glitter expands, her sinuous draconic body taking up a decent amount of the room. Honey has to fly up and fires off a spell, exploding a chunk of stonework underneath the feet of several devils near the stunned one. It looks less effective than it should. With the power of being a big, sexy dragon, Glitter summons a draconic spirit. The spirit doesn’t quite drop one of the devils with 4 rends of its claws and a psychic breath attack, but it is currently 11-5. They need the bodies to split the focus of the baddies.

Nyadia charges at the stunned devil, smiting twice to drop the first baddie. Only for the entity to teleport over to the lazzorkat. Then the horde of devils start to attack. The three that Honey hit respond by throwing balls of fire at the lawyer; one of them even hit. Four slash and stab at Glitterdust. One was actually able to smack the dragon hard enough to deal some damage, causing Glitter to slash back. A couple move to take on Nyadia, but they can’t land a hit between the tower shield and displacement armor confusion.

The entity swings twice at the lazzorkat, Nyadia catching the swipes with her shield, as it chants something foul. The goddess chants back and the entity looks annoyed. Then the goddess chants a second time and uses that Steel Wind Strike spell again, and the little devil count went from 9 to 5. Harper then slashes down another.

Glitter gets to show off now. She teleports to the airspace above the entity and starts the usual dragon combo: a chomp, and then two slashes from her claws. She lands all three hits, which is good, then gets distracted by the little spurts of flame and drops the spirit.

Honey tries to use that spell again on the entity and the one devil by it. Again, not as effective as possible. I know a more effective spell! Glitter chants out a cast of Feeblemind, only for the entity to resist the brain-addling. The entity swipes at Glitter again, slicing a painful slash through the dragon’s nose. Ow! That hurt!

Glitter sees red, getting tunnel vision. She claws at where she thinks the entity’s face should be and connects just before the thing teleports away. The dragon turns around trying to find where it’s at, just to see her goddess fire off what looks like a small sun. Again, maybe not as effective as it could be.

As soon as the sun dissipates, Glitter teleports and gets another scythe to the face. Glitter bellows in draconic as she bites, then claws at the thing a couple of more times, getting more spurts of flame (which is a slight irritant) and a big scythe slash for her trouble. Glitter isn’t feeling great, then Honey casts a spell and she feels quite a bit better. The dragon fires off another psychic scream, which is once again not as effective as she’d like. It’s almost as if these things are resistant to magic.

The thing swings at Glitter so many times in rapid succession. Two grazing blows that felt like getting hit by a flung donkey and a big swing that felt like getting hit by a galloping donkey cart. Then, the entity gets unfuzzy as it’s weird dog head slides off. Harper, the beautiful MtF goddess, pants over the corpse. Nyadia roars as she smashes the last devil dead.

“Everyone alright?” Harper asks, pocketing the dead thing’s head into her inventory.

Glitterdust: +61 XP (Killed 10 Level 5 Monsters, 0.263x penalty [overleveled], Killed 1 Level 14 Monster, 0.737x penalty [overleveled], Killed 1 Level 38 Monster, all rounded down at the end)

Harper: +54 XP (Killed 10 Level 5 Monsters, 0.185x penalty [overleveled], Killed 1 Level 14 Monster, 0.519x penalty [overleveled], Killed 1 Level 38 Monster, all rounded down at the end)

Honey: +72 XP (Killed 10 Level 5 Monsters, 0.417x penalty [overleveled], Killed 1 Level 14 Monster, Killed 1 Level 38 Monster, all rounded down at the end)

Nyadia: +72 XP (Killed 10 Level 5 Monsters, 0.417x penalty [overleveled], Killed 1 Level 14 Monster, Killed 1 Level 38 Monster, all rounded down at the end)

“Of course, MY Harper! Did you see how good I did?”

Harper nods as the room turns white, “Yeah. Good job Glitter. And good job Nyadia and Honey. If you don’t mind, I really, really want to sit down.” And the goddess rests her bones upon Glitter’s glorious flank.