Explaining the Rules

Sylvia stood up, leaving Dakota to explore her new lease on life. She turned out to the seven girls who remained in their seats.

“To start, I’m going to explain where we are.” she swept her hand across the beach. “As I’m sure several of you have guessed, you’re no longer on Earth. Think of this as sort of a pocket dimension. You’re on a film set right now, or something akin to it at least. This is an island paradise where you’ll be able to live out your heart’s desires, on…”

She glanced at Nick with a smirk, and he groaned.

“Harem Hotel: Island Holiday Season!”

She waited politely for the applause to stop before she continued. “Now, I’m sure you all noticed that lovely hotel, the eponymous Harem Hotel. It’s a wonderful resort, filled with everything you could ever want. Shopping malls, swimming pools, gymnasiums, arcades, spas, banquet halls and buffets, an open bar with the works, oh, and even a squash court! I haven’t a clue what ‘squash’ is but all the fancy places seem to have one. All these facilities are yours, to do with as you please! Think of this island as your own private abode. Remember: you are the harem. You have absolute authority over everyone here, save myself, and the master of course.”

Several girls, even as apprehensive as they were, still felt a little excited to hear that. It did sound like a nice vacation. But given the intense and bizarre things they’d seen up until this point, they were wary. Sylvia had been dancing around the “harem” aspect of this whole thing.

“Now, as I said before, we all have our roles to play. My role is host. I facilitate things, and ensure a smooth transition from competition to competition.”

“Competition?” Dawn narrowed her eyes. “What kind of competitions?”

“Oh, whatever kind can be imagined of course!” Sylvia gushed. “I can wait to show you all the wonderful activities I have planned as your holiday coordinator! …But that comes later. I would hate to spoil the wonderful surprise.”

“If there’s a competition, that means there’s gotta be prizes, right?” Kim asked. “So what do we get if we win?”

Sylvia placed her hand over her chest and smiled with pride. “The respect and adoration of a loving master.”

Everyone stared at her.

“…No dice, huh? Fine, let’s talk about the challenges,” she grumbled. “During your stay on this island, you will be expected to compete in several- what is it now?”

“So, uh, how long are we staying here?” Carly asked, lowering her hand. “Because AnimeExpo’s in a couple weeks, and I still need to-“

“100 days.”

A collective “WHAT?!” rose out of the crowd.

“You can’t!” Dawn exclaimed. “I have cats! They’ll die without me taking care of them, I can’t be here for 100 days!”

“I have work! If I take that much time off I’ll get fired!” Kim protested.

“AnimeExpo-“

“ENOUGH!” Sylvia roared, swinging her cane. A wave of silence followed its path as everyone lost their voices. She calmed down quickly, taking a few deep breaths like she practiced. Just get through this. Then you can do the fun part.

“Now listen. You won’t ACTUALLY be gone for 100 days, alright? You may be here for the entire summer, but when you return to your lives, it will be as if no time passed at all. Things work differently here, don’t question it. It’s a bunch of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, doctory-woctory stuff. Got it?”

She gave them back their voices.

“…So you are going to send us home, then,” Dawn said, narrowing her eyes.

“…You will have that option, yes, once the season is over,” Sylvia promised. “Anyone who wishes to go back to the life they lived when this is all said and done, you’ll be able to. You’ll still be bound to the master, of course, but you can keep living your life. …If you want to, that is.”

She let that part hang ominously in the air, a foreshadowing of things to come.

“Now, can I get on with the challenges? Thank you! As I was saying, there will be regularly scheduled challenges that will take place. Attendance is not optional. You will meet, back here, at this stage, every 10 days to take place in your challenge of the… well, it’s not quite a week, but you can think of it like one. Boom! We have 10 day weeks now, as the producers intended. But hey! Trade-off, you get an 8 day weekend!”

“What do you mean?” Carly asked curiously.

“Your presence is only required twice a week. Once at the beginning, for your challenge for that week, and once at the ending, for the weekly popularity poll. Other than those two times, your time is yours to do with as you please, with one slight condition.”

Several girls tensed and so did Nick. There was always a catch.

Sylvia turned and pointed to a large dome atop the hotel.

“That dome right there is the Master Suite. It’s Nick’s room. And Nick’s a very lonely boy **** for female companionship. And that’s why, every night, one of you is required to spend the night in that room. The order and schedule will change every week. But for the 8 days when your attendance isn’t mandatory, one of you WILL be spending the night there. You’ll have a nice meal. Maybe play some games. Talk about life. Oh, and fuck the shit out of each other until you all go crazy. Understand?”

Her vulgar language nearly made Mary burst into tears again.

“What about the other two days, then?” Holly asked suspiciously. She glared at Nick. “Somehow I think that if this is a game about… ugh, ‘satisfying’ our master you wouldn’t want him going without some… company.” She looked like she was going to throw up after spewing those words out.

“Very perceptive of you, Holly,” Sylvia smirked. “Don’t worry. We have something special planned for those days.”

With that, she moved onto the next part. "Scoring!" She cackled.

“These challenges will have you girls face off against each other. Depending on how you do, you’ll earn what’s known as Victory Points, or VP. The goal is to make it to 100 VP at the end of the 100 days. If you do that, you’re a winner!”

Everyone’s left hand flashed. On the back was a number. Everyone’s number read “0” except Gina, whose number was a “4”. Dakota waved her hand around curiously, revealing a “10”.

“Your VP can be monitored any time by checking the number on your hand,” Sylvia explained. “If you look at the tally, we can see…”

A screen appeared in the air, with everyone’s faces and names written on it.

1st: Dakota – 10 VP

2nd: Gina – 4 VP

3rd: Dawn – 0 VP

3rd: Dani – 0 VP

3rd: Carly – 0 VP

3rd: Holly – 0 VP

3rd: Mary – 0 VP

3rd: Kim – 0 VP

“I don’t get it,” Dawn scowled. “Why do those two have points and rest of us don’t?”

Sylvia smirked. She was hoping someone would ask that, and was so glad that someone happened to be Dawn.

“I don’t know my girl, why do you think? What have they done to earn VP?” She wondered, tapping her chin. “I don’t remember issuing a challenge, so… why not work your big brain to figure something out, hmm?”

Dawn bit her lip, glancing at Dakota first, then Gina. Dakota had a massive point lead over the others, a tenth of the way to victory already! And she hadn’t done anything yet, except…

Then she remembered the goal of the show and gasped.

“It’s because they’re naked, isn’t it?” She said. “Dakota was revived without any clothes on, so she got bonus points because Nick could see her buck naked. And Gina, well… her boobs are out, so…”

Gina finally, FINALLY had the presence of mind to cover up her chest now that it had been pointed out.

“Exactly right!” Sylvia applauded. “I knew all those degrees weren’t for show! And yes, there’s another way to win Victory Points besides placing high in competitions! And that method is through sexual acts with the master! The first time you and Nick do something dirty together, you’ll get points depending on what that thing is. Show him some boobs? 2 points! Strip down completely? A whopping 5 points! Having sex? Well… I’ll leave that up to you to find out,” she said, winking at the camera.

“But wait, those numbers don’t add up,” Dani said. “They’ve got twice as many points as you said before.”

“That’s right, because they did it first,” Sylvia nodded. “See, we want to motivate you girls to go for it! And the best way to do that is by making it a matter of first come, first-served! From now on, whenever you do a sex act worthy of points with the master, if you’re the FIRST contestant do the act, then you get double the points! So if you want to play nice and conservatively like Pretty Mary Sunlight over there, that’s fine by me, but you’ll be missing out on a boatload of points by not throwing yourself into the deep end as soon as possible.”

A wicked smirk crossed her face.

“I doubt that all your fellow competitors will afford you the luxury of going slow…”

She paused. “Oh, and one more thing. Sex acts you’ve already done together in the past don’t count,” she added. “No points there. So Gina, if you kiss him again, we’re not handing you a bonus for that one.”

Gina gave a halfhearted shrug, still covering her chest.

“Are there other ways to earn Victory Points?” Holly pressed, eyeing Nick warily. “Ways that don’t involve… that?”

Sylvia smiled from ear to ear. “Nope!”

And that was that.

“Now, on to the purpose of Victory Points themselves,” Sylvia continued. “As I said, when you get to 100, you win. But it’s not as simple as that. We can have multiple winners, so the game doesn’t end just because you reached 100 VP, nor do you get to just sit out the rest of the competition. No, participation is mandatory the whole way through. And you’ll want to compete. Because, at the end of the season, the one with the most VP… will be granted one wish.”

Silence fell over the girls as that sank in.

“Let me explain. That wish can be for ANYTHING you want. Anything at all. A million bucks? Done. Live forever? Sure, why not! If you want ownership of this island and its inhabitants, even THAT is not outside of the realm of possibility. In fact, there’s only three things that your wish CAN’T grant you. You can’t remove your bond to the master. That’s there for life. You can’t kill anyone with it, either. And finally, no reversing your own fate, or the fate of any of your fellow contestants.”

The way she said that sent a chill down everyone’s spine. The beach had never felt colder. What were they in for?

While Kim was imagining the happy lives she could provide for her family with the money she won from her wish, everyone was surprised to see Mary raising a shaking hand. She looked completely broken, and Sylvia was just delighted. If she couldn’t handle this, then the transformations would snap her like a twig.

“Yes, what is it my girl?”

“What… if the contest ends… and we DON’T have 100 points?” She asked, gulping.

Sylvia smirked. “Knowing the answer to that question won’t help you right now, Pretty Mary Sunlight. Unless your goal is losing, of course.”

Mary was petrified, and Holly looked a little shaken by that too. Kim couldn’t blame them. From what she could tell, neither girl was particularly fond of Nick, for reasons that still escaped her.

“Now then, along with VP, there’s another type of point you can earn, called BP, or Bonus Points. You won’t win these in the challenges, but rather, at our discretion. If we feel you deserve a little bonus, we’ll hand it out! Usually, though, these Bonus Points will allotted to you based on your spot in the rankings.”

Dawn’s ears perked up. “Rankings?”

“Yeah, but not in your VP totals,” Sylvia clarified. “I mean your popularity! You girls know you’re being filmed right now, don’t you? Millions of people in countless dimensions are watching you eagerly, deciding who their favorite girl is. And at the end of each week, they’ll cast their vote. But we’ll get to voting later. For now, all you need to know is that BP will act sort of like currency for you. While none of the resort’s primary services will be denied to you, you can still spend your BP to purchase advanced services, which could be all manner of things.”

But Sylvia wasn’t going to tell them what they were- yet.

Dani tapped her foot impatiently. Finally, she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“You said we get VP and stuff if we win the challenges,” she blurted out. “But what happens if we lose? Do we get punished?”

An ominous atmosphere had hung over this competition from the start, and Sylvia had been dancing around it. If this were an anime, this was the time that Sylvia would reveal that the lowest-scoring person each week would be brutally murdered.

In truth? She wasn’t far off.

“You won’t be punished for scoring low, no, unless losing some VP matters to you,” Sylvia assured her. “No, the challenges are there primarily… to facilitate your transformations.”

Mary’s breath hitched. “Tr-Transformations?” She stuttered.

“That’s right, transformations. What, did you think our audience would be surprised by a gaggle of gals having a gay old time together?” Sylvia snorted. “Please. Here at Harem Hotel, we pride ourselves on giving our audience only the best! And that’s what the transformations are for. After every challenge is completed, you girls will be transformed. Mentally, physically, in metaphysical ways that can’t be defined by the laws of reality, it’s all up to the audience’s vote. But you WILL change.”

“...Into what?” Dani winced.

Sylvia smirked. “Let’s… find out, shall we? Because your first transformations… are starting right now.”