I ain't tryna play these games no more, I don't wanna be textin' your name no more

Morgana scrunched up her face. If one looked at her, they would think she was deep in thought, concentrating on something important. And with the graphic novel open in her lap, normally they would be correct.

But for once, Morgana had more important things to do than read her manga. She was concentrating because she was trying to make use of her new boon.

“Dawn… can you hear me right now?” Morgana mentally shouted into the ether.

She received no response, which turned her scrunched-up face into a pout.

“Dawn, can you actually hear me, but are trying to pretend like you can’t because you don’t want me to keep using my boon on you?” Morgana demanded.

“…Yes,” Dawn finally responded. “Sorry. Just… it’s really weird, talking to someone in my head. You know?”

Morgana’s jaw dropped. “But this was YOUR idea!”

To nobody’s surprise, Dawn was the one who Morgana had chosen to be her secret “silent partner”. The two girls were now in their rooms, trying to test the limits of Morgana’s communication abilities.

“Once again, for the record,” Dawn telepathically said, staring up at the ceiling, “I still think you should have chosen Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin. It’s not like any of us can talk to her anyway, at least, not the normal way. This could be a useful tool to communicate with someone who can’t talk back to us,” she pointed out.

“…I don’t want to talk to her, though,” Morgana replied. “She seems really scary and not a very supportive friend.”

Morgana still remembered nearly peeing herself when the assassin ambushed them in the last challenge. Heck- maybe she actually did, and she just didn’t notice because of the massive wave of orgasms that had overtaken her almost immediately.

The goth witch could actually almost hear her psychic correspondent sighing, which was a surprise. They weren’t exactly communicating audibly; it was hard to describe exactly what was happening, but it felt like the words were popping into her mind.

“Morgana, remember when you first showed up and you were looking down on all of us and being really presumptuous and arrogant?” Dawn reminded the younger girl of her initial attitude towards being on the show.

A blush spread across the flustered girl’s pale face. “W-well… that was different! I thought…”

“That the whole world revolved around you, and we were just bit actors in your little demented love story with Nick, right? Just another part of the fantasy? Well… that’s not exactly a nice way to treat somebody.”

“I know… I’m sorry.” Morgana had grown a lot since those days. She was much more considerate of the feelings of others, although she still had the occasional bout of fantasy. It wasn’t entirely her fault, though! It wasn’t like she had a lot of female friends growing up!

“Well, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin is a lot like how you used to be. Self-absorbed and doing whatever she wants without thinking about other people, because she wants to live out her own idealized fantasy with Nick,” Dawn pointed out, hoping that her bitterness wasn’t being conveyed to the other woman. But she couldn’t help it- her roommate was really annoying.

“So… you want me to help her?” Morgana asked timidly.

“Actually, I just wanted to test out if it was even possible,” Dawn replied. “After all, we’re communicating with our minds. So in theory, even though Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin can’t talk, she might still be able to respond to us.”

Morgana sat up in bed, a little intrigued. “You think so?”

Dawn nodded, only to remember that Morgana couldn’t actually see her. “Yeah. But on the other hand, we’re talking to each other with words right now. Would Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin even be capable of doing that if she can’t read or write? Do the words just pop into her mind? Or would she just be a complete blank?”

It was an interesting question that Dawn found familiar. A few psychology classes she’d taken in college had covered stuff like this. It was very similar to the question of what a blind person’s dreams were like.

“Oh wow that’s really interesting!” Morgana considered the possibilities. “So what you’re saying is that because she doesn’t know words, she might not think in words! Oh… wait, isn’t that really sad!? How does she even think?!”

“She probably does,” Dawn assured the goth girl. She didn’t want Morgana to freak out, and even if she couldn’t actually hear her friend’s voice, she had a pretty good idea of when Morgana was losing control of the situation. “If she was deaf, that would be one thing, but since she can hear our words, then she must think in terms of them, right?”

Morgana nodded to herself, a gesture that went unnoticed by her conversation partner in the other room. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

“Right,” Dawn nodded back.

“But that just gave me a really good idea! Hold on, I want to try something.”

Dawn wondered why Morgana had suddenly went silent. Normally it was hard to get the girl to stop talking.

A few seconds later, the goth girl spoke up again.

“Okay! Did it work?”

“Did what work?” Dawn asked.

Morgana sighed. “…You didn’t see it? But I was concentrating really hard…”

“No, see what?” Dawn was curious now what the other girl was talking about.

“I was looking at my manga just now,” Morgana explained. “I was trying to focus really hard on the picture and send it to you. But it seems like you didn’t see it?”

Dawn’s ears twitched. “Oh wow… so you were trying to send an image? Sorry, I didn’t get anything. I guess it only works with words.” She hopped out of bed and began to pace around the room as she considered the implications. “That was really smart of you, Morgana!”

“Really?” Morgana puffed up with pride.

“Yeah, really. That’s just the kind of experimenting we should be doing, to figure out how those powers of yours work! Nice job!”

Morgana beamed from ear to ear. She was glad Dawn wasn’t in the room with her, because she must have looked like a dopy fool!

“Maybe it didn’t work because you didn’t have a perfect visual representation,” Dawn considered. “It’s too early to say for sure. Let me try something; my memory is perfect, after all.”

Dawn pictured the state of her room perfectly, capturing it with her mind’s eye. With her perfect memory, Morgana should be able to get a complete image of the inside of her room. She focused on sending it to the other girl, just like if she was talking.

“Okay, did that work?”

“No… looks like pictures can’t be submitted…” Morgana was pretty bummed out about that. She would have loved to send Dawn pages of all her favorite manga!

For obvious reasons, Dawn wasn’t as broken up about it herself.

“Well we can still test more things,” Dawn mused. “How about this? Try… saying something to me in french.”

“What!? But I don’t know french!” Morgana mentally exclaimed.

“I know, that’s not the point though. I want to see if it translates language. Maybe if you think in french, I’ll receive it in french. It’s worth testing, anyway. For Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s sake, as well.” Dawn was still really invested in figuring out whether or not they would be able to communicate with the mute assassin using this boon. If they could, it would really open up new avenues for befriending her, even if the woman herself was somewhat difficult to deal with.

“Instead of french, can’t I do japanese?” Morgana asked.

“Why, do you know japanese?” Dawn asked right back.

“Well… I mean… I watch with subtitles, so…”

“So no?”

“…”

Morgana’s silence spoke volumes.

“Okay, I’ll try french. Um… hi, this is me, speaking french!”

“Nope, still english.” So much for a universal translator.

“Oh, drat!” Morgana sighed. “Well… thanks for trying to help, anyway. Do you think we’ll be able to help Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin?”

Dawn shrugged, glad Morgana couldn’t see the indecisiveness on her face. “It’s worth a shot,” she replied. “Anything to help.”

Dawn and Morgana weren’t the only ones experimenting with their boons. Dani, Carly, and Marley were outside in the fields in front of Harem Hotel, focusing on one person’s boon in particular.

“Marley, you didn’t bring your pillow?” Carly gasped, holding her hand over her mouth. “For shame! I thought for sure that you’d… oh, well…”

“What, you wanted me to cling to it like a security blanket or something?” Marley asked. “That thing’s embarrassing, you know!”

“But you were so attached to it!” Carly giggled.

Marley turned red. “Because… it’s really soft and comfortable!” She sniffed. “It’s not more complicated than that, okay? We don’t need to turn this into some big thing!”

Carly shrugged. “Whatever you say, sis. In the meantime, let’s test this baby out!” She held up the black and pink wristwatch clinging to her arm. “I wonder what kind of awesome animal girls I’m going to turn into? Last time I was a pig, and that wasn’t fun at all.”

“Just be careful,” Dani urged her. “Knowing Dakota she’d probably turn you into a fish girl, and you’d just flop around and drown.”

“Eh, knowing you, I think you’d like if I grew some scales,” Carly giggled, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively at her partner.

Dani rolled her eyes. “Just saying, as someone who’s got feathers now, just hope you don’t get a bird person. It’s not fun.”

“That’s because you can’t fly,” Carly pointed out. “I bet if those feathers of yours let you fly, you’d be singing a different tune. My little songbird~”

Dani turned red and crossed her arms, smoothing over her feathers subconsciously.

“If you do become a bird, could you not fly, please?” Marley asked, raising her hand like a diligent student.

Carly looked at her, surprised. “Eh? Why not?”

Her sister stared at her.

“…Because knowing you, you’d get wings, take off, and cross the ten-foot boundary in a second, and I really, really don’t want that,” Marley replied.

Carly bit her lip. Her sister had a point.

“Okay, I’m not going to say you’re wrong,” she said, basically admitting to it. “But let’s just see what we get, okay?”

She began to fiddle with the pink spinning disk until it stopped. Unlike the show her watch was based on, there were no visual indicators of what she would be turning into. So she was just going to have to slap it and hope for the best!

That was exactly what she did.

“Alright!” Carly declared, smacking the extended disk back down into the watch. “It’s morphing time!”

A bright pink light erupted from Carly’s arm and quickly spread across her body, forcing Marley and Dani to shield her eyes. Forget animals, it looked like Carly was getting hit by a blast of bimbo energy or something!

But when the light died down, the last thing anyone would have thought when they looked at Carly was a bimbo.

“Whoa, what the heck?” She looked down at her new form in surprise. She was bigger, with muscles, and rough brown scales covered her skin. Her hair had turned into jagged spines that sprung out of the back of her head, and was the same ruddy color as her scaly skin was now. “What am I? A snake girl or something?!”

Also notable, to Dani, was the fact that Carly’s clothes had changed to fit her new appearance. That was a bit of a shame; part of her had been hoping that Carly would be naked.

“I don’t think you’re a snake, I think you’re some kind of lizard,” Marley said, indicating to the long brown tail flopping out from her sister’s backside.

“Huh… so I’m not even a dragon, then? That’s a little sad,” Carly pouted. She flexed her clawed hand, and then struck a muscular pose. “Well… even without wings or breathing fire, I think I still look pretty badass like this!”

Dani nodded. She couldn’t agree more.

It was quite a transformation of the cosplayer.

“So what now?” Marley leaned forward on her tree stump curiously, and then stood up to get a closer look. Thanks to Rose’s sweater, she could still walk around without her boobs being too much of an inconvenience. “Do you have, like, super strength or something?”

“You look like you should,” Dani noted. Carly was pretty muscular now, way more than Dani had been even in her prime.

“Hmm… only one way to find out!” Carly turned to her sister and spread her lips into a mischievous smile. Her blue reptilian eyes sparkled in the sunlight.

Marley noticed for the first time that her sister’s teeth were sharp, like fangs. That was an interesting detail, and one she would have been far more fascinated with had she not felt the sudden urge to run the other direction.

Because she realized what her sister was about to do before Carly even did it.

The buff cosplayer reached down and wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist. Marley’s biceps were like tree trunks, and even with Marley’s enhanced figure the bigger girl was able to hoist her up into the air like she weighed nothing at all.

“Hey!” Marley thrashed in her sister’s arms. “Put me down! This isn’t funny, you know!”

“Wow! You’re so light!” Carly said, shaking her sister playfully. “Come on, sis, I know how much you love hugs!”

“I think that’s a ‘yes’ on the super strength, then,” Dani said, amused in spite of herself.

Marley was not amused.

“CARLY!”

“Relax, relax, I’ll put you down,” Carly assured her sister, rolling her eyes. “And it’s going to be a very gentle landing for you, too. After all, with how light you are I can definitely throw you at least ten feet, so no problem! A nice, safe splat.”

“Don’t you dare!” Marley protested.

“Hey, come on! I’m just teasing!” Laughing up a storm, Carly set her sister down. The second both of Marley’s feet were on the ground she started wailing on her sister, smacking her repeatedly with her hands.

“Not funny!” Marley’s face was hot. “That was NOT funny, sis!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Carly took a step back and held up her hands. “I was just playing around, sorry. I won’t do it again.”

Marley calmed down and returned to her seat, a little frazzled and slightly dizzy but not that bothered. “Just… don’t do that again,” she pleaded.

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” her sister assured her. “Now let’s see what else this baby can do!” She moved her clawed hand to her wrist, only to find that the watch was gone. “…Eh!? Where did it go?” She questioned.

“Oh, yeah, that happened on the show,” Dani said, nodding. “You probably can’t use the watch when you’re in another form. And it’ll time out sooner or later, and when it does, it’ll need a cooldown period.”

Carly frowned. “Oh, well that’s no fun at all! So I can only turn into one thing at a time, and I can’t even control it? What kind of dumb idea is that?”

Dani shrugged. “The kind that builds narrative tension, I guess,” was the only answer she had. “At least your boon is pretty useful.”

“That’s true,” Marley nodded. “There are a couple that seem completely worthless, you could have gotten one of those.”

Carly scratched her head. It was strange, feeling the scaly ridges that her hair had turned into; it was like wearing a wig made out of stiff wires.

“Fair enough,” she admitted.

Now, if someone asked Mary whether or not the boon she’d received was one of the completely worthless ones, she would have answered with an emphatic “no”.

…If Nola was in the room, anyway.

It wasn’t that the leprechaun was a nuisance. And Mary didn’t dislike many people, certainly not ones as sweet as Nola!

But…

“Are you sure you don’t need help washing the dishes?” The pink-haired girl asked, standing on her tiptoes to peek over Mary’s shoulder. “I’d be happy to help, you know, if you want.”

“No, Nola, it’s fine,” Mary said, trying to keep the exhaustion out of her voice as she scrubbed a dish. “This is part of being a dutiful wife, cleaning up when you’ve made a mess. I would expect Nick to do the same for me.”

“Aww, that’s so sweet! But I did help cook, so didn’t I make a mess too?” Nola pointed out. “And also, so did Dani and Gina, huh… but they’re not helping you with the dishes? That’s rather rude of them! Don’t you think?”

“Dani should spend as much time with Carly as she can,” Mary answered. “There’s always next time. I didn’t want to waste the effort.”

“And Gina?”

Gina had fled before Mary could even say it was okay to leave, much to the redhead’s irritation. But it wouldn’t be fair to make the punk girl stay if she was letting Dani off the hook, so she didn’t push the issue.

And also…

“…Gina would probably break the dishes,” Mary replied.

Cynical? Sure. But Mary had seen it happen before. Gina could be a bit of a klutz, even when she was sober.

Nola shrugged. “Well… okay then,” she said, trying not to sound disappointed. She was still smiling, and it stirred something in Mary’s chest.

Mary sighed and turned to the other girl.

“Nola… what’s up? I know you have to help me, but you don’t have to beg me to help,” she said gently. “If you want to use this time to relax and take some time to yourself, that’s okay too.”

Nola flashed a beaming smile. “Oh, that’s quite alright! I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself! For me, working hard is its own reward!”

Mary winced. Now that she thought about it, the leprechaun was a former host. Perhaps, like Sylvia, she had been created for the purpose of running a good show, and now that she was relegated to an assistant, all that work ethic needed somewhere constructive to be channeled.

In that case…

“Well… there is something that’s got me a little worried,” Mary admitted, setting down the dish she’d been scrubbing clean. “I don’t know if you can help, but…”

“I’ll do my best!” Nola said excitedly, her green eyes sparkling. “Just say it!”

“…Can you enter Dream Alley?” Mary asked. “You know, without Dakota’s permission?” She wasn’t sure if the host would be okay with this or not, but she was trying to do something for Nick’s sake, so she hoped Dakota would look the other way on it.

Nola scrunched up her face thoughtfully. “I mean… I can,” she said with a nod. “I can sneak around just about anywhere since I’m an assistant! But… why?”

“Because I’m worried about my husband,” Mary said honestly. “He’s such a sweet and kind man… I’m afraid that he might be letting Vivian walk all over him, instead of asserting himself. Do you think you can sneak in, and just keep an eye on him, maybe? Give him some pointers? And if Vivian isn’t opening up, maybe help, I dunno, get his foot in the door? Give him a push in the right direction?”

Nola scribbled away furiously on her notepad. “Sneak in… point in right direction… open up Vivian’s door… give him a push… got it! You can count on me, boss!” She clicked her heels together and saluted. “I’ll push him with everything I’ve got!”

That wasn’t quite how Mary had worded it. “Um… I don’t mean…”

“Have no fear! I can handle it!” Before Mary could formulate a coherent sentence, Nola was already gone, scurrying off to Dream Alley.

Finally, a chance she could be of help!