I want you to hurt like you hurt me today

“Darn, you know, I wish I had better control of this thing,” Carly grumbled, staring at her watch.

A pair of bunny ears bounced on her head as she looked down. This was an animal form Carly had used a couple of times in the past, and it was fairly convenient for her. She definitely wasn’t going to complain about it! But… it wasn’t the most useful option of the ones she’d tested.

What can that transformation even do?” Dawn asked curiously, adjusting her glasses. “Rabbits are known for being quite fast and agile, does it enhance your speed? Or your jumping abilities, perhaps?” She inquired.

Carly glanced at her sister. Marley was trying very hard not to laugh. Having been subjected to a rather embarrassing transformation herself, temporary as it may have been, Marley was enjoying Carly getting a taste of embarrassment for once.

There were very few things that embarrassed her sister, after all.

“It, uh… it doesn’t really do anything like that,” Carly said, smiling confidently to hide her inner shame. “But don’t I look cute?”

She took off her glasses and struck a pose.

Dawn stared at the bunny girl, and raised her eyebrow. “…Right.”

“Carly, come on, it’s Dawn,” Marley snickered. “Just tell her, she won’t use it against you. Since when were you the prudish sort, anyway?”

Dawn’s ears twitched. Prudish?

Carly sighed and admitted that maybe her sister had a point. “Look, it’s really not a big deal,” she said, scratching one of her ears. “But the bunny form is kinda… not that useful. It makes me look really cute, sure, but… the only real change I get? This form is way, WAY hornier. Like, even right now I’m kinda just getting hotter and ready to cum just from talking to you.”

Dawn made a face. She really could have gone without hearing that. But it made perfect sense as an invention of Dakota’s, especially one for Carly. Sighing, her tail drooped behind her for a second. But then it perked back up as she had a thought. “Well actually, that could be pretty useful here!” She pointed out. “If you’re so easily aroused now, you can just cum whenever you like and we can find our way out of the maze using the map.”

“Or, we could rely on my sister,” Carly pointed out, gesturing to Marley. “I mean, her transformation kinda already does that, no?”

Dawn considered Carly’s point. “I guess you’re right,” she agreed. “But then… we don’t really know how helpful Marley’s transformation even is, though.”

“Hey!” Marley frowned. “What’s THAT mean?”

Dawn looked at her. “Let me see the wording of the transformation you got again,” she urged the other woman.

Sighing, Marley brought it back up. She didn’t like doing it.

• Guide the Way: When heading in the right direction of the maze's exit, Marley's breasts will start bouncing. When heading the wrong direction, her butt will clap instead.

“See?” She gestured to the screen. Screw Carly for being embarrassed about having a massive arousal boost. Her libido was already sky high as it was, Marley knew that all too well! But at least SHE didn’t have to deal with her body bouncing all over the place whenever she walked!

…Well, not any more than usual, anyway.

“Just follow my lead, and we’ll be heading in the right direction,” Marley assured the other girl. Carly nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, maybe…” Dawn mumbled, stroking her chin.

Carly leaned forward, curious. “You’re thinking of something, aren’t you, Dawn?” She inquired worriedly. “What’s up?”

Dawn shook her head. “No, it’s just the wording of that transformation, you know?” She said, reading it back to herself in her mind. “It said ‘right direction’ and ‘wrong direction’ in regard to the maze’s exit, but that could mean different things. This isn’t like being lost in the wilderness or something, it’s a maze. Until now, we’ve been thinking about it like a nature trail.”

“Huh?” Marley tilted her head to the side curiously. “No, I’ve definitely been thinking about it like a maze,” she assured the other girl.

But Dawn was adamant. “We’ve been walking the maze, using Marley like a compass. If her boobs bounce, then we’re going in the right direction, and if her butt is clapping, that means we’re going in the wrong direction. Right?”

“Right,” Marley confirmed. She would know.

“So what’s wrong with that?” Carly asked.

“Well… what if that’s not what the transformation means?” Dawn asked. She stopped walking and gestured at the branch ahead of them. The hallway split into two long paths that made a “Y” shape, each stretching off into the darkness. Identical, as far as they could tell.

The perfect place to test Dawn’s theory.

“Because the terrain of the maze keeps shifting on us, we don’t know for sure if we’re always walking in the same direction or not,” Dawn pointed out. “Even if we’re walking in a straight line, the rest of the maze could be changing around us, and that includes the location of the exit.”

Carly shook her head. “No, I still don’t get what you mean. We can just use Marley to guide us down the right path, right?” She turned to her sister. “Sis?”

Marley stepped forward, prepared to test the two tunnels, but she paused. “…Dawn, what do you mean by that?” She asked. Her brain was starting to question things too, and that wasn’t good.

Dawn bit her lip. It was possible she was just being paranoid… but she was afraid that wasn’t the case.

“A maze doesn’t exactly have what you would call a straight line from one end to the other,” Dawn tried to explain. “It’s full of twists and turns. And we don’t know how Marley’s transformation actually works! It could be Marley’s body reacts when she’s headed in the correct direction towards the exit of the maze relative to the physical position, but is actually heading down the WRONG path, in terms of what would actually LEAD us there. Mazes can be tricky like that. A pathway could lead you right up to the exit, only to find out that there’s a wall there, and no way to actually get through. You ended up wasting a ton of time, even if you thought you were going the right way.”

Carly gasped. “Oh man, I see what you mean… we’ve been relying on Marley’s transformation because it was always causing her body to react in one way or another, but… maybe that’s not how it works. Maybe we’ve been going down a false path this whole time, and we could end up at a dead end with the exit right on the other side.”

“It’s the problem with the wording of ‘direction’,” Dawn said, nodding. “The right direction doesn’t necessarily mean the right path!”

“So it’s all been for nothing, then?!” Marley groaned. “We’ve just been walking in circles this whole time? …No, but that doesn’t make sense! Because we’ve made a bunch of turns, and my body has still been acting like we’re going the right way! Even when we were walking 90 degrees from where we were going down before, nothing changed!”

“Unless Dawn’s right, and the maze’s exit shifted its position to fool us again,” Carly pointed out quietly. “That’s always a possibility.”

Marley blanched. She didn’t like how much sense that made…

Dawn shook her head. “Look, at the end of the day, it’s impossible to say one way or the other,” she asserted firmly. “But now, we can test it! Take a look.”

She pointed down the path again.

“Both of those paths lead in roughly the same direction,” she pointed out. “So Marley, if you go down one of them and your boobs bounce, but you go down the other and your butt claps, then that means your transformation really is leading us through the correct path of the maze! See where I’m going with this?”

Marley nodded. “Good thinking, Dawn!” She agreed. It would have made her smile, if not for the alternative. “But if my boobs bounce down both paths…”

“Then it’s reacting to general direction,” Dawn confirmed. “It’s not foolproof, I know, there’s still the possibility that the maze will just shift back and forth. But it’s the best test we’ve got.”

She figured that with the two paths being so close together, it was worth a shot to test anyway. But in the back of her mind, she couldn’t ignore the possibility of more mind games. She’d hardly be considered a genius if she didn’t account for every potential negative.

Even if the idea hadn’t occurred to the curvy sisters yet.

“Okay, we’ll start with the right one first,” Marley determined. “Right is always right!”

She stepped down the right pathway, and her boobs kept bouncing. Smiling a little she stepped back, and headed down the other one. At the same time, Dawn and Carly both braced themselves, hoping they could feel the ground shifting to signal the exit might move. But of course, there was no real way to tell that.

But what they did see was Marley’s boobs bouncing again.

“…I think this is the first time a bouncing pair of boobs has been a bad thing,” Carly grumbled, playing with her bunny ears.

Marley’s heart sank. “So that means my transformation…”

“Now we know,” Dawn confirmed. “It’s not finding the right path for us, it’s just leading us in the general direction of the exit. Like a compass that only points north.” Except a north that was always changing. So basically, a worthless compass.

“Not necessarily,” Carly mumbled. “I mean… it could also be the case that both paths lead to the exit, yeah?”

Dawn slumped over and sighed in defeat. She hadn’t even considered that. But Carly was right.

Back to the drawing board.

“What this means,” the cat girl grumbled, raising her head, “is that we can’t just rely on Marley. We’ll have to rely on calling up the map, as well.”

Carly knew what that meant. Her time to shine! But she was hardly happy about it, given the circumstances.

She would much rather have preferred her sister’s transformation being a reliable tool.

Carly adjusted her glasses. If there was one good thing, it was that her bunny form helped her see through a lot more. But it still wasn’t all that good for finding her way through the maze, unfortunately enough.

“Cinder, are you alright?” Dani was worried about the other girl. After Morgana had regained control of her body, and Cinder had been returned to hers, the latina looked just as dazed and confused as she had when she was inhabiting Morgana’s body.

Only it looked much more worrisome on her.

Morgana was in a tizzy as well. When the cat had led her hear, she’d been hoping that the cute kitty would allow her to play the hero! And while she’d been a big help, now she’d made everything worse! If she ever found that kitten again, she’d give it a scolding after she thanked it!

“I… I think so…” Dazed, the latina staggered to her feet, rubbing her forehead. She looked up at the two girls from past her bangs. “But I’m… not Cinder… …I’m Ella. Cinder is resting right now… she’s in a really bad mood. So… I’m here.”

Dani sighed in relief. “Oh, good…”

Ella looked at her.

“N-no, I didn’t mean it like that!” Dani said quickly, waving her hands. “It’s not like I have anything against Cinder, I was just worried that, well… when Morgana swapped bodies, you’d be…”

She looked warily at Morgana, not sure how to explain the worries that had been plaguing her until now. It was hard to describe.

Dani watched a lot of anime. And while she was a rational enough human being to know that anime portrayals weren’t true to life, she could also acknowledge that this was far from an ordinary situation she was in. Real life didn’t have body swapping spells.

So when Morgana had used a body swapping spell on a girl with a split personality, Dani’s anime brain told her that several things might happen. But she wasn’t sure if any of them were actually true or not. One of her biggest fears had been that Cinder would somehow remain lodged in Morgana’s brain, or something. Unlikely, right?

…But Dani didn’t exactly have a lot of experience in this area.

“…You were acting weird before, when you were in Morgana’s body,” Dani finally said. “I wasn’t sure what would happen when you got your body back… but if you’re conscious, and Cinder is resting, then… that means everything is fine, right?”

Ella timidly nodded, feeling a little better. She was glad Dani wasn’t judgmental.

And just a little disappointed that the tomboy didn’t explicitly prefer her over her murderous counterpart, no matter how connected the two of them were.

But she didn’t have time to think about stuff like that.

“A body swapping spell?” Ella looked at Morgana, concerned. “How- …How does that even work? You can really… swap our bodies?”

Morgana stiffened. She looked ready to burst into tears. “Pl-please don’t be upset!” She begged, shaking her head frantically. “I know I didn’t get your permission, but-!”

“It was the only way we could free you from an obstacle,” Dani said, bailing out the flustered witch. “Morgana saved us both. …Well, I mean, I’d mostly figured it out myself already, but Morgana was a huge help all the same.”

“Right! Right!” Morgana bobbed her head up and down. “I was just trying to help, I swear!”

Ella nodded. She even almost smiled, a little bit. “Well… th-thank you for saving me, Morgana,” she said, beaming at the goth girl.

Morgana smiled from ear to ear. “No problem!”

“Ahem.” As happy as Dani was for Morgana and Ella getting to bond like this, she had to keep her head in the game. They’d lost a lot of time on that obstacle; who knew how close the other girls were to the exit?

Maybe the others had already gotten out. Maybe they were the last ones.

That’s pretty sadistic, Dani realized. If we don’t know how many people are left in the maze, we have no way of knowing the relative amount of points we’re liable to get. It’s a way of incentivizing backstabbing. The longer the challenge goes, the higher the likelihood that our small group of people are the last ones… and if we all finish it at the same time, we could end up with almost nothing.

In a situation like that, the correct move might be to betray your friends and get to the maze first. If you cared about winning and maximizing your VP gains.

A lot of people over the years had taken shots at Dani’s intelligence, but she wasn’t an idiot. She was actually quite clever, as her assessment of the situation had just proven.

But… one could argue that sticking to her ethics made her an idiot, in a way.

“Let’s go, guys,” she said, looking at the two girls. “We need to stick together! Let’s finish this maze as a group!”

Even if they were the last three girls in the labyrinth, Dani wasn’t going to backstab. She’d sabotaged another contestant once before in an early challenge, and she still felt guilty about kicking Dawn when she was down.

…And Dawn had WON that challenge, too! Yet she still felt guilty.

That was just who Dani was.

“How sweet,” Mr. S purred, a saccharine grin on his face. “All those girls are working so hard, doing their best… trying to get to the end of the maze. So adamantly sticking together, even if it may not be the most advisable move…”

“That’s how the girls in my harem are,” Nick asserted, crossing his arms over his chest. It still felt odd to refer to the group collectively as ‘his harem’, especially since that included women like Dani and Sylvia, and even Amelia. But when talking to the producer, it just seemed like the right way to assert himself.

Mr. S nodded thoughtfully. “Yes indeed… they’re quite sweet on each other. Working together so well… no matter how Dakota might try to sabotage them.”

He glanced dismissively at the seething host. “…Come on, now. Don’t tell me you’re still upset about your doll? Don’t you trust Amelia and Sylvia to take good care of… …What was her name again?”

“LYNETTE!” Dakota screamed. “Her name is Lynette! And YOU did that to her! Bringing her to life just to torment me… making them break her like that…”

Mr. S rolled his eyes. “So melodramatic. Your little doll is fine, Dakota. She’s just a doll, after all, it’s not like she’s a real person. Frankly, I don’t see why the audience would be bothered, or why YOU would be bothered, for that matter.”

He scrutinized her carefully. “After all, with what you did to Sylvia… it’s rather absurd now, to be championing a doll’s rights.”

Dakota’s eye twitched. “…What happened with Sylvia… should not have happened,” she conceded. “I made a mistake.”

Nick was amazed. Dakota admitting a mistake? That was a miracle among miracles.

“…But you aren’t going to guilt-trip me over Lynette!” Dakota snapped. “She may have been important to me, but she was still a doll! How I treated her… it would be one thing if I did that to a person or even a pet, but she was a DOLL! How could I have known… that you would turn her against me like that!?”

Mary nodded. “That’s right!” She agreed. “Dakota couldn’t have foreseen this!”

“So just stop it already,” Nick demanded, even though he knew that the man in front of him could put an end to this whole show with a snap of his fingers.

…Nick would just have to hope that he didn’t do so.

Mr. S stroked his chin. “Look at you… coming to Dakota’s defense. How sweet… I honestly didn’t expect that, given what she’s done to the people you care about. But then… that’s how it is with you, isn’t it, Nick? No matter how badly Dakota treats you, you keep crawling back to her like a battered housewife. It almost makes me shed a tear, if I could even cry…”

“Nick has a good heart,” Mary asserted. “He feels for people he cares about, and even people he hardly even knows!”

She turned to him with a look full of pride on her face. “It’s one of the many reasons I adore him.”

Nick blushed. Dakota looked like she was about to throw up.

“Stop meddling in my challenge,” the host said, brandishing her cane. “It’s MY challenge. Mine. Lynette… I’ll deal with that later, if I need to. But right now… this is MY challenge!”

Mr. S stood, just so that he could bow with a flourish. Then he returned to his throne.

“By all means,” he crooned. “Take command as you see fit, Dakota. But I will say this. With so many girls in one place now… your labyrinth is starting to lose its luster.”

“Don’t listen to him!” Mary scoffed, knowing what the producer was proposing. “You know that everyone works well together, that something like that is worth celebrating instead of condemning, Dakota! Right?”

Dakota looked at Mary. The redhead was right, and Dakota knew it all too well.

Which was why she had to take matters into her own hands.