Life can be easy, it's not always swell

“How did I get here?” Amelia wasn’t sure what had happened. Had she taken a wrong turn somewhere? She wasn’t in the musty, medieval corridor anymore, she was standing inside a room that looked almost like a kitchen. Only it wasn’t a kitchen as far as she could tell. Everything around her was completely artificial. The fruit bowl on the table? Decorative. The tablecloth itself? Not even cloth! It was a solid, carved part of the table that only LOOKED like it was cloth; it was made out of some strange plastic.

Everything was. The fridge, the stove, none of it was real, even the knives in the knife drawer were harmless, they couldn’t even cut butter.

This was all VERY strange.

In fact, only one thing in the room WASN’T made of plastic. A small wooden box on the table. She opened it instinctively, wondering if this was some puzzle of Dakota’s.

…No, no puzzle. Just… a whistle. And a note that read:

BLOW IN CASE OF EMERGENCY!

(By emergency, that means an erection that isn’t going down.)

(Also, not talking about the whistle BTW hehe.)

Nola

Amelia rolled her eyes. Talk about juvenile.

---

Sylvia often acted like a flighty airhead, but she was actually quite shrewd. She knew the importance of finding their way through the maze, and she knew how to achieve that goal as well. And she had no qualms about masturbating in public, of course. Being groomed for the position of host of Harem Hotel, she was quite lacking in modesty.

And besides… one look at Vivian (even if she couldn’t make out the other girl all too well in the darkness) and it was obvious that the heiress wouldn’t be capable of doing what needed to be done right now.

Not in this void of a corridor.

“Vivian, I’m going to need you to let me go,” Sylvia said carefully, not wanting to startle the heiress too much.

No luck there.

“What?! Wh-why?!” Vivian stammered nervously.

“Because I need to masturbate,” Sylvia calmly reminded her. “We were just saying how it’s important that we find our way through, right? And, well, if you’re not going to do it, then I should. Right, my girl?”

Vivian shuddered. The thought of doing something like… that… while trapped in his awful, dark pit… …She couldn’t stand it.

“O-okay,” she conceded, nodding. Vivian wasn’t exactly comfortable being in the same room as someone who was touching themselves, especially someone she didn’t know very well like Sylvia, but she was a lot LESS comfortable being all alone in the hall.

So if Sylvia wanted to do something like that… Vivian would just have to suck it up and deal.

“Okay…” Sylvia took a deep breath, and her hand dipped between her legs. This wasn’t exactly easy for her, either. But she had a challenge to complete, so she tried to put Vivian out of her mind and focus on the task at hand.

Now that I think about it… this is the first time for me, isn’t it? The first time I’m really doing anything sexual in a challenge… yeah, it is, isn’t it? As Sylvia closed her eyes, she thought back on the two previous challenges she had taken part in.

The first one was unique. Not only would it not have required her to do anything sexual under any circumstances, just transforming other people (which she was already quite experienced with) but it had involved her mother as a child. Nothing sexy about that.

The second one was a little closer. That one had plenty of orgasms flying around, although she’d only had the one. But there was something so impersonal about being made to come from being sprayed with something, rather than a human touch getting the job done.

Sylvia wasn’t trying to criticize her mother or anything like that. Certainly not! She had nothing but respect for her beloved creator’s ability to design engaging challenges. This was just the first one where she’d had to take an active role in her own sexuality.

It was a little trickier than she’d anticipated.

What should Sylvia’s reward be for cumming?

https://strawpoll.com/kjn1DrRAjyQ

---

Morgana wandered through the moonlit field, and began to get nervous. The fog was so dense, it was hard to see the way. She loved the ambience here, it was really quite lovely, but she couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t really a “maze” in the traditional sense.

Frankly, she was just lost.

“Dawn?” Morgana attempted to use her trump card. Her ace in the hole! Her psychic connection to Dawn might help her navigate her way through this strange challenge, if the two girls were close enough.

“Morgana? So it does work even in the challenge, interesting…” Dawn answered her, and Morgana sighed in relief.

“Where are you right now?” Morgana asked, sitting down on a tree stump to refocus. She didn’t want to be distracted wandering around and get even more lost. “And what does the maze look like where you are?”

“What does the maze look like?” Dawn seemed confused by the question. “It looks like a maze. Brick walls, dark, but somehow not so dark I can’t see… really damp… …Though that’s probably because of the fog.”

“It’s foggy where you are too?” Morgana wished Dawn could hear the excitement in her chest. Maybe that meant she was close by! (She was ignoring all the other details that were completely unlike where she currently was.)

“Yeah. You’ve got fog too? It’s really weird, this stuff. It’s almost glowing. I think it’s why the corridor here isn’t so dark.”

Morgana looked around the field, and sighed in disappointment. The fog where she was didn’t glow.

“I think we’re pretty far apart from each other,” Morgana said. “I’m not even in a hallway. I’m outside, can you believe that?”

“Outside? What, like, out of the maze?” Dawn asked.

Morgana shrugged. Only Dawn couldn’t see the shrug, so she continued, “I don’t think so… I think this is still inside the labyrinth… or, like, part of the challenge… field, I guess? …There’s a bunch of grass and trees and stuff and a really thick cloud of fog… …Oh, and the moon is out!”

“The moon? We haven’t been in here that long,” Dawn reminded her.

Morgana sighed. “I know, that’s why I’m confused. This place makes no sense! But it’s really got just fantastic vibes, I feel like I’m walking through a graveyard! …Oh, but not one of those creepy, scary graveyards with dead bodies and stuff, a cool graveyard.”

…

“Dawn, are you still there? Dawn?”

“I’m here. I just had to take a second to process what you just said.”

“About the graveyards?”

“…Right. Anyway, Morgana, it sounds like we’re pretty far apart from each other. I’ll try to keep an eye out for you, but I don’t think it’ll be that easy. The map doesn’t actually give much of a description about landmarks or the terrain or anything like that, it’s very low detail,” Dawn explained. “Keep me posted, we can keep in touch, if anything changes just let me know.”

Morgana nodded. “Okay… …Wait, Dawn, you’ve already gotten a peek at the map? But doesn’t that mean you had to-?”

“Don’t say it!” Dawn wailed.

Morgana giggled to herself and ended the telepathic conversation. She felt a little better after that, but she was still concerned. Dawn wasn’t any help, and the fog was only getting thicker. If only there was some sort of sign she could follow…

Something damp brushed across her legs and she let out a shriek. She yanked her legs up onto the stump with the rest of her body and hugged them to her chest, trembling with surprise.

“Wh-what was that!?” Morgana looked down at the ground, and saw a dark figure darting through the fog. It stopped in place and turned back to her…

“…A black cat!?” She gasped. Those were supposed to be bad luck, but Morgana never believed superstitious stuff like that, anyway. It was staring at her with bright golden eyes, looking at her. There was an odd wisdom in its eyes, like it was goading her to follow it. Waiting for her.

Did it come to help me? Aww, how cute! Morgana was absolutely a cat person, but her parents never let her have one. Grinning like a giddy schoolgirl she dashed after the cat, hoping it knew the way out of this fog!

---

“She’ll be fine,” Dawn tried to convince herself. “She’ll be fine, right? I mean, it’s Morgana we’re talking about, she can handle herself.”

Dawn closed her eyes and tried to remember the map she’d seen earlier. As soon as she entered the maze, she’d put her little “plan” into motion, hoping that she’d only have to bring herself to orgasm once and then everything would be fine.

No such luck, unfortunately. Because Dawn was staring at a brick wall right where a turn in the corridor was supposed to be.

“Well… she DID warn me about the labyrinth’s layout changing,” Dawn groused, and crouched down on the floor. She worked her leggings down, incredibly grateful for the glowing fog clinging around her feet. The less knowledge she had about what she was sitting on, the better.

She’d just started digging her fingers into her snatch when a cracking sound came from underneath her.

“Eh!?” Dawn sprung to her feet, or tried to, anyway. Even with all her natural grace, her legs still got tangled around her leggings and she flopped flat on her ass as the ground in front of her broke open, and something emerged from the dirt.

“…Phew! See? Told ya! No need to get worried, we made it out!”

Dawn couldn’t believe what she was looking at. The first thing she noticed was a pair of giant breasts. Then came the woman attached to them, who was much more recognizable. For the most part.

“C-Carly!?” Dawn adjusted her glasses to get a closer look. “What happened to you?”

Carly looked a lot different. Her hair was shaggier and her hands were furry and oddly-clawed. Her clothes were nothing like what Dawn remembered her wearing, either. She looked like… …Dawn didn’t even know what she looked like!

“Oh! Dawn! Hey, sis, Dawn’s here!” Carly helped her sister out of the hole. Unlike Carly, who was smiling up a storm, Marley looked miserable.

Mainly because her white clothes were irrevocably stained in mud and maze gunk. Dawn winced in sympathy.

“Hey Dawn,” Marley said, greeting the other girl with a tired wave. She was trying to put on a positive smile, at least.

Dawn waved back awkwardly, confused. “Marley… Why is your sister… …How did you guys come out of that hole?”

“Eh? I thought that’d be obvious,” Carly said, showing off the watch on her wrist. “I used the Anitrix! Mole form, see? Marley and I were stuck in this weird locked room, and I thought ‘Well, why solve puzzles when I can just tunnel my way to freedom?’ and here we are!”

Dawn wasn’t sure how to respond to that so she just nodded slowly.

“Okay…”

“And now my clothes are ruined…” Marley sighed glumly.

“Cheer up, sis,” Carly said, patting her sister on the back. “Maybe the audience will reward you with something to make up for it!”

“Good luck,” Marley said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not even a contestant.”

What should Marley’s new outfit be?

https://strawpoll.com/wby5QdO6KyA

---

On the subject of new outfits…

“Eh!?”

“Wh-what the hell?!”

It took a second for Ella and Dani to process that their clothes had completely changed. Mainly because they were so focused on what the other was wearing, it hardly occurred to them that their own outfits had also gone through some alterations.

“Wh-what is this?!” Ella cried, looking at the tight leather bondage gear she was wearing. It covered enough, but it was so embarrassing and it wasn’t comfortable at all! “Why am I wearing this… these… clothes!?”

She felt that calling them “clothes” was actually being too generous. But as weird as they were, they weren’t sticky like her old clothes were.

Dani wasn’t much better. “I’m dressed like some kind of dominatrix!” She exclaimed. “What the heck!? Did the audience do this!?” She tugged uncomfortably on the long latex gloves clinging to her upper arms. They were pressing her feathers into her skin in an uncomfortable way, almost like a vacuum seal. And the rest of the outfit… well… she knew she looked sexy, but still!

“The audience did this?” Ella’s heart sank in her chest. That wasn’t good. It meant there was no way out of it! Not that she had any other clothes she could change into. “Why?”

“Well, I’m dressed like a dominatrix,” Dani repeated, just to emphasize how absurd that was. “And you, well…”

Dani didn’t want to use the term “leather gimp” because she was pretty sure Ella wouldn’t understand what that meant and get even more confused. But it painted a pretty clear picture in Dani’s mind of what the audience was intending, even if Ella herself was totally lost.

“Dani?” Ella looked at the other girl nervously, playing with her rubber-band. She didn’t know why, but she felt very uncomfortable. Mainly because she and Dani weren’t exactly close.

“Don’t worry, Ella, I’m not going to take advantage of you,” Dani said aloud. She gasped. It had just slipped out, because she was worried about what the audience was doing! But once she said it…

“Take advantage of me!?” Ella’s jaw dropped and her eyes bugged out behind her bangs.

“No, come on, that’s not… that’s not going to happen,” Dani assured her, shaking her head. “I’m just weirded out because of the sudden change in our wardrobes. Trust me, if I was under the effect of a mental transformation, I would know.”

Ella relaxed. A little. “…Okay,” she said, nodding. “Just, um… just remember, Cinder’s still ready to protect me if she needs to.”

“Don’t worry,” Dani cracked a pleasant smile. “I’ll try and stay on her good side.”

---

“Hey, so, like, we’re cool, right? I’m not talking too much, am I? I’ve been told I tend to talk too much when I feel awkward. It’s why I like getting high and drinking, because I’m way less awkward then, much more relaxed.”

Gina was anything but relaxed right now. Yes, the orgasm she’d gotten was quite refreshing, and to her surprise, she’d managed to keep her wits about her enough to picture the map! …It had taken a good 3-4 tries before she had the presence of mind to keep her cool, but hey, nothing wrong with good orgasms, and her tattoos gave her plenty of fuel to get going. Even if her fingers were a little sore now.

But for better or worse, she found herself with someone who was a complete enigma to her. And Gina had never been more aware that she was talking too much than she was right now.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin listened to the other girl ramble with a completely even expression on her face. She wasn’t even looking Gina’s way, she was scanning the corridor with her eyes as she walked ahead, leading the way.

Gina followed behind her at an easy pace, careful not to get too close. She didn’t want to bother the girl, for obvious reasons.

The fact that Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had practically steamrolled her, tripping over Gina on the ground while she was playing with herself, didn’t help either. …Well, not “tripped” exactly, she’d managed to evade Gina well enough, only to slip on the damp floor and bang their heads together.

Hard.

So yeah, Gina felt a little guilty. And a little concussiony.

“If you need my help, just ask!” Gina said, placing her hand over her chest. “I know I’m not some super-cool assassin, but I’m good in a pinch, ask anyone!”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s ears twitched. She turned and looked back at Gina, her expression totally serious. Not a smile to be seen.

A rarity for her.

Gina gulped. Had she said or done something to get on the assassin’s bad side? If so…

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin turned forward again and kept walking. Gina was half-ready to just give up and head the other way, when a thought occurred to her.

She was running before, but now she’s not. Could it be… she’s being considerate of me? Does she actually want to team up or something?

Taking another look at the assassin, Gina froze when she saw the girl staring back at her with those sparkling blue eyes. She was standing at a turn in the corridor, just… waiting there.

Waiting for Gina.

“I-I’m coming!” Gina said giddily, catching up to the assassin. “Don’t leave me behind!”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s smile returned, a satisfied expression that made Gina giggle. The two girls turned down the corridor…

…Only to be met by a dead end. A thick iron gate stood in their way, barred so that they could see that the corridor continued past. On their side of the bars, two large boxes stood like pillars framing their path. They reminded Gina of those old stage boxes you’d see magicians use for their shows. One of them was open, the other was closed.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin puffed up her cheeks in frustration and grabbed the bars. Was she trying to pull them apart?

“Whoa, hold on there,” Gina stopped her. “I know you’re strong, but Dakota’s not gonna let you just smash your way through.”

The assassin shrugged.

“Come on, you haven’t been getting through other obstacles in this maze like that, right?”

The assassin’s muted expression shifted into a triumphant smirk.

Gina couldn’t help but smile. “…Damn, girl. …But still, there’s gotta be a way to open this gate. We just have to find it…”

She squinted, looking past the bars and down the candlelit corridor. She could just barely make out the sign written on the other side.

“Hey, your eyes are, like, super eyes, right?” Gina turned to the nanomachine-enhanced assassin. “Can you see that sign over there?” She pointed.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin stared blankly at her.

“…Shit! Right, you can’t read, I almost forgot…” Gina groaned. “Well… it says, I think…”

Two travelers seek entrance but one must sacrifice for the other. The sacrifice must step into the Box of Endless Tickling for a period of no less than five minutes to assure safe passage through the gate.

Gina could barely make it through without laughing. “‘Endless tickling’? Ooooh. Come on, Dakota, seriously? And how is it ‘endless’ if it’s only five minutes?”

She shook her head and grinned. “So I guess that one’s the ‘Box of Endless Tickling’ then,” she said, pointing to the open box on the left. “What’s the one on the right for, then?”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin shrugged. The two girls looked at each other.

Who was getting the tickle ****?

Who IS going in the Box of Endless Tickling?

https://strawpoll.com/Dwyo340PeyA

---

“Eeeeeeeeeeeee!” Rose shrieked like a banshee as a figure rose out of the muddy swamp and crawled up onto the bank, approaching her.

Then she saw who it was.

“Eh!? Wait… you’re that… Serenity?!” It took Rose a second to recognize her, because the siren’s beautiful features were covered in mud. And her elusive, mysterious expression was now a very readable and obvious scowl.

The siren clicked her teeth together and approached the blonde, who had let down her guard once she saw it wasn’t some hideous swamp monster coming to eat her.

Serenity stopped in front of her, and looked at her apologetically. “…Sorry,” she said awkwardly, holding up her hand. Small blue flakes glittered in a pile on her palm. “Not my call.”

Before Rose could process what she was saying, the siren puckered her lips and a swift exhale blew the flakes right into her face.