Mukuro wants to talk to me.

Regina had set the impression that my power and my choices would enable me to build a "school harem," and with that framing, one would probably expect me to use this first free time picking the most desirable woman and starting to work my magic. Whatever the success chance of that was, it didn't seem I was going to get the opportunity. As people began talking among each other, Mukuro had left her desk with her eyes locked on me and a faint smile. I saw her reach first for the hem of her skirt and then under it, and, for a moment, I wondered if some subconscious part of my mind had decided I was going to start my sexy time with her.

That turned out not to be the case at all. When Mukuro arrived at my desk, she wasn't putting her lips on my face or her tight ass on my lap: she was putting the serrated combat knife she'd just drawn from a hidden holster to the side of my neck, expertly hiding the gesture with her shoulder by leaning in across my desk like we were having an especially friendly secret chat. Our noses were just inches apart, but her cold eyes told me she wasn't looking for anything romantic. "I know you're up to something."

"Something like what?" I tried, catching myself covering my ring finger with one hand. I instead shifted that hand as casually as I could to hide it beneath my desk on my lap.

"I'm guessing you talked to my sister, Junko. I had a hunch when you showed up late, and now that I smell you, it's all but certain. What did the two of you talk about?"

My brain didn't seem to realize I was in a life or **** situation, and I babbled out a retort. "How can you smell her? I didn't roll around in her perfume or wear her clothes or anything, I just-"

I felt the steel briefly poke against my throat as Mukuro applied light pressure. "Keep your imagination under control and answer my question if you want to live. You think I won't do it in front of my classmates? Please don't underestimate me."

The cold steel seemed to have woken me up, and my resistance crumbled in preservation of my life. I knew there must be a thousand ways to use the ring to make Mukuro bug off, but rather than risk any of that, I did something even more dangerous: I spilled the truth again. "W-we talked about my magic ring that lets me control women. I'm not joking, it's real!"

Mukuro frowned. "I can tell you're not lying. There's no way that's real, but at the very least, you think it's real..."

"Well, if I'm crazy, your sister is too. Ask her yourself, she'll tell you it's one hundred percent the real deal."

At this, the gloomy student grimaced. "My sister... isn't well. I mean, there's nothing wrong with her! But... she's subject to some imaginative ideas that I don't believe are, um... compatible with our reality. I wouldn't ordinarily expect she'd believe garbage like that, but I have no idea what your powers of persuasion are. Let's continue, though. When she believed you, what'd my sister say?"

I tried to glance past Mukuro to figure out why nobody was coming to my aid, but that was a dumb idea. Her head was nearly taking up my entire field of vision, and any interest my classmates had in conversing with me probably vanished when Mukuro decided to make me her business. I had **** but to continue the conversation. "Uh... She told me I was interesting, and to do interesting stuff. 'Keep up the good work,' basically. Something like that."

"What'd she tell you to do specifically?" Mukuro stressed.

I struggled to remember. I was sure Junko had packed her speech with plenty of stuff important to me, but if I was being honest, at the time, I was a lot less interested in her gibberish and more interested in the huge boobs I'd given her. "Uh... she seemed to really like the idea of me making as many changes to my classmates as possible. I didn't really understand it. Something about hopes and ambitions?"

Mukuro seemed to think hard about this. If I wanted to, and if life was a movie, this would be the point where I could take advantage of a distraction and turn her knife on her. Instead, I just waited to see what she'd come up with. When she finally spoke again, it was more nonsense I couldn't understand. "Despair. I get it... I'm sure I understand what she wants. I have to..." The soldier raised her eyes to me again, and I saw a momentary twitch in them, a crack in her steely surface. It was gone again in an instant. "If you use that ring to control people, you need to use it on me."

I looked at her like she was joking and, realizing there was obviously no trace of joke in her, looked at her like she was crazy. I tried to reason with her. "Are you thinking you're volunteering to, like, be a soldier in an army? This isn't like I'm giving you orders. I wouldn't just be controlling your actions or even your mind, I'd be... messing with your reality and shit. Also, I can't even do it right away. I have to, uh, practice and get better with it to really make it work."

"I understand," Mukuro said with a solemn nod. "All the better. You need someone to practice on; I'm volunteering to be your target dummy. You have to do it. Control my reality."

I'd never imagined I'd be in a situation like this. Was Mukuro willingly relinquishing control of her life to me? I couldn't understand her motivations at all, but... wasn't this a pretty hot situation? With the killing intent out of her eyes, I could now say Mukuro was attractive... Surely not the hottest babe in this class of tens, but a solid eight that I felt was overqualified for me.

I was starting to understand Junko and Mukuro were some measure of insane, whether it was the same type of insanity or not. Doing anything they asked me to do was definitely a bad idea...

On the other hand, something told me what I was doing was incredibly important to Junko. The pained way she talked about boredom and the gleeful way she described her interest stuck with me. And, as for Mukuro, her conviction was obvious.

If I was being honest, a part of me knew I was just playing dumb if I pretended Junko didn't have malicious intent. It was starting to sink in that she expected me to literally overwrite the realities of my classmates with realities of my choosing. That wasn't just wrong, it was probably evil. But...

If Mukuro was volunteering, was that wrong? And, honestly, what did I have to lose by changing her? The possibilities if I did were endless, and if I didn't, she might kill me here and now, for all I knew! Even if she didn't, she'd certainly be displeased and unpleasant to be two desks away from.

I'd talked myself into it, but I still didn't want to dive in head-first. "I'll... give you a chance to try it. So, let me know if you want out, and don't say I didn't warn you!"

"Don't talk to me like a person anymore," Mukuro told me a crazy line with a straight face. "Treat me like a puppet."

"Uh, I'm not really picturing that kind of relationship, and please don't throw away your personhood that easily... Just, uh, try this. Ask me more nicely."

Mukuro lowered her eyebrows. "Nicely? In case you haven't noticed, I don't do nice."

"Good," I told her, letting my cocky grin creep in again in spite of myself. "Do it anyway."

Mukuro sighed, then spoke again, this time with an unusual pout and playful tone. She tilted her head down and her eyes up, as though she was giving me puppy dog eyes. "Minnie, can you pleeease control me with your magic ring and make me your stupid dummy slut? I wanna be your sexy toy soldier and make you stand at attention, mwah!" She punctuated her ridiculous statement with a quick but wet peck on my cheek (it would later occur to me that, preposterously, this was my first kiss from another girl).

I didn't answer, although I thought I was making a goofy grin. I raised my eyebrows at her, interested to see her reaction.

She looked into my eyes, then finally backed up. I saw her spring back on reflex, then wipe at her mouth with one hand while holding her knife defensively and pointlessly in front of her with the other. "No way. It's real...!"

I shrugged nonchalantly, but I couldn't deny it felt good to freak out a woman who was supposed to be the Ultimate Soldier. "Are you in or out?"

Earlier, Mukuro had seemed convinced of my power without proof and was solid in her conviction. Now that she'd experienced it first hand, though, she seemed badly shaken. She looked between me and the knife in her hand, which I didn't like... I didn't see how the knife was related to her options here! Finally, she dropped it to her side, then expertly returned it to the holster under her skirt without even looking. "I'm still in. I think with this... I can finally give my sister what she wants..."

I didn't understand, but I could tell she thought she was doing Junko a huge favor. I had to assume they were really close. "Do you want to know? When I'm doing it, I mean?"

She shook her head. "I'm sure with my instincts, I'll be able to tell... and then, when you take away my instincts... or my awareness, or whatever... I guess I won't. And that'll be it." She said it with a shuddery breath, but when she got it out, she seemed like she was back to her grim, collected self.

"Okay," I told her, although I still wasn't quite sure if this was okay at all. I also hoped she didn't expect I was signing some exclusivity clause to only use my powers on her... Even if I'd agreed to an experiment, I didn't have any intention of letting it become a full-time commitment. Regardless... Knowing there was someone in the class who'd essentially agreed to be my guinea pig whenever I wanted to try and sharpen or flex my powers was comforting. Or, it should have been, anyway.

The teacher had just walked back in, and I could tell the state of the classroom was currently a bunch of small, whispering groups trying to figure out what Mukuro and I had been doing. Even if Mukuro's angle had hidden her sudden kiss, if even one student saw it, I was sure rumors would spread. For once, I actually did try and see if I could magic up a state where everyone just forgot about it, but I could quickly tell my juice wasn't bringing that to reality. So, instead...

Mukuro suddenly whirled at me, pointing her knife my way. "Remember, like we talked about, there'll be trouble if you even look at my sister!" She backed towards her seat with her eyes rooted on me, then sat down and paid me no more mind. I was hopeful that this would reset everyone's impression and once again make them believe Mukuro had been threatening me, which would be far easier to explain.

While Ms. Yukizome gave her students another lecture about threatening each other in the classroom, I whispered to Regina, who'd been the closest earshot to my encounter with Mukuro. "Regina, this situation's gettin' pretty weird..."

"So unweird it," she responded instantly, yawning. "You're the boss here. Things only have to get weird in ways you want them to. If you decide you don't like this little subplot of yours with the twisted sisters, just use the Ring and give 'em a memory wipe... Or turn 'em into people with better personalities. Whatever."

"I feel like the ethical questions are starting to get to me here."

"Well, I'll tell you a little something else that's going to get to you." Regina turned around in her seat, giving me a tight smile. "I dunno if you remember my earlier speech, but I didn't say 'you're gonna get really horny, and then you're gonna play little pranks on your classmates, tickle each other and play footsies,' did I? I'm pretty sure I said something about an irreversible carnal hunger. Very soon, you're gonna have to actually address the metaphorical elephant in the room. If you don't, I think there's one of two possibilities, both of them bad: one, you're gonna get so pent up that you burst, by which I mean you lose control of the ring and do something fantastically stupid and unpredictable; or, two, without any horny grease lubricating its gears, your Ring power is going to start to get weaker instead of stronger."

I didn't like the sound of that at all. "So what do I do?"

"Fuck!" Regina hissed, throwing her arms up impatiently. "Or, if you're not gonna fuck, at least cum! I don't care if it's in someone, on someone, or in your pants, and I'm not saying it has to be right now, but I am saying there's gonna be consequences if you don't get there eventually. I'm saying feed the weasel, then you can get back to making memories with your school buddies or grapple with ethical dilemmas if that's what floats your boat."

... It wasn't as if I didn't understand what Regina was saying, or as if I wasn't looking forward to it, but how was I supposed to make that happen? Everything else aside, I was in the middle of a class. I had no clue how to get away with that in the middle of class at my current power level.

But if what Regina said was right, maybe I needed to be thinking about it?