I don't know where I'm goin', only God knows where I've been

Dakota tore through the forest, scarcely taking her eyes off the scanner. She was a woman on a mission, and wasn’t about to let anything get in her way.

“Geez, slow down, would you? I’m trying to talk here!”

…If only the other girls could have that same resolve.

Sighing, Dakota spared a glance over her shoulder at the blonde stumbling after her, pulling her dress free from the branch it had gotten snagged on.

“If I knew we were going to have to walk through the forest I would have worn something else,” Gina grumbled. Not that she had a wide variety of outfits to pick from. With leather skirts and torn jeans removed from her wardrobe, all she had left were long skirts, chaste blouses, and respectably decent dresses. The only kind of clothes a good girl would wear. Useful for attending job interviews, going to church on Sundays, and looking pretty for daytime dates to the movies with nice boys who would have her home by 7.

Wilderness exploration? Not so much.

“What do you want, Gina?” Dakota sighed in exasperation. Her Radar System beeped, and a cursory glance let her know there was a box in the vicinity. Her childhood friend didn’t seem to care about that though.

“I said, I want to talk,” Gina repeated herself. “I know we’re in the middle of a challenge, but we’re still friends, aren’t we?”

“Fine. What do you want to talk about?” Dakota was only half-listening, scanning the bushes for any sign of the elusive black box. With how the show worked, it would probably be low to the ground, forcing her to bend over and show off her ass.

There it was! Nestled right next to that rock. She just had to…

“We never got a chance to finish our conversation before. About what happened with me and Nick.”

Dakota flinched, her pale face souring. She turned her full attention to the other girl.

Gina continued. “You said that if I really liked him-”

“Loved him,” Dakota corrected her, narrowing her eyes. Gina winced.

“Okay, well, technically I think you said ‘have feelings’ but-”

Dakota turned and walked over to the box. “We’re done here.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Okay, okay, you win! Love him! Fine! Whatever!” Gina rushed after her, clinging to Dakota’s pale arm. “I just- oh, it’s a box.”

Dakota resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “You’re a little late,” she grumbled, grabbing the black cube. As soon as her fingers touched it the box crumbled away, revealing the card hidden inside.

The King of Spades. Dakota’s eyes glimmered with excitement and a smile curled up her lips. The highest value in the game. The card fastened itself to her belt.

“Whatcha get? Anything good?” Gina poked her head over Dakota’s shoulder. “You know, this kinda reminds me of when we were kids, and we bought those packs of Pokemon cards? You always wanted to collect the EXs, and I-”

“I remember,” Dakota cut her off. “In fact, I remember you didn’t even like Pokemon all that much.” She shoved the former punk off her back. Nothing personal, she just needed to be careful with her prize.

Getting the hint, Gina stepped away to give her some space. She didn't stop talking, though. “Huh? Hey, come on, sure I did.”

Dakota raised her eyebrow and crossed her arms, not impressed. “Name three pokemon right now.”

“Um… P-Pikachu?”

“Everyone knows that one.”

“Uh… ah… Agu… Agumon?”

“That’s a Digimon. Try again.”

“Whatever, that stuff was years ago!” Gina grumbled. “Come on, you’re changing the subject!”

Dakota pinched the bridge of her nose. Gina had been the one to change the subject in the first place. “No, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You didn’t really care about Pokemon, did you? You just pretended to because Nick and I liked it.”

Gina’s momentary glance at the ground was all the proof Dakota needed.

“…Okay, well, yeah. I did. But can you blame me?” Gina whimpered. “You two were my friends! I just wanted to be included! Is that so wrong?”

Dakota’s expression softened when she saw the sad look in Gina’s eye.

“It’s not wrong… but that’s why I’m not sure if I can trust you with Nick,” she said quietly. “He needs someone sincere. You know as well as I do how sensitive he is.”

Gina blinked. “Huh? He’s not that sensitive. He lasted inside me for like- oh. Oh. You meant… yeesh.” She shut up quickly under the weight of Dakota’s **** glare.

“Thank you for proving my point.” Dakota smiled sweetly, turned, and stormed off. Gina quickly chased after her.

“Hey, I mean… look, I don’t know, okay?! I like Nick, sure, but love?! How am I supposed to know whether I love him or not?!”

Dakota rolled her eyes as the path beneath their feet began to steepen downwards. “You had sex with him, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah, what’s that got to do with anything?”

“Everything! God, this is why… no, never mind.” She shook her head. “You’re not even worth it.”

“Come on!” Gina grabbed her by the arm and Dakota slipped, nearly losing her balance on the loose dirt of the slope. After regaining her footing she turned and scowled at Gina.

“…Sorry,” Gina lamely apologized, letting her go.

“Anyway. As I was saying, if you really have feelings for Nick, then I’ll be okay with you two being together,” Dakota said, continuing down the hill. “I won’t like it, but I’ll be okay with it.”

“Okay, but what if I don’t know?”

“You’ll know. Trust me.”

Gina frowned. That was easy to say. But the truth felt way more complicated. Frankly, love had never been a part of her life before. Either life. Her descent into debauchery had turned her teen years into a fog of sex, ****, and rock and roll, and by the time she came out the other side as an adult, the notion of “love” seemed like a sick joke. And in her other life, the one from those fake memories? Her parents didn’t even let her have male friends.

But Nick… Nick didn’t treat her like every other guy did. Sure, he wanted her, he’d made that more than clear. But when other men wanted her, they just took her. Nick… Nick wanted her to enjoy having sex.

He cared about her.

That was so not something Gina was equipped to handle.

“I-I… I think I like him that way,” she finally admitted.

Dakota sighed. She’d reached the base of the hill, and the beep from her radar indicated another card was around here somewhere. She scanned the bushes on either side of the trail.

“Dakota?”

Okay, it was clear she wouldn’t be able to look for her cards in peace until she resolved this.

“You want to know what I think?” Dakota asked, turning to face her friend. Gina was about halfway down the slope, and paused when she heard the tiredness in the other girl's voice.

“…Yeah…?”

“I think you’re completely fucked up in the head, that’s what I think,” Dakota calmly replied. “I think, once upon a time, you were a nice girl who had her own stuff going on, but were willing to pretend to like our stuff because you wanted to have fun with your friends. But all your self-**** over the years has completely warped your way of thinking, and now you just do things. You’re not even sure why you do the things you do at this point, are you? Not just about Nick, but in general. What do you want, Gina? Huh? Why are you even here?”

Gina stared at her in confusion. “B-Because… because Sylvia dragged me here? I don’t get it.”

Dakota sighed and slapped her palm against her forehead. “No, you don’t get it. That's my point. What I’m asking is, are you even trying? To win, I mean. To complete the challenges, to earn Victory Points, to get the wish, to stay in the harem, anything? Because it sure doesn’t feel like you care one way or the other. You’re just… I don’t know, just sitting back and letting things happen to you instead of doing anything about it!”

“I-I…” Gina didn’t know what to say. It would be one thing if Dakota was yelling at her, that was something she’d dealt with enough times to be fine with. But she wasn’t. She reminded Gina of the principal at her high school (before she dropped out) when he tried to convince her to turn her life around. Before she sucked him off, anyway.

“Honestly? You don’t feel like a real person to me right now,” Dakota continued. “You’re like a dog. You just run around sniffing at butts, peeing on fire hydrants, chasing cars, all of it on instinct. Not for any real reason.”

Gina couldn’t deny it. Even now, Dakota’s words still rang true. She’d told her dad that she was trying to change. Fine. How was she going to do that? What was she going to do differently? Dakota’s words goaded her into answering those questions, but she found that she couldn’t.

So she was clean now. So what? She was still just coasting through life, waiting for something to happen to her. Sober, or high off her ass, that didn’t change her status as a burnout.

No wonder my dad didn’t believe me when I said I was trying to turn my life around.

Dakota could see the conflict on the other girl’s face, but refused to let that stay her hand. If Gina wanted to stop being useless, she needed to be firm with her. “You’ve completely degraded, don’t you see that? You’re not even sure if you like Nick anymore! You kissed him, or don’t you remember? You sure liked him back then!”

“Th-That was…”

“That was his first kiss. Are you telling me you took Nick’s first kiss, and you didn’t even like him?” Anger started to seep into Dakota’s voice. “Are you saying that what happened to me-”

“NO!” Gina exclaimed. “I did like him back then! A-At least, I-I think I did! He was always so nice and sweet to me, and I thought… I don’t know what I thought, I just wanted to kiss him!”

She feared that admitting she wasn’t sure back then would make Dakota even angrier, but to her surprise the other girl took a deep breath and calmed down.

“Back then, you still felt real to me,” she said. “Even when you pretended to like the same stuff we did. But you changed. You’re not that girl anymore. What happened to your dreams, Gina? Didn’t you say you wanted to be a singer when you grew up? How did that turn out for you?”

Gina flinched. A queasy feeling welled up in her stomach as old memories flashed through her head. She remembered dancing in front of the TV back at her old house, singing into a little plastic microphone while her parents cheered her on with smiles on their faces.

Her eyes started to fill up with tears.

“That… I mean, I… I didn’t…”

She stumbled down the hill, practically falling into Dakota’s arms. Fuck… fuck she’s heavy… The dark-haired girl grimaced, helping Gina stand on her own.

“I-I don’t know what to do,” she admitted through her tears. “But you’re right… I spent so much time wasting away, that… I don’t know how much of me is left. But… but I don’t want that anymore, I… I want…”

She couldn’t verbalize what she wanted in words. She felt a cloying itch in her throat, but even deeper than that, there was something inside of her that wanted to be satiated. She’d used **** and **** to feed it for years, but now…

Dakota awkwardly patted her on the back. She didn’t exactly do “comforting” so she just mimicked what Nick did whenever she’d gotten upset. It seemed to work, anyway.

“Um… there-there?”

Dani grimaced, staring up the trunk of a tall tree. There weren’t any good handholds to climb it, but she could clearly see one of the boxes nestled in its branches, about ten feet above her head and glistening in the sunlight.

She jumped, trying to grab it, but didn’t even get close.

“Damn it!” With a grumble, she punched the tree in frustration. She heard a cracking sound as the whole thing shook, and the box rattled free, hitting her on the head.

“OW! Hey…” Dani had almost forgotten that she wasn’t just stronger than she looked- she was stronger in general. She’d nearly knocked the tree over with that punch. At least, she felt that way. “Oh, shit! Right! Super strength!”

Ha! Who needs 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups a day? She laughed to herself as she inspected her prize. The box had opened when it landed on her, and the card inside was now tightly fixed to her belt.

The Nine of Hearts.

Not a bad start. But not good enough.

Dani checked her radar again. There seemed to be another card somewhere around here. She scanned the forest, but couldn’t see it.

How far does this thing even go? She wondered. Dani knew that, at her core, she was a muscle head. She’d enrolled in art school because she knew even if a track scholarship could get her into a great college, she’d never do well in an academic environment. So obviously, things like judging distances and measuring weren’t even close to her skill set.

She shrugged and tromped through the forest, going off the path. She might not have been the sharpest pencil in the coloring box, but even she knew that the shortest path between two points was a straight line.

“FUCK! SHIT, FUCK!”

…A straight line that led right off the edge of a fucking cliff!

Dani scrambled for a handhold as she nearly fell off the side of the ledge, grabbing onto a tree branch at the last possible moment and pulling with all her might to keep from falling into the brush below.

SNAP.

Oh, shit. Right. Super strength.

She tumbled through the briar patch, shielding her face and doing her best to slow her fall. To her surprise, it didn’t hurt much. By the time she rolled to a stop at the base of the hill, she almost felt fine. Sure, she had some cuts and scrapes here and there, and her torn clothes were covered in dirt and debris, but otherwise she felt fine. No bruises, no broken bones, not so much as a twisted ankle.

The scanner beeped and she checked it again. Somehow the darn thing had survived the fall just fine, too.

“Guess they make these things strong,” Dani sighed in relief. If her Radar System broke, she would basically be fucked. And not in the good way.

Using the Radar System as a reference she took stock of her surroundings. The hill had been pretty steep, but in terms of distance she wasn’t that far from where she’d fallen. If she wanted, she could probably climb back up, but she’d have to deal with the pricker bushes again.

She glanced down at the cuts all over her clothes, and the tine red markings covering her body, like someone had dragged their nails across her skin. She was lucky only a few spots were bleeding!

Nope, not going back through that. A steep climb through sharp thorns sounded miserable. Which left going forward. She turned to look at where she landed, and realized she was sitting at the edge of a lake.

Dani had no way of knowing this, but she’d stumbled upon the same lake where Nick and Mary had their picnic date. Unfortunately, she wasn’t on the scenic side, with the field of flowers and the shady oak tree.

As was often the case, Dani was on the wild side.

She checked her scanner again. It was telling her that the box was right in front of her.

“Oh, you have GOT to be shitting me!” She groaned, staring out at the crystal blue water.

As if spiting her, the machine beeped again.

“You better be fucking waterproof.”

“Mary!”

Mary’s head snapped up in surprise. Unlike a lot of the other girls she’d remained on the beach, wary of venturing into the forest in her dress. But she hadn’t expected to see Kim come after her.

“Hey, uh… what’s up?” She asked her friend.

“Are you okay?” Kim caught up with her. She'd been worried about her friend ever since this morning. “I know what Rose said was shocking, but… I didn’t think you’d react like that.”

Kim had gotten to know her buddy fairly well these last few weeks, but when she stopped and thought about it, it hadn’t even been twenty days. In that time, Mary had been a beacon of patience and forgiveness towards her close friends, like Holly, and even jerks like Dakota.

So to see her behave so coldly to Rose was a surprise.

“She lied to me,” Mary said. “That’s wrong.”

“Well, yeah, I know,” Kim mumbled. “But you forgave Holly, didn’t you?”

“That’s different,” Mary shook her head. “Holly is my friend. I know that she’s a good person who just made a mistake. And even though I forgave her, when I think about what she did… well, I’m still upset about it. Even then, though, I know I’ll be okay in time. But with Rose…”

Kim frowned. “It seems like Rose is a good person who just made a mistake, too.” That’s why Kim had found it in her heart to forgive her. The fact that the blonde hadn’t actually done anything really damaging to anybody in spite of her lies had certainly helped, too.

“I know.”

Kim blinked. “You… know?”

Mary shrugged. “She seems like a good person, anyway.”

“So… then why the cold shoulder? Why didn’t you forgive her?” Kim asked.

Mary stared down at her beeping scanner. There was a box in the vicinity.

“Because everyone else was,” she mumbled.

“…Huh?!” What sense did that make?

Mary’s brow furrowed. She didn’t seem angry, more like… anxious? Worried, even? It was an expression that puzzled Kim.

“Everyone was acting like it was fine,” Mary explained, sighing. “Even Holly was fine with it. Holly! She lied to us, and everybody just… forgave her. How is she supposed to learn her lesson that way? If she can just lie and we’re all fine with it, then maybe she’ll lie again! Or worse!”

Kim hadn’t really considered that angle before.

“I-I guess you’re right,” she admitted. “So what, you’re just going to stay mad at her so she doesn't think to lie again?”

“What?! No, of course not!” Mary gasped. “That would be horrible! I just didn’t want her to think that we were all okay with what she did. I know she feels bad for her lies, I have eyes, Kim. But if feeling bad was all it took to be forgiven, well…”

She sighed again. The box was just ahead, she could see it in one of the tide pools.

“I guess I’m waiting. When I feel confident that she’s not going to lie anymore, then I’ll forgive her. And I’m sure she will.” Mary flashed a smile that even Kim had to envy. Only Mary's was genuine. “It’s like you said, right? She’s a good person who made a mistake. I know she must be thinking really hard about how to prove her sincerity!”

Kim sighed in relief, grateful that her friend’s optimism had returned.

“Besides,” Mary continued, crouching down to pick up the box. It flashed open. “I know she’s a sincere person at heart. She’s saving herself for someone special, after all! Only a good person would do that.”

Kim thought that bad people were just as capable of preserving their virginity for that special someone, but she didn’t want to crush the poor thing's hopeful dreams. “So what did you get?” She asked, changing the subject. “Anything good?”

Mary gestured to the card on her belt.

The Ace of Clubs. Not exactly game-winning.

Kim raised her eyebrow. “Wow. One whole point. You should probably just ditch that.”

Mary shook her head. “I can’t! Abandoning a card like that just because its value is low… isn’t that just so mean?!”

“…They’re cards, Mary. They don’t have feelings.”

Sometimes her friend could be a little TOO considerate.

The girls continued walking, scouring the beach for more boxes.

“So, actually, I was thinking...” Kim turned to her redheaded buddy. “Neither one of us is going to pick someone else, are we? For the elimination thing. It's okay if you are! I just want to know for sure. Because I'm not.”

“I was actually considering picking Holly,” Mary admitted. “But that was before… well, you know. And only if you were okay with it, of course.”

Her freckled face roiled with conflict, and Kim didn’t need to be a genius to know why. At this point, it was hard to tell if Holly even wanted to keep playing, or just give up and spend the rest of her life as Nick’s sex ****.

Is that really different than the rest of us, though? She wondered. But she quickly dismissed that thought. Nick was a nice guy, he wouldn’t treat them like sex slaves. Gina had been boasting all week about how gentle he was with her, making Kim feel embarrassed and Mary feel heartbroken.

Kim pushed forward with her topic to distract her shaken friend.

“Anyway, like I was saying, since we’re both going to pick each other for our buddies, I think we should use this game to pump up our points.”

“Oh?” Mary tilted her head to the side curiously. “What do you mean?”

Kim sighed. “Well, we’re currently rocking the popularity polls, but who knows how long that will last. More importantly, we both have the same number of Victory Points, and that number is… low.” She waved her left hand, displaying the “6” emblazoned on it, matching the number on Mary’s. The redhead blushed and quickly covered it.

“W-Well… yeah…”

“And I mean, I don’t know where things are going with me and Nick,” Kim admitted. “But I’m trying to take it slow for now. And that doesn’t always lead to high Victory Point totals, you know?”

Mary nodded warily.

“And you, well…”

Kim couldn’t really picture Mary trying to intentionally do anything that would earn her more points. Maybe kissing, at the very most. Judging by how she acted she'd probably be ready for that by the time she was forty.

“So if we’re not going to get any points from… you know, that sort of stuff, then the only way we can stay competitive is if we score high in the challenges,” Kim finished.

“That makes sense,” Mary agreed. “So what are you saying? We should work together, then?”

“Exactly!” Kim nodded. “We team up! You and me work to find cards to complete each other’s sets, and get more points that way! Plus, if someone tries to take our cards, it’ll be two against one!”

Mary couldn’t agree more. Not the “two against one” part, but the rest, that made sense. “Okay, yeah! Let’s work together, then!”

She was so relieved that her buddy was also her friend.

The sound of two Radar Systems beeping interrupted the positive moment. Both girls checked their screens, and saw a blinking light closer in towards the island.

“Over there!” Kim spotted the box sitting next to a rock about halfway inland. They rushed over to it as fast as they could. But they weren’t trying to race. Mary got there first, and then waited for Kim to catch up.

“I opened the last one,” she said. “You can have this one!”

“You sure?” Kim asked. “Because you got an Ace, so it’s practically like you didn’t get a card at all.”

“It’s fine,” Mary assured her. “Hopefully your luck is better than mine!”

Kim nodded and grabbed the box. It crumbled away with a flash, revealing the card inside.

The Two of Hearts.

Well, our team is off to a phenomenal start.

Sylvia sat back on her throne. Nick had gone off into the forest to be of what help he could, with a Radar System of his own that showed the locations of all the other girls. That meant she had all the time in the world to herself.

She could take a look at chat, but over the last few days things had devolved into a flame war over who deserved to be kicked out of the harem, and she wasn’t in the mood to indulge that just yet. Instead, she looked up and checked the current numbers. Only a few cards had been found so far, but she expected that to change very fast.