The Skirt Gang

Kaitlyn Peterson

You can't be serious!" Lauren said in shock to Kaitlyn.

The two sat in a small living space across the dining hall, having reunited when Lauren joined dinner late.

The new goth shifted uncomfortably, her irritation magnified by how much she hated the attire she was **** into. "There's no possible way I'm giving up my dignity for that loser," she continued, feeling nauseous.

"I'm not saying we give up," Kaitlyn countered, the **** cheerleader sitting with her legs tightly pressed together due to her skirt's length. "But with the first deadline so soon, we got to get our points up. At the very least, we need to have a positive score."

Lauren scoffed. "So you just want to give into our captor's demands and whore ourselves out for that freak Levi? Since when were you such a quitter, sis?"

"I'm not a quitter," Kaitlyn said, slightly hurt. "But what other options do we have?"

"Simple. We ice that Azure bitch,” Lauren said, grinning while making the shape of a gun with her index finger and thumb.

“We don’t have any weapons,” Kailyn argued.

The goth shrugged. "Maybe just we get Gorilla-Arms to snap her neck.”

"It's not nice to call Olivia that," Kaitlyn mumbled.

"What did you say?!" her sister asked in irritation.

Kaitlyn quickly backtracked. "I said I don't know if that's safe. You know how powerful Azure is."

Lauren lifted a finger to her temple. "That's why we get her while she's sleeping. Tomorrow, we'll stalk her to her bedroom."

"I wouldn't mind stalking you to YOUR bedroom, sweetcheeks," Kaitlyn blurted out before hanging her head in shame. It hadn't been the first time Kaitlyn's punishment made her hit on her sister, and it never got any less disgusting for the two.

"Can you get that under control?" Lauren asked in frustration.

"I'm trying!" she whined apologetically. "That witch said it happens more when I'm ranked low. I could stop if I could get my score up. The way YOU get me up, beautiful. Damn it!" She pounded the armrest of her chair in frustration.

After a moment to recover, Kaitlyn began speaking slowly, hoping to stop herself if she felt another flirt coming. "Look, we just need to get out of the negatives. We can kiss him on the cheek or something. That should be enough."

"I have standards, Kaitlyn," Lauren said, looking away.

"You've dated guys you didn't like to get ahead at school before. How is this different?"

That was what Kaitlyn WANTED to say, but there was no way she had the guts.

Instead, she pleaded, "Sis, please. I don't want anything to happen to you."

"Fighting is our only option," Lauren grumbled, averting her sister's eyes.

"It's too dangerous!"

"If you're scared, I'll do it without you," Lauren shouted as she got to her feet.

Kaitlyn also stood. "Please, just listen to me! I'm trying to help you!"

"Since when have you ever helped?!" Lauren snapped.

"What?" Kaitlyn asked, taken aback.

"I'm always the one who has to solve our problems. I was hoping you would step up for me this time, but you're useless like usual!"

Lauren crossed the line. Both sisters knew it. But Lauren was too pissed to care.

"Sis..." Kaitlyn whimpered, but Lauren had already marched out, slamming the door behind her.

Standing all alone, Kaitlyn collapsed into a nearby chair and wept.

---

Kaitlyn didn't return to her room until around 11:30, not wanting her roommate to see her crying. However, it did not matter as the place was empty.

She sighed in relief. The girl just wanted to go to bed. She hadn't bothered to grab her pajamas. At least for now, she wasn't in the mood to test what breaking the cheerleader dress code would do.

As she headed for her bed, she was interrupted by the sound of the door opening and closing. Looking around, she saw Sophia enter, looking happier than Kaitlyn had ever seen her in their brief time together. The bespectacled girl carried a new red bag with her.

"Oh, Katie, hi." Sophia began.

"It's Kaitlyn," she corrected.

"Oh, ok. That will make things easier," Sophia said to herself.

"You missed dinner. Were you shopping this whole time?" the cheerleader asked.

"Well, no, I spent my points hours ago. But I was checking out what I bought since then." She gestured to the bag.

"What is it?"

Grinning, Sophia set the bag on her bed and opened it to reveal a laptop.

"Ta-da"

"Oh, a computer," Kaitlyn said, unable to keep the lack of excitement out of her voice.

"Yeah, this is going change everything!" Sophia cheered, not catching that her roommate wasn’t as impressed as she was.

The blonde scratched her head. "How will it change things? Does it have internet or something?"

"No. But it does have a search engine for the shops catalog."

Sophia paused, clearly expecting Kaitlyn to gasp. When it was clear she wouldn’t get this reaction, she continued.

"That shop had thousands of cards all just lumped together in vague categories. Plus, Jezebel was constantly hitting on me. It was super distracting."

"I can take Jezebel's place if you want, baby. Gah!" Kaitlyn blushed at her newest outburst. "Sorry."

"It's ok. I know it's not your fault," Sophia replied dismissively before returning to what she wanted to discuss. "But anyway, now I can search things way faster. Here, let me show you.”

Opening the laptop and selecting her profile, the screen filled with tables and lists.

Before Kaitlyn could ask any questions, Sophia began speaking. She did so without any of her usual shyness. The excitement of showing her findings has replaced it.

"The laptop has a database of all the purchase options and costs. The UI design sucks, but it lets you search and filter. Honestly, this database should have been available to us by default. Were we supposed to go through every single card? Hasn't anyone who made this show heard of basic quality of life systems?"

She took a brief second to breathe, having said all of this in a single breath. Once again, Kaitlyn tried to get something into the conversation, but Sophia dived back into it, cutting her off.

"But anyway, being able to scroll through options doesn’t just to make purchases easier. It's also helping me learn about the game through context clues."

"Huh?"

Sophia turned to her. "You see, while the transformation cards don't give any details aside from their titles, the One-Shots do. They have full descriptions of their game effects, and sometimes, these reference gameplay mechanics that Azure didn't talk about."

Kaitlyn was starting to get interested. She sat on the bed beside Sophia and watched her enter some search terms before selecting. An image of the card appeared on the right half of the screen, shifting the list to the left.

Beneath its cost of 2 BP, the card said, "Reduce all Silver Doors by 12."

Sophia smiled expectantly at Kaitlin again, waiting for her to understand the significance. However, seeing her clueless, Sophia added, "You remember the Silver Doors. The locked doors with silver numbers on them."

She paused again, hoping for Kaitlyn to be on the same page. She added, "We saw a few on Alison's tour, and she said they were secret."

"Yeah, a lot happened on that tour. I was more distracted by the shower bombshell," Kaitlyn sighed.

"Well, anyway, this One-Shot says it reduces the number on the doors by 12. That tells us that they are unlockable by some quantity. Like, you need a certain number of points to go through. But the fact that we have to spend 2 BP for a twelve point reduction means the door uses an unrevealed third point system."

She began rubbing her chin. "Or maybe a countdown. They were all divisible by 12, which may be based on time. I've only found three examples of these doors, so that's just a hypothesis."

"That's... incredible, Sophia," Kaitlyn said, impressed by how much she could get from one card description.

"Oh, it's nothing," she replied modestly but could not hide the smug satisfaction on her face. "Anyway, there is still more to get through. Like I said, there were hundreds of cards."

She then laughed. "Again, I have no idea how we were supposed to do this without the laptop. It's kind of essential to make an informed decision."

Kaitlyn rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure Azure doesn't want us to make 'informed decisions.'"

"Well, then she's a bad Game Master!" Sophia snapped.

"Was that ever in question?" Kaitlyn laughed bitterly. She then asked kindly, "Hey, can I use it?"

"NO, I'M USING IT!" Sophia shouted automatically. She then blushed. "Sorry, **** of habit. But no, you shouldn't. It came with a warning that said 'may have strange effects if used by nonpurchaser.'"

Kaitlyn tensed up. "Yeah, okay. I don't want to tangle with any of that."

"Good plan. But I can help you look stuff up if you want," her roommate offered.

Kaitlyn thought about it for a moment. "I don't suppose there's anything in there that will let me wear pants again?"

Sophia chuckled to herself. "Trust me, I'd want that too. I can keep looking, but they did say that transformations that were voted on couldn't be overruled by purchases, so we're probably stuck as the Skirt Gang for the foreseeable future."

"Skirt Gang?" Kaitlyn laughed.

Sophia looked at her apologetically. "Sorry, I suck at naming things. But yeah, I hope we can do something about that. It gets cold in Quebec."

"Oh right, you're from Canada. What's life like there?" Kaitlyn asked kindly.

Sophia tensed up, her introversion creeping back when the conversation left her areas of interest. "Oh, it's fine. Uh, I'm at college and doing... uh... good, I guess."

She trailed off, looking around awkwardly. She then, rather bluntly, steered the conversation back to her laptop. "But anyway, this also came with an up-to-date scoreboard. However, that's pretty pointless when every room has one. But in any case, for just 5 BP, this thing was a freaking steal. It's honestly shocking they would hide such essential features behind a missable in-game purchase."

Kaitlyn, who had looked at the scoreboard monitor in their room when Sophia had mentioned it, noticed that Sophia was at 0 BP. She asked, "Wait, you said it cost 5 BP. What did you spend the other five on?"

Sophia's face turned a slight shade of pink. "Promise you won't tell anyone?" she asked.

Kaitlyn was surprised by this response. "Is it a secret?"

Sophia sunk into her hoodie. "No. It's just embarrassing."

Kaitlyn couldn't imagine anything more embarrassing than what Sophia had already gone through at the opening ceremony but nodded. "Okay, I promise."

"Thank you," Sophia said before showing her.

As she did, the time struck midnight.

---

Bonus Image