Cos for now we're playing beach volleyball

It took a moment for Ella to process what had just happened. She had a hazy feeling in her mind, like when she took over from Cinder. But at the same time, that couldn’t have been the case, right? She was standing right here, after all, on the beach, just where she’d been before.

What happened? I felt lightheaded… faint of breath… and then… wait, that’s right… no!

She remembered now. Everyone was looking at her, judging her, and then… Nick… Nick had said…

Her face burned, and it was like a cloud of smoke burst up from her head as she remembered the overwhelming emotions she’d felt. Even though she’d tried to hold on, it had become too hard for her to deal with, and then… then Cinder had…

“I… I-! I’m sorry!” She sputtered, clutching her scarlet face and shaking. Everyone was still looking at her, but now their expressions were filled with panic and concern. It was all too much for her to handle, she felt like she was going to die!

“Hey!”

A surprising voice Ella didn’t expect called out to her, and her head snapped up. Behind her bangs, her eyes widened in shock as she saw the rude, mean-looking blonde named Rose storming towards her.

Ella felt a tremor of fear stab through her heart. Rose… she had trouble with Rose. The other woman looked and acted snobby and condescending, so much like the horrible people who had abused her growing up. Even when she did something generous and cleaned the Master’s Suite for Ella, like last night, it didn’t ease the anxiety the maid felt around her.

Rose knelt in the sand beside her, her blue eyes watery with concern.

“Are you alright?” She asked, her normally haughty voice aching with sympathy.

Ella… Ella didn’t know what to say. She just stared incredulously at the blonde, and blinked.

“…Huh?”

“It’s okay, Ella, you’re fine,” Dawn said gently, coming over to the two of them. She had a cautious look in her eye like she wasn’t sure how close she should be, no doubt due to Ella’s prior harsh words towards her.

But right now, Ella was nothing but appreciative of the shorter woman’s consideration.

“I… I let her out again, didn’t I?” Ella wasn’t sure who she was asking as she clutched the rubber-band on her wrist. Rose? Dawn? Herself? The universe?

…Cinder?

“You did,” Amelia said, utterly lacking in tact and subtlety with her cold words. Ella flinched and started shaking.

“But… but it’s fine!” Nick hastily assured her, trying to laugh it off with a smile. “Look, I know it was pretty rough, being put in that position, but it’s okay. Cinder… she was just upset.”

Right. Like that made Ella feel better.

“I thought I could handle it…” she said glumly, looking up at Dawn. Shame and guilt blossomed on her face. “But I got overwhelmed…”

“…You did,” Dawn said, not sure how to help. “But… you’re back now, right? And nobody got hurt or anything.”

“But… but everything she… I… must have said…” Ella looked around at the sea of faces, searching desperately for the looks of anger and condemnation she anticipated. Knowing Cinder the way Ella did, she was certain that her alter had hurt the other women with her words, if nothing else.

And yet, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see anybody blaming her. If anything, they all looked…

…Concerned?

“No one’s blaming you for Cinder,” Kim said with a shake of her head, placing her hands on her hips and standing in defiance of the other girl’s fears. “We all know that you’re not responsible for her. We’re not going to get mad at you for something she did!”

Nick didn’t say anything, but he wasn’t sure he liked the way Kim phrased that.

“You guys, let’s not forget, Cinder was overwhelmed too,” he said gently. “She was out of line with some of the stuff she said and got too angry, but remember that she was really embarrassed by wearing that swimsuit.”

Ella winced, and Nick quickly had to backtrack what he’d just said.

“…Not that that’s your fault, either!” Nick hastily clarified. “You have the right to wear what you want to wear, Ella! I wasn’t trying to excuse her actions or blame you, I’m just trying to explain why she had that outburst, that’s all!”

Nick felt like punching himself in the face. He already had enough of a struggle trying to mediate between the women in his harem… now he had to mediate disputes between the two sides of the same woman?!

He really wasn’t equipped to handle this.

Ella swallowed and nodded reluctantly. “Um… yeah, that… I guess…”

She looked down at the frilly pink swimsuit, and could understand why Cinder might feel embarrassed to be wearing it. She also noticed that she was wearing a bulky leather jacket now.

“Ah, this coat… I…”

She looked around, trying to piece together her brief memories from before her escape, to remember whose coat this was. Bad enough she could barely remember the names of some of the girls!

Gina was happy to step in.

“Ah, yeah, that’s mine!” She said, raising her hand. “You’re lucky! Nick was so heroic, grabbing my jacket to cover Cinder when she was so embarrassed…”

Oh… he… he did that? Ella’s heart skipped a beat. It was such a romantic gesture, offering your coat to a woman… especially considering it was Cinder! If Nick could even be nice to Cinder, how wonderful of a man must he be?

She didn’t have time to contemplate those thoughts, though, because the hand Gina raised was her left one, exposing her sleeve of tattoos for everyone to see, especially Ella.

Suddenly, the shy girl was assaulted by a wave of images involving Gina and Nick in various sexual positions, taking massive pleasure in one another. They were all violent and sexually-aggressive, with Nick practically a rabid dog tearing into the punk girl with everything he had, and her loving every second of it.

Ella, who up until this point had absolutely zero sexual experience, was suddenly loaded up with a massive amount of it, and it nearly swallowed her completely. Her eyes spun in her head, and if it weren’t for Cinder’s refusal to come out, she might have switched again after just a few seconds!

“Gina! Cover your arm, are you crazy!?” Luckily, Dawn was there to jump between the two of them, and with her quick thinking she swiftly covered Ella’s eyes. That was enough to break the flow of images and give the trembling latina a brief respite, but everything she’d seen remained lodged in her brain regardless.

“Shit… sorry, I didn’t mean that…” Gina quickly pulled her arm behind her back, wishing she’d thought ahead and grabbed the arm sleeve before coming here for some extra insurance. But it was a pain in the ass to get that thing over her cuff, so she hadn’t bothered, and now they were paying for it.

Ella was still breathing hard, but she gently wrapped her fingers around Dawn’s wrist to pull her hand away.

“It… it’s fine,” she said, giving the other girl a shaky smile that definitely didn’t look fine. “I’m a little overwhelmed, yeah, but… I can deal. Don’t… don’t worry too much…”

Dawn winced. She really wasn’t sure how “fine” any of this was, but she didn’t want to be responsible for piling even more pressure on the poor woman, so she stepped back to give her some space.

“Are… are you sure you’re okay?” Morgana asked warily.

“Yeah, Ella, if this is too much for you, don’t feel like you have to do anything,” Nick agreed. He extended a hand to help her to her feet, and Ella was happy to take it.

Her heart skipped a beat.

So generous and considerate… almost like a prince!

In spite of her extensive psychological issues, Ella wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t going to break into some wild delusional fantasy like Morgana, or Rose, or Kim in her dreams of someday living in a society with a robust social safety net for the lower class. But Nick being sweet to her definitely made her feel sweet on him, even if she knew Cinder wouldn’t approve.

Her alter would throw up if she knew what she was feeling right now, but again, Ella refused to be constrained by Cinder.

…At the same time, though…

I should be more considerate of her wants and needs, too… but don’t I still have the right to wear what I want to wear?

In many ways, Ella felt like she was still in captivity. Only instead of her wicked stepfamily, it was Cinder’s demanding personality that she had to contend with. The fearsome girl wanted things her way, and even if she thought she had Ella’s best interests at heart…

Ella wanted to fall in love! She wanted to live some of the wonderful fantasies she’d only dreamt of in her horrible life. And Nick was her best chance of that.

If Cinder didn’t like it, well…

She snapped her rubber-band just to make sure she could keep Cinder away. “THWAP!”

It helped relax her, but at the same time, she saw the other girls tense up.

“…It… it’s fine,” she tried to reassure them, shaking her head. “I’m not going to get swept away again. Cinder… Cinder isn’t coming back for now. She’s too shy.”

The thought of that blustering girl being shy was rather strange. But Dani understood.

“I’ve had some problems with my temper myself,” she said gently, approaching Ella. “So I don’t blame either of you for what happened. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Dani had gone through similar experiences when she’d first come onto the show. And even though she’d begrudgingly gotten used to the fact that people would be checking her body out, it still wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

Ella sighed in relief and nodded. “Thanks for… understanding, I guess,” she mumbled, trying to put on a tough smile.

That really did make it better.

A loud clap got everyone’s attention.

“Okay. I know this was a pretty wild detour,” Vivian said, seizing control of the mood. She had a way of commanding everyone’s attention. “But let’s get this party started! It’s a beach bash! We can’t just stand around talking about serious stuff like this and have a good time!”

Nick nodded in approval to the boisterous heiress. It might have seemed like Vivian was being insensitive and ignoring Ella’s problem to bring the attention back to her and her party, but it seemed that just like him, she’d picked up on the fact that this was exactly what Ella wanted.

Indeed, the shy girl was incredibly grateful. With Vivian taking control of things, it allowed her to slink away into the background unnoticed. Which helped salve the pounding in her chest.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Dakota purred, twirling her cane in her hands as she approached Vivian. “In fact, I was thinking, for the first activity-”

“Oop, I’m gonna stop ya right there, chief!” Vivian held up her hand. “Now, I appreciate you coming out here with that bounty poster and helping us kick things off with a bang. But don’t forget, this is our party, and you’re just a guest! So I hope you don’t mind if I do things my own way?”

She winked at Dakota, and the host looked a little taken aback. Nick knew from experience how much his beloved friend liked to do things her way and stay in control, and he feared what her response would be to Vivian trying to take that from her.

But to his surprise, the golden-eyed girl just smirked, and nodded contemplatively.

“Well… alright then. I suppose it’s okay to let you have time to enjoy things on your own terms,” she acknowledged.

To Nick, that sounded a lot like a different way of saying “I’m gonna give you enough rope to hang yourself with” but he really hoped Dakota could be the bigger person for once in her life.

All common sense and past actions would suggest the opposite, but hey, a guy could dream, couldn’t he?

“Great! So does that mean you’re gonna take part?”

Dakota blinked.

“…Hm?”

“I was thinking, what’s the best way we could have a good time? There’s all sorts of fun activities we can do, yeah?”

Vivian walked over to one of the tables that had been set up by the stage. Nick noticed that a lot of decorating had been going on since the last time he’d been here, now that he wasn’t completely captivated by all the swimsuits of the beautiful women in his harem.

For one, a large grill had been set up, presumably for Mary and the other girls to cook a nice lunch for the group. Alongside that, there were tables and chairs with various activities set out, including a volleyball net, some fireworks, and even a boombox.

It looked like everything you’d need for a classic party, but the interesting thing he noticed was a closed box, like what you’d see at a raffle.

What would there even be to raffle off?

He looked over at Dakota, wondering if she had any notion of this, but the host seemed just as perplexed, even if it was hard to tell on her cold face. Only someone who knew her as well as Nick did would be able to tell clearly.

“First thing’s first!” Vivian said, picking up a large beach ball from the table. “Anyone for beach volleyball?”

“FWEEEE! Foul! No smashing the ball to pieces!” Nola blew her whistle and held up her arms in a big “X” shape. “Dani gets the ball now!”

The leprechaun was taking out her ire on being consigned to referee by being an absolute tyrant with her whistle. But it wasn’t like she didn’t have good reason to be so aggressive with her rulings and judgments.

The girls weren’t exactly playing a traditional game.

As the ball reformed itself, Dani picked it up, looking across the net at her lone foe with a smirk on her face.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin feigned a yawn, acting like she didn’t have a care in the world about Nola’s ruling.

“…Well, at least they’re having fun, right?” Holly laughed as she watched the two of them go at each other with the beach ball.

Dani had been really excited to play. And Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had just as much passion.

It took all of one round for the other girls to determine that they would just get in the way of these two, and leave things to them. Between Dani’s superhuman strength and the assassin’s skills, it was clear this wasn’t a fight for ordinary women.

“Uraah!” Dani swatted the ball from beneath with her fist, and launched it in an arc into the air. It soared high over the net, and looked set to land well out of bounds.

As if Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin would allow herself to get a point through such a pathetic situation! Not a chance!

She focused on her legs and leapt into the air, jumping higher than the net with the aid of her nanomachines. At that height, spiking the ball was a simple matter of course.

The rubber ball crashed down onto the island like the impact from a meteor, blowing sand in every direction as it punched a massive crater into the beach.

Dani was blown away. Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had the ball now!

Nola blew her whistle again, as the humming assassin cheerfully retrieved the ball, much to Dani’s amusement.

“Don’t think it’ll be that easy again!” She warned, brushing the sand from her swimsuit as she hopped to her feet.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin replied with an amused smirk and a roll of her eyes.

“That’s the spirit, Dani! You can do it!” Carly cheered her on.

“Yeah, go give it to her!” Marley nodded in agreement.

“Good effort out there!” Holly called. She had a bit of fondness for the silent girl, respecting her obsession with Nick, and so she was in the assassin’s corner for this one. And she wasn’t the only person, either!

“Be careful out there!” Dawn shouted. “Don’t get too rough, you might hurt yourself!”

Her pleas fell on deaf ears. “Careful” had gone out the window a while ago, for both girls.

“Well, while they’re off having a blast with each other, I was thinking of something else we could do that might be fun,” Vivian said, gathering some of the other girls up. Some wanted to do their own thing, so not everybody joined in.

Ella did, though, much to everyone’s surprise. Even though she could still use some time to decompress, she seemed determined to have a good time.

“For this next game… I was thinking Nick could be the judge!” Vivian teased, taunting the girls with the possibility.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s head snapped around, and she considered just giving Dani the win right now and going to take part.

In doing that, though, the beach ball smacked her in the face.

She slowly turned back to Dani, and glared at her. Oh, it was SO on!

“So here’s how this is gonna go,” Vivian said, counting up how many people they had. “Let’s see… we’ve got Gina, Kim, Sylvia, Amelia, Dakota, Ella, myself, of course, and… oh, Rose, were you going to join in, too?”

“Obviously,” Rose scoffed, placing her hands on her hips and smiling. “After all, a chance to go up against Mary and show what I’m made of? Couldn’t have it any other way!”

“I’m not taking part,” Mary informed her. “I’m preparing the burgers for lunch later.”

Rose’s jaw dropped.

“You can still join in, though!” Sylvia chirped. “It’ll be fun!”

She had no idea what kind of contest this would even be, but she trusted Vivian would come up with something good.

“I-I want to join in, too!” Morgana said. She’d wanted to go swimming, but it didn’t seem like anyone else was interested right now.

“Hmm…” Vivian looked around at the assembled girls and stroked her chin thoughtfully. “It would be better if we had an even number of people… nine’s not really enough…”

“I’ll sit out then!” Rose chirped, tossing her hand high into the air. She skipped over to Nick and hugged his arm between her breasts. “I’ll help Nick on the judging part, if that works!”

“Sure thing,” Vivian nodded.

Well… Rose did know how to be judgmental. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea, Nick had to admit. “Works for me,” he agreed.

“What… what kind of competition is it gonna be, though?” Ella asked warily. There wasn’t a lot she was good at.

Vivian smirked. “When it comes to the beach, there’s only one thing it could be!”

Gina paled, really hoping Vivian wasn’t going to suggest swimming.

But then, the heiress held up a bright plastic red shovel and a bucket.

“We’re going to be making sandcastles!” She declared.

Nick was surprised to hear that. It was certainly… novel.

“Sandcastles?” Amelia adjusted her glasses. “I suppose that does have a certain feel to it reminiscent of the beach.”

“I, um… I’ve never made a sandcastle before…” Ella admitted sheepishly, looking down. “I wouldn’t even know where to start…”

“Me neither,” Morgana said, shaking her head.

“A simple task,” Dakota said with a smirked, drumming her fingers on her cane. “Shall we begin?”

“Dakota, don’t use that thing,” Nick said, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t be fair to the others. Come on, you don’t need to cheat to win.”

Dakota glared at him. “I never cheat,” she spat, her golden eyes filled with venom.

Amelia cleared her throat, and the pale woman’s cheeks turned pink.

“…As the host, regardless of the past, I must remain fair and impartial in my judgments, as well as my actions,” Dakota declared, stowing her cane for the moment.

Sylvia giggled, and Dakota ignored her.

“Don’t worry guys, I get it,” Vivian said, shaking her head. “Some people haven’t ever done this before! But it’s cool. That’s why I was thinking, we’d draw lots!”

She picked up the box from the table and held it up.

“Lots?” Nick raised his eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I put these numbered slips in here,” Vivian said, digging her hand through the box and taking out a slip of paper. She held it up and unfolded it. “See here? Number 1! There’s another 1 in here, and whoever pulls that, they’ll be my partner! We’ll work together to make the best sandcastle we can in an hour, and when we’re done, Nick can be the judge!”

“An hour? Isn’t that pretty short?” Nick questioned.

“More time to enjoy to ourselves,” Rose hummed, tightening her grip on his arm.

Sylvia nodded pleasantly, enjoying the idea. “That sounds really fun, Vivian! Now, if only there was some way to make it sexy, we’d have a real good challenge idea on our hands!”

Dakota rolled her eyes.

Ella shook her head frantically. “Please… please don’t,” she pleaded.

“That’d be just what we needed, Vivian in charge,” Kim groaned.

Vivian just laughed. “Come on guys, line up! Let’s see what we’ve got to work with!”

The women all got in line to draw lots to determine the teams. Nick actually felt pretty good about this. Another friendly competition, and this one with even lower stakes than before! It sounded great.