Dream walking

Mark awoke to a rather heavy weight on top of him. What the heck? God, hard to breathe. “Flora, why are you on top of me, you’re crushing me. Please get off.” Flora was sound asleep, but purring and rubbing her body and especially her face against Mark’s chest. “Flora, get off of me.” Mark tried to get her off of him but his hands and arms were also trapped beneath her so he had trouble getting leverage. Damnit, how is she asleep? Sorry Flora I need you off me. Mark bit her ear not too hard but he hoped hard enough that she would wake up. Which she did.

“OW! What the fuck! Mark, did you bite my ear?” she said as she jolted awake and upright.

“Yes, I was having trouble breathing since I had something like a hundred pounds of Flora on my chest, and you weren’t waking up.”

Flora’s anger at being bitten vanished as was replaced with embarrassment. “Oh. Umm, sorry?”

“It’s fine. Well mostly fine, I don’t blame you. It was really clear you were asleep. Do you sleepwalk or something, because you were moving around? And I don’t want that happening again.”

“I don’t sleep walk, at least not that I know of and no one else here has mentioned it. But did you really have to bite me?”

“Well, my alternatives given the position were, headbutting you, or doing something in your crotch area with my hands since they were pinned there. I figured that was the least bad option. Plus remember I was having trouble breathing, so I panicked a bit. I’m sorry if you ear hurts”

“It really does, well at least you didn’t cause any bleeding.”

“Let me get you some ice. And really I’m sorry.” Mark went to the kitchenette to get her some ice and wrapped it in a damp cloth.

“No, I get it. I would panic too.” Taking the ice from Mark as he came back and putting it on her ear.

“Are you sure you never sleep walked before? Because you were definitely moving but not responding to me.”

“Mark, I lived alone mostly. Occasionally there would be a fellow ranger who would bunk at the same station as me, but no one has ever told me that I’ve done something like this before.”

“Okay, let me check with Cassandra. Cassandra. CA-SSAN-DRA.” Mark just waited for her to appear.

Flora looked at him confused. “Why not just call her on your phone?”

“Two reasons. First, I’m not sure if this has made it through the grapevine or not. I really do have bad phone anxiety even with the meds I was taking, it was still pretty bad. Second, this is funnier.”

“Would you just like me to call her?”

“No, I think I’ll just file an ADA complaint directly with the producers.”

~POP~

“Fine, I’m here okay.” Cassandra pouted. “What did you want? Oh right Flora. Yes she sleepwalks, has for years in fact. Is that really all you called me here for?”

“No actually, I want an answer to my question from yesterday.”

“Pretty sure I answered. You just wouldn’t believe me.”

“Not that one. What is it going to cost?”

“What, is what, going to cost?” Flora asked in confusion.

Cassandra also looked confused for a moment, then realized. “Oh that. They aren’t for sale.”

That upset Mark a lot. “Cassandra, I want those favors. I want them cleared.”

“Too bad. I’m keeping them. I am The Host. You don’t get to order me around, I am not part of your Harem. If you have something else you want to ask then do so but otherwise I’m leaving.” Seeing Mark had nothing but contempt for her at the moment, she left.

~Pop~

“Hey, Mark?” Mark turned towards Flora and his expression softened. “You’re not planning anything rash are you? It… your expression. It sort of looked like, when you came to the tower to help Ellen, Aubrey and I. Like when you told me you were going to punish me.”

“No, I’d like to do something but anything meaningful I could do to her would end up causing more harm than good.”

“That was about Laura’s favors right?”

“Yes, it was. I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Okay, Mark.” Flora’s expression was one of concern. “If you change your mind let me know. Because you don’t have to handle everything alone.” Flora wrapped him in a tight hug. “You may officially be in charge of the harem, but you aren’t the only one who wants things to go well. It’s okay to ask us for support.”

“Thanks Flora. I know I’m not alone, but it is nice to be told that on occasion. Now we should address the other issue, you sleepwalking.”

“I mean it is a little odd to learn that but I don’t see the big deal?”

“Flora, nothing happened this time which is good. But this could have been really bad for you.”

“How so?”

“When you woke up, what if you had tried to defend yourself, thinking I meant you real harm. You have claws now, what if you had really gone at me with them? You could seriously injure someone. Remember what happened to Sam for attacking Cassandra? In order of things not to do on the show it's: physically attack The Master, The Host, another Contestant. Cassandra would probably let anything she can slide but her producer is clearly a prick, and wants to make people suffer. I doubt she could let you raking your claws on me or another go unpunished, even if it wasn’t completely intentional.”

“I mean you bit me though, rather hard too? Isn’t that a problem?”

“I’m given more leeway, towards you than the reverse. Like I could bend any of you over my knee and spank you even hard and that wouldn’t get me punished. Also I do actually want to nibble on your ears, in a playful manner, so that could simply be ‘I got too rough’, as far as Cassandra is concerned. You causing, big gaping wounds on my face or chest, where I need medical attention, that is likely too far for Cassandra to excuse. So we need to figure something out, because of that, but also you could just harm yourself, accidentally. I’ve heard of sleepwalkers doing all sorts of things. You were staying in the tower, what if you put on some of the bondage gear while asleep? What if tonight while staying in the Sugar Garden you end up using the hookah there?”

“Shit.” Flora looked down at her fingers extending and retracting her claws. “Well I definitely need to file these down then, but you’re right all of those would be rather problematic. But what can we do? I have no idea how to deal with something like this.”

“I don’t know to be honest. The only thing I can immediately think of to someone to restrain you before bed. And by someone I mean Sam, because you are guaranteed not to suffer harm from it if she ties you up with her boon. I’m sure there are actual treatments too, but I don’t know what they are.”

“I really don’t like that idea. I like the idea of getting a punishment TF less, but I’m going to look into a solution. Actually, that reminds me of something, I think it could help here, and I know Ellen would like it and Laura had talked about it for some reason too. We should get Ellen, The Master’s Library. Apparently it actually exists already, as something we can use but is expensive, if you get it for Ellen, she can decide the permissions for it. It has every book ever from our world so it is sure to have stuff about sleepwalking. Plus…” Flora trailed off.

“Plus?”

“Well it says that it had books about us, and you, but more importantly the show.”

“Sure, but it also sounds like those are deliberately going to be hard to find.”

“Right, sure. But… well what if one of those books has information on how… on how an elimination transformation could be undone? Like that’s a part of the show right, even if rare?”

Mark grabbed Flora’s face and kissed her causing her to blush at the sudden affection. “Flora, you are a genius.” Mark pulled out his phone, and to look at how much it would cost. “Hmm, Okay we need to talk with the others.”

Mark (To Harem Group Chat (HGC)): Hey I don’t know what everyone was planning to do for breakfast but I would like to have a talk with everyone today, so could we meet up at the cottage?

Sam (To HGC): I talked with everyone yesterday, I thought you wanted individual chats?

Laura (To HGC): Merida and I don’t mind making breakfast for everyone, if you want.

Mark (To HGC): Thanks, Laura. The talk isn’t about that, Sam. Though come to think of it, it would be a good idea to talk about that too. While I would like everyone there, Sam Aubrey, and Ellen you three need to be present. Nothing bad. Flora just came up with a brilliant idea. I’m getting changed now. I hope to see everyone there soon.

“Okay let’s get changed, and head to the cottage.” Mark was rushing to get changed and then realized he should probably bring Freya along too.

Mark (To Freya): Meet me out in front of the palace with Hilde in say 5 minutes. I’ll explain soon.

Mark didn’t bother to wait to see if he got a response. Flora grabbed him by the arm. “Mark, I’m glad you're excited and optimistic about this, but slow down. This isn’t going to be resolved any time soon. Even if the answer exists in the library, finding it will take time. Then it might take even more time from there, to implement the solution. So slow down. Take a breath. Your shirt is on inside out, your fly is down and your shoes are untied.”

Mark, noticing the state of his clothes, was a little embarrassed. “Thanks Flora, you’re right.” Mark took a few deep breaths to calm down and then fixed his clothes. “There, do I look presentable now?”

“Much better, now shall we?” So the two of them left the suite, and found Freya and Hilde waiting there for them.

“Mark, may I ask what is so urgent?” Freya asked, a bit concerned. Hilde was avoiding eye contact with Mark.

“We’re heading to the cottage, Flora came up with an idea. I think both of you need to be there when we explain it.”

“I’m not sure that I really want to get involved in anything more right now.” Hilde said a little sourly.

“Hilde, I’m upset with you. Flora’s idea isn’t the only reason I want this meeting. It is also to address how most of you have been disrespecting my boundaries. So you will be present. So let’s get going.” Mark Climbed into the carriage not waiting for a response quickly followed by Flora and Freya. Hilde just sighed and moved to the front and started to drive the carriage to the cottage.

“Mark? Could you explain what the idea is? And why are you so excited?” Freya asked as the carriage sped along.

“I would rather not explain repeatedly, but Flora came up with something that might be able to help your sister.” Freya’s eyebrows rose at that. “Again I’m going to explain at the cottage because I’ll need the others’ help for this.” Mark could see Hilde just shaking her head at his words. They arrived at the cottage a few minutes later to find everyone waiting outside except for Laura and Merida.

Chloe grumpily asked with sleep in her eyes, “Okay, Mark, it’s barely past the crack of dawn and you send a message for a group meeting and then ignore all the messages asking for more explanation.” Mark looked at his phone and noticed he did have quite a few unread messages.

“Sorry about that.” Mark rubbed the back of his neck.

“He was too busy stumbling around getting dressed in a hurry to bother to check his phone.” Flora explained with a bit of amusement.

Laura and Merida came out with large stacks of bacon, scrambled eggs, and pancakes, for everyone. “We would have made something nicer but wanted something fast since it seemed like you were in a rush not answering any messages.” Laura said, gesturing at the food.

“It’s fine Laura, it looks and smells great.” Both Laura and Merida felt a jolt of pleasure at Mark’s complement. “Let’s grab some food, I’d like to deal with the serious topics first and then end with Flora’s idea to end on a far more positive note.”

So after everyone sat down and grabbed some food, including Freya and begrudgingly Hilde, Mark started to speak again after a few quick bites. “Okay, so first. I’m glad that Sam was able to talk to everyone, so this isn’t some surprise and I do want to have individual conversations as well. Generally to some degree most of the people at this table haven’t been treating me with respect, I’ve been insulted and berated until I went along with things. That is going to stop. I will say I have also screwed up in this regard towards some of you. I am sorry about that, and I am going to try to do better.”

“Now that brings me to the second topic, I had asked Laura to talk with everyone about what we can do if I think one of you did something to someone else that crossed a serious line. I want to make this clear that this is not going to apply retroactively. We are leaving anything that happened in the past alone and starting fresh. We don’t have a completely neutral arbitrator and I can’t accept a voting situation amongst you as a viable option. I’m going to take the solution that Laura was able to come up with, after talking with all of you until such a time that someone can suggest something better. So I’ll make sure to talk to as many of you as I can and wait a day so I don’t make any rash decisions. Now that is for if you do something to each other. If you decide to cross my boundaries that is another story. As I said that is going to stop. I want to have good relationships with all of you but that requires each of you respecting my boundaries, and me respecting yours. If you decide that you don’t want to respect my boundaries I’m not going to put in the effort to try and have a positive relationship with you. Does anyone have any general questions that would be applicable to everyone here?”

Chloe raised her hand to indicate she had a question but was chewing. “So, that sounds essentially reasonable but I would like a clarification on something. If we upset you, are you planning on actually punishing us? Because it sort of sounds like that was the case.”

“If you mean am I going to, physically punish you, or spend BP to do something to you, then no. I’m not going to be doing anything like that. If you mean am I not going to be physically intimate with you, which might impact your performance in the show then yes. I don’t know how a resolution to a particular problem might look but I’m not going to **** anything on anyone. I also won’t let anyone get eliminated, but that is as far as I’m willing to go for someone who isn’t willing to respect my boundaries. I don’t owe any of you sexual intimacy because of the show. I’m sure everyone here would have a problem if I thought I could simply expect something like that from any of you. Remember, I’m also here unwillingly. I’m not responsible for all of you being here. I intend to talk with each of you about things that I think need to change in our relationship, and I want everyone to think about what their own boundaries are too, because I do want to respect them.”

Chloe sighed, “I guess that is about as good a response as I could hope for. Thank you, Mark.”

Mark ate some more to see if anyone else wanted to bring something up before continuing to the next topic. After a few minutes of no one speaking up he went ahead. “Okay, last thing I wanted to talk about. I think we need to get Ellen The Master’s Library. It is significantly more expensive for one of you to buy a Boon than a standard TF.”

"Couldnae ye just buy it? Ye've got a fair bit mair BP than we dae." Merida asked through a mouthful of food.

“My store works differently. Remember? I can buy it for Ellen, but the option to do so isn't cheap. It is significantly negative, meaning I would have to buy Ellen a bunch of other things to offset it. There is actually a third option which is stupidly expensive, meaning all of you would have to gain a lot of BP for me to afford it.

Laura spoke up, “Okay two questions, not that I don’t want you to get her the library mind you, but why do we need it and are you asking us to actively stockpile BP because that also means we will need to spend more or you will. I learned yesterday that there is a limit on us purchasing consumables per round, probably for exactly this reason.”

“How did you learn that?” Talia inquired

Laura looked away but realized she couldn’t really get away with not answering. “I might have… hit the limit. When collecting stuff for my date night tomorrow. Specifically the limit is on how many consumables you have bought and not used. Slevia may have mentioned there was an actual higher total limit as well but we shouldn’t hit it unless we are really abusing the system.”

“Well that is one option and that is why I wanted everyone here to get their opinions on the best course of action. The prices are either 8000 BP for Ellen to buy it herself, as that is apparently just the cost of a missed boon in your personal stores. The prices in my store are -12000 BP or 48000 BP, like I said stupidly expensive, for some reason. As for why we need it, well Flora thought of something, when we were discussing an unrelated topic. See, the Library contains books on all of us, but also contains books about the show. Flora thought one of the books about the show might contain information about how to reverse, or at least mitigate an elimination transformation after the fact, without breaking the rules.”

This got the others excited even Freya, but not Hilde she spoke up rather condescendingly “Really, Mark. You think we haven’t read the rulebook? That Cassandra hasn’t? If there was something in the rules we would have already found it.” This took the enthusiasm out of most of the group.

Mark took a deep breath not wanting to lash out at her right now. “Hilde, which rulebook?”

“The one for the show of course.”

“Right but which rulebook for the show? I’m sure there have been revisions. Also I doubt that the rulebook given to Contestants is the same rule book given to Hosts or… To Producers. Are you saying you read a The Host’s copy or a Producer’s copy of the rules and what they can and can’t do? And as for Cassandra, she is a Host, what she can and can’t do is limited by the rules. Maybe she does know of a way to help Astrid, but can neither tell us, nor do anything about it.”

Hilde sat in silence at that, just thinking. Freya answered those questions for her, “We only ever have read the copies provided to Contestants and The Master. Personally, and Hilde knows this, I’ve thought that Cassandra knows that it is possible to help Astrid, but she can’t. Which is why she, unlike some people,” Freya glared at her sister, “has never discouraged me from continuing to look for ways to help Astrid.”

This perked people back up, Aubrey chimed in, “So you want to buy the library, and want us to all search it, hoping that these books are in there somewhere. I really like the idea, but is it even practical? Every book ever written is a lot, especially if the definition of book is rather loose.”

“Honestly, I don’t know but I think it is a solid lead worth pursuing.” Mark responded. “Moreover, if I’m right it would be something within the rules. Meaning that the Producers aren’t going to come swoop in and reverse what we did. Which is a possibility if we go outside of the rules.”

“Okay, I mean I’d happily help search the library on occasion.” Allie said, “But I don’t think I want to try to help you get that much BP even with the polls and everything else that is still essentially the equivalent of asking each of us to spend a lot of BP and I feel like Cassandra will take measures if we start trying to **** the system to much. We would probably need to at least upgrade a TF per person on average. That is… a lot to ask of us. Even if we go with temporary purchases it’s still a lot.”

“I know, which is why I would prefer not to do that.” Mark said “But that would put everything on Ellen, since you can’t transfer BP.”

“I’m okay with that.” Ellen said.

“Really?” Multiple people exclaimed simultaneously.

“Yea, I mean I would need someone to do the math to figure out exactly what the sizes I would need to go to are but unless there is a cap, I’m pretty sure if I simply increase my bust and butt sizes, I can get to the 8000 BP especially if I do well in the popularity polls.”

“So far, you gained 100, 200, 300 BP For the first second and third bust or butt size increase done at once, by my recollection” Talia offered. “So if there is no hard cap on the gain you can get nor a cap on the increasing amount you would need to go up ten bust or butt sizes all at once, at least that is with what you currently have in BP. Wait actually that was before the halving of BP so around fifteen cup sizes again all at once.”

“Will she even be able to walk around with tits that big?” Merida glanced at Ellen’s already huge cleavage.

“That also assumes there isn’t a cap on how much she can get per increase or in total per week. I bet there is at least a cap on how much she gets per increase.” Chloe said, “Otherwise it would be rather ridiculous how much more BP she could get than the rest of us.”

“Well, we aren’t finding out right now.” Ellen said. “I don’t mind trying it but I don’t want tits that size before my date tonight.”

“Also, for unrelated reasons I had wanted access to it.” Laura said, “Cassandra mentioned that if it became Ellen’s it would be her private library and she could charge us for access. So I think it would be reasonable if she wanted us to help reimburse her for the cost. Since I think we all want to help with this project. Maybe we each give her like 500 BP so we cover half of it and we are allowed to go in and look through the books freely or something. We can work out the exact details later but I think that is reasonable.” To which most people nodded along.

“Well, I just want to say. Thank you.” Freya beamed. “Seriously, thank you all for caring.” She then lightly kicked Hilde under the table.

“Uh… yeah, thanks from me as well.” Hilde’s expression was still one of contemplation.”

“Alright, sounds like a plan. Now, can I get some more pancakes, the blueberry ones please, they're really good.” Mark said, causing both Merida and Laura to squirm in delight in their seats a little. “Ellen, would you like to immediately start your date with me after finishing this wonderful breakfast,” more squirming and a slight gasp escaped Merida’s lips “or wait until later?”

“Let’s do it immediately or rather give me fifteen minutes. This school uniform isn’t what I want to be wearing on the date. I feel like we haven’t had any chance to interact really and I know you the least out of everyone here, so I'd like to spend as much time as possible with you today. Oh and Mark? I don’t know if you were doing it on purpose but I think you should either stop complimenting the food, or be nice and really lay it on thick, to give these two an end to their frustration.” Ellen said pointing at Merida and Laura.

“Uh, Sorry you two. I totally forgot about that… Do you two have a preference?

Merida said. “Stop.”

Right as Laura said, “Keep going.” Causing Merida to glare at her. “Or… I guess you could stop. Wait… darn no Merida helped with those too. I’ll have to remember to make a few things solely by myself in the future. That way you can indulge me.”

“Okay, well I’m going to go change. Be back soon.” Ellen got up and Mark was pretty sure she was skipping towards the portal.

“That probably leaves me enough time to talk to Aubrey and Sam. Flora and found potential fixes for you two. To deal with the trouble that your TFs are causing.” Mark said looking at both of them in turn.

“You should add Ellen’s Waist Training to that list.” Allie and Sam said at the same time.

“Okay… Why?”

“Well…” Allie began, “I made sure she had a corset under that outfit this morning. But, well, remember the **** outfit?”

“Yes, I do. Kind of hard to forget that.”

“Well do you remember her wearing a corset with it? Or the cowgirl outfit? And Freya, did you put one on her with the butler outfit?”

“I did not.” Freya responded.

“So she hasn’t been wearing one since, what? The first day?”

“Give or take…” Allie said. “I’ve been making sure she has been since the day after the party though.”

“Crap… That’s not good. Wait…” Mark stared at Allie in thought. “That means when you and she—”

“Mark.” Sam interrupted. “Sorry about cutting you off, but I thought it important you know before going down that line of thought. Allie and I already thoroughly questioned Ellen about that. Both with and without a corset on. I literally couldn’t tie the corset tighter when we asked. She wasn’t upset at all.” And said some things that I shouldn’t repeat in front of everyone. “So please don’t be upset with Allie, no one noticed, not even you, that this was a problem.”

“You’re right. Thanks Sam. Sorry Allie.”

“No you’re fine Mark,” Allie shook her head. “I panicked about that as well, when Sam pointed it out. Like Sam said, we questioned her extensively.”

Mark breathed out a sigh of relief. “Good, Okay Sam, Aubrey, can we talk over there?” Gesturing at a bench swing on a tree away from the cottage. They both nodded and got up and followed Mark over. Mark went ahead and sat down on the swing and Sam and Aubrey sat down on either side of him. “Do either of you mind the other being here for the conversation?”

“I don’t if Aubrey doesn’t mind.” Sam looked at the other woman, who just shook her head.

“I’m good too.”

“Okay well Aubrey, I found two options for you. One would put a cap on the desire for more kids, but doesn’t say what that cap is. The trade off is that your fertility would also increase to some point as well. It specifically mentioned that having more than one kid at a time would become far more likely.”

“Hmm, I mean that is definitely better. We can take precautions. What’s the other option?”

“First just to clarify something while I could wear a condom nothing would work on you, and I could see your ideal penis for me might be one that would regularly tear a condom. If not right now eventually. So just consider that. The second option somewhat shifts your desire around a bit. Instead of simply producing my children, it would increase your desire to raise them.”

“Oh well, that sounds perfect!” Aubrey exclaimed.

“Does it?” Sam asked, looking over at Aubrey. “Because I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you giving her that one Mark.”

“Sam, why not? That’s perfect.” Aubrey huffed in confusion.

“Well…” Mark began. “I get Sam’s point which is actually why I wanted someone here because I wanted a second opinion before even bringing it up with everyone, and I wouldn’t get it without everyone’s approval Aubrey.”

“Why not? What am I missing?”

“It would increase your desire to raise MY kids, not OUR kids Aubrey. Meaning you would want to raise all of my kids.”

“OH! I… I see. Yeah, I could see how the others might have an issue with that.”

“I’m not saying we need to do either, right now but that is what Flora and I could find in a day of searching.”

“Don’t worry Aubrey, I’ll help look through the store too.” Sam smiled at her. “Maybe we can find something better. It isn’t like we have to resolve it this round.”

“Sam, thank you but you don’t need to spend your time doing that.” Aubrey smiled back.

“Actually, I kind of do.” Sam grimaced. “But I would have been okay helping anyway.”

“Crap. What got added this time Sam?” Mark put one hand over his face.

“I’m going to be really good at solving your problems in the future.” Mark sighed at Sam’s response.

“This is because I asked for your help yesterday isn’t it?”

“Yes, at least partially.”

“Okay well your issue actually does need to be resolved ASAP. We found two options. Neither are great but they are better than the status quo. The first makes it so I can see the list of things you feel the need to perfect, and can move some to an inactive list but at least five must remain active. You’ll also feel an increased motivation to work on your active list for every option in the inactive list. The second is to make it so anything that is added to the list is something you or I actually feel like you didn’t do a good job at or that one of us actively wants you to improve on instead of anything that is less than perfect.”

“Wait, you or I? Not just me?”

“Yep, like I said neither are great but I think the difference between anything either of us feels like you didn’t do well at, instead of anything you believe that there is room for improvement is better. Also not that I intend to do this Sam, I can probably add something to your list now, by accident if I critique something you do. Also neither of these options would remove anything currently on your list. At least permanently.”

“Well of the two I like the first one a bit more. I do agree the second is better than the current situation though. But I don’t know how I feel about giving you that much control over what I need to work on. I have an idea, I’d like to try. Aubrey I think you should do this for your problem too, but if you had something else in mind that’s fine.”

“What’s your idea?” Mark and Aubrey asked at the same time.

“Mark, I want you to give my Practice Makes Perfect a boost. That might just resolve the problem.”

Mark felt a compulsion from the game to give out the offered reward. “Alright, LET’S GIVE IT A BOOST!” Mark said in a deep voice extending one arm directly towards Sam’s chest. “Cassandra, I want you to know, I hate you so much right now. There is absolutely no way I would have had to do that on the first day.” The other two just laughed at the ridiculousness of it.

“I’m sorry Mark but let’s be fair if any of us had to do that you would also find it humorous.” Sam chortle.

“Yeah, you’re right. So let’s see what the effect was.”

Practice makes perfect: Samantha has a perfectionist streak, now that compulsion will be reinforced in all things. When she feels like she didn’t get things just right she will be compelled to try and try again until she gets it right. [Discipline] Upgrade: Samantha will now internalize anything Mark gives as constructive feedback to improve upon. Boosted 1/3: Perfection is an ideal never to be realized but always worked towards. Samantha, will find that she can determine what is lacking with prior performances and will find her speed of improvement to be faster. While her abilities can deteriorate with time as long as they remain above a certain level of excellence set by both hers and Mark’s subconscious she will no longer feel a compulsion to improve upon them.

“Well that is useful.” Sam said. “I mean I’m going to want that permanently for sure. I can already feel like half of the list isn’t affecting me at all anymore. But it doesn’t stop the issue of adding things to the list. I wonder how this would work with the first option you found, like what if you have something on the active list and I’m above the threshold?”

“I can take an educated guess. I would bet that it wouldn’t count for either the active or inactive list if you are above the threshold. Sort of like a third list would be made, like a dormant list. So I couldn’t leave you with five options you are excellent at but not perfect, but they also wouldn’t increase your desire to perfect the active list. Alternatively, them being on the active list would override the effect listed here, to some extent.”

“Well I’m going to try this out today and again Aubrey I think you should have Mark boost your TF, see what happens.”

“I don’t know… I was sort of considering Mark using it on Chloe.”

“Really why?” Mark asked.

“Well, if Chloe and I both had you boost her Fairy Godmother TF again it would permanently be better. I’m pretty sure that is what Chloe is going to ask for you to use it on, at least. Even if it doesn’t immediately get her anything.”

“Okay that’s smart.” Sam replied. “But I think you should still use it on you, not your girlfriend. That is a nice gift you want to give her but you have an actual problem that needs fixing.”

Aubrey thought about it for a moment. “Okay, fine do it Mark. It’s only for a day, so just don’t have sex with me today okay?”

Mark felt the compulsion again and shouted “LET’S GIVE IT A BOOST! Fucking damnit, Cassandra!” Mark could almost hear her giggling hysterically at him.

Nobody Like Mom: Aubrey loves kids, teaching them, playing with them, pinching their adorable cheeks, you name it. The only problem is that no one takes care of a child like a mother does and Aubrey now will want this too. Aubrey will gain an ever growing urge to have children of her own with Mark and this urge will grow while she is not pregnant. [Child-Care] Boosted 1/3: The urge will now slightly decrease while pregnant based upon the number of children she is pregnant with but she will be more fertile and she will be fertile for longer and later in life. In addition, successfully convincing another person they should give Mark another child will also decrease the desire to get pregnant again when they become pregnant.

“Okay… so not helpful now…” Aubrey complained. “But that is much better. I just have to convince everyone that they should have one or more kids with you, it should allow us to keep the total number of kids you end up with under forty.”

“Forty!?” Mark spluttered.

“Well yeah. I mean… Look Mark, I was always going to want more than two or three kids. Like in my ideal world it was like five kids, maybe six or seven. I always want to have quite a few. It is why I didn’t mind the TF at all. You have nine women right now. It isn’t unreasonable that they would want a kid or two from you. So let’s go with the average of two and a half kids per person, and we get twenty-two right there. Maybe Laura won’t want kids but I think that the rest of us would at least consider it.”

“I know I would like to have children with you someday, Mark.” Sam joined in.

“Right so you just need one or two of us to skew higher than the average by a bit and you could easily exceed thirty. If we don’t do anything about my TF I find it hard to believe you aren’t getting at least a baker’s dozen out of me, if not more. Unless you want a very cranky Aubrey on your hands. So yea under forty, seems like a reasonable goal to shoot for to me. It actually might be a little low.”

Mark reeled at that figure. “I mean I realized it was going to likely be a lot, I actually made Talia wealthy for exactly that reason. But that is still about double what I was thinking I would end up with from this situation.”

“Well, I hope you don’t think that I’m okay with simply relying on another woman to provide financially for our kids.” Aubrey said. “I get the situation will be complicated but I want us to provide for them, Mark.”

“Fair enough, honestly a problem for future us to worry about let’s worry about the show and making sure your TF doesn’t get out of hand. Would you both agree that both of your TF boosts should become permanent eventually?

“For sure as long as Aubrey is okay with her having increased fertility.”

“I’m fine with that. So if you don’t have anything else to boost just use them on us at the end of a round.” Aubrey agreed with Sam. “You should probably do Sam’s first though. Since mine is very much an issue after the show ends but not a problem right now. Well looks like Ellen got back, you should go spend the day with her.”

Sam squinted across the clearing, then said in confusion, “What in the hell is she wearing?”