Would they like what they saw?

Kim and Gina were an unusual pair. They’d been roommates the entire round, which was almost over; they’d had plenty of time to get to know one another, and yet you rarely saw them together. Mainly because Kim was a very hard worker and Gina was a bit of a slacker (but she was getting better!) and they didn’t have a lot of intersecting hobbies.

It didn’t help either that Kim wasn’t old enough to drink yet.

In short, it was quite unusual to see the two of them together like this. They’d actually gone to the Banquet Hall and ate dinner together, and had a pretty decent time.

The well of conversation topics was starting to run a little dry, though.

“You know, if you’ve got such an aversion to washing your clothes, you could always buy new ones,” Kim joked, ever the saleswoman. “You’ve got tons of BP you’re just sitting on, you know.”

“So do you!” Gina laughed. “But you raise a good point. What hours are you working tomorrow? I’ll be sure to go check out the place after your shift ends.”

Kim stuck out her tongue, and the two girls shared a laugh.

“…Hey, I didn’t see your stalker around tonight,” Gina said after an awkward pause, trying to keep the conversation going. The loud girl was allergic to quiet. “What’s she been up to? She was kind of poking around for you all day yesterday.”

Kim blinked. “Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin? Yeah, you’re right, she wasn’t at dinner, was she? …And don’t call her a stalker, we’re just friends.”

“Sorry, just playing around,” Gina said, holding up her hands in surrender. “But the way she jumped on you this morning, I don’t know…”

Gina had been an unfortunate casualty of Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s quest to reunite with Kim. Collateral damage. More specifically, she had been the one to answer the door that morning, and in doing so had placed herself between the assassin and her target.

Never a good move when dealing with someone of Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s experience. Gina had woken up with hangovers that were easier to get through.

Kim shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since she went off to do her lessons,” she said. “It’s hard to tell with her. She’s so quiet, she’ll sneak up on you when you least expect it.”

And just like that, a pair of arms shot out around Kim’s waist, and pulled her into a hug from behind. The tomboy let out a startled gasp and started flailing in confusion as Gina stumbled to the side. The punk girl swung her head around in surprise and when she saw who it was she stifled a laugh.

No, it wasn’t a certain assassin notorious for disregarding people’s boundaries. It was someone else who suffered from a similar affliction.

“Kimmmmikoo! Heeeeeyy!”

Gina recognized the telltale signs of intoxication from the scantily-dressed heiress, although with the familiar scent of **** in the air, she didn’t really need to. She held back an amused smile as Kim struggled furiously against Vivian’s iron grip, but surprisingly, it seemed like the model could actually rival Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin herself in that regard.

“Vivian!” Kim’s face burned with frustration. “The hell are you doing?! Let me go! …And I told you not to call me that!”

“No!” Vivian said, letting go of the other woman in spite of her statement. She clarified her meaning a second later, “You said you didn’t want me calling you ‘Kimmy’! Not that I couldn’t call you Kimiko! That’s your name, right?”

Kim glared at her. Technically Vivian may have been right, but… “…How about you just don’t call me anything? Or, like, talk to me.”

Normally Kim wasn’t one to be in this foul of a mood, but Vivian annoyed her even when sober. Intoxicated like this? Forget it.

“Sorry,” Vivian said, hiccupping slightly. She scratched her hair sheepishly while wobbling back and forth a little. “I was just… trying to, um… break the ice? I think?”

Kim scowled. “How am I supposed to know?” She grunted at her.

Gina raised her eyebrow. It had been a while since she saw someone this drunk without her being involved. “…You good there?” She asked. “Need to sit down or something?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine! I’m fine…” Vivian repeated a couple times, shaking her head rapidly. She had to stop after a few seconds because the movement was making her dizzy. “…Sorry. Dani… Dani and I… Dani and I were…”

She squinted off into the distance and Kim rolled her eyes.

“Sorry about that! She got away from me!”

Dani’s voice echoed across the lounge and the tomboy jogged up, fanning her flushed face with a hand that Kim noted was devoid of feathers. Her skin was glowing and she had a blissful, if sheepish smile on her face, and a dazed look in her eyes not unlike Vivian’s. Was she drunk, too?

“You been drinking tonight, ma’am?” Gina did her best impression of a cop, before doubling over in a fit of laughter. Vivian joined in, not really getting the joke but wanting to feel included.

“No, I haven’t,” Dani said, yanking Vivian back and helping her over to a couch to sit down. “Just, got back from the spa, Vivian and I… we spent the day chilling out and relaxing.”

“Oh, right!” Gina nodded. “Your boon you won. From my slumber party.”

Dani nodded back. “I invited Vivian, and we had a good time together. Little did I know how much she’d been drinking on the side…”

“**** and hot springs? Sounds like an awful idea,” Kim said, clicking her tongue. She couldn’t believe Dani had actually invited Vivian with her, either. That didn’t sound like any fun at all! “If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought Dakota was lying about the whole ‘no side-effects thing’ judging by how she’s acting.”

Vivian giggled again and fanned her flushed face, parting her collar to help herself breathe a little.

“You shoulda come, Kim! It was a lot of fun.”

Kim raised her eyebrow. “You and me, in the sauna? After last time? Yeah, how about in ‘never gonna happen’ land?”

“What’s this, now?” Gina’s ears picked up on something that sounded really exciting. “You two, in the sauna? Well, well, well…”

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Kim snapped at her roommate. “Nothing happened. Like I would ever…”

She rolled her eyes and scoffed at the ridiculousness of that possibility.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Dani said, trying to play mediator. “We actually had a lot of fun. We got massages, did some mud baths, and hey, look, I even got a manicure!” She held up her neatly-filed fingers for Kim’s perusal. “My hands have never looked this nice before!”

Dani had been a nail-chewer since way back. The faeries had done what they could, and to be honest, her fingers did look pretty nice.

Not that Kim cared about stuff like that. More than anything, she was surprised that Dani did.

“What?” Dani looked at Kim and frowned. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Kim shook her head, not sure what to say. “Sorry, it’s just… I didn’t know you were such a girl!” She meant it as a good-natured jab, but Dani looked uncomfortable. “…Oh, I, uh, I didn’t mean, I just… that came out wrong…” Kim hastily tried to correct herself.

Vivian snickered from the couch. “Now you know how I feel,” she teased.

Kim ignored her.

Dani reached up to scratch her head, only to stop herself, remembering the manicure. She settled for playing with a lock of her hair instead. “I mean… I’ll admit, this definitely has never been my thing,” she conceded. “The closest I’ve ever gotten to polishing my nails was when I used to get paint on my fingers.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, they were offering, and it felt nice. What’s the harm?”

Dani took another look at her fingers. They actually looked pretty.

Dani wasn’t used to looking pretty.

Kim bit her lip. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it,” she gently assured the other girl, shaking her head. “I actually think it looks great! I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

A small smile spread across her face. “Usually, people think of you as, like, this tough girl who hates girly stuff, I guess. So seeing this side of you, it’s kinda amazing.”

Dani blushed. “Well… I guess you’re not wrong there,” she conceded. Like she’d just admitted, she’d never been the kind of girl to care about doing her nails or getting her hair blown out or anything like that.

“I think it’s nice, you being so girly,” Kim continued. “As long as you’re happy with it!”

“…I guess I am,” Dani said, after a moment of thought. Now that she was out of the spa and back in the land of semi-sanity, it was like her thoughts were clearing. “I mean, kind of a waste though, I will say. I’m just gonna mess ‘em up tomorrow during weight lifting.”

Kim laughed. “That is an inconvenience, I bet.” Same reason Kim never bothered with stuff like that. “Looking pretty” wasn’t high on her list of priorities. Money that could have been spent on a manicure that would be ruined after a hard day’s work could be spent on food and necessities. “I don’t think I would have bothered, myself. Not much for manicures.”

“I don’t care about stuff like that, either,” Gina said, wiping her greasy bangs out of her eyes.

A shocking admission. Kim and Dani both stared at her. Words could not describe their surprise at the idea that Gina had never taken care of her appearance in that way.

“Right…”

“Yeah, I getcha…”

Vivian giggled again from the couch. She stretched her arms up above her head and kicked out her legs, and finally managed to stand back up.

“Hey, look, she’s awake,” Kim said sarcastically. “Back among the living, then, Vivian?”

Vivian playfully stuck out her tongue in response.

Gina snickered in amusement. “Fun, huh? Never thought I’d see our little prissy heiress getting plastered!”

It was a testament to how little the two of them interacted. Vivian was a lot of things, but prissy? Hey, whatever, if she enjoyed drinking this much, maybe they could have some fun together after all, Gina was down.

“I don’t normally… drink this much.” Vivian needed a pause in the middle of the sentence to remember the word “drink” which was a red flag, to say the least. “But I was having such a good time… just me and my bestie, hanging out together!”

She reached out and hugged Dani’s arm awkwardly while Kim stared at the tomboy.

Dani shrugged. “…Yeah, I guess we’re besties now,” she said, not sure what else to really say on the topic.

“Don’t worry, Kim, you can be my bestie too!” Vivian assured her with a toothy grin.

“Gee, where do I sign up?” Kim wasn’t sure if Vivian was even sober enough to understand sarcasm, but she couldn’t help herself.

Frankly, Vivian might not have even understood words at this point, given how she was acting.

“I’m not as drunk as I look!” Vivian objected, seeing the judgmental look in Kim’s eyes. “…Or, act, either. Or sound.”

Gina snickered again.

“I’m just enjoying cutting loose!” Vivian let Dani go and flopped back on the couch, stretching her arms over her head. “Nothing wrong with that, right?”

Kim looked at Dani, who just shrugged. “I mean, she was walking just fine a second ago, and we were chatting. I think she’s just messing around with us.”

“Yup, I am.”

Whelp. If that was the case, Kim definitely didn’t want to stick around. “Anyway, I’ll be going now, got another day of work tomorrow, you have fun with your… babysitting.”

“Bye, Kim!” Vivian giggled, waving her fingers at the other girl.

“Hey, Kim, wait, one thing real quick before you go,” Dani said suddenly. She’d forgot to mention but the reason they’d come this way in the first place was actually because Dani had something she wanted to ask the two of them, before Vivian slipped her leash.

Kim looked at Dani with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah? What?” She asked.

Dani cleared her throat awkwardly. “Um… it’s about… my bounty,” she said, trying to jog the other girl’s memory. “You know, the one-”

“Where you have to sleep with five different girls?” Gina said loudly enough for anyone in the lounge to hear, not that anybody was present.

Dani gave her a look. “…Yes, that one.”

“Technically she only has to bring five people to orgasm,” Vivian clarified. Just as loudly.

“…Yes, thank you Vivian,” Dani said with a sigh. “I was hoping you guys could help with that, actually? Maybe?”

“How?” Kim asked curiously. “I mean, uh… it’s not like you and I could… uh… well…”

Her face turned red under the pressure of Dani’s stare, not to mention Vivian’s presence.

“Oh, right, you guys fucked!” Vivian practically shouted. It was pretty shocking hearing such vulgar terminology spoken in such a posh accent, but Kim wasn’t exactly focusing on that right now.

“No! No we didn’t!” She hissed, her face burning. “It was a threesome! With Nick! Dani and I, we, we barely did anything together! Just enough for her to get the check on her bounty, that’s all! That was more about Nick than the two of us!”

Dani would disagree that the threesome was more about Nick, given she was part of it, but figured Kim probably wouldn’t appreciate that technicality right now.

“I was the one who had sex with Dani,” Gina unhelpfully volunteered, earning another chagrined expression from the blue-haired tomboy.

A giggle burst out of Vivian’s lips.

“…Right, well, uh… so what do you need our help with, then?” Kim just wanted this conversation to end, frankly. The last thing she wanted to do was discuss sexual matters in front of Vivian fucking Carrington, and the idea that she might not remember any of this came as a cold comfort to her.

Dani had bigger concerns at the moment, though.

“Well… I’ve already knocked four names off my list,” she said. “You two, then Carly, and Sylvia, also, but… as for the last one…”

“Wait, Sylvia?” Gina was stunned to hear that. “Seriously?”

“It was a food thing,” Dani clarified. “Don’t worry about it. Anyway, uh… Vivian’s not someone who can help with that, but I thought maybe, well…”

Dani kept staring at Kim, and the younger girl didn’t know why. There was something her friend was clearly dying to ask, but…

“Dude, if you’ve got a question, spit it out already,” Kim said bluntly.

Dani sighed. “…I was thinking, maybe… maybe Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin might be up for that stuff,” she said finally. “Out of everyone on the show, she seems the most… nonchalant.”

That was the nicest way to put what Dani really meant.

Kim blinked. “I mean… I guess so? Maybe?” She said with a shrug. “I could ask, but she might say no…”

“Say?” Vivian chirped.

Kim glared at the drunk heiress. “Shut up, you know what I mean,” she sighed. “Anyway, I don’t think Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin has a grudge against you or anything from the last challenge, Dani, so it wouldn’t hurt to ask. But she doesn’t seem to care much about sex stuff unless it involves Nick, so…”

“Carly and I taught her how to masturbate,” Dani awkwardly offered.

And with that, Kim decided that this conversation had reached its natural termination. “…Right, well, if I see her, I’ll ask. Anything else?”

Dani shook her head. She reached up to scratch her feathery hair, only to stop herself again. The manicure. “No, that’s it, thanks, Kim. And sorry before, about the whole Vivian thing.”

“You’re not the one who needs to be sorry for that,” Kim said dryly, shooting Vivian a scathing look.

Vivian waved at her and giggled. “Sorry! I just couldn’t resist,” she cooed. “You were right there, and I just had to hug ya, you know?”

Kim wasn’t sure how to take that so she just shut her mouth and chose not to engage.

“…Hey, what about Dawn?”

Everyone turned to Gina, almost having forgotten that the punk girl was there. Well, Kim and Dani turned to her, and Vivian lazily swung her head around a couple seconds later, still a little out of it.

Gina shrugged. “I mean… it’s kind of an awkward thing, right? It wasn’t for me, I’ve had all kinds of sex, but most of the girls on this show are straight. But with Dawn, it doesn’t have to be sex or anything, yeah? She’s got that tail of hers.”

Now, coming from Gina, that may have sounded like she was just trying to get someone to play a prank on Dawn. But no, she was actually trying to help for once! It made the most sense to her, since Dawn basically came with an “Instant Orgasm” button.

More sense than relying on the unpredictable nature of Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin, anyway.

Kim and Dani shared a brief look.

“I mean… it does kind of make sense,” Kim conceded. “She might actually agree to it, if you’re gentle and it’s over fast.”

Dani nodded. “I honestly never thought about it,” she admitted. “But… yeah, you’re right. Dawn might work… maybe.”

It wasn’t an idea that had occurred to Dani, because she and Dawn weren’t exactly close. Which was kind of hilarious when she thought about it, considering they were the two contestants who had probably know each other the longest on this show, not counting Gina and Dakota’s nebulous relationship.

The two of them just didn’t have a lot in common. Or any mutual interests. Or interest in one another, for that matter. Dani was more artistic, while Dawn was cerebral. They were both athletes, but in very different fields.

Also, Dawn would probably not go for it.

“Just appeal to her rationality!” Vivian chirped from the couch. “She’ll appreciate the logic in it! And she’s a nice girl, you know!”

“She is?” Gina asked with a sarcastic smile on her lips. “Coulda fooled me.”

Kim rolled her eyes. “Well… I think that’s probably the best move, Gina’s right,” she said. “And if it doesn’t work, I’ll ask Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin next time I see her.”

At the very least, Kim figured Dawn had better odds of saying yes than Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin did.

And no, Vivian, not because she could actually talk.