I hope you know we had everything, and you broke me and left these pieces

Silence fell over the basement. No one could believe the sheer absurdity of Rose’s claim. Even more shocking was the absolute certainty with which she said it- anyone who was familiar with Rose’s oversized ego understood that she absolutely believed that she was correct, and anyone who didn’t know any better may have been convinced through the sheer **** of her conviction.

Fortunately, Lynette was one of those people.

“Really?!” Her blue eyes were aglow with amazement and she covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her gasp. “You’re the person that Nick loves the most?! He loves you even more than he loves Mommy?!”

“Of course he does!” Rose declared with the absolute, unshakable confidence of a woman who truly believed in her own hype. “Certainly he and Dakota have a deep history together, I won’t deny that. But from the moment he laid eyes on me, he was captivated by my beauty! He simply couldn’t resist my touch, he was so enchanted!”

Given what she knew about Nick’s relationship with Dakota, Lynette found it hard to believe Rose’s words. Her confidence was winning the doll over, but her statements seemed to fly in the face of everything Lynette knew to be true!

“Really?” Lynette narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She turned to Sylvia. “Is that true?”

Sylvia gulped. “Well… that… that IS an accurate description of their first meeting,” she answered, not technically lying. “If you wanted to think about it like that…”

“Nick absolutely loves Rose!” Holly nodded her head rapidly, far more comfortable with fudging the truth. She squirmed in her seat, a giddy expression on her face. “He likes her more than he ever could love someone like me!”

“Yeah, same here,” Gina chimed in. It stung to say but she believed it to be the case.

“Mmhm, Rose is great,” Vivian chirped. “With her beauty, she could easily be one of my top models if she was interested!”

Rose perked up. “Wait, really?!”

Vivian looked sharply at her and jerked her head towards Lynette, reminding the actress to keep her eyes on the goal here.

Kim looked at Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin. The mute girl was pouting. She met her gaze, and the two women rolled their eyes at the absurdity of this whole situation.

“Wooooow…” Lynette cradled her cheeks, eating up every piece of bullshit Rose spewed from her lips with a big spoon. “You’re amazing! And so pretty…”

“That’s right, I am!” Rose declared proudly. “I’m a renowned seductress who has my dearly beloved Nick wrapped around my little finger! Trust me- you take me a prisoner, and he’ll be falling over himself to get me back! He’d be your little puppet practically!”

It was a dangerous game that Rose was playing. But it seemed like she had Lynette wrapped around her finger now, as well!

The doll seemed completely enchanted. So swept up in Rose’s statements that she hardly even considered what she would be giving up.

“Okay, okay, okay!” She nodded her head vigorously, waving her scissors about. “You’ve got a deal! Shishishishi! I’ll take you down, and then I’ll let them all go!”

Rose paused and shook her head. Her plan might still work that way, but it would go a lot easier if Lynette would let her prisoners go first. She glanced at Jess for a fraction of a second, and saw the fox girl trembling with uncertainty.

I can’t be too easy or she might suspect something, Rose thought, looking back at the crazed doll who was slowly advancing with her scissors. Luckily Lynette happens to be an excellent judge of character! At least someone here understands my greatness!

It’s a good thing that doll is such a naïve fool, Kim thought, staring at Lynette. Hell, for all we know, she really WAS born yesterday.

Needless to say, Kim’s estimation of Lynette was closer to the truth.

Not that something like reality ever stood in the way of Rose’s ego.

“Hold on for a second!” Rose said, holding up her hand. She firmly shook her head. “I’m not going to agree to those terms.”

“What!?” Lynette scowled at her. “But you JUST said-!”

“I’ll be your hostage, but only AFTER you let the rest of them go. Understood?” Rose offered, standing her ground.

Lynette blinked. Then she scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Eh!? No, no, no, I’m not a fool, fool, fool! Lynette isn’t going to fall for THAT! Once I let everybody go, you’ll go back and your word like a liar and run away! Shishishishi!”

“What? Certainly not! I’m the most trustworthy woman in Nick’s harem, I would never lie!” Rose lied.

“This is your territory, right?” Sylvia pointed out from her chair. “It’s not like any of us could really get away from you. You caught us all the first time with hardly any trouble. So if Rose is lying, you can just catch us again anyway, right?”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin shot Sylvia a hostile look. SHE certainly wasn’t going to be captured again!

Lynette mulled over Sylvia’s words. “…You’re not wrong,” she admitted, stroking her chin. “…Then again, since this is my territory and I’m in charge anyway, we’re gonna do it the way I want!” She ultimately decided with a twisted smile.

Right, in the heat of the moment with all the focus on how gullible and naïve the doll girl was, they’d temporarily forgotten that she was completely fucking psycho. Oops.

“Shishishishi!” Lynette charged at Rose with a crazed expression on her face, raising her scissors. So much for negotiations.

Well… that was about what I expected anyway, Rose conceded, taking a step back. It wasn’t like she’d ever intended to ACTUALLY sacrifice herself for the others! She just wanted Lynette to focus on her instead of on them.

For the plan she’d come up with to succeed, it was necessary.

“Alright then!” Power flowed through Rose’s body as she used the benefit of the transformation she’d copied for the day. One of her favorites for challenges, Dani’s Soft as Silk transformation.

Was it cliché? Yeah. Rose could acknowledge that she’d copied this transformation way too many times to carry her through challenges. But so what?

If it wasn’t broken, there was no need to fix it! And right now, Rose needed the enhanced strength and speed to enact her plan, as Lynette swung her scissors right at the blonde’s face.

“Not happening!” Rose’s hand shot out… and grabbed a different blonde.

Jess blinked. She had a fraction of a second to process what was happening when she felt Rose’s fingers around her arm.

Then she felt a tug, and a pair of hands grabbed her by the waist.

“EEeeeeeee!?” The fox girl shrieked as she suddenly found herself in the path of Lynette and her scissors. She flailed her arms in a panic as her ears stood on end.

“Shi-!” Lynette clicked her tongue and her arms jerked away. It was like she’d been pulled by invisible puppet strings, and the sudden shift in movement nearly caused her to fall over.

Rose smiled in triumph. “What’s the matter, dolly?”

“You-!” Lynette raised her scissors again and circled around Jess, moving to stab at Rose again. But even with her speed, Rose was faster thanks to the borrowed transformation and her years of stunt work. She moved Jess in front of her again, forcing Lynette to back off.

“What are you doing!?” Jess wailed, thrashing and trying to get herself out of Rose’s grip, but finding it impossible to fight against the transformation. “Are you trying to get me stabbed!?”

“I told you I had a plan, didn’t I?” Rose said confidently. “I call it: ‘Fox Shield’!”

Jess paused as that settled in her bimbo brain.

“…You’re using me as a human shield?!”

“No, you’re a fox,” Rose pointed out without a single trace of irony.

Jess’s mouth fell open.

“Shi! You bitch!” Lynette screamed, swinging her scissors impotently. She couldn’t get them anywhere near Rose because the second they came near Jess, they jerked out of the way. “What’s going on!? Why can’t I stab you!?”

“This is unreal…” Vivian leaned forward as much as her chains would allow. “Is Rose… actually safe?”

“I don’t get it, why isn’t she getting stabbed?” Gina wondered. “She should be…”

“Perhaps… it’s because of that girl,” Amelia guessed, looking at the scantily-clad fox girl with a curious glance.

“Jess, I have you to thank for this plan,” Rose said, smiling at the flustered fox girl with gratitude. “I couldn’t have come up with it without your help!”

“Am I supposed to be happy about that!?” Jess demanded.

“You’re the one who gave me the idea!” Rose protested. “Back in the hallway, remember? You said that you helpers can’t get hurt. So I figured that as long as you were in front of me, Lynette couldn’t lay a finger on me! See how that works?”

Jess stared over her shoulder at the Frenchwoman, remembering the conversation they’d had from earlier.

“Because we can’t be hurt. It’s part of the rules. Helpers like mistress and I, and I’m guessing the siren too, you can’t actually hurt us. It’s in the rules, so…”

Her mouth fell open again.

“THAT’S why you wanted me to come along with you!?” She screeched. “To use me as a human shield?! This whole time?!”

“Fox shield,” Rose gently corrected her.

“That doesn’t make it better!”

“You’re the one who said you wanted to help!” Rose pointed out. “And you’re definitely helping out like this!”

“I didn’t mean use me as a shield!” Jess wailed.

“Stop MOCKING ME!” Lynette screamed. She wanted to stab that girl so badly but she couldn’t! No matter what she tried, Rose always moved the fox girl between them, she couldn’t get a good hit in at all! It wasn’t fair! “Was this all a trick then!? You were NEVER gonna give yourself up, you little lying girl! Liar, liar, liar! You’re probably not even Nick’s favorite, are you?!”

“No, that part was true!” Rose replied.

“No, it wasn’t,” Kim called from the table.

“Yooooouuuuuuu!” Lynette screamed in impotent rage, her eyes spinning in her skull as she unleashed a throaty roar and charged, swinging her scissors again.

This time, Rose took it a step further and shoved Jess forward.

“Waaaaah!” The fox girl wailed, flailing her arms as she stumbled right into the path of the incoming doll girl.

In order to keep from stabbing Jess, Lynette’s body practically twisted itself into a pretzel. Her waist twisted almost 90 degrees to pull her torso out of the way, her scissors jerked out of the path. As a result, the two blondes collided, falling into a pile on the ground.

Lynette lost her grip on her scissors and they skittered across the floor.

That was the moment Amelia chose to act. Still untied thanks to Lynette’s punishment she was able to move, and move she did- The older woman lunged forward, jumping over the table and adding herself to the pile of blonde women, doing something that made her feel absolutely shameful but was sadly unavoidable.

She crouched over Lynette and plopped her big, enhanced booty right on the other woman’s chest, pinning her down.

“Aagh! Get off me!” Lynette scratched at Amelia’s torn clothes with her nails, trying to push her off. “Get off me you fat cow!”

“What a vulgar tongue,” Amelia chastised. “Your mother should have taught you better. It’s a shame you inherited her foul mouth.”

“I said, GET OFF!” Lynette was stronger than she appeared. She couldn’t hurt Jess, but she could certainly move the both of them. It would just take some doing.

At least, that was the case until Rose joined the mix. Now four blondes were tangled up together, with Rose pinning Lynette’s arms to the floor while Amelia rest upon her torso, and poor, clumsy Jess ended up all aflutter and tangled up in her legs and dress.

Rose looked up at the table above her. “Sylvia!” She snapped. “A little help here! I can only keep her pinned for so long with my strength, you know!”

The point of Rose’s fake offer to Lynette was to distract the other girl and get her to focus her attention onto Rose. By focusing on Rose, she got sloppy, and allowed herself to be taunted. The naïve, immature girl had been completely fooled, and that upset her- and now they could take advantage of that.

Sylvia sucked in a breath of air and did what Rose had done, copy Dani’s transformation. With her enhanced strength she was able to smash through the chains wrapped around her, a feat not even Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had been able to do, much to the killer’s chagrin. Having tipped her hand to the doll, Lynette had used far heavier chains to bind her with, and now she was stuck unable to help.

But Sylvia’s help would be enough.

Instead of assisting Rose and Amelia (and Jess) in pinning down the thrashing doll, Sylvia understood the most important part of the assignment.

She ran across the room and grabbed Lynette’s scissors.

Lynette’s eyes went wide and she suddenly went very still. For about a second. Then she began thrashing again, this time with twice the power as before.

“No! NO!” She shouted furiously. The basement rumbled around them as the walls and the floor came to life. Chains lashed out from the walls at Sylvia and she ducked, just barely dodging them.

“NO! Give those back, they’re MINE! Mine, mine, MINE!”

Sylvia was a bit of an airhead, but she knew a thing or two about being a host. And her familiarity with the position meant that she could recognize an enchanted object when she saw one.

Refusing to give Lynette a chance to tie her up again, she clutched the scissors with both hands and pulled.

“SNAP!”

The rusty scissors snapped right in half, the screw breaking.

Lynette’s mouth twisted into an “O” shape and a look of despair flashed across her dirty face. Tears welled up in her eyes and her body crumpled.

“Mommy…” she breathed out before she shattered to pieces.

Amelia and Rose suddenly landed flat on the floor. And partially on Jess.

And resting beside them was a dirty, grungy doll with stringy hair that had lost its golden luster, a patched dress, and poor stitching connecting parts of worn felt that were almost coming undone at the seams.

“Lynette…” Amelia looked down at the familiar doll. She picked it up off the floor and dusted it off, feeling a sting of regret in her chest. It really was that same exact doll…

But she didn’t have time to mourn, because the whole room began to shake.

“Hey, Rose? That plan of yours? To take Lynette down!?” Kim shouted to the blonde. “Did you account for what would happen if you beat her while still in her territory!?”

Rose shook her head, trying to stand. The shaking made it almost impossible. “No!” She shouted back.

Kim rolled her eyes. Just great.

Just as Lynette’s human glamour had shattered, so too did the dollhouse. The torn pink walls, the plastic table and chairs, even the chains that bound the girls, they all vanished, shattering like smashed glass and disappearing into nothingness as the dim, dreary walls of the labyrinth reared up to take their place instantly.

Within moments everything changed. All the girls landed on their butts, with the exception of Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin, who fluidly transitioned to a standing position.

“Oh yeah!” Gina cheered, scrambling to her feet once the shaking had stopped. “We did it! We’re free! Yes!”

“We are,” Vivian said pensively. She glanced at the doll in Amelia’s hands. “That’s good, but…”

“I know,” Kim said, biting her lip. It didn’t sit well with her, either. Lynette had been unstable, and that was the nicest thing you could say about her. But that didn’t mean Kim was happy about how the situation had turned out. If it was up to her… she wished they could have found a peaceful way to resolve all this.

“It’s… not like we killed her,” Holly pointed out. It did little to settle the uncertainty in her breast. “I mean… Dakota… Dakota can just bring her back, right? Because she’s the host?”

Sylvia nodded. “Those scissors were a tool that the producer used to isolate her ego in a physical form. So just like how Dakota brought me back to life before when she deconstructed me, she or one of the producers should be able to bring her back… if they wanted to…”

Would her mother even bother?

“So what do we do now?” Rose asked, standing up. Her bluntness shattered the tension hanging in the air over the girls. “I mean, I DID just rescue you guys. So I think that entitles me to a bit of assistance from you girls, yeah?”

“Excuse me!?” Jess jumped to her feet. For the first time, she actually looked angry. “You used me as a SHIELD!”

Rose held up her hands. “Well, SOR-RY! I had to!” She protested. “It was the only way we could beat her, you know!”

“Still!”

While Jess chewed Rose out, Sylvia approached Amelia, her eyes never leaving the doll in the woman’s hands. The scissors she’d broken had shattered just like the rest of Lynette’s “space” but that just left a feeling of emptiness in Sylvia’s breast.

“Lynette…” she murmured sadly, looking at the little doll and feeling awful for the sister that she almost sort of had.

“Well, I must say, I’m impressed,” Mr. S said, stroking his chin. “They actually managed to stop her. I didn’t expect that!”

“Lynette…” Mary felt just awful about what just transpired. She looked over at Dakota, wondering what sort of face the other woman was making now.

Judging by the anger emanating from her, it wasn’t hard to guess.

“There… are you happy now?” Dakota spat, digging her nails into her palm. She glared at Mr. S with a look of pain burning in her eyes. “It’s done. You got what you wanted. They beat her. Will you stop messing with my challenge now!?”

“How does that make you feel?” Mr. S asked, turning to his favorite host. “Those girls stopped your daughter from her crazed rampage. What are your thoughts on that?”

Dakota had a lot of thoughts on that. And plenty of feelings.

Sharing them would hardly be professional, however.

Fighting back the pain welling up in her breast she straightened her back and picked her cane up off the stage.

“The challenge will be resuming as normal,” she vowed. “This time, we’ll be handling the polls like we should.” Determined to return to normalcy, Dakota crafted some very simple and basic polls to weigh the girls against one another. But after what just happened, her heart really wasn’t in it.

Who should get an advantage, Kim or Morgana?

https://strawpoll.com/mpnb1E5LJy5

Who should get an advantage, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin or Rose?

https://strawpoll.com/GPgVY0zVpna

Who should get an advantage, Carly or Amelia?

https://strawpoll.com/2ayLQ0q8Vn4

Who should get an advantage, Vivian or Cinder/Ella?

https://strawpoll.com/XOgOV0R4rn3

Lynette’s face kept appearing in her mind. Her twisted smile. And her frown. And her tears. It made her feel like a murky black pile of soaked ash.