Doubts, spoken to one another. End of day 1.

After First-Melt-of-the-Laurentide left, the group looked each other over. “Does anyone think Ember is like that?”Jessica wondered aloud. Ryan and Jesse were shocked that Jessica would suggest it, especially given how many conversations they had half had through Chris. Becky considered it, and Heather nodded. “From what I have glimpsed through Chris, she isn’t, but the fact that he is the one communicating to us might be skewing my opinion on this. I hope you understand my point.”

Becky chimed in. “I think I get the argument. The chatbot idea: she doesn’t have a tone from our point of view. But Chris would be able to perceive tone and body language. So I think trusting his opinion is valid.”

Samson felt the need to clarify. “As much as a ball of fire can have, as well as the recent addition of colour shifting. Trust me, Ember is a fun, passionate ball of fire. Nothing like the cold puddle that just walked out. But that is my opinion as their colleague whose wife gets scolded all the time by said puddle. Chis is Ember’s first bond that is going to hold a different weight than a random one in the large line, I think.”

“How picky are elementals on their bonds?” Ryan asked.

“How picky is a human?” The goblin bounced back. “Each elemental is different. Culturally speaking, fire elementals are the least picky, but the rest have a lot larger variance. If you can’t afford to be picky, you aren’t.”

“They can’t be?” Ryan was confused by that.

“How long do wildfires last? How often do they occur? How long is the hotspot of a volcano leaking magma? Compare that to ice frost melt cycles, pristine lakes, wonderful winds across cliffs, mountains eroding, fertile soil. Fire phenomena occur less often, last for shorter periods, and are actively fought against by humans and the other phenomena. So yes, a human is as if not more reliable than, those.” The goblin said in a sad tone. “We only have Ember and [Dim-Flame-Who-Keeps-a-Constant-Heat] on staff, not because Syl didn’t want more, but because they were the only ones who qualified. They can be a hazard, but we didn’t check for that... we checked if they spoke English and another humanoid language and their age; that is it.”

Heather’s eyes opened wide. “You said we! Why we?”

Samson knew he had fucked up. “I was one of the recruiters for the staff.” The goblin was closer to Alex’s assistant than anything. He definitely qualified for what he had said, but it had minimised the effect he had had on the show as a whole. “I looked far and wide, but the only ones who met those requirements were those two. Still, Syl might find more eventually over the course of time.” He added with a shrug.

Heather’s glare continued as if she had seen through his legal bulshittery. “Is there truly nothing we can’t do for us to assess her ourselves?”

“I would like to point you to the fact that I am not allowed to tell you what the transformations do. That I am not the staff person who manages the shop.” A coy smile formed on his face.

Ryan looked him over. “But you could still give us advice on our purchases. If we discussed them with you, right?”

“I don’t see why not. I have no idea of what your spending limit is right now. All I know is that, in theory, nothing has changed since I left the store. Heather can either be in 6BP or get a free transformation or upgrade, and Chris can get a free upgrade.” The goblin said with a smirk.

“Wait, the transformation you bought for me counts as me having bought one?” Heather asked. Samson affirmed the conclusion. “How does that work?”

“I spend your BP without you transferring it to me first; ergo, you bought it. Had I asked for 5 BP and spent it on the transformation, it wouldn't have counted.” The bartender said, looking at the book in his hands. “Still, my advice: wait until a bit later in the week before spending big. You never know what you need your BP for.”

“Why?” The heiress demanded from the staff.

“Read a book, sweetheart. Read a book. Sometimes others have answers you didn’t know you needed. I will say, the policy is that books remain in the building where you started reading them. They will remember where you left off.” The goblin sipped some tea.

“That isn’t an answer!!” The woman who always expects to have everything handed to her shouted.

“Am I allowed to answer? If I give a weird response, maybe ask yourselves that. I want to help; I do. I sometimes try to be obtuse just as a joke, but if it is in follow-up to my own advice. Would I be obtuse for no reason?” The green-skinned man finally looked up from the thing he was reading and gave a mildly defeated look. “I have agreed to the terms of what I can and can’t say, what I can and can’t do. Think about that before you complain about the answer you get. Same goes for everyone on the staff. Ember is the most likely to break that covenant, but should they, then they become a part of the harem. That relationship goes above and beyond her other ties to the show.”

“Wait, is that for real? Everyone?” Missy shouted.

“For the most part. Syl has the most leeway being the boss, but she has bosses above her who could restrict what she is allowed to say.” Samson finally downed the last of his tea and refilled his cup with grace. The group stared at him as if he had said something ridiculous. At the same time, it wasn’t; it was a balancing feature for a game show. “I need to close up in an hour, so last call. What do you lot want before I stop serving?”

“Wait, it has already been that long?” Jesse said.

“Yeah, you had a lot of fun playing that game. I swapped bottles a couple of times.” The bartender added with a smile. “But I suspect that now that I have drawn attention to the time, you guys might want something different.”

“Can you make a martini?” Heather asked. As she finished speaking, Samson started mixing and shoved it forward. Ryan asked for a radler. Jesse ordered two fingers of whiskey on the rocks. Jessica ended up with a glass of hard cider. Becky drank an appletini, and Missy drank some form of hard iced tea. None of them dared break the illusion that this evening had made them all friends and that all was well.

The group flowed out of the community centre tent by tent with Becky and Missy leaving first. “You did really well today. Good girl, Missy, you have been so well behaved.” A soft smile akin to a proud parent formed on Becky’s face. “Do you want me to do something for you as a reward?”

Missy grumbled at being treated like a little kid. “No. Thank you for asking, though.” The bitchy woman looked at Becky and decided to ask an important question she hadn’t dared ask yet. “Why are you doing this? Helping me survive, making sure I don’t eliminate myself? Why? You gain nothing from this!”

“Just, cause. I don’t know you, but seeing you turn into a dog who can’t speak her mind and has to do nothing but listen isn’t appealing to me. Would it be to you if it were to happen to me?” Becky looked in the distance as she spoke.

“No, it wouldn’t, but why do you think that would be my elimination?” Missy got curious about the reasoning.

“Your current transformations, mainly. The fact that Chris said your main fear is losing control. Nothing more.” The plump woman's words made sense.

“But all of that isn’t much gain now, is it? What is your real reason?” The selfish, self-reliant person still suspected grander plans.

“I have no ulterior motives, really. I might be a stranger to you and you to me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel your suffering. That I can’t take your needs into account when doing my own thing. It is the smallest thing I could do. It costs me nothing to take you along; don’t worry.” The woman clad in black explained patiently.

The two did their respective nighttime rituals with practised ease. Missy went to lie down. She found she was lying atop a plastic disc with a conical protrusion above it with a narrow hole. She didn’t remember what it was and threw it out. It was the raincap they hadn’t placed on top of the tentpoles.

Heather left alone 20 minutes later, wondering about what the day had shown her. She had done nothing to get to where she was. Everyone around her before coddled her or at least didn’t force her to face reality. Her power was bestowed upon her by her Father, not by skill, talent, hard work or anything else others found important, but by daddy. The heiress had seen movies where entitled bitches got to those places by lineage. Was she one of them? Was she an entitled bitch who only got to where she was because of her father? Were her demands too high? Was she too short-sighted?

All of these thoughts swirled as she got to her closet to look for a nighty. She was amazed by how much her choices had expanded. It was as if the closet had almost become a walk-in with how much was in there. The cacophony of choice made her thoughts fade away. Because real character development who needs that when you have a whole boatload of clothes to look through. She now had at least a dozen full coverage options for the evening, but the one she found most appealing was a onesie in the shape of a bird. It was warm and fluffy and would in no way be embarrassing to walk in. As she put it on, it clung to her every curve as if it were a catsuit, but made of faux fur instead of leather or latex. She looked at herself in the mirror. The feathers on the back emphasised her ass, and the same went for the feathers around the chest. Heather could see how this onesie was provocative. She had never seen a onesie this hot. She put on slip-ons and went to her tent.

Heather took off the slip-ons and crawled into the sleeping bag. The heiress decided she needed a plan to survive here long-term; she needed an alliance. Someone as a patsy in case she wanted to do something underhanded and wanted plausible deniability.

Ryan felt awkward alone with the Jessies, and so did they. The three of them had agreed to date Chris and each other as some weird form of threesome. Ryan had no experience with it and didn’t know anything at the moment. He had agreed spur of the moment; he hadn’t thought it through. It had given him a lovely night with one of his long-time crushes, but at what cost. For their part, the Jessies only knew Ryan as a buddy; they had never dated, not even in the other timeline. Chris wasn’t interested in Ryan; there here, he had to be. The duo didn’t know what this would mean for them. All of them sipped their drink slowly; no one spoke. “So did you guys know a lot about me in the other timeline?” Ryan tried to break the ice.

“Nahh, we didn’t. We just saw you as a dude interested in Chris, with whom we could have fun. A friend for sure, but nothing romantic at that point. Sorry to disappoint. You managed to convince us to play Minecraft a few times but not much more in terms of video games. We did play ‘Secret Hitler’ at some point, and you were disgustingly good at it.” Jesse said, ending in a mock accusatory tone.

“I have the best poker face. So instead of trying to squeeze a date in here, let’s plan our back-to-back dates. Did you guys think Chris did what he wanted today?” The only person who had fucked the person he was asking about asked.

“We didn’t end up walking the trail. We could still do that on one of our dates. I could also see us playing a bunch of games one day or afternoon.” Jessica admitted. “Codenames might be fun to see who is best at word association or knows the partner.”

“Yeah, but that is just going to be you guys crushing Chris and me if we team up, so we either need to play with you guys with each one of us or not.” He complained only half jokingly.

“Fair, but there are many games here, some more competitive than others. Like the ‘Forbidden Island’ or the later ‘Forbidden Desert’. So we can just play a few rounds of Codenames, swap between Jessica and me once, and have seen all the combinations.” Jesse replied in a dry tone with a smile. “I get it if you don’t want to bed me tonight or her. I assume you will never want to bed her, by the way, but I can always be wrong.”

Jesse had successfully removed all the remaining tension between them before they decided to go to bed. They got themselves cleaned up, and to the Jessies' surprise, they found themselves with a giant cot capable of fitting 3 people. “I upgraded the tent twice and bought the cots. If you want to maintain the comfort, buy two upgrades and the cots for 20. If you do, whilst sleeping with me, your standard probably will move up anyway.” Ryan gloated in a teasing manner. For which Jesse rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek, at which he blushed.