Racing Home

Jack and Robin popped back into existence on the top floor of the hotel, the Host groaning in pain.

“Are you alright?!” The Mastress asked. During the scene change Jack had become a green-haired tomboy with purple eyes. An orange dress, somehow both damp and covered in scorch marks was draped across their right shoulder, belonging to someone taller than Jack’s current form. Her own garb was garishly colored but functional, clearly meant to go running in.

“Am I alright?”Jack repeated, narrowing her purple eyes at them as they both stood in the hallway.

“Yes. I’m sorry, you sounded like-”

“I know what I sounded like, and you should be sorry.” Jack said, her words coming like daggers.

“Why? What did I do?” Robin asked, somehow the most confused they’d been after an already bewildering evening.

“Don’t give me that ‘what did I do, I’m innocent’ crap. I’ve pulled that enough times to know when someone’s lying-” She made eye contact with Robin and stopped. “Oh, fuck me with a mason’s horse.” She swore. “You actually don’t know what was happening back there.”

“Right. I mean, we were in some crazy mall, but other than that…”

Jack sighed, squeezing the orange cloth in an attempt to calm down. “I’ll try to walk through this slowly. You understand that I am a being of fantastic power?”

“Yes.”

“That I’ve decided to become a god several times?”

“Yes?”

“I told you earlier that I was a trickster god, a ‘knower of secrets’” Jack waved quotation marks in the air. “That’s about the coolest thing that you can be a god of, but it’s not the strongest. Humans are generally the most reliable creatures I can involve myself with without having to prepare a backup plan. Are you still with me?”

Robin nodded.

“When I saw Eleana show up, I was pissed. She’s the kind of thing I’d need to have a plan B for, probably one step in danger above if a dozen of Genet’s sisters swarmed us but a step below one of Lovecraft’s patrons trying to eat the set.”

“Who’s Genet?”

Jack ignored the question. “It was a relief when she gave up her powers. But now our problem is that you’ve got the powers.”

“But why is that a problem?” Robin asked. “I thought you said her powers were safely beyond my reach.”

“And as we established with genders and boxes earlier, you apparently get a bit grabby. My guess is that you got overwhelmed and confused as we were starting the tour, and since you saw me and this set like that, you made the set and I more overwhelming and confusing. I was planning for some mall aesthetics in certain places, but let’s just say it was not exactly going to be how we saw it. I can’t retcon the tour of course. That ship has sailed. But I’ll have to sneak some more human-ish and beaver-y attractions in to balance out your inventions like the turnstile exhibit.” Jack sighed. “Does that make sense? We should really stop info dumping if we can get away with it.”

“I… not particularly. But somehow it’s easier to understand than the rest of this.”

“Fair enough.” Jack shrugged, and a gold coin fell out of a pocket in the singed dress on her shoulder. “We’ll finally get to your part of the tour, but remember, keep an open mind. If you get overwhelmed, ask me before jumping to conclusions.”

Jack turned the other direction, towards the wider hall. “As I mentioned earlier when your sense of anxiety was puppeting me, that over there is the elevator. I assume you’ve seen one before.” She pointed at the elevator on the right side of the penthouse level. It was a golden coppery color, which Eleana and any gamers or Greek history enthusiasts among the contestants would recognize as a specific metal. “There is a panel both on the inside of the elevator and in your suite with which you can give permission to specific contestants to come up and see you. Once we’re inside your quarters, I’ll show you where it is.”

The Host ushered them down the hall, her moss green eyebrows furrowed. She stopped them at the only door on the left side, painted wood with brass finishes. She took the handle but before opening it, turned back to Robin. “Do you think you have the mental capacity to look at a bedroom right now?”

“Uh, yeah. I think I can handle that.”

“You’re not going to make a waterbed with a shark on the inside?”

“No? Why would I-”

“You prompted me to announce that the contestants were encouraged to scale the walls of the Hotel, so I want to double check.” Jack rolled her eyes before opening the door, letting them in.

The two of them walked into a comfortable craftsman style living room. The walls were lightly covered, with wooden crowns and baseboards. A lightly colored rug was spread across the majority of the room. Most of the furniture was in a half circle around the wall facing the outside of the hotel, where a large television hung above a crackling fireplace.

“I figured by the time this is over you might be hosting larger parties down here, so there’s enough room for a majority of you to sit. Not everyone, but once you all are far enough everyone is in here at the same time I’d imagine some people would be open to sharing laps." Jack explained.

“I see. Can the TV show outside stuff? There’s a Kamen Rider marathon tomorrow, and I think I might’ve missed tonight’s Ancient Aliens.”

Jack lightly chuckled, finally appearing to calm down at the question. “Yes and no. It doesn’t have cable. But I designed a few channels myself that I think you’d like. One of them is just conspiracy theories and True Crime. Now that I know what our contestant pool looks like, I’ll add some more options that might appeal to them. Can I show you something else in here before we get to the rest?”

After waiting for a nod, Jack cocked her head and directed Robin's attention to the coffee table in the middle of the seating area. A small model racetrack sat in the middle, with several toy cars on it all lined up at the starting line. Each one had a little flag with a symbol on it, like pizza or a beaver. She crouched down next to the track, smiling. “Do you like NASCAR?”

“I’ve never paid much attention to it.” Robin shrugged. “I think I have a cousin down south that likes it, but we don’t talk much.”

“I love NASCAR.” Jack gushed. “A team of mechanics need to design the fastest possible car without violating a menagerie of silly rules. And if they do well enough, whatever they designed gets banned. Then next year they have to figure out a new way to bend the rules in an endless cycle of laws versus physics. I think if you haven’t managed to kill me by the time this season is done, I’ll become a NASCAR driver.”

“Good for you?”

Jack looked back up. “You’re probably wondering why I went into that little tangent.”

“A little, yeah.”

“I’m the law this season, and you all are the engineers. I’ll have more rules that’ll be explained over time, and I welcome both you and your harem to look for ways to bend my rules without breaking them. I’m looking forward to us all playing that game, while the contestants are trying to compete in the larger game for your favor.” She pointed at the starting line. “This right here is the main scoreboard. When any contestant earns VP, their matching car will scoot along the track here. Once one of them hits that magic hundred, you’ll know because their car crossed the finish line and started a second lap. You and whichever contestants are with you will have the best knowledge of everyone’s progress.

"There will be another scoreboard on the stage I met you all at starting tomorrow morning, but I’ll only turn it on for an hour a day of my choosing. There’s something fun about incomplete information, don’t you think? A game gets boring if you can always see everyone’s cards.”

Jack stood up, moving on from the fireplace and the model cars. She slowly walked to the right side of the room, towards two doors. One was currently open, the other closed.. She pointed at the open one. “That is your bathroom. It has a shower big enough for three and a tub big enough for four. Be careful not to use the bidet accidentally.”

Then she moved on to the closed one. “That right there is your kitchen. It’s available if you want something other than that gods-forsaken Sbarro you forced into my set, but it only unlocks when at least two people are in here. Not that I expect you to, but I don’t want you to hide in your room watching Ancient Aliens all day. Any questions before we move on to the star of the tour?”

Robin shook their head.

“Fantastic. Come with me then.” She led them past the fireplace again, to the one door on the right. The door was ajar, with light peeking through. “Why don’t you head in?”

The Mastress nodded, brushing past the green-haired tomboy to explore. They found… their bedroom. The same one they’d left that morning they were back at, as if they hadn’t been intercepted boarding the bus. Their nightstand was bulging open with knicknacks like they’d left it, and their twin bed sat in the middle of the room. A set of models sat on top of their dresser, Godzilla and Sailor Scouts and Ipheara’s pets, Birdy and Catty. I’ll need to hide those. Now that I know she’s real it might get a little weird for her to see.

Robin turned back around to talk to Jack, who was smiling just outside the room.

“You took my room?”

“Copied it, but yes.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” The smile became a smirk.

“I’m not trying to get ahead of myself, but isn’t my bed a little small to share?”

“It would be,” Jack acknowledged. “But there’s a little trick I came up with to accommodate that.”

She stepped into the room and Robin felt everything morph around them. The room grew wider, and as they turned to orient themselves they found that the shifting had been to adjust for their bed becoming large enough to fit another person, if snugly.

“The room will always be big enough to fit the people you need inside, while being small enough for it to be what you’re used to.” Jack bragged. “When you bring in larger groups your bed will shift just enough to accommodate that, and when they leave it’ll shrink so everyone will still be in cuddling range.”

“What if someone wants personal space?”

Jackie raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like they’re not trying very hard to play the game.”

Robin wasn’t sure how to respond.

“In your wardrobe, you’ll find a selection of clothes resized for your standard body, your feminine form, and your masculine form. I started relatively close to your current style, but let me know and I’ll provide more options to help you experiment.

“The last thing worth showing is the panel I mentioned earlier.” She walked to the far side of the wardrobe, where a set of switches were on the wall, each of them labeled with a different contestant’s name. All of them were currently set to ‘off’. “I tried to make it relatively simple to control. Do you have any other questions about your suite tonight?”

“No, thank you. I’m sorry for… whatever I did earlier.”

“It’s not your fault.” Jack shrugged. “That much power never goes right when it's first given. Just try to keep a clear head until you understand it better. I’m going to work on the date order tonight, but I’ll let you know now that Eleana is going to be somewhere in the first half. This way you can have some lessons and control sooner rather than later. Whoever is your date tomorrow, I’ll let you know a couple hours in advance.”

Jack gave them a final smile, snapped her fingers, and the Host was gone. Robin was left alone for the first time since their tumultuous landing. They sat down on their twin bed.

A few hours ago, I was leaving Guido’s. Now I’m… I don’t even know how to describe this.

Robin tried to ground themselves, remembering what was normal. Itzel and Zoe are here with me. Though it turns out Itzel is an alien, and not secretly an actress like I thought.

Ms.Rosovich is here. Robin tried next. And it turns out she’s a former god that just granted me powers I don’t know how to use.

I was right about the Perdue mystery. Robin congratulated themself. And now I'm expected to fall in love with someone who barely knows English.

This was increasingly feeling like a bad train of thought. Giving up on trying to find something ‘normal,’ Robin decided to focus on what came next.

Tomorrow, I’m going to have a date. Either I’ll know them and we’ll figure out how to treat it like a date, or they’ll be someone I don’t know as well and I’ll get to know them. This’ll be weird, but I already knew life was weird in ways no one else understood. Aliens are real. The Perdue dynasty is still alive. Nothing about this is impossible to understand.

Robin stood up, leaving their bedroom to go brush their teeth and get ready to settle down for the night. I’ve got this.