Mallory

Mallory's heart raced, her head pounded, her body shook and broke out in a cold sweat at the overpowering sensations in her body. The entire world felt like it had spun off its axis. Up was down, left was right, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. She pinched her eyes closed as tightly as she could and gripped the ground with both hands. She felt a tree root under her right hand and slipped her fingers around it, clinging to it like a parachute as centrifugal **** threatened to pitch her right through the sky and out into cold, desolate space. She heard panicked sounds coming from her left, Another of the girls… locked in the same life-or-**** struggle as me…

And then, a bugle.

A BUGLE.

"AGGHHH!" Mallory screeched as the sounds of an off-key but enthusiastic Reveille pounded through her head. She didn't dare let go of the ground to cover her ears, she could only protest verbally.

"What the hell?!" Janet’s voice called out from her right, Mallory slowly cracked her eyes against the agonizingly bright light of day.

"Al?" Mallory yelled at the rotund figure, then regretted it as it made her head hurt even worse. "Stop doing that!" Al shrugged and pitched the bugle over his shoulder. "No, not that! I mean stop that TOO but stop… whatever you're doing to the world! Stop that!"

"I'm not doing anything right now. You ladies have been out cold for weeks, and you’re dry as a bone. Ronnie's taking it well at least."

The sounds behind her got more urgent, and Mallory whipped her head around to see Ronnie laying naked right next to her but for her ever-present high heels. A shredded waitress’ uniform sat in the dirt next to her, which she’d clearly ripped off from herself the second she woke up. Ronnie had her legs splayed wide open despite their audience, and what Mallory had interpreted as panic were instead the frantic grunts of a woman fingering herself so rapidly that she risked setting her clit on fire.

"Fuck! Fuck! I need it! Fuck! FUCKKKKK!" Ronnie's face scrunched up, and Mallory couldn't tell it it was from pain or pleasure. Or both, most likely. But the violent shaking in the woman's legs was unmistakable as she dragged herself to a long-denied climax. Al pulled a small disposable camera from his pocket and snapped a shot of the poor woman in the middle of her long-denied, desperately craved climax. Ronnie collapsed back into the dirt, her chest heaving as she tried to pull some oxygen back into her body.

"That's goin' in the album." Al said as he tucked the small piece of plastic back in his pocket.

Seeing that neither Janet or Ronnie had been flung over the horizon, Mallory experimentally released the tree root and her fistful of ground. The spinning sensation started to fade slightly, but she still felt like she'd been run through a meat grinder. She was sitting on a cliff at ground level overlooking a narrow series of canyons that spider-webbed their way along the landscape. The hotel was very distant but could clearly be seen from up here. If she went down into the canyons, however, she'd be lost immediately.

"What… happened…?" Mallory stammered as she sat up and tried to rub the pain from her temples. Mallory really didn't want to keep talking with Al, but Ronnie was in no condition to answer, and no one else was readily apparent.

"Welcome to Challenge number four." Al said, with a sarcastic flourish. "Not what we had in mind, but you gotta be light on your feet to host this show."

Mallory could help but laugh at the fat man pretending to be light on his feet in any context, but he didn't respond to her derision. In fact, to Mallory he looked more troubled than she could remember seeing him at any point.

Of course, remembering anything right now was a massive challenge. Even though the initial shock had worn off, she was still so impossibly drunk that she could barely pull herself together.

"Need … a drink…" She begged, but Ronnie was still catatonic.

"Sorry, I can't give you one, sweetheart." Al's words were apologetic, but his tone made clear it was fake. He placed his hand over his breast pocket as if swearing an oath. "We are in a challenge, and I must uphold the integrity of the competition." Mallory groaned in response to this, and tried to stand, but collapsed into the dirt from her lack of coordination. "Janet, you wanna help your girl out?"

“Not really.” Janet sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Why do I feel all greasy?”

"And look so shiny?" Ronnie sat up, rejoining the world from her orgasm stupor.

“Well we couldn’t just leave you under the sun that whole time,” Al said, “You’dve cooked. It’s sunblock and coconut oil.” Janet’s face was a mask of horror as she realized that meant someone had been rubbing it all over her while she was ****. “Oh don't look so scandalized. I didn’t apply it, we had the staff do it.”

“That’s not-!” Janet started. “Ok… that’s better. Slightly. But why not just put a blanket over us or pull us inside?”

"Look we had two weeks of dead air here. It was so slow we had the chance to attend a freakin’ wedding on a different season. The damned sun doesn't even move right now, it's been 'High Noon' for days." The situation was so disorienting that none of them even reacted to the wedding comment, but the torn away waitress uniform must have been a holdover from that.

"Yeah Colt loved that shit." Ronnie tried to rub the sleep from her eyes, and yanked them back once she realized her hands were still slick with her pussy juices. Al gave her a sharp look at the mention of the name.

"'Best we could do is let someone oil you up on camera." Al said.

"EW!!" Mallory shuddered.

"Would it help if I told you it was Damien?" Al smirked.

"NO!" Janet yelled. Actually yes, that does help, Mallory thought, but she kept that to herself.

"Well he volunteered, what a hard worker."

Ronnie was the first to stand. She blinked a couple times and shook her head like she was trying to get water out of her ear. “Why can’t I stop thinking about Michael on a stagecoach?”

“That’s the challenge. Rather than waste time explaining it all to you, we just planted the rules in your head so we can just get to the action.” Al opened a bag resting at his feet and tossed out small outfits at the feet of each of the three nude women. “Now get dressed. Clock's tickin'. There's a vendor in that cave down that incline, they can get you squared with goodies to help you steal that wagon. But that's all the help I can give you. Go win this one for your old buddy Al."

Al turned to walk off into the desert, and after a few steps the heat haze off the sand seemed to swallow him up, leaving the girls alone. Janet and Ronnie pulled on the tiny little outfits, which perfectly met at the intersection of "trashy" and "offensive" - where the Harem Hotel did all its business. They were brown faux-animal skin bikinis, with a pair of moccasins, and a headband that had a colored feather in it, a horrible caricature of a Native American.

"At least the moccasins are comfy," Janet pretended not to notice Ronnie glowering at her own heels. "Do we have to wear the headband?" She asked.

"It won't work without it." Ronnie said. "Watch." When she pulled the headband off, the bikini magically undid itself and dropped to the ground.

"Nothing half-assed around here." Mallory giggled, slapping Ronnie's buttcheek from her place on the ground.

"She’s useless like this. Janet, go see if they've got liquor at that vendor, I'll try to help Mallory down the path."

As Janet made her way down the path, Ronnie pulled Mallory’s arm over her shoulders and helped Mallory to her feet. Mallory slumped over, her head landing in Ronnie’s cleavage. She pinched Ronnie’s boob, causing Ronnie to drag her back out of there.

“Oh get up, you faker.” Ronnie tried walking her down the incline.

“Don’t fall in luuuuve.” Mallory giggled. She leaned in to whisper in Ronnie’s ear. “I banged your husband.”

“I know, I gave him permission to do it, remember?”

“That was goooooood. Way better than dumb Trent.” Mallory groaned. “Wish Janet hadn’ta given me permission to bang him.”

“She didn’t, remember? You were cheating with him.”

“Riiiiiiight,” Mallory said, all of this coming back to her in hazy waves. “No wonder she’s acting mad.” Mallory startled.

“She doesn’t have much right to be, she was cheating with Michael at the same time.”

Mallory gave the world’s most dramatic stage gasp. “Reallly?!”

Ronnie shot her a confounded look. “You might be the only one who didn’t know, I guess.”

“Now I’m mad!” Mallory huffed. “She knew how good he was that whole time and she didn’t share!”

“Girl, you are around the bend over this. You’re making me wonder if it was a good idea to let you two get together.”

Mallory shoved herself off Ronnie and turned to point an accusatory finger. “You just want him for yourself! You’re just like Janet, greedy and selfish!”

“This is not gonna help us win this challenge, Mallory, get your shit together.”

“No! Not until you admit you’re jealous I banged your husband.”

Ronnie rolled her eyes. “Of course I want Michael all to myself, I’m his fucking wife. But that’s not on the table anymore, ok? And I couldn’t be mad at you for banging Michael, I banged your mom. We’re even.”

Mallory scrunched her eyes, her brain struggling to process this revelation through its deep **** haze. Ronnie banged Mom? Does that mean…

“Does that make you my Daddy too?” Mallory finished her question out loud.

“Oh my god, you drunken fool…” Ronnie grabbed Mallory’s arm and dragged her the rest of the way to the cave, while the blonde’s pondered how the math worked for her to have three dads. She couldn’t walk and think coherently at the same time, so her head lolled over as Ronnie pulled her along. Mallory heard footsteps approaching.Janet roughly grabbed her hair and pulled it backwards, hard enough to hurt but also soft enough that it was clear she could have made it hurt worse if she wanted to.

"We need you vertical, Mallory." Janet said.

"Ow, Hey-" Mallory's complaint was cut off when Janet pushed a glass bottle between her lips and tipped it up. The red concoction was foul tasting in the ****, but it also had **** in it, so Mallory choked down swallow after swallow. It was more than even she could put away in short order so she had to push it away, spilling the remainder down the front of her chest and into the dirt and sputtering as it made its way to her brain. After a few moments, the planet mercifully returned to its normal right-side up arrangement.

"What the hell was that!?" Mallory wiped up what she could from her breasts and, faced with a decision, chose the less-dignified path and licked her fingers clean.

"Moonshine." Janet said, "That was all they had, and I still had to pay for it from chips!"

“I thought drinks were free?” Ronnie thought for a second, then shook her head. “…Damn, that’s right. They weren’t when Colt was in charge.” Ronnie asked, tentatively letting go of Mallory. Mallory tried to stand on her own, and was barely capable of doing so now. She was not fully back to stability - she was two weeks sober and a few swigs wouldn’t change that. But at least she could move under her own power for a bit.

“I kinda feels like he still is, in a weird way?” Janet offered. “The whole cowboys and indians thing, the challenge at noon… Al and Ruby don’t seem into that stuff.”

Ronnie looked a little guilty for a second, but before anyone commented on that, Mallory felt the words surging up her throat again.

“You’re so smart, Janet! That’s a really good point!”

Janet rolled her eyes but Mallory noticed that she flushed a little at the compliment. She can’t resist compliments any more… the magic turns her on… Seeing an opening and lacking the self-control not to pounce on it, Mallory pushed on. Her own magic helped.

“Your boobs are just the best!”

“Ok, ok, enough.” Janet pushed Mallory back, hard. But it was a lot closer to a playful friend shove than attacking a rival, and Mallory felt a glimmer of hope that she could dig out of the hole she’d made.

“Janet’s right,” Ronnie said, “We need a plan. I need to see what they’re selling.”

“SHOPPING TRIP!” Mallory squealed as she jumped up and down.

“You sure that was all the liquor they had?” Ronnie asked, causing Janet to wince as she nodded. “Guess we’ll have to figure it out as we go.” The vendor was only just around the bend. Once they got closer, Mallory saw that the stall was carved directly into the rock in the style of a southwestern cliff dweller's home, hastily converted into a store, staffed by-Oh god.

"Mornin' ladies," Damien stepped out of the shadows up to the "counter" cut into the rock, with a friendly but knowing grin on his face. He was wearing a jeans and a knit poncho with nothing underneath, and tipped his brim to Mallory. "We missed you at the bukkake." Ronnie groaned while Janet sniggered under her breath. "Not as fun without you."

"Wait, I didn't show up and you did it anyway?"

"These things have a momentum of their own." Damien shrugged.

“Ew.”

"Speaking of momentum, Michael's already on his way, can we get focused for a second?" Ronnie said, looking over the array of magical weapons, traps, and other implements of sexy destruction. "What can we get if we pool our chips?"

"Hold up, even after buying Mallory that garbage liquor, I'm still bringing three times the chips as you two combined." Janet protested.

"This is the Harem Hotel, anything cheap is going to be less useful and more humiliating." Ronnie picked up a tiny bullet vibrator that was sized like an actual chromed bullet, and held it up. Damien suddenly blurted out his sales tagline: "Small and discrete, yet powerful. Perfect for the discerning lady. 1,000 chips."

Ronnie put it down and picked up a large, dildo heavy enough to need a grip and a pommel resembling a sword. Damien piped up again.

"For the **** and depraved. 50 chips."

"See?" Ronnie lay the terrifying thing down. "This is a team game, you need us and we need supplies."

Janet looked at the table of depraved tools, and Mallory started to feel a little nervous at how Janet's eyes kept flitting to her.

"Ok, I’ll share, but then we’re doing things my way." Janet leaned over to Ronnie and whispered something.

Luciana

Luciana and Sarah kept their mouths shut as Ruby tried to hustle them through the explanation of the game and drew the map in the sand, but they weren’t watching. Sarah looked wary and Luciana looked defiant, but their eyes never left each other. They barely even blinked, which was exceedingly hard in the harsh sun and dust of the hotel desert.

“And that’s all the help I can give you. You can use items you already own, like these.” Ruby tossed a small bag with Danica’s pill bottles at her feet, and the brunette scrambled with shaking hands to pop one open and shove it in her mouth. “But other items have to be bought from the vendor over there.” Ruby pointed towards a nomads’ tent set up about twenty feet behind her. “Remember, you all have a lot riding on this. Some of you more than others.” Ruby glared at Danica and Vivian, whose X tattoos were still visible under the Indian bikini bottoms they’d all been dressed in.

As soon as Ruby disappeared into the desert, Vivian spun on the ground where she’d been kneeling and glared at Luciana and Sarah.

“Out with it, what the hell happened?”

“Nothing.” Luciana spat back, instinctively defiant.

“You three and Ronnie disappear for a day, and then coincidentally we’re knocked out for two solid weeks and stuck in the middle of the desert, in a challenge?”

None of the three answered

“Well, I know it wasn’t me.” Vivian crossed her arms, nearly making Luciana laugh at how she looked pissy from her knees. “I was fucking Michael. I need to get over this 100 point bar by myself, because I don’t see Michael making me queen. Do you?” Vivian said.

“Michael said he would.” Sarah offered. “That’s his plan.”

“I know Michael believes he will.” Vivian offered. “And I want to believe that too, but I can’t bank on it.” Vivian grunted in annoyance as she tried to stand but her legs refused to listen. “Can someone help me out here?” After looking to see if either of the others would do it, Danica took the end of Vivian’s leash so that she could stand. She stretched out her legs and brushed the dirt from her knees. “If I lose one more challenge, it won’t even be Michael’s choice any more. So can someone please tell me what the hell happened so we can figure out how to win this one? It clearly started unexpectedly, so maybe there’s a strategy in that. The other team has got to be confused too, and if we move faster, we can get the jump on the coach first.”

There was silence from the three, a long guilty silence.

“We went to the old hotel.” Danica cracked first and blurted out. Sarah and Luciana glared at each other again.

“Old hotel?” Vivian squinted. “She looked around, from atop the canyon their view was pretty broad but only their hotel was visible in the distance.

“This casino isn’t the first version, there was an older host. The one that hosted Ronnie’s show, before she got… changed. He had a whole Wild West theme, he was obsessed with it or something. It was hidden by magic.”

“You went looking for his notebook then?” Vivian asked.

“How you know about that?” Luciana jumped in.

“I didn’t. Not until you said that.” Vivian’s eyebrow raised, Luciana felt busted. “I’ve been thinking about them for a while, the notebooks seemed inordinately important. They stuck us in a pocket dimension to write on them, so I figured there must be some reason why. They’re as powerful as Al and Ruby.”

“How can anything be as powerful as those two?” Luciana asked. “They are actual wizards.”

Vivian bit her lip, pondering something. Given how controlled the woman was, Luciana recognized how hard she was mulling her next move.

“They’re not omnipotent.” Vivian said softly. “I know this for a fact.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Sarah insisted.

“Look, I’ll be honest with you three if you give me the full story then. …Ruby came to me for my help.” Vivian said, her shoulders rising as she spoke, like weight was being lifted off them. “Before the show. Weeks, actually. I knew about the show weeks before it started.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?” Luciana demanded.

“I had no idea who you even were, and even if I did, would you have believed me? Any of you?” Vivian said. “She took me from California to fucking France and back before my lunch hour so I could meet some women who had been on the show.”

“Why?”

“She wanted me to help you guys, her team. I was working for her. That’s why I made Janet win the first challenge, that’s why I made you sell me your pills Danica, that’s why I messed up my team’s date. Al found out, and **** me on to your team. Either of the hosts could have eliminated me if they wanted, but neither did. I think they’re worried what will happen if whoever they work for finds out what they’ve been doing.”

“Why are you telling us this now?” Danica asked.

“Because now it’s my team too, and if we fail then I’m fucked.” Vivian swiveled her hips to draw attention to the X on her ass. “And if we’re going to pull this off we need to trust each other. So, now that all my cards are on the table, what the hell happened?”

Sarah and Luciana stared at each other again, each willing the other to be the one to explain, but this time the shame of it finally broke through Luciana’s defenses.

“I did it.” Luciana puffed herself up to try to keep up her tough girl look, but it was a facade obvious to all. Including her. So she dropped it, feeling a little like a chastened teenager in front of the older women. “Sarah and I found Colt’s office, but I had a look at the book before she could see. I saw a chance to swing the game and tried to pick a challenge I thought I could win.”

“Why?” Danica asked. “Why not let us figure out how to use it together.”

“That was what I was trying to do!” Sarah tried not to get pulled down in Luciana’s confession.

“I get it.” Vivian interjected. “You had the power in your hands and you thought you could handle it.” She put a motherly hand on Luciana’s shoulder. Luciana initially wanted to slap away but resisted that impulse. It felt nice. She wouldn’t have expected it from Vivian or from herself, but Luciana couldn’t help feeling appreciative.

“I didn’t think… I didn’t want to lose again.” Luciana said. “The times I’ve put my trust in someone else, I’ve been burned. So I wanted to do it myself.”

“I get that too.” Vivian said. “But we need to right now.”

Luciana felt a small tear forming in the corner of her eye. She got to it quickly, hoping the others could mistake it for rubbing out the dust. She wasn’t sure if they did, but she could still hope.

I have to at least keep some kinda rep, damn.

“Alright, so then what? There’s the vendor obviously but Danica and Sarah are flat-ass broke.” At the mention, the group headed over to browse the wares. Esmeralda waited patiently inside, sitting cross-legged on a large rug, her wares spread out in front of her.

“Hello Sarah, you’ve missed quite a few shifts.”

“I was literally ****.”

“A no-call, no-show is very naughty.” Esmeralda tut-tutted at her. “We’ll talk after the challenge.”

“Michael as both a boss and a harem master is looking better by the day…” Sarah groaned.

“I think we need to split up.” Luciana said, “One pair try to get in front of him, the others come at him from behind.” She stopped and the foursome listened as they thought they heard a low ‘thaaaaat’s what she saiiiiid’ carrying on the wind. But it was just a trick of the desert.

“Splitting up is what started this fiasco.” Sarah scoffed.

“Maybe, but it's still the right idea. Twice the chance.” Vivian offered. “Don’t worry. I'll stay with her.”

“I don't need a babysitter.” Luciana pushed back.

“I don't do babysitting. You're my backup.”

“How about you're MY backup.”

“Oh get a fucking grip you three.” Danica had enough and cut through all of it. “I'll stay with Luciana and chase, you two get in front and try to cut him off or slow him down. Deal? Deal. Now can we please buy some damned equipment and get going?”

Mallory

"I can be more useful than this!" Mallory whined as the other two were frog-marching the now-shackled blonde through a small tunnel, too narrow for Michael's coach but shorter and more direct. Given the map Al had hastily sketched, this should put them out in front of him, but just barely. After Janet and Ronnie had their little pow wow, they’d bought these steel cuffs and locked Mallory wrists in front of her without explanation. Struggling was counter-productive: each tug Mallory gave the chain sent a pulse of arousal through her body. But every time she tried to reach down and touch herself to deal with that situation, either Ronnie or Janet pulled her hands away.

No fair!

"You're an extremely valuable member of the team." Ronnie said from Mallory's right.

"Extremely valuable." Janet said from the other side. “Crucial to the plan.”

"What exactly is the plan again?" Mallory said.

"We have not told you the plan, because for some reason you blurt out whatever sails through your mind." Ronnie groaned.

"It's not my faullllt, it's the maaaaaagic." Mallory giggled and started to list to one side, before Janet yanked her arm and pulled her back to vertical.

“We know, you’ve said it a dozen times.” Ronnie’s skepticism dripped through. “But we’re not taking the chance.” The trio emerged from the cave into a small clearing at the base of the canyon. Other than the tiny tunnel they’d exited, there were four wide paths splitting off of the clearing: three to their right and one to the left. On the right there was a signpost mounted, with an arrow indicating the route to the hotel.

“Michael’s gotta be coming from the other way then.” Janet said, pointing to their left.

"Gotta be.” Ronnie nodded. Her eye started twitching slightly, and seemingly involuntarily. But Ronnie clenched her neck and seemed to bring herself back. Mallory looked at Janet but she hadn’t noticed. “Secure the strumpet to the pole.”

“What’s a strummmmmpet?” Mallory slurred. “Is that like, a bird? I love birds!”

“Yes, it’s a bird.” Janet pulled Mallory to the signpost while Ronnie wrenched the arrow sign off of the wood. Ronnie grabbed a rock and knocked the nails free from the sign. Then, with Janet’s help, they held Mallory’s hands over her head and nailed the chain to that same pole, securing the blonde.

“I don’t know if I like this plan.” Mallory gave the chain another yank, which jolted her pussy again. “Ok, maybe I like this plan a little.”

“Quit struggling-” Janet said, but Ronnie cut across her..

“No, we want ‘er to be as aroused as she can when Michael arrives. Every tug on the irons pushes her further.”

“Aroused for Daddy?!” Mallory said excitedly, “I like this plan a lot!” She gave the cuffs another hard yank, and the pleasure in her body overwhelmed the small amount of pain in her wrists. “Ooooh!” Mallory closed her eyes and tugged again. “Ooooooh! Oooooh!” She started to lose her balance from the combination of her arousal and the intoxication, and falling over caused her to pull against the chain again… She hung slack and drooling with her eyes closed, enjoying everything about that.

“Guys…?” Mallory panted and stood up again as her arms started to hurt, opening her eyes to find… no one. The other two had run off and left her behind! “Guys? Guys!?” She yanked again on the cuffs to try to pull them free from the nail, and felt another powerful jolt down her arms. It shot through her breasts, making her nipples tingle furiously and landed like a bomb between her legs.

"Fuuuuuuuck." Mallory slumped back against the pole with a dopey look on her face. That felt gooooooood. After a minute of that lovely sensation though, Mallory realized the depth of her problem. With her hands bound way up there, she couldn't do anything about the fire in her loins. “I could be stuck here alllllll dayyyyyyyy…” Mallory whined, humping her hips uselessly at the air. Mallory was not used to being denied anything in life, let alone climaxes, and a desire unfulfilled was enough to make her more than a little crazy.

Fortunately for her, it was only a few minutes before the coach made its way around the corner, with Michael being pulled by…

"What in the actual hell?!" Mallory blinked through her drunken haze, trying to reconcile the sight of a coach being dragged by… a woman? Michael held a whip in one hand and the reins in the other, and he was rearing back to give the girl a strike across the backside when he saw Mallory. He lowered his whip hand, looking a little sheepish as he did so, then pulled back on the reins connected to the lady…horse…thing and slowed the coach down.

“Daddy!” She cheered, jumping up as he saw her. “Come on, Daddy! Let me off of this!” Mallory tugged the chain again, making her eyes roll back in her head for a moment and leaving her drooling on her breasts.

Michael looked around at all the various caves, passages, cliff edges, and large boulders leading into this gully, and shook his head as he approached.

“Daddy?” She asked, putting on her best pout face.

“Sorry babygirl, that’s a trap.” Michael gave a small whip strike to the redhead and the coach started to accelerate.

"Ohhhhhh, I'm the bait!" Mallory figured out the plan only fifteen minutes after literally everyone else in the viewing audience. In her defense, she was more intoxicated than everyone in the audience, by a significant margin. “Come on… Don’t you wanna stop and play with meeeeee….?” Mallory swayed her hips as seductively as she could manage, given the circumstances.

“I know you’re the bait, you know you’re the bait, and you still expect me to get down off this wagon?” Michael laughed as he passed. “Love you, Mal. I’ll be back for you first thing.”

Janet

Damnnit! Janet had worried he’d see through this, but hoped that Michael would be overcome by his need for Mallory and overwhelm his reason. But as he started to pick up speed, she saw her chance slipping and moved to the back up plan. Up ahead, there was a dead tree hanging off the side of the cliff by a few remaining weak roots. Ronnie would give it a solid shove and the whole thing would come crashing down to block Michael's path. Any second now.

Aaaaany second now.

“Ronnie, now!” Janet yelled, jumping out from behind a rock to Mallory’s left. The coach was nearly level with them now, and when Michael's head swiveled around she pointed her brand new shiny revolver at him. Michael was so stunned at this that he did nothing, and with the path still clear she only had a few seconds before she'd lose her chance. Janet fired a round in the air as a warning and gestured for Michael to raise his hands. His eyes went wide, and he dropped the reins and the whip onto his seat as he surrendered. “Ronnie?!” Janet called. Janet stepped to her right to get a view of the place where Ronnie was hidden - Should have been hidden - but nothing appeared. “I’ll do it myself, then. Good lord.”

“They gave you guns?” Michael stammered.

“No, this one is just for me.” Janet smirked. “Nice little toy. Six shots, six transformations. Well, five shots now. But don’t worry, they’re only temporary.” Michael started to lower his hands, but Janet cocked the hammer on the revolver. “I’d hate to change you, handsome, but I need that stagecoach.”

Text scrolled across the bottom of the screen for the benefit of the viewers at home:

Colt's Bushmaster - Love nature but wish it wasn't so danged far away? Blast your friends and lovers with the Bushmaster and have a touch of the animal kingdom right in your own home! Changes to your targets should revert within 24 hours. Side-effects are half the fun. Call now, Harem Hotel operators are standing by!

Michael looked like he desperately wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. He just kept opening and closing his mouth silently, growing increasingly frustrated that he could not speak.

“Janet…” Michael said, but once again he was cut off by something. No matter, Janet thought, Whatever he wants to say can wait until we win.

“Climb down from there, Michael.” Janet ordered. Michael looked very pained at this, and Janet felt a serious pang of regret. “Boss, I will make it up to you after the challenge, I promise.”

Whether he accepted that or not, he climbed down off the wagon slowly. Before he reached the ground, he took the whip from the seat.

“That for me, Daddy?” Mallory spun around on her shackles and waved her ass at Michael.

Michael’s eyes were drawn immediately to the drunken blonde’s gyrating booty because… obviously, but still he held out the coiled whip in Janet’s direction.

“You’ll need it to drive the coach.” He said, and Janet nodded. “Don't worry about Zoe, she can take it.” As Janet grabbed the whip, he pointed to the marks criss-crossing the leather-bound horse girl’s butt. Janet followed his pointing finger, which he used as his own distraction. He stepped out of the path of the gun barrel and yanked the rope coil towards the coach, yanking Janet forward and off-balance. Michael grabbed for the gun, but Janet had just enough wherewithal to pull the revolver back out of his reach before he could grab it. She recovered before he did and quickly pressed the gun into his chest.

“You’re a tricky one, Boss.” Janet smirked, backing away from his reach, this time keeping her focus entirely on him. “Now I feel slightly less bad about robbing you.” She gestured with the gun again. “But I can still make it up to you. I can leave you out here with Mallory and you can keep each other company. Now take off that silly cowboy outfit. Slowly.”

He kicked off his boots, then pulled off his goofy vest and dropped it into the dust.

“Oh come on!” Janet mock-pouted. “I deserve a better show than that.”

“It’s dead silent out here.” Michael complained. “How could I possibly get in the mood with no music? And a magic gun on me?”

“I can fix one of those. Mallory! Beatbox a little for him.” Janet called over her shoulder. Mallory… attempted a beat, but as drunk as she was, the rhythm was entirely useless. For stripping, rapping, or any purpose really.

“Take it off, sexy! Wooo!” Mallory hooted, jumping up and down, trying and failing to keep from yanking on the nail as she did so. She slumped against the pole again, her thighs getting slick with her excitement.

“Ok, I guess we’ll both have to make do.” Janet rolled her eyes. “The jeans. Drop ‘em, cowboy. You can leave your hat on.”

“This is gonna take a minute,” he grunted as he struggled to pull down the nearly painted-on jeans.

Janet laughed, “Oh boo hoo, Boss. I’ll wear jeans that tight every day, if you ask me. Or better yet, if you order me.” Given how everything shrinks when I put it on, I don’t really have the choice.

“I… please reconsider.” Michael said, as he kicked off the jeans. “I can’t tell you any more than that. Just don’t do this.”

“It hurts me to leave you too, Boss,” She said, as she circled around him, keeping a wary distance this time. “But I need to win this.”

“Where’d that shot come from?”

“Down there!”

“Everything echoes in here, how can you tell?”

Janet and Michael froze as they heard voices approaching. As well as the sound of hoofbeats - actual hoofbeats. Janet scrambled up into the seat of the coach, grabbing the reins with her left hand.

“Yah! Yah!!” She snapped the reins, and the ponygirl began to pull the coach at a painfully slow pace. “Faster! Go faster!” She snapped the reins again, but the girl seemed to be content to dawdle along at this trot, which wasn’t going to escape anyone. Janet looked down at the whip.

Better you than me, girl. Janet had to put the gun down to pick up the whip, but as soon as she reached for it, she had to jerk her hand back as an arrow zipped just past her in a blur. Janet quickly lay down across the seat to use as much of it as cover as she could. She peeked up to see what she could. Coming up the canyon maybe 50 yards behind her were Luciana and Danica, riding an actual horse instead of some overburdened redhead.

Janet thought, putting down the whip and reaching for the gun again. Can’t outrun them. New plan…