Snaps and Snacks

Scarlet

Tina, Josie, and Indigo all left for destinations unknown immediately after the meeting, leaving Scarlet as the third wheel to dealing with Skye’s problem over a late breakfast. It’s not that she doesn’t want to help; it’s that she can’t. Thinking about the situation makes her brain spark with blocked trauma recovery techniques and those blocks lead to feeling turned on so inappropriately. So, she excused herself as quickly as she could.

She heads back to her room to plan for an afternoon alone. She needs time to think and she needs to take some **** on the show, no matter how petty. She is happy to see that not just the clothes in her closet appeared in her wardrobe. She pulls out a road flare from the small box of them she hid in the back corner of her closet. Being from the big city, she firmly believes that any strong, independent woman needs 2 things in their purse at all times: wasp killer spray and a road flare. She knows that a gun is a simpler, more reliable form of self defense, but she worries that, if she is overpowered, it would be turned on her. The wasp spray is a cheaper, more accurate form of pepper spray with a much longer range; blast the baddie in the eye with that and they aren’t getting up. The road flare is more for intimidation. She can count on how many times striking up a road flare scared off a would-be mugger on 1 hand, but she’d still count more than zero. Good thing I started this back in high school after that asshole Mike tried to grope me while waiting for the bus.

She grabs the rulebook, her phone, and all of the Beckie commemorative T-shirts, stuffing everything in a tote bag. She grabs the insulting signs, too. The big banner on top of the bathhouse entrance was tricky, but Tina used her magic whats-its to untie it when she went to grab some food.

She walks out to the beach, taking off her shoes once she hit the sand. It feels warm between her toes. It takes a bit of doing, but she gathers some driftwood and digs a hole in the sand. She tosses the T-shirts and signs in the hole, then adds some wood. Striking the flare to get it started, she shoves the spewing sparks deep into the cheap cotton and paper. Once the fire is truly going, she starts a group text with the rest of the girls. Snapping a pic of Beckie’s burning face, she sends the image with the accompanying text: “Job’s done. And you better not bring any weenies to this roast ;-P”

That text turned out to help with the Skye situation after all. She apparently never had a phone before, so (with Dinah assisting on the other end) Scarlet spends some time teaching Skye how to text (like any good girl should know how to do). Explaining texting abbreviations is a little aggravating, but she can send messages reasonably well by the time the flare starts to burn itself out.

Scarlet then begins to settle down to her other (less cathartic) task: to read through the game rules. She watches the small fire and listens to the waves for a bit to psyche herself up. When the moment seems right, she opens up the music app on her phone (luckily, her music collection on her real phone was already uploaded) and started her “studying” playlist; a deep blast of bass erupts as her first intense symphonic metal tune begins.

Reading these rules is like the worst masturbatory session Scarlet has ever had. The legalese is so dry, so wordy, so filled with jargon and weird prepositions that it is taking everything she would have had parsing academic papers to even begin to understand anything beyond the very basics. It takes 10 minutes (and nearly creaming her panties twice) to even get through the first few pages. The hornier she gets, the harder it is to focus; the harder it is to focus, the more intense the effects of her transformation become.

Her music stops as she gets a text notification. Scarlet nearly flings the rulebook in the now smoldering fire, but resists. Looks like Tina’s finally checked her phone. In the group text, the bonny bunny sent her own responses. First, an actual text: “Boo! I wanted to help burn those! Why couldn’t you have waited until I figured my magic out?” Then, a video. It shows Tina using several casts of her spell to essentially spray paint some sand in a crude rendition of Beckie’s face, followed by a cast of her spell to catch the tip of her finger on fire. She then waved the flame through the sand, lightly melting the image. Another text: “Solidarity!”. Dinah sends a laughing face emoji; Skye follows a few minutes later with a ladybug. Weird girl.

Happy for the distraction, Scarlet almost begins to go back to reading when she sees the notification of another text pop up. Tina sent a few private messages: “Naughty girl, starting fires on your own.” “Look what you did to my outfit.” “Does my tail make my butt look too big?” Then Tina sends a video of her backside. Large sections of her clothing are just gone. She walks backwards (towards the camera) and bends down to show off the curvature of her ass; one can just about see her lower lips through the holes in her pants. She wiggles her rabbit tail, then wiggles her whole butt. Finally, she turns around (showing off her ample cleavage bulging through the remnants of her tops), sticks out her tongue, and winks at the camera.

With that, Scarlet actually throws the rulebook into the fire and starts to bury it in the sand. Gonna need to find a private place to take the edge off after all that.

Indigo

Indigo is exploring the hallway of random doors. The arrangement is strange, to say the least. There are more rooms than doors in the hallway. One can select a specific room from it’s assigned door on a display or one can open and close a door to randomly cycle through the available options.

Indigo doesn’t have a particular destination in mind but does have some goals. Her attempts to talk the others into helping her test her playtime app fell flat last night, but she has other ideas in mind.

Her first idea is to find some sort of streaming room; while she doesn’t know much about how the game works, she hopes that interacting with the audience would be helpful. If nothing else, it would make her feel a little more normal. Indigo rarely left her room, much less her home since graduating from high school and starting her streaming career. Outside of her parents, she can’t remember the last time she had an actual conversation with someone in meat space until yesterday. Talking into a mic while staring at a screen just feels right. It took a bit of doing, but she eventually found a “confession booth”. A single chair with a camera pointed at it, lacking any sort of power source. The room is filled with ankle deep salt water. A small bowl filled with a thin layer of sand is placed on top of the chair; a few words are scratched into the sand: “Out of Order”.

Her second idea is to find some lunch. She wandered to the cafeteria to see that, once again, the menu is just various items on sticks. Turning around, she wonders whether she can find a convenience store like the 24-7 she regularly gets deliveries from. A quick search for energy drinks on the shop app later, and Indigo is standing in front of the most amazing convenience store she has ever seen.

The entrance has deer feeders and fire pits on display. They have shopping carts like it is a real grocery store. And the inside! The inside is bright and clean and filled to the brim with kangaroo rat mascot merch.

“Behold!” a squeaky voice from a hidden PA system booms, “Welcome, valued customer, to Kang-oo’s! Our normal staff could not be transported here from our time and place, but we are super excited about this cross-promotional location on Harem Hotel! The Hotel has promised us that they will have trained staff members available to run the shop eventually. While they wait to fulfill that promise, we do have automated checkout operational. They have also asked us to stock some additional items from our usual fare. Peruse to your heart’s content! Do enjoy our delightful delectables, such as our delicious Rat Leavings!”

Rat Leavings, Indigo snorts, What kind of snack are Rat Leavings?

The Day 1 Special sign immediately catches her eye: 1 BP – Kang-oo’s Harem Hotel Membership Card! Unlimited Mundane Sodas and Snacks while on the show!

Can this show get any better?

Indigo grabs a shopping cart and starts to fill it with all of her usual energy drinks and snacks, plus a bag of Rat Leavings (hey, advertising occasionally works). Several shelves completely emptied by her spree, she starts to explore some of the less usual offerings. This place has a jerky bar, complete with both basic (beef jerky flavored with the usual options), slightly odd (goat jerky, bison jerky, rabbit jerky, rattlesnake jerky), weird (dodo jerky, chimera jerky, manticore jerky, chupracabra jerky) and super weird options (Human jerky? Really?). She grabs 3 wood-fired pizzas from the “customize your own gas station pizza” bar, basking in the glow of the look of them. The soda dispenser has flavor options she has never seen before; she, of course, grabs a cup and makes a suicide slurry of all 50 offerings. Downing it, she doesn’t gag (or die). Another successful venture!

In the refrigerated drinks section, she finds what is considered by many gas station connoisseurs the ultimate discovery: several cases of original formulation Cuatros Locos, before the government said you couldn’t have a 20 oz canned drink that was both 120 proof and filled with 500 mg of caffeine. They even had the mythical Mango Chili Lime flavor! Indigo grabs a small fortune’s worth of boozy glory.

A quick pass through of the kitschy merchandise section, featuring cast iron skillets shaped like a kangaroo rat, led to Indigo’s final discovery: the Merch Master 9001. A device that can generate 1 outfit of merch a day, with whatever design one can feed into it, in whatever size one wants. The only stipulation is that the outfit has to meet a minimum sexiness quotient. A steal at 5 BP.

Indigo get annoyed when it is time to check out. First, her Cuatros Locos are not a part of the Membership Card deal (and cost 5 BP, each). Second, the automated check-out insists that she is not of legal age to purchase them. Sadly, she puts them back where she found them. Oh well, I know where they are. Just need to get The Master to buy them for me.

Indigo: - 6 BP

As she wheels her massive haul back to her room, she is already dreaming up designs for her new Merch Master 9001 made wardrobe.

This show is the best thing that has ever happened to me!

Francis

10 more combos. Get ‘em knocked out.

Francis needed to clear his head. So, he does what he often did when the world beat him down: take out his frustrations on the heavy bag. He has been at it for a couple of hours now, but administrating **** against the 250 lb mass of leather, cloth, and sand isn’t as cathartic as it normally was.

Honestly, the gym nook is the one bit of this nightmare that he could appreciate. The gym back home was set up to teach classes, not let the anti-social loner really get a good workout in. While a purulent part of him did enjoy the eye candy (like Josie, a rude thought erupts), having to careen into bags to avoid people barely jogging during the cardio portion of a class did not an enjoyable experience make. Plenty of space to run here; jump ropes are available for some cardio variety. Free weights in various styles displayed to work on strength conditioning. They even had a speed bag set up; he doesn’t have the rhythm yet to keep it going, but, with enough Streem tutorials, he’ll get there.

It’s been like this all day. Eat. Watch “game film” until he can’t stomach it anymore. Punch and kick until he’s too sore to move. Repeat. The only real change from this morning is that his nerves are starting to get to him. His first date ever is going to be tonight with a woman who, maybe 24 hours ago, confessed that she found him physically repulsive. On an inter-dimensional dating game show. And this’ll be the first of many, many such dates. His social incompetence is gnawing at him, dreading the amount of stress this is going to cause.

A voice rings out behind him, a sing-songy soprano with a heavy Greek accent, the first he’s heard all day not from a TV screen, “Your form sucks. Keep those hands up. Also, your date is going to start in 10 minutes. Unless you want to smell like a rotting whale carcass, I suggest a quick shower.” Francis hears a splash before he could turn around.