Steps and Staff Mishaps

Scarlet

Tina had the right idea, Scarlet glumly thinks, sneaking away from the impending group therapy session.

Scarlet hates the fact that she can’t help with emotional healing right now. She devoted a quarter of her life to learning how to help, only for it to be snatched away from her by the game. She feels helpless, worthless. So, she is avoiding the conversation, hoping that thinking about how poor of a coping mechanism it is won’t get her too aroused.

Well, she found a distraction from everything. Something that she spent a lot of time on in her simpler, more innocent days. Before going a little wild in college. Before buckling down to try and get into grad school. Before Mom got sick and Dad lost his job trying to take care of her. Before she saw that she can’t live on scholarship money without her parents’ financial support. Before she had to corrupt this bit of happiness to survive. Don’t think about all that; it’s just going to cause more pain.

In her younger years, Scarlet’s grandparents served as babysitters while her parents worked. And her grandmother loved watching old Shirley Temple movies. So, naturally, she fell in love with tap dancing. Sure, she moved on to other dance styles when it wasn’t “cool” anymore, but tap dancing was her first love. She had a cheap pair of wedge heels with taps in her closet, so she grabbed them. Been a while. Hope I’m not too rusty.

She enters the hotel’s dance studio. A simple room, all things considered. Plain wooden floors. A mirrored wall with a support bar for ballet practice. A small jukebox.

She laces up her tap heels and starts to get a feel for them again. She does some warm-up steps. Her rhythm is initially a little off, but she recovers soon enough. She puts on “Fifth Avenue” on a loop from an old Shirley Temple movie she watched over and over again as a little kid. She dances the routine a few times, just getting lost in the movement, the beat, the nostalgia. She doesn’t even notice Dinah walking in until the de-aged doctor gives her a polite round of applause.

“You know, I could have used your help dealing with Indi, right?”

“Sorry, I just...”

“It’s okay,” Dinah assures, “Too close to family therapy, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Just remember, we are all in this together. You don’t always need to avoid these situations. We won’t hold the effects of your transformation against you. We’ll understand if you need to step aside to take the edge off.”

Scarlet puts on a mock air of exasperation and hams up rolling her eyes. “Ok, Mom.”

“You know, I could stop paying for your dance lessons, young lady.”

Scarlet sticks her tongue out at that. That causes both women to break character and laugh. Scarlet rests her head on the taller woman’s shoulder as the two walk out.

I should dance for myself more often.

Francis

Francis never considered himself a religious man. Sure, he attended lectures at his local Federalist Institute monthly to maintain his voting rights, but he considered that an obligation akin to attending militia training sessions (before he aged out), a necessary duty for a citizen. Back in his younger, less socially isolated years, someone would occasionally drag him to a church service somewhere, hoping to save his soul, where he’d politely sit, but it never felt real.

So, he is less moved by the religiosity of the book he is reading than he is fascinated by the multiversal implications of it. He is holding a book from another world, a world both similar and vastly different to his own; he is getting but a glimpse of it and is in awe. This other world is as if Faerun went through the same technological revolutions that his own did. There is still monsters and magic there, but also skyscrapers and cell phones and silly lattes with stupid names. These glimpses keep him from flipping directly to the more practical aspects of the book, namely, how to function as a woman after being born and raised as a man. In that particular world, Eilistraee worship requires males to undergo the Changedance once and stay female for the rest of their days when the option for males to become priestesses evolved. It speaks to what he must do to keep that promise. If only he can live with herself after. So, he sits and reads about how men interested in becoming priestesses should do a stint with the Harpers to see if that kind of service to the goddess would suffice.

His thoughts are interrupted by a loud argument in his living area. He marks his page and leaves his reading nook to see what can only be described as mermaid sumo wrestling. Two mermaids, both black and blue scaled, are slamming into each other like bull elephant seals on the seashore fighting over a mate. They are growling at each other in a language Francis doesn’t recognize. The one with the battle scars looks more intimidating (and more muscular), but the one with the fake glasses(?) isn’t backing down.

“Hey, if you’re going to fight, take it outside.”

At the sound of his voice, the two seem to go after it harder. The bigger fish girl slams hard into the smaller one, only for the smaller one to latch onto the other’s shoulder, gnawing at it with sharp, sharky teeth. The larger one starts to lunge for the other’s neck when a splash erupts to the side of them. Ariel has leapt out of the water (Wow. She’s almost an A cup now. They are certainly growing...) and basically belly flops on the other two. The smaller girl loses a couple of teeth in the larger one’s shoulder in the process.

“Calypso, Daphne, you both have 3 seconds to apologize to each other and the Master before I get whatever cum-based rewards you came here to collect.”

“But sis,” the smaller girl begs, “I haven’t had a chance at Master’s yummy cummy wummies until now.”

“Don’t care, Daphne,” Ariel growls, “Don’t care.”

The larger, scarred one speaks, “Daphne, I apologize for assuming that you would respect that the Master submitted his order before you made your deal with that contestant. It’s called ‘dibs’.”

She shimmies over to Francis, “I’m sorry you had to see that, Master. I’m Calypso, the hotel’s librarian. Here is your order,” she pulls out a resealable baggy with 2 books in it and opens her mouth, “I’m ready to accept payment at any time.”

“That was a terrible apology, big sis. Make her do it right,” the smaller one whines.

Francis, once again mildly regretting his deal with the hotel staff, fishes out his dick. Before he really has a chance to start stroking it, the fish girl at his feet wraps a surprisingly delicate webbed hand around it. She winks, then starts to lightly suck on the tip, swirling her fine sandpaper textured tongue all around his head. He tries not to think too hard about the sharpness of her teeth as they brush lightly across the surface of his rapidly hardening cock. Once he is at full-mast, the girl starts to pump on him with her hand, maintaining a vacuum-like seal around his glans.

Seeing as the fight has basically resolved itself, Ariel looks at her nerdy little sister, “You still haven’t apologized. If you don’t by the time Master cums, I’m going to claim your treat.”

The younger mermaid sniffs, “Sorry, Calypso. I let my betta fish instincts take over. Sorry, Master. I got too excited by the prospect of your cummy wummies.”

“That’s okay,” Francis grunts, “I understand, I guess?”

“While I am here, Master, what does ‘New phone. Who dis?’ mean?”

Francis then begins to rant about not being told he had a phone. Calypso, excited by the prospect of Ariel having screwed up (as far as Francis could tell), picks up the pace of her stroking, the pressure she is exerting on his glans. He almost falls over cumming as he got to the crescendo of complaint. Calypso swallows loudly and repeatedly as she tries to suck every last drop of semen out of Francis. With a loud pop, she pulls out the softening cock from her mouth when she is satisfied.

Then, after all of that, Ariel just smirks and says, matter-of-factually, “Is that why you haven’t been cumming on the floor when I asked?”

Calypso sneers at her sister, shimmies over to an end table and drops the baggie off. She then goes to one of the floor tube openings and dives right in; Ariel does the same to another tube, leaving Francis alone with Daphne. He almost immediately gets a text from Ariel (Why are you just standing there when you could be squirting another delicious load of egg batter on the floor for me?).

Francis sighs and looks over at the fake glasses wearing mermaid. “Want to talk about whatever reason you are here while we wait for me to recover from... all of that?” He types out a snarky response about refractory periods to Ariel as he walks to the reading nook with his purchases to sit down. Daphne, for her part, shimmies over beside him.

“Would you like a pillow, or something?”

“Nah, big sis is already annoyed with me. Don’t need to add ruining upholstery to it. Again, I’m Daphne. Nice to meet you. I’m the hotel’s Dungeon Mermaid and I am so excited to meet another DM!”

Francis nervously looks at the pirate ship nook.

“No. Not that kind of dungeon (though one of those kinds of dungeons is a part of the game, hee hee). A DoD kind of DM!”

Not quite relieved, Francis turns to face his “fellow DM”.

“I guess you know about that bitch Beckie’s grand idea or whatever. And how she got to take over this set to run her season? Well, originally...”

“Let me guess. A lesbian Master and a bunch of male contestants? And the contestants would all undergo what I’m facing?”

“Yup. Guess you figured that out, huh?”

“I put two and two together, based on something Ariel said when we started this arrangement.”

“Well, the master for that season was also a DM for her gaming group. Like a third of the contestants were going to come from it, so, the host for this failed-to-launch season tasked me with building a fun infinite dungeon for them to game in. I had a lot of fun making it. The end of that season was probably going to be wild, since the contestants that weren’t eliminated were likely to be like Level 15 Giga-Stacies. Well, when that fell through and the set was put on television limbo, I was really bummed that no one would see my baby. So, in a way, I’m glad that bitch Beckie is a lazy good-for-nothing that is just re-purposing large swaths of the old season. That way, my baby has another chance to see the light of day. I’m so glad that your I totally lost my mouth virginity last night making out with your hot redheaded contestant while fingering her cloaca!” The mermaid covers her mouth in shame.

“A few things there, Daphne. One, if I had a nickle for every time someone was magically compelled to brag about having sex with someone in my harem before me, I’d have 2 nickles this week. I mean, it’s not a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice. Although, since I just got my first blowjob from one of your sisters, I guess I shouldn’t be too annoyed with it? Two, I guess you’re here for one of the contestants I haven’t met officially yet. Think broader. Three, cloaca? Is that you misunderstanding human anatomy or...”

“It was part of the challenge that the bitch ran last night; the girls who lost got a temporary mermaid transformation so they wouldn’t drown during the rest of the game. You aren’t going call me a gross grouper for my little make-out session?”

“Glad Scarlet got to enjoy it?” Francis replies, a little unsure on how to respond. The fish girl leaps up and wraps her finned arms around his shoulders, giving him a light peck on the cheek.

“Thank you! Back to the story. One of your girls came into the entrance of my dungeon today looking to start her journey to bad-bass heroine glory but was a little short in the BP department. She was wondering if you wanted to pay off the loan she took for it?”

“Going to add some conditions to this. This is literally twice in the past 24 or so hours that something like this has sprung up. I mean, I like the piano, but...”

“You don’t want to constantly feel like you are being used for your yummy cummy wummies?”

“That’s part of it,” Francis pulls out his phone and starts a voice memo text to Ariel, “I understand that you and your sisters are wanting to feed off of me, but we need some ground rules for these so-called ‘loans’. I don’t mind helping the girls out and subverting our quite possibly phantom host. I do mind manipulating the girls as an excuse for getting to feed off of me. So, rule 1, I demand to approve any loan that I am going to be paying off with my semen before the deal is struck with a girl in my harem. They should know beforehand if they are going to need to pay the loan off themselves. Rule 2, I want to know exactly what they are buying and, ideally, why. If you are not willing to abide by these rules, then we can discuss alternate ways of subverting the game economy face-to-face. Thanks.” He hits send.

Turning back to the hugging mermaid, he says, “Okay, what am I about to pay for here?”

“Can’t tell you exactly what it is, since she is upgrading a transformation you are not aware of. But, she is basically getting a positive equivalent of an elimination transformation at a super deep discount.”

“What?”

Daphne starts explaining her services to Francis. It took a few attempts (and a few more embarrassing sexual secrets) for her to figure out exactly how much detail she can give about the purchase the loan would be paying for, but she managed to convey that one of the girls was basically going from a commoner to a Level 1 sorceress and that Daphne would be handling the finer details of the change. There would be some sexy flair to the arrangement, but she would ensure that spells and whatnot would be as well-rounded, flavorful, and desirable as possible for the buyer that a Level 1 character spell list could be.

She describes her other services. She runs a shop for items useful in the dungeon (and a way to sell items found in the dungeon for BP); handles leveling services either with XP earned from the dungeon or BP; offers lower level transformations to grant certain aspects of DoD class features; applies the effects of PP to a player; and, of course, manages the actual dungeon. Basically, she is a one-fish-woman hub area. The dungeon has loot chests with BP, VP, items, transformations, and PP. Slain monsters drop XP, with modifiers applied for party size and level differentials. All in all, the perfect place to take a harem of bad-bass heroines on a lovely group date.

Francis listens. This may be exactly what we need if we have to **** our way off the show, he muses. I mean, Planeshift is only a 7th level spell. How hard could it be to get to be a Level 13 wizard, especially if I can bribe the DM with cum? And surely a little more cum could be spilled to get us a planar fork to a better world, if not home.

Francis comes to a decision. “Ok. So, what do I need to do to cover the debt?”

“Three things: I’d like some yummy cummy wummies in my egg sac tummies. Both some today and tomorrow. I’d also like to dig through your DM notes in your game room for some more inspiration; this’ll be the first time I would actually get to DM with other people, after all. My dolls weren’t exactly good role players. Or dice throwers. Or conversationalists. And, finally, can I come hang out with you some during the day, maybe pick your brain? I don’t want to interrupt your dates or anything; I just get a little lonely and I tend to get into fights with my sisters when the old betta brain starts acting up.”

“You actually want to be friends?”

“Huh,” Daphne pauses, “I guess I do. Weird making friends with a food source, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Ouch. Well... friend, I think I’m ready for another feeding. How are we doing this?”