Training and Technical Manuals

Tessa

Tessa is appreciative that Daphne can teach her in the pool. She is basically sunbathing at the bottom in a spot where a sunbeam penetrates through the mess of water slides. She is basking while she waits her her lesson. The warmth and the saltwater both feel so good. Ahh! So relaxing! When was the last time I let myself laze about like this? Perhaps needing to soak to rest my lungs is a good thing?

Tessa: -20 BP

And then, the insanity starts again.

It starts with the loud rumble of giggles and squees reverberating in the water, a young woman’s exclamations of joy in Aquan. Then a splash as a young woman with flowing fins like Daphne and a fish tail, covered in black scales with blue and indigo highlights, erupts from one of the water slides and essentially cannonballs into the pool. Her black hair is a haphazard mess of blue and indigo highlights; her olive skin well tanned, her smile filled with razor sharp shark teeth.

“[Hi, Auntie!]” the mermaid bellows in Aquan, “[I’m Melody! Pleased to meet ya!]”

A smaller voice pipes up in Aquan, barely felt in the water, “[But I’m Melody.]”

Tessa turns around and sees another mermaid. Her highlights are more orderly (only blue on one side, only indigo on the other), her skin a paler olive (as if she gets out less), but clearly these two are sisters.

“[Sorry, girls, but I was told that this pool was for the contestants? I can get out?]” the rumbling whalesong of Aquan feels strange and natural at the same time.

The louder mermaid sounds, “[Don’t worry, Auntie! This is your pool. We’re the lifeguards! Right, Harmony?]”

The quieter one folds in on herself a little, nervously stammering, “[But... you’re Harmony.]”

Why do I need a lifeguard? I can breathe underwater. Her phone notification gives her pause. That might explain it.

Tessa: +8 XP (Full frontal nudity, all at once, for Mistress)

Tessa swims towards the surface. Mona looks like she was crying, but is now distracted by the skinny dipping former teacher. The crystal clear water highlights Tessa’s naked curves, if anything. The mermaids also swim to the surface, the extrovert introducing them, the introvert squeaking out objections. It look like, between the three sets of bare breasts, the words aren’t sticking in Mona’s mind.

Sighing, Tessa forces herself out of the pool, equips her uniform, and directs the slack-jawed mistress to a nearby picnic table. The extrovert mermaid plays with the slides behind Mona. Tessa doesn’t see the introvert; she’s probably hiding in the deep end below her line of sight.

When the girl finally speaks, it’s not the most eloquent greeting, “Boobies.”

Tessa wants to cut to the heart of the matter, “What’s the matter, Mona?”

That opens up the water works. “I am so bad at this! I tried to make friends with Tegan, and she blew up on me! And Craig last night... I don’t want to talk about Craig last night. And tonight is a date with Gaia. And me bawling like a baby in front of you is not good and...” Mona’s voice fails her as she breaks up into sobs.

Tessa is used to dealing with hormonal teenage girls breaking out into tears. She taught middle schoolers. Hardly a week goes by without one of her students cracking under the pressure of the puberty pressure cooker that is junior high. But those experiences are nothing compared to the pressure on this young woman before her. Francis... Tyalangan... her sibling said as much. Tessa gets up and wraps Mona up in a side hug.

Tessa: +0 XP (Side Hugs Aren’t Real Hugs!)

“Hey, it will be okay. It’s what? Day two? We are all going through this together. And sure, it’s going to be easier for some than on others. But, in time, I am sure we will all get along. Okay?”

Mona sniffles. “So, you don’t think I’m being a big crybaby right now?”

Tessa quickly evaluates the situation. Kind of? I didn’t see how Tegan treated her. Could be something serious, could be petty middle school stuff. Or, it might be Craig hurt her badly enough that the petty Tegan stuff hit too hard. I don’t know for sure. “I am sure you are not a big crybaby.”

Mona leans her head into the side hug. Her tears subside. “Sorry for interrupting your naked swim time.”

“It’s okay. I’m just waiting for my lesson.”

Mona looks a little excited by it, especially as Daphne saunters over to the picnic table. She drops a wand and a textbook on the table, greeting, “Hi Tessa, hi Mona! Nice to see both of you again. Ready to try magic again?”

Tessa nods and Mona interrupts, “Oooh, can I learn some magic, too?”

Mona pouts when she’s told that she can’t at the moment, due to the mundane nature of her original world. Still, she watches and tries to follow along. The girl drools as Tessa removes her dress again. Magic requiring nudity still feels odd.

The thing about bardic magic is that it is all about patterns, rhythms. Getting the level this morning really helped Tessa grasp it. She always liked poems with meter to them and not just a simple rhyming scheme. Once she could flick her wrists in time with the words, the spell came together. And it was fun. She (temporarily) turned her hair red again. She washed the sweat from sitting in the near noontime heat off of herself. She even started a candlestick with a flourish.

Tessa: Success – Prestidigitation cantrip lesson (5 XP / 5 XP)

Tessa: +5 XP, Prestidigitation cantrip (Training Session)

Tessa: +20 BP (Weekly Task Complete! Successfully Complete a Training Session)

Mona: Weekly task update! Ensure each contestant successfully completes a training session (4/6)

Mona was very impressed, clapping and whooping as Tessa performed the tricks.

“Thank you for the lesson, Daphne.”

“Yeah,” Mona agrees, “It was really cool! I do want some magic, too!”

Daphne laughs, “Okay, Mona, I will see what I can do. Tyalangan can be convinced. She just needs the right encouragement.” The mermaid waggles her eyebrows as she packs up to leave.

“Daphne meant asking while they have sex,” Mona declares, as if it wasn’t obvious.

Tessa shakes her head, but smiles. The extrovert mermaid shouts, “DUH!” from the pool. Mona breaks out in giggles.

“Ready for lunch, Mistress?”

Mona: Weekly task update! Spend one-on-one time with each contestant (4/6)

Kevin

The combat training ground is a simple thing, all told. A ring of packed earth on the castle grounds, with locked up weapons racks. The sun bakes the ground in its rays; the mid morning is rapidly turning into a very warm day.

“Scared?” the Host asks, already unlocking a rack and drawing out a couple of swords, straight, double-edged, as long as a sniper rifle from the militia’s armory. Kevin never liked range time during militia training. Maybe this will be better?

The Host assumes his silence was confirmation. Perhaps it was. She starts to speak, “Don’t be. I taught a lot of my kids self defense with a blade. I know what I am doing. The ring converts damage to arousal, if you haven’t been told that either. And I will be going easy on you for the sparring portion. I will guarantee you a couple of things. One, you will definitely respect the sword as a weapon and two, you will be cumming, repeatedly.”

Kevin gives her a look, “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I am. A Level One person might have double digit health. I could check your sheet, but I won’t. I can deal around 25, 30 damage a round using a practice sword without tapping into my magic. A fatal blow with bring you to instant climax.”

She starts with footwork, which is not expected. The idea that using the momentum of one’s leg and hip muscles to add more power to a swing would not have occurred to him. He starts to break out in a sweat. It’s hard work moving a body as big as his and he is not used to it. Her corrections are helpful.

Once she feels like he’s moving effectively, she adds in the sword strikes. He swings at her, first quite cautiously, then with everything he’s got once he watches her use sword and some sort of spell to deflect his blows, telling him how good he did every time. He got more “decent for a beginner” than anything else, which he is glad for.

The switch to two-handed strikes felt different. Sure, he can get more power in, but it takes more commitment. Again, many “decent” comments, some “poor”, a few “good.”

So, he has some confidence when the Host says that they are going to finish with a couple of spars, stating, “The last part of the lesson is that your opponent is going to respond. I’ll let you have the first swing and I won’t use magic. But, once that first strike happens, I’ll hit you back. Be ready.”

She takes a stance quite different from the one she taught him. She presents as small a profile as possible, her feet moving in time with a tune she is humming. He swings, hears “[decent]” in Elvish, then feels a burst of arousal blast through his chest. The world goes white as he blasts ropes of jizz into the collecting tube of his chastity belt.

He finds himself on the ground, a hand offered to help him up. “You okay, kid?”

“That was taking it easy on me?”

“Yeah, it was. You seen the stained glass in Dungeons for Damsels? Daphne’s idea, the art. For that one scene, it depicts the time I took down a tank with my sword in less than a minute. You think that hit I gave you was enough to disable a tank?”

Fuck. Really?

“Watch my feet in your periphery. They’ll give you an idea of what I should plan to do. Try again.”

Kevin goes for an overhead swing, trying to take advantage of his height. She sidesteps, declares “[Poor. Too slow,]” then lands a blow to his flank. He only falls to his knees while cumming this time. The remaining spars go the same way. Hearing the slosh of the storage tank mostly full of cum tainted milk (or is it milk tainted cum?), he calls himself done for the day.

Kevin: Success – Longsword proficiency training (3 XP / 5 XP)

Kevin: +3 XP (Training Session)

“You’ll get there, Kevin. Trust me. You won’t be fighting a monster like me for real until you’re ready. Thank you for the spars.”

Kevin groans as he gets up. He hopes the shield lesson goes better. “Hey, do I have to pay for a lesson, or can I train on my own? No offense, but you hit way too hard.”

“None taken. At some point, Tessa or Craig might be able to be your sparring partner. The payment is for the instructors’ time. I can get one of my wives to spar with you next time.”

Great, he thinks as he heads to lunch, I get to look forward to getting my ass handed to me again.

Andromeda

A nice thing about no longer needing to eat is that she can skip meals without having to worry about it. Andromeda has spent the last few hours reading her own user’s manual. It would be disturbing if it wasn’t so useful.

Also potentially useful is the pseudo-librarian, Alex. Helpfully, she did find the right manual out of a daunting stack of them for this dimension’s version of her model. Now, she seems to be sitting on top of a bookshelf, plucking away at a large battle ax. It makes notes as if it’s an electric guitar, which is strange and mildly distracting. “Find anything interesting there, dudette?” she asks, playing around with a chord progression.

“Several. Thank you for the assistance.”

“No prob, dudette. While I’m playing hooky, you need anything else?”

Andromeda arches an eyebrow. “Hooky?”

“One of my wives runs a spa and I play at being a receptionist for her. Spa would make a pretty good date. Get Mona a rub down after getting all sore at the gym. Think about it. But, seriously, you want anything else?”

Andromeda describes the thing that Tyalangan put on the card in her dream. It is unnerving, still. Spending the night in stand-by mode actually resulted in a better rest than sleeping the night before. The nightmares were a lot. Alex listens, adding little riffs from her battle ax all the while. When the arcanist android concludes, she asks, “So, how do I advise Mona on how to kill it?”

Alex leans back, taps her chin like she’s thinking. “That is a tricky pickle there, dudette. So, you are trying to kill an unknowable monster from beyond space and time. And one of the things about unknowable monsters is that they are unique. Bespoke. If there were a bunch of the same kind, they’d be knowable, you know?”

Andromeda nods, a little confused. Is she on ****?

“So, Step One in advising Mona would be to know your enemy. I can pull some books for you, hope you can find some scraps of answers from mortals who encountered these things and somehow survived with their minds intact. But, the real answers will come from those who can know.”

“Like Tyalangan?” Andromeda tries, hoping it will be that easy.

“Try another step higher on the divine food chain. My sexy blue wife is an immortal quasi-goddess. She knows what you are to face, but currently has no idea how to face it. We are working on it. Maybe when Kevin is strong enough, my naked purple goddess will tell him.”

“Naked purple goddess?”

“Yeah, Skye is a sweetie, but she insist we don’t call our household goddess by her real name. It’s silly, I mean, I literally work for her.”

“I am allowed to be skeptical, right?”

Alex shrugs, unfurls giant black wings from her back, and swoops down. “Sure, I’ll pull some books. Go make friends with your harem-sisters and -brothers. When I got a collection for you, I’ll let you know.”

And, with that, Andromeda is shoved out of the library in time for a Kevin looking tired, a Mona looking like she cried, and a Tessa looking okay to all pile out of the canteen.

“We were going to have a lazy afternoon, it you want to join us, Andromeda.”

Andromeda shrugs. Why not?