Waking up on the ground

Nick had finished getting dressed and was waiting by his bedside when a knock on the door got his attention. He looked up from the puddle of slime that was Marley and sighed in relief. With Carly here, her sister would finally be returned to a normal person.

Before he could go to the door, though, it burst open and someone he didn’t expect to see strolled into the Master’s Suite with a cheeky smile on her face.

“Bonjour, mi compagnon!” Rose greeted Nick with a saucy wave as she pushed her way into the suite. “Did you miss me?”

Nick’s jaw dropped. “R-Rose? What? …What are you wearing?!”

Rose batted her eyelashes. “What? …Oh, this? Do you like it? I thought I might give you a little preview, that’s all.”

Rose was wearing a french maid outfit. Unlike Holly’s, which was designed to be incredibly skimpy, this one seemed a lot more traditional in appearance. So even though it was still very fetishistic, at least she looked like she could be seen in public wearing it.

The question was, why was she wearing it in the first place?

“Preview of what!?” Nick exclaimed. Then he spotted Holly trying to sneak past Rose into the room. “Holly, you mind filling me in here?”

Holly batted her eyelashes. “Whatever do you mean, master?”

Nick crossed his arms over his chest. “I mean, why is Rose here? I thought I told you to go get Carly.” For someone who claimed to be his obedient maid, Holly seemed to be doing a terrible job at actually following directions, Nick had to say.

“What’s the matter with me, huh?” Rose pouted. She actually looked hurt.

Nick winced, not sure what to say to that. He hadn’t meant to disparage Rose with his comment, he just meant that she wasn’t Carly, that’s all.

“It’s okay, master!” Holly tried to assure him. “Rose can help too, right?”

“Absolutely!” Rose chirped. She reached up to curl her finger through a lock of her hair, only to realize that because it had been shorn short, she couldn’t. With a pout, she lowered her hand, and brought up a screen instead. “And… there we go.”

And just like that, reality reasserted itself as Rose activated her transformation, and copied Carly’s transformation as Marley’s sister.

Nick took a step back as memories rewrote themselves in his hand, and at the same time, Marley’s body reassembled itself on the bed.

“…Ah!” She gasped, sucking air into her lungs and sitting upright. She was just as naked as Nick had been.

“There! All better!” Rose chirped.

“Ah!” Marley cried out again, quickly covering herself with a blanket. Her face burned scarlet as she fumbled around the sheets. “Where… where’s my sweater!? I was wearing it when I went to Dream Alley! Where is it!?”

Rose sniffed. “What, that ratty old thing? It’s in Carly’s closet. I guess Dakota was willing to bring your clothes back to the room, but not the rest of you.”

Marley frowned. “Don’t call it ‘ratty’,” she told her sort-of sister with a glare. “Mary gave me that sweater, remember?”

The corners of Rose’s mouth twitched. “…Well, I’m sorry. I forgot about that.”

“Why are you here?” Marley demanded, looking around the room. Her eyes landed on Nick and she began to process everything. “…You couldn’t get my sister to come, so you brought her instead?”

“Carly was taking a shower,” Rose replied. “And you know how long it takes her to finish one of those.” She laughed, going over her newly-implanted memories of growing up with twin older sisters and watching them bicker over Carly spending lots of time taking care of her appearance, including long showers.

“So I thought that instead of waiting for her to finish, it was better to just come over and help you out myself!” Rose chirped.

Marley raised her eyebrow. Then she sighed. “…Yeah, I guess you make a good point there,” she admitted. “It’s probably faster to do it that way.”

“Apparently there was enough time to change into a maid uniform, though,” Nick said under his breath, having no illusion that Rose had just coincidentally thrown that on this morning.

Holly rolled her eyes. She knew Nick liked it, he was just being stubborn.

“One more thing,” Marley added, “in the future, could you maybe ask permission from Carly before you borrow her transformation? Or at least me? I’m not loving the new memories I just got pounded in the head with.”

“Fair enough,” Rose agreed. “But it’s better than being a puddle of slime, right?”

Marley opened her mouth to answer, but nothing would have resounded better than a simple nod of admittance.

“…When I’m a slime, I’m still conscious,” she informed the room. “At least a little bit, anyway. It’s like when you’re in a hazy dream. I can sort of tell what’s happening, but not exactly… and I really don’t like it.”

She turned to Rose and gave her a look of genuine gratitude. “Thanks for coming over and helping me out there.”

“Hey, no problem!” Rose cracked a lopsided grin. “What are little sisters for?”

Marley winced. She still wasn’t exactly thrilled that that was the type of relationship she had with Rose currently. But at the same time, she couldn’t deny that Rose was, in a technical sense, her sister right now, even if those memories had been implanted.

It wouldn’t be the first time Marley’s memories were tampered with, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, either.

“I’m sure your sister did it purely out of altruism,” Nick said, glancing over at Rose again and scanning her choice of clothing. “And definitely not because she had any ulterior motives in sneaking up here this morning.”

“Aww… you know me so well!” Rose batted her eyelashes as Nick while playing off his comments. “And you really shouldn’t be talking about ulterior motives when you’re eating up these clothes the way you are.”

“She’s got you there, master,” Holly giggled as Nick turned red and glared at the both of them.

“That’s not funny!” He replied, turning away. Even Marley was getting in on the giggling right now, though that quickly stopped.

“So what’s with the maid costume?” Marley asked, looking at Rose. “Don’t tell me you really did come up here in order to have…”

“What? No, no way,” Rose scoffed, waving her hand. “I’ve had this ready to go for a while now. Since my very first week, in fact!”

Nick stared at her. “You’re kidding.”

“Not at all,” Rose crooned, licking her lips. “You remember those games we used to play, teacher and student?”

That happened one time. And it hadn’t exactly gone the way either of them had planned.

“You mean when you were trying to copy Kim in order to get an edge on her?” Nick pointed out, earning him a glare from the blonde.

“Yes, that, shall we move past it, please?” Rose cleared her throat. “I thought it might be nice to try out some more costumes, so…”

She lifted the hem of her skirt and curtsied. “A maid for your tastes, ‘master’. You do like that sort of thing, don’t you?”

“My money’s on yes,” Marley contributed to the conversation. She hadn’t been around at the time when Rose was talking about (or maybe she was… it was hard to keep all the different memories in her head straight, and she had one distinct one of being partnered with Carly from the start of this bizarre show) but she could tell when Nick was interested.

Rose was right, his eyes kept sliding over to her.

“I didn’t even need to win that transformation from the past round to get you looking at me!” Rose tittered.

“I notice you didn’t answer her question,” Nick said, trying desperately to change the subject as he shifted uncomfortably from one leg to the other. He was grateful to Marley from exhausting him last night- even if it had been a dream, he bet it would take some time before his body fully recovered after the wild sex they’d had.

“Why am I dressed up like a maid?” Rose clarified. “Why, that’s because one of the bounties on my sheet- you remember that, right? How could you forget!” She tittered, shaking her head. “If I clean the Master’s Suite each day, I get a nice reward of 100 BP!”

“So you have to clean the whole room, and you only get 100 BP?” Nick asked. “That… doesn’t really seem like a great bargain, though.”

“Ah, but it’s 100 BP per day,” Rose clarified, wagging her finger from side to side. “That’s quite a tidy sum, don’t you think?”

Nick stared at her.

“…No, it’s really not,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s actually kind of a rip-off. Are you sure you’d be willing to do that?”

“And what about that other girl?” Marley pressed. “The new one, Ella. Doesn’t one of her transformations sort of make her have to do that anyway?”

“Nothing wrong with some healthy competition,” Rose replied, smoothing out her skirt and preening for Nick’s approval. “I’m sure she can handle the more… mundane aspects of the job, while I serve in other, fundamental ways.”

Ah. So that’s what it was.

Nick rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Rose? You’re planning on making Ella do all the work cleaning while you just wait on me hand and foot?”

Rose licked her lips and batted her eyelashes. “…And a couple other parts…”

“Hey, Nick, breakfast is gonna be ready in a- oh.”

Mary popped her head out of the kitchen to inform Nick of what was going on, only to see the new faces that had joined them.

“Hello, Mary,” Rose said, turning to Mary and crossing her arms. Nick was surprised that she’d managed to sound genuinely glad to see the other girl. “Nice night?”

“…It was fine,” Mary replied, raising her eyebrow. She looked to Nick, the question evident on her face.

“Rose came in Carly’s place, apparently she was taking a shower,” Nick answered her.

“Ah. Okay… and why’s she wearing a maid costume?”

Nick sighed.

“It’s a long story,” Marley dryly replied.

“…Right… got it.” Mary looked more confused than ever. “Last thing then, why is Marley not wearing any clothes?”

She glanced over at Nick with a curious expression on her face. “Nick… did the two of you… last night… together?”

Marley turned bright red.

“Well, obviously, that was the whole point, right?” Rose rolled her eyes. “Dakota gave her that reward so that she could finally act on her feelings.”

“No!” Marley exclaimed. “That… that wasn’t the whole reason, I mean…”

“But you do have feelings for him, right?” Rose bluntly cut to the heart of the matter. “Don’t try to lie to me, Marley, I have a ton of memories of growing up with you now, I’ll know when you’re trying to lie to me.”

Marley blushed. She lowered her head and nodded shyly.

“It’s… that’s right,” she admitted, glancing at Nick out of the corner of her eye. “Nick and I… the truth is, I really did like him… that’s why… when we were alone together…”

“They fucked a lot,” Holly said, fastforwarding past all the excuses and explanations Marley was desperately trying to form.

“Okay, yes!” She brunette exclaimed. “We… we slept together! So what!? I’m not going to apologize for that!”

She got up out of bed, still clutching the sheet around her curvaceous figure. “I’m in love with him! That’s okay, right?” Her declaration had started out with fire, but it quickly turned timid as if she were seeking Mary’s approval. Which made sense, given that Mary was Nick’s official wife.

“You… you’re in love with him?” Mary’s jaw dropped. “Oh my gosh! I’m so happy for you, Marley! Wow, that’s amazing!”

“Wait, really?” Marley didn’t expect a reaction like that.

“Come on, have you met Mary before?” Rose rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t have thought that she’d be opposed to this.”

“W-well, I mean…” Marley glanced at Nick tentatively before turning her attention back to the redheaded wife. “You… you’re married to him… and the two of you already have enough obstacles to being intimate together, since you’re not even competing anymore… I just thought… well, wouldn’t you be opposed to having to split his time among even more people?”

Mary shook her head. “It’s never been about that,” she said firmly. “Nick and I… I love him. I wanted to be the only one he loved, really, I did. But… I can’t have that. And I know I can’t have that. Nick… he’s not just my husband. He has other people in his heart. And if you’re one of them, then I’m going to support that.”

“…Really?” Marley looked like she was going to cry.

“But that’s if Nick really does love you that way,” Mary added. She turned to Nick and scrunched up her face into a look best described as a stern wife, and put her hands on her hips. “Nick, honey, I trust you no matter what, but you DO love Marley, right?”

Nick couldn’t believe she was putting him on the spot right now.

“I- Of course she’s important to me!” Nick sputtered. “As for love… I don’t know for sure, but… I think it’s possible… I really care about her a lot, and I enjoy the time we spend together, and I felt my heart breaking when I thought about her leaving and meeting someone else someday…”

Marley squirmed a little. Her cheeks turned bright red and a giddy smile pulled up her lips.

“I think that’s about as good as we can expect from our boy,” Rose tittered, flouncing over to Nick and rubbing her shoulder up against his. “After all… it’s not just any girl who can score an ‘I love you’ from the ladykiller over here.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Rose, you’re not helping.”

“No, but it’s a start,” Mary agreed. “For now, Marley, you have my tentative approval.” She stroked her chin and glanced between the two of them. “If you want to make Nick fall in love with you, don’t feel like you’re taking anything away from our relationship.”

“You mean it?” Marley’s face lit up. “I wouldn’t be interfering with anything?”

“No, of course not!” Mary shook her head. “You’re not Rose, so it’s not like you’d be getting in the way of Nick and I.”

“Hey!” Rose snapped.

Mary glanced dismissively over at her, while Holly doubled over with laughter.

“Come on, you two, let’s not do this now,” Nick pleaded. He loved both Mary and Rose, and this little feud between them was starting to bother him. “Mary, Rose isn’t in the way either.”

“Yeah!” Rose agreed, pointedly stepping between the two of them and cuddling up into Nick’s chest. “I’m not in the way at all!”

She leaned up and kissed him sweetly on the cheek.

Mary rolled her eyes. Then she turned to Marley and offered her a polite smile. “Now then, Marley, I was in the process of cooking breakfast. Would you like to join us?”

“Really? Can I? That’d be great!”

“Of course you can!” Holly chirped. “Having breakfast with the master is one of the perks of spending the night with him!”

“If it’s Marley, though, you might need to do some more work in the kitchen,” Rose pointed out with an amused smile. “My sister’s got quite an appetite on her.”

“Hey, that… isn’t inaccurate,” Marley admitted, glancing down sheepishly at the floor. Her penchant for gluttony hadn’t disappeared in the transformation from slime girl to human. But thankfully, all those extra pounds she ate seemed to go to the best places.

“You’re right,” Mary nodded. “I’ll have to cook some more… you guys okay with waiting for a little longer, then?”

“Not a problem,” Marley said, shaking her head.

“Nope!” Rose tittered, twirling her finger in circles on Nick’s chest. “Take all the time you need! I’ll be waiting here, with Nick…”

“Huh? What are you talking about?” Mary raised her eyebrow and cocked her hip to the side. “You’re coming with me.”

Rose blinked. “…Huh? Say what now?”

Mary grabbed her by the back of her dress and pulled her away.

“You want to be a maid, right? Well, welcome to serving,” she said, trying and failing to hide how amused she was. “Come on now, your master’s hungry, right?”

“But… wait, no!” Rose protested. “I wanted to be the sexy maid that serves her master in the bedroom, not cook for him!”

Mary couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’ll go to all the trouble you went through yesterday to cook for Nick’s stepmother in order to gain his approval, but when it comes to actually buckling down and cooking something for Nick and Marley, that’s when you suddenly want nothing to do with the kitchen? Are you for real right now?”

“I only want to show Nick my best sides,” Rose replied, slipping out of Mary’s grasp. “And I think I know just the way he likes me, right?”

She gave him a suggestive wink that made Holly giggle, Mary blush, and Marley roll her eyes. But it was effective enough at giving Mary pause. If Nick wanted Rose to do… other things for him, well… as his wife, she should support that, right?

Even if it was Rose.

She glanced at Nick to see what he wanted.

“You know, Rose,” Nick said, seeing a quick way to resolve this situation and make everybody happy, “I would actually really like to try some food you made today, if that’s okay with you?”

Rose’s face lit up.

“You do?! You mean it?!” She exclaimed, grabbing his hands. “Right away! What do you want? I can make you anything! Pancakes? Sausage? A layer cake with sour cream frosting? Just say the word!”

“…How about you surprise me?” Nick suggested, figuring that was the best way to keep the enthusiastic girl occupied.

“You got it!” Rose nodded rapidly, looking and sounding as obedient as a regular maid. If Holly’s biggest fetish wasn’t being outshone by someone superior to her, she might have cause to be worried that Rose was angling for her job as a sycophant.

“Come on, Mary, we’re wasting time here!” Rose snapped, pushing past the flustered redhead and barging into the kitchen.

“…Well, whatever works,” Mary sighed, trudging after the blonde. She’d just meant the suggestion to be a little bit of passive-aggressiveness to dig at Rose a little, since the other girl had barged into the Master’s Suite the way she did. But if she actually wanted to work, Mary certainly wasn’t going to complain about it.

“I’ll help, too!” Holly obediently chased after them.

It took Marley a second to realize what was about to happen.

“…Hey! Wait! Rose, you can’t leave me alone here!” She chased after her sister, practically throwing herself through the kitchen door before Rose reached the ten-foot boundary.

Nick, left to his own devices, sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Last night had been fun and relaxing, a good vacation from the stress of managing his daily life now. But he was back in the saddle again, it seemed.