A Conversation Between Hosts

Tyalangan

Tyalangan’s office is ready for her to observe the goings-on for her season. The array of floating screens display the camera feeds, pointed at her desk. A cold-brew coffee sits beside her morning protein shake (just needing water when it will be time). While, during a normal day, this would be perfect, today it is not.

The sea elf directs the screens to array themselves at her sitting area, ensuring the cameras for Cammy and Felix’s date are most available to the other chair. It wouldn’t do to deny the demon the opportunity to watch her wards. Professional courtesy.

I need to be careful about the wards around the demon’s name.

The demon notices her nerves. It’s probably hard not to. Tyalangan has felt too close to preemptively striking since the demon arrived. The scarlet-skinned fiend cuts to the quick, “I’m not going to hurt anyone here. Especially not someone who stuck their neck out to get me a crossover.”

Tyalangan lets out a long breath. Her grip on her blade’s pommel slackens, a little. “Sorry. My track record with our co-workers is not great and my kids are but a few walls away from my office. There are precious few Hosts that would not be causing me at least a little anxiety being here. Coffee, tea, or is this not too early for the hard stuff?”

“Tea dear, thank you,” The demon replied. “I had a very busy morning.”

Tyalangan taps into her earpiece and places the demon’s order (Skye does have some lovely tea growing and drying in her vineyards), plus a selection of meats for snacks. She takes a seat in the far overstuffed chair of her sitting area, using Mage Hand to bring her coffee back to her; staring at the skull through the glass of the table for a moment, she sets the drink down for now. It’s only polite to wait until her guest has her drink first.

The demon takes the offered seat. She notes, “I even came here naked to show that I have nothing to hide.”

Tyalangan can’t help but snort a little at that. The demon’s reputation presides her, as far as that goes. The demon’s relationship with clothing is much closer to Daphne’s than Aelene’s. And a demon can be a threat without a weapon, without armor. Then again, so can she. She takes the risk, pulls her Host outfit and her blade into her inventory. Now they are both properly nude.

The demon’s gaze is directed to her at that. There is a bit of obsessiveness in her eyes. “Fascinating,” the demon sighs.

A brief interruption arrives in the form of a daughter. Lyra, looking every bit like Aelene when they first met in her elf-self’s pre-show life, dressed in her maid uniform, delivers the food and drink. She eyes the demon with something between interest and lust. Then again, Lyra’s taste in women is much closer to the typical Harem Hotel contestant body type than either of her mothers’. Tyalangan gives her daughter a kiss on the cheek and nudges her head towards the door. Lyra pouts a little and winks at the demon before sashaying away.

Once the interruption is over, Tyalangan acknowledges, “Fascinating is an... interesting compliment.”

“The sheer quantity of transformations you underwent is fascinating enough, but the design of them is quite unique, a work of art. Most transformations are set up for one, maybe two upgrades, but yours...”

That... is... new. I never expected someone to take much interest in what the show did to me at the design level.

The demon continues, “Of course, improvements could still be made. It must be so disappointing to only be a... D-cup, I guess? Your hips could be a few inches larger, too.”

“I’m actually extremely busty for the local elven population. Top ten percentile in hip size, top five percentile in bust size. And I find the girls to be a little too big every once in a while. Makes archery a little annoying.”

“Of course, the major flaw with your transformations was that you were put through the wringer to no purpose,” The demon’s voice was unusually warm, one could say kind if they weren’t scared of what she would do. “For instance, I would never drag out changing someone’s genitals or some of the other things that happened to you. It was tormenting you to no purpose, and such reckless sadism was something I used to punish. Not even most of the audience wants to see dick shrinkage, nor everything else you got put through.”

That means something. Tyalangan has seen the stats. She is sure the demon has as well. The vast majority of the audience likes things done quickly. The “slow burn” transformation archetype rarely wins when it’s put to a vote.

More than that, though, was that the demon gave as close to an apology for what she went through that Tyalangan has ever received. The scars from her time as a Mistress on the show are still there. Not just the one from her engagement, that starburst of silvery scar tissue right over her heart. Not the lingering soul damage from Dinah’s separation. The little things. The moments of terror when she forgets, when she thinks all of the good things that came after are but a dream.

Tyalangan stares back down at the skull that serves as the base of her sitting area table. “Thank you. I made sure they paid for it.”

They both pause for a moment. The demon helpfully changes the subject, asking, “May I ask for a favor?”

That is interesting. Tyalangan nods, curious.

“Felix needs help that I cannot provide. I spent my existence torturing the guilty. It hasn’t prepared me for certain aspects of the job. I don’t wish to crush the boy, but I don’t know how to build him up.”

The sea elf is torn at that. On the one hand, a lot of Felix’s woes are due to the very rule deviations the demon pushed for and implemented. While not the most hostile current collection of contestants (that likely goes to Ashley, maybe Malgor, in an odd reverse way), Felix had a rougher go at it than most on that account, too. On the other hand, the subsequent graduation reality adjustments have been measurably improving Felix’s life. The demon is certainly not just running a “kick the woobies” campaign with her **** season. Tyalangan decides to relax another half tick or so. The fact that the demon wants the boy to succeed and not just conform to some sick desire is evidence enough that she deserves the benefit of the doubt.

“You know that it’s dangerous to ask me to help that way, right? While I’m not like that Director nutjob, my help may end up with your position being undermined.”

“My producer is very aware of that, which was part of why this trip was acceptable,” the demon continued. “The other one is that a… Harem Hotel assigned assistant has been taking on a lot of my hosting duties for the rest of the week. Part of that is I need to learn from other hosts how to handle some things.”

Curious. Learning from mistakes. Another good sign. Time to share some thoughts, and hopefully they are for the best. “Ultimately, you will need to relinquish some control over to the boy, which is at odds with your season’s theme. As long as he feels powerless, he will never be confident enough to take the leadership mantle that is required of him. He’ll need a way to stand up to supernatural forces normally beyond the humans of his world. The simple solution doesn’t feel viable, given how you’ve been handling the Master transformations. There are reasons why the command category of Master transformations are so popular with the audience; heck, I got two of them, more or less, one of which I will occasionally use. But, the ones that Felix most needs to be able to command will never consent to it. I do not see a way to skew the vote eligibility to lock them out of getting that vote either.”

Tyalangan lets the problem simmer for a bit. An old Socratic teaching method; one gives the students time to think about the problem instead of just blurting out answers for them. It drives the impatient and the lazy batty. The demon takes it well.

“I already planted a seed of something with my letter. You trust me to water it properly, let it take root? Without you getting the details? He may need to feel like he’s getting one over you for the confidence boost.”

“The key here is that I’m not the one doing it, because Felix wouldn’t trust a boon that came from me,” the demon replied. “He needs to think, on some level, he got away with something. If I do it, he’ll think it’s a trick.”

Again, recognizing the problem. Imagining Ora giving Ashley a bit of power to solve one of her many mistakes is ridiculous, but Ashley would not trust it. Heck, Azure actually gave Levi a lot by tweaking his Master’s seal thing and he still views it as a trap. All of those kids need help; Felix is the only one I can help at the moment. Is it odd that a literal demon is being a **** Host, in her own way, than half of the first-timers still on the air?

A decision is reached. Not that it was in much doubt, “Very well, I will get it done tonight, while he sleeps. Drop whatever wards you may have on him to prevent a Dream spell from targeting him. I hope, for those kids’ sakes, it’s enough.”

The demon changes the subject again, “Surely, you would not mind a little bit more breast expansion? I have so many fun ideas.”

As Tyalangan sips her coffee and watches her wards go through their day, she listens to the demon excitedly pitch some transformation ideas. She takes some mental notes. She’s as bad as Shar is about BE, huh?