With Her Nose Stuck In a Book

As Lana woke up, her head was still swirling as the transformation, which was meant to come slowly, hit her full ****. The human mind wasn't created to handle having multiple personas. Even though she had looked like a girl for almost two weeks now, it didn't mean that she had started to really think like one until very recently.

Another thing that was weighing on her already-overtaxed mind was what had happened to Abby. Kendra really had just made her disappear by the flick of her wrist. While it shouldn't have been shocking that she had the ability to do so, given that she had managed to transport eleven people between dimensions, the fact that she had just done it so nonchalantly set a dangerous precedent.

"It wasn't even like Abby was trying to get in the way," Lana shuddered. "I bet she would've even left if Kendra had given her a few seconds. Was she on some sort of power trip or something?"

Thinking about Abby got Lana to look over at where Abby was last night, only for her to be gone. In ordinary circumstances, she would've just thought that Abby had just gotten up early and left, because that was typically what happened. However, these weren't ordinary circumstances. When they'd gone to sleep, Abby was all but acting like a zombie, as dazed as someone on powerful anesthetics. What if Kendra had sent Abby into the fabric of space-time again for some minor infraction? What if Abby was still not in her best state of mind and was just wandering the island aimlessly? Was Lana gonna have to go on a manhunt for her?

"Guess I should get up and get out of here, although I really don't want to run into anyone today, given what happened last night," Lana said through gritted teeth.

She especially didn't want her mom to try and find her. Mandy had already been worried over the course of the last couple days as her memories of her child were constantly being altered, but now that Liam was officially Lana, her distress was likely gonna be through the roof, and Lana didn't exactly want to deal with that.

Lana also had some mental changes that she didn't seem to notice happening to her. As opposed to her past wardrobe of a 5-year-old shirt that he'd gotten for free and some sweatpants, she was wearing a pink and purple tie-dye shirt and jean shorts, something Liam would've never been caught dead wearing.

She was about to step out of the house when she heard frantic banging on the door. Her brain, swirling with all the possibilities that something may have happened to Abby, started to kick into a fight or flight state as she answered the door and saw Kathryn, whose frantic demeanor only exacerbated her fears.

"You've gotta help, is Abby there with you?" Kathryn asked between deep breaths.

"Wait, what?" Lana copied Kathryn's panicked energy. "No, Abby's not here—wait, what are you talking—what's wrong?"

"It's a long story, but it involves Charlotte," Kathryn half-explained. "Can you keep an eye on her for me?"

"Uh, sure I guess, but where's Abby?" Lana redirected.

"Don't know, that's why I was wondering if she was here," Kathryn shrugged.

"Okay, because I'm kinda worried about her," Lana continued.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Well, let me start from the beginning," Lana sighed. "What's my name?"

"Your name is Lana, but I hardly see how that's relevant to Abby's location..." Kathryn began, before catching herself. "Wait, you're Lana again? I was thinking of you as Liam yesterday, what happened?"

"Kendra happened," Lana rolled her eyes. "She came here last night and decided that I shouldn't be able to reverse my transformation like I was doing, and just fast-tracked it so that everyone's memories were immediately replaced with the new memories."

"That's bullshit, but not surprising from her," Kathryn grimaced. "But wait, what does this have to do with Abby? Did Kendra do something to her too?"

"Well, Abby was the one who answered the door, and Kendra decided she wanted to talk to me alone, and then Abby was just...gone," Lana explained.

"Gone?" Kathryn repeated.

"Yeah, like with a hand wave, it was like she just deleted Abby from existence for a bit."

"Deleted her from existence?"

"Can you just stop repeating what I say for a moment?" Lana exclaimed.

"Sorry, sorry, it's just this is a bit hard to unpack," Kathryn excused. "So she still might be floating in space-time?"

"Well, Kendra brought her back after she was done with...this," Lana gestured to herself. "But Abby just didn't seem like herself. She just went straight to bed, almost like she was a zombie or something."

"Ah, I see," Kathryn nodded slowly. "Well, I haven't seen her, but can you come looking with me for Charlotte? We might find Abby or Kendra along the way."

"Sure," Lana assented, having calmed down after speaking rationally with Kathryn.

"Oh, hey you two," Abby suddenly said, appearing behind Kathryn. "What's going on?"

"Abby!" Lana yelled, tightly giving her a hug. "I'm so glad you're okay!"

"Um...yeah?" Abby trepidatiously returned the hug. "I'm happy you're okay too? Why wouldn't I be okay?"

"From last night..." Lana prodded.

"Last night..." Abby tried to recall if anything happened then. "Nope, drawing a blank. What exactly happened last night?"

"You don't remember?"

"Nope. Did I fall out of the bed while I was sleeping or something?"

"Kendra was there..." Lana began, then prompted Abby to see if that rang a bell.

"Okay..." Abby responded. "What did she do?"

"She transformed me last night, and while she was doing that, she did...something to you," Lana explained. "I'm not a hundred percent sure what it was, but it seems like she briefly sent you to another dimension or something like that...you just vanished before me."

"Wait, WHAT?" Abby all but screamed. "How did I not know about this?"

"Well, when you came back, you were acting almost like a zombie or something," Lana continued. "You didn't really seem capable of coherent thought and mostly just followed her commands, immediately falling asleep."

"Followed her-" Abby incredulously repeated. "Holy shit..."

"You don't have any recollection of any of that happening?" Lana asked.

"No, none at all!" Abby exclaimed. "I just got up early to talk to Becca as if it was a normal day."

"Classic Kendra, changing the rules of science just for some sort of power move," Kathryn rolled her eyes. "Well that's good that you're doing okay. Now...we need to go look for Charlotte, she might be a problem her lowered inhibitions are as bad as I think they might be."

"Wait, lowered inhibitions?" Lana swiveled on her feet to look at Kathryn.

"Her Dionysian Mysteries transformation," Kathryn stated as if it was obvious, but sighed and elaborated seeing the other two girls' confusion. "Lauren used her Sharing is Caring transformation to transfer her arousal to Charlotte, and now she's probably gonna be running around the island like a crazed nymphomaniac or something."

"Why is that our responsibility to stop her?" Abby countered.

"It's not," Kathryn relented. "But I feel like we should at least keep an eye on her, lest she fall in the hands of someone manipulative like Paige."

"Eh, she's a grown woman," Lana waved flippantly. "She can look out for herself."

"Is that what you thought when Abby was being influenced by Kendra?" Kathryn pointedly asked.

"That's...that's completely different!" Lana rebutted.

"Not completely," Kathryn shrugged. "But there are some similarities in there."

"I'm not following that train of logic," Lana said. "It's not as if Charlotte just disappeared, she's just a little aroused."

"...which has caused her to, for all intents and purposes, disappear," Kathryn countered.

"Sorry, but I don't think I have the energy for an island-encompassing manhunt today," Lana winced.

"Yeah, I'd like to keep myself free today too," Abby agreed. "Sorry, Kathryn."

"So hard to find good help these days," Kathryn muttered under her breath before responding to the two girls. "Okay, sure, you all have fun today."

"We're headed to the bookstore!" Lauren said, with more excitement everything she'd said in the last two weeks combined.

"The bookstore," Turner mused, excited at the thought. "Sounds like a great idea!"

"This way," Lauren started walking, not hazarding a glance to see if he was following her.

"Ah, that's the Lauren that I've come to know," Turner grimaced.

As the two walked in dead silence, Turner started to grow uncomfortable. This was Lauren's one day of the week...ish...he should at least try to make it more enjoyable for her. But what was there to even talk about with her? Before two weeks ago, he hadn't talked to her in probably fifteen years, and that was during the heyday of Minecraft videos and Hot Wheels cars. What was there to talk about with her? He glanced over at her, and she didn't seem at all fussed at the lack of communication.

"I guess no communication is better than whatever she's used to at home, if the clues I've gathered are any indication," he reasoned. Based on the little tidbits he'd gathered from their last date as well as the other girls in the harem, Lauren didn't exactly have the best home life, so it might've been that she just preferred silence to whatever verbal **** may have been constantly thrown her way back on Earth.

"So, Lauren," Turner began, trying to end the awkward silence and causing Lauren to flinch in surprise at the sudden speech. "What kind of books do you like?"

"W-what kind of books do I like?" Lauren stammered.

"Yeah, we're going to a bookstore, may as well try to find something you like," he clarified.

"Um...well, I guess I like mystery novels," Lauren answered trepidatiously. "Just trying to figure out what's happening throughout the book is fun."

"I can see that," Turner nodded. "At least, I can see that from the few days I've known you here."

"I guess I also like r-romance books..." Lauren admitted, her face turning fifty different tints of red, each darker than the previous.

"Nothing wrong with a good romance book every once in a while," Turner affirmed. Personally, he wasn't a fan of them in the same way that he wasn't a fan of being compared to some 6'5 Greek demigod, but there wasn't inherently wrong with them.

After all, his night with Sara seemed straight out of a romance.

"Here we are," Lauren suddenly announced. For the first time in a while, Turner wasn't wary entering a building, because this one, thankfully, was clearly marked "Bookstore" on the front. The lack of name, pizzazz, or even a bit of decoration made him chuckle a little bit. It's as if some sort of alien tried to design a human-looking business.

"Shall we?" Turner offered. The word "enter" was missing from his sentence, but both knew what he meant as they walked inside.

What awaited them on the inside was not what they anticipated, but what they should've expected given the nature of the show.

"Is this all...erotica?" Lauren wondered out loud, whispering the last word as if Turner was still a young child who needed to be sheltered from the world of porn.

"I probably should've expected as much in a show called Harem Hotel," Turner slapped the palm to his face. "Some of these titles are pretty ingenious though. We have both Where the Wild Things Are and Moby Dick..."

"Oh, those are actually normal books," Lauren interrupted.

"Uh...no, they're not," Turner held both of them up to show that they were both just smut, likely smutty recreations of the originals.

"Well, that just blows," Lauren sighed deeply. "There go all of my plans for our date night. So stupid, why didn't I see something like this coming."

"Woah woah woah," Turner slowed her descent down. "Just because the front of the store is like this doesn't mean the whole place is gonna be. Why don't we take a stroll to the back of the store and see if they have something a bit more palatable back there?"

The pair walked to the back of the store. It felt a little backwards to walk to the far side to get away from the erotic literature, as most stores would keep the more racy stuff in the back. Nothing was normal here though, and the fact that nothing was normal was becoming the new norm for Turner and the ten girls in the harem. Speaking of abnormal, both of them noticed the lack of any employees in the building as they were walking.

"Wait, are we allowed to just take books from here as we please?" Lauren mused.

"What do you mean?" Turner asked.

"Well, there's nobody here to stop us from stealing," Lauren explained. "It would stand to reason that we're just allowed to take from here as we please, especially given how much in this place is free."

"That wouldn't make a whole lotta sense," Turner countered. "Why would they put such an expansive library in the hotel itself if they were gonna make another library in town?"

"Maybe to just make it seem more immersive in town?" Lauren wondered.

"This place could also be protected by some magical anti-steal barrier," Turner offered. "I wouldn't put it past Kendra to put some sort of barrier up on the bookstore for the 'general public', she seems to be trying to separate me from the rest of y'all for some reason."

"I can answer that for you," Kendra said, suddenly appearing them.

"The fuck-" Lauren and Turner simultaneously exclaimed, startled by her sudden appearance.

"You gotta stop randomly appearing behind people," Turner pleaded. "One of these days you're gonna give someone a heart attack by doing that."

"Oh, dear, don't get all torn up," Kendra soothed. "Y'ain't gotta worry 'bout gettin' a heart attack here, we got whatcha call 'magic healin' powers' or somethin' like that."

"It's a figure of speech..." Turner pinched his nose. "You of all people should know that, you use some sort of Southern idiom every other sentence."

"I know that, sugar, ya don't need to get all ugly," Kendra said condescendingly. "Anyways, back to why I came here in th' first place. What good would a store like this be if y'all needed to pay for it? I reckon nobody would come here then, and that ain't what Harem Hotel is about! Why, when you're on a date with our very own Turner here, ev'rythin' is free. Why do you s'pose you never had to pay for your last date?"

"I guess that make sense..." Lauren remarked after trying to decode what she had said.

"Oh, and I recommend checkin' out the front counter," Kendra added, pointing to a desk near the front of the store. "I'll tell you what, I think you specific'ly would stand to gain a bunch from it." She motioned to Lauren with that last statement.

"Me?" Lauren asked aloud. "Why?"

"Why'ont you just take a look there yourself?" Kendra mysteriously retorted. "Anyways, I s'pose I should leave you two kids to your date. 'Til next time!"

As suddenly as she had arrived, Kendra vanished back into who knew where.

"That was weird," Lauren commented. "Do you think she's watching our dates all the time?"

"I wouldn't doubt it," Turner grimaced. "They're probably recording us to send to that mysterious audience all the time, so I bet she's getting a live feed 24/7 as our caretaker, host, and seemingly supreme overlord."

"Well, you wanna check out what's at the counter?" Lauren asked.

"Might as well, doesn't look like the back section of the store is getting any more PG," Turner resigned.

The pair walked up to the counter that Kendra had pointed at. It looked like a standard run-of-the-mill counter in a bookstore, with some random gift cards (why would they need gift cards anyways, Turner wondered), bookmarks, and little random memorabilia. There was one particular item that caught Lauren's eye, though.

"Bonus cards?" she read off the package. It looked like a normal deck of playing cards had just been opened and left out on the table, but there were a lot more than 54 cards sitting there. She tried to flip one over, but a random buzzer sounded once, startling the two of them, and the card acted like it was glued to the table. "What the hell is this?"

"I remember Kendra briefly mentioning these at the opening meeting," Turner recalled. "Something about how it was like you could pay BP to draw one of these cards, which would give you some random perk."

"Ah, so it's gambling this show's currency," Lauren summarized. "I guess it's waiting for payment before I pick it up."

"Wait, you're actually gonna do it?" Turner asked, somewhat incredulously.

"Yeah, why not," Lauren responded, throwing caution to the wind. "Got nothing better to do, this stupid show already ruined my date idea with this smut bookstore, so might as well spend our date doing whatever this says if it's some sort of task for extra points."

"Well, I guess if you want to, go ahead," Turner assented. "It looks like you pay there."

He pointed over at a tablet with a little box that read "500 BP for a Bonus Card" on it. Lauren tapped the box, a relatively loud "ding" noise was made, and she pulled the top card from the deck.

Lauren: 1850 BP -> 1350 BP

"What does it say?" Turner asked.