Yes, hallelujah!

Once the room was mostly devoid of lascivious women, the girls finally released my arms and Ming Zhao brought me my coat by wrapping the sleeves around my waist so that the torso would cover my front. She embraced me in a hug and I held her as well.

"Alright Ahab, we can finally head home now." I breathed a sigh of relief. My wonderful girlfriend took my hand and led me to the front exit with Scarlet and her crew following behind. Ruby and Macy stayed behind; they seemed to be talking to each other about something.

"Oh man," a terrible thought occurred to me as we were walking away, "aren't any of you guys going to get in trouble with those ladies for lying to them like that?"

Ming Zhao raised an eyebrow. "What are you talking about Ahab? Every word I said up there was true."

My stomach turned. "What!?"

"Well we had to offer them something." Scarlet intervened. "Those women looked like they were going to eat you the moment you stepped off stage. So I made an arrangement with my sister to bring the winners of the raffle to the studio on a later date to take those pictures with you. How else could I convince Ruby to let you go without a fight? I had Bridget and Ingrid set up the raffle and the auction in the east wing; while everyone watched your...home movie...I ran into Ming Zhao and convinced her to pitch the idea to the crowd while I sneaked up to Ruby during the chaos in order to sell it. I couldn't lie to her fans, Ruby is still my sister, I don't want her to get in trouble for fraud."

I could not even argue with her. Scarlet's original plan was to sneak me out unnoticed, but then I messed that up when I left the balcony and got tricked by Macy. Hold on a second...

"Macy went along with this as well?" I asked.

Scarlet bit her lip. "She needed a little extra...incentive in order to let you go. Right now my sister is promising her any one of the blown up pictures of you for free if she stops bothering you for now."

My heart sank into a pit of despair. "Macy… Macy is going to have a giant naked picture of me!?" I felt nauseous. Just the thought of Macy, of all people, having an enlarged embarrassing photo of me in the buff at all times. Where was she going to put it? Her kitchen? Her living room? Her bedroom? What if she put it in front of her window or out on her front lawn for the whole world to see? That does seem like something she would do. On that note, what about all those other photos those various women are buying right now at the auction? I felt like every woman in this city was going to have a picture of my naked ass on their wall. As if every girl I am going to run into from now on was going to stare at me with x-ray vision.

"Relax Ahab, everything is going to be fine."

That was total bull. Though I had to admit, I was actually kind of impressed that Scarlet came up with all of this so quickly with so little to work with. That girl might rule the world one day.

What a scary thought.

Before I had a chance to rebuke her, our group had finally reached the exit.