But now that you got me, you wanna leave me behind

As more people began to enter the lounge, Ella had to fight back her instinctive urge to flee the scene. She wasn’t good around large crowds of people, but she was even worse around small crowds of people where the attention might land on her.

But Cinder wasn’t trying to take over. Ella was on her own. So she took a deep breath to try to calm herself down, and snapped her rubber-band a couple of times. “THWAP! THWAP!”

“Hey, good morning,” Kim said, walking out of the room with a spring in her step. “What’s up? Why are we all crowding around here?”

She was currently wearing her schoolgirl uniform- apparently, changing into her new clothes wasn’t something she was considering yet.

Dani followed after her shortly, looking a little energized too. Apparently she was as excited to get the day started as her roommate, but upon entering the lounge and seeing everyone crowded around the Bounty Board, and all of them looking at her, she frowned.

“What? What are you guys looking at?” She questioned as Carly and Marley walked in. Carly was also dressed in something that looked like a schoolgirl uniform, with a long pleated skirt that danced around her ankles and a black blazer over a white blouse, with lilac-colored hair that fell down to her back. She stared anxiously at Dani, wondering what she’d just walked in on.

“Dani? Everything okay?” She asked cautiously.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Dani said, glancing at Dawn and Rose again. They had expressions on their faces that were hard to read, even Rose, who was usually like an open book.

“Guys, sit down,” Dawn urged the others. “We’ve got something important to talk about here.”

Dani eyed Ella cautiously out of the corner of her eye, and walked over to the couch. She didn’t know if this was Ella right now, or the one who called herself Cinder, but judging by the wary expression on the other girl’s face, it seemed likely that she was the shyer one of the two.

Able to relax upon learning that, Dani sat down and turned to the other girls.

“Okay, what is it?” Kim asked. “I wanted to get breakfast and go do my exercise with Dani this morning, and you guys are kinda messing up my schedule here.”

“Maybe, but this is important,” Rose said. She was uncharacteristically serious. “It has to do with the Bounty Board.”

“What about it?” Carly questioned. She hadn’t really paid much attention to the bounties yesterday.

“Did new stuff get posted?” Kim asked. She couldn’t quite read the flyer that was hanging from the corkboard.

“Exactly,” Dawn nodded. “Something that I think we need to discuss with everybody. All the women in Nick’s harem.”

Dani knew that included her, at least in a technical sense. She sighed and crossed her arms, and then rolled her eyes.

Carly placed a gentle hand on her shoulder to soothe her.

“Ella, what about Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin?” Dawn asked, turning to the nervous girl. “Is she awake yet?”

“Uh… n-no, I mean, I don’t know,” Ella said, shaking her head quickly. “She wasn’t in the room when I woke up this morning… I don’t know if she went to sleep, either…”

Her memories of last night were spotty, to say the least.

Dawn sighed. “Well… can’t do anything about that. She probably went off on her own somewhere. So that leaves Amelia and Vivian… and Gina and Sylvia?”

“Don’t forget Morgana,” Kim added. “And if this is so important, shouldn’t Mary be here, too? And Nick, for that matter?”

A very valid point.

“Let’s just get on with this,” Dani groaned impatiently. She hopped off the couch and walked over to the corkboard, not willing to wait for an explanation.

She read the note, and gasped.

“Wait, seriously!?”

“What is it?” Marley asked.

“What does it say?” Her sister questioned.

Dani read the post out loud for the rest of the girls.

FORFEIT YOUR NEXT NIGHT WITH THE MASTER TO ANOTHER CONTESTANT

REWARD: 5 VP

Kim’s jaw dropped. “5 VP?! You’re kidding me!”

“But you have to give up your night with Nick,” Rose pointed out. She glanced over at Carly, who gave her a solemn nod in return. They’d already had this discussion last night. “That’s the catch. You get 5 VP, but you can’t get your night with Nick. A random contestant will be chosen instead.”

“I can see why you guys wanted to wait for the others to show up, so we could discuss this,” Marley said, stroking her chin. “That’s a bit of a tricky issue…”

“What’s a tricky issue?”

The girls all turned to see Gina coming down the hall. She looked surprisingly alert for it being so early in the morning.

“You guys throw a party and forget to invite me?” She asked with a crooked grin, lazily throwing herself onto the spot on the couch Dani had been sitting.

“I was planning to wait,” Dawn replied, adjusting her glasses. “The idea was to wait for everybody to show up, so we could all talk through the issue as a group. But some people had other plans.”

Dani made a sour face, and claimed an armchair for herself.

“Well, if you’re waiting for Sylvia, keep waiting,” Gina replied. “I think she’s gonna be holed up in her room until that bounty of hers runs out, and she doesn’t have to walk on those heels anymore.”

“It just did, actually.”

Again, heads turned to see Sylvia leave her room after Gina, walking normally on her sensible shoes. She looked a little tired, but the smile on her face signaled just how happy she was that she didn’t need to wear those damn things anymore.

Sylvia: 2000 BP + 500 BP = 2500 BP

“So, what did I miss?”

Dawn sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “…This is why I wanted to wait until we had everybody gathered here,” she groaned. “So people don’t keep coming into the conversation halfway through and getting confused. It’s just Amelia and Vivian left, right? Can someone please go and get those two?”

There wasn’t exactly a sea of volunteers.

“Don’t look at me,” Gina said, shaking her head quickly.

“I’ll go do it!” Rose flounced over to the door of the Garden Suite. “Amelia’s, like, one of my biggest fans!”

Maybe in Rose’s deluded mind that was the case. But the other girls were happy to let her believe that if it meant they didn’t have to be the one to go wake up the stern teacher and the annoying heiress.

Amelia answered the door just as Rose hoped, though you couldn’t say she was happy to see her. She had a sour expression on her face, with her lips pursed into a thin line.

“Miss Carrington is still asleep,” the teacher said, glancing back at the bed, where Vivian was snoring away. Octavia was watching over her. Apparently, answering the door wasn’t one of the duties of her job.

It was notable that the heiress’ chest had shrunk to a reasonable size again.

Vivian: 3100 BP + 1000 BP = 4100 BP

“…And I need my coffee.”

Amelia stormed past Rose, and only paused when she saw everyone assembled in the lounge. She raised an eyebrow in confusion at what she noted, but she didn’t have time to let that bother her.

You didn’t get between a woman in her thirties and a cup of coffee, not this early in the morning.

“…Well, Vivian’s asleep, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin is in the wind, and who knows when Morgana and the others are going to come down from the Master’s Suite,” Dawn sighed, scratching her head. “We might as well talk about this bounty.”

“Oh? Bounty?” Gina sat up curiously.

“What’s it say?” Sylvia asked.

It felt like Dawn had to keep doing this. She was starting to get annoyed by it. For what felt like the fourth or fifth time this morning she read the bounty flyer out loud.

FORFEIT YOUR NEXT NIGHT WITH THE MASTER TO ANOTHER CONTESTANT

REWARD: 5 VP

A hush fell over the women.

“…Huh. How would that work?” Gina raised her eyebrow. “I mean… let’s say I grabbed that thing, does that mean my night would be skipped? So no party, either?”

Rose and Dawn looked at each other and shrugged.

“I guess so?” That was the best Dawn could do.

“Sounds reasonable I suppose,” Marley nodded. “It’s not like Carly’s transformation would really work, either.”

“If I was still the host, that’s what I’d do,” Sylvia nodded. “And knowing Dakota, there’s no way she’d let you just choose who the other contestant would be, either. I know I wouldn’t.”

Dawn nodded. “That’s basically what Nola told us, yeah.”

“Before she snuck away, that little leprechaun,” Rose scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“So what does this all mean?” Dani asked, leaning forward intently. “Are you saying that I can just get 5 VP? Just like that? And I wouldn’t have to spend the night with Nick?”

Because that sounded like a pretty good deal to her.

“That’s basically it, yeah,” Rose nodded. “I was considering it myself, and Dawn was, too… but we thought that before we took it, we should discuss it with everybody else here. Because it certainly seems like a really important decision to make.”

“That’s surprisingly mature of you, Rose,” Carly said, genuinely surprised.

“Almost too mature,” Marley agreed, crinkling her nose. “Sounds more like Dawn came up with that idea if you ask me.”

Dawn giggled and Rose flushed red. “W-well-!”

“May I ask for clarification?”

The girls turned to see Amelia approaching with a mug of coffee in hand, and a much sunnier expression on her cold face. She slowly took a sip and pushed up her glasses.

“Clarification? Sure, I guess, though we don’t know much either,” Dawn said. “Not like we can grab Nola again.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Amelia said, shaking her head. “I simply thought it best to clarify the reward. Is 5 VP a considerable amount? It’s only 2.5% of the total 200 VP needed, so it does not seem substantial, but how generous has Dakota been with distributing VP in the past?”

It was a valid question. Ella found herself nodding in agreement. She didn’t really care about the competition, but as one of the newcomers, there were a few details in the rules she was a little foggy on still.

“…5 VP isn’t that much,” Rose admitted.

“But it’s more than Dakota’s ever put up before,” Carly pointed out. “I mean, let’s face it, VP isn’t exactly easy to come by in this game.”

“That’s true,” Sylvia admitted. “The two methods of getting VP are through doing sexual acts with Daddy, and by winning challenges. This is the first time VP has been offered up through something like this. It’s kind of hard to say how scarce it would be because of that.”

“A few transformations have given opportunities for VP as well,” Dawn agreed, recalling Carly’s newest transformation and a few transformations she herself had missed out on. “Sylvia, you said that this is unusual?”

Sylvia shrugged. “…Different hosts do different things on their seasons,” she said. “In some seasons, VP is super easy to get, and the hosts toss it out left and right. On others, it’s very difficult to acquire. I think that since Dakota raised the cap from 100 VP to 200 VP, she plans to make VP an easier thing to get moving forward.”

The girls considered that for a moment. With all of Sylvia’s childish behavior and how difficult it was to behave like a reasonable human being most of the time, sometimes they forgot that she knew more about the rules of this show than even Dawn.

“…In that case, it’s hard to tell either way…” Amelia stroked her chin thoughtfully. “5 VP might seem like a lot given the context of it being the first instance of an external source of Victory Points… but if the targeted goal is 200, there may be even greater rewards in the future.”

“If it helps, 5 VP is more than you’d get for just about anything you did with Daddy shy of actual sex,” Sylvia was happy to chime in.

The distasteful look on Amelia’s face suggested that the other woman’s input was far from welcome.

“Okay, but before we go down this whole rabbit hole, does anyone even WANT it?” Gina questioned, looking around the room. “I mean, yeah, 5 VP. Big whoop. We’re spending so much time talking about the prize, and we haven’t even thought about what the cost would be, right? You’d be giving up your night with Nick. Anyone want that?”

Amelia nodded. “Surprisingly reflective of you, Gina,” she stated. “You’re thinking ahead for once.”

In Amelia’s mind, that came out as high praise. The gloomy expression on the punk girl’s face was her first clue that her intentions were misplaced.

“Excuse me, what I meant to say, err… that is…” Amelia cleared her throat. “…I’m glad you’re taking this seriously.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Gina grunted, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, I was all excited about throwing a big party this week. And as for the reward… who needs it? It’s not like I’m planning on winning this thing anyway,” she scoffed.

Amelia winced. The defeatist attitude from the punk girl was to be expected, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“…Hey! Wait a second!”

Dani had been following the conversation quietly, and had heavily considered taking the deal. After all, it’s not like spending the night with Nick actually benefited her in any way. But as she was considering that, she realized something.

“…This is a freaking setup!” She angrily declared, jumping to her feet. “Giving us this bounty now!? That means I can’t claim it! Because I already had my night with him! What a fucking scam!”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a good point,” Kim agreed, leaning forward in her seat. “Dani and Morgana already had their nights with Nick. So how’s THAT gonna work?”

Morgana wasn’t here, so they couldn’t get her opinion on the matter, but Dani raised a valid issue. And of everyone there, she was the one who had the least to lose by taking the bounty.

“I was thinking about that, in fact,” Dawn said, adjusting her glasses and turning back to the Bounty Board. “The post says that you forfeit your next night with Nick. It doesn’t say anything about this round specifically. So perhaps it will roll over to the next round, and you’ll be removed from consideration for that one.”

“Yeah, that would make sense,” Kim agreed.

“So in that case, Dani, you could claim it after all!” Carly nodded.

“Wording for stuff like this is very particular,” Sylvia confirmed. “Dakota would almost-certainly take the next night you spent with Nick. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Ah, Dawn, I expected such a brilliant insight from the smartest girl in the harem!”

Dawn’s tail stood on end as Dakota popped into the room, clapping her hands.

“Dakota,” Dani said, scowling at her. “Are they right? I can take that bounty, and if I do, I won’t have to spend my next night with Nick, and I’ll get 5 VP?”

“Oh?” Dakota blinked innocently and turned to the tomboy, a perplexed expression on her face. “Weren’t you listening? I believe Dawn already explained that point quite succinctly.”

Sylvia sank down into her seat and looked away. She’d explained it even better, but of course Dakota didn’t care about that.

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Marley nodded. “I mean, does anyone else want to take it, then? If not, we could let Dani have it.”

“Dani getting 5 VP for free? Not a chance!” Rose crossed her arms over her chest and turned up her nose. “I’d rather take it for myself, in that case! I was here first this morning, after all!”

Dawn stared at Rose in utter disbelief. “Huh!? But… what about all that stuff you said before!?” She sputtered. “We discussed this at length! You said you weren’t going to give up your night with Nick just for a measly 5 VP! Because romance and all that!”

Dakota smirked, and snickered in amusement as Rose doubled down.

“I know, that’s what I said, but I thought about it some more!” Rose placed her hands on her hips. “If I don’t claim it, then someone else will! And then they’ll get 5 VP? Not happening! The important thing is that I get ahead!”

Dawn wanted to scream. Of course you would do this. You didn’t want to give up your night for 5 VP, but the second you realized that meant giving someone else the chance, now you’re taking back everything you said before about valuing your time with Nick, just to make sure someone else doesn’t get an edge over you. Of fucking course.

Say what you would about Rose, but she was certainly determined.

“Well, I already said I don’t want it,” Gina said, shaking her head.

“I’m out too,” Kim agreed with a nod. She had a playful smirk on her face. “I can get a lot more than 5 VP with Nick on my night with him.”

“But you can always do that,” Marley pointed out. “It’s not like sex with him is going away or anything. There’s nothing to lose by taking the bounty now, and waiting another week.”

Kim sniffed and glared at her. “I think I’ve waited long enough,” she replied.

Marley wasn’t even IN the harem, and somehow she’d had more opportunities for sex with Nick than Kim had.

Kim was tired of waiting.

“I’ll be casting my vote for Dani,” Carly said, batting her eyelashes at her lover. Dani smiled.

“It’s not voting, we’re not doing voting,” Dawn said quickly. She found that she was starting to lose control over the room. “Let’s not democratically vote for this, that’ll just cause feuding and make the whole mess even more complicated!”

“What’s the matter Dawny? Afraid no one’s going to vote for you?” Gina jabbed with a smirk.

Dawn turned red. “I-I don’t even WANT it in the first place!” She protested.

“Okay, well, vote or no vote, I don’t want it either,” Carly said. “I mean, with my transformation, I’ve got a pretty good chance of winning 5 VP regardless.”

“Unless they vote for your competitor,” Dakota sang, wagging her finger in a warning. “And I haven’t decided who that’s going to be just yet…”

The vein in Dawn’s forehead started twitching again. “Okay, anybody else? Raise your hand if you’re not interested in taking this bounty.”

Gina and Kim’s hands shot up. Same with Carly. Dani’s arms remained firmly crossed, as did Rose’s.

Ella meekly raised her hand… and to everyone’s surprise, Amelia raised her hand as well.

Everyone gasped in shock.

“What?! No way!” Gina couldn’t contain the look of amusement on her face.

“You gotta be kidding,” Marley said, shaking her head.

“**** route? Seriously?” Dani was so stunned that she failed to filter out her obnoxious thoughts.

Amelia’s eye twitched. “Is it so hard to imagine that I do not wish to give up spending quality time with my stepson and his bride?” She replied. “The first real chance of spending time with him since I arrived in this place?”

Well… when she put it like that, nobody could really argue.

“Oh, yes, quality time,” Dakota chuckled, giving the older woman a brazen smirk. “There are all sorts of ways that time could be spent, I’m sure…”

Amelia glared at the other woman and crossed her arms defiantly. “Don’t think that your position as the host means I won’t wash your mouth out with soap like in the past, young lady,” she snapped.

Dakota’s jaw dropped in shock. Gina fell off the couch in hysterics, holding her sides.

“Fucking Amelia! You’re too much, damn!” She cackled, only to feel the piercing glare of the teacher fall onto her, next.

“And as for you…”

“Hey! Whoa! I’m good! No soap please!” Gina sobered up immediately and hopped to her feet. “We’re good here.”

“…I should think so,” Amelia sniffed, and then turned to Dawn. “Now, back to the issue at hand…”

“Ah, before you gals continue this conversation, I should probably mention something,” Dakota added, clearing her throat. She still looked a little flustered from Amelia’s threat. “I assumed this went without saying, but it doesn’t look like you’ve considered it, so I would be remiss in my duties as the host if I didn’t bring it up.”

Dawn sighed. The other shoe had dropped so many times at this point they could outfit a whole track team. “What is it now?”

“You’re aware that if you claim this bounty, it will be ongoing until the night in question, correct?” Dakota clarified. “So you won’t be able to take any bounties until then.”

“Wait, what!?” Rose’s jaw dropped. “That… you just made that up!”

“Not at all,” Dakota said, and clicked her tongue. “It’s simply how the system works. You do not receive your reward until the bounty is fulfilled. Whether that’s a temporary transformation, or a photoshoot, or walking on high heels for 24 hours, until you’ve fulfilled the conditions, no reward, and no other bounties. So if you claim that, until your scheduled night with the master arrives, and is taken by someone else, you will not be able to claim another bounty.

“But… but mine’s next round!” Dani protested. “I don’t even know when that’s gonna BE!”

“And mine’s at the end of the round!” Rose wailed. “I have to give up bounties for the whole round!?”

Dakota shrugged. “Those are the rules,” she calmly stated.

The rules that she made.

The rules that she could change on a whim, if she had the inclination.

Which she very clearly did not.

Before anyone could lodge another protest on these grounds, the door to the Garden Suite swung open and Vivian skipped out with a big smile on her face, wearing a stylish blue sundress and a white shawl.

“Good morning, everyone!” She chirped, and looked around the lounge. “…What? What did I miss?”

Dawn groaned and gently soothed her budding migraine in frustration.