Feel like an animal in a cage

Marley woke up not even realizing she was asleep.

“So this is Dream Alley?” She said aloud, looking around.

She wasn’t a fan.

“What the heck’s going on?!”

This definitely wasn’t her dream date that Dakota had promised. If she and Nick were going to go on a date, she would have wanted something casual and fun that they could both enjoy! Something that she could use to appeal to him and help him get to know him better, like a walk through an arboretum or even a trip to the zoo!

Not… being locked up in a cage, chained to the wall of a medieval dungeon.

But that was how Marley found herself. She was strapped in to something that resembled a straightjacket, and the jacket itself was chained to the wall. She could move her legs, and walk about a foot away, but then the loops sticking out of her back would keep her from going any further. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she was standing in the middle of a cage, with the door wide open- all she’d have to do was walk out, but she couldn’t.

So yeah. This wasn’t at ALL what she had been expecting.

…And Nick wasn’t even here! What the heck was up with that?!

“What’s going on?!” Marley demanded, looking around. “Where’s Nick?! Why isn’t he here!? Dakota, you said this was supposed to be MY date, right?! So what did you do!?”

Unlike her sister, Marley wasn’t the kind of person that just went with the flow. When something like this happened, she got mad, like any rational person would.

Then, she heard a crackling distortion and her head shot up. She looked around, trying to place the location of the sound.

“Good morning, Marley!” Dakota’s voice floated through the air like an ethereal intercom. “Welcome to your dream date!”

“How is being chained up in a cage my dream date?” Marley snapped at the disembodied voice of the twisted showrunner. “That’s more of a Holly thing, you know.”

Dakota laughed in amusement. “Oh, how gauche. But you see, this IS your date. While I may have led you to believe that you’d be choosing your date for yourself, the producers disagreed. They thought that any date you came up with would be… well, boring. After all, you can’t even bring yourself to acknowledge that you have feelings for Nick, isn’t that right?”

Marley’s face turned red and she squirmed in her bonds, trying to pull herself free from the wall. “L-listen here!” She spat, averting her eyes. “It’s not as simple as that, you know! I just wanted to have a nice time with him!”

Marley could hear Dakota’s eyes rolling.

“Yes, yes, I know that’s what you were planning to do,” she scoffed. “And believe me, if you were Mary or Rose or someone else who knows how to go for what she wants, I wouldn’t have a problem with that! Really, I wouldn’t! But you see, since you’re no longer in the harem in an official capacity, your opportunities to be alone with Nick will be… how should we say… very limited. You can at least acknowledge that, can’t you?”

Marley blushed. That was undeniable. After all, the nature of her elimination meant that she could never be further than 10 feet away from her sister, or whoever was chosen to “babysit” her for the evening.

She realized that, for maybe the first time, she really was alone.

“So… what? You’re having me dress up as some kind of sex **** for him, so I’m **** to be with him?” Marley spat. “How twisted is that? I already told you, that’s not my thing!”

“No, no, you don’t understand,” Dakota said, clicking her tongue. “Right now, you’re experiencing the first part of your thrilling date! And I bet you just can’t wait to figure out the rest, now can you?” She laughed gleefully.

Marley sighed in exasperation. “Doesn’t Nick need to be here for it to be a date?”

“Oh, we’ll get to him eventually.” Again, Dakota’s actions were so predictable that Marley could easily imagine the dismissive shake of the host’s head. “He’s… a bit tied up at the moment, if you catch my meaning.”

“Great. You chained him to a wall too, then?”

“No, a table. Moving on-”

“A table?!” Marley exclaimed.

“Moving. On.” Dakota’s tone turned stern. “Because the producers were convinced you’d absolutely squander the time you’d won with Nick, I decided to propose a fun little activity and let the audience decide how you’d be spending your date!”

“And the audience voted for a sex **** dungeon?” Marley rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised by that?”

“Well,” Dakota pouted with a huff, “I was pulling for the romantic date in a snowy cabin, all curled up nice and warm with a mug of hot cocoa. But I only get vetoes where transformations are concerned, apparently. Even if there were a few suspicious discrepancies with the votes, and some sudden incremental jumps that would suggest vote tampering… ‘oh but it’s nothing conclusive, Dakota, so you have to go along with it!’ fucking tools…”

“What was that?” Marley couldn’t hear the end of that sentence.

Dakota cleared her throat. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with! I’m sure that this result was definitely representative of the desires of our audience and not at all tampered with to push an agenda! People wouldn’t do that… especially not on my watch,” she added with a snarl that made Marley shiver.

“Well… okay, then,” the buxom brunette muttered, shaking her head. “Still, this doesn’t feel like much of a date, if you ask me.”

“It’s a date. A fun date activity! Have you ever heard of an escape room before?” Dakota questioned, the bright levity returning to her voice.

Marley blinked.

“An… escape room? Well… yeah, I have, actually. Never actually did one, though. That’s the date the audience decided on?” Marley thought that was more normal than she’d expected. Then again, she didn’t think that escape rooms were so literal that they entailed chaining one of the participants to the wall.

“Exactly,” Dakota confirmed. “The audience… supposedly… decided that they wanted to see you and Nick work together to solve puzzles and clear an escape room together! It’s not necessarily the most romantic thing in the world, but it will sure help the two of you relax and have some fun together! And with that brain of yours, maybe you can even show off to him a little? You may not be on Dawn’s level, but you’re a rather bright girl yourself, aren’t you?”

Marley frowned. That was a questionable topic at best, given the shady nature of her history. But more importantly…

“So why am I chained up?” She demanded. “No way that’s how escape rooms work.”

“We took some creative liberties,” Dakota said dismissively. “Don’t worry your head about any of that. What you need to do is focus on getting out of here! So let me explain to you the rules. Your date will be spent solving puzzles. Whenever you clear all the puzzles in a room, the door will open, and you’ll be able to move onto the next room. By the way, Nick is in the next room, so when you two meet up, you’ll work together to escape through the rest of the scenario.”

“And what is the scenario?” Marley asked. From what little she knew of escape rooms, she knew they were usually more than just a bunch of puzzles; they tended to have a theme, like escaping from a space station or trying to get off of a sinking ship.

Dakota cleared her throat and the intercom crackled.

Radio silence.

Marley’s eye twitched. “Dakota…”

“…You’re a couple who have been kidnapped by a wicked witch and locked in her dungeon so she can experiment with her erotic potions on you and get you worked up to have sex,” Dakota informed Marley after a pause. “Your goal is to escape from her dungeon and the cottage she lives in, and make it to safety.”

Marley rolled her eyes. “Yeah. I figured it was something twisted like that.”

“Don’t worry!” Dakota assured her, trying to keep the laughter out of her voice. “I developed this scenario to ensure that you two would have plenty of opportunities to avail yourselves of one another! Isn’t that what you should want from a date?”

“No!” Marley exclaimed. “Stuff like that is supposed to come naturally! You can’t just **** it on us, you know!”

“Ah. So if the opportunity arose naturally, then you’d be all for it, is that correct?” Dakota inquired with a chuckle.

Marley’s jaw dropped and she turned red. She squirmed in her straightjacket and stared down at the floor. “That… it’s a little bit more complicated than that!” She sputtered. “I don’t mean… I mean… I just… what I was saying was…”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry, I understand completely,” Dakota cut her off, not allowing Marley the opportunity to explain herself. “And rest assured, you’ll have plenty of opportunities for those organic developments as well! But for now, why don’t you sit back and enjoy your opportunity to the fullest? You’ll get to spend as much time with Nick as you like, just the two of you! And if the mood should strike you, well… seize the moment when it comes, yes?”

Marley blushed. “That’s… is there anything else?”

Being chained up like this was one thing. But being chained up while Dakota talked down to her was something else completely, and it was making her feel embarrassed.

Dakota just laughed.

“It’s a simple matter,” she assured the other girl. “Also- I left a walkie-talkie for you, you see it over there? On the shelf?”

Marley looked past the door of the cage, to a shelf that was affixed onto the stone wall of the dungeon. A walkie-talkie and a cup rested on the shelf, much to her confusion.

“Uh… yeah?” She didn’t know what the purpose of that was.

“If you happen to need any help in solving one of the puzzles, feel free to ask for a hint,” Dakota suggested. “And I’ll be happy to help you through it!”

“Can’t I just call out to you or something?” Marley looked around. “I mean, you’re kind of controlling this whole thing, right? You can obviously hear me without using the walkie-talkie. So that seems kind of pointless.”

The response she received was a long, drawn-out sigh. Marley decided not to say anything further.

“Fine, whatever,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes.

“Believe me, this is far more engaging,” Dakota assured her. “Although… I wouldn’t be a good host if I didn’t warn you of the consequences of asking for a hint.”

Marley’s heart sank. That didn’t sound good. “Consequences?” She asked cautiously, narrowing her eyes in suspicion at the inky blackness of the dungeon door. “What consequences would those happen to be, huh?”

“Weeeeeeelll… every time you ask for a hint, I’ll be flooding the room with a small dose of aphrodisiac,” Dakota informed her.

“WHAT?! Are you crazy!?” Marley turned bright red.

“It’s simply to keep the game going, and encourage you to make full use of that brain of yours!” Dakota said, her voice sounding practically innocent and genuine, but Marley was well aware that it was all one big act. “If I just let you have infinite hints, well, it wouldn’t be sporting. But at the same time, we can’t leave you locked up in there forever just because your big brain isn’t enough to solve all the puzzles! This is a nice compromise, wouldn’t you agree?”

No, Marley really wouldn’t. Right now, she wanted to throttle the obnoxious host.

But she held her tongue, took a deep breath, and exhaled.

“…Listen, Dakota,” she said, speaking very carefully so as not to risk letting her anger out. “I get what you’re proposing. But if you really want things to develop organically, fucking aphrodisiacs? Seriously? What happens when we get so horny that we can’t even think about doing the puzzles anymore, and just want to hump our brains out, huh!?”

A long silence followed Marley’s demanding question.

“…The ratings will go up, that’s what happens.”

A definitive “CLICK” like a phone being hung up informed the frustrated girl chained to the wall that the conversation had reached its conclusion.

She screamed and stomped her feet on the cobblestones in frustration. But a tantrum wouldn’t solve anything. She needed to think her way through this if she wanted to get out of this room, find Nick, and escape from this stupid puzzle game without turning into a rutting beast.

“…Okay… calm down, Marley,” she urged herself, taking a few deep breaths. “No need to get frustrated. Dakota said that I could use the walkie-talkie to ask for hints. But I can’t really do that now, can I? After all, I’m still chained up here. Which means that she expects me to be able to get out without any help from her.”

If Marley was still a slime girl, she would have been able to slip her bonds without even thinking about it. But turning to slime on her own, well… that wasn’t really how things worked anymore, was it? She was still a normal human deep down.

No, she had to figure out her own way out of this.

But she wasn’t Houdini! She had zero experience with escape artistry!

Marley squirmed against her bonds, but it was no use. There was hardly any give in the jacket, in fact, it was strapped so tightly it was actually starting to hurt! She could feel the bulky fabric pressing against her chest, almost like it was suffocating her. Clearly, it didn’t want her to get out, but she couldn’t exactly give up!

She took a deep breath and tugged again. As expected, it rattled the chains, but that was all it did in the end.

Dakota wasn’t going to give her a jacket that was easy to escape from, after all.

“Ugh… this is so stupid,” she muttered, shaking her head. She pulled again, and then tried arching her back, trying to adjust her position.

That’s when she heard a strange ripping sound, like fabric tearing.

Marley’s eyes widened. “Huh? Wait, what?”

She looked down, and saw that her breasts were straining against the jacket even harder. And it was causing the seams to start fraying.

“…Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” Marley groaned, sighing in embarrassment. But what else was she supposed to do?

With a jerk and groan, Marley pushed even harder, and then, finally, tore herself free of the jacket completely.

Or, more accurately, her breasts did.

Marley’s breasts burst the front of the jacket open, too heavy to be contained by it with all her struggling.

And that was how she learned that Dakota had not given her a shirt under her clothes. She wore a lacy half-cup black bra that just barely covered her nipples. Not the sort of garment that she’d normally wear, to say the least. It looked more like the kind of thing that would come out of her sister’s closet instead.

But she didn’t have time to concern herself with that now. Since the straightjacket had a big gash down the side of it, escape became a lot easier. She could move her hands a little better now, and actually make her escape. Like a liquid, she practically oozed herself out of the garment, stepping forward and pulling herself out of the sleeves.

Marley stood in the center of the cage wearing just her underwear and a set of sleek black pants. She didn’t even have shoes, not that she minded terribly. She preferred going barefoot if she was being perfectly honest. She turned and looked back at the pieces of straightjacket hanging from the wall, and knew there was no chance it would serve any function as a shirt. The sleeves and back were still bound to the wall, and if she tried to pull them free they would just tear open.

So apparently, she would be spending the rest of this little escape room “date” topless with just a bra.

Dakota was a lot of things, but subtle was definitely not one of them.

Sighing, Marley rolled her eyes and walked through the open door of the cage. She was standing in a little alcove, barely big enough for her body to fit outside of her prison. She reached up and took her walkie-talkie off the shelf, along with the cup. She had no idea what the purpose of the cup was, but since this was an escape room, she figured she’d need it for later.

There was a key resting on the bottom of it. You didn’t need to be Dawn to figure out that it was the key to the door, and in a few seconds Marley was already out and into the next room.

Like the room before, this one was also styled like a dungeon with cobblestone floors and walls, and the dim light of candles casting everything in an eerie glow.

In fact, it even had someone else chained up!

Just as Dakota had alluded to, Nick was strapped down to a stone slab carved to resemble an operating table. His hands and feet were cuffed to the corners, though at least, unlike Marley, he was wearing his normal clothes.

“M-Marley?” Nick turned red when he saw her bra-covered breasts. “What’s going on here? I just woke up, and I was chained down!? Is this your idea of a date?!”

“What?!” Marley’s jaw dropped. Nick thought that SHE had been the one to come up with this insane idea?! “No! Of course not!” She exclaimed. “This wasn’t me! Dakota was the one who set this whole thing up, I had nothing to do with it! I wanted to go to an arboretum or take a walk through a greenbelt or something!”

Nick blinked. He calmed down slightly after hearing that. “…Oh, okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay then… right.”

Yeah, now that Marley pointed it out, this whole situation definitely sounded a lot more like something Dakota would have done.

“Apparently, we’re doing an escape room,” Marley informed him. “We’re trying to get out of this dungeon. That’s our date activity.”

Nick could get onboard with an escape room, but there was one issue he had to address about the matter first.

“An escape room shouldn’t be physically restraining people like this!” He exclaimed, struggling against the chains that bound him to the table. “This is ridiculous!”

“I know, that’s what I said,” Marley replied, rolling her eyes. She walked over to the table and tried her key out on Nick’s cuffs. But of course, that didn’t work. “Ridiculous. But then, your old friend is a ridiculous kind of person.”

“Hey now!” Dakota’s voice came crackling over the intercom, making Marley jump and making Nick squirm in his bonds. “That’s quite a rude thing to say about your gamemaster, I’ll have you know!”

“Oh, shove it,” Marley rolled her eyes, and got back to work trying to break Nick out of his shackles.