Season 1 Episode 9: Omnibus

You are Alabaster Soliloquy, mindbreak maestro and sex Lazarus. You get knocked down, but you get up again.

"Gross, gross, gross! Oh my God! What the fuck, Alabaster!"

"It's not what it looks like--"

You stumble to your feet, pulling up your pants and boxers, painfully aware that it's 100% what it looks like. You chase after Cerise as she flees toward the living room.

Ms. Carte passes you in the opposite direction. She approaches Mom, who's still kneeling on the ground, covered in spunk. Ms. Carte runs a hand across her forehead before helping Mom up.

"Oh," Ms. Carte says. "Ohhh."

In the dining room, Cerise wheels around and shouts: "Our own mother? Seriously?"

"Come on-- is it really so different than our little family movie night?"

"Is that REALLY how you want to play this? How would you like it if you came home and found dad licking my pussy? Huh?"

"Well -- I'd be surprised. Since when does your pussy have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal?"

Cerise groans and starts for the living room again. You stop her by grabbing her wrist.

In the kitchen, Ms. Carte daubs Mom's cummy face with a wet washcloth, mirroring the courtesy Mom paid her when she was injured. Mom seems a little shell-shocked right now.

"Did you get any of that in your mouth?" Ms. Carte asks.

"Uh-- q-quite a bit, I think."

"Oh. Ohhh."

"Do you fuck EVERYTHING that moves?" Cerise hollers. "Serious question!"

"Only if it has a vagina. Err-- well, I guess the general policy is 'only if it's cute'..."

"Oh my fucking Christ. You are literally the worst. Just the WORST, Alabaster."

"Wait, no-- I'm not explaining myself properly..."

Ms. Carte leads Mom into the dining room and helps her sit down at the table.

When Ms. Carte sits down opposite, you notice she still has the cum-soaked washcloth in her hands, squeezing and playing with it idly.

"If you've got some way to explain this, I'm all ears!" Cerise says.

"It's just--"

The doorbell rings. The room falls pindrop quiet as all heads swivel in the direction of the foyer.

"Is that..." Mom begins, too full of trepidation to finish whatever thought plaguing her.

"Spancer wouldn't let any Darkbloom agents through," Ms. Carte says, but doesn't seem very confident. She fiddles with the washcloth anxiously.

You approach the front door.

"Alabaster!" cry all three women in worried unison -- Mom, Ms. Carte, and Cerise. You wave an impatient hand behind your back to silence them as you put your eye up to the peephole.

Through the fisheye lens, you see Whitney.

"What are you doing here?" you demand when you swing open the door.

"Duh," Whitney says. "It's dessert-for-dinner Sunday. Did you think I was gonna skip it just because we're all about to get murdered?"

Whitney cranes her neck, peering into the dining room. "Hey, Ms. Carte. Feeling better?"

Ms. Carte waves sheepishly in acknowledgement but doesn't say anything.

Whitney sniffs at the air. "It stinks like cum in here. You guys having an orgy?"

"No," Cerise says. "It's just another normal day at the Soliloquy house. My mother sucking my brother's dick, sticking fingers up his ass. You know, the usual!"

Whitney laughs. "You fucked your mom, Ally? Wicked..."

"I didn't FUCK her-- I mean, it's... it depends on what your definition of 'is' is..."

"I don't understand why you're so mad, Cerise." Mom stands up, one hand clutching at her bosom as if trying to physically draw confidence out of herself. "I know what you and Alabaster get up to late at night... I can't enjoy his body as well?"

"Mrs. Soliloquy has a point," Whitney says. She steps inside, uninvited. The front door hangs open.

"...Wait a second," Whitney drawls. "...you've been fucking Cerise, too? We were supposed to do that tog--" You shush her.

Cerise's jaw is slack with indignation. She glances between Mom and Whitney as if she isn't sure who to hector first. And it's at that moment that Vivian walks through the open front door.

"Alabaster Soliloquy," she says. "We need to talk."

"Are you here to suck my brother's dick, too?" Cerise says sarcastically.

"Yes. But that is only one reason--"

Cerise throws her hands up in the air, completely defeated. "This is a madhouse! This is an honest to god madhouse!"

"You're overreacting," Mom says. "Be reasonable, dear."

"I don't want to hear it! You're molesting your own--"

"Oh, but it's okay for YOU to molest him--"

Whitney tries to mediate: "Guys, we can all take turns with him--"

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Cerise cries. A three-way match of bickering kicks into high gear.

Ms. Carte, anxiousness apparently getting the better of her, holds the soiled washcloth to her face and inhales deeply, trying to calm herself.

Vivian tugs at your shirtsleeve. "Um... can we go somewhere private?"

You take her aside so you don't have to shout to be heard over all the yelling. "Vivian, now... isn't exactly the best time--"

The doorbell rings again. From your new position, you can't see who it is.

Cerise charges forward like an angry bull. "What are YOU doing here, you dumb cunt?" she demands.

"Is Alabaster home?" comes Rose's honey-sweet voice. Your blood turns to ice. "We were supposed to work on a project together..."

"Yeah? Does that project involve sucking his dick?"

"Mm, maybe~"

"God. God. GOD."

You push Cerise out of the way and stare Rose down. Behind you, the bickering gets even worse. Vivian follows you like a lost puppy, tugging on your shirt sleeve with greater persistence.

"Your place seems rather busy today," Rose says smugly.

"It is. Get lost."

"Nope."

She shoves her way past you. The last thing you see before she closes the door is Spancer, still standing guard outside, his expression as befuddled as you've ever seen.

[ ] This is crazy. We need to kick some people out.

[X] Guys, let's all calm down and have a nice dinner together.

Your head swirls and the room seems to spin around you as the din of shouting gnaws at your eardrums.

"I can't belive you would--

"It's not any of your business--"

"--your own son--"

"--trust me, he has a lot of stamina! We can totally share--"

"--that any daughter of mine would be so SELFISH--"

"--Ahahaha! Haha! Oh, this is great! It really is busy here today, isn't it?..."

"--Selfish? SELFISH? You've got to be kidding--"

"He fucked me, like, three times in a row! There's definitely enough to go around--"

"Shut up! SHUT UP! Shutupshutupshutup--"

Ms. Carte rocks back and forth, her face covered like a veil, breathing deeply. Vivian pulls on your sleeve with a thumb and forefinger like she's holding on to the last spot on the last boat off the Titanic.

This is when you notice that Dad has -- unbelievably -- taken up his usual post in the dining room. He's reading the New York Times.

When did he come out of his bedroom? Did the shouting draw him out? Why doesn't he seem to care?

The argument becomes a toneless drone in the background as you watch him. He's oblivious to the apocalyptic horror happening all around him.

You close your eyes and try to focus on thoughts of calm. If Dad has that kind of resolve, then you must have inherited it, right?

You need to grab control of this situation before it flies off the rails even further.

"--and if you don't like it, you can MOVE OUT, missy--"

"--completely shameless! How can you--"

"--I mean, a foursome or a fivesome or whatever would be really hot--"

"Ahahahahaha!"

"--manhandling my little brother in the kitchen all the time, maybe I WILL move out--"

You put a thumb and index finger in your mouth and whistle sharply.

"EVERYONE! SHUT. THE FUCK. UP."

And amazingly, everyone shuts the fuck up. They stop and stare at you.

"Mom, dinner is almost ready, right?"

She nods.

"Good. Cerise, help Mom serve. We are all going to sit down and eat dinner like civilized human fucking beings."

Rose snickers. "Fucking beings is right..."

You glare at her. She stops laughing.

"We are going to be calm and rational and enjoy a nice meal together. Can we please, PLEASE, do that?"

Ms. Carte puts her washcloth down. "I think that's a good idea," she says.

Mom and Cerise glance at one another. In tandem, they turn toward the kitchen.

You know both of them are still infuriated -- but they're willing to call a ceasefire. For now.

The rest of you sit down at the table. You have to pull some dusty chairs from storage in the garage to accommodate all the guests. Directly across from you is Vivian, and to her right Ms. Carte and Dad. To your left are Rose and Whitney.

That leaves Mom and Cerise to sit at either end of the table when they return bearing stacks of scrumptious-looking desserts.

Your modest dining room is as crowded as it's ever been.

Tonight is an exemplary edition of Dessert-for-Dinner Sunday, itself the most exemplary of all Soliloquy family traditions. The dining room table almost groans from the weight of key lime pies, devil's food cake, ice cream ala mode, chocolate fondue, amaretto cheesecake. It's enough to convert a vegan to dairy, and then give that vegan diabetes, all in the same night.

You'd be going out of your mind with sugar-induced ecstasy, if the atmosphere all around weren't so tense.

You wanted everyone to shut up, but now you wish someone would break this awful silence.

Rose is the first to speak. Well -- it isn't exactly human language. The gutteral moan she makes when she takes her first bite of Mom's pie is more sensual than any noises she's ever made with you. It's almost enough to make you jealous.

Cerise gives her a look that could cow a sailor.

"Who is this girl? Why is she here?" Mom asks, looking suspiciously at Rose, her voice cool and level.

"She's the student council president," Cerise says, running her spoon lazily through a smear of chocolate on her plate. "I guess Alabaster is fucking her, too."

"Is that true, Alabaster?"

"Well--"

"What I want to know," Cerise says, "is who the hell let Android Under-18 in." She points at Vivian with her spoon.

"Yes," Mom says. "I think it's time we got some answers about David Darkbloom."

"I believe I'm missing something..." Rose murmurs. "When did androids come into this, again?"

Whitney swallows hard and smiles wide. "Oh, let me clue you in -- Vivian here is a robot, and her dad is trying to take over the world. It has something to do with Ally."

Rose frowns.

"My personal theory is that Ally's cum is magical," Whitney continues, "but I'm not sure if that's possible. Like, physically. You know?"

Rose's frown deepens.

"I am not a robot," Vivian says.

"Are too," Whitney says.

She flings a fork directly at Vivian's face. The fork rockets toward her, a silver blur -- and then Vivian swipes it from the air with an impossible burst of agility.

"See?" Whitney says.

"Look-- what we need to know right now," Ms. Carte says, "is how much YOU know. Do the Viv-tans really run on Pheromone X-11? Are you on it, too? Is that the secret--"

This mysterious terminology must be from Damon's file, the one taken from Darkbloom's notes, the one Ms. Carte has been poring over for the past couple days. But Mom cuts off this line of interrogation:

"Are you trying to kill my son? Answer me!"

"She doesn't want his head. Just wants his dick," Cerise mumbles. "Like everyone else. Grab a ticket, get in line..."

Vivian, wilting under everyone's accusing gaze, stares across to you with pleading eyes. "Alabaster, please... make them understand--"

"Make them understand what?" you ask, confused. "I don't understand, myself..."

"Make them understand-- that I don't have any special knowledge-- that I know as much as anyone else here--" Her shoulders roll and tears trickle down her cheeks.

And then -- she disappears.

Pulling you chair slightly back and looking underneath the table, you see her crawling on all fours toward you. She clambers into your lap like a kitten and grips your t-shirt.

"I am loath to say it, but I desperately require your help."

"You haven't been doing anything funny with this girl too, have you?" Mom asks. "She can't be older than ten... that's a sex crime, you know!"

"Sex crimes!" Cerise laughs bitterly. "Classic."

"Don't bully Vivian," Whitney says. "She's a little girl."

"I bet you've been fucking her too, you lesbian deviant."

Ms. Carte stands, palms flat against the tabletop. "This is more important than sex crimes. PLEASE tell me you haven't had sex with Vivian."

"Err-- her mouth--"

"Ohh." Ms. Carte slumps her shoulders and rubs her forehead.

"You're a dog," Cerise says. "WORSE than a dog."

"Hear, hear!" Rose chirps. "Finally someone says something that makes sense."

You think maybe she's had a bit too much of that amaretto cheesecake.

"Get off your high horse," Whitney sneers. "You're just jealous because he hasn't fucked you yet!"

Vivian's breath is hot against the hollow of your neck. She seems to be trying to hide from the rest of the table. Awkwardly, you push her back.

"What did you just say to me?" Cerise says, voice low with loathing.

"Stop pretending like you don't want to fuck him! I swear, if there was any more sexual tension between you two I'd think I was watching HBO--"

"Alabaster..." Vivian whispers. "Please, let's go away from here."

"This is-- a really, really bad time," you whisper back.

"Take that back," Cerise says.

"Make me!" Whitney says.

Cerise picks up one of the pies -- banana cream, fittingly -- and smushes it into Whitney's face.

The tin slides slowly down and then falls to the ground with a metallic plop. Whitney blinks a few times and smacks her lips like a fish out of water, her face coated in rich cream.

She picks up the bowl of fondue and dumps it over Cerise's head.

"What are you ANIMALS doing to my dinner?!" Mom cries.

"Oh dear," Rose slurs. "Are we doing this now?" She takes her slice of pie and chucks it blindly armwise. It arcs across the dining room and lands in Mom's cleavage.

"Oh, you WHORE," Mom curses uncharacteristically. She smears her ala mode in Rose's face.

And just like that, the dining room descends into a hellscape of sweets being flung like munition.

Somehow, even Ms. Carte loses her reason and joins the insanity.

"Alabaster..." Vivian whines. Her hair is coated with flecks of cocoa and icing. Her elegant Victorian dress and your own much-less-elegant t-shirt are darkly spackled, too.

[ ] Join the food fight.

[ ] Try to mediate this madness.

[X] Take Vivian with you somewhere quieter.

You lean against the stucco wall directly outside your front door, fingers tented over your mouth. Vivian and Spancer stare blankly back at you.

"I feel like I started World War III back there," you say -- as much to yourself as to Vivian. You can still hear the muffled sounds of screaming and fighting from inside the house.

"In moments like these, I'm reminded of a quote from Proust's Swann's Way. 'One cannot change, that is to say become a different--'"

"Please," you say, cutting her off. "I get it. All right? You're a little girl, you're crazy smart. You don't need to quote continental lit at me."

"I mean nothing by it. This is just how I am."

You pace back and forth.

"Is it true?" you ask. "Your dad is doping you up on some kind of wacky sex pheromone?"

"Yes. He gives me a supplement every week. It helps sustain my strength. But the synthetic version isn't potent enough, so steadily I'm growing weaker--"

"And so, magically, I'm the ONE guy on Earth who can produce it naturally."

Vivian frowns.

"...I'm sorry, Alabaster Soliloquy. All of this is my fault."

You hear what sounds like shattering glass from inside the dining room.

"Look, I should probably go check on that. I'll see you at school."

"Wait," Vivian says. She tugs at your shirtsleeve again. That one motion is enough to melt your heart, and stay you. "Since my first dose of your natural pheromone, the synthetic version has lost all efficacy. I need another dose. From you."

You grimace. "Can't I... I don't know, jerk off in a plastic cup? Give it to you at school?"

"That is one possibility," Vivian admits. "But the fresher it is..."

She gets down on her knees. "I have been practicing," she says. "On some organic produce from the store. I estimate my skills have increased at least 74%."

She fish-hooks her own cheeks open and gazes up at you expectantly.

Your quiet suburban street is deserted at the moment, save for Spancer who you can easily send away. And the walkway to your door is hidden around a corner. But a nosy neighbor could snoop by at any moment.

"Does it have to be right here?" you ask, glancing around, but feeling your dick harden all the same.

Vivian unhooks her cheeks. "Research indicates this sort of scenario excites you. The more excited you are, the more potent--"

You wave her explanation off. She spreads her cheeks open again and lets her jaw hang slack. Thick saliva glistens on her pink, dainty tongue.

[ ] Give her the D.

[X] Not now. Things are too crazy. She can wait one day.

"Stand up for Godsakes," you say. "This isn't the time."

Vivian looks dejected, but obeys your command. "I don't understand," she says. "You like public sexual encounters. You like quote-'lolis'-unquote. You like--"

"Do you hear that?" you ask, jerking a thumb over your shoulder. "That's the sound of everyone I care about having a fucking meltdown."

"...You don't care about me?"

"That's not what I meant."

"I would like to remind you that I technically have the body of a 10 year old."

"Jesus Christ."

The front door opens. Rose and Whitney stumble out, arm-in-arm, covered head-to-toe in white and brown goop.

"Interesting dinners you have here," Rose says accusingly as she passes you by. "But I guess you decided to ditch us to practice your child molestation skills..."

"Forget about it," Whitney says. "He's too much of a pussy to fuck anyone without my help." She glares at you over her shoulder before she and Rose disappear around the corner. "Thanks for watching my back in there," she says. "I really appreciate it."

You massage your eyelids.

Well, it could have been worse. They could have seen you with your cock down Vivian's throat.

"Go home, Vivian," you say. "It would probably be bad if your dad knew you were here, anyway."

"So you truly don't care about my suffering."

"Geez. I'll cum in your mouth tomorrow, if it means that much to you."

You usher her down the walkway.

"I see," she says. Her voice is cold and affectless, the way it was the first time you met. She opens her parasol despite it being evening, turns on her heels, and leaves.

Inside, your dining room is a certifiable disaster. Food smeared into every surface, shattered glassware strewn about, chairs and desks turned over -- for some reason a throw pillow lies torn in the middle of the tabletop, downy feathers scattered all over.

Cerise is nowhere to be seen, though you can hear the upstairs shower. Mom is in the kitchen, by the sound of pots and pans banging. And Ms. Carte is at the table, a chocolately nightmare, haggard and glum. She sits hunched over at the table, chin on her arms, scanning an article from Dad's paper spread out in front of her. She doesn't seem to be paying much attention to it.

Dad is at the table too, bizarrely immaculate, also still reading. There's not a speck of food anywhere on him or his paper.

[ ] Deal with Ms. Carte first.

[ ] Deal with Mom first.

[X] Deal with Cerise first.

You wait outside the bathroom, sitting and hugging your knees as Cerise finishes her shower. In your mind, you practice a little speech.

"I know this all must be so sudden-- I know this all must be so-- what I want you to keep in mind-- the key point is--"

The key point is -- what?

You hear the squeal of the metal faucets turning off and the showerhead's rush trickle to a halt. The gentle rustle of Cerise wrapping herself in towels shortly follows. And then she steps out of the bathroom.

You look up at her. The towel around her torso barely covers her breasts and genitals. The one around her hair is curled into a dripping tail. Your speech curdles like milk before you have a chance to speak.

"Cerise--"

"You," she says. "My bedroom. Now."

Cerise sits in her swivel chair, legs folded, ankle-to-ankle. Drops of water run in rivulets down her pale skin.

"So just we're clear," she says, "is there a single woman in southern California who you're not fucking?"

You shrug. "There's probably three or four I haven't gotten to yet."

She tosses one of her Franken-Furbys at you. It bounces painfully off your forehead, a hard plastic edge gouging a shallow scrape in your skin, but you figure you deserve it.

"Let's count," she says, tapping a forefinger across her opposite hand's fingertips. "There's Whitney, Rose Mallory, Ms. Carte, fucking MOM, fucking VIVIAN, who is literally some kind of loli death machine-- am I missing anyone?"

"That's it," you say. "That's the whole list ...Except for you."

Cerise stops counting and gawks at you, frozen in place.

"We're not fucking," she says.

You counter this with a question. "Do you think what Whitney said is true? I mean, about the tension."

Cerise closes her eyes.

Your heart is beating much faster than usual. You somehow sense hers is, too. She gulps.

"Of course it's true. That doesn't make it RIGHT--"

"I just had Mom's finger up my butt. I'm not the guy to talk to about 'right.'"

Cerise giggles, despite herself. But then: "So that's it. I'm just another conquest for you."

"That's not it at all."

"Stop. Just stop. I don't want to hear whatever it is you've got to say. I'm sure you said the same thing to all of them."

She stands and takes the towel off her head. Her hair is tamped down in long wet strands that smell faintly of coconut.

Next comes the towel around her midsection. She lets it flutter to the ground, unseen. She stands before you naked, dripping, and shivering.

"I'm tired of the way you look at those other girls," she says. "If you don't care about 'right' then look at me that way, too."

She steps toward you.

Cerise straddles you, sitting in your lap. Her lithe body is slick against yours, the shower's residual moisture transferring to you and making your clothes stick to your body. The chocolate and cream smeared on your clothes smears a bit into her skin too, dirtying her up again. Neither of you care.

This time when you kiss her, she doesn't break away.

Your tongue pushes through her lips and explores the inner contours of her mouth, her perfect white teeth, as smooth as pebbles in a fountain, her swirling tongue as sweet as the dessert you just finished. Her fingers interlace behind your head, gripping your hair and pulling you into her, beckoning you deeper, a wordless begging for more. Her eyes are shut with the peace of someone dreaming, and you shut yours this way as well.

Together, you fall back on her bed. Cerise lies atop you, wiggling with anxious energy. Her hands clutch your shoulders. Your hands clutch her cheeks. You grip each other like two astronauts floating into the void with nothing else to hold. You see nothing but the two red screens of your eyelids, hear nothing but Cerise's little murmurs and whines, smell nothing but her shampoo -- the same shampoo she has used for a decade -- the shampoo that always makes you think of her whenever you catch a whiff of it. There is nothing but Cerise, here, now.

But when she pulls back, she's crying: awful gasping blubbers that she can't control.

"What's wrong?" you ask.

"Nothing! I'm happy! Look how happy I am!"

"You're not happy."

"You want to use me! Why shouldn't I be happy?" She buries her face in your chest and sobs.

You hug her tight and stroke her hair. Of all the adjectives you've mentally ascribed to Cerise over the years, "fragile" is not at the top of the list. But with her curled up in your arms, you feel like you could break her in two if you just pressed against her spine. Right now she seems as small and weak as Vivian.

"You're such an idiot..." you grumble. "Come on, hey." You pull her chin up to look her in the eye.

"You're the worst pervert I've ever known," Cerise says. She sniffles loudly. Her face is a puffy, reddened mess.

"I know."

"But you're all I've got. I need you."

"I know."

"So, fuck you. Fuck you, Alabaster. I hate you."

You kiss her again, and she returns it. Her breathing, her movements against you, seem full of an aching longing that you've never felt before, not in any of the other girls. She feels tense and limp, light and heavy all at once.

"I love you," you say.

"I love you, too."

You fall asleep in one another's arms. This is the third time in as many weeks that you've slept in her bed, but now you finally feel as if you're truly together. As you drift to sleep you're vaguely aware of yourself whispering, over and over: "You're different. You're different. Tell me what to do to convince you."

But Cerise doesn't say anything else.

---

You are Alabaster Soliloquy, noted scanlator critic and siscon. If you ever vacation in Vegas, avoid the craps table.

In the morning, you wake to find Cerise sitting at her computer, reading what appears to be a VN. She rests her cheek against her palm, scrolling lazily through the text.

You rub the sleep from your eyes and squint at the monitor. "What is that? I don't think I've played it before."

"It's about a girl who murders her little brother after his snoring drives her insane."

You sit up, stretching your back. "That sounds boring. I prefer the one about the guy who murders his older sister because she keeps kicking him in her sleep."

The glare of sunlight in Cerise's room is annoying. If this is going to become a routine, you'll need to convince her of the benefits of blackout curtains.

Cerise swivels around. "Do you do this just to antagonize me?"

"Ooh, busting out the twenty-dollar words."

She grabs a pillow and tosses it at you. You shield your face with the crook of your arm. "Don't get loquacious on me, now!" you laugh.

Cerise turns red up to her ears. "Go to school, you pretentious fuckmuffin."

"Ah, there's the Cerise I know."

Downstairs, Ms. Carte is passed out on the sofa, jaw hanging open.

Like you, it seems she also has a problem with snoring.

Mom is on her hands and knees in the dining room, scrubbing away the remains of last night's battle from the walls and carpet. She wears long yellow gloves and a matching rubber apron. A bucket of soapy water stained dark brown by chocolate sits beside her.

"There you are," she says. She wipes her forehead with the back of her gloved hand. "Will you tell your live-in skank to get off her lazy butt and pull her weight around here? I could really use some help."

"You would disturb the sleep of that angel?" you ask.

As if on cue, Ms. Carte lets loose with a particularly loud snort.

"I'd do a lot more than disturb her sleep," Mom grumbles. She scrubs at the wall with both hands, all her weight pressing against the brush. "Do you know she spent almost an hour washing herself last night? I practically had to jump in the shower with her just to get a turn."

Mom and Ms. Carte soaping each other down: now there's a thought. You can picture yourself coming into the bathroom and spying them through a parting curtain of steam.

Hugging each other, breasts pushed together -- both of them smiling seductively, both crooking a finger at you--

"Hey!" Mom snaps her fingers in front of your face. You blink, the daydream dissipating.

She puts her glove back on and kneels down again, dipping her scrub brush in the rinsewater. "Well? Are you going to wake her up, or am I her slave now, too?"

[ ] YOU wake her up. I want to see this.

[X] Okay, mother dearest.

Ms. Carte is sprawled out, limbs splayed akimbo, and dead asleep. Some of Cerise's beer cans lie empty on the coffee table in front of her. Cerise isn't going to be happy about that.

You nudge Ms. Carte awake, shaking her gently by the shoulder.

"Wuh...?"

Eyes still closed, she swats at your hand as if trying to ward off a housefly, then turns to her other side. You shake her a bit harder. Then a lot harder.

"It's too early..." she murmurs, voice muffled by the couch cushions. "Leave me alone."

"It's 8 AM. If you weren't hiding from David Darkbloom, you'd be at school right now."

Ms. Carte sits up, reluctantly. "Pah. I almost never come in to school before third period."

"Don't you have classes to teach during the first two periods?"

"I don't think so--"

You give her a look.

"I mean, I'm 90% certain I don't."

"Look, Mom wants help cleaning the dining room. Let's try to keep her happy, okay? She really went out on a limb giving you a place to stay like this."

Ms. Carte is flipping through TV channels with the remote control and doesn't seem to be paying attention to you. She settles on a daytime talkshow whose subject appears to be determining the paternity of a bastard child.

You repeat yourself, growing annoyed. Finally, Ms. Carte looks up at you.

She glances toward the dining room, furrowing her brow. "I was never into domestic stuff like that."

"Who is? This mess is at least partially your fault."

"Yeah, and it's mostly yours. You're the one who can't keep your magic dick in your pants." She sets the remote down on the table and stands up. "I guess it can't be helped, though."

"Please don't say things like that. It creeps me out."

She ignores this, too. "Listen. I'm close to figuring Damon's file out, but I need to see Vivian again. Do you think you can bring her over sometime during the week?"

[X] Sure.

[ ] That's too dangerous. What if Darkbloom finds out?

"Thanks, Alabaster." She kisses you on the cheek. Then, nipping at your earlobe and rubbing up against you, she whispers: "my turn on the magic dick today, right?"

"I--" you stop yourself short when you see Mom standing with her arms folded behind Ms. Carte. You push Ms. Carte back a bit to get her to stop pawing at you.

"Aww," Ms. Carte pouts. You subtly motion your head to tell her to look over her shoulder. She turns around and finally notices Mom's presence.

Mom shoves a bucket of water into Ms. Carte's hands. "If you're done whoring yourself out to my son, we can get to work."

"Sure thing, Mrs. Soliloquy. Are you sure you don't want to whore yourself out to him first, though?"

Mom makes an indignant noise that sounds a bit like a dog's squeeze toy being compressed. She does an about-face and heads back toward the dining room. Ms. Carte is close behind, grousing.

You decide to leave for school before a real argument breaks out.

When you arrive at school, there's an assembly.

Again.

One of Rose's particularities as student council president, apparently, is a penchant for mandatory meetings like this.

You suppose she enjoys the spotlight. She stands on stage, reading from a series of note cards.

You crab-walk down one of the aisles and sit next to Whitney and Stackleford. Rose finishes up some preliminary announcements:

"--and the doctors say Ryan Netor is back on solid food again. Let's all wish him a speedy recovery."

Muted applause.

"Now-- in other news," Rose says. "I'm pleased to announce that the results of the recent student council election are finally in. Drumroll, please--"

She signals somewhere off stage, and a member of band actually gives her a drumroll. She smiles smugly.

"For the position of treasurer, Lucy Bancroft won with 87% of the vote. Congrats, Lucy! For the position of Secretary..."

Rose continues to read winners off like this. Whitney pretends to be falling asleep and makes exaggerated snoring sounds.

For some reason, Stackleford mimmicks this, and it makes you want to punch him.

"--and now, the result you've all been waiting for: I am ecstatic to announce that I, Rose, have been reelected as your student council presidennnttt--- nnngh~"

Even after all this time, the remote vibrator is still fun to play with.

Rose steadies herself against the podium, wipes the sweat from her brow, and continues. "--As student council president, with 100% of the vote... nnn~"

You grumble. "100% of the vote, my ass. Kim Jong-un gets 100% of the vote too."

"Kim who?" Whitney asks.

"Kim Jong-un," Stackleford says. "He's the president of South Korea," Stackleford says, smug in his ignorance.

"It's a comparison," you say. "He's a dictator. Like Stalin."

Whitney stares at you. This reference is lost on her, too.

"--Or Hitler," you add.

"Oh, totally. Rose is a complete Hitler," Whitney says. "But instead of Jews, she just hates everyone."

You can't argue with that.

After the assembly and your truncated homeroom class, Mr. Langley takes you and Vivian aside in the hallway.

"Boise!" he says. He stomps once and throws his hands wide, smiling broadly, as if expecting some sort of reaction from you.

"What." you and Vivian say flatly in unison.

He pushes his glasses up. "I just got an email from the National Academic Mind-Bout League of America -- they organize the national quiz bowl competition. This year's tournament is in Boise. What do you think? Land of potatoes! Land of... err-- panhandles!"

He's really trying to sell it, but you can't muster up enthusiasm for a place so boring.

"If we win our next two games like we won our first two," he continues, "we'll be guaranteed at least fifth seed in the state-level tournament. We almost CAN'T lose out on getting to nationals this year! Isn't it great? You and Vivian have been such a force this year. It's unbelievable."

He's so giddy. You don't have the heart to tell him that come this time next week, you'll be on an island in the south Pacific, far away from North High and dreams of quiz bowl glory.

It's a bit wistful, actually.

"It sounds wonderful," you say.

A shadow briefly passes across Mr. Langley's face, as if he can tell that something's amiss, but he doesn't push the issue. "What do you think, Vivian?"

When you glance over, Vivian is smiling in a way you've never seen before. It may be the first time you've seen her genuinely happy.

"We can make it that far?" she asks, and it seems like she's asking herself more than Mr. Langley.

"I KNOW we can make it that far," he says. "If we all stick together."

When Mr. Langley steps back into the classroom, Vivian smiles up at you. "Even though I put you through a lot of trouble, Alabaster Soliloquy, I'm glad we have the chance to be teammates, too."

[ ] This is too much. Break the news to her.

[X] She can't know you're leaving the country. The news could get back to her father.

Instead of lying to her or trying to explain the delicate truth, you say nothing, and instead ruffle her hair.

Her smile drops. She bats your hand away, huffing. "Do not treat me like a child. I am far more mature than you."

You pause, letting that sink in-- then reach out as if to stroke her again. And once again she bats your hand away, this time with more force.

She steps back. "I'm serious," she says.

"Oh, sure," you say, nodding solemnly. You fold your arms. "I understand. I won't pull a stunt like that again."

"Thank you."

"Hey, what is Spancer doing?" you say, pointing to a spot behind Vivian. She turns around, but Spancer is just standing there, staring blankly ahead as always.

With Vivian's focus distracted, you pet her head again.

Vivian withers, humiliated that she fell for it. She turns on you, chasing you down the hall, as you flee toward second period.

"Get back here!" she cries, but you're already miles away.

....What will happen to her when you're gone?

Second period is your elective class: East Asian Literature. As with all your other classes, Vivian sits behind you. The whole time, this question plagues your mind.

The protagonist's struggle as you near the end of Mori's "Gan" seems to mirror your own.

>Okada's reading of his Chinese novel had given him a headache. He had gone out for some air and from habit had turned toward Muenzaka. He felt dizzy. In old Chinese novels, especially the Kimpeibai, usually after ten or twenty pages of innocent description, the author invariably throws in an indecent scene as if he were quite punctually fulfilling a promise...

You rub your temples. At this moment, Vivian taps you on the shoulder, and hands you a note.

>Can you meet me in the band room during lunch?

You sit in the band room in a hard, armless plastic chair. Whitney sits in a similar chair beside you.

Vivian's head is in your crotch, Rose's in Whitney's.

The only noise is the steady slurp of two tongues servicing you and your tomboy girlfriend. Despite the risk, both you and Whitney are naked from the waist down: it adds to the excitement that anyone could walk in, and there would be no way to conceal yourselves.

Whitney flexes and unflexes her well-toned thighs around Rose's head. From your position, all you can see of Rose's head is a golden moptop moving steadily up and down as she laps like a hungry bitch at Whitney's pussy. Whitney guides the oral service with a free hand.

Vivian wasn't lying yesterday: her technique is much improved. Her mouth and throat, impossibly tiny, can nonetheless take your entire length. The wet softness of her insides grip you so tightly it almost hurts. Her hot tongue twists and swirls around you, articulating the mushroom-shaped head and swishing around inside your foreskin. When she deepthroats you, her button nose smashes up against your pubic bone, and she drools around you, coating your balls with her spit.

Rose looks up. "Can we switch off?" she asks impatiently. "I want to suck Alabaster's-- mmfff--"

Whitney pushes Rose's head back down to her pussy. Obediently, Rose starts eating her out again.

"If you're good, maybe you'll get something extra," you say.

This is incentive enough. Rose's efforts on Whitney's cunt redouble. The slick sounds of Rose's cunnilingus mingles with the determined gurgling of Vivian swallowing your cock. It's a melody that makes your temples throb with debauched enjoyment.

Vivian is small enough that, leaning forward, you can reach the hem of her dress. This also has the effect of pinning her head in place underneath your stomach: the position forces your entire dick down her throat and doesn't allow her to come up for air, or move much at all.

Vivian endures the abuse admirably, without fighting or trying to pull away. Still, the rippling sensation of Vivian gulping for air makes your toes curl in sick pleasure.

When you pull her dress up around her waist and move her lace panties aside, she reacts a muffled "ghhh--!" that sends a geyser of saliva spraying from her mouth and nostrils.

"Eat me, eat me..." you hear Whitney murmur next to you. "Ohh, you're such a darling cunt..."

Your probing hand finds its target. You snake a finger over Vivian's soft, smooth butt and past the tiny pink anus it conceals. Unashemedly, you molest her fleshy, undeveloped pussy. It's smooth -- 100% bare -- and sticky with lust.

As you slip a finger inside of her pussy, you hump against Vivian's face, sawing your throbbing erection in and out of the deepest recesses of her gullet. Your cockhead is so sensitive and the hole so small that you can feel every rib and nubbin. You grit your teeth as the suckling warmth surges through you, and revel in the pliable feeling of Vivian's most intimate place.

Meanwhile, Whitney is drowning in a series of rolling orgasms. She tugs her shirt down and pulls at her bare nipples. She cums on Rose's face, again and again. Rolling her hips in a rythmic twisting motion, she leans all the way back in her chair and lets the pleasure tear through her.

Her pussy sprays its cream in spurts -- what little of Rose's face you can see now glistens with it -- and Rose gulps down as much of it as she can. The overflow runs down her chin and pools at the foot of the chair.

Rose's pussy, too, is engorged and drooling wetly on the hardwood floor beneath her. The room reeks of female arousal. It actually starts to make you dizzy.

Vivian's pussy is small and constrictive, exactly what you expected: you can hardly fit a single digit inside.

Putting your cock in her is going to be a serious struggle when you do fuck her. She's so small, you'll probably fill her straight to the womb.

You lean back again, moving your hand away from her little twat.

Now freed, Vivian slowly pulls her head up, darting her tongue all around as she fellates you. You can once again see her face: it's a wet, sticky mess, her pale features blurred by spit and slime. But her eyes are shining bright, and she smiles up at you.

The thought that she literally needs this to live is incredibly hot.

"Are you going to cum inside her?" Whitney asks, her eyes half-lidded.

"Yeah," you grunt. "I'm going to cum in her throat."

"She's so small..." Whitney breathes. "Ohhh--"

Whitney shivers and grabs you tightly. Hand-in-hand, you cum together, using the mouths and faces of the two girls underneath you to get off. You kiss Whitney deeply as you spurt your hot cum down Vivian's child-sized esophagus.

As you and Whitney bask in the afterglow, your cummy servants paw at each other: Rose clambers over to Vivian on hands and knees and forces her tongue down her throat, trying to fish out whatever traces of your cum remain in Vivian's mouth. They suck on one other's tongues, their faces and bodies totally covered in cum and filth, their clothes ruined, their minds gone. Rose's enormous udders push and press against Vivian's flat chest, pinning her.

Without anyone suggesting it, Rose and Vivian lock legs, rubbing their naked cunts together as they make out. They cum all over each another, adding to the smelly mess they've made of themselves. They moan and groan, barely human-sounding, slobbering and orgasming and debasing themselves. Fucking wrecks, the both of them.

You and Whitney watch them approvingly. Lazily, Whitney rubs her clit, a dreamy smile on her face.

You could get used to this.

Rose and Vivian look odd in spare girls' soccer uniforms from the locker room, but it was all you could whip up on such short notice.

Whereas Rose's uniform is skintight against her giant knockers, her pert nipples protruding obscenely and making her hug herself to conceal them -- even the smallest uniform you could find is baggy on poor Vivian.

They make a cute, if mismatched, pair.

The rest of the day passes rather uneventfully. In calculus, your teacher goes on a digression about statistics that bores you to tears. Means, medians -- standard deviations, normal distributions -- all of it makes sense, but who cares? And who the fuck ever uses the mode for anything?

Biology without Ms. Carte is strange: instead, it's some weird Hodoresque sub who communicates mostly through inarticulate grunts.

When you see him feeding beef jerky to Smatters, the Transhumanism Club's pet rabbit, you file away a mental note to kidnap Smatters for the eventual trip to Palau.

As the final bell rings, you hurry off. There's a lot to do. First:

[X] You want to do something special for Cerise.

[ ] You want to go find Vivian.

[ ] You want to visit Whitney at soccer practice.

The anime clubroom-- err, the Turkish Cultural Appreciation Clubroom -- used to belong to North High's home ec teacher, before he got busted for leaving a thumb drive full of child porn in the school library.

The back half of the room is a small kitchen area that students would use; now the room is abandoned, but the clutter remains.

For a while now, you've been thinking that this kitchen area, which is potentially roomier, and -- more importantly for the rather off-kilter series you and Cerise enjoy showing, out of sight from windows -- would be a better place to conduct showings in than the classroom proper.

But the kitchen is desperately in need of a good clean, top-to-bottom, before it can be used. And at the same time you work on this project, you can also tear down the awful DeviantArt-tier drawings that paper the walls like so much lumpy shit. Win-win.

With half an hour to go before TCAC is supposed to meet today, you have some time to get a good start on things. Hell, you might even work on it while the rest of the club watches anime -- be proactive about it.

The fact that you're doing this principally to make Cerise happy is evident, but you deny it even to yourself. As if you actually care about the rest of the club -- yeah, right.

As you enter the clubroom, you're met with an unexpected sight. Fazil has Kimberly bent over one of the schooldesks, and he's plowing her with what can only be described as excessive gusto.

You're not the only one making improper use of school facilities, it seems.

Kimberly has her eyes shut in orgasmic bliss, her slightly chubby arms wrapped around Fazil's swarthy, naked back. She doesn't notice you standing in the doorway. But Fazil does. His only reaction is to glance over at you -- never breaking his piston-like pace -- and give you a thumbs-up.

You wait outside the clubroom for the two to finish. You hear the slapping of flesh against flesh and finally Fazil's grunts, signalling that the act is finally over. When Kimberly stumbles out -- headed toward the ladies' room, presumably -- she's surprised to see you in the hallway. But she's too fucked-out to really comprehend that she's been caught red-handed. She waves sheepishly as she passes you by.

Fazil is still adjusting his buckle as he steps out of the room.

"What were you doing in there?" you ask, rather obviously.

"I was helping her to appreciate the Turkish Culture," he says, grinning.

When you don't laugh, he must think that you haven't gotten the joke, because he adds: "Turkish culture mean the big diiiick. Wasuuuup?" He sticks a tongue out and holds his hand up for you to high-five. You lightly clap a palm against his.

"You know what I'm saying. He winks. "Ala-bast-or is good with the ladies, too. Not like other TCACs."

"Mmhmm." Connor, one of those 'other TCACs' is known to be madly in love with Kimberly -- you wonder how he'd react if he knew what was happening behind his back.

"Don't worry, though. I know you want to give the fuck to Cerise. I fuck with Kimberly only. Only TCAC I will fuck."

You nod. In some strange way, it feels like Fazil is living the inverse of your life.

"Say..." you murmur, "do you have an older sister, too?"

"Me? No, but I have little sister in Istanbul. How you say, imouto? Very cute."

This is too much. You breeze past him and get to work on cleaning the clubroom.

The kitchen is in worse shape than you first suspected. Unidentifiable brown goop on every surface, rotting food left abandoned in the cupboards -- it's not just gross, it's a health hazard.

Connor and some of the other TCACs arrive. Kimberly comes back, too, the only evidence of her tryst the deep red flush in her cheeks.

You inwardly cringe as Connor sits at the same desk she was bent over just a few moments ago. He drums his gloved fingers on the spot where her bare ass was being pounded into oblivion.

Fazil makes small talk with him before clubtime begins. You have to admire the kind of chrome-plated ballsack it takes to do that.

You turn back to the work at hand. You grimace. The cleanup is going to take several days of concerted effort, far longer than you thought. Is it worth all this if you're going to be leaving the country in a week's time?

Then the thought occurs to you that TCAC are Cerise's only real friends -- as pathetic as that is. Wouldn't it be better for her to enjoy to the fullest what time she has left here?

You're the reason that she's losing all of this, after all.

You're the reason... huh. You never thought of that before. As you empty the carcasses of cereal boxes and wormy bags of flour into a garbage bag, you feel a bit guilty.

Cerise shows up as you ponder on this.

"M'lady," Connor says, tipping his trilby.

Cerise grabs it off his head and chucks it like a frisbie.

"Next time I see you in one of those," she says, "I'm dumping gasoline over your head and lighting it on fire."

She glances across the room, into the kitchen area. "Alabaster," she says. "What are you doing?"

You shrug. "Nothing. Just-- cleaning up in here. It's a mess."

Cerise smiles warmly.

"Okay," she says, drawing her attention to the rest of the assembled club members. "Fezzes on. Fazil will lead us with some Turkish drilling."

You smile to yourself as you clean. Even if it's pointless, it's honest work.

---

You are Alabaster Soliloquy, nakadashi knight and savior of anime club. Your efforts continue to encourage cross-cultural understanding and diversity.

"Say ahhhh."

Vivian opens her mouth. Ms. Carte presses her tongue down with a wooden depressor.

"Ahhhh," Vivian says.

Ms. Carte peers deep into Vivian's throat, using a flashlight and craning her neck to see from different angles.

"Other than a little bit of internal bruising, it seems all right," Ms. Carte announces. "Did you choke on something recently?"

Vivian shakes her head, blushing.

Technically, she's telling the truth: she didn't choke.

Ms. Carte pulls away, allowing Vivian to close her mouth. She clicks off her flashlight and puts a hand on her hip.

She gives Vivian an appraising once-over. "Well, all your vitals are top-notch. Reflexes, pulse, blood pressure -- sight, hearing -- even your old tonsillitis seems better. In most respects, you're in perfect health."

Sitting beside Ms. Carte on the living room couch, Cerise grumbles: "except being addicted to Alabaster's cum."

Ms. Carte leans forward, taking a stoppered vial full of Vivian's blood from a test tube rack on the coffee table.

When she went back to her apartment on Sunday, she apparently had the foresight to grab some of her old supplies.

She holds the vial up to her eyes and tips it to the side, watching the crimson fluid stain the glass walls of the tube. She thinks aloud. "Physical weakness, pale complexion, exhaustion, loss of equilibrium, night terrors... you may be suffering from physical withdrawl, as from nicotine or heroin or any other addictive substance... or you may be suffering from something more severe, like anemia. The bloodwork should give us some hints."

"When will you know?" Vivian asks.

"Tomorrow at the earliest. I need to collect a few other samples, too."

Vivian nods. She stares at the ground, purses her lips, and worries the hem of her dress. She alternates between standing flat on her soles and balancing on the sides of her feet.

[X] It's late. Why don't you stay for dinner?

[ ] I'll see you out.

"I appreciate the offer, but I fear I cannot stay," Vivian says. "Thank you regardless.'

"Good lord," Cerise says, letting her head fall back against the couch's headrest. "You talk like you're from 1856. No wonder you're so obsessed with a dork like Alabaster."

Vivian begins to say something, but Cerise interrupts her. She stands up, continuing: "what's the rush, anyway? You can't be in a hurry to go home to your dad. And we can use the help tonight. Mom's making pork chops."

You shudder. Mom's pork chops are more like hockey pucks, slathered in tepid mushroom soup. Now that you think of it, Vivian's probably better off with Darkbloom.

"Well. If none of you mind," she says. "I suppose I could stay for just a little while. And-- if it's all right with your mother, too--"

"Oh, sure!" comes Mom's angry voice from the kitchen. "Didn't you see the sign outside? Soliloquy Diner, free meals to all skanks 12 and under!"

How did she hear this conversation from all the way on the other side of the house? Sometimes her sense of hearing is uncanny.

Vivian withers at the insults.

"I think she's starting to like you," you tell her.

Vivian doesn't say anything, but it's clear Mom's style of affection confuses her.

This time, dinner goes smoothly.

While the rest of you pick and poke at the inedible concoction sitting putridly upon your plates, Vivian clears hers in just minutes and goes back for seconds.

"Thish food is tremendoush," Vivian says through a full mouth. "Abshoultely delicioush. It'sh leagush better than what I get at home."

She swallows hard and chases it with a gulp of icy lemonade.

"Hmph," Mom pouts. "I'm so glad you like all this food you're stealing from me. You should come over to mooch off of me more often."

She says this even as she piles more food onto Vivian's plate.

You, Ms. Carte, and Cerise glance warily back and forth amongst one another.

Maybe Vivian really is a robot. Only someone with no sense of taste could enjoy this food-as-torture.

At least it takes Mom's attention off of you. She always bitches when you guys don't finish your food, threatening to withhold dessert. With Vivian here to praise her subpar entree skills, she doesn't even notice as Cerise stealthily gathers up three plates full of untouched dinner and scoops them into the trash. The whole time, Mom keeps her eyes peeled strictly on Vivian. She watches Vivian eat, chin resting on interlaced fingers.

After dinner, Mom and Cerise retire to bed.

Alone in the dining room with you and Ms. Carte, Vivian is quiet for several long moments before finally saying, almost inaudibly: "thank you for having me."

"Yeah," is your lame reply. You don't know what to say.

"By the way," Ms. Carte says, pushing her chair away from the table and standing. "Who's doing your maintenance nowadays?"

"My father."

"Hm. Well, that's a testament to the quality of my handiwork, then. If a knucklehead like David can do it..."

Vivian stands up as well. She starts toward the foyer, but Ms. Carte stops her.

"Vivian," she says.

Vivian doesn't reply but silently waits for Ms. Carte to speak.

"It's nice to have dinner like this, isn't it? It's been so long." Ms. Carte thinks for a moment, scratching the back of her head. "I guess what I'm saying is, I'm sorry for not trusting you before."

Vivian shrugs. Another silence settles over the room.

"We used to watch movies," Vivian says finally. "Do you remember?-- Whenever you came over to eat with us. Before the accident."

"We could do that again," Ms. Carte says. "Hell, I've got nothing better going on..."

"All right," you say, knowing well enough to sense when you're a third wheel. "I guess I'll go to bed, too. See you guys tomorr--"

"That sounds nice," Vivian murmurs. "Alabaster, would you like to join us?"

You stand there awkwardly, glancing between her and Ms. Carte. Looks like you've been suckered into a family movie night. A real one, this time.

Ms. Carte flips through the cable channels until settling on an action movie of some kind. It's got robots and time travel and it doesn't seem very age-appropriate -- although who are you to talk about age-appropriate when it comes to Vivian?

Despite being invited, you still have the sense of being a third wheel. Vivian and Ms. Carte's history runs deeper than you expected: they seem to have a number of injokes.

Vivian and Ms. Carte are smiling, though.

It isn't very many scenes later when Vivian, sitting by herself on the recliner, drifts to sleep. Her face is still and placid in the light of the TV screen. You grab a quilt from the linen closet and cover her.

"Do you think it's okay for her to stay here?" you ask, sitting down beside Ms. Carte again. "I don't want some kind of death squad descending on my house. But that's just me."

"David can probably guess that she's here," Ms. Carte says. "If he hasn't come looking for her by now, he won't. After all, he wants you to be with her -- right?"

You shrug.

You and Ms. Carte try to watch the end of the movie, but you feel like you're losing focus. It was never that interesting to you, anyway -- the special effects leave a lot to be desired.

But when you try to excuse yourself for bed, Ms. Carte stops you by quickly swinging her legs over your lap, facing you. She grabs your cheeks and kisses you, and you mingle tongues for several long, luxurious moments before pulling away.

"It's been a few days," Ms. Carte says. Her voice is suddenly low and silken. "You haven't lost interest in me now that you've got younger girls to play with, have you?"

You kiss her again. Hopefully that should be answer enough. You're not good with expressing your emotions verbally.

"You know," Ms. Carte says. "I do need a sample of your -- erm, what does Vivian call it? Your essence..."

She grins devilishly and nuzzles you. Reaching down, she tugs at your zipper.

For someone who was so timid when at the start, she knows how to take the initiative now.

You push her hand away. "But... Vivian," you whisper. "Vivian's right there."

"Oh, forget it," Ms. Carte says, replacing her hand on your zipper. "I can't wait... and she sleeps like a kitten. Besides, weren't YOU the one who bruised her throat like that? Don't lie to me, now."

You give her a surprised look. In the semi-darkness of the living room, her eyes glint back at you. "Just lie back and think about science," she advises.

[ ] I don't think this is a good idea.

[X] NO BRAKES

There's a thing Ms. Carte does during foreplay: she runs her flattened palms up and down your chest while squirming in your lap and giving you the most lascivious eskimo kisses in human history. You suppose it's your fault, this last element of the equation -- you're the one who addicted her to them -- but whenever she pulls this move on you, you can't resist.

You lift your butt from the couch and tug your jeans down. Ms. Carte sheds her clothes as well, piece by piece, tossing them carelessly across the coffee table. First come her coat and blouse, then her bra -- revealing her smooth tummy and perfectly round tits. You gaze at her little pink nipples that you never get tired of sucking and biting. Her breasts are the perfect size and weight to toy with -- tender and bouncy in your groping hands, and with real heft to them. Ms. Carte has single-handedly drawn you away from being a militant DFC-only partisan.

You push your face against Ms. Carte's chest and swirl your tongue around her areolae -- first one and then the other. Mischievously, you're careful to deny her the pleasure of your wet tongue against the nipples themselves: instead you just puff some hot breaths against them, making them stiff and engorged in only moments.

Ms. Carte's neck muscles strain with frustration. She lets out a whine, a bit louder than is probably prudent.

"Don't tease me..." she begs.

You tease her anyway.

As she pulls off her pants, your hand snakes down to her quickly moistening underwear. The garment rubs against your stiffening cock as she writhes in your embrace. You let your fingers play across the cotton and feet the wet, pooling stain of her lust as it spreads. In the screen's dim light, you can see your dick glisten with your commingled fluids, and you haven't even begun yet.

"Fuck me," she says simply. "I need you inside me."

You grin. "I thought you wanted a sample of my semen for research? It won't do much good inside of you."

"That can wait for tomorrow," she groans. "I need your cum inside me tonight, it's been too long... and doesn't it feel better squirting it inside my womb instead of some test tube?..."

Ms. Carte gives a little gasp, and you think it must be half from hearing the lewd things coming out of her own mouth. Your cock surges with desire and, grunting, you tear her sodden panties from her waist. You toss the shredded article away, and it lands with a soft plop at the foot of the recliner where Vivian sleeps.

"Oh!" Ms. Carte cries at your sudden forcefulness. You twist her around in your lap to take her from behind.

"Yes," she purrs. "Put it in... put it in..."

You tease her just a little more, sliding your dick between her slick, healthy thighs a few times. The feeling of her dripping labia rubbing against the dickhead is toe-curlingly delicious -- and soon you feel the same burning fuck-lust she does. Your temples throb and your jaw clenches. You need to bury your cock to the hilt inside of her, right now. You need to feel her cunt around you.

You hold her around the waist and guide her slowly up. In the gap that forms between her ass and your thighs, you can see your cock in silhouette, huge and angry compared to Ms. Carte's mature -- but unbelievably tight -- pussy. The lips cling to your cock and refuse to let go, despite the ample lubrication.

Ms. Carte's knees are hooked over your lap, bowed out, and every time you fuck yourself into her, her legs bounce limply. Even though she's on top, you completely control the flow of the action. She's just along for the ride. You raise her up with both hands and then slam her back down, roughly, again and again. The wet sound of your flesh slapping together echoes through the quiet house. So do Ms. Carte's satisfied moans and whinnies.

Soon, you catch motion in your peripheral vision and glance to your side.

Vivian has thrown off her quilt. Sitting on the recliner, naked, she uses one hand to hold Ms. Carte's soiled panties to her face, huffing deeply. The other hand masturbates furiously, pinching and rubbing an erect little clitoris at the top of her bare slit.

Ms. Carte hasn't noticed yet: her head is bowed down and her eyes are tightly shut. You stare at Vivian, smiling evilly, as you fuck Ms. Carte deeper than ever

Vivian, locking eyes with you, responds by rubbing her little cunny even faster. The sound of her inhalations is almost as loud as the obscene mating between you and Ms. Carte.

Suddenly, Vivian throws the panties aside and falls to her knees. You watch her with perverted interest as she crawls on all fours, like a bitch in heat, to the foot of the couch.

Her nose is practically touching Ms. Carte's steaming cunt before she opens her eyes and notices.

"V-vivian," she stammers. She tries to pull off of you, embarrassed, but you hold her firmly about the waist and won't let her escape.

"Oh God, Vivian... what are you doing..." Ms. Carte mutters. She draws her hand to her mouth and bites her knuckles, powerless to put brakes on this.

Vivian starts lapping at the two of you where you're mated, like a kitten at a bowl of milk, drinking down your juices. Her tiny throat bulges as each gulp makes its transit to her waiting stomach. Her face smeared with slop and sweat, Vivian is drinking down your precum and Ms. Carte's cream like ambrosia.

Vivian's lapping becomes a wanton sucking as she covers Ms. Carte's pussy with her entire mouth. You can feel Ms. Carte orgasming around you, over and over, her insides becoming searingly hot and milking your cock.

"We s-s-shouldn't be d-doing thissss... ungf..." Ms. Carte tries to protest. But even as she says this, she stares with unbridled lust at Vivian's cute little face -- that cute face with its lips currently curled into a whorish suckling shape.

"We have to stop-- you're t-too young..."

"Oh, but you love it, don't you?" you breathe into her ear. "Come on, her mouth feels really good, doesn't it? Let her make you cum."

"It-- ah-- ahh-- FUCK!" Ms. Carte shrieks. "I'M CUMMING! OH FUCK!"

That was enough to wake up the neighborhood. And enough to make you cum, too. You pump Ms. Carte's pussy full of the jizz she wanted so much. The excess sprays out from around your throbbing dick and splatters against Vivian's face.

Vivian stares intently up at Ms. Carte as she suckles, licks, and inhales the fruits of your lovemaking. She might have the body of a little girl, but she has the mind of a depraved slut. She wipes the cum from her face and, moving her hand down, rubs it sensually into her puss. She quickly brings herself off to a cute, shivering orgasm of her own.

Ms. Carte watches this, her mouth rounded into a wide O as she cums a final time -- and then she collapses against you, exhausted from the sheer debauchery of it all.

The last thing you see as you doze off is Vivian squirming around on the living room floor, still masturbating. She takes Ms. Carte's ruined panties from the ground and huffs them again, rolling around like a sow in mud as she rubs the cum and cunt juices all over her pale, frail, naked body.

You wake in the gray gloom of the predawn hours. With effort, you rouse Ms. Carte and Vivian -- both heavy sleepers, especially after cumming so much -- just long enough to get them decent before anyone else in the house can see them.

Although, let's be honest: there's no way the rest of the family didn't hear what was happening last night.

Ms. Carte and Vivian both fall straight back to sleep, curling up with one another on the sofa.

Since you're awake, you decide to visit Whitney at the track field, where she should be doing her early morning exercises.

[ ] Invite Vivian.

[X] Let her sleep.

You walk to school alone, feeling pensive.

Vivian isn't so bad, really. And she seems to get along well enough with the other people in your life these days.

...

Would you be so bold as to kidnap David Darkbloom's daughter at the same time as you're fleeing from his wrath?

There's a lot of variables to consider. Vivian is nice, but is she worth risking the lives of the rest of your loved ones?

For some reason, you feel like you should discuss this with Whitney -- she's not book smart, but she has a wisdom all her own. Yet when you arrive at the track, she isn't around.

A momentary jolt of panic courses through your veins, but you don't allow it to get the better of your reason. If she's not at the track, she might be elsewhere on campus. You check in the auto garage first.

Sure enough, she's there. She's working on a different rustbucket this time, a Chevy pickup circa 1980-something. Her head is under the hood as you approach.

"Hey," you say.

"Huh?--" THUD "--OW!" She wheels on you, rubbing the back of her head where she smacked it. She stomps a foot indignantly. "God fucking dammit, Ally, how many times do I have to tell you? You don't startle someone when they're underneath a hood!"

"Uh huh. Shouldn't you be on the track right now?"

Whitney grabs her wrench from the engine block where she dropped it. She pulls the socket off and goes fishing through the toolbox beside her for another.

"I dunno," is all she'll say. "Didn't feel like it."

This kind of behavior isn't like Whitney at all. She seems sullen. And as long as you've known her -- in all those years, she hasn't once broken her exercise regimen.

[X] Push her on it.

[ ] Ignore it.

"Come on, you never skip your exercise," you say.

"How would you know? You never come along, do you?"

She leans under the hood and sets to work again.

You circle around the truck, countering with: "I know you well enough to tell when something is up. So what is it? Did you flunk another test?"

"Please. What's the point of exercising if you're going to drag me to Malau in a week?"

"Palau," you correct her.

"What the fuck ever. Who even lives in Palau? I googled it on Wikipedia the other day. You know what it said? It said the population is, like, 20,000."

This is your normal sort of banter, but today it seems to have an edge to it.

"A small population is kind of the point," you say. "And besides, if you looked it up online then you know it's beautiful there."

Whitney doesn't respond. For a few more minutes she works in silence. But then, pulling away from the car and washing her hands in the grimy tub-like shop sink, she admits: "it does look like a nice place."

"You don't have to go," you offer. "Really."

Whitney slugs lightly you in the chest with her still-dripping fist.

"Don't be an idiot," she says. "Like I'd let you get away from me."

She twirls around and hoists herself up onto the black benchtop against the wall, sitting down on the glossy surface. Her well-toned legs dangle over the edge and she kicks her sneakered feet lazily back and forth.

Her hand grips the edge of the table, so hard the knuckles turn white.

"Really," you say. "Why the change in schedule today?"

"That's the truth," Whitney says. "I'm going to Shalau, so it's not like I can play soccer anymore. And... to tell you the truth, I haven't cared about soccer for a while..."

You give her a worried look.

"Oh, don't start," Whitney says.

"Start what?"

"Things change. That's all. I'm getting more into shopwork now... and even your stupid cartoons interest me more than soccer does... is that so wrong?"

"I don't get you," you say. "A couple weeks ago you were so into soccer that you were blackmailing me into joining the team. Now jut because you're moving, it's doom and gloom. It's not the end of the world, just a change of scenery--"

"It's more than that," Whitney says. "It's... there's something inside of me that just doesn't want to play anymore."

Whitney hops down from the benchtop and starts putting away her tools. For the rest of the school day, you ruminate on those words. You feel a knot in your stomach, small, but growing.

That day in TCAC, you spend the entire meeting scrubbing the classroom's kitchen area, and actually get this little project of yours finished. Something about worry tends to motivate you far beyond your usual limits.

Now the club has a nice, cozy area to watch anime in. You even manage to snag a couple disused sofas from the nearby journalism clubroom -- you know they never get used, and no one will miss them.

When the cleaning and reorganization is over, the rest of the club is long gone. You stand before Cerise in the empty class, your bucket full of cleaning supplies in hand as she surveys your work.

After she tours the sparkling kitchen, she makes rather a show of scanning you with her eyes, circling around you several times as you stand in place, feeling oddly humiliated.

"What did you do with my little brother?" she asks. "Did Vivian replace you with a pod-person when you were fucking her last night?"

You groan. "I didn't fuck Vivian--"

"Whatever, Bill." She holds up a hand to silence you. "No matter what you call it, whatever you did to her made her stink like a French whorehouse. In my book, that counts as sex."

You shrug. Somehow, you don't feel like banter today. Cerise shifts her weight to one foot, folds her arms, and frowns.

"You're no fun today," she pouts.

[ ] Maybe another family movie night back home would cheer me up.

[X] We can test the new viewing area. I have a 'special' new OVA on my thumb drive...

Cerise reels back slightly, and you can almost hear the sound of her pulse quicken.

"You're not saying what I think you're saying," she breathes.

"It's a pretty raunchy one... Do you like traps?"

"I LOVE-- I mean--" Cerise glances nervously around. "Here? We're on school grounds. You're talking about projecting porn onto the wall of a classroom--"

"What are they gonna do," you ask, "expel us? We're leaving town in a few days anyway."

Cerise's brow trembles as thinks this over. Her face is flushed and she chews her lower lip.

When she creeps over to the door, you can see her whole body shaking with trepidation and anticipation. She pokes her head into the hallway, glances both ways, and steps back inside. She locks the door.

"Aw, come on, that's no fun," you say. "Leave it unlocked."

"You're crazy."

Even still, she reaches up and unclicks the locking mechanism.

Cerise keys up the dirty movie and connects it to the projector. She settles down beside you on one of the sofas, front and center in the viewing area.

Both of you have watched porn, but never on a cinema-sized screen, and never in surround sound.

"Do you think someone in the hall could hear this?" Cerise asks, unbuttoning her jeans.

"Probably," you say, pulling down your boxers.

You sink into the well-worn couch seat, enjoying the sensation of the rough fabric against your flesh. Doing lewd things at school will never cease to excite you -- but doing them with your own sister is a whole new level.

You weren't kidding about the OVA, either. The question of what the average student would think if they came in right now to find two siblings masturbating to animated images of traps getting their boypussies ravaged lingers in your mind. And it makes you incredibly horny.

On screen, a tender-looking thing is impaled between two enormous dicks -- one in his ass and one in his mouth -- and he sits suspended between them as slimy ropes of cum spray everywhere.

"Ohhh, that's so cute..." Cerise mutters to herself. "So hot..."

Cerise has all four fingers of her right hand buried almost to the second knuckle in her cunt. Her thumb plays across her clit. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," she repeats. Her shapely hips rotate and grind against the couch cushion. Like before, your eyes are drawn away from the depravity on-screen to stare at her.

Unlike before, she turns to stare at you, too.

"Do you like watching me?" Cerise asks. She spreads her legs further apart to give you a better view.

"Yes," you moan.

"I like watching you, too," she says. Her eyes are fixed on your red, swollen cock.

"Fuck-!!" she cries, hunching over suddenly, an orgasm tearing through her. This removes her last vestige of shame. She flings her shirt off and sits upright again, completely naked.

She stands up. "Come on," she says, and grabs you by the hand. All you can do is follow her.

First, she turns up the volume on the hentai movie, making it so loud that it causes your ears to ring, and ensuring that anyone passing by can hear it.

On her way to the front of the room, she picks up your underwear as well as hers.

Then she sits down on the teacher's desk -- a spot plainly visible from the hall through the window in the door.

She puts the musky crotch of your boxers in her mouth and sucks on it, teasing her nipples.

...Even all of this seems a little risky to you, but you're hot enough that your cock wins out over logic.

"Sit here," Cerise says, her voice muffled through the fabric. She pats a spot on the desktop beside her. "Let me sit in your lap..."

You do as asked. You sit down on the desk, and Cerise climbs into your lap, straddling you. You guess what's coming before it happens: she shoves the crotch of her panties into your mouth. What a wholesome bonding exercise this turned out to be.

Cerise's panties taste tart, but not unpleasant: oddly sweet, a sweetness that sticks to the back of your throat. As you swirl your tongue around in the cotton fabric, you want more and more of it. You savor it just as she savors yours. Together, you watch the projector screen from across the room.

Cerise rubs her cunt with a flattened palm, stopping every few seconds to give the mound a sharp and sexy little slap. You think about the fact that the garment in your mouth was against that cunt, and almost faint from excitement. Her womanly scent infects your synapses and shorts them out, making you dizzy.

Your dick is between Cerise's crotch, and only her masturbating hand separates it from her drooling labia. With her in your lap, you can't reach yourself to relieve the mounting need boiling inside you. Sucking the cummy fabric of her panties deeper into your mouth, so it touches the very back of your tongue and almost gags you, you nuzzle her neck impatiently. You hope this will send her the right message: you need some attention, too.

Cerise pulls her hand away and quickly squeezes her thighs together, trapping your cock in between them. She humps up and down, rubbing you against the entrance to her pussy without letting you inside.

The two of you grunt and heave like animals as you taste each other's sex and use each other to masturbate. You hold Cerise by her slender shoulders, guiding her motions. Cerise brings her hand back down to grip you around the base of your member, rubbing the cockhead directly against her clit.

Cerise's other arm loops around your neck, and she draws herself as close to you as she can, her back against your chest. Leering up at you through half-lidded eyes, she looks indescribably lewd with your boxers shoved inside her mouth. She draws you into a kiss -- a kind of indirect kiss, because your tongues have to poke and prod at one another through two layers of cotton, but a kiss nonetheless.

The underwear between you becomes wet with your collective drool. It runs freely down your chins. Your own rank, sweaty odor mingles with hers in the space between your mouths and floats through your nostrils, driving you over the edge. As your dick rubs against her hot pussy and her hand inexpertly but lovingly tries to coax the cum from you, this feels like the next best thing to actually mating with her.

"Mff-- mff~" she moans.

You bask in her little muffled sounds of pleasure and the spasms of her pussy. But then you hear the unmistakable sound of someones shoes squeaking on the tile floor out in the hall -- whose, you have no idea.

Cerise's eyes bulge open, but neither of you can stop -- you're both too close. In those few seconds of fear, you feel a tingling sensation all over and start squirting your hot cum all over your older sister's cunt. You don't care who sees or what the consequences are. Let the whole world see. You WANT the whole world to see you cumming all over your sister.

Cerise shrieks with pleasure and panic, her cheeks puffing out as she mashes her lips to yours. The footsteps recede, and whether they saw you or not, you have no idea.

Cerise throws her head back, the boxers falling from her mouth, and she repeats a familiar mantra as she cums herself stupid: "fuckfuckfuckfuck--" she draws in a sharp breath and shouts loud enough for the world to hear: "I'm cumming, Alabaster, I'm cumming! I'm cumming on you!!!"

And she does. She cums so hard that she becomes a quivering lump, and melts out of your lap to the floor, shivering, covered in pearls of sweat. Your own orgasm subsiding, you come to your senses and quickly shut off the movie, ushering Cerise into a part of the classroom not visible from the hall.

"That was..." Cerise heaves, out of breath. "...amazing."

You walk back home with Cerise. You carry with you the plastic enclosure that houses Smatters, the Transhumanism Club's pet rabbit.

"I can't believe you're taking that thing to Palau," Cerise says. "It really flies?"

You hold the kennel up in front of your eyes and tap against the wall. But Smatters is sound asleep, and like its owner, isn't easy to disturb. "Oh it flies, all right," you say. "Like a furry little predator drone."

"How on Earth did Rose and the Student Reichsleiter give the okay for a club like that exist? It's insane."

"Ms. Carte says that when she went to the council with her proposal, they approved it as soon as she said 'transhumanism.' I guess they thought it meant something else."

Cerise kicks a pebble along the grimy sidewalk. Staring at it instead of you, she says, "I guess I should be thankful to Ms. Carte for helping us, huh? I mean, she's getting us away from Darkbloom, and it's because of her we've got Spancer--"

She turns to indicate Spancer, walking a couple paces behind the two of you. He nods placidly in acknowledgement.

"--But I sort of feel like she ruined our lives. Is that unfair? And-- she's so intimate with you, too. The way she lies on the couch with her legs in your lap, the way she gives you shoulder massages--"

"Don't pout, now. You're free to massage me anytime."

"Ugh. Please. That isn't the point. The last thing I want is to fondle your fucking bacne."

"I haven't had bacne in like six months. Besides, it's not any worse than the laundry hamper of horrors you keep in our bathroom. But do I complain about how gross YOU are?--"

"All the fucking time."

"Well, it's the principle of the matter..."

Banter is one thing, and it always comes easy with Cerise. But you're not sure how to respond to the underlying issue. Cerise is jealous, but you like seeing Ms. Carte and you don't intend to stop anytime soon.

Thankfully, she changes the subject on her own.

"I feel a bit gypped to think how Ms. Carte gets to run a crazypants club like hers, and I couldn't even keep anime club around."

"We kept it around in spirit, right?"

"Mm. Do you know that when Rose called me to say she was disbanding us, the first replacement she suggested before a cultural appreciation club was a tabletop gaming club?"

"What, you mean like Dungeons and Dragons?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, God. That would be awful."

You both take a moment to reflect on how close you came to such indignities. Cerise focuses on her little game of kicking the pebble. In the overbearing afternoon sun, her pale face is sheened with sweat. For as much as she mocks your otaku tendencies, she gets out even less than you do.

"Anyway..." she murmurs, keeping her head down. "I wanted to say thanks. You know, for cleaning up the clubroom. It's nice that they'll have a better place to hang out in when we're gone."

She glances over at you, her face suddenly reddening a bit. "God, the heat must be going to my brain. I'm rambling."

[ ] (tsun) It's no more annoying than you usually are.

[X] (dere) I like it. Today was fun.

Cerise's face turns a spectacular shade of crimson. "What, just because you got your rocks off?" she says, trying to adopt a sarcastic tone.

"Partly. --Didn't you get your rocks off, too?"

Cerise simmers and looks away.

"That's not the only reason, though," you say. "Before a couple weeks ago, we hadn't really hung out in years. What happened to that?"

"You became a jerk, that's what."

"And you became a bitch."

Cerise leans her head against your shoulders as you stroll down the quiet suburban streets in your housing development. Neither of you are in much of a hurry.

"Don't think just because you did something nice for me, and just because you tricked me with some cute crossdressing boys, that I'm not still mad at you."

Even though she says this, her voice has an unusual tenderness in it.

"When are you ever not mad at me?" you ask. "I'd be worried if you weren't."

"Hmph."

You continue the rest of the way in silence.

You sleep in your own bed for the first time in several nights.

Tonight's session with Ms. Carte was disappointing. She jerked you off into a vial while whispering dirty things in your ear: no penetration of any sort. Sure, it felt good, but not nearly as good as pouring it directly inside her. There's something about cumming directly in a panting woman's womb that you'll never get tired of.

Well -- greater good, etc. Hopefully the sample she took will give you guys some answers.

As you sleep, you find yourself plagued by bizarre dreams of Rose. She collars you and parades you around town on a leash. Besides the humiliating collar, you wear nothing but a thin negligee, pink silk with frilly hems, that barely comes down to your crotch.

She shows you off to hundreds of anonymous townspeople, some of whom you fear may do more than leer at you. Rose doesn't seem to care; in fact she encourages it. Then she parades you in front of Whitney, Ms. Carte, Mom, Vivian, and finally Cerise, each in turn. They all laugh at your predicament. Cerise, in particular, takes perverted joy in the erection poking up through the sundress, your precum darkly staining the whorish pink garment.

The worst part is that, in the dream, you LIKE this treatment. You even thank Rose for doing it.

In the morning, you take a long shower that still doesn't make you feel clean. Or even make your erection subside.

At school, Whitney isn't in the lunchroom for breakfast. You figure she must be goofing off in the auto shop again, but she isn't there, either. Nor is she on the track or soccer fields.

Growing worried, you skip out on homeroom to spy on Whitney's homeroom instead.

This visit confirms your fears. She's absent today.

You try to call her cellphone, but yesterday was her service end date, and she must not have purchased additional minutes.

You massage your temples and try not to the adrenaline overwhelm your reason.

There are plenty of logical explanations for why she isn't at school today that don't involve Darkbloom chaining her up in a torture dungeon.

...Right?

First thing's first. How will you investigate?

[ ] Cautiously.

[ ] Passionately.

[X] Tie Vote

You dial Whitney's home phone. It rings and rings without answer. After two minutes, you're just about to give up and have Spancer take you to Whitney's place in person -- but finally her drunken failure of a father picks up.

"Whazzat?" he grumbles. You can tell he just woke up.

"Mr. Price," you say, swallowing your revulsion toward him. "Is Whitney home?"

"Who?"

"Whitney. Your daughter."

"Pfft," he says. "How the fuck'a should I know?"

"Please check," you say, wishing you could punch him through the line.

"Please wait warmly," he says, feigning civility. You hear him setting the phone down and then, a few seconds later, his muffled voice crying out: "Whitney! Ey!" --you hear what must be Mr. Price banging against his daughter's door-- "you in there? Some fuckin boy wants to talk'a to ya!"

There's a long pause. You tap your foot, burning with anxiety and frustration.

After an agonizing delay, he picks the phone up again.

"Says she's sick," he tells you curtly. "Been pukin' her guts up all morning. Quote-unquote. You got yourself a message for'er?"

You hang up, your blood turning to ice.

You try to attend classes as if everything is normal. But it's no use.

Whitney... she really couldn't be-- could she?

You've been paying for her birth control. She's supposed to be taking pills to prevent this kind of thing.

Did she forget? Did she do it on purpose?

Is what you suspect even true?

At lunch, Vivian corners you in the hallway, practically begging to suck you off. It's a testament to how worried you are that you decline the offer.

"But..." Vivian says, clearly dejected. "I spent all night practicing. I estimate my technique has improved 17% since the last--"

"Some other time, okay?"

Vivian shakes her head sadly. "You vacillate so much. I don't understand you, Alabaster Soliloquy."

"Of course you don't," you snap. The words come tumbling out of your mouth without conscious effort. "You're just a little girl. And you're not as smart as you think you are. Now please, get out of the way."

You shove her aside. She stumbles back from the force of it and doesn't make any attempt to stop you as you briskly walk away.

In the school parking lot, you have Spancer hijack a black Harvey-Davidson motorcycle. He pulls a mess of wires from engine block and hotwires it easily. Following orders, he speeds you to Whitney's trailer park at 70 MPH, weaving in and out of traffic.

Surprisingly, Whitney is outside -- behind her ramshackle corrugated tin trailer -- when you arrive.

Her backyard is a tiny parcel of patchy brown grass on hard, dusty red soil, surrounded by a chain link fence. One of many such yards connected to one of many such trailers. The park is drowned in the incessant cacophony of barking dogs, screaming children, and rumbling engines -- it's redneck central in this part of town.

Whitney has an axe in her hand. She's chopping tiny logs of wood on an old tree stump.

You know from experience that she does this whenever she has nervous energy she can't get rid of.

You link your fingers through the diamond-patterned mesh and rattle the fence to grab her attention. She looks up.

"Hey," you say. "I thought you were sick."

"I feel a little better now," Whitney says. She hefts the axe up and brings it down again, cleaving the current log in two. She replaces it with another.

"Besides," she continues, drawing the axe up once more, "once your little phone call let dad know I was home for the day, he started bugging me to cook and clean and shit."

"--Even though you're sick?"

She chops the log before her. This time she brings it down so hard that the axe gets stuck in the stump. She has to brace one foot against it as she tugs at the axhandle with both hands. When she pries it free, she goes tottering backward, and almost falls over.

"Should you really be doing that?" you ask, concerned.

"Why not?"

"I mean... because--"

[X] (be direct) Whitney, are you pregnant?

[ ] (be indirect) You shouldn't exert yourself if you're ill.

"How the hell could I be pregnant?" Whitney asks.

You push your forehead against the fence and sigh. "Well, you see, when a man and a woman love each other very much..."

"Don't be an ass. I'm on the pill, remember? Don't you trust me?"

"Of course," you say -- although honestly, you're not sure. You try a more tactful approach, though. One that gives her an out if she wants to come clean. "Sometimes the pill can fail, right?"

"I'm not preggers, Ally. God. I ate some seriously old hotdogs for dinner and spent all night puking up my insides. That's it. Stop being paranoid."

She resumes her amateur lumberjacking, the steady thunk of her chopping replacing conversation.

You breathe a tremendous sigh of relief. Whitney has a bad poker face, and with her weakened state -- the food sickness has left her pallid and baggy-eyed -- you trust that she's telling the truth.

"Does that make you happy?"

"Huh?" you ask.

"Does it make you happy? That I'm not pregnant?"

"Why not? We can't be parents."

"That was true before. Is it true now?" She tosses the axe aside and approaches the chain link fence. She pokes her fingers through to hold your hands through the mesh. Standing on her tiptoes, she looks you in the eye.

"We're going to some island paradise to hide for the rest of our lives, right?" she asks. "No responsibility to anyone but ourselves. Would it be so bad if I was pregnant?"

You dither. "We still have futures ahead of us, even in Palau. It's something we'd have to think about--"

"Why think? Thinking is all you ever do. I'm sick of it. You think too fucking much, Alabaster. "

Whitney never calls you by your full name.

"You're my future," Whitney says. "Aren't I your future too?"

"Yes."

You say it with conviction, but Whitney frowns. She steps back from the fence, releasing you. Turning, she takes the axe goes back to work.

Somehow, you feel like you said something wrong, but you can't pin down exactly what.

After dinner, Ms. Carte explains the significance of the test results.

"Sort of like anemia, then," you summarize. "Only it gets worse over time and the pheromone reverses it."

Ms. Carte nods.

"Is... anyone I've been with at risk?"

"Blood samples from me didn't show signs of weakening. Good counts on red cells, white and T-cells, iron, magnesium... everything Vivian is deficient in. It's her augmentations that make her require the X-11. But..."

You frown. Buts are never good.

"Darkbloom's notes confirm what I suspected. You're addictive."

"Joy."

"So that's the plan," she says. "Produce your special blend on an industrial scale, get the world addicted, and then make them need it."

You rub your eyelids and shake your head slowly, taking all the information in. It's a lot to digest.

Ms. Carte cocks her head and looks at you quizzically. "Is something the matter?"

"Other than the fact that my cum is going to cause Armageddon?"

"Yes."

"Seems like everything I do is a mistake. Whitney, Cerise, Vivian-- I always say the exact wrong thing." You don't know why you're revealing this to her, but it seems as good a time as any.

Ms. Carte sets Damon's file to the side and slides closer to you on the living room couch. She puts a reassuring hand on your knee. "Things are a little hectic right now. Just ride it out. I'm sure that they'll come around if you don't press things."

You look from her delicate hand resting on your leg up to her face. She smiles back. Drawing her closer, you peck her on the lips, but stop yourself short: "does that X-11 stuff work both ways? Sometimes I feel like I'm addicted, too."

Ms. Carte giggles. "Hmm. Maybe. Do you want to get a fix together, my fellow junkie?"

As you kiss her more deeply, you get the odd sense that the two of you are not the only ones in the room.

Never breaking the kiss, you push Ms. Carte partly supine as you tug at her blouse. She kicks off her socks and unzips her pants, trying to disrobe as quickly as possible.

Your lips trace a path from her mouth down to her chin and neck, and further down still, to her naked chest. She arches her back then falls flat underneath you, letting out a a high-pitched, adoring whine.

"Don't make me wait," she says. "Just fuck me. Fuck me, fuck me..."

"Are you two going to do this every night?" comes Mom's voice from the entryway.

You and Ms. Carte freeze in place, still locked in an embrace. Mom flips the wall switch, turning on the overhead light. Blinking from the sudden illumination, you and Ms. Carte squint at her.

"Err-- hi Mrs. Soliloquy. D-did we wake you?"

"Tonight, and last night, and the night before."

She steps past the threshold and approaches the couch where you're still hunched over Ms. Carte's body. You can feel Ms. Carte's embarrassment from the increase of her body heat. You pull away and sit against couch's back. Ms. Carte gropes around on the carpet to grab her clothes and cover herself.

"Honestly," Mom says. "What do you see in this slut? She's just some drunken old maid..."

"Who the hell are you calling old, grandma?" Ms.Carte yells. She swings her legs over the edge of the couch and sits forward. She clutches her pants against her tits to cover them -- but doesn't seem to realize that her pussy is on full display.

"And just look at that chest," Mom says. "Pitiful. Did you stop growing when you were 14?"

"Only a cow like you would think these things are small!" Ms. Carte tosses the garmet aside and stands. Her tits jiggle as she does, and she's right: calling those delicious round knockers "small" is hard to fathom.

Mom glances from Ms. Carte to you. Only now do you realize that your erection is evident even through your denim jeans.

"And on top of everything else-- she leaves you in need like that--"

"I WAS taking care of him, before you so RUDELY interrupted me-- hey, what are you doing?"

Mom kneels down before you, despite Ms. Carte's protests. She peels her shirt off of each shoulder in turn, tugging it down so that it bunches up around her tummy. Her enormous breasts come free. As it turns out, she wasn't wearing a bra.

"Mom--"

"Shh. Don't worry about that awful woman. I'm going to take care of you now."

You watch quietly -- as does Ms. Carte -- while Mom pulls a bottle of baby lotion from her pocket. She flips the cap open and pours a generous amount on both her tits, using her free hand to rub it in. They shine under the light like something laminated.

With a thumb and forefinger, Mom unzips your pants. She fishes a hand into the fly, and suddenly you feel her warm fingers wrap around your aching dick. She pulls it free.

"Oh, look at it throb... how dare she leave you so frustrated... she has no idea how to treat you right, does she?"

Ms. Carte sits next to you. Her eyes are fixed on the lascivious scene below, but there's still a trace of anger in her voice when she says: "come on, Alabaster... I thought we were going to fuck. You're going to settle for this instead?"

You glance at her and shrug. What are you supposed to do?

Mom slathers a helping of oil on your cock. She must have warmed the bottle beforehand because it comes flowing out at a delightful temperature. The thick rivulets of fragrant liquid run down your cock and make you grunt with pleasure.

"Shh, baby, shh," she coos. She rubs you up and down with both hands, working your shaft like a vase on a pottery wheel, applying just the right amount of pressure.

"Just let Mama rub your cock milk out..."

She lets go of you and pushes her tits together. They're so large that her hands sink into the flesh and you can no longer see them, only the indentation their pressure leaves behind.

Smiling up at you, she leans forward and pushes your oil-slick cock into the equally oil-slick crevice of her cleavage. It's hot and perfectly smooth, better than the best cocksleeve you've ever used. You can't help bucking your hips against her.

"Do you like Mama's titjob, baby? Do you like fucking my tits?"

Ms. Carte clasps your chin in her hand and draws your face toward hers. She kisses you, trying a seductive approach: "come on, that's boring, isn't it? Don't you want to fuck my pussy instead? I'm so hot for you..." She spreads her legs and sensually rubs her soft, wet mound.

"Don't listen to that tramp. Just sit there and cum to your heart's content. I'll do all the work..."

You lean back and shut your eyes. The underside of Mom's breasts presses against your balls every time she pushes down or you involuntarily hump up. The result is a lewd and arhythmic slapping sound that adds to the thrills of pleasure coursing through your horny dick.

"Ugh," Ms. Carte groans. She slinks to her knees beside Mom. "I can do that kind of thing just as well! Look!"

Without further warning, she shoves Mom aside. The sudden removal of pressure, softness, and warmth from your dick drives you to frustration. Your nuts are begging for release.

Ms. Carte scrambles across the floor on all fours to pick up the bottle of oil. She quickly pours some across her perky breasts and, balling her hands up into fists, presses them together in imitation of Mom's technique. As Mom clambers back to her knees, Ms. Carte mounts you.

"See?" Ms. Carte says, smiling up at you and fucking your cock gusto. "My titjob is even better, isn't it?"

"Unf," is all you can say.

"Nyah," Ms. Carte gloats, sticking her tongue out at Mom.

"Bitch!" Mom hollers, and body checks poor Ms. Carte. She falls to the side and Mom takes up her position again.

"You like Mama's tits better, don't you? Some stupid girl like that doesn't know how to do it properly..."

"Oh, you cunt!--" Ms. Carte says, sitting up again.

Even in your fuck-crazed state, you sense this is going to turn ugly if you don't intervene.

"I need to try both of you," you say. "I can't judge if you keep going back and forth like that..."

Ms. Carte mashes her oiled tits together again. "Me first, then," she says. "She's the one who interrupted."

"No way! I'll be the one to make him cum first--"

"Together," you moan impatiently, your voice low and gravelly. "Do it together."

They look at each other warily, but as you put your palms against each of their backs and beckon them toward one another, they don't resist.

Mom even swivels around to give Ms. Carte room. They sit at either side of your lap, their voluptuous breasts pushed together, nipple-to-nipple. The way the light glints off of them is tantalizing, like ripe fruit.

At first, they grit their teeth and stare at one another like sparring lionesses, but as you push your cock through their tit-meat, they become fixated instead on your slowly invading shaft. Their eyes lose focus as they both stare lovingly at your fucking cock. Both women squeeze their tits tightly together with both their hands to make the fit as snug as possible.

A new, more deviant synapse fires off in your mind. You grab for the bottle of baby oil and open it. You upturn it and let it pour out with steady glug-glugs into the crevice of their breasts. The added lubrication floods into every cranny and seeps through, across the undersides of their tits and all over your nuts. The warmth, heat, and wetness are divine.

But you're not done yet. A large amount of oil remains in the bottle, and you want to use it all.

You pour the remainder out, first over Ms. Carte's head, and then over Mom's. The translucent fluid runs in little streamers down their wanton faces, and neither of them mind the degradation. In fact their rounding mouths seem to indicate they enjoy it. Their hair becomes slick and shiny, their faces blurred and puffy-looking. Their jaws hang open as the wetness creeps down their necks, their backs, and their chests.

You fuck them with increased pace now, getting ready to shower them with cum. Your thighs slap so hard against them that you're sure it will leave bruises on their tender tit-flesh. Instead of shying away from the abuse, they just push together even closer, making the fit even tighter. You run your hands all over their slimy faces and bodies, the oily sensation making them feel like human onaholes.

"I'm going to cum," you say.

"Cum for Mama... pour it all out..."

"No! Cum for teacher... you want to cum for me, right? Shoot your cum, just for me...'

"Ugh! Fuck!" you moan. "I'm cumming for both of you! Stop fighting! You're both the best!"

You seat your cock so the head just barely pokes out from their cleavage, and let yourself blow. The spurting cum looks like a white geyser, emptying into a transparent ocean of oil.

In the shower afterwards, you earlier vision of being pressed between the two women as they soap each other down comes true.

"Be honest, now. I was the best, wasn't I? N-not that I care, of course, I just can't let a skank like that beat me..."

"Please. Tell your mother that nothing can compare to the purity of love between a student and his mentor. Besides, mine are perkier..."

Letting your hands roam free, across their round, plump asses and well-formed thighs, you alternate between kissing both of them.

"I was telling the truth..." you say in between kisses. "You're both the best."

You're not sure whose hands are working you over or whose tongues are mingling with whose after a while, but together they bring you off to another grunting orgasm in the shower before you finally go to bed that night.

That Thursday, Ms. Carte gets a definite date from her contact in Palau: on Sunday, the weather should be good enough to charter a plane.

That means you have to go to the Quiz Bowl competition on Saturday. And potentially to David Darkbloom's house.

"What do you think about taking Vivian?" you ask over dinner that evening -- a dinner Whitney is also present for.

"Great idea," Whitney says, chewing down a mouthful of food. "She's super cute and totally into you. The more the merrier!"

"I thought the point of this was to get AWAY from people named Darkbloom..." Cerise says.

"Well, she kind of needs me to live," you point out. "I don't want to kill her."

Ms. Carte wipes her mouth with her napkin and sets it aside. She clears her throat and says, "I agree. Vivian is a good girl. She doesn't deserve any of this. But we have to ask ourselves if it's worth the risk... and in any case, I have to believe that David would find a way to keep her alive if you disappear. He's kept her alive through worse."

"But he had you to help," Mom offers.

"This is fucked," Cerise says, pushing her plate away in frustration.

"Language," Mom chides.

"So the choice is between saving ourselves or letting a little girl die?" Cerise asks, ignoring the admonition. "There has to be another way."

>What say you, Alabaster?

[X] No other way. You will go to David's house on Saturday and steal Vivian away from him.

[ ] You'll send for Vivian after we get to Palau and things settle down. She can survive that long.

Quiz Bowl on Saturday is another 22,000-0 drubbing. The team captain for the other school, a mousy-looking girl, threatens suicide as she exits stage left at the end of the match. Mr. Langley tells you and the rest of the team not to worry; that girl has a history of attention-seeking behavior.

To be honest, you weren't that worried anyway.

Today's match happens to be on home turf, and Rose is in the audience. Only the tiniest hint of a smile serves as evidence that she enjoys seeing you dominate the opposing school.

Also in attendance: David Darkbloom himself. It's the first match he's come to watch personally.

Mom, Cerise, and Whitney sit in the back, far behind Darkbloom, and they watch him at least as much as they watch you up on stage. Spancer is with them.

The entire atmosphere in this little auditorium is unbearably tense.

When you step down from the stage, you head for the back of the auditorium first, to confer with your loved ones.

"Are you sure about this?" Mom asks. "You don't have to go. You could say you're feeling sick."

"I'll be fine," you insist.

"You better be fine," Cerise grumbles.

"Yeah," Whitney adds. "If you die, I'll kill you!"

"Just make sure your things are packed and ready to go," you say. "We may have to be quick about getting out of town..."

"Alabaster!" booms David's voice as he approaches. You turn, and he throws his arms wide. "Watching you and Vivian up on stage is so impressive."

Vivian, at his side, is stony-faced. You also notice Rose off to the side, a few rows away, watching this little gathering.

"Mrs. Soliloquy," Darkbloom says, playing cordial. "I hope you don't mind if I steal your son for the afternoon. I promise to return him in one piece!"

Mom can't help herself: she growls.

"I'll take that as a yes," Darkbloom says, smiling. "Are you ready to go, Alabaster?"

[ ] Do you mind if my friend Spancer tags along?

[X] (leave Spancer to protect the harem) Let's go.

Darkbloom leads you and Vivian to a black limousine and orders the chauffeur to drive you to the business district.

As you step inside, Mom, Cerise, and Whitney wave you off. They try to look chipper, but it's obvious that they're worried.

Rose watches you leave as well.

"How are you feeling today?" Darkbloom asks once the car is on the road. He sits across from you in the limo's plush red-velvet interior, a hand on his daughter's knee. "Relishing the thrill of victory? Savoring the taste of success?"

"Mm," you say.

Darkbloom nods as if you just said something sage. "Now, then -- Alabaster, I just want to thank you again for all you've done to help Vivian. She's really coming out of her shell."

He pats her knee. It's not very fatherlike.

In the business district, Darkbloom ushers you out of the limo. You stand outside a skyscraper, the oldest in town, an art-deco throwback.

"I own this building," Darkbloom says.

"You have offices here?"

"No, I own the entire building. Every floor. $200 million -- what a steal." He nudges you with his elbow. "We'll ride up to the roof and take a helicopter back to my home in Palo Alto. This way, please..."

He steps up to the pane-glass door and pulls on a large gilded handle, motioning for you to enter.

Stepping out, Vivian hurries around the back of the limo to walk beside you. She whispers: "Maintain your calm... please don't try anything foolhardy tonight."

Darkbloom takes you through the cavernous, granite-tiled lobby and then on a minutes-long elevator ride.

On the roof, a helicopter waits. Darkbloom hands you and Vivian some ear protection when you get inside.

The pilot flicks some switches and the blades begin to rotate.

"You're well acquainted with Vivian," Darkbloom shouts over the roar of the rotors. "But maybe you'll like my other daughters too."

You give Darkbloom a wan smile.

"That's the spirit, Alabaster. I've got so much to show you!"

--

"Would you please pass me the butter?"

"Dalton!" David Darkbloom claps his hands, beckoning his manservant to the oak dining table.

Dalton, perfect image of butlerdom, clad in white gloves and a tuxedo with long tails, steps forward. He stands at attention before his master.

"Please give Alabaster the butter platter," Darkbloom tells him.

"Mmyes sir."

He takes the lidded dish and walks across the room with the pomp and precision of a soldier marching in a parade. He sets it down in front of you and then returns to his vigilant post alongside the far wall, hands behind his back.

Darkbloom's dining room is a long, tall, vaulted hall that feels positively medeival in decor and ambiance. A blond-and-crimson carpet accents an enormous oil painting of Darkbloom on the wall opposite the heavy double-doors.

You sit between the billionaire and his daughter -- Darkbloom at one end and Vivian at the other. Vivian is quiet as death, and picks sullenly at her food.

"Are you excited about attending the national competition?" Darkbloom asks you.

Usually you're a better liar, but the current situation creeps you out, and Darkbloom has a domineering energy that makes it hard to even attempt outmaneuvering him. He watches you, resting a chin on the backs of his palms.

More and more you feel a mounting sense that coming here was a mistake.

"I'm glad Vivian found a friend like you, Alabaster. I admit I was skeptical when she first took a liking to you -- you're not from money, you're a product of the public school system... I hope you'll forgive me for my prejudices."

"Uh, no offense taken."

"Good. And I do hope you enjoy her fellatio, as well."

You choke on your coq au vin.

"Oh? Did I say something upsetting? Hopefully her technique has improved. I've been buying her cucumbers to practice on."

Vivian turns red as a beet. "Father, this is hardly appropriate table-talk--"

Darkbloom laughs. "You two are cute when you're flustered. Young love, hmm... don't be bashful, Alabaster. I know Vivian is a real firebrand when she wants to be. If a girl like her came after me, I wouldn't be able to resist either."

[ ] (play it cocksure) Vivian definitely knows how to please a man. I don't mind helping teach her.

[X] (play it demure) Your daughter is a nice girl. I hope you approve of me.

[ ] (play it inscrutable - say nothing)

Darkbloom is quiet for several long moments. He frowns and appears contemplative. You can feel the sweat pearling on your brow.

"Why don't you tell me how you really feel," he says, his voice flat.

"That-- that IS--"

Darkbloom pushes his plate away and snaps a thumb and forefinger, beckoning his manservnt forward again. "I believe we're quite done with tonight's meal, Dalton. Please see that the mess is taken care of."

"Mmyes sir."

Dalton begins to gather the plates and platters from the table, but Darkbloom stops him. "I should have been clearer. Get Maribelle to take care of those," he says. "I need you to help retrieve number 27 from isolation."

"Mmyes sir."

Dalton turns on his heels, throws the double doors of the dining room open with a flourish, and exits. The tails of his dinner jacket flap behind him.

You have no clue what to make of any of this.

"Did you enjoy the food, Alabaster? This dinner was in your honor, after all."

"It was fine. Err, more than fine, actually -- send my regards to the chef." You wince at your own painfully phony etiquette.

Darkbloom stands, making a cordial sweeping gesture with his arm. "Now that this stuffy formality is out of the way, we can get down to business. Now, I need to go help Dalton for a moment, but..."

He glances at Vivian. "Perhaps," he continues, "Vivian would like to show you some entertainment in her bedroom before we move on to the main event. I'm sure you two are itching for some alone time. I will call you down when the preparations are complete."

Vivian closes her eyes, looking mortified.

[ ] This is your chance. Go with Vivian to her room.

[ ] Accompany Darkbloom on his preparations.

[X] Tie Vote

"Thank you, Mr. Darkbloom," you say.

"Please-- call me David. Over time, I hope you come to think of me as a father. Vivian will show you to her room -- see you soon, Alabaster."

You help Vivian stand as Darkbloom makes his exit, but some impulse compels you to call out to him.

"What is it?" Darkbloom asks, standing at the threshold of the dining room.

"I appreciate the time with Vivian... but if it's all the same to you, I'd like to see your work personally. I'm interested in your research. Always have been."

Darkbloom pokes his chin up, apprising you. He seems pleased.

"I told you on the way over here that there is much to show you. I suppose we can start sooner rather than later, if you like. But please, enjoy Vivian's body while I help Dalton. You may view the rest of the preparations a bit later."

What you don't say, of course, is that you intend to be long gone, with Vivian in tow, by the time he comes back to get you.

Darkbloom walks briskly away, his shoes clacking on the marbled tile of the mansion's grand lobby.

"Is there a place we can speak in private?" you whisper in Vivian's ear.

"Mm." She leads you by the hand through the labyrinthine home.

It's now or never.

Vivian's bedroom is like a crypt. At first, you don't even recognize that she took you to her bedroom at all -- the deep black carpet, the black wallpaper, the bizarre cruciform decorations and bloody artwork on the walls -- when you step inside, you think this must be some kind of guest-room-as-macabre-conversation-piece.

Vivian takes the gothic loli thing seriously, it seems.

"Are we alone?" you ask.

"Yes."

Wasting no more words, you grab her by the shoulders -- roughly. She's so small and light that she's like a ragdoll in your hands. You draw her into a passionate kiss, your lips pressing into hers with a hungry insistence.

"So you did want to use me now," Vivian says when as you pull away -- a bittersweet note in that.

"Not now. We don't have time."

Vivian stares at you blankly.

"I'm leaving the country," you tell her. "First thing in the morning. And I'm never coming back. Come with me."

You explain about Palau. Vivian doesn't say anything. She just turns and sits down on her four-post bed as you speak. The frame is so tall that she has to do a little hop to sit on it. The mattress is so downy that even her small body sinks into it.

"Please," you say. "Don't stay with that crazy person."

"I told you not to do anything foolhardy. This is the precise sort of thing I was warning you about."

"Vivian--"

"I cannot accompany you. Many apologies. I wish you, your family, and your lovers all the best. Goodbye, my love."

"Christ. Stop talking like some heroine in a bodice ripper. This is our chance. This is YOUUR chance. We can go where he'll never find us."

"He'll find us."

"No, he won't. And if he does... we'll stop him. We'll put a stop to whatever he has planned."

"You think you can stop my father?"

"I know we can."

"You know nothing, Alabaster Soliloquy."

"God fucking dammit, you little loli twerp. Do not make me kidnap you. I swear to god I will carry you out of here in a burlap sack if I have to."

"Alabaster."

"I will bonk you over the head and drag you by your feet to the airport--"

"Alabaster."

You stop ranting.

"Do you honestly believe he doesn't anticipate this? He's waiting for you to try and take me. You would be playing right into his trap."

"We can still get away-- we just have to be careful-- you could come to the airport tomorrow--"

"Stop. Just stop." She seems on the verge of tears. "I have been living the past three years on borrowed time. Do you see? I'm just a dead girl anyway. Don't risk your life for me."

You sit beside her. You hug her tight, drawing the side of her face against your chest, and lie down with her. But no amount of pleading, begging, cajoling, or ranting will convince her to attempt escape with you.

"You're an idiot," you tell her, petting her hair.

"You have a pulse," she says, her ear against your ribs, apropos of nothing.

"What?"

She draws up against your torso and tugs lightly at your fingers, drawing your palm flat against her own board-flat chest. She grips you around the wrist by both hands, holding you in place.

She has no pulse.

"Do you understand?" she asks.

You shake your head and can't think of anything to say.

She looks into your eyes, forcing a smile on her forlorn face. "Have fun in Palau," she tells you.

A few moments later, there's a light knock against the door. "Are you ready?" Darkbloom asks from the other side.

Vivian nods reassuringly.

Vowing to yourself that you'll rescue her, you extract yourself from her embrace and go to face the music.

Darkbloom leads you down a long hallway at the end of which sits an elevator. He pulls up the diamond-mesh metal barrier and beckons you inside.

"Did you enjoy your time with Vivian?" he asks, stepping in.

"Uh-huh."

"Wonderful. Just wonderful." He gives you a meaningful look. "I'm glad you're here."

The elevator travels down. You close your eyes and let the sensation of weightlessness overtake you. It feels like a descent into hell.

When you step out, you find yourself in a clean, sterile-looking laboratory. Bright fluorescents illuminate perfect white walls, glass equipment, and -- at the far end of the room -- a rounded portal that looks to be made of heavy steel.

"We do the blood work in this room," Darkbloom tells you. "Your friend Rene Carte used to work here. I'm sure she's fed you a great deal of lies and misinformation about my company does."

"Um--"

"Never mind. This way, please."

You follow him through the portal and into a white tile hallway. This underground facility encompasses a great deal of acreage, if the number of doors is any indication.

Dalton is waiting for you here, now clad in a sharp-looking lab coat and khaki dockers.

Beside him is a little girl who looks exactly like Vivian -- only blonde and chipper.

"This is Viv-tan," Darkbloom says. "Number 27. Viv-tan!"

"Fathah!~" Viv-tan cries, hugging him around the waist. She nuzzles his hipbone, staring up at him with dewy blue eyes. "I missed you! Let's play!"

Darkbloom smiles warmly and ruffles her hair. "Please be patient, dear. I have business."

"Aww~" She pulls back and pretends to pout, folding her arms.

"This is the first in what I hope to be a long line of cybernetic companions," Darkbloom says. "The Viv-tan you see here is modeled on my daughter, naturally--"

"She doesn't seem like Vivian at all," you can't help saying.

"The current Vivian? Heavens, no. Viv-tan is modeled on the way Vivian used to be, before she decided she would be difficult and depressed all the time."

"With your help," Darkbloom says, "maybe the real Vivian will begin to shape up, too."

Right now, the Viv-tan preoccupied with trying to drag Dalton off. "C'mon," she says, "let's play hide and seek!" Dalton is impassive.

"You say you're interested in my research. Well, there's a problem with the Viv-tan -- with all cybernetic companions, honestly -- that I need your help to solve."

You look from the Viv-tan to him.

"Without your special pheromone," Darkbloom says, "these poor things malfunction quite easily. Watch."

He taps the Viv-tan on her -- its? -- shoulder. The Viv-tan turns, smiling toothily. "Let's play! Let's play!"

"All right," Darkbloom replies. "Let's play the adding game."

"Ooh! I love the adding game!"

"Hmm. Find first Mersenne prime higher than 2 to the power of 12 billion, minus 1."

"Oooh, that's a toughie~" the Viv-tan puts a finger to its lips and stares off into space, thinking. You watch, uneasy.

"This-- is a hard quessstion--- a harrrd--- q-u-e-ssss-- vvvvvvvvvvvv"

"Viv-tan...?" you say reflexively. "Are you--"

"vvvvvvvvv"

The Viv-tan hums and shakes like a paint-mixing machine, its whole body vibrating.

You reach out to grab ahold of her, but too late. The Viv-tan falls to its back, flapping wildly like a fish out of water. Electricity arcs from its eyes, nose, and ears. Dark smoke rises from its body. You detect the odor of burning plastic.

Then abruptly, it goes still. The electrical arcing halts, the smoke putters out.

Dead.

The Viv-tan's eyes lose their shimmer, and now you can see that all along they were just glass beads, two little monitors set inside a fake skull. The Viv-tan's face is partially melted, revealing a metal frame underneath.

Darkbloom sighs. "Dalton, please dispose of that. And get me another Viv-tan from isolation, please."

"Mmyes sir."

"You see," he says to you. "And that one went without X-11 for just three days."

As Dalton drags the charred carcass away by its ankles, you feel close to puking.

You stare at Darkbloom with wild eyes, unable to speak. Some moments later, Dalton returns with an identical-looking Viv-tan. Number 28, you suppose.

"Cybernetic companions come in a variety of different styles," Darkbloom explains. "That's the key. We use modular personality units -- MPUs -- to modify behavior."

Dalton, taking his cue, opens some kind of tiny portal behind the new Viv-tan's ear, just a few millimeters in diameter. He inserts a tiny cathode into the opening.

"The 'dandere' module," Darkbloom says. "More similar to the Vivian you know. Viv-tan!"

"Greetings, father. What do you require of me today?"

Dalton removes the MPU and inserts another.

"The 'tsundere' module," Darkbloom says. "Viv-tan!"

"W-what is it, y-y-you dummy? It's not like I like having you for a father, you know! Don't get any weird ideas!"

Dalton removes the MPU and inserts another.

"The 'yandere' module," Darkbloom says. "Viv-tan!"

"Who is that boy?" Viv-tan asks, pointing at you. "Why are you hanging out with strange people like that? Even after I told you not to! I bet he wants to steal you away from me! I... I won't let him! You'll be mine forever, father! Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and--"

Dalton removes the MPU and inserts another.

"Stop," you say. "Oh my God."

"Do you see the potential now? Will you help me, Alabaster? With your help-- we can prevent the cybernetic companions from experiencing the type of suffering you just saw. And on top of that, we can change the world."

"I--"

"Before you answer," he says, "let me show you one final thing. Once you see it, I'm sure you'll be on board. And if you're not -- you have my solemn word that you can go. I'll even still give you the million dollars I promised."

"What is it?" you ask, setting your jaw.

"Oh, but that would ruin the surprise. Well-- here's a teaser. It has to do with your sister."

[ ] I've seen quite enough.

[X] All right.

Darkbloom sends Dalton away with Viv-tan #28 and takes you further down the hallway.

Behind one of the portals is a tasteful little room -- like an atelier or a small loft, sparsely furnished and not at all lab-like.

Sitting on a hassock in the center of the room, legs folded, is Cerise.

Your stomach drops.

"Cerise!" you cry, rushing over to her. "What are you--"

"Alabaster," she says, cocking her head. "It's so nice to see you. Let's play!"

"What did you do to Cerise?" you growl, spinning on your heels.

"That's not Cerise. That's Cer-tan."

He steps past you and brushes his palm lovingly against the android's face. "The very first model. She has the standard Viv-tan MPU right now, so she isn't very like the Cerise you know...'

"I missed you, Alabaster," Cer-tan says. "Can we go get some ice cream?"

"This is sick," you say. "You're sick."

"I just want to help you. I want to help everyone. Think of how difficult Cerise is. Think of how many times she's spurned you, shunned you. Imagine if you could make her instantly docile! Imagine if you could turn her off whenever she annoyed you!"

"That's not..."

"This is only the start. Think of it!" Darkbloom booms. "A Whitney in every garage, a Mrs. Soliloquy in every kitchen, a Rose in every basement. A Cerise in every bedroom! Why keep them to yourself, Alabaster? You can share them with the world! All you have to do... is just -- say yes."

You set your jaw and grimace. "I love Cerise the way she is," you say firmly.

"I understand. I love Vivian the same way. I can make an MPU that exactly mirrors Cerise's personality -- with your help. The only difference between your Cer-tan and the flesh-and-blood Cerise is that the first one will be better, more resillient -- changeable! I can make MPUs based on your entire harem. But I need your help in this endeavor, Alabaster."

"What happens to the originals if I say yes?"

Darkbloom circles the Cer-tan and strokes its cheeks from behind, staring at you. Cer-tan sits there docilely.

"Alabaster, don't let your shortsightedness ruin mankind's greatest technological advancement. There's more to think about here than just yourself."

"I'm not thinking about myself."

"Cerise will be Cerise, no matter what her form is. Let her be the best that she can be. Stop holding your sister and your other loved ones back because of petty sentimentality. Say yes."

[ ] Yes.

[X] No.

"Never," you say. "I will never sell you the people I love."

Darkbloom's smile crumples.

"I'm so disappointed in you, Alabaster. You could have been like a son to me."

"Seeing how you treat your daughter, it looks like I dodged a bullet."

"You have no idea how much that hurts me. But I suppose it's my own fault. I misjudged you."

Darkbloom opens the panel behind the Cer-tan's ear and pulls out its MPU. It powers down, appearing to fall asleep.

"I will destroy this model, if you wish," Darkbloom says. "This is the only one of her type."

"Do it. But not in front of me."

"I hope one day you'll come around, Alabaster. I will always be here for you if you do. -- Shall I have my pilot take you home now?"

You do a double take. "You're letting me go? Just like that?"

"I said I would, didn't I? I'm a man of my word. Unlike some people."

Dalton comes into the room and leads you away. He brings you up the elevator, out of the Darkbloom mansion, and to the private helipad at the foot of the rolling green hills behind the opulent residence.

But as Darkbloom's personal pilot takes you home, something doesn't feel right.

The helicopter touches down in your quiet cul-de-sac, hovering a few inches above the asphalt. The air whipped up by its rotors makes the brown autumn leaves spin in a giant vortex. Your neighbors gather outside and watch, transfixed, as you step out of the chopper.

Mom, Cerise, and Whitney rush outside and smother you with a group hug. The helicopter lifts off and putters away, leaving you to your reunion.

"You're alive!" Whitney yelps. "Being alive is the best!"

"You idiot! You idiot!" Mom cries, eyes full of tears. "Making me worry--!!"

"What took you so long?" Cerise demands, over and over. --But you were only gone for about five hours.

Inside, Ms. Carte is equally overcome with relief -- but after a tearful passel of kisses, she's the first to realize that you're missing something. "Where's Vivian?"

You explain everything that happened. They listen, growing increasingly somber.

"Egomoniacal fuckwit," Cerise summarizes. "Ugh, my skin is crawling just thinking about it... sharing me with a million fat otakus..."

"What will happen to Vivian?" Whitney asks. "You know, once we're gone."

An uneasy silence settles over the room.

"Darkbloom will keep her safe," Ms. Carte avers. "Physically, at least. He's a sick twist, but he does love her. In his own way."

"Let's all try to get some sleep," Mom says. "Tomorrow is a big day."

Whitney spends the night at your place, her bags packed and ready to go.

She doesn't intend to tell her father where she's headed.

She and Ms. Carte spend the evening slobbering all over your cock and riding it to dozens of howling orgasms, but now is not the time to go into detail.

This will have to work as your double-date, you suppose. Whitney approves of Ms. Carte now, at least.

In the morning, you and Ms. Carte decide to go to the airfield first, before the rest of the family. She has personal knowledge of Darkbloom's operation and will be the best judge of whether the escape plan has been compromised by his agents. Mom will drive the rest of them there to meet with you when the plane arrives.

Spancer takes you and Ms. Carte on the stolen Harley-Davidson. The airfield is a small, sandy affair. There's only a single terminal at one end, but it has a steady stream of foot traffic. Ms. Carte sits between you and Spancer, wearing sunglasses and a scarf, scoping the terminal out for potential threats.

"I wish this stupid plane would hurry," you say.

"You and me both," Ms. Carte says. "He was supposed to be here ten minutes ago."

"When we get to Palau... what happens then?"

Ms. Carte shrugs. "We spend our days drinking rum out of coconut shells, fucking like animals on the beach, and singing kumbaya at the campfire."

"Will you miss your old life?"

"Yeah right. My old life was living in fear 24/7. No thank you. I'm... just sorry you had to get caught up in this."

You sigh. "What about your science? I doubt Palau has many research facilities."

"Gustav actually has a very nice lab of his own I can work out of. He's already trying to rope me into his research projects. But to be honest... I sort of want to leave that stuff behind."

First Whitney with soccer, and now Ms. Carte with science -- weird.

"What the...?" Ms. Carte says.

You look up to see Vivian standing in the doorway of the terminal, parasol in hand.

"Vivian?" you say, confused.

"Run."

The skylights of the terminal shatter as a tactical assault team, clad in black riot gear, drops down on ropes. The civilians in the terminal scatter in a hundred different vectors, shrieking madly, covering their faces against the shards of falling glass.

Spancer leaps to his feet. He pulls a sawn-off shotgun from out of his coat that you never knew he had. He fires at the descending strike team, blowing a few of them away in a shower of gore. But their numbers are great, and his ammo is limited.

Vivian whips her parasol like a cat-o-nine-tails, and in front of your astonished eyes, it transforms itself into some sort of extendable sword. She joins Spancer's side and uses her weapon like a sort of lasso to attack the strike team as they touch down on the ground.

Ms. Carte scrambles out of her chair. She falls to her hands and knees but quickly rights herself. She grabs a pistol from her waistband.

Is everyone packing heat but you, or what?

All you can do is sit there, stunned.

The attackers fire on Spancer with assault rifles, but their bullets do little more than glance off him, leaving sparks in their wake. The rounds leave nicks in his face and puncture some holes in his clothes, but he's unfazed by it. He steps forward, firing on them. In just a few moments, he runs out of shells.

He tosses his gun aside and switches to hand-to-hand. He grabs one of the strike team by the throat and crushes it. He punches a hole through another's chest.

Ms. Carte is firing wildly, but her little pea-shooter can't penetrate their protective vests.

"Run!" Vivian yells again, cutting a man in two. "Get out of here!"

You and Ms. Carte turn toward the exit. But Darkbloom is blocking your way.

[ ] Attack

[X] Escape

"Where are we going?" You ask. You have to shout to be heard over the whipping wind and roaring engine of the motorcycle.

"My orders for this contingency are to take you to a safehouse in the Nevada desert and wait for further orders from Carte's contact in Palau."

You massage your forehead. "This is intense. Get a grip, Alabaster..."

You ride for several silent moments before asking: "what was up with Vivian's parasol? How did it do that?"

"Her parasol is made from a mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal. It can transform itself into a variety of weapons."

"Then why doesn't she turn it into a bomb or a machine gun?"

"It doesn't work that way. It can't form complex machines. Guns and explosives have chemicals in them, moving parts. Vivian's parasol can only form solid metal shapes."

"Like what?"

"Knives, and stabbing weapons."

"Well, forget the safehouse. We have to go back home first. We need to keep the others safe, too."

"Negative. Darkbloom will definitely try to reacquire you there."

"You sure?"

Spancer glances back at you. "I would."

"Well, I don't care about the danger. We have to save them."

"Negative.

"I'm not going to Nevada, you lumbering fuckwit. I'm giving you new orders. Take me home."

Spancer doesn't reply, but a few moments later, he throttles the hog and turns in the opposite direction, heading back to town.

As you approach your home, you see black smoke pouring into the sky on the distance. When Spancer turns down your street, your worst suspicions are confirmed.

Your house is on fire.

An intense blaze consumes both levels, tongues of flame darting from the windows and the partially caved-in roof. The fire department is already there, blasting it with high-pressure hoses, but it's like spitting on hell.

As Spancer pulls to a stop, you get off the motorcycle in a panicked daze. Amongst the firefighters, you spy a familiar face: Fazil, all dressed up in reflective yellow heat-retardant gear, and helping to man one of the hoses.

You run over to him.

"Ala-bast-or!" He says. His face is smeared with black soot. "We put this shit out! Don't worry!"

"What are you--"

"I volunteer for fire department on weekends. We put this out, no worry. I promise!"

"Is there anyone inside? Oh god..."

"None we have seen. We send in men to look-- hey!"

Fazil and several of the other firefighters call out in surprise as Spancer dashes across the lawn and through the blazing front door. When one of the men tries to stop him, he tosses him aside like a paper doll.

The heat of the fire is almost unbearable even a dozen yards back. Through the melting window panes, you catch glimpses of Spancer's shadow moving around, searching.

Only a few moments later, Spancer leaps out of a second story window in what used to be your bedroom. A small fire burns upon his shoulder blade. He pats out with his hand. The firefighters stare at him, mouths agape.

"Your family is not inside. I believe Darkbloom must have them already."

When you speed off again with Spancer, you haggle with him and eventually convince him to attempt an extraction mission at Darkbloom's mansion. He refuses to take you along, however: he's going to go solo after leaving you at the safehouse.

Yet all of this planning quickly comes to naught.

As the motorcycle tears around a corner and onto a four-lane artery, you're blinded by the rushing headlights of an oncoming truck. Spancer tries to swerve, but his reflexes aren't quick enough. The bike shatters like glass underneath you. Spancer goes tumbling away along with the rest of the wreckage.

A hand reaches out of the truck's window just before impact and saves you from death by grabbing hold of you.

It's Darkbloom.

Holding you by the scruff of your collar just as he did with Ms. Carte, he steers the truck with one hand. But Spancer is holding onto the truck's tailpipe, holding on tenaciously as Darkbloom drags him down the road. Glancing at him in the rearview, Darkbloom sighs.

He stops the truck and drops you in the road like a sack of turnips. He steps out.

As you crawl away toward the sidewalk, Spancer approaches Darkbloom and attempts an attack. Darkbloom easily deflects it, grabbing Spancer by the throat and tossing him backwards. Spancer lands against the curb, his head making a loud thunk.

Darkbloom grabs a stop sign by the pole and rips it whole from the sidewalk. A cone of crumbly cement remains attached to the bottom. He twirls the pole through his fingers like a marching baton.

Spancer charges a second time. Darkbloom steps to and wields the sign like a giant bat. He hits Spancer in the face. Spancer, reeling, falls flat. For good measure, Darkbloom gives him two more hard whacks with the broad steel octagon of the sign. The thin sheet metal makes a wobbly, woozy swishing noise as he slices it through the air.

The metallic whump of the sign bashing Spancer's face in sounds fatal. Spancer convulses on the hot sidewalk, and finally goes still.

Grinning evilly, Darkbloom throws the stop sign aside. It lands with a clang in the middle of the street. He turns to face you.

"What... what are you?" you breathe.

"God."

You swallow hard. "You're not God. You're just a crazy person who thinks he's God."

"Call me what you like. But you cannot stop me. The essence of world diegesis flows through me. I am a walking monomyth."

"Where is my family?"

"Burning your house down was only a warning. The only one I will give you. Your choice is to ascend to my level or die in ignominy. Make the right fucking choice, Alabaster Soliloquy."

A limousine pulls up beside you. Dalton hops out and circles around the back, opening the rear door. Darkbloom motions for you get inside.

[ ] Get in

[ ] Refu--

Oh, who are you kidding. You don't have a choice in the matter. You get in.

Darkbloom gets in, too. Dalton closes the door and jogs back around the car, getting into the driver's seat. He pulls away.

You watch Spancer's prone form as it recedes into the distance.

Darkbloom sits right beside you, a hand on your knee. You've never felt more alone in your life.

Darkbloom drops you off at his towering skyscraper downtown.

Dalton leads you, in manacles, down to the buildings sub-basement. This level houses a sort of makeshift prison. As you pass a series of heavy metal doors, you can see your loved ones through the plexiglass portholes, each one in an individual padded cell.

Whitney lies on a cot, tossing a rubber ball against the ceiling and catching it as it bounces back. Mom lies with her face buried in her pillow and appears to be weeping. Dad reads his newspaper.

Only Cerise notices you as you pass. She dashes to the porthole in her cell and peers out at you. Her mouths form words, but you can't hear them.

Dalton deposits you in a cell at the end of the line.

"Master will be back in the morning. He will take you and the others to his home after further preparations. Please wait warmly."

"I'm going to kill him."

"Duly noted, sir. Please wait warmly."

He swings the door shut and leaves you to your thoughts.

You spend what could be hours or what could be only just minutes stewing with inchoate rage that matures and blossoms like fire inside your chest with every passing moment.

You pace the length of your cell back and forth, full of righteous energy that you can't dissipate. Every once in a while, you peer out of your tiny porthole, but every time it's the same: you can't see shit, just the grey wall opposite your cell.

This is the end of the line.

You lie on the uncomfortable cot and try to sleep, but sleep won't come. You toss and turn, trying to think, trying not to panic, trying not to despair.

This is the end of the line.

Was there something you could have done to prevent this? Was there a choice, somewhere along the way, that would have stopped this from happening?

This is the end of the line.

Vaguely, muffled and in the distance, you hear two quick pings. But you don't pay them any attention. You're probably going to be dead in a few hours. Or a slave. Or worse.

This is the end of the--

Your cell door swings open. You flip over on your cot and sit upright, scooting back against the wall far wall. Your jaw hangs open.

Standing at the threshold is Rose.

She has a gun in her hand.

"Come with me if you want to live," she says.

You step into the hallway with her. Glancing to the opposite end, you see Dalton lying in a bloody pool at the foot of a wooden stool.

"You... did you do that?" you ask, even though the answer is rather obvious.

"Of course."

You look again at Dalton's corpse. His head is a gory mess. The two shots Rose fired were bullseyes.

"Where did you get that thing?" you ask.

"My dad's gun safe. Duh."

"Your DAD owns guns?"

"Oh, yes. He doesn't just believe in the first amendment, you know." She turns the gun over in her hand, checking the chamber. "He's been taking me to the firing range every weekend since I was little. I never imagined I'd have to use those skills, though..."

"Jesus Christ. How the hell did you know I was here?"

"I've been following you since yesterday. No one who gets mixed up with a multi-billionaire is into anything good."

"And so... you decided to save me, then. But-- why?"

"It's obvious," Rose says. "You're mine. I'm not going to let some shitlord one-percenter like Darkbloom mindbreak you before I do."

[ ] Ruffle her hair and say thanks.

[ ] Say nothing.

[X] Custom: Kiss her deeply

You ruffle her hair. "Thanks," you say.

She swats your hand away. "Honestly. How infantilizing."

"No, really. You totally saved my ass." She frowns at you, so you continue egging her on. "Good pet. Goo-oo-d pet."

You stroke her hair again, smiling. And again she swats your hand away.

"Bad pet," she says. "Bad! You're forgetting who's the owner and who's the pet here! Just remember--"

You cut her off by grabbing her shoulders and kissing her deeply. She tenses up, and tries to resist, but quickly melts like putty in your hands. She opens her mouth to yours, mewling, and shares the kiss with you. She draws her knee up and sensually rubs her thigh against yours.

You could lose yourself in that embrace forever, but there are things to do.

"The others," you say, pulling back. "We need to get them out of here."

Rose pulls a keyring from her pocket and jingles it in front of you. "Way ahead of you. I lifted this off numbnuts back there when I shot him."

She walks down the line, opening the cells one by one.

After tearful reunions all around, the million dollar question is: how are you going to escape the building?

Rose has an answer for this, too. "There's a helicopter on the roof," she says. "All we have to do is take the elevator up."

"But can anyone here actually fly a helicopter?" Mom asks. "Dear, can you?"

Dad's silence indicates a 'no.'

"Oh, what rotten luck..." Mom pouts.

"Regardless..." you begin, demurring. "We're missing two people. We can't leave without them, anyway."

"Yeah!" Whitney chimes in. "We can't just abandon them. They both eat pussy way too good! Err-- and they're both cool, too, I guess."

"That nebbishy little buttbuddy of Darkbloom's said something about Ms. Carte being in the building," Cerise says. "After he got done manhandling me. Something about making sure she completes her research."

Rose rubs her chin. "We could check in the CCTV room. I left the asshole rent-a-cop there tied up so there shouldn't be any problems with security."

[ ] You guys wait here. I'm going alone.

[ ] You guys wait here. Rose and I are going alone.

[X] Let's go.

Rose puts her gun in the waistband of her skirt and covers it with her blouse. "Yes," she says. "Let's all try to maintain a calm demeanor, now... if we stick together, we should be fine."

You leave the sub-basement and take the elevator one level up, to the basement. You step out into a cold, dank-smelling concrete-and-tile security suite. The wall of the lobby has an enormous logo on it bearing the letters "DE" -- Darkbloom Enterprises -- which is illuminated by shaded amber mood lights.

You lead the head of your motley crew, and Rose brings up the rear, walking in reverse and ready to draw her gun at the first sign of trouble.

It's nice to have a girl like that on your side.

In the security room, an enormous bank of screens shows the activity on all 88 floors of the building, from multiple angles. There's probably more than a thousand screens here in all.

Lying tied up and gagged on the floor behind his swivel chair is a balding security guard, just like Rose said. He squeals in terror when you and the others walk in.

Rose kicks him in the stomach, eliciting an 'oof.'

"Shut the fuck up, you fascist pig," she says. He shuts up.

You scan the monitors, one by one. The others do the same.

"There she is!" Mom cries, pointing at a feed from the 66th floor. Ms. Carte is working on a Viv-tan. The Viv-tan's chest cavity is open and Ms. Carte is tinkering with its components. A riot of prostheses and other parts lies strewn all around the benchtop and floor before her.

Ms. Carte is chained to the ceiling by a metal hoop latched around her waist. She has a glum, defeated look on her face.

"And hey -- there's Vivian!" Whitney says, pointing to another monitor. This feed is from floor 86, the top level. Vivian is lying on a bed in what appears to be a spacious penthouse suite, also looking glum. The windows of the suite have bars on them.

[X] Let's get Ms. Carte first.

[ ] Let's get Vivian first.

You step out of the elevator on floor 66 to find yourself in a cherry-paneled reception area. A security guard sitting at the crescent-shaped desk stands up.

"What the fu--" he says. Rose shoots him in the kneecap. He falls to the carpet with a thud.

As he howls in pain, Rose kneels over him. "The next one goes in your head if you don't start talking." She puts the gun against his temple. "Where's the woman your boss kidnapped?"

"T-through there!" he says. "Straight through the next set of doors after those, in the research lab!"

"Do you have the key to her restraints?"

"Take them!" he cries, pulling a keyring from his pocket. Rose snatches it up.

Turning to face you, and the shocked expressions of the rest of your little harem, Rose shrugs. "Comes natural, I guess," she explains.

You hurry through to the lab. As you enter, Ms. Carte looks up, shock playing across her features.

"Jesus," she says. "You're alive-- you're all alive..."

As Rose undoes the metal hoop around Ms. Carte's waist, you pull her away from her workbench and hug her tight. "Did he hurt you?" you ask, pulling back to look her up and down.

"Not much," Ms. Carte says. "He needs me healthy." Her eyes dart around for a moment, then: "Vivian's here, too. She's--"

"We know," you say. "Let's go get her."

You head for the elevator again, leaving behind the sniveling, injured guard to nurse his wound.

As you ride the elevator to the top floor, the ceiling begins to rattle. Plaster floats down around you like snowflakes. You hear a menacing whump from the other end, inside the elevator shaft.

Gazing up, you see the emergency exit hatch pop open.

Dalton's ruined, gore-spattered head pokes inside. His nose and one of his eyes is missing -- the left half of his face is concave -- electricity arcs from his neck and ears -- but he's still alive. God help you, he's alive.

Rose draws her gun and fires some hip shots, but Dalton withdraws back into the elevator shaft before she gets them off.

The elevator stops with a cheerful ding at your floor. You rush out with the other girls, Rose once more drawing up the rear. She holds her gun in front of her, aiming it at the open elevator, but the doors soon close and you can hear it slide away without incident.

"Go get Vivian," Rose calls over her shoulder. "I'll watch your six."

The only way is forward, to the opposite side of this small marble lobby. You hurry up a set of short, broad stairs that surmount a pair of heavy double doors.

Locked, of course.

"Vivian!" you call, pounding with balled fists. "We're here!"

You and the girls act in unison, pressing your shoulders against the doors and ramming against them. With Mom, Cerise, Whitney, and Ms. Carte helping you -- even Dad gets in on the act despite being absorbed in an article about the NSA scandal -- you bow the doors in far enough to force them open.

Vivian stands on the other side and watches as you bust through. She stares at you, face slackened with disbelief.

"Alabaster," she says flatly. "I thought I told you not to do anything foolhardy."

"Oh, shut up!" you say, grabbing her by the hand. You lead her back to the elevator. Fearing taking it, Rose points out an alternative -- an entrance to the stairwell in the corner. You hurry into the claustrophobic space, clattering quickly up the corrugated metal steps with the others.

And then, pushing through a creme-colored metal door, you're met by blinding sunlight -- and the glinting frame of a helicopter just waiting to be hijacked.

Two problems. One: you still don't know how to fly the damn thing. Two, and more pressingly: Dalton is here, too, with what appears to be a katana in his bloody, sparking hands.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Cerise groans, terrified -- and that about sums it up.

Rose fires at him, but he sweeps to the side with inhuman speed and dodges the bullets.

Righting himself, he sweeps across the gravel rooftop in a single bound and draws the katana savagely upward, cutting Rose from tummy to shoulder.

"Gaaahhh--!!" Rose cries, falling to her knees and dropping her gun.

It's Whitney who acts first. She pounces, latching herself onto Dalton's back. He goes windmilling in a spastic circle, but then jabs his katana through Whitney's calf.

The sword penetrates all the way through, protruding from the opposite side. Whitney's firm, tanned skin is stained by crimson blood. She falls to the gravel with a howl.

Dalton walks forward with measured, menacing, purposeful steps and grabs Cerise by the neck. He dangles her over the edge of the roof.

You vision goes red -- it literally goes red -- and you lose your higher reasoning faculties.

You charge Dalton like a bull, head down, arms out in front of you.

You catch him around the waist, wheeling him around and causing him to drop Cerise safely to the ground.

He hugs you close with both arms, and stabs you through the back.

The katana comes out of your stomach. You stare at it, disbelieving, as black blood burbles out.

"Alabaster--!" several voices call out behind you.

Time seems to slow to a crawl. You hunch forward. You grip the sword handle behind you and force your stomach against Dalton's, imapling him on his own katana.

Dalton lets out a horrid death rattle and his one remaining eye loses its shimmer.

But in a final act of vengeance, he pulls you with him as he steps backward, off of the rooftop.

You come tumbling down.

Your limbs flail as window after window passes you by..

You hear a rushing sound, as of air whipping around you, and feel a sensation like freefall. And then there is only black.

Death is instantaneous.

END OF EPISODE 9.