Live long enough in Black Harbor and the sirens become meaningless. Ever-present and eternal, your brain reduces them to less than noise - a background hum to filter out. Like cicadas in the summer, you forget about them with time. Even I, someone who could potentially do something about whatever emergency had summoned the sirens, didn't pay them much mind. Surely, if a situation warranted my intervention, then there would be other, more appropriate signs than the blaring of horns and whistles, like a text or something. Anything would be better, really, the waving of arms, wordless shouting, calling my name, calling a name that was close to mine, anything but the few sounds I'd been conditioned from birth to ignore.

"Either of you prone to motion sickness?" I asked my two companions. We were in the alley behind the $2 Dollar Pizza, having parted from the goths with a promise to meet again. As long as nothing too calamitous happened between now and Fashion Week, I had a pretty eventful foursome on my calendar to look forward to.

The girls shook their heads, their interest piqued. I could practically see the question written on Shania's face – is this a sex thing? If so, how?

"Cool. Bring it in then, and hold on tight."

I held my arms wide and crouched down. They nodded with sudden understanding. Aminah practically threw herself onto me, wrapping her arms around my neck with a laugh.

"Are you going to take us up to the roofs?" she asked. "I've always wondered what it feels like."

"Sure am. And good news, Annie and I'll have you roof-hopping in no time. Shania?"

The skinny black girl nervously straightened her skirt and clamped her legs together, no doubt worried and thrilled by the fact that she had no panties on. I could have pointed out that we'd be moving far too fast for anyone to sneak a peek, but that would have taken some of the fun out of it.

"Come on, Shanny, it'll be fun. James won't drop us. He wouldn't offer if he wasn't absolutely sure of that."

"Yeah. I'm absolutely eighty to ninety percent sure I won't drop either of you. It's totally chill."

Shania gave me a look derivative of one of her mother's 'Oh, you think you're cute?' faces, but rolled her eyes good-naturedly and stepped into the hug. I scooped the girls up and held them close to me, their legs intertwining around my waist instinctively.

Black and gold silk snuck out from beneath my sweater and began to flow atop their scantily clad bodies, sinfully mussing their clothing. I made each a climbing harness from the sash, on the off chance I did have to catch them unexpectedly, and then applied some more sensual bindings, framing their breasts and giving them makeshift collars. The slits on Shania's dress were spread apart under the pressure, and she would have been fully exposed if there was more cleavage for the cloth to disappear into. As it was, she was just shy of indecent exposure and keenly aware of it, judging by her mix of embarrassed excitement. Both their breaths hitched as the silk bit deep, and their nipples hardened, though Aminah's were more prominent against my side than her friend's. Her borrowed blouse's buttons, strained as they'd been before, had popped, causing her bare, perky brown breasts to squish against the wool of my sweater.

Once they were snug and secure, and my hands under their bums were there for only emotional support – my own, of course – I jumped up a good ten feet and kicked off a fire escape to clear the roof. There was an awful screeching, banging sound from the rusted metal, but we were a blur a block away before anyone could have noticed.

Shania buried her face into my chest, her grip white-knuckling on my sweater. Aminah, on the other hand, howled with laughter, reacting to each jump and turn in a way that told me her eyes were wide open, enjoying the roller-coaster for what it was. I made a note of their individual reactions for future training sessions, already going through a catalogue of good spots in the city to ease them into parkour. Shania was terrified, but hopefully, having an enthused best friend with her would help her get over the initial fear. If I did things right, she'd soon be addicted to the terror and the feeling of release that followed - the mark of a great daredevil and stunt performer.

I put my plans aside as I approached Gardens Building B, a thirty-plus-story government housing project and the tallest of its kind in Harbor Hill, beating out Building A by a few floors. It would have taken a few minutes at most to get back to my place, but I had a different idea for the date. There had been three interruptions to our afternoon, first due to the possessed Pha Thet, then because of the mercenaries at Mugisha's, and finally I had lost control over my lust. The first two were what they were; being a youxia was a lifestyle, not a job. If anything, I liked to think I'd earned some points with the girls for the crime-fighting.

However, for as fun as the movie theater foreplay and facefuck had been for all involved, I did feel the need to make up for spoiling our intended plans. The fight at the herbalist's and my first kills had scrambled my brain, sure, and Maria's teasing hadn't helped, but the responsibility was all mine. I had to make up for going so hard, so fast. The moment called for a purely romantic gesture, some way to reassure the girls they deserved more from a date than cheap pizza, a pretty face, and great sex.

The coast-facing highway lights had been swapped out three years ago after a particularly bad hurricane for larger models with more give to them. I circled round to an overpass near our destination and used one of the huge streetlights like a springboard, getting more than enough 'oomph' to send us flying into the open expanse of air, eighty-plus feet above nothing but hard ground. Aminah's screams turned from excited to terrified, and Shania whipped her head around to see what was happening. The wind caught her glasses as they were jostled loose from the quick motion and forced them tumbling off her face.

My hand and sash snapped out, the former catching Shania's glasses as the latter sailed up and forward, reaching out to grab some decorative brickwork extruding from the top of Gardens Building B, still hundreds of feet away.

We experienced a second, maybe more, maybe less, of stomach-dropping freefall before my Steel-Silk Sash went taut and began to reel us toward the building. There had been, I suppose, a minuscule chance that the bricks had spalled to the point that my tactile telekinesis would have had only a layer of choss to cling to, but we were in the clear now. Granted, we were hurtling towards a brick wall at tremendous speed, but this was all according to plan.

The girls didn't know that, though, and were screaming bloody murder, so just to be extra safe, I opened up my system menus at the speed of thought and navigated to a Feat in the Force Armor tree that had been on my to-buy list for a while. This was as good an excuse as any to finally pull the trigger on it.

> [Major Feat] Tele Firma

>

> You've learned to polarize your Force Armor with precision to aid in both movement and defense. Add your Telekinesis Dice when trying to climb or cling to a surface, and to resist any attempts to sweep you off your feet or knock you prone. With a little practice, walking on a ceiling will be as natural to you as the ground.

God, I couldn't wait to have a fight on top of a moving train.

The instant my foot touched the face of Gardens Building B, I 'righted' our gravity to orient us horizontally to the ground far below. With the tactile telekinesis and the Sash providing us resistance as it reeled us to the top of the wall, I could have easily strolled my way up, but the girls were in quite a state and I didn't want to prolong their panic. I bounded up instead, crossing thirty to forty vertical feet with every step, each blasting off a layer of caked-on sea salt left behind from Atlantic gales and front-flipped safely onto the roof.

The cessation of movement meant my body heat was no longer tempered by the cold, rushing air, and the sudden warmth acted as an immediate balm. The girls stopped yelling and opened their eyes. I lowered them onto the tar of the flat roof gently, untangling them from my sash and slipping Shania's glasses back onto her face.

"Too much?" I asked as she blinked up at me.

She opened her mouth, jaw agape at the audacity, and decided to respond non-verbally, repeatedly jabbing me in the ribs with her index finger.

Aminah looked down at her exposed chest as if weighing whether or not to cover up, but thought the better of it and buttoned her top with a little blush. She started jabbing me on the other side. "Too much, he says. Too much!"

"Dummy. You're lucky I used the bathroom at the theater."

I laughed as they continued poking me in the sides. Now that they were vertical and no longer rocketing through the air, their displeasure was fast fading, little grins threatening to overtake their frowns. "Alright, alright, my bad – probably should have given you some more warning. But I wanted to show you this. Close your eyes and take a listen. You won't regret it."

The girls first glanced at each other to make sure that the other wasn't actually upset by the experience, best friends to the end. Seeing that the other had recovered from the ordeal, each giggled before following my instructions.

I watched their faces as they listened, searching for what I was referring to. It took a moment – as I said, growing up in Black Harbor inures you to cacophony – but the awe arrived for both as I knew it would. Their brains had finally identified the peculiar absence. At around four hundred feet off the ground, the city sounds were washed away by the wind. There were no sirens up here, no honks, no industrial hum, the rumble of truck tires on asphalt did not reach from below, and the airport was on the other side of the city, too far for the roar of the jets to assault us from above. We were alone but for the wind and the occasional cry of a restless sea bird.

"Oh," said Shania softly.

Aminah breathed out a low, "Wow."

"Nice, right? Come on. Let's see if we can borrow some chairs."

The penthouse floors in buildings this size and age were usually reserved for maintenance, allowing for ease of access to the elevator mechanisms, and this one was no different. Even better, the Gardens had their HVAC units built into the side of the building, meaning the roof went untouched outside of the rare emergency. That made it firmly the realm of those stupid enough to climb to the top of buildings from the outside, a community I was a proud member of.

The door was predictably unlocked, though I did have to force the rusted hinges open. I cracked it and listened. The chance that any of the hired handymen had stuck around on a Friday night was vanishingly small, but there was always the possibility a building super was using the penthouse to get away from his wife and kids. Only silence greeted me, though, so I beckoned the girls to follow me in.

They tittered once we were inside, nervous and excited to be committing their first 'crime'. I couldn't even remember the first place I broke-and-entered into – the pumphouse on 5th, maybe? This was such old hat for me that I managed to flip the lights on with a bit of telekinesis on the first try. My friends and I had never made it to the top of Gardens B before – the climb up three hundred feet of crumbly bricks was daring even for us – but I'd been on the roof of other projects in the city before and they only had so many layouts between them.

"Sick, they got a kitchenette in this one. You two want to see if you can't make us a pot of tea while I lug up some seats?"

A task was exactly what the girls needed to overcome their apprehension. They hopped to it, climbing down the metal stairs into the cinderblock and concrete workspace, and began exploring the cupboards. I doubt they would have normally engaged in petty theft, but stealing three packets of tea was hardly a moral conundrum, and my request meant they were doing it for me instead of a selfish desire for a hot cuppa. This probably didn't even count as moral corruption.

The new mattress I found leaning against one of the concrete walls, however, did present me with a bit of an ethical quandary. Not for the theft, I was sure the workers would be glad to be rid of the thing; it was still in its factory plastic and caked in dust, taking up space that could be better used for tools. There had to be at least five hundred units in this tower – the mattress had probably been delivered after someone had moved out or died, and had found its way to the penthouse by virtue of having nowhere else to go. No, my issue was that I'd brought the girls here as a romantic but non-sexual gesture, and there were some expectations that came with a mattress.

Ah well, the alternatives were metal folding chairs and a ratty couch that stank of cigarettes – I was taking the mattress.

I brushed the dust free of the plastic cover and used ample tactile telekinesis to walk it up the metal stairs and into the bitter cold of the New Jersey night. Cutting a thin slit along one side of the plastic, I extracted the queen-sized mattress and laid it atop the covering. Once we were done, I'd slip it back inside its sheathe and melt the seal closed again – if I was going to leave an entire mattress on a roof, I was going to at least try to get more than one use out of it.

Cross-legged and facing the brilliant rainbow skyline of the city, I took the time to meditate and let my Qi expand outward in a dense dome, going so far as to roll a Willpower and Meditation. As my mind and breathing stilled, so too did the gusts. Strangely, though I had made no conscious effort to push it aside, the whipping wind had split itself to go around the dome of heat, as though generously respecting my space and unconscious desires. Perhaps it was – maybe I'd gotten to the point in my transformation into an archetypical Hero that the weather itself would play wingman for me.

I still had over 350 Experience after buying Tele Firma and would likely make another 100 or more tonight, but that didn't give me license to spend frivolously. Quest Rewards were slowing down and would continue to do so, pushing me ever towards debauchery and excess. The threats, alternatively, were mounting and circling, deserving ever more attention and resources. Just in my immediate future, I had two major goals to accomplish in the upcoming week that could make any stockpile disappear.

First, I had to make Black City Kung Fu a more cohesive style with clear paths a student could work their way down to get to where I was now. The Happy Idiot was perfect in that regard. It had multiple, lower-cost Feats to learn on the way to mastery or to branch out from to make the Stance your own.

Any student with the Happy Idiot Stance, the Rule of Cool, and Improvised Brawler Feats would be recognizable as a practitioner of Black City Kung Fu, but I wanted more from my school than a bunch of bar-brawling, back-flipping maniacs. As cool as those were, they weren't necessarily equipped to survive in the city for long. Plus, there were no paths toward my Fire and Telekinesis powers, which had become as quintessentially James Li as my extremely annoying fighting style. And, of course, a true master of Black City had to be able to use Style Maker. That was non-negotiable. If I wanted to create disciples in my image, I had to tie the threads of my build together.

That brought me to my second goal. Starting Monday, I was going full steam into a training arc, taking Annie from somewhat of a burden to be worried about, to a full-on ally in arms. Not to say I wouldn't worry about her after, but right now, the thought of bringing Annie into a mission on par with the exorcism at Bell Street was dread-inducing; she'd have died a hundred times over in the fight with the Hungry Ghost. I didn't necessarily need more teaching Feats than I had currently to get her up to snuff, but if I was ever going to invest in them, then now was the time. The same could be said for training Shania and Aminah, and even Smoothie to a lesser extent.

Now was the time.

In the clarity of meditation, I could feel it. There was smoke on the wind, blood in the water, dark clouds on the horizon. It wasn't simple paranoia based on meta-knowledge and the warnings of others – I could feel it in my core, in my spine. I could see it behind my closed eyes. The Wheel was turning. The despair of decades in Harbor Hill had metastasized into a material Evil. There was a gang war brewing in Black Harbor that was all but certain to spread to New York and beyond. Not to mention the stranger omens, like the soon-to-be enacted repeal of all obscenity laws; I know I had no room to talk, but I couldn't help but feel that moral degradation portended something darker. And all that was just what I could see – what were my friends dealing with? What was bubbling in the cyberpunk nightmare city of Ryuukai or the infamously cult-afflicted England?

By the pricking of my thumbs/ Something wicked this way comes.

Were the Heavens kind, Shania and Aminah would have walked through the door to interrupt my thoughts. I would have turned to them with a grateful smile, would have maybe thrown 25EXP at a Minor Feat, and we would have concluded our date. Unfortunately, I was forced to continue my contemplation, my mind turning to how well the girls had performed in the pizzeria. Social Lubricant and a healthy helping of cum had allowed the wallflowers to make friends of the two caustic goths. They may have even developed Social Feats or seen permanent boosts to their Skills if they were lucky.

Goddamn it, the writing was on the wall, wasn't it? The Producers had spraypainted it there for me, just one word in bolded caps: CUM. So annoying. And it was written multiple times too. They'd been subtle at first with the upgraded form of Infused – what else was I supposed to take from the sentence, "The raw crystallized essence in your every cell is of such potency that long-term exposure has positive transmutive effects on your environment and companions." But now I had six—Six!—cum feats that all synergized with each other to push my partners slowly toward divinity.

The question I had to ask myself was, was there anything except for pride keeping me from investing in magic cum? The risk of my bodily fluids coming, no pun intended, into the wrong hands was already present. We'd crossed and burned that bridge a while ago and there was no backtracking now. If an evil witch milked a load out of me, it would be bad with or without any more specialized Feats. And importantly, while there wasn't an evil witch milking loads out of me, there were multiple women that I liked doing so on the regular.

Long-term, it made more sense to invest in non-sexual, generic Teaching Feats, things that would give Black City the broad appeal I wanted from it. But we weren't talking about long-term needs. I was looking at a week in which, save for one or two classes teaching Marianne's sons, my only students were hot girls. Annie would already be slurping down my special protein shakes on the regular, and Maki, too stubborn to accept training, wouldn't see any benefits from normal teaching Feats but would gain permanent boosts from the cum ones.

An unhelpfully helpful part of my brain offered, We have enough Dice in Erotic Sorcery and Aura that we could make a completely busted, pun intended, Feat using Style Maker. They barely balance sex-related abilities as is.

I sighed and waited a few seconds to see if Aminah or Shania would interrupt me. The possibilities with Style Maker began to rush in and fill the space in my thoughts. A simple, when aided by Experience, conscious readjustment to the way that I already passively filtered my Qi would allow me to enhance the properties of my cum that were already present.

Damn, it seemed I'd be going through with this. I hated feeling like a monkey jumping through hoops for the Producer's pleasure, and yet here we were.

You know, there's no shame in ceding some wins to interdimensional gods every now and then.

True, but I didn't have to like it.

Well, if I was doing this, I might as well do it right. I started by buying the upgrade to Nature's Anabolic since it was a no-brainer for training Annie.

> [Major Feat] Nature's Anabolic (Semen Upgrade)

>

> Other people who have consumed your semen gain a temporary +2 to Strength and Agility for as long as it remains in their system. Consuming your semen in enough volume and frequency can lead to epiphanies, resulting in permanently increased Skills.

There were multiple ways I could create a broken semen upgrade, but for my pride and ever-dwindling dignity, I would allow my build only one. That said, I wasn't going to half-ass this either. Whole-ass or no-ass – that was an official Black City Kung Fu tenet.

I very nearly went with something that would boost Aura and grant Dice in a few of my Mystical Skills, but I wanted something more universal. My students would benefit from gaining access to Elemental Control (Fire) and Telekinesis, but those might interfere with someone more along in their development, like Maki, who would be better off continuing to pursue her specialty.

> [Master Feat] Seed of Power (Semen Upgrade)

>

> You have focused your Sorcery inward, to the forge of creation within your body. Your life seed is of incredible potency. The positive transmutive effects of your body parts are vastly increased for your semen. Your semen can cause the rapid acceleration of an individual's natural abilities and talents when consumed or interacted with in enough frequency and volume. Others who ingest your semen by whatever means gain a temporary +1 to all Attributes for as long as it remains in their system.

I stared at the Feat's pop-up message for a while, delving into my feelings and thoughts. They said the best way to escape a rip tide was to swim perpendicular to the drag until you could escape. Fighting it directly was a sure way to tire yourself out and drown. You had to relax and keep calm, and eventually, you'd be free.

Aminah's cheery "We're back!" snapped me from the reverie. "Wow, it got really nice out. Thanks!"

"Sorry, we took so long. Mina insisted we let it steep for ten minutes."

"We're Asian, Shanny. I can't serve a Chinese man poorly made tea! I've got my Desi pride to maintain."

I turned back and smiled at the two girls. "This Chinese man was microwaving two-day-old coffee until pretty recently, but thanks, I appreciate it. Have a seat. Sorry there's no sheets, but it's as clean as a mattress can be. I'm thinking about coming back later and turning this place into a private haunt. If I crouch menacingly on the ledge, I bet I could channel my inner Batman – good way to get into the thug-beating mindset."

Aminah handed me a borrowed mug and pushed my crossed legs open, sitting between them. "Might be a good place for dramatic meetings, too! It was surreal and mind-bending stepping out into the warm air; that would definitely put most people at a disadvantage right away.

"The quiet, too," said Shania, nuzzling in between her friend's legs and resting her weight on her chest, making Aminah do the same on mine. We were sitting like spoons in a drawer. "How are you doing that without making fog like before?"

"I'm not. The wind is just being polite – it must like you two." I took a sip of the tea; it was excellent. The Pakistani girl had done the Silk Road and her ancestors proud.

Aminah craned her head back to look at me upside down and gave my chin a peck. "Yes, it's us the wind is obliging."

Shania raised her cup to the sky for a toast. "Thank you, Mr. Eurus. The east wind from Greek Mythology," she added for my benefit.

I muttered my own thanks to the minor wind god, dipped a finger into the teacup, and flicked him a drop over the ledge. It sparkled once, refracting the light of the technicolor horizon, before falling out of sight.

The skyline of Black Harbor stretched like a bony ridge from the back of a great primordial wyrm, the tallest of the buildings clustering around the Beagle. Like every Friday night since shortly after McFadden's election, the river shore skyscrapers were putting on a synchronized light show, LEDs flashing in time across the separate buildings. A shimmering violet band rolled across the city's spine before being replaced by gold and then green – it was spectacular, particularly from a boat on the water's surface, like a technological fever dream. They did something similar in Chongqing and other Asian megacities, I knew, but for America there was nowhere else where you could see a show like this one. Even Vegas didn't make the entire Strip dance in harmony. It spoke to a mutual pride shared by Harborians in their city that even the murderous rivals who owned those buildings could work together to create something beautiful – in theory, at least.

It was a shame, then, that this display was also an environmental fucking catastrophe. Since the start of these shows, the number of birds that had suicided themselves full speed into skyscrapers could be measured in the thousands. Everyone had known that would be the result; the phenomenon was well-known and activists had been ringing the alarms during planning, but the city powered through regardless. What were ten thousand birds compared to the value add of a great tourism campaign? To add insult to injury, the energy subsidies that McFadden offered to the various real estate groups in exchange for their collaboration were an obvious funnel for graft. Suddenly, the kilowatts required to run those lights cost two hundred times what they did a few months prior. Funny how that happens.

I had to give it to McFadden and his cronies, though; the show was pretty great first-date fodder. We sat for a bit in silence, sipping our tea and enjoying the warmth of the cuddle as a great fiery arrow streaked across a hundred thousand LEDs and a few dozen steel-and-glass facades.

Aminah spoke first. "Would it be okay to ask about your heroics outside the theater? A lot of people rushed in when we were in line for snacks, and you seemed…"

"Out of it?" I finished, resting my chin atop her head. "Sure. I owe you that much for stepping out in the middle of the date. Might not be a bad idea to talk about what happened, either."

"Oh. It…didn't go great, then?"

I sighed and nuzzled into her thick, black locks. "I like your shampoo," I muttered.

"Thanks. It's aloe plus honeydew."

Some predatory bird cast a lazy silhouette in the dazzling red skyline, searching for unsuspecting pigeons nesting in the nooks. Decrepit abandoned warehouses across Black Harbor were the frequent roosts of owls and hawks. Hopefully, if I did enough good deeds, Karma would reward me by having one of them kill my rat nemesis 'off-screen'.

"I think," I said, trying to mentally will the bird's flight towards my apartment, "that it went as well as it was ever going to go. There was this," I paused, trying to put words to feelings, "this sense of inevitability from the second I crossed the threshold into Mugisha's." I'd have called it the grim presence of death, but I knew exactly what that felt like – he was about four feet tall, had a crow's head, and whatever the opposite of charisma was. "Fate, maybe – I don't know. You ever feel like you're a character in someone else's story?"

"Only every minute since I met you," said Aminah. Shania giggled. The question was fairly ridiculous coming from me, I suppose.

"Sorry."

"Don't be. It's really cool, actually; I feel special, important in a way."

"Same," added Shania.

Hm, I could relate. I'd felt special and important in Alpine's story as well. I was the end. "Ah, and what genre would you say we're in?"

Aminah didn't hesitate for a second. "That's easy – slice-of-life kung fu sex comedy, of course."

"What," added Shania, voice rich with worry for me, "was the genre of the story in Mugisha's?"

I took a sip of my tea. I didn't want to spoil the moment, but it did feel nice to talk about what had happened. "Gritty noir – no, that was mostly Maria. Greek tragedy. I was the third act, final scene; curtain drop."

"Exodus," said Shania, using the proper term. Her voice seemed less affected by the admission than I'd expected. "They're dead?"

"Drinking with the boys in Valhalla as we speak. The shopkeep's still kicking, though; that was a fat envelope of cash he sent me in the pizzeria."

The girls sagged into me a bit at the confirmation – the opposite of my expected reaction. There must have been some subtle concern they'd been carrying since we'd passed the storefront, which, much like the sirens, had been invisible until its absence.

Shania sighed. "Then it sounds like you were right; everything went as well as it could go." From someone else, the words might have come across as callous, but there was too much sympathy and relief in her tone for there to be any cruelty in the sentiment.

"You think?"

She placed a tender hand on my calf and massaged it. "James, it's good and admirable that you can mourn those men, but I wouldn't think any less of you if you didn't. That's the right thing, probably, to mourn the men and hate the circumstances that produced them – if I was stronger, I'd like to be able to do that myself."

"Yeah," said Aminah sadly. "It's unfortunate, but as much as I'd like to treat men like that as people, when all you can ever be to them is a victim, it's—" she sipped her teeth. "I guess I just don't have it me, you know, the depth of compassion needed to grieve them. When I see a news story about a gang member dying, I don't think about their family, I think about my cousin who got stabbed for no reason. I think about the twenty or so kids who go missing from our grade every year. School just started, and we already have two kids missing."

"Three," corrected Shania. "One of the emergency texts was asking about two siblings."

"Oh. I don't even open them anymore, to tell the truth. Too depressing."

God, how did people live like this? Alan was old enough to remember them shutting down Washington D.C. over the sniper – would that even register as a news story in this world? "Damn, guys. Sorry for bringing the mood down."

"No!" said Shania forcefully. "You didn't, that's what I was trying to get at. As bad as it sounds, I'm glad that heavily armed men who feel comfortable with torturing shop owners in more-or-less broad daylight aren't walking around anymore. It feels like nothing bad ever happens to men like that unless it's on accident, like they kill each other in a firefight or something."

"We have to hate them," continued Shania. "You can't live your life afraid every day – literally; the brain adjusts. But fear doesn't vanish, it sublimates. It becomes loathing. I don't like it, and I try not to dwell on the feeling actively, but I have to acknowledge it's there, or else it'll grow out of control."

Aminah nodded emphatically. "We know it's wrong to celebrate death, but when stories of violence are as common as the weather report, the deaths of the violent become like sunny days. Is that bad?"

I raised my eyebrows; these two might be easier to train than I thought. Their language sounded somewhat like 'therapy-speak' but the pseudo-endorsement of violence was different than anything Alan would have anticipated from a therapist.

"No, that checks out. If it makes you two feel better, I'm not mourning those men, nor do I hate the circumstances that produced them. It just feels bad to kill people. It's like, uh, paying taxes – I know I've got to do it, so I do, but it still feels bad every time." I paused. God, it didn't sound great hearing that said aloud, but at the same time, "Huh. You know, I think I was putting off admitting that to myself…"

Aminah reached a hand back and ran it through my hair, stroking her fingers through my scalp. "Do you feel a little better now?"

"Yeah. Honestly, I think maybe the realization that my mind treats killing with the same annoyed acceptance as paying my taxes was bothering me more than the actual killing."

I turned an introspective eye to the reaction from my two halves at the confession; yes, that was it. For James, killing Alpine – and specifically Alpine – had been the death of his boyish imagining of what being a youxia entailed. He had known intellectually that some of his enemies would die in combat, and not all of those enemies would be heartless thugs beyond redemption, but it was one thing to know and another to know. Alpine had come to Mugisha's with a purpose and a vision for the world that he was working toward. He had talked about killing a man that preyed on Black Harbor, and I'd known without an Insight roll that he had been speaking honestly, just as I had known that his vision and mine were incompatible. A stim-abusing mercenary with a team of trigger-happy thugs who were willing to torture to get their way – yeah, it didn't matter if our goals were aligned. The inevitability I'd felt in Mugisha's hadn't been 'Fate' or 'Death', or any other cosmic truth. It had been force-of-personality, his meeting mine, and the recognition that they couldn't exist in the same place at the same time.

For Alan, everything was just a lot right now, alright. Someone had to sort out the brain stuff, and that someone was definitely not the twenty-year-old he was sharing it with, but did it really have to be him? Had anyone actually checked that it absolutely had to be him? That was all he wanted to know. Maybe someone else could go check, and then we could all reconvene in a few days or something.

As for the third and least talked about of my two halves, the union that came from both, how did I feel about confirming that I had the heart of a killer?

Fine. I felt fine. And that was…fine. It was a hell of a lot better than the opposite, certainly; living like a saint in this world would be like torture.

I sighed and draped my weight onto the girls. A great, metaphysical burden unfurled and slipped free of my shoulders. "Ahh, the knowledge of self is pretty liberating." Indeed, the lingering childish/out-of-context desire to deny that aspect of being a warrior had been acting as a mental block since the fight.

I realized that I'd been sitting in silence for a bit now as the girls continued gently massage me, Shania, my calves, and Aminah, my scalp. I cleared my throat. "Thanks, girls. Between the blowjob and the pep talk, you managed to screw my head on straight again."

Shania laughed. "Wow, Mina, that's like the plot of half the books you read."

"I know! Do you see the appeal now? It's cool being the good woman to tame man's bestial nature, isn't it?"

Shania groaned. "I guess so. I'm still not reading them with you."

Aminah shook her friend side to side. "Noooo, you have to! Read smut with me, damn it. You know you want to."

"I-I have brothers! I can't leave books like that lying around the apartment; it would be too awkward."

"That's what e-books are for, baby girl."

I smiled into my tea. Even with a bit of a rough start, tonight turned out to be pretty nice. The universe had finally delivered me my 'one normal person' in the form of a pair of them. I'd killed some guys, and that was a bummer. Nor was I enthused to learn that Maria was spiraling into a loose cannon, Lovecraftian bike cop – the least respectable and most concerning versions of loose cannon cops – but still, it was a good night.

"You two are insanely well-adjusted, you know that?"

Aminah reached back and patted my cheek affectionately. "If more people talked through their feelings, I'd like to think we'd be the average amount of well-adjusted."

"That's extremely optimistic of you."

"Nothing wrong with a little optimism," said Aminah.

"Or a lot," added Shania.

"Or a lot."

I pulled both girls to me tightly and hummed my content loudly. "So wise, so sensible! Black City Kung Fu really lucked out – though, admittedly, the bar for what counts as a responsible member is pretty low right now. Lord knows we could use a good influence or two."

"Aww, thanks, Master," purred Aminah. "We'll try to rub off on you as much and as often as possible."

"Thank you, my young apprentice. And so too shall I rub off on you – all over you, head to toe."

"Oof," said Shania with a laugh. "Terrible."

"Mind out of the gutter, Shanny, we're only talking about the mutual influence of the student-teacher bond!"

I cleared my throat dramatically, and stage whispered in her ear, "Actually, Aminah, I was talking about covering you in my cum."

Aminah whispered back, "Shh! I know, I was trying to protect her sweet innocence—ow! Hey!"

Shania pinched her friend in the side. "Sweet innocence," she scoffed. "James's magic and your kinky, smut-warped brain made me a masochistic bondage slut for life."

"Oh my God, really!? Shanny, that's amazing! We're like ultra-best friends now, especially because I think I got your exhibitionist kink, too."

I didn't think that was actually true, or not yet, at least. I needed to do a little bit more pushing there before I earned that particular Quest Reward.

"Wha—I don't have, a—"

Aminah cooed. "Look, James, Isn't that cute? She just remembered getting seen sucking your cock in public." Shania groaned at the memory. "Ha! So cute. You call me Mina, by the way, Master. I keep meaning to mention."

"Neat. My own Pakistani Mina Harker – the only character I didn't want to strangle while reading Dracula."

The girls paused and turned to look at me as if I was insane.

"You've read Dracula, James?" said Shania in disbelief. "How? Where?"

I scanned through James's life fruitlessly for any and all information on Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Nothing.

Somewhat desperately, I looked for memories of movies or a show or any references at all to Dracula. Nothing again.

Oh God. Oh fuck. Oh shit. There were so many implications for that fact, and they were all terrible. I'd bet my life that Mars was dealing with Dracula's bitchass off in Keletsnya, which meant that I would either be doing the same or handling the fallout eventually.

"Hey, I read alright," I said, trying to pass off the impending sense of doom. "I'm literate."

"It's not like that, James," said Aminah, thankfully more confused than suspicious. "We're just surprised you've even heard of it. Stoker went crazy, I don't know if you know, and then his estate tried to get it removed from print. I only know about the book because, well," she bit her lip embarrassed, "like Shanny said, I'm really into smutty fiction. I went on a horror smut kick, and it's like, the godfather of the genre."

"Where did you read it?" I said, getting an ingenious idea.

"I found a scan from a library in London online."

"Cool. Same."

"Really? Wow."

"Yeah," I said smugly, "what can I say, girls? I possess multitudes."

My newest students turned to look at me with awe and amazement as I went from 'remarkable meathead' to 'total enigma' in their heads. Goddamn, was I good.

I tossed the rest of my tea back and put the mug aside. I was glad I hadn't just swept the girls from one sex act to another; that would have felt a little gross after the fact, even more so with the $2 pizza intermission. I wanted there to be something memorable about this date that wasn't sexual. Between the secluded rooftop light show and the girls managing to help me with my mental state, I would say that we had neatly checked that box off. Now, I could cynically earn some sex Rewards without feeling like an asshole tomorrow. The mention of Count Dracula had lit a fire in my heart that could only be quenched with Experience, preferably enough to drown a Dark Lord.

I'd been planning to continue the lovey-dovey traditional romance back at my place, mostly for Marianne's sake. The nurse was too important to me for me to not do right by her daughter, but I could see the truth much more clearly now that the brain fog had been lifted. The facts were that Shania and Aminah were freaks, which was great because I, too, was a freak.

Besides, now that the mood was right for it, this was a perfect place to accomplish the true goal behind this date. Marianne had asked me to take the two out not to give them a storybook evening, but to overcome their fears of intimacy. Where better than here to do that? Aminah's parents were a minor complicating factor, but Lord Byron's Luck would handle that for me. Rumors of my depravity were supposed to help me, not hurt, and if that didn't extend to Aminah as one of my three full-time students, then the Feat was useless.

"Speaking of Big Drac'," I said, "my own bestial nature is beginning to act up again. In fact, gosh, I'm feeling a little diabolical."

My telekinetic limbs extended out, teasing the girls' arms and legs before taking their teacups away and depositing them to the side; I had a different drink in mind for the two. With a mental shove, I pushed the mattress we were on across the roof to the corner of the building closest to Gardens A and began emitting my Shining Resolve. Building B was taller than its twin, but not by much, and barely had a parapet, meaning that the top floors of the other apartment complex could easily see us, especially with the golden glow of my Aura.

"W-wait," said Aminah, shrinking down and pulling her hair over her face, "I have some family friends in the Gardens."

"Nope," I said, popping the 'p'. "I won't wait, and neither will you. If you're going to train under me, you've got to learn that I'm a fighter and a lover, always and at all times. I was going to overlook my baser nature for the sake of the date, but if we're going to have a deeper relationship, then I've got to be true to myself around you. Your training begins now."

The system didn't ask for a Seduction at that; I assumed the girls were already too infatuated to resist or that they had been truly earnest in their promise to train seriously.

I stood up and kicked off my loafers and socks. Stripping off my jersey and sweater and stretching out my back, I rolled my first Teaching roll for my two newest students. The intended lesson plan bouncing around my head would be meaningless for extroverted Annie or the supremely confident Maki, but for two shy virgins, it would hopefully be exactly what they needed.

I got nine Successes on the Wits + Leadership for the Teaching roll from Cultivator of Men, which would have left the girls with 9 Experience for me to spend on their behalf. But since this was about to be an extremely sexual lesson, my upgraded Special Feat Sex Ed kicked in, multiplying that by four.

Damn, 36 EXP for one session; I knew Teaching builds were broken. This was the first time I'd gotten to use the upgraded Sex Ed, and, man, it went a long way to making the fight with the demon at the Kingfisher feel worth the headache. Annie was going to be a monster by the end of the week.

"Listen, girls, Black City Style is audacious; it's bold." I dropped my pants and boxers, now butt naked apart from my sash, and turned to face Building A, glowing gold for all the world to see. "It's fearless. A Black City practitioner doesn't give a fuck about how people see them." I turned back to the girls and put my hands on my hips. "Sometimes you got to show the world your whole ass just so you can donkey kick them while they're awestruck and admiring."

I kicked directly behind me, using Lance Pressure to release a shockwave from the ball of my foot that rattled the windows of Building A with a loud crack. Very soon, people would be coming to see what had made that sound.

Aminah slapped her hands over her head, so anxious that even the sight of my cock wasn't enough to calm her. "Oh God, Master. I get the metaphor, but – oh God. My parents are going to kill me. James, you're the only person in the neighborhood known to glow gold, and you were seen glowing gold earlier today, and we were seen with—"

"Bah! Let them see!" I clenched my fist. "Listen, Mina, forget the you of today and her fears, and think of the you of the future! Not long from now, there's going to be a Mina who doesn't care about her parents' rules – a Mina who lives her life the way she wants to and is too strong, confident, and sexy for anyone to do anything about it. Be that Mina, right now, right here!"

She gulped, mouth dry, and blinked at me.

Shania put a hand on her friend's shoulder and smiled. "It's okay, Mina. Your parents will understand."

"They will?"

"Yes, silly. This was the plan from all along, remember, when we asked James to train us."

"Right, but, but I didn't picture this." She pointed at the projects across the way. There were quite a few faces silhouetted in the windows.

Shania stood up, took a deep breath, and pushed the straps of her dress off her shoulder, letting it fall to the ground. Then she bent back down, gave Aminah a kiss on the lips, bundled up the dress, and threw it off the side of the building.

I laughed loudly. "Yes! That's what I'm talking about."

Shania put her hands behind her back and gave a little demure curtsy. "I," she licked her lips, "I want to be that future me. I'm," she said slowly, "going to be that future me."

Aminah clasped her hands in front of her and looked up at her best friend, eyes wide and wet with pride. "Oh my God, Shanny, you're too inspiring!"

She leaped up to her feet and stripped as fast as she could, tearing the buttons off her blouse and almost falling down in her haste to get out of her tights. Flinging her clothes off the roof, she had a brief moment of exuberance before freezing. She slapped her forehead. "Aaah! I forgot those were yours! Sorry."

Shania giggled and pulled her friend into a hug. "It's alright. I'm proud of you. It's time I stop dressing like I'm going to church every day, anyway."

Aminah squeezed her tight and shook her like a teddy bear. "I'm proud of you! I can't believe we get to have our first times together." She turned to look at me sheepishly. "Um, we do, right, Master? That's what's happening?"

I gave her a thumbs up. "Yep!"

They were going to get over their performance anxiety and crippling fear of social scrutiny by fucking in public. Genius!

She turned rose-pink and looked like she was about to start hyperventilating but kept it together, squeaking a simple, "Cool."

"Very cool, indeed," I agreed. Extending out both ends of my sash, I encircled their waists with glowing, golden silk and held them aloft. "But first, since you're both being such good sports, I'll let you pick what Erotic Sorcery enchantments you'd like before we begin."

The golden glow I was casting through my Qi technique was dim, but people in Gardens A were already rushing to turn their lights off to get a better view. Aminah tried to cover her breasts, keenly aware that she was on display for potentially hundreds of eyes, but I sent a tendril to bind her arms behind her back. Her face flushed a deep red as I triggered her bondage and masochism kinks. I hadn't gotten a Reward for giving her an exhibitionism fetish like I had with Shania and BDSM – too much overlap between masochistic humiliation and exhibitionism, maybe – but I was hoping this lesson would do the trick. Shame played a role in both, but Yearning Song was telling me that Shania's kink revolved around the conquering of it, while Aminah's involved reveling in her shame.

"Um, can we get the sensation link again?" asked Shania. "It was intense, but I liked feeling closer to Mina, and getting your pleasure helped me understand what to do."

I cast the spell with ease, barely needing to concentrate at this point. The girls shuddered as the magic coursed through them, their dantians flaring briefly to my senses in a way I'd not seen before.

That was odd. I focused on what I was feeling through the sash, using Erotic Sorcery in place of Medicine; the side effects would be more than manageable in this situation. They twitched sharply as the lust-tinged Qi slowly and thoroughly inspected them at a cellular and metaphysical level; I didn't want a repeat of what happened with Annie. One Qi mystery was more than enough.

Their hearts were beating in sync, their meager Qi networks were circulating their life energy with the same rhythmic pulses, and – could it be? I pulled them closer to me and held my hand in the space between them, the hairs on the back of it rising in reaction. Incredible, their bodies were intermingling their Qi at a distance. Annie and I dual-cultivated with the ease of two people in near total simpatico, and I doubt we could have managed that, let alone without any conscious effort or thought.

The bond was remarkable and unusual, but I couldn't see any negatives to allowing it to develop further. I withdrew my probing Qi, running my hands along their hips and sides as they caught their breaths. It had to be strange to be titillated at a molecular level; if it was anything like I'd felt from healing myself using lust energy, then they were probably out-of-their-minds horny.

I gave Shania's ass a spank, Slut-Making Strikes on full blast, enjoying the way both girls reacted to the hybrid pleasure-pain sensation. "Fun, hm? And we're just getting started. What else would you like?"

"What—hrk," Aminah gritted her teeth as I sank my fingers into her upper thigh. "What else can you do?"

"Stamina to stay awake through the explosive peaks, raising the valleys so you stay in a constant state of arousal, added sensitivity for both pleasure and pain, new erogenous zones—"

"We want it all," cut in Shania.

"An orgasm block—"

"Maybe not that one."

Aminah bit her lip, smut-fic-addled brain racing with possibilities. "Surprise us, please, Master."

"Oho, I can do that." I chuckled and started to envelop them in the usual lust magic boons as I thought about what I wanted the 'surprise' to be. It had to be something novel; this was equal parts confidence training, sex, and a way for me to farm easy EXP, after all. The girls, Audience, and Producers would all appreciate the creativity, I was sure.

The sensitivity increase and spreading their erogenous zones across their bodies were easy enchantments, natural extensions of basic Erotic Sorcery, but the added stamina required me to gather lust energy from the environment. As I reached into the air around us, a combination of what I felt and my earlier nine Successes for teaching presented me with an inspired idea to take the lesson to the next level.

This would be truly devious – one for the ages. I would break the girls of their paralyzing social and sexual anxieties and get myself some more godlike Quest Rewards in one scene.

From the unique tones and signatures in the sexual energy, we had attracted an audience of a couple dozen at the very least, judging by those releasing enough lust for me to sense them at this distance. More would be on their way; I wasn't the kind of guy to summon friends to watch three people fuck on a roof, but it wouldn't shock me to learn that I was in the minority on this Earth. There was a lot I could do with the kind of power soon to be coming at us, but first, I needed to make sure the vibe stayed positive. Right now, people were curious and amused by what they were seeing, but lust could take a dark turn pretty quickly, and if there was anywhere the many evil presences that made up The Misery collected in number, it would be in one of Harbor Hill's notorious housing projects.

I started with upgrading Shining Resolve, something I probably should have done the moment I hit the prerequisite Willpower, Charisma, and Presence.

> [Major Feat] Shining Resolve (Upgraded)

>

> You may call upon your mystic might to resist fear and despair, letting you use your Aura in place of an Attribute or Skill for relevant rolls. Doing so causes your body to shed dim golden light in the material world, and your soul to glow like a second sun for anything with the appropriate senses. If you choose, you may allow anyone who can see your light to add your Aura to any attempts to resist fear and despair, but doing so will cause you to glow brighter in both the material and immaterial world.

Almost as soon as I activated the enhanced Feat, the tone of the lust energy I was feeling from the building across the way became 'clearer', less touched by darker impulses, and much more vigorous. I hadn't anticipated the latter effect, but it made sense; I imagine a lot of sexual inhibitions were related to fear and past trauma. Was it definitionally a mindfuck to treat depression and PTSD with a public sex show? Yes, but also, who cares?

Using the lust of our voyeurs, I tapped into the primordial sensation of being watched, that nameless, universal feeling you got when walking alone through supposedly empty woods, and tied the two together. Most people found being watched by strangers to be alarming, but while Alan wasn't thrilled to be the subject of so many perverts' fantasies, James Li was a brain-broken actor. I filtered the feelings through his attention-addicted mind and rolled my Aura + Erotic Sorcery to craft the spell I was after.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

As I had lamented in the past, sex magic was one of the strongest tools in my kit. I'd been aiming for synesthesia, tying the feeling of each individual's lustful gaze into some kind of physical sensation to give the girls a way to know they were being watched. With thirteen Successes, though, I got something much more potent.

Dozens of ghostly, reverent caresses graced my body, mostly centered on my butt and thighs, though there were a strange number of them that circled my hands and forearms – I guess more common kinks than I'd imagined. The reverence and awe could not be understated. This was twice now on this roof that I had discounted the effects of chronic fear on the average residents of Harbor Hill. Just as I had expected the girls to be reticent to endorse my killings, I'd thought that this display of ours would be, I don't know, viewed as a really fun Friday night or something. But Shining Resolve had temporarily washed away the accumulated stresses of living on the edge of despair. I had silenced the sirens in their minds, and they were responding to the quiet with almost religious and highly erotically charged gratitude.

Whoops.

Oh well, maybe it would be fine. Yeah, maybe whatever insane cult of personality shit I had just inspired would turn out to be a positive later – nothing wrong with a bit of optimism, right? Or, hey, what about a lot of optimism? Maybe there would be no downstream effects from this at all.

I nodded to myself, a beatific smile not quite reaching my eyes, and pushed the spell onto the girls, glad to be free of the not-at-all worrying psychic touches. They jerked against the sash and telekinesis holding them in the air and looked around wild-eyed. I poked each on the mons, raising the threshold of pleasure required to climax three-fold. We'd be testing the power of my stamina spells when they did cum, but I was pretty sure they'd be stuck in a constant cyclical orgasm if I didn't – fun for them, but less so for me.

"Can you feel them?" I asked, raising them higher. The light from my body was bright enough that the details of their bodies could be seen clearly now, Shania's sex-slick thigh gap and Aminah's bouncing breasts cast in heavenly gold. "Can you feel how badly they want you, want to worship you, want to be in your place? This is the heart of my Black City style – our audience thinks you're helpless, who really has the power? Once you have their focus, you can lead them without resistance, use their wants and desires to accomplish your goals."

"Oh God, those are their…thoughts? So many, there are so many people watching." Mina shivered, crunching inwards and turning as much as she could to cover herself, but that only exposed her back. She jumped as the eyes turned to her cute, spankable ass, and whirled to protect it, accidentally drawing attention to her jiggling breasts. The Muslim girl whimpered helplessly, a bead of her sticky lubricant running down her thighs.

Shania twitched and brought her hands down to her butt; her front was facing Gardens A, but she could feel the eyes upon Aminah as well. "Amazing," she breathed out.

The skinny black girl gave me a begging look through her thick, round glasses that told me she understood my intention with this lesson and had an idea of her own. I gave her a quick nod and lowered the two to the ground, though not before crisscrossing them thoroughly in glowing silk. They looked almost angelic now.

Shania grabbed her friend by the waist and pulled her in close, standing in a way so that our voyeurs could see their breasts mash together. The comforting touch quelled Aminah's rising panic, and the added sensitivity and shared pleasure made her moan loudly into Shania's neck. The smaller girl whispered something in her ear and gently lifted her face to hers, thrusting her tongue into her friend's mouth for a sloppy kiss. Shania's palm moved from cupping Mina's cheek to the back of her neck; there, she seized hold, summoning all her meager strength to grab her harshly as she deepened the kiss. The act of being dominated by the petite girl seemed to eclipse all insecurities, and soon she was a pliant slut in Shania's small arms.

"Open," commanded the little black girl. Her friend quickly opened both her eyes and mouth, lolling her tongue out. Shania gargled up a wad of spit and mucus and spat it forcefully into Mina's mouth. "Chew—ngh!" Whatever rush of pleasure that came through their link almost made Shania fall down as her friend started chewing, eyes watering from disgust. "Swa-swallow! God, girl, I can't believe you never told me how much you wanted to be dommed."

"Sorry, Shanny. We didn't really talk about sex stuff too much, though."

"I know," said Shania sadly, "that's my fault, I know. I was scared you would reject me, I think, that everyone would."

"I would never! I love you."

"I love you, too. And I know you wouldn't; I was being stupid. Do you want to stop, Mina?" she asked gently, stroking her cheek.

"No," said the taller girl weakly. "But what if it gets back to my mom and dad?"

"It's going to, of course."

Aminah gulped, a shock of arousal running down her spine and making her legs tremble. The fear of being exposed and humiliated was doing a number on her confused mind. If I hadn't gotten her worked up with my Erotic Sorcery, I had to think she'd have bailed by now. But unfortunately for Mina, her fear was only driving the lust that was keeping her here. "It is?"

"Yes, it is, but that's okay. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Because it's like James—like Master," she corrected, knowing the power that word had over Aminah, "said, they don't have power over you. They'll be reacting to your actions. So long as you're ready for it, then you'll have them at an advantage. That's right, right James?"

"Ha! Well done, Ms. Greene, you're a fast learner. Yes, that's essentially the core of the Art. You keep your opponents guessing, getting them to react to you." I almost brought up how I'd tricked the mercenaries into shooting each other earlier, but thought the better of it. Though, now that I wasn't quite so brain-fogged, at least I could admit to myself how cool that had been.

"But, I—"

"Mina," I cut her off, "you've been putting off this conversation for years. I bet you've run through it in your head a thousand times, had nightmares of every potential failure, dreamed of every success – you can do this. And you will, now that you have to."

"I can?"

Shania gave me an adoring smile, her eyes telling me she had it from here. "You can, baby. And if you don't believe us, then believe them." She turned Aminah to face Gardens A and stepped behind her. Running her hands up the lighter-skinned brown girl's sides, she cupped her teardrop-shaped breasts in her small palms. "What are they telling you, Mina?"

Both girls squeaked, Shania clenching Mina's breasts as a rush of sensation struck them. Seeing the teens put themselves on display like that had evidently done something special for the still-rising libidos of our audience. A wave of lust must have crashed down on them, their brains interpreting it as a hundred needy hands or more groping and molesting their hypersensitive breasts.

"They're telling you," continued Shania, her breath ragged, "that you're a queen, their goddess. I," she paused, before continuing slowly, "I do have an exhibitionism fetish. I've always dreamed of wearing beautiful dresses around town, cuts that show off my dark skin and long legs. I want to wear cute pumps and skirts that stop mid-thigh. I want to feel sexy, wanted. I want girls to go home and picture themselves as me, wishing they had the confidence to be what I am. I want to be the person I dreamed about being."

"You are! Oh, Shanny, you're a queen."

"So are you! Listen to them, Mina, listen to all those people." She brought her hands lower and lower, teasingly slow, bringing the gaze of the audience down to Aminah's soaking wet thighs. With two fingers, the black girl spread her friend's clean-shaven pussy to Gardens A. I doubted they could make out the pink folds from there, but they were sure as hell trying to. The girls let out a single, throaty moan in total sync with each other. "Hng-mm. Ah! They can't lie, not with their eyes and not to James's magic."

Aminah let out a shuddering breath and sank back into Shania's hug. "Right. You're right." She giggled and licked her lips. "We're going to look so cute together, baby girl."

> [Ally Quest Complete!]

> Give Aminah an exhibitionism fetish.

> Reward: 20XP, +1 Erotic Sorcery

> Bonus, Got Shania to take the lead: 20XP, +1 Leadership

I pumped my fist. Had I just broken through both girls' primary sexual hangups in one go? Marianne was going to be so proud of me. Man, this might have been the first time I was unreservedly happy to have Erotic Sorcery.

"Hell yes! I'm giving you both five grand to replace your wardrobes before this date is over."

Shania sputtered. "What? That's insane—"

"Nope, don't care. I want you in sexy wear for all four seasons and every occasion. Don't think about it like a gift – it's an order! If you've got it, flaunt it – that's a Black City Kung Fu tenet. Er, unless you're being stealthy, but that's just so you can flaunt it harder later."

"Mmm, Shanny in lingerie."

"Mina! Don't encourage him."

"Damn, I forgot about lingerie." I pounded my fist in my palm. "It's ten K a piece now, but I'm giving myself permission to tear them off of you, and I want to be there when you try them on."

I needed to go clothes shopping anyway, something I'd been putting off for years now; knowing there'd be eye candy on hand might get me to actually go. Plus, it probably wasn't a great idea to send two untrained girls around Black Harbor with twenty thousand dollars in their pockets.

"Oh, Master, imagine her in a pale garter belt and stockings giving you a foot job until you paint her dark chocolate skin a milky white." Mina let out a lascivious titter, drunk off the sex magic and emotional high.

"Mina, we're supposed to be the responsible ones."

"If this is training, then why can't that be? What if you were in handcuffs and needed to pick a lock with your toes? See, foot dexterity, done."

"She's making some good points, Shania, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. This lesson is far from finished. You're in the middle of your first performance; let's make it count."

I picked the girls up and maneuvered them onto their knees on the mattress, me standing side-profile to Gardens A for the best angles. We may have made major strides in getting them past their social anxiety, but that was no reason to stop here.

The girls leaned on each other for support as another wave of lust hit them. "Ah, the audience realized what they're about to see, did they? How many people are watching now, would you say?"

"Mmah, ahm, a hundred, maybe more," said Shania, struggling to get through a sentence without panting. "Did – you didn't put on the orgasm lock, did you?"

I stepped up and flopped my semi-erect cock onto her face. My body opened the floodgates on my pre-cum in anticipation of what was to follow, the first dollop smearing onto her glasses, the second her cheek. The third drop of pre became one with the steady drip now flowing from the head, running down my shaft and balls to begin raining sticky strands on her collarbones and upper thighs. I'd have found the copious flow to be a grotesque reminder of my own inhumanity were it not for the subtle colors in the semi-transparent liquid. Maybe it was the rainbow LEDs of the skyline or the interplay of shadows from the glowing silk sash, but the droplets seemed to swirl where they lay, their opalescent undertone brighter than before.

"Just raised what it takes to hit the peak. Don't worry; keep pushing, and you'll be there soon enough. Go on, you remember what to do."

The girls wasted neither time nor words save for a single deep breath they took in unison, cheeks pressed together, noses brushing against my frenulum. Their expressions confirmed that something was, in fact, very different with my cum, lighting up with surprise, heads rearing back as the scent hit them. The effect was more pronounced than it had been in the theater, and considering that had been their first time, I took it to mean that Seed of Power had unstated but potent effects on the taste and smell.

Shania whipped off her glasses and buried her face where my shaft met my balls, tongue out, and lips ready to suckle. Aminah, having no glasses to worry about, had used the fractional advantage she'd been given to monopolize the tip of my dick. Her eyes fluttered up at me as the taste of my refined lifeforce hit her tongue, giving me a pleased eye-smile. Shania, sitting forward on her knees, head pointed straight up under my heavy sack, hadn't realized yet that I'd tied their taste buds together and had to catch herself on my thighs, almost faceplanting as her senses reeled.

I let a bit of sex magic pool at my fingertips and began to gently massage their scalps, communicating all my pride for them via sorcery-enhanced touch. Shania's natural hair was spongy and soft under my fingers, ideal for headpats, and Mina's was silken and thick, made either to be wrapped around your fist or, perhaps, to gently grace your chest as she leaned down for a kiss while riding. Touch to Speak, the Finesse Special Feat, ensured my pride and fantasies for the future were sent at a level deeper and older than words, channeling pure, primal human connection. The girls immediately picked up the pace, beyond eager to please.

Shania tried to fit as much of my sack in her mouth. With her tongue out, trying to scoop more of me in, she started to hum and gargle, letting her saliva start to drip down her chin without a care. Simultaneously, she reached back and grabbed a handful of her friend's shiny black hair, tight enough that it was sure to hurt, and started pushing her down onto my cock before she could catch her breath. I hit the back of Mina's throat like a hammer, growing to my full size under the dual assault.

All my force pythons exploded out of me at once as my subconscious screamed for more. Their hold on the girls was tight and flowing, letting no inch of skin go unmolested. I reveled again in their civilian, girl-next-door bodies, petite cocoa begging to be toyed with, and soft, pliable caramel on their knees before me. It wouldn't be long under my tutelage for both to gain a hard layer of muscle; I had to savor these undeveloped forms while they lasted.

"A hundred or more people," I mused. "Phone cameras wouldn't be able to get your details, but I wonder, they're clearly calling in people to come and see, how long until someone with a proper nighttime lens shows up? Not an uncommon hobby, photography."

Shania whined and started slapping the back of Aminah's head hard to get her deeper on my dick, knowing exactly how good it felt for the maso-slut to be used and abused like that.

"GHKK!"

The Pakistani gagged in shock and then, as she felt my pleasure through our one-directional link, began forcing herself to gag and cough. That let out a fair bit of spittle directly onto her friend's face, making Shania have to close one eye as it was buried beneath the mix of fluids. Neither seemed to mind, growing only more animated. With how fervent they were, I was starting to think that setting the threshold for climax at thrice the height was a bit excessive. They must have been close to the top, though. Shania's heavy breathing into my sack had grown ragged and fast, and her hand slapped the back of Mina's head more and more urgently.

I decided I wanted a closer look at what was to be the first in many orgasms. Besides, at this angle, Shania was blocking out a bulk of Aminah's torso, and that was poor cinematography on my part. I flipped Shania upside down, spun her around using my sash, chest facing out, and pulled her up, locking her legs around my neck. The pink of her pussy was delectable in contrast to her dark black skin, her thighs soaking wet around my face. I held her tight to me, hand digging into her side as the other began mauling her small breasts, and planted my tongue deep into her pussy. Her arms dangled loosely at first, but my fierce treatment of her small, diamond-hard nipples snapped her into action. She reached down, past my cock and balls, to start squeezing down on Aminah's modest breasts.

The system demanded a Seduction here, making me realize that everything prior had somehow been included under my earlier Teaching roll – a fascinating observation to be explored at another time; currently, my tongue was on a much more pressing expedition.

Eighteen Successes on the oral, dear lord – that was…I mean, I wasn't even sure I wanted to know what that felt like firsthand.

It was, apparently, revelatory, mind-numbing, and explosive, judging from how the girls reacted. Shania howled, sounding somewhere between agony and the black abyss of madness, bucking in my grasp, muscles alternating from absolute rigidity and liquid looseness, her pussy fluttering around my tongue, trying desperately to draw it deeper. Aminah, at the moment before the eclipse of reason, had used her resolve to shove herself down to the base of my cock with one wet 'GLURK' and was now twitching and trembling, my shaft and sash the only things keeping her from falling limp to the mattress.

Fortunately or unfortunately for them, my stamina enchantment kept them sensate as I continued my oral pleasure. My tongue worked miracles within Shania's cunt, scooping wide at the entrance and drawing hard circles against her g-spot, while my nose circled and teased her clit at a steady rhythm and my force pythons massaged her thighs. My sash, meanwhile, looped around Aminah's neck like a collar and leash and started fucking her face upon my cock, my hips pumping in time, balls slapping on her chin, splattering her heaving chest with pre-cum and drool.

I swear, I could feel Aminah's heart beating through her throat in between the hard gagging and choking. I'd had more skillful blowjobs, but there was something about the brown cutie's earnest self-abuse that cut through my sexual endurance. She was barely cognizant and still in the midst of her rolling orgasm when she was right back to slamming herself hard against me, nose hitting my base again and again. Mina was living for this, arching her back and thrusting her chest forward so she could better coat it in the mix of juices, free from all worldly concerns beyond the next thrust of hard dick.

I hit my limit just as I felt her movements grow more jerky, her heart rate quickening to a hummingbird's pace as the lack of oxygen threatened to overwhelm her. Being a considerate lover, I used my makeshift leash to tug her back so the first hot rope of cum could fill her mouth, not wanting to deny her the taste. She tried to swallow as much as she could, but it was a deluge and soon she was choking, strangely thick and almost iridescent white cum falling from her mouth to bathe her front. I let her fall back to the mattress and kept blasting, lowering Shania to the ground as well. The small black girl scrambled to get her mouth around the head of my cock and sucked down several ropes of her own before she was outgunned. My sash pulled her back to the mattress and held her body next to Mina's as I unloaded the rest of my insane orgasm.

The flood of semen post me getting to 12 Dice in Endurance was ludicrous. Cum Overflowing multiplied my already higher-than-normal output by 144 – that was well over a liter now emptied upon the brown girls. There was something so viscerally pleasing about the sight of the pearly white in contrast to their dark skin, particularly compared to Shania's deep black, that I almost stopped them from cleaning themselves. Not that I was sure they'd have listened; they took to scooping it up and into their mouths like addicts, unable to feed themselves fast enough.

They didn't have long either, or at least Shania didn't. My mind was aflame with the need to be back inside that perfect pink pussy. Also, with the girls on their backs, the lip of the roof obscured them completely from Gardens A, and while I was quite a sight by myself, we were putting on a show here. I was an artist, and it would not do for our audience to think otherwise.

I picked up Shania by her hips and held her back to my chest, feet dangling in the air, and stepped forward so that I was straddling Aminah still on her back. Silk snapped out and pulled Shania's legs behind my waist and tied them together, her back having to arch dramatically, especially as the silk came up and tied her arms behind my neck. She was now strapped to my front, pussy suspended over cock. Heavy, sticky strands of cum began to dangle down, dripping like wax onto my legs, dick, and Aminah, who looked up at us in almost disbelief. Her tiny friend was about to get fucked like an elf upon an ogre in some hentai, the girth and size of my cock almost monstrous in comparison to the waif.

"Clean your friend, Mina; she's a mess."

"Yes, Master," said Aminah, struggling to her knees, arms still tied behind her back. I aided her along with a violent tug on her leash, allowing her to begin her tongue bath, herself still covered in cum.

"They're watching. Oh lord, they're watching." Shania said airily. "Can you feel them, daddy?"

My inner Alan cringed at the moniker, never having enjoyed daddy-daughter stuff, but even he was too deep in the sauce to protest now, and James didn't give a shit either way. James Li was a people pleaser; if you were into it, then he was into it.

"No, baby girl," I said, finding that the term of affection had a very different connotation coming out of my mouth than it did Aminah's – much naughtier. "Tell me what you're sensing."

"They're ours," she moaned, Aminah's tongue running a back along her upper thigh, "completely ours. They'd do anything but look away."

"Are you ready to give them a show, baby?"

"Yes, please."

"And what would you like me to do now?"

I was smiling, and she could hear it in my tone. I might have been too goofy to be a natural dom, but the words were enough to trigger the girls' BDSM fetish, earning a synced gasp from both.

"Fuck me, daddy. Fuck meeeeeeeeeee!"

I dropped Shania onto my cock, getting three inches into her excruciatingly tight, virgin pussy in a single thrust before her body locked me down. Regardless of how wet and ready she was, without my porn physics, I don't think I could have managed even that. Her biology and my hentai powers were momentarily stalemated. The head of my outrageous cock stretched her lips to the limit, forming an airtight seal as her inner muscles tried to adjust to the sudden intruder.

Gritting my teeth, I lowered Shania slowly down the rest of the way, agonizingly for us both, dragging out her first time as long as I could. As she wailed and grunted, and tears from the mix of pleasure-pain welled in her eyes, the system imposed another roll on me. The Dice were romantic this night. Fifteen Successes ensured that the memory of this moment would be seared on both girl's minds for the rest of their lives, although I did worry I might have set the bar too high for future dates. At least the ample Successes assuaged whatever gentlemanly part of me was offended by my choice of seduction location.

What did fifteen Successes mean here? Well, I followed the Dice-inspired knowledge and began to use my supreme pelvic floor muscles to make my cock jump to the left on the downstroke, hitting an unusually sensitive part of her. My hands on her hips shifted slightly forward, fingertips touching atop her belly button, emphasizing our difference in size and awakening a new specific kink in her for being tossed around. I also began to flex and tense my muscles more, purely to feel larger and more overpowering to her mind. These, and perhaps a few dozen more micro-adjustments, seemed to shatter her mind, capturing her in fantasy as my body adapted to her every subconscious desire. She was openly drooling and babbling by the time I was six inches inside, sometimes repeating 'please' or 'yes', but more often than not just making wordless noises.

Aminah, though I could have simply allowed her to sit in the shared sensation of Shania's pussy splitting on my baseball bat of a dick, wasn't left out of the activities either. Telekinetic limbs mashed her face into her friend's body, using it as a wet rag to sop up the cum left there. She had just enough sense in her to stick her tongue out and slurp but was otherwise limp in my grasp, an occasional moan and mewl causing her to cough up the spit, tears, and semen pooling in her mouth.

My cock bulged out Shania's belly once it was fully rooted inside her, the tip of her cervix peppering its head with kisses as it spasmed at the sensation. I would have teased her further, but Shania was an incoherent, whining, and at times screaming mess, in no place to understand my words. Her friend was barely better, only her task keeping her from filling the air with her own noises of defeat and pleasure.

I forwent making her beg for more and instead went straight to fucking her the moment I was fully hilted, not hard at first, but with a steady rhythm. There was the slow, long withdrawal until I was just barely inside her, and then a single, brutal stroke all the way to the back wall. I repeated that again and again, hands bruising her hips with my grip until Shania was back at the precipice of a massive climax.

"Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me," she started to repeat between mewls and shouts.

I lifted Aminah up, choking her still limp body, and brought her face to level with Shania. That seemed to bring her back to her senses somewhat, and the girl managed to get her feet beneath her. Leaning forward, chest against her friend's for support, she kissed her hard and started feeding her the fresh taste of cum, licking it off of Shania's lips, chin, and neck and dragging it wetly to her mouth.

They came again like that, shivering and mewling. This climax was larger than the last, and I had to wonder if I wasn't about to reach the limit of magically enhanced stamina. It rippled through them, seeming almost painful, and I had to use tactile telekinesis to keep us three stable and upright as their bodies began seizing.

Picking up my pace to join them, I started fucking the thin black girl as hard as I thought she could take, not wanting to test the protections provided by porn physics too much. The wet slapping of my heavy balls and soaked flesh filled the night sky, echoing out in the little bubble of warmth that I and the wind had made for us.

I pumped rope after rope inside my petite neighbor until I felt the sticky seed break the seal of her lips around my cock. Quickly untying her limbs, I pushed both girls down to the mattress, chest to chest, as they continued to make out. The rest of my cum was destined for Shania's back. It was a cruel fate to pull free of the heat of her cunt, but the glorious image of the black girl painted from neck to ass in my white seed more than made up for it.

As excited as I was to take my second virgin, the girl was still recovering, and I wasn't foolish enough to waste a hot commodity like my semen on this sight alone, amazing as it was. I summoned one of the borrowed mugs from earlier and psychically scooped what I could off Shania's back and thighs, as well as what hadn't finished soaking into the mattress. Then I summoned the second, brows raised at just how much I was able to still produce three loads deep into the night, and finally, the third, which was similarly filled to the brim. What remained, which was a lot, would have to be absorbed via the skin since I was now out of vessels. Well, I suppose I could have used their purses, but even if my cum did clean things it came in contact with, that felt a bit rude.

Having finished my chores, meager as they were, I yanked Aminah out from under her friend and knelt down on the mattress behind her, positioning her to face Gardens A. This wasn't quite the artistic angle that the previous one was for our audience, but I walked her forward so that she was literally partly sticking clear out from the building's ledge. Hopefully, the sight of her teenage breasts bouncing as I fucked her doggy style would be enough to make up for the lack of creativity in choreography.

She could have, maybe, precariously balanced on her thighs with her abdomen hanging off the thin lip of the roof, but I wanted her on her knees. I kept walking her until her legs were pressed against the very edge and used my telekinesis to keep her from falling forward and off the building. Mina was perfectly safe like that, but I wanted to give the appearance of danger, so I let her sag in my telekinetic hold. Instead, I used the leash around her neck, pulling back on her with just enough strength to keep her stable without fully choking her, forcing her to thrust her chest out towards the building. Her wavy, black hair tumbled around her face; it would provide the plausible deniability I needed to keep Lord Byron's Luck active. The Feat said it affected rumors of debauchery, and while Aminah had been correct in saying that anyone with a brain would know who my partners were, there was a major difference between leaked footage of a girl who was probably your daughter, and footage of your daughter unquestionably getting fucked on a roof across the way from your family friends.

I slapped my cock between Aminah's ass cheeks and slid forward until our thighs met, pulling her up a bit so she could feel my pre-cum leaking head against her lower back. She tried to rock her hips back and forth, her sensitivity to both touch and the raw eroticism of the moment such that this alone could be enough to make her orgasm again. All my many rivers of force undulating around her body kept her still, though, allowing me to continue my teasing.

"Ah!"

I spanked her, quite liking the way it sent ripples across her cheek. From behind me came a muffled cry out of Shania, still face down in the mattress. I spanked her again on the other cheek, and then again, and again, alternating sides as Mina's strangled moans became needier, only slowing down when necessary to keep her from climaxing. The pain-pleasure mix was almost too much for the naturally masochistic girl, so I took to pumping my cock into her ass cleavage, drawing a frothy line of pre-cum and Shania's juices on her caramel skin. That, too, sent electric shocks to her sex, and it took considerable restraint from me to keep her on the edge, my base urges roaring at me to fuck her properly.

After several minutes of the casual abuse and edging, Shania was finally recovered enough to shuffle up beside us. She had cleaned herself of cum and had a palmful of the sainted liquid, the rest either having been swallowed down or had already absorbed wholly into her skin. In a show of total trust, she leaned out and over the ledge, relying on me to keep her steady with the sash still crisscrossed along her body, and slapped her cum-covered hand over her friend's mouth.

Shania opened her mouth in a silent moan, eyes half rolled back in her head. "She loves this; you have no idea how much. You're such a slut, Mina." Shania used Aminah's hair like a towel, wiping her hand clean, the humiliating gesture making the masochist whimper. Then she raised her other hand high and brought it down with a loud slap on the girl's ass as hard as she could, throwing her own head back as the shared pain struck her. "Lord, Mina, what have you done to me? Be rougher with her, James; she wants your worst, trust me."

"Good to know."

I grabbed a handful of Shania's peach bum and pulled her into my side, leaning down to kiss her, three pythons enveloping her as I did. One took her hand and brought it to my cock. Her lips and tongue were as pliable and submissive as ever, but there was already a marked increase in skill. She teased me with her little mewls and gasps, dancing the tip of her tongue on mine, begging me without words to savage her. All the while, her hand stroked my cock, occasionally dragging it side to side as a brush to cover the dark red of Mina's cheeks with the flowing pre-cum.

Lack of breath forced her to break the kiss. Shania buried her face into my side, free hand greedily feeling up my back and butt inch by inch. "It's not weird that I'm calling you daddy, is it?" she asked meekly.

I made my cock twitch in her hand, and sent a faux flash of strong pleasure through our connection, disguising it as organically mine. It wasn't entirely fake, but this way, there would be no doubt in her mind that it was fine by me.

Shania tittered and pressed her skinny body and little tits into me harder. "Never mind. Thank you…daddy." She lifted her face up and stood on her tiptoes to beg for a kiss. I answered her call, taking her lips again.

The system asked for another roll here, a rare Erotic Sorcery + Leadership, for reasons that I assumed were known to only the Producers and Shania's horny and lovestruck teenage mind. It was a narrative system, though, so these light, gentle kisses of mine must have been significant in some way beyond what we had just done. Whatever was going on in Shania's brain, I hoped the nine Successes were enough to carry me.

She lowered back onto her heels and leaned her head against me in a way that spoke to some bone-deep contentment. "There's hundreds of them watching us, you know? A hundred tongues worshiping every inch of us," she said with a sigh. "Those kisses – they'll be dreaming of them tonight, and tomorrow, and maybe every night forever. You're their god, daddy, and we're your angels."

I hid a frown by sinking my face into her bushy hair, giving her forehead a kiss as I extended my senses. Ah. The spell I'd cast with the two dozen or so watchers from earlier had grown and was continuing to grow second by second, taking on a life of its own. There was a radiance to the adoration and lust subsuming our voyeurs, and not a metaphorical one – to those with the proper abilities, the roof of Gardens Building B was brighter than any skyscraper downtown and more brilliant by far. Hundreds of unique energy signatures were circling around us like a vortex, glowing to my senses and other mystically capable residents in unearthly and impossible colors.

I sucked in a breath. Maki was going to be very upset with me about this, wasn't she? It was probably time to close out this performance.

Still, I was a professional, and this was important training; we couldn't just leave in the middle of the show. No, we had to close it out with a bang.

I rocked my hips back, making some room between mine and Mina's. "Would you care to do the honors, baby girl?" I asked to Shania, her hand still on my cock.

"Yes, daddy." She shuddered. "Wow, Mina, I'm about to take your virginity with Master's godlike penis."

"Aww," choked out the light-skinned brown girl. "Sho cu-kh! Cute. Yay!"

Shania rubbed the tip of my dick through her friend's folds a few times, and then a few times more to tease her, even slapping me onto her clit. She had to bite down on my arm at those sensations, though. Rapidly losing the ability to stand unaided, Shania decided to tug me inside after that. I let her lead me four inches deep in one sharp thrust, at which point her legs cut out from under her, knees hitting the mattress. She hugged my leg for support, echoing the strangled groans of her friend as I completed my stroke, slamming to the hilt inside Aminah.

My mind's eye, still partially turned towards the growing erotic energy swirling around us, felt the vortex grow wilder – much wilder. It was like I'd inadvertently lit a spark with her penetration and was caught once more in a flaming tornado of my own making, and while this one wasn't as destructive as the last, it felt just as dangerous. This little improvised spell of mine was fast becoming an uncontrolled sex magic ritual.

Fuck. I gritted my teeth, not in the headspace, to weigh solutions to the problem. It was a problem, though, of that I was sure; the last uncontrolled ritual I'd done resulted in permanent mental and physical changes to Annie that we still didn't understand. I had to do something with all this power. At least the energy was free from the usual darker undertones of lust, my golden light washing away all fear and despair.

Goddamn it, I really had a way of stepping on my own dick, didn't I? How many times had I felt so clever tonight? How many times did I congratulate myself on this bit of Erotic Sorcery?

No, now wasn't the time for self-reflection – I had to think of what to do. Think, James! Think!

I needed something simple to do with the power, simpler than even the most basic Erotic Sorcery blessings to be as safe as possible. My mind was simply not ready to blast Qi into the bodies of so many without any chance of something going wrong. But what did that leave me? Maybe I was going about this in the wrong direction – what did the neighborhood need? What was something small that could make a difference here?

Fear and despair, I mused to myself, thinking of the encounter with The Misery.

I couldn't punch my way through The Misery, but if the horde of evil spirits thought that meant they were safe from me, then they were sorely mistaken. James Li was no one trick pony. I was a goddamn dynamo.

Underestimate me, will you!?

Harbor Hill was so flooded with bad will that it had manifested into a Lesser or possibly even Greater Evil. This whole neighborhood needed catharsis - a good cry and a long rest, preferably. But if that wasn't on the table, then a hard fuck would have to do.

"Sexual catharsis, baby!" I shouted, thrusting my hips forward to batter Aminah's cervix with my already fully buried cock. This all made perfect sense to me. "Hahahaha! I'll fuck the evil out of this neighborhood!"

My battle spirit was loose, but that was fine. No mortals had anything to fear from me, and hopefully, that would be clear at some mammalian level for them. I hinged my hips back, bringing all but a centimeter of length into the New Jersey night, and started hammering Aminah.

The system allowed my earlier roll for fucking Shania ride, my body falling into a hard, but fast rhythm without conscious effort. Telekinetic tentacles continued to molest both girls, driven by my subconscious desire to claim every sliver of them, outside and in, to make my mark on them, mind, body, and spirit.

Eyes closed, and with a manic smile frozen on my face, I began working my magic. Sinking into the carefree, go-with-the-flow mind state that had saved me from possession back in the theater, I focused on what exactly had allowed me to escape The Misery's trap.

They, or It, had presented me with a false image of reality, not just the visions of past horrors, but the idea that we were in a battle, fighting for life and death. I had rejected the premise. The Happy Idiot was unmoved by facts, feelings, and any sense of reason in the face of complete and absolute faith in oneself. Being subsumed in the Stance's final form, the Empty-Headed God, required at some level the belief that you would fundamentally be fine no matter what happened.

I rolled another Erotic Sorcery, gathering the roaring vortex around us, almost blacking out from the surge of foreign energy hitting my Qi network, and projected out that belief and faith, getting ten Successes to do so. There would be no material Dice-related benefits, but maybe a spiritual pep talk could go a long way.

"Believe in yourselves, goddamn it!" I yelled with a particularly hard thrust into Mina, shaking her body with the force.

I opened my eyes to see the girl covered in sweat, drool flying from her open mouth into the air. I could relate – the vortex of erotic energy, once circling us, was now flowing directly through me. My brain was partially unraveling, a big ball of yarn bouncing around my skull, but oddly things felt mostly under control – though that may have been the conclusion of a highly intoxicated mind.

My muscles were screaming at me. Alien power was doing a rally race through my Qi networks, barreling into the dividers and splashing mud everywhere.

What was happening again? Ah, right. The spell was in play; I'd taken control of the ritual, and all that was left to do was enjoy myself. I just had to get to the end of the ritual, climax, and let it all go - send out my good vibes into the world.

"BELIEVE!" I shouted – this time to myself.

My exclamation would have seemed an insane thing to yell during sex normally, but the girls were fully enthralled by my Erotic Sorcery themselves. Even Aminah, whose mind should have been goo, snapped out of her pleasure fugue to give me two thumbs up with her arms still bound painfully behind her back.

"Y-Yes, sir!" shouted Shania.

She flopped onto her back, slid herself between our legs, and began tonguing my balls and Mina's split-open pussy. Why that had been her interpretation of my order was a mystery; maybe she'd been debating doing it when I'd yelled or something. It was appreciated nonetheless, most of all by Mina and Shania herself. Almost the second the black girl's tongue met her friend's clit, they both began to cum.

Mina's cunt was pulsing, her inner muscles desperately trying to milk another load from me, but I had 12 Dice in Endurance and had already cum three times today. It would take more than that. I continued to fuck her through her orgasm, cruelly prolonging it, pounding her already too-sensitive pussy.

My teeth held the silk leash, freeing my hands for those bouncing titties. I leaned over her and grabbed a hold of them, pinching and rolling her nipples, abusing them into another sharp climax just as the girl was starting to come back down. Her voice was shattered, just a constant, stuttering hoarse scream, timed to my thrusts. I angled my hips down so that my cock struck the roof of her cunt, coming and going, battering her g-spot with brutal, staccato strokes.

Shania's heavy breaths on my balls were addicting, a joy second only to her tongue bath. Though the girl was taken in and out of her conscious ability to act, she didn't stop trying, never pausing for long.

How long we kept at it like that, I couldn't say. I lost myself in the moment and the pleasure, battle spirit on full blast the full time, mind consumed by the sensations.

As my orgasm approached, though, I had the wherewithal to psychically drag the mattress and the three of us back. It was a wise call – my climax turned the world white and made me fall forward, my full weight pressed atop poor Aminah. Semen blasted her womb and filled her cunt to the brim by the fifth rope. It jetted out and back, leaking out from our seal in a grotesque flood onto Shania's face and open mouth.

As my cum exploded from my cock, so too did the Erotic Sorcery spell, out like a goddamn bomb, sending a shockwave of metaphysical light into those who had been watching and beyond, rippling into the distance, far past what my modest senses could feel.

With a wet, gushing sound, I pulled out of Mina and sat back on my heels as I continued my prolonged orgasm onto Shania's face and chest, with a number of ropes flying out to hit Mina's prone form, a few even reaching her hair. As soon as the last driblet of cum exited my dick to land atop Shania's belly button, I rolled over and covered my eyes with my arm.

Every muscle in my body hurt, my brain was fried, and I think my soul may have been sore. There were consequences to channeling that kind of power through your Qi networks that I would be feeling for a few days, I suspected. Who knows, had I fewer than my massive 10 Dice in Aura, I might have been crawling home. As it was, I needed at least a few minutes.

Luckily, the same could be said of the girls, and there were a lot of Quest notifications to keep me busy in the meantime.

> [Quest Complete!]

> Inspire the creation of a sex cult.

> Reward: 30XP, +2 Leadership

> Bonus, Inspired multiple separate cults at once: Gain Major Feat Icon of Lust, Gain Master Feat Icon of Perfection

>

> [Major Feat] Icon of Lust

> Statues, paintings, and other physical representations of you of suitable quality inspire NPCs to new heights of veneration. While in the vicinity of these, they can add an extra 2 Dice to any attempts to pleasure, seduce, or soothe lovers. Artists, when crafting physical images of you, can add 2 Dice to their attempts, though this may result in certain overtones. The effects of this Feat are evident to laypeople but will be attributed to natural inspiration rather than supernatural causes.

>

> [Master Feat] Icon of Perfection

> Statues, paintings, other physical representations of you of suitable quality, and your immediate presence inspire NPCs to new heights of veneration. While in the vicinity of these, training and all pursuits of self-improvement are twice as effective for them. Artists add 3 Dice to attempts to craft images of you, gaining a clear-headed creative high of sorts when doing so. The effects of this Feat are evident to laypeople but will be attributed to natural inspiration rather than supernatural causes.

>

> [Recurring Quest Complete]

> Put on a live performance.

> Reward: 5XP, +1 Occultism (Erotic Sorcery)

> Bonus, Sex show: 25XP, +1 Presence

>

> [Quest Complete!]

> Make or inspire over a hundred people to climax in one Scene.

> Reward: 50XP, Gain Master Feat Scoposthesia

>

> [Master Feat] Scoposthesia

> You gain an additional sense that informs you when someone is observing you directly, as well as their direction and distance from you. This reacts only to direct visual observation but has almost no counter. Watching you through cameras or magical means may baffle your ability to know direction and distance, but more often than not, you will at least know you are being watched and by how many.

>  

"Argh…"

The Producers were trolling me. Why were those the first ones?

It'll be fine, James. We got this.

Yeah. Totally. This would all work out.

Oh God, I was going to have to explain the multiple sex cults to the Party at some point. There would be so much razzing. Endless razzing.

Also, I was never going to be free of my Challenge, was I? The others would never catch up in Experience if I kept getting horny and doing dumb shit with sex magic. I needed to recruit a deeply repressed schoolmarm or something to bonk me with the horny hammer the next time I tried to get clever. Wait. No, that was actually pretty hot. I needed to develop some self-control.

Yeah, good fucking luck there. In my defense, knowing that I could get a broken Feat like Icon of Perfection whenever I was insanely irresponsible was a hard incentive to ignore. I was a victim of market forces, alright, cut me some slack. The Producers had even allowed Icon of Perfection to affect the Experience Shania and Aminah gained from this lesson; they had a whopping 72 EXP each for me to allocate. How was I supposed to feel bad about my poor decisions with wins like those?

> [Quest Complete!]

> Fuck in full view of the public.

> Reward: 25XP, Gain Major Feat I Know It When I See It

> Bonus, To an audience of thousands: +1 Random Attribute (Aura), +1 Random Attribute (Strength)

>

> [Major Feat] I Know It When I See It

> What can be understood to be obscene, reprehensible, or pornographic is usually a pretty intuitive judgment call, except for when it comes to you. People, lawmakers, and police included, are far more likely to 'let it slide' when it comes to your actions for their own reasons. Some may make an exception for you because they view you as an artist above such pedestrian concerns, while others could be grateful enough for your perceived positives that they won't mind some 'minor' flaws.

I clenched my jaw shut, the pain of expanding my Qi network in its current state almost blinding me.

What did they mean thousands!? How!?

Shit, I'd dropped the Happy Idiot at some point while fucking Mina. Well, okay, that wasn't that bad. How long could I have been in that animal haze, anyway? A few minutes at most?

Whatever, the damage was done. Oh, hey, I Know It When I See It would for sure get Aminah's parents to accept insane sexual training methods! That was nice.

> [Quest Complete!]

> Have a threesome.

> Reward: 33XP, +1 Finesse

>

> [Ally Quest Complete!]

> Take Aminah and Shania's virginities in a threesome.

> Reward: 33XP, +1 Wits, +1 Willpower

> Bonus, A first date to remember: 15XP, Aminah and Shania Gain Major Feat Two Hearts Beating As One – All of your Skill rolls, abilities and Feats that would affect one girl in a positive manner, now affect her twinned-heart without need for additional resources or rolls.

>

> [Quest Complete!]

> Become someone's first love.

> Reward: 25XP, Remove 1 Point of Permanent Corruption

> Bonus, Two people in one day: Gain Random Producer chosen Special Feat from the Prince Charming Archetype (Damsel Insurance), Gain Item Charm Bracelet x3 – Those you gift these to will receive a bonus Die on all their rolls. While worn, these bracelets prevent the passive loss of your Affection and Lust Scores with the wearers.

>

> [Special Feat] Damsel Insurance

> As nice as it can be to sweep a damsel into your arms and away from Evil, the experience, if repeated, can rapidly lose its charm for everyone involved. Once you have rescued a damsel (gender-inclusive term), Fate will conspire to significantly reduce their chances of being put in harm's way. Enemies will be less likely to intentionally target them, random misfortunes won't find them, and in general, they will encounter far less danger in their day-to-day lives.

>

> [Recurring Quest Complete!]

> Have a steamy smut scene.

> Reward: 5XP, +1 Random Skill (Alchemy)

>  

Man, the Producers were trying hard to butter me up. Still, it was nice to feel appreciated.

I immediately spent some of the girls' accumulated Experience, curious to see how broken Two Hearts Beating As One was.

Damn, it seemed that while I'd be able to train one and have both gain the Experience, their pools and stats were kept separate. Ah well, I was sure I could figure out a way to break it eventually. For now, I bought them both 1 Die in each of their physical Attributes. Shania went to 2 Strength, 3 Agility, and 2 Endurance, and Aminah went to 2 Strength, 2 Agility, and 3 Endurance.

Mina groaned from behind me, making me turn to see if she'd noticed the changes. The way her shoulders were framed told me that her back muscles had certainly seen some major improvements, but that was the most visual of whatever benefits she'd received.

She yawned and winced, clutching her side. "Oof, sore. And hungry. Can't believe I'm still hungry." Looking around, she spotted the three steaming mugs of cum and nearly leaped to her feet. "Shanny, look how considerate Master was!"

"I can't believe you can walk after that," Shania mumbled, slowly pushing herself up. Oh, hell yes, her butt was noticeably more shapely. She looked at the skyline with a confused frown. "Wait…"

Shania found her glasses where she'd quickly tossed them aside and put them on. She started to lower and raise them from her eyes repeatedly, mouth open in shock. "Oh my God – I can see. I can see! James, I – is this permanent?"

"Yeah. Magic cum," I said, still limp on the ground. Everything continued to ache. "Part of your eventual job as students will be to rescue me when I get kidnapped by witches over it."

"Ooh, I wonder if I have any permanent changes," said Mina, handing Shania a mug of said magic cum. "You were inside me for at least an hour, I think." Clinking them together in a cheers, they shared a laugh before taking large gulps. "Ahh, amazing. Thanks, Master—oh, is something wrong?"

I swallowed, mouth dry. "An…hour? Surely, not."

Shania hummed, finding her phone in her purse. "Wow, that's a lot of notifications. Um, hm…whatever." She shrugged and put it away again. "Probably was closer to half an hour or forty-five, actually. Mina, what do you mean you wonder if you'll have any permanent changes? The fact that you can use your legs at all is a miracle."

"Half, half-an-hour…" I clapped my hands over my face. "Maki is going to kill me." Oh God, my mother's Eagle Eye technique was definitely capable of watching all of that in high definition—

Nope, not thinking about that.

I smiled peacefully. Hey, this was a pretty great date, wasn't it?

I kipped to my feet, actually relishing the pain; it was a welcome distraction. "So, you guys want to cuddle at my place?"