It doesn’t take long for my quip to become reality. Bodies are packed tight as sardines as people sing and dance and spill liquor onto each other. Players rub up on us, half by accident and half on purpose as they party like their lives depend on it. The crowd is as diverse as anywhere in Lifestream; traditional races like elves and dwarves and even Klingons mingle with creatures and characters I’ve never heard of. Everyone is half dressed, and bare breasts and asses are everywhere I look. Women cling to me for a moment, brushing a kiss to my cheek as they press impossibly perfect videogame tits to my chest before spinning away laughing. Men grab Mika and try to turn her for a dance, and our hands strain against sweat and the pressure of bodies as we cling to each other. Almost everyone but us wears masks, mostly of animal varieties, and I have to shake my head when I spot at least one girl with a cat’s face wearing a bird mask.
The air smells like alcohol and sweat and fruit and sex and the roar is so loud now that Mika and I don’t even bother trying to talk. We just press through, searching for an elf girl with heart shaped pupils.
Finally, we reach a little outcropping of trees that juts from the middle of the street. An island of flowers surrounds it, and at least one couple’s already getting down on the soft bed. In fact…
“Where’s her head?” I shout to Mika.
“In her hands!”
And it is. The girl’s removed her own head, and she holds it at her partner’s crotch. The stump at the top of her shoulders is clean, like her head’s meant to be removed. Her arms flex as she pumps her lips over his cock so deep that its head pokes out the hole at the bottom of her throat.
Next to them, another couple stumbles through. A girl whose skin glows like flame tugs a man double my size by his shaft. He stumbles, pants around his ankles, laughing so deep that I can feel the vibration in my chest as she gives him a hard pump to keep him interested. They disappear back into the crowd.
Jesus. These people are nuts.
“This is about to devolve into a full-blown orgy!” I shout.
“Pun not intended?” Mika yells, eyes on the headless girl.
“Do you see any Obsidian? Anything dangerous?”
Mika turns full circle, shrugging helplessly. “There are so many character panels! They run into each other, blend together… I can’t make them out!”
I growl. This is ridiculous. “How the hell do we find her?”
Mika’s lips press to my ear. Her breath is hot and wet, and surrounded by such pure carnality I can barely fight the desire to bend her over and take her right then and there. The idea of doing it in front of so many strangers… Of them cheering us on… Blood rushes to my cock at the thought. By her quicks breaths I think she’d welcome it, especially after the night on the roof.
The only thing that stops me is the mission. Knowing the others are back at the hideout living on borrowed time. Who knows when Obsidian might find them? Or Kara?
“Maybe over there?” Mika says, and even though she’s a millimeter from my ear I can hardly hear her.
I trace the path of her pointing finger. “Madam DeVeaux’s Pleasure Palace,” I say. The words are six feet high and are lit with neon wire where they’re mounted to the roof. “Why the hell not? She was taken by a rival Madam, and I haven’t seen any other brothels.” It’s as good a place to start as any in this insanity.
I tug Mika through the crowd, trying to avoid sprays of wine that arc across the partiers like sprays of arterial blood. Someone shoves a bottle of something into my hand. It smells like blueberries and has to be at least one hundred fifty proof. “Keep this one away from you,” I call, laughing.
Mika flicks a tiny flame on her index finger and taunts me with it, drawing it closer. I put my hand over the neck of the bottle and stick out my tongue before handing the liquor to a passing girl with long bunny ears. She rewards me with a surprise squeeze at my crotch and grins behind her sequined mask when she feels my still half hard cock. “You two wanna sneak off somewhere?” she calls.
“Kinda, yes!” Mika grins, “But we can’t!”
Bunny girl’s dark brown ears fold as she pouts. “Fine!” With that, she melts into the churning mass of bodies.
“Too bad!” Mika yells as we push closer to Madam DeVeaux’s. “If she fucks like a bunny, too…”
I throw a dirty look over my shoulder as her laughter chases me through the churn.
It takes at least five minutes to cross the twenty feet to the brothel, and when we get there we’re stained with alcohol and sweat. Most of it isn’t ours. Mika has a series of little lipstick prints across her face and neck. “Where did you get those?”
She grins, eyes a little dreamy. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
I actually would. We never even slowed down. But I roll my eyes and tug her up the steps to Madam DeVeaux’s. The building’s like something you’d see in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, a two story French Colonial affair with a balcony overlooking the street. Lights burn in empty windows, and the double doors are set with frosted glass that we can’t see past.
No one greets us at the door. I trade glances with Mika, then shrug and pull them open.
The front hall’s empty. A little desk sits at the far side but it’s unoccupied. No girls come to greet us, and no Madam slowly descends the far stairway to welcome and usher us to waiting, half naked girls. But the gaudy red and black rug and low hanging chandeliers certainly look like what I imagine a brothel to be, so the place certainly looks the part.
“No one here,” Mika whispers as the doors shut out most of the noise behind us.
“Probably a good thing,” I say. “Now, if you were keeping a rival’s girl prisoner, where would you do it?”
“Lock her in one of the rooms?” Mika says. “I mean, I doubt a place like this would have jail cells or anything like it.”
“Good enough,” I say. “Let’s check ‘em out.”
We make our way to the steps slowly, and the stairs give ominous creaks as we creep upward. At the top, I halt Mika with a hand to hers. “Voices,” I mouth.
The stairs arc outward as they go down, so we hide at the sides, crouching low. Footsteps approach in the hallway above. I ready my power and wait, holding my breath.
“Bullshit that we have to stay up here while all that’s going on down there,” a deep voice rumbles.
“Hey, you want double chips or not?” Another male, his voice high and whining. “I can’t do this job without you, so don’t go all cold feet on me, now.”
“You know that scary bitch is gonna send someone for the elf,” the first guard says.
“Yeah, but not tonight. She don’t even know we have the girl, yet, and by the time she figures it out we’ll have moved her somewhere–” The voice trails off as the guards move down the hall.
I nod to Mika. We sneak into the upper hall, peering around the corner for the guards. “Damn, I didn’t realize we were that good at sneaking,” I whisper.
“Yeah, we didn’t even put any upgrade points into it,” she grins.
“Wait, you got points? I didn’t get points.”
“Jokes aside, that felt too easy,” Mika said. “The first place we check, and she’s here? Inept guards that just so happen to drop important information as they pass us? This feels like a setup.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Well, keep your eyes open for traps.”
“Like?”
“You know. Boulders chasing us. Poison darts from the walls. Traps.”
“Sounds good, Indiana,” she sasses, pushing me on.
We move past the first connecting hallway into a lateral corridor set with doorways. All of them are open.
All but one.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “This is just… This is just freaking me out.”
Mika swallows, eyes pinched with worry. “Yeah. But maybe everyone’s down below? Why use a comfy bedroom when you can get busy in the street with a drunk dude puking next to you?”
“That’s my fetish,” I win
k.
“Ew. Bro. No.”
Suddenly, footsteps, almost on top of us. “Shit,” I whisper. Where’d they come from?
I grab Mika and pull her into the closest room. We flatten against the wall and I resist the urge to close the door. It wasn’t a moment ago, and that’d definitely tip off any guard worth his salt.
Mika scrunches her face and nods to the room we’ve taken refuge in. The light is off, but even in the dark I can make out an entire wall arrayed with every kind of sex toy I’ve ever heard of, and a shit ton that I haven’t. It’s a sea of buckles and dildos and clamps and even something that looks suspiciously like a vial of acid. The bed at the center of the room is round and draped in gaudy red covers. There are easy to access brackets in the ground at even intervals around it to be used with the straps and chains dangling from the wall.
The ground is stained. With blood or…
I mouth to Mika: What the fuck?
Right? she returns.
Whatever Madam DeVeaux uses this room for, she’d better have a healing potion handy for when it’s over.
The heavy footfalls reach the door to our hiding spot. It sounds like just one guard this time. He pauses at the doorway, peering inside. I can see the silhouette of his nose poking past the door frame.
I hold my breath and seize my power, ready to shove a gag of air down his throat. No idea what level this guy is, but if I have to jump him…
“Guh. Weirdos.” He turns to leave.
We exhale slowly, silently, thankfully. I grin at Mika. “Close one,” I whisper.
She turns to me, grinning. “Nice work, Solid Sn–” her elbow swings wide as she rotates, knocking a black, double sided toy off of a set of drawers to her side. It bounces and thuds to the floor, and each time it rebounds it’s like a gunshot in the silent brothel.
Shit.
“What was that?” The guard spins and pushes back into the room.
Everything happens so fast; I barely have time to register that it’s over. My power rams down the guard’s throat, choking his sudden shout off like someone’s hit mute on a remote control. His surprise doesn’t last long, though; his eyes widen on us and his hand darts to a wickedly curved short sword at his belt.
Desperate, I throw two bands of power at his wrists. He sails backward at the force of it, and at least one of his arm breaks as it’s wrenched backward. He screams; even past the gag I can hear it in his throat, desperate to break free. His wrists hit the far wall and are pinned amongst the menagerie of sin, and he tangles in a thicket of leather straps as he wrenches to free himself.
What now? The vibrablade? If what Wick said was true, it’ll make a hell of a mess. A mess we might not be able to hide if the other guards show back up.
Mika saves me from having to decide when she launches across the room holding something above her head. She doesn’t shout the war cry I can see on her lips, but she brings her arms down as hard as she can and smashes the guard over the head with something I can’t make out. Whatever it is, it hits him like a war hammer, and his head wrenches sickeningly to the side as his neck breaks.
His body goes limp and I release my power, letting him fall. He slams to the floor noisily, and the sword still at his side clangs against chains and other shit as he goes down.
“Crap, I should have eased him down,” I hiss.
Mika’s eyes are wide. “Oh my God. I killed him. I didn’t mean to.”
Clutched in her fists, something flops. It’s the enormous double-sided dildo that she knocked over earlier. Even panicking, I have to choke back a laugh. “You killed him with…”
Mika suddenly drops it like a snake. “I didn’t mean…”
“A dildo. You just killed a man with a dildo.” I bite my lip. “I feel like there’s some hidden subtext here…”
“Shut up,” she laughs, punching my arm. “Had to save your handsome ass somehow.” She winces. “Just meant to knock him out, though.”
“He’ll respawn. And no more Saint’s Row for you.”
“Nice.” She pokes her head into the hall. “Nerd.”
“Hey. That game was cool.” I hunch behind her. “Anything?”
“Nope. Not sure where the hell those guards went, but coast seems to be clear.”
“Aright. Let’s hide this guy behind the bed and get moving before you start getting ideas about which of these things to use on me.”
Mika takes the guards hands and grins. “I saw nipple clamps up there.”
“No way. Not a chance.” I scratch my chin. “Maybe?”
She chuckles as I take his feet and we heave him up. Despite being a beefy dude, he’s practically weightless with our upgrades. We toss him beside the bed and make our way back to the door. “One sec,” I say, holding up a hand.
I reach out with my power, probing through the house. I can’t believe I didn’t think to do this before; if I had we would have detected the lone guard patrolling separate from the other two. I could make the excuse that I haven’t had supernatural fuckery powers that long, but still… I need to be better than that.
My awareness flows along hallways and through rooms. It’s eerie; though I can’t see anything I’m sensing, I can still feel the shape of it all. It’s like walking through your house with your eyes closed. You can’t see where the doorways and furniture are, you just know.
“Anything?” Mika asks, watching me intently.
“Just one person up here with us, now… I think it’s our girl. She’s by herself down the hall and around the corner.”
“What about the two whiny guards?”
“No idea. On break? Wherever they are, I can’t find them.”
Mika grinds her teeth. “Wish Syl was here. Her premonition ability would be pretty fucking handy about now.”
“Right? We’ll just have to muddle through without her.”
We make our way down the hall, trying to watch everything at once. I don’t think the two guards are anywhere close, but I don’t know that for sure. I keep underestimating what people are capable of imagining in Lifestream, and it’s already put us in trouble a few times. Can the guard shield themselves from mental probing?
I hope not.
Our destination is the only closed doorway on the floor. We reach it without incident, and it sets my spine crawling. “This still feels too easy.”
“Yeah. I’m getting serious heebs,” Mika says.
“Heebs?”
“You know Heebie-jeebies?”
“No, I know what you meant. Just… Kids still say that these days?”
Mika frowns. “What do you mean ‘kids’? You’re like five years older than me.”
“And in those five years, I stopped saying shit like ‘heebie-jeebies’.”
She rolls her eyes. “Okay, grandpa. Can we do this? I feel like the floor’s about to turn into lava or something.”
“Yeah. Just… Let’s be ready for anything. Could be Akalia in there, could be someone else. Or maybe the door’s trapped. Or…” I reach for the handle tentatively.
“Wait. Should you use your power? Like… Probe it or whatever it is you do?”
“Yeah, okay. Though I’m not sure what I’m looking for…” I send my senses into the doorknob. “Nothing. Just… Feels like the inside of a doorknob.”
“Oh, is that something you’re intimately familiar with?”
“Hey, college was wild, okay?”
Mika laughs quietly as I extend my senses. “Door frame, wall… Floor. It all feels… Normal? I guess? Like… Wooden.”
“You sure make science easy for us poor wimmin folk to figure out.”
“Speaking of which, what are you doing up here? Doesn’t this place have a kitchen?”
“Oh, hoo,” she says, voice turning dangerous. “Now you’re pushing it.”
“I’d like to be pushing a sammich down my throat, but…”
Her dark eyes are narrow, glaring, shrouded by a veil of black and purple. Her full lips turn up in a pout as she sti
cks her tongue out at me. I can’t help it. I dart forward, chasing it as it slides back between her lips to kiss her.
It’s silly. We’re in the middle of enemy territory. The two guards could return from their smoke break or whatever at any time. But I can’t help myself.
Mika’s body goes rigid with surprise before she melts into me. I press her to the wall and run my fingers into her hair. She smells so delicious and tastes better, like strawberries and citrus and the promise of sex. “I love you,” she whispers at my ear.
“I know.”
She bites my earlobe hard enough that I almost yelp.
We separate, laughing and breathless as we trade hooded glances.
I wonder if we can sneak back up to the rooftop before Kara lets us aboard the airship.
Mika nods to the door. “Alright. Let’s get this over with.”
“As you wish,” I grin.
The door’s latch falls away with no poison needles or exploding bolts. Nothing happens. I turn the door’s handle with my heart in my throat. Nothing continues to happen. “Huh, just a door,” I say, pushing it open.
The room beyond is similar to the one where Mika killed the guard. Same bed, same gaudy furnishings, but there are two significant changes. One: there’s no armory of sex toys, so my nipples are safe.
Two: the girl that sits huddled in the corner.
She looks up as we enter, eyes wide with fear. “Hello?” she says quietly.
Goddamn. She’s stunning. Short blond hair in a pixie cut frames an impish face with a slightly upturned nose and small, pursed lips. Long, slim ears jut from her hair and end in delicate points. Definitely an elf. She’s petite yet full figured, and white scraps of what look like linen barely cover generous tits and an ass we get full view of as she slowly stands. She takes a timid, newborn deer step forward. “Are you… Are you my first clients?”
“Clients?” I look to Mika. “No, we’ve been sent by Madam Kara. We’re here to rescue you,” I say, feeling a bit like Luke when he finds Leia on the Death Star cell block.
“Madam… She sent someone to…?” Akalia’s eyes widen further somehow.
“That’s her,” Mika quips. “Heart shaped pupils, check.”
Aspirant 2: A Sci-Fi Harem Adventure Page 39
