You content yourself with punishing her by trying to draw a reaction from her as you play with her, searching for all her sensitive spots. You remember most of them from last week, but it's fun to map out her pussy with her fingers and memorize each and every one of her most sensitive spots. There's her clit, of course, although you try not to play with that too much; it feels like cheating when you make her gasp with a quick flick to it. She still enjoys it when you squeeze her lips together, too— but not nearly as much as she does when you gently rub the length of one of your fingers between her lips. The first time you do that, you draw an audible gasp from her— and that's before your hand brushes her clit.
In fact, you end up having so much fun that you miss it when the clock rings to mark two o'clock, and the cessation of today's session. Victoria has to forcibly drag your hand away so she can put her jacket back on, causing you to look around, confused. Not that she minds; you can feel that with a quick brush of your power. In fact, she doesn't mind at all. You can feel how strong her lust has grown— her shame has diminished, and whatever that warm feeling of hers is, it's grown even stronger.
"Come on," she says quietly once everyone else has left. "Is anyone picking you up today?"
You shake your head. "No, I take the bus home."
Victoria hums. "I'll fly you home then," she tells you. "If that's okay with you. I'll explain along the way."
You nod once, sharply. "Sure," you say. If she hadn't asked permission, you might have been miffed, but she did.
The two of you head outside and to a nearby alleyway, whereupon Victoria sweeps you up into her arms, bridal style and flies in the direction you point out. Silence flows between the two of you for a moment as the girl tries to gather her thoughts.
Eventually, a few blocks later, she speaks up.
"You know I'm in a relationship, right?" she asks. You nod. You know— you just don't care. "Right. Well, I'm dating someone, and I lo— I like him a lot. Not that I don't like you a lot, too," she hastens to add. "But I've known Dean for a long time, and I'm actually dating him."
"Yet you still let me play with you," you say dryly. She raises an eyebrow at how you describe it, but doesn't comment on that.
"Yeah," she says instead. "We have a bit of an open relationship. It was my idea a while back, when Dean was having troubles— well, you don't need to know about that. But anyway, he was having some troubles with some other women, and we talked it over, and came to an agreement we could live with. We set four rules."
You look up at her quizzically. "Hm," you comment. "What are the rules?"
Her hands jerk, as though she went to count them off her fingers before remembering she's still carrying you. "Oops. Well, they're pretty simple rules. One, no kissing. It gets too messy. Two, no nudity. Underwear is fine, but we can't show our privates to anyone else. Three, no sex. We can, like, dry hump, but that and fondling's as far as we can go. And four, no falling in love. Goes back to rule one. Too messy."
Considering that, you tilt your head. "Huh," you say. "I'm in an open relationship myself, but we don't have rules like that."
"... Huh." Victoria stares down at you for a moment, then clears her throat and begins to descend. She comes to a stop in an alleyway, one you recognize as only being a couple of blocks away from your house. "Well, okay, I didn't expect you to be in an open relationship too. But, yeah. That's why I had to stop you."
"Mm." You make no moves to get down from her arms, and she doesn't try to put you down, just floats in the middle of the alleyway, looking down at you. Then, abruptly— before she can react— you lean up and kiss her on the mouth.
She doesn't react for a moment, stunned. Then she shakes her head and lets out an amused scoff. "I should have seen that coming," she says tiredly. "I don't know why I expected you to let this go that easily."
"That was silly of you, yeah," you agree, and kiss her again. She's passive at first, not stopping you, but not participating, either. Then, she slowly begins to kiss you back— gently, barely moving, just barely opening her mouth and nipping lightly at your upper lip. You take the chance to quickly swipe your tongue against her lower lip. She shives against you, and this time, after you break for air she's the one who leans forward and kisses you.
You don't let it evolve to a full make-out session, keeping the kisses gentle and soft, trying to tease her out of her shell. She responds, shying back whenever you get too aggressive, but otherwise fully participating in the kisses.
Eventually, you lean back, satisfied. Victoria blinks slowly, as though waking from a spell, and gently places you on the ground. She can't resist leaning in for one last kiss before taking a step back, though.
"I'll see you next Sunday, Taylor." She sighs, although her disappointment isn't aimed at you, and gently rises into the air.
You're tempted to whistle happily as you step out of the alleyway and begin making your way home— it's not too far from here, although for a moment you wonder how Victoria knew where you lived (the answer becomes clear momentarily: there's a bus stop just outside the alleyway, the same bus stop you wait at for your bus).
Well. That went better than expected, you think to yourself.
Eventually, though, all weekends must pass. Night falls, and you find yourself falling back into your planning sessions as you look to the week ahead.
You honestly haven't used your power that much recently. Minor uses of it, but they've been small enough to not trigger your headache. By now, it's faded entirely. You're hesitant to use it too much, because you know that it could come back with a vengeance if you push yourself too far, but the option is there again.
But you can't determine that in a moment. Instead, you turn to your notepad and begin planning to... [Pick two options. Tutoring with Madison is locked in for the next two weeks, as per an earlier vote.]
[] Investigate the situation at Winslow further. You've seen the situation through a political lens; now it's time to investigate the situation yourself. You can't exactly go around asking everyone, but you can try and observe, in class and without. See how many people are in gangs, what they're doing, who they hang out with; all that kind of stuff. Anything you can use when you begin planning out how to deal with the problems here.
— Success chance: 50%
— General results: Grants ground-level perspective on the situation at Winslow. Introduces pre-trigger Aisha as a character, but does not yet open her for recruitment. Opens up later votes in which recruitment of Rune will become available.
— On a success: Taylor is a master of subterfuge, by which she means, everyone's used to Taylor being weird. Nobody cares that she's paying attention to them.
— On a failure: Gang members take note of Taylor's sudden interest in them. Will force Sophia to intervene behind the scenes to prevent the situation from going bad for Taylor. Note: Forcing this intervention too often will result in Shadow Stalker intervening in Taylor's life, potentially a bad thing if Sophia's recruitment has not progressed enough.
[] Sit down with that girl you began manipulating last week— Charlotte. Your romantic life is getting entangled enough as it is, between Madison, Sophia and Victoria; you don't intend on romancing Charlotte. But you could always use another friend.
— Success chance: 40%
— General results: Increases Charlotte's Loyalty by 2.
— On a success: Charlotte will be willing to participate in conversations on a semi-regular basis. Hooray for acquaintances!
— On a failure: Raises the general state of alarm by 2.
[] Continue with your time spent at the clinic. It was boring last week, but the only way they'll give you more engaging tasks is if you keep showing up and prove you're reliable. Plus, there was that cute girl there last week. Who knows when she'll show up again?
— Success chance: 65%
— General results: Taylor will spend more time at the clinic. Progresses further down the path of giving Taylor actually interesting things to do there.
— On a success: Doctor Fitzgerald will ask Amy to attend the clinic for a few hours to assist him with treating victims of a minor vigilante attack. Will provide Taylor and Amy more chances for interactions.
— On a failure: Taylor will have to focus on stacking pill boxes. Will probably result in me just summarizing the whole thing in 200 words.
[] Find a part-time job you can do after school. It'll be difficult, but... you're being forced to admit that you need money. Not only do you really need to be able to be able to take Madison out on dates, you're pretty sure that if you'd had a cellphone by now, you could have given Victoria your number today and progressed further with her. But since you can't steal the money from anyone— and given the talk about Rune punishing people, you're not even going to steal from Brotherhood members— you need to earn it honestly: by actually working for it.
— Success chance: 55%.
— Special note: If this option is chosen concurrently with attending the clinic, chances will raise by 20%. Additionally, Taylor's progression through the clinic's volunteer ranks will progress faster.
— General results: Taylor continues existing.
— On a success: Taylor will continue existing, but will also have a part-time job doing some basic maintenance and customer service work for a local movie theatre two days a week. Hooray for menial drudgery.
— On a failure: Taylor's jobless life continues unabated. Hail the corporate system.
Spoiler: Stat Gains/Losses
Stat gains:
Madison Clements:
+1 Affection
+1 Lust
+1 Submission
Victoria Dallon:
+2 Affection
+1 Lust
+2 Loyalty
Spoiler: Bonuses Achieved
For rolling 50 or higher points above the target threshold, you have received additional benefits. These benefits are:
— A modification to an existing scene, in which rather than wearing skimpier panties, Victoria wore no panties in anticipation of Taylor playing with her.
— Further understanding of Victoria's current mental state, and how her unconscious decision to cheat on Dean has affected her and how Taylor's presence soothes her.
— Modified Victoria's stat gains, dropping the increase in Theatricality for the more important gain of Affection.
1.14
> Success chance: 65%.
> Necessary roll: 35. Rolled: 98. Success.
> Success chance: 75%.
> Necessary roll: 25. Rolled: 67. Success.
> Success chance: 20%.
> Necessary roll: 80. Rolled: 53. Failure.
By the time you make it to your locker on Monday morning, your high from the success of your seduction of Victoria has crashed, and you're back to obsessing over your relationship with Madison. Exacerbating this is the slight headache you developed over the weekend; it's not bad, but you're becoming kind of paranoid about stretching your powers too far. You've seen what happens when someone ignores a headache for too long, during the aftermath of your Mom's death. The stress Dad had gone under had resulted in him developing severe headaches that had left him crippled for days until you'd made another trip down to buy high-strength painkillers.
Absently, you wonder if your late-night study sessions have been helping your headaches at all, but you dismiss the thought. It's not like you can afford to stop them even if they were making them worse. You get most of your seduction and manipulations done at school.
Madison seems slightly subdued when you meet with her in first period. You know it's probably a bad idea, but when you see her downcast face, you can't help but sit there and pull her into a hug anyway, at least until the teacher glares at you for disrupting his class. You try not to make a big deal about your reluctance to let go of her, but Madison seems to get the idea anyway, and gives you a small smile.
Unfortunately, you're not able to sit next to her in any other class, so the next time you'll be able to sit next to her is during lunch. You're growing wary of sitting next to her at lunch— not only because you're afraid of what some of the gang members at school might do to you if they get it in their head that you're a deviant who needs to be put down, but also because you're getting a little bit worried about how easily Madison is neglecting her friends in order to spend her time with you. Not that you're necessarily against the idea of Madison devoting all her time for you— the thought does have a certain appeal. Hmm...
Regardless, you do have other issues to attend to. And principal amongst them is the girl sitting next to you now, in fourth-period Chemistry; Sophia Hess.
Once, the thought of being assigned to the same project as Sophia would have caused you to break into a cold sweat. Now, there's a certain appeal to it. Not only because it gives you the perfect opportunity to gently tug at her loyalty without having to be obvious in your staring at her, it's mostly because it gives you the chance to actually learn about the girl.
For instance: Sophia is a very aggressive girl. You were already aware of this, having once been the recipient of her cruelty, but it manifests in other ways, too. She gets competitive at so much as the slightest hint that somebody might be better at something than her. It makes you feel a little cruel to admit it, but you take a certain perverse delight in rubbing your academic accomplishments in her face. She looks so cute when she bunches her nose up and sneers half-heartedly at you.
But there's more to her than that. She's a lot smarter than she gives herself credit for, for instance. You're far ahead of her in academic rankings, but you don't have much to do other than study and spend time with Madison. Sophia does.
"Track keeps me pretty busy," she confides to you quietly during Monday's Chemistry lesson. You've been making light talk with the girl about your hobbies, and the topic had eventually swung around to what the two of you do in your time after school. "We meet most days after school at four, and it doesn't let up until eight most days. Sometimes not until as late as eleven. Weekends, too, but we get more time off those days."
You raise your eyebrows at her, sneaking a peek down at her legs. "Well, I can't argue with the results," you note.
She gives you a sly grin. "Didn't think you'd complain, Hebert. But yeah, it keeps me pretty busy."
You nod. "Seems like it," you say. "I have to admit, it's impresive that you manage to keep your grades up as high as you do."
