(For story with images see PDF below)
Dungeon Rehab 7
Paul slammed his hammer into the slime. It swung its pod and smashed him once again. The blow sent him crashing to the floor, unconscious. Hal, gasping for breath, had paused to rest and now felt the slime grab him and lift him in the air. Grant turned to run but Ollie grabbed him as well.
Lab
“Looks like they’re all going to die,” Madison said.
“Let’s hope they learn their lesson,” Kim said.
Dungeon
I wish I had some way to make it up to my parents, Eric thought, I wish I had something…
He opened his eyes and grinned. If he could have, he would have laughed.
A notification popped up in Grant’s Status Screen:
Wizard seeks to transfer Potion of Mana Restoration to your Inventory. Do you accept: Y or N.
What? Grant wondered, having forgotten about the treasure from the mirror room.
“Mhhhmmmm!” Eric mumbled through the slime’s tentacle. “Errreng.”
“Oh! Yeah!” Grant called in his soft voice, getting the idea. He accepted the transfer, drank the potion and saw his mana refill, then equipped the hoop earrings he’d sworn he would never wear. They would increase the power of his healing spells. He cast the heal spell, feeling the now familiar wash of pleasure. When he saw the color return to Eric’s face, saw the man’s eyes pop open, Grant squealed.
Eric, who’d been on the verge of passing out, found himself completely healed and energized. He equipped the Wand of Fire, which he’d also gotten from the mirror room but forgotten about . Flames erupted from the wand and washed over Ollie’s base.
Ollie howled as he felt his body melting. He dropped the party, letting them slam to the ground and fled down the hall. Eric sent a blast of fire after him, spreading the flames wide now that none of the party members were in the way, and the slime howled and oozed across the floor, dead.
Eric, Paul and Hal lay– stunned.
The intensity of the battle had sobered Grant right up. Shame consumed him. What the hell was I thinking? He wrapped his arms around his soft chest, his firm breasts squeezing between his slender arms. Feeling the soft swell of his new chest cradled between his arms incited memories of his striptease, his breasts swaying as he danced. It had felt so good, and he’d enjoyed the looks in the eyes of the men, a feeling so powerful he couldn’t deny it, though it slashed at everything he’d believed about himself.
As much as he’d hated his corset, it struck him now as something much better than being topless and shaking his melons in front of the men. He looked to Marlena, only to see the little wolf girl curled up on the floor, a pool of vomit next to her head. In a testament to his changing nature, he felt his heart flutter. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “Oh, Marlena.” He made his way over to the girl, putting one hand on her head while keeping the other arm wrapped across his abundant chest.
“What’s wrong?” Hal asked.
What happened?” The guys all found themselves likewise concerned with the girl. “Is she okay?”
In the lab
Watching in the lab, Madison pumped her fist. “Good. Good.” The selfish thugs were getting humanized. “It’s working,” Madison said.
Kim nodded. “We could be making history.”
“This could have applications beyond criminals.”
In the Dungeon
Grant clicked on Marlena and a message floated above the little girl:
Marlena is suffering from acute alcohol poisoning. It seems the responsible adult who was supposed to be taking care of her is a degenerate and fed her alcohol far before she was ready to experience her first hangover. You are the worst! -2 demerits.
As if primed to confirm the status report, Marlena stirred. “Sick.” She started crying. “My tummy hurts.”
“It’s the wine,” Grant explained to the others. New levels of empathy overwhelmed him. He felt not only Marlena’s suffering but an overwhelming wave of guilt for having allowed this to happen to the innocent little girl. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He helped Marlena sit up and moved her away from the vomit.
“Dizzy,” Marlena said, leaning against Grant, hugging him.
Grant had to do something. He didn’t know if his healing spells could cure a hangover, but he decided to give it a try. He put his hands on Marlena and the magic flowed. Marlena looked up in amazement, a smile spreading across her face. “Magic!”
Grant’s tears of sorrow turned to tears of joy as he hugged Marlena, now feeling a surge of joy and relief.
Back in the lab
Madison found herself intrigued. She hadn’t seen Kim push any buttons, but Grant seemed to be expressing feelings, as were the other men. “Did you make them all feel sad just now?”
“Nope.” Kim pushed all the pleasure inputs to max. She was excited and determined to turn the former the thug, Grant, into a sweet and loving mommy, while the others would learn to be doting dads.
“That’s so sweet,” Madison sighed, looking at Grant’s tear-stained face, enjoying how much he seemed like a nurturing, maternal woman. “I’m starting to really like Divinity.”
“I know, right?”
“I wonder if we could use this to make men in the general population more empathetic,” Kim said. “More compassionate.”
“And to help them remember to leave the seat down.”
The women laughed. While Madison was thinking mostly ironically about it, Kim had much more grandiose ideas. Boys, she thought. They could all spend part of their developmental years as girls, learning to see things from a girl’s perspective. “We could have boys spend time as girls during their formative years, maybe in Victorian Times.”
“That might be a little extreme.” She tossed out another idea: “Marriage counseling.”
“Right? How amazing would it be if people could see from each other’s perspectives?”
While Madison and Kim celebrated their progress and talked excitedly about other applications for what they were discovering, another watcher was not so pleased. The Warden, Connor Warrant, pounded his fist on his desk. He’d watched the scenes from where Grant had kissed the werewolf and then been charmed right up to when he’d been dancing around, his breasts swaying and bouncing.
All of that had been disturbing, but the man’s soft, feminine and maternal mannerisms as he’d heeled and doted over the wolf girl drove him over the edge. “This is sick as hell,” he mumbled. “Turning a man into… into… that…” He’d been familiar with Grant from before the experiment had begun. Given the man’s size and history of violence, he and his staff had been on guard from the moment he’d been processed. He’d been a seething bear of a man, gruff and seemingly permanently angry.
A criminal no doubt, but also a man. “No man deserves this,” Warden Warrant mumbled, cycling back to look at the scene of the kiss. He paused the image of the man trapped in not just a female body, but wearing high heels, a short skirt. Warrant’s eyes traced up and down the long, shapely legs, the plump inviting rise of the man’s rear, the swerve at the small of his back. The formerly big, intimidating man had his hand on the wolf’s chest and gazed up at him, looking just like any excited female, a smile on his pretty face.
My wife hasn’t looked at me like that in 20 years, Warrant thought, unpausing the video and trembling as Grant but his lip and batted his eyes. “No… no… this is so wrong…” Warrant mumbled, but he kept watching, his hand dropping between his legs, squeezing.
“Pretty please?” Grant said in that soft, breathy voice. “You’d be my hero.”
Warrant paused the video and covered his eyes. He felt – attracted to that little elf girl. He found it even more exciting knowing she was a he and he imagined her on her back, moaning, him on top…
“No!” He slammed his laptop closed. “This is an affront to God’s will,” he shouted. His cheeks burned, and he had begun to feel aroused… “This has to stop.”
Back in the Dungeon
Grant held his hair up as Marlena wrapped the corset around his body. As she began to tighten the laces, Kim juked him yet again with an abundance of pleasure. The tighter the corset fitted around his slender frame, the better he felt. He suffered in the awareness that he was posed in an utterly feminine manner but given the second choice was to go around topless, he didn’t feel he had any choice.
In the name of modestly, he’d found a spot where his back was to the men. Should I say something about the dancing? He wondered. He felt so sick the guys had all seen his bare breasts, and he was worried they would get the wrong idea now that he’d flashed them all.
Feeling his hoop earrings brush against his cheek, he put them back in his inventory. They were something he could choose not to wear, and he associated hoop earrings with not just women but a certain kind of woman. He did not like the idea of wearing them.
Marlena cleared her throat. “What did you just do?”
“I don’t want to wear those things,” Grant said.
“Sometimes the girl chooses the look, and sometimes the look chooses the girl. I’m afraid I must insist you wear your earrings. They’re perfect on you.”
Having recently made the poor kid sick, Grant didn’t feel like he could argue with her. The hoop earrings reappeared in his ears. He figured he could take them off later after Marlena forgot about it. He immediately felt more like Cherise, more like a stripper, yet there was something else.
Marlena laughed. “You look perfect!” He’d made her happy. Then, he got another surprise:
DING! +2 Merits. Congratulations on being a good girl!
Eric, Hal and Paul, meanwhile, had gone to examine the stain where the slime had died. “No treasure,” Eric said, kicking at the cave floor. The slime had left a dark, green stain, and the air smelled like chlorophyll.
“Why would a weird blob have treasure?” Paul said in a mocking tone.
“Sometimes they have remnants in them from the creatures they’ve eaten. Coins. Armor. Weapons.”
Hal drifted back to get a better angle where he could enjoy the alluring sight of Grant sitting there with his hands buried in all that blonde hair while Marlena laced him into his corset. Gorgeous and so much a woman. Hal couldn’t help but replay the image of Grant shaking his glorious breasts, smiling, whipping his glittering golden hair around his pretty face.
I bet she’d be a great lay, Hal thought. He wondered how realistic it would feel to make love to a woman here in the VR world. Had the tech nerds who made these kinds of places nailed that?
Then, a new thought: what would it be like to do it as a girl? He’d wondered sometimes. He even dated a girl once who’d wanted to do some role-playing, but he’d refused, mostly because he didn’t trust her to keep it a secret if he let her dress him up as Little Bo Peep, which was some kind of specific kink she had.
Eric checked the time to complete level and get the bonus: 2:05. They’d lost nearly an hour and a half. “We still have two hours to get the bonus, and it doesn’t look too far.”
He pulled up the map for everyone to see, pointing out the relatively short looking tunnel. “Maybe we can still make it.”
“Worth a try,” Paul said. “Fair Maiden? You about ready?”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Grant called back as he ran his brush through his hair.
“Dude, seriously,” Hal called. “We don’t have all day.”
“You’re worse than my ex-wife.” Paul added.
Grant glared at the guys. Maybe there’s a reason she dumped you, he thought. “I lost my buffs, so I need to fix it.” The guys looked back with dumb, ape-like expressions. “It makes me more powerful.”
The guys rolled their eyes. Women.
Grant saw the +1 Level Buff return and stashed his mirror and brush. He couldn’t admit to the boys that he’d also discovered his hair would get tangles and knots if he wasn’t careful.
Marlena helped Grant get to his feet. He smoothed his skirt.
“You’re gorgeous,” Hal said, actually meaning it as a compliment, once more hoping to get the bouncy little female to agree to a roll in the hay.
“Bite me,” Grant said, walking past him.
“I’ll wear her down,” Hal thought, letting his eyes roam up and down Grant’s backside. “Use the old Halster Charm.”
Men being men, Paul and Eric were also plotting to be Grant’s first.
The party made their way down the tunnel. As they progressed, they found more and more spider webs stretching across the passage. Hal cut them away with his swords. They stuck to the steel, and he had to keep cleaning the webs off. “Why can’t you just burn these things with that wand?”
“I only have limited charges, and I want to save them for the spiders.”
Hal came to a turn in the cavern. There was an obstruction on the map up ahead, and he now saw that it was a plateau. He held up a hand to keep the others back. On top of the plateau was a huge spider the size of a bear, and the area all around it was smothered in webs. Behind the plateau, he could see the tunnel opening up into a much larger cavern. That was the spider queen’s lair.
Once he’d assessed the situation, he made his way back to the others and explained what he’d seen. “She’s guarding the entrance,” Paul said.
“Yeah. We need to figure out a way to take it out, so the whole spider’s nest doesn’t know we’re coming.”
“Fire wand?” Hal suggested, having fixated on the idea the wand was the solution to every problem.
Eric thought about it. “In these games, webs are usually flammable, so that could create an inferno. The spiders in the big cave would see the smoke and flames. They would be warned. I think we should try and sneak in to free Marlena’s family.”
“Once again, I feel it needs to be pointed out that we want to kill things,” Paul said. “That’s how we get experience.” He pointed to the map. “Suppose we set the fire. The spiders swarm. Isn’t this a much better place to make a stand? The entrance is narrow. We can pick them off as they come.”
“They might not charge into fire,” Hal said. “They’re afraid of it. I saw it in a movie once.”
“Dude, I was backing up your plan.” Paul shook his head. “What the fuck?”
“How big was the spider you saw?” Grant asked.
“What difference does that make? It was big,” Hal said.
“I’m wondering how many could fit into the tunnel. Would it be small enough to create a bottle neck?”
“It’s the size of a… I don’t know. A German Shepherd? So, a few could come in at a time.”
“Don’t forget they can crawl on the walls and ceilings,” Grant said.
“How do you know?” Paul said.
“She’s right,” Eric said. “They’re just like any spiders– only bigger.”
“Again. How do you know?” Paul said again. “This is not the real world.”
“Dude. Just fucking lose the attitude. What makes you think these spiders can’t crawl on the ceiling?”
“Nothing,” Paul said. “I’m just saying we don’t know.”
“I do know,” Marlena chimed in. “I have been in the spider cave. They can crawl on anything.” She moved closer to Grant and wrapped her hands around his arm.
“See?” Grant said.
“The clock is ticking.” Eric took a deep breath, struggling not to lose his temper and blow up on all the idiots.
“Marlena.” Grant twisted his hair around his fingers. “How many spiders are in the cave? Do you remember?”
“I think…” She put her first to her chin, like a grownup pondering the secrets of the universe. “This many.” She now held up all ten of her fingers. “And they have poison!”
Grant tossed his blonde hair. “Here’ my proposal.” He moved around the other side of the map, so it was floating between he and the rest of the party. He’d been looking at his stats and had realized that the charisma score made him more persuasive—especially when it came to men. “Eric magic missiles the spider.”
“What if that doesn’t kill it?” Eric asked.
“Doesn’t matter. We want the spiders to know we’re here, and we want them to swarm.”
“Jesus,” Paul said. “You really are a blonde.”
“Just cause she’s a girl doesn’t mean she doesn’t know anything,” Marlena shouted.
Paul laughed, and it was a booming laugh that echoed up and down the hall. “Girls stick together, right Divinity?”
“Lay off her,” Hal said, seeing an opportunity to continue his charm offensive. He stepped between the two.
“I don’t need anyone to defend me…” Grant said, even as he felt himself begin to tingle. He was coming to love having guys fight over him, but now was not the time. To enhance his charisma with the men, he made his voice breathier and higher pitched. “Just give me a sec to explain my plan, okay?” He shrugged his little round shoulders and pouted. “Pretty please?”
The guys fell under Grant’s spell. “Go head, doll,” Paul said. “I’m all ears.”
“Don’t forget, I’m the one who stood up for you.”
Grant giggled, putting on his full-on all girl flirting powers.
“Guys. Quiet. We don’t want to alert the spider.” Eric looked down the hall and saw the webs quiver. “Oh, shit.”
“Um, so,” Grant tossed his hair again. He missed the days he was bigger and stronger than everybody else, when he could just push people around behind the threat of a fist. The old Grant hated all this, but he wanted to boss these two goons around, and for now he would use the tools he had at his disposal. He arched his back and thrust his chest forward.
“Oh, shit. Guys?” The webs continued to quiver. “The spider…”
“The lady has the floor.” Hal made a small and ridiculous bow. “Please, do not interrupt her.”
The spider emerged.
“SPIDER!” Eric shouted, pointing. “Look out!”
“SPIDER!” Marlena screamed, having looked where Hal was pointing.
Several things happened at once. Kim flooded Grant’s brain, so he found himself terrified at the sight of the spider and screamed, turning and running to Eric, throwing himself into Eric’s arms.
The spider leapt and dug its fangs into Hal’s shoulder, flooding his body with poison. Hal felt his body go completely limp and slumped to the floor. Paul now stood, hammer in hand, blocking the passage between the spider and the party.
The spider chittered and fired webs that smothered Paul’s body, and he struggled to free himself from the sticky webs as the spider approached.