Fighting Them There

The last time that there were skill descriptions for Max's party members was chapter 8. There will be another bite at the apple at the end of chapter 12. I have ideas of how to format them so that they are legible on the site.

### BEGIN CHAPTER 11 ###

Fiona woke in darkness, drenched in sweat. Again. She'd woken three other times that night. She normally slept with a sheet rather than a blanket, and spending the night sandwiched between two tall hunters had her overheating. It was the work of a moment to use her darkness magic to chill herself to the point of comfort, but she needed to be

awake

for that to be an option. Her feelings about sharing the bed with Max and Sophie were complex: despite the severe thermostat problem, it

was

sexually fulfilling and even kind of

romantic

to be used by the couple. She woke up cuddled up into Max's side, with Sophie enveloping her from behind. The blond amazon had her arm over Fiona's breasts - breasts that had been made large by Max's class. If it wasn't for the heat problem, she could stay that way forever.

Max was her party's support, and she was designated as his slave for purposes of being a recipient for his boosting seals and other support abilities, and after the events of the preceding night, she felt that her designation as a slave had become rather more literal. Sophie was their party's vanguard, the strongest front liner in their crop. But perhaps more importantly, she was Max's girlfriend, the woman Max actually loved. Fiona didn't pretend to understand their relationship, Max's class was turning them into sex slaves, probably had already completed the process for Sophie. But while the Valkyrie would willingly,

eagerly

submit to any sexual demands Max might make, he insisted on deferring to her.

She nudged Max in the shoulder. "Max. Max!" she whisper-shouted into his ear. When he grunted and stirred, she pressed on. "Max, I'm your slave, right?" Even if she wasn't becoming addicted to his semen or however it worked, she would still have acknowledged that he was handsome. Tall for a human, and well muscled like a swimmer or a swordsman, he was someone who had trained to become a front liner. The supernatural strength he'd received from his class was much less than he'd expected, his trained abilities with a sword weren't used very much by their party. Up close and personal, his muscles felt nice in her hands, even the small amount of supernatural strength he had was more than plenty for her to feel overwhelmed in his arms.

He scrunched up his face. She was wrapped up enough with contemplating his body that she almost didn't notice he was awake enough to talk. "Wha- um, yeah. Of course. You can be my slave for as long as you want." The fundamentally nonsensical nature of that claim was not lost on Fiona, though Max did seem to genuinely mean it. It was of course the case that Max could revoke her status as his slave at any time and she had no power to resign from the position. He had a limited number of designated slaves, and it was ultimately his choice if he wanted to designate someone else in her place. Rosalita and Thelenia had asked him to let them go, and he had, but there was no obligation for him to do so. And Fiona thought it likely that she was rapidly reaching the point where she would be

unable

to ask him to end their contract. "Wait, what time is it?" He blinked in the darkness. She could see his confusion because her class' eyes of night skill let her see in darkness, but to him the room was drowned in darkness.

"It's three and a half hours after midnight." The planet they were on did not spin at the same rate as Earth, and so there were a lot of ways to describe the flow of time. Using seconds, minutes, and hours the same as they were done on Earth could be done, but only by resetting to zero in the middle of the local night every day. Max's expression betrayed that he was confused and a little bit annoyed that he had been woken up at such a time. "Can I be on the other side of you?" Max had been up front with his idea that Fiona should sleep in the middle. His class was Master, and the women of his party got literal power from swallowing his semen, but he didn't want to cheat on his girlfriend. Apparently he had convinced himself that a woman sleeping with him

and also Sophie

at the same time wasn't cheating. It was kind of adorable, in a crazy and stupid way.

The look that passed across Max's face was worried and sad. "Do you not like Sophie touching you?" Sophie looked like a comic character drawn by a skilled but horny teenager, easily the hottest woman in their crop, almost certainly the hottest woman at Camp Acheron, and very plausibly the hottest woman on the whole planet. Not that there were that many women on the planet, the entirety of North America only supplied two military bases, South America only one. The truth was that she liked Sophie touching her, she liked it a lot. "Was she too aggressive when she sucked my Essence out of your pussy?" Fiona's sex had been left entirely hairless and smooth by Max's class and the aesthetic preferences it imposed. The other women got to keep a landing strip or a cute shape of pubic hair, but for Fiona it was all soft and smooth. Sophie had rubbed her face all over it, and then stuck her tongue deep into her vault while pinching Fiona's clit to near pain. Sophie hadn't just drunk Max's cum out of her, but Fiona's as well. Even though Fiona had already been fucked into jelly by Max, had ecstatically babbled out a bunch of oaths of submission to Max, Sophie had promised to break her even more. And she had.

She shook her head, only belatedly realizing that Max couldn't see her as well as she could see him. "No, no. Sophie's great. I can see why she's the head girl in your harem." She sighed. It was surprisingly difficult to just

tell

him that she didn't want to go along with his plan. It made her worried what might happen if he upgraded her more. He'd enhanced just

one

of her skills, and she had

begged

him to dominate her sexually. She'd pledged herself as his slave, his property. Max had told her that he didn't think it counted, that it wasn't real. But it had certainly

felt

real when he was fucking her, and it

still

felt real while her pussy was empty. "No... um... I'm just used to sleeping alone, and you two are really warm. I think I need to hang an arm or leg off the side of the bed."

Max chuckled. He also blushed, but he didn't make any attempt to conceal that because it hadn't occurred to him that his rosy cheeks were plainly visible to her in the darkness. "I'm so sorry, Fiona. I'm trying to make sure that everyone is comfortable with everything we do, and her I think I've made you uncomfortable the old fashioned way by just making the bed physically uncomfortable." He closed his eyes and sighed. "Sorry, I'm not very good at this. Maybe it's better if Sophie gets the middle?"

"Surely not, Master!" It had escaped her lips without thought. Then it was her turn to blush. "Sorry, Max." There was a stirring on the other side. Fiona winced at the evidence that her outburst had woken the Valkyrie.

"What was that?" Sophie asked blearily. "What

time

is it?" On having the answer told to her, she became annoyed. "Fuck!" After a short pause, she spoke again, but her tone had changed. "That's it, isn't it? The insatiable Fiona wants more fucking, wants to be dominated more thoroughly. It's even... oh right, she wants to be

dominated

. So by waking you up at fuck-off-o'clock, she's requesting that you punish her. I read about this, it's called 'bratting.' The slave does purposefully annoying and disobedient things in order to get punished." She dramatically dropped herself back on the pillow. "Get it over with. Twenty lashes with a wet noodle or whatever."

The proposal was not accepted by Max. "We're absolutely

not

going to do anything like that. I know that the acts of chastisement give you pleasure and progression of your binding seal when I restrain or beat you, but I'm absolutely not doing any of that without knowing that you're onboard. If you want me to beat you, tell me that you want me to beat you, and choose what you want me to beat you with. Don't try to play head games where I try to guess whether and what kind of beatings you want. I'm not going to guess right very often, and I can't see that ending well." In the darkness, his expression was still completely sincere.

Perplexed with how serious everything had gotten, Fiona turned toward Sophie. "Nothing like that. I was just suggesting that we be on each side of Max. Because it's too warm for me in between you guys." Feeling like she needed to explain herself, she continued. "I usually sleep with a sheet and no blanket. So I was thinking I should hang off the edge of the bed." It sounded lame even to her own ears.

The blond woman laughed. "Oh dear. Actually, I think you might be on to something." Unlike Fiona and Max, whose second line classes gave very little in the way of supernatural strength, Sophie was a B-tier vanguard. On top of that, Max's claiming seal increased physical strength, and Sophie's claiming seal had progressed more than anyone's. She was very strong, like comic book

superhero

strong. Also, she could fly. And she used these two abilities to literally float herself over Fiona like the Tooth Fairy or a paralysis demon and then lift her out of her space. It was a surprisingly comforting thing, being held aloft by the Valkyrie. Sophie was powerful, but she was also gorgeous and soft in precisely the right manners and places. While Fiona was just being carried half a meter, she still felt like she was a damsel being rescued by the caped hero. It was romantic in a way she wouldn't have expected it to be.

It wasn't what Max had expected either. When Sofie had finished rearranging everyone, he felt womanly flesh on both sides and became concerned. "Are you sure about this, Sofie? We agreed to threesomes where the third was with me

and you

. If you're both just pleasuring me, that seems like a really big, really selfish escalation." His voice betrayed genuine concern. "That seems like a big step to take in the middle of the night."

A harrumph came from the Valkyrie. "Your seals dictate what is selfish and what is charitable. You don't have them, you don't feel what it is like. But for us, for your

slaves

, it is a simple fact of life that watching you get amorous with our sister-slaves is the act of..." She'd been on such a roll, and then she'd ruined it by forgetting the weird names of the progression acts. "

Fuck

, I'm such an idiot sometimes." Her shame was compounded when she realized that she'd triggered the self-disparagement progression of her envy seal on accident. The

act of supplication

, which for some reason her sleep-deprived brain was happy to provide her with.

Seeing the predicament of the Valkyrie, Fiona assisted. "Act of demonstration. We are rewarded for watching by the act of demonstration, but we get nothing for being watched. For us, exhibitionism is done for charity, voyeurism is for personal gain." She pressed her softness into Max for emphasis.

"Right," Sophie agreed so she could proceed, "so if we both get made love to by you, that's allowing us to be both selfish and charitable. Both in the lovemaking itself, and in our seals." She let that point sink in, which took a bit of time because of the horrendous hour. "But that is not the only way the seals dictate our behavior in bed. The binding seal has an act where we make pledges..."

"The act of austerity." Fiona supplied.

"Right. That one." Sophie acknowledged the Night Caller's contribution. "And it means that if we tell you what we're going to do before we do it, we get rewarded. It progresses our seal that boosts tenacity and vigor. So when I tell you that we're going to rub our tits all over your body from both directions until we get your flagstaff to bullhead city, that's just what we're going to do. And we're going to love it."

She made a powerful argument. And when Fiona joined in, the argument became even stronger.

Elsewhere in the building, Danny was awoken by sounds coming from Max's room. "Fuck, what

time

is it?" he asked the universe at large.

####

Daniel looked at the crude targets that Max had set up. "So why do you want

me

to watch you swing that thing?"

Max held the whip he had looted from a Tartarian corpse and they both looked at it. "It doesn't respond the way normal dungeon equipment does. It has a status window, but it won't fully open for me. It makes electric shocks when I crack it, but not when Sophie does. But mostly I want you here because of what happened when the Tartarian cracked it in the dungeon basement." A wave of dominating psychic energy had incapacitated Oscar and Kaitlin until Alex had slain the enemy rune-bearer with his sword.

Danny looked alarmed. "I was under the impression that your entire party was made out of women who want to suck your dick. I don't want to suck your dick." The Tartarian in question had waved around an engorged phallus of ridiculous proportions, and the psychic assault had been focused on that part of his body specifically.

"Exactly," Max grinned, "the domination pulse didn't affect you, and you aren't one of my party members. If I told any of

them

to get on their knees, they'd just do it." He shuddered. "The big problem is the act of fealty. If I tell them to do something and they do it, they progress their claiming seals. So I always have to be really careful that I don't tell them to do anything that they don't already want to do, or it becomes coercive."

Danny gave him a world of side eye. "Max, you genuinely have the most first world problems I've ever heard of." He seemed inclined to kvetch more. "I would be so happy to have just

one

beautiful woman who wanted my dick as much as any of your slaves want yours. She wouldn't even have to be a slave! I mean, the least hot woman in your party is like an LA seven." Danny didn't elaborate on which woman he thought was the least hot, and Max didn't ask.

Max gesticulated. "If you want a girlfriend, just go get a girlfriend. You're young, you're reasonably attractive, and you're a C-tier defender. You have super strength, super speed, and super endurance. The dating pool is small if you're limiting yourself to members of our crop, but there's a couple thousand support staff. Even the cooks and janitors on this planet are all guardians who've passed Space Force basic, there are plenty of attractive women. And I

guarantee

that you're a physically superior specimen to

thousands

of men on the base. Think of all those men who can't lift a Harley Davidson one handed. Pick any of the hot sergeants and ask them out. They'll say yes."

The Sentry face palmed, his thumb and middle finger massaging his epicanthal folds. "You were just saying how you felt uncomfortable being in a mismatched power relationship with your harem of super women. How do you think

I

would feel dating a woman who wasn't a hunter? Someone who didn't have

any

durability from their class? It would be like dating a porcelain doll." Then it was Danny's turn to shudder. "And while Camp Acheron does have other crops from last winter and last year, I don't think I have to tell you why I think dating a woman from an advanced crop is a bad idea when we're still in chest debt. That really does leave just the twenty-three women in our crop. Eight of them are aliens, three of the humans are in your harem already, and I don't think it's a great idea to date women in my own party, which scratches off Kaitlin, Alice, and Lupe."

Shaking his head, Max disagreed. "Ulzhari and Chaeryn were pretty naive when they joined, but they are enthusiastic to learn. There's no internet porn on the other home worlds, but the other Alliance races are... compatible. Completely. You don't have to swipe left on all the aliens." Max was reminded that he actually

did

have to spend Capitulation on Chaeryn and Ulzhari, even though he was concerned about how they would handle the submissive urge that would accompany that.

"Not all of us are as adventurous as

you,

Max," Danny confided, "personally I think think that wanting my hypothetical girlfriend to be a human woman is not an unreasonably high bar to set. But it doesn't leave a lot of options. Like, Chloe? Sandra?

Yalena?

"

Affecting a look of pretend puzzlement, Max retorted. "What's wrong with Yalena? I'm sure that if you submitted a ten point list outlying the pros and cons of sleeping with you, that she'd see reason and hop right in the sack." The two of them shared a laugh. It wasn't entirely fair, but it wasn't entirely

un

fair either.

Using the whip was different than Max had expected. One thing he'd noticed early on in his study was that movies that had whips tended to use computer animation to make the whips look cool on screen, but that those depictions weren't physically accurate. Older movies used real whips, but their poor resolution and crummy frame rates made it difficult for Max to identify what was being done. He'd been close to despair when he discovered Lash Larue. He was a cowboy action hero who had used a bullwhip to do movie stunts in the middle of the twentieth century. Max wasn't encouraged because the movies were any good or because anything could be gleaned out of the choppy cinematography of the techniques being used, but merely because of the life story involved. Larue had done his own stunts, but also his skills with the whip were self taught on the job. When he'd gotten the part in his first movie, Lash Larue had never held a whip in his life, and had needed to learn proficiency in time for shooting the scenes. Getting good enough with a whip to open bottles, cut newspapers, and grab people was something which factually took

weeks

, not years. And that was for someone who

didn't

have supernatural agility from a hunter's rune. Max's first attempts were embarrassing failures, but he persevered.

The whip itself was two and a half meters of braided, black, flexible material. Max wasn't sure if it was leather or licorice or what, but it was strong and it was supple. Like any whip, it could be made to make a cracking sound when part of it traveled faster than the speed of sound. The speed of sound was very slightly faster at Camp Acheron than it was on Earth, but getting the end of the whip to exceed that speed was still pretty easy. There was a lot of leverage and torque available on a two and a half meter string, and abruptly change the inclination of the handle would make the end move very quickly indeed when the wave had propagated along the length of the whip. Whenever Max made it crack, there was also an electric spark. Danny was actually much stronger and faster than Max because of the generous benefits of being a C-tier defender, but there were no electrical arcs despite the fact that he had no difficulties making the whip crack. That itself was a curiosity, but it left Danny fairly uninterested in holding the whip anymore.

Having full ownership of the whip, Max tried various tricks with it. Most of them didn't work very well, being more akin to flopping around than having an extended arm. A few times he was able to get the crack, and thus the lightning bolt, to happen right next to an intended target. The results were impressive, but it was unreliable enough that he was afraid that the shock had struck where he'd wanted it to on accident rather than by design.

When it was time to go to lunch, Max wasn't where he wanted to be, but he could see a road to get there. "It's not ready to take into a dungeon, but it seems like something that might be sooner rather than later." He turned a serious face to Danny Hu. "So, at any point during that did you feel..."