Fighting Them There Ch. 13

### Begin Chapter 13 ###

When Max bit into the burger, many kinds of sauces came squirting out onto his hands. It was messy and he loved it. The burger bar had offered many condiments and toppings, and he'd basically put all of it on. Chili, ketchup, mustard, relish, mayonnaise, garlic-mayonnaise, barbecue sauce, ranch dressing, onions, cheese, different cheese, guacamole, tomato, jalapeños, lettuce, bacon, and bean sprouts. Was it a good idea? Absolutely not. Was it delicious? Absolutely yes. And he'd already eaten one just like it. A third was not out of the question. He'd been off food with a tube down his nose for several days, and now that he could eat again we wanted to eat all the food. Traditional advice was to "take it easy" once back on solid food, but he was a hunter with magically increased vigor. He wasn't going to be defeated by condiments.

All of his party members looked concerned, but Ulzhari and Chaeryn seemed actively impressed. The reason was almost certainly the jalapeños, which carried a warning for aliens. While they were a mild pickled pepper by human standards, eating them would be a painful experience for any elf or orc. The canteen also had to mark anything containing cloves, nutmeg, or cinnamon for the same reason. Despite all of the strangeness of going to other worlds, possibly the strangest experience was seeing a warning label on pumpkin pie. He would have thought there'd be something similar that went the other way, but apparently there wasn't anything discovered so far. The most challenging foods from the other home worlds were just sour or bitter, and almost any human could find them palatable - at least with the addition of sugar or rice.

Confirming that the peppers had inspired her awed expression, Chaeryn chimed in. "The human ability to simply eat blister berries is always fascinating to watch. It's a reminder of the resilience and endurance we expect from humans." Given his recent time in the infirmary, Max didn't feel very resilient or enduring, but apparently elves and orcs who didn't have a hunter's mark and the magical increases to stamina that implied found it difficult to keep up with humans on long distance hikes.

"I'm definitely looking forward to using Max's endurance." Miriam said without a single hint of shame. Max was nowhere near as nonchalant, and blanched noticeably at her aggressive insinuation. "Oh, come on," the redhead objected, "after what we did, we're way past 'Shy Max.' You've actually conquered my ass. I'm like, literally you're bitch now, don't make it weird."

He contemplated Miriam's outburst. "You're right," he said slowly, his hands and face still covered with burger fixings, "I haven't been contributing much for several days. I know you all have needs, especially after your submissive urges have been activated. The responsibilities of my class don't really end when we leave the dungeon. So whatever you guys need, I'm the support, I'll be there for you." The import of his statement may have been slightly undermined by the ketchup and sundry dripping off of his chin. "So please, everyone, tell me what you'd like me to do for you." He turned to Sophie first, but she demurred.

Put on the spot, the women looked at each other and at their food. Several started to say something but swallowed it in embarrassment. Fiona was the first to muster the courage to present. "I think... and obviously I know that I need Sophie's permission for this... but I'd like to have more of the girlfriend experience." Chaeryn and Ulzhari seemed confused. Miriam's eyes bulged with worry, looking with trepidation at the faces of Max and Sophie. A wide range of emotions played on the Valkyrie's face: real rage swallowed by regret and resignation. "At this point, my pussy belongs to Max," the Night Caller continued, "I can't have a boyfriend of my own. So I need someone to watch movies with, to tell me that my new clothes look cute, to listen to the songs I like and pretend to like them too. Not just to fight and fuck all the time, I want to go camping."

Miriam pounded her fist on the table. "Dammit Fi! You can find love and get married after we retire. Don't fucking ruin this for us!"

"No." Sophie declared. "No, Fiona's right." The blond woman didn't look happy, but she continued. "We don't know if this slave stuff ever wears off. We have to treat it like we're going to be harem sisters forever. When we're out of the barracks, we're probably going to live together. We need... chores rotations and date nights. Bed rotations even." She looked like she was ready to cry.

Sensing that they were on uncomfortable ground, Max spoke slowly and with frequent pauses to look for cues from the others. "None of you agreed to marry me. Not even Sophie. I hoped... I mean, I've known Sophie for years, but the rest of you only met me a couple months ago. I don't have the right to demand a lifelong commitment from any of you. We're all going different places in the February break, none of you have to be in the party, or the harem when we come back." He looked from worried expression to worried expression, realizing that he wasn't nailing it.

"Are you..." Ulzhari uneasily inquired, "ejecting us from your harem?" The orcish woman had long since finished her food, yet her face seemed emptier than her plate.

Max's face fell. "No. Oh no. Absolutely not. It's just... the seals and the Capitulation and Mastery and everything keep escalating all the time. I was stuck in the infirmary for a few days, and there was a lot of lost progression for you. So I know you feel pressured to keep training with me, to keep pushing this harem stuff farther and farther all the time. But... you don't have to. Your mental health is important in all this. If you, if any of you, want to take a break from all this or quit altogether, that's OK." He looked at his party's Berserker with as much gravitas as he could muster under the circumstances. "But if you want to stay with us that's OK too. More than OK. Ulzhari, what do you want? From me. From us."

The orc thought about it for a bit. "I'm going to be in a harem eventually, and I think I would like it to be this one. Max as war leader, and Sophie as sex leader, it works. Some day I would like to have children that I can keep, and I don't know if this harem can provide that. But I'd like to try, maybe Max can do that with his class." Her statement reminded him of his ability to spend Mastery to create heirs, and he wondered if he actually would be able to grant Ulzhari's wish some day. Human hybridizing with elves and orcs wasn't impossible, but it was difficult for some genetic reason that Max didn't understand. He knew that sex between humans and orcs was very unlikely to lead to pregnancy even without his class' weirdness. "For right now, I enjoy having Max use my breasts and face. I see my harem sisters are used in other ways, and I think I'd enjoy that as well." Max gulped. He was pretty sure that she'd just asked for more threesomes with him and Sophie, ones where she took his cum in places lower than her mouth.

When Chaeryn was put on the spot, her answer unnerved him even more. "I will follow you across every world in the galaxy, Master Max. You shall slay Calamity Lords and raise your banner above the bastions of vanquished gods, and I will be there with you. If you would have me, I shall fight at your command, and the soft parts of my body will comfort you at your desire. One day you shall have a pit dug for me, and when I am one of your queens I will crawl into that pit with joy." It was really a lot of responsibility to put on him, and he was pretty sure that he wasn't going to manage most of those things. And yet, of all of Chaeryn's screed, the part that jumped out to him the most was her surety that she was going to be one of his queens. His understanding was that one of the requirements to be an elf queen was childbirth. Part of him wanted to just ask for a show of hands of how many of his party wanted him to impregnate them at some point, and the only reason he didn't was that he was afraid of the answers he might get.

Miriam's answer was non-committal, which Max found reassuring in its normality. "I appreciate that you're leaving us an escape route, but I also don't think I'll take it. The seals make me very good at the job, and that's very important. And while the thing where it makes me enjoy getting sexually dominated by you is honestly pretty creepy... I do enjoy it." She let out a heavy sigh. "Look, I know you don't love me, and there's already four other women and there's going to be more. But just... make sure you fuck me from time to time, OK? Don't just fill my ass with Essence for dungeon raids." Her plea seemed like something he could do, and that filled him with shame. Both that he still felt like he was cheating on Sophie when he had sex with the other party members, and also that her needs were objectively not onerous to cater to. He didn't think he'd done a great job in keeping the redhead satisfied, and that was hard to justify.

He turned at last to Sophie, and with no one left to speak, she steeled herself for her admission. "Um... in the dungeon you dominated Miriam. Um... I want you to do that to me too. We're all your slaves now, Max. We have to share. But we... I don't want to be left out. Please do that to me." Everyone looked at the Valkyrie with some amount of surprise, except Chaeryn who seemed to have expected it. In the dungeon, Miriam had been placed in a pillory and then sodomized by Max while she was experiencing the submissive urge of having her Capitulation spent.

The awkward silence was broken by Max. "Sophie, I thought you didn't want to have anal sex?"

She shut her eyes and scrunched up her face before letting out a calming breath. "I don't." Max's incredulous expression prompted further explanation. "I want you to do things to me that you want, and I want it to not matter whether I want it. We're your slaves, Max. It feels so good when you dominate us, I just don't want to be left behind." The powerful Valkyrie looked fearful.

Max looked defeated. "But... I don't want to make you do things you don't want to do! I know I can, but that's not sexy, it's disturbing." He reached out toward her, then thought better of it when he saw how messy his fingers were. "Me giving you orders is an important part of your seal progression. I know that, but while I can give you orders that you don't want to follow, it doesn't feel good. That's not something that makes me feel powerful, it just makes me feel guilty." The enormity of the gulf between their desires was laid bare. Despite both wanting to make the other happy, an inherent contradiction was difficult to unwind.

The two looked at each other with sadness in their eyes, and the vibes at the table became uncomfortable. Their Geomancer offered a way out. "What if you spent some of her Capitulation? During the submissive urge, she will want you to put her in bondage and fuck her in the ass." Miriam thought about her own experience. "Yeah, she'll want that a lot. And once you've done it, she'll keep wanting it. Just like how I keep wanting it, it wasn't a joke when I said that it feels like you own my ass." She looked back and forth between Sophie and Max. "That would fix it, right? Sophie would want Max to turn her into an anal bondage slave, so he should be OK with it. And then Sophie can feel dominated and enslaved according to her preference."

It was a lot to think about. Sophie vigorously nodded her agreement. Max cautiously nodded and went back to eating burgers. Fiona looked like she was about to say something and Sophie preemptively agreed with her. "Yes, obviously you'd be able to watch. Turning me into Max's three-hole slave would definitely have to be an activity for the whole group. We wouldn't want to waste all that envy seal progression by doing it without an audience." It was a solid point, but Max still felt uneasy about the whole thing.

####

Sitting alone in his room for the first time in what felt like forever, Max checked his messages and found that his sister had sent him a video. Hoping for a bit of normality, he opened it. Michelle came on the screen, looking like she'd dressed up to go clubbing. Her unhatched hunter's rune would open many doors, but close many others. It might as well have been her birth date tattooed on her chest, a declaration of age that no fake ID could gainsay. There wasn't much of a clubbing scene in their town, so he was left wondering where she was going and hoping that she wasn't getting into trouble. She did not yet have even his meager hunter's strength, and wouldn't have any magical augmentation until shortly before the August recess.

"Sophie told me all about it!" She was excited. "So first, before anything, I have to tell you to not get killed. It's very important that you not die. We love you, and we need you to live." The dour admonition quickly gave way to excitement again. "The slave storage is insane! It means that we can adventure together no matter what class I get! Even if I get a vanguard or support class, you can still make me a slave and put me in storage. It's so perfect! I can be your slave just like Sophie! Just like we always wanted, the three of us traveling to new worlds, fighting them there. Together."

She made little hops of excitement and joy. "It's better than we imagined. Your class is perfect for us. It's so powerful. You can make me your slave. Train me thoroughly. And then not only can Sophie and I both be your slaves, but we can both be really powerful. We'll be trained together and fight the really nasty monsters. With you as our master, we could join the SDRF! Sophie told me how great it was to have you as a master, August can't come soon enough. It'll be so perfect when Sophie and I can be your slaves together." Her excited demeanor gave way to a paper thin mask of seriousness. "But you can't die. Don't die, brother. You need to be alive to come back to me in August to become my master." Her serious expression was already leaking the joy she had behind it when she ended the recording.

Max had thinking to do. Obviously, he'd promised Meesh that she was going to be one of his slaves. And he did need to train her so that her seals progressed. There was a lot of things he could do to train his sister that didn't involve him doing... what he was doing to train Sophie. Meesh's whole message had left him feeling uncomfortable and ashamed. She wanted to join his party, and he wanted her to join his party too. But... obviously his relationship with Meesh was going to be different than his relationship with his harem. He didn't mind having sex with his party members in front of Kaitlin, her offended incredulity was actually pretty fun to provoke. Having sex in front of his sister was a whole different thing, and he didn't want to do it. He'd still need to kiss his party members in front of her to progress her envy seal, but he couldn't have her watch group sex sessions like he was doing with his current party. At least he had months to come up with a solution, he wouldn't be able to put seals on his sister until the end of his second tour.

He wondered what Sophie had told her about their master and slave relationship to have sold it to Meesh so well. He decided that he'd have to have a tough conversation with Meesh when they got back for February recess. Make sure her expectations for August were sufficiently tempered, because the training he did with her was not going to be the same as the training he did with Sophie.

####

"You were um... not available when we woke up after the last mission," Fiona explained with as much tact as she could muster, "but we all leveled up. It's a key level for us D-tier hunters, because we all finally got an additional skill. I mean, Sophie got a new skill too, but she gets skills all the time." Max was obviously interested, so she continued, "My new skill is shadow anchor. It puts a spike into an enemy's shadow and doesn't let them leave. But with the way lighting works in most dungeons, it's not going to last long. As soon as the twinkling of a glitter cloud or wandering of a will-o-wisp moves their shadow off the anchor they are free."

"So it's best to think of it as a way to trip an opponent rather than a way to restrain one," Max mused aloud, "probably best used on enemies that are running, jumping, or flying so that the sudden stop will knock them down." He turned to the non-human members of the team. "Chaeryn, Ulzhari, what did you get?"

The Shadow Elf was thrilled to explain it. "I got ambusher's guile, it makes me fade from view if I kneel in place." Given that her primary weapon was a crossbow, Max didn't think he needed to elaborate on how it might be used.

Ulzhari took several seconds of awkward silence before she realized that it was her turn to speak. "I got resilience of courage. I can spend a bunch of mana and stamina to gain a very large amount of durability that goes away quickly whether it's used to block damage or not." Like the Essence he provided, it was conceptually similar to healing, but had to be invoked before damage was inflicted. The use was obvious in that it could be invoked right before charging into danger. Berserkers didn't have a lot of mana, so it wasn't something that could be used if threats weren't both certain and imminent.

The last was certainly not the least. "Sophie? What did you get this time?" She was higher level than anyone else on the team, and also her B-tier class showered her with new skills every time she went up in level. Her gaining a new skill wasn't nearly as special an occurrence as a new skill for the others was, but she was already the strongest and more is more.

"Well Max," she replied, "I receive blinding blades: when I strike at an opponent from above, they are briefly unable to see." The requirement of attacking from high ground would be much more limiting if she wasn't literally able to fly. But it did further pigeon hole her fighting style. "Now that we're all up to date, we can go to the bathroom so that you can store me." When Max put someone into slave storage, they left behind everything except dungeon equipment - very much including whatever was in their intestines. Getting stored and unstored was a way for her to get completely clean in anticipation of anal sex.

Max looked at the padded bench and the ropes the team had put together. The plan was simple enough: tie Sophie to the bench belly-down, spend some of her Capitulation, and then sodomize her. There were extra sets of ropes so that he could tie up the rest of the party at the same time, which was just efficient for their binding seal progressions. Yet despite how well thought out it all was, he didn't feel right about the plan. "I'm uneasy about this," he said to the entire team, "I know that Sophie doesn't like the idea of me putting my dick in her ass. Using the Capitulation to make her want it doesn't really change that what I'm doing is betraying her, you know what I mean?"

None of them had read the book Catch-22, but Miriam, Sophie, and Fiona were still familiar with the idiom that was named after it. Miriam proposed a solution. "What if you used your own Mastery to make yourself want to make Sophie want you to take ownership of her last hole? I think she wants you to want to make her want it." She paused so that the others could play it back in their heads and sort out all the clauses of what she had said. "While your dominant urge has taken over, you can run roughshod over Sophie's hangups, and then you can live happily ever after with a completely dominated girlfriend." Max nodded along. The logic was sound, and it would probably work, but he didn't actually want a completely dominated girlfriend. He loved Sophie, and he didn't want to replace her with a sex doll.

Sophie jumped on the idea, almost literally. "That's perfect! This would also be a good time to make sure that you have a slot for a non-hunter slave. And we could find out what really happens if you upgrade it so that your slaves don't have to be people." There was a rune in Ancient that referred collectively to humans, elves, and orcs, and the people of the Alliance had chosen to translate this as 'people.' An orc wasn't human, but they were still a person. It raised the question of what the Tartarians and Jotunheimers actually were. They had tool using, language speaking races, but the rune for people did not apply to them.

"Wait," Fiona interjected, "why do we need a non-hunter slave?" Three other women wanted the answer to that question as well.

Waving her arms as she excitedly explained, the Valkyrie unveiled her plan. "In just a few days we're going to have a USO show, and both Peppa Grinda and Sidewinder Kate are going to be there." Chaeryn and Ulzhari were completely lost, while Fiona and Miriam were only almost completely lost. "This is a perfect opportunity! Max is going to need slaves who have utility outside the dungeon. Eventually that's going to mean a cook, a maid, a gardener, a lawyer, stuff like that. But right now, we don't have much use for any of that. But having a harem sister who is rich and famous would be very useful for all kinds of things."

She was stopped by Miriam. "Look, I don't know if Peppa Grinda or Sidewinder Kate have boyfriends right now because I'm on a distant alien planet and don't get live gossip updates." She pointed to her empty hand, held like it was supposed to be clutching a smart phone that was light years away. "But like, you know both of 'em are way out of our league, right? They're celebrities, they only date other celebrities. Like actors or sports players..." Miriam's sentence trailed off, her point having been made without an explicit conclusion statement.

"... or hunters!" Sophie added for her. "Something we're going to have to get used to is that we are celebrities now. Well, not now, but the moment the government takes the gag order off us, we're going to be interviewed on shows. We're going to make appearances and get endorsement deals. I'm B-tier, and I'm not even the most amazing member of our party. Max is entitled to have celebrity girlfriends, and it's a perfect opportunity for him to get one. Peppa Grinda and Sidewinder Kate are both about our age, famously beautiful, kind of slutty, but not such massive celebrities that it would cause upheaval if they settled down." She smiled. "Either one would be a fantastic slave for Max, a great harem sister for us to have." Even to her own ears, Sophie sounded like a saleswoman at a car dealership. She felt trashy for saying them, but she did not take back her words.

The orcish member of their team was sold. Mostly. "This Peppa and Sidewinder, they are ladies that sing the songs about sex that the mess hall uses for background music, yes? It is natural that women of accomplishment like them should join a harem with other accomplished women and an accomplished man. Max's harem would be a good place for them." She left a pause that even from an alien implied that a 'but' was coming. The rest of the party expected it, and they weren't disappointed. "But it would be normal for them to join harems with hunters who have returned triumphant. We are still fighting, and will still be fighting for several years. We have very little to offer a potential harem sister. Max is good at sex, but the sex singers can get good sex from their own world without waiting for hunters to gain renown and hoping that they come back alive. They are singers, not warriors, so there is no haste for them to have children."

"OK," Sophie conceded, "but can we agree that he should open up that non-hunter slave slot so that we have the option of enslaving one of them after the show? Even if the chances of one them submitting to Max is low, it isn't every day that super-hot singers who are right out of high-school come to Camp Acheron." Sophie had moved on to the next stage of sales: bargaining.

Fiona had questions. "I know that Max got a lot of Mastery for solving the riddle of Miriam's ass," there was some chuckling around the room. The redhead shot her a dirty look, realizing that the description was clever enough that they'd probably just keep calling it that. There was a very real chance that further dungeon domination equipment would get called some derivation of Miriam's Ass Riddles. And all because their Night Caller made a witticism one time at her expense, "but how much does he actually have? I think we need to unlock the sixth hunter slave slot. And there's the non-people option."

"Yes," Chaeryn enthusiastically agreed, "any dungeon we go into could have a female Tartarian. We have Faleryn's arrow, we must be prepared to have a Tartarian join Max's harem on every raid from here on out." Her purple eyes got a far away look. "This is the Spider Herald's destiny, we must prepare the web to secure the future." The rest of the party seemed somewhat confused, but no one actually contradicted her.

Max sighed. "Yeah, I think I can do all that. Increase both slave limits, and allow non-people in as slaves. We'd be leaving our options open in case someone who wasn't part of the crop became available on short notice. Whether that's at a dance party or in a dungeon raid or whatever. Everyone cool with that?" It was an awful lot of Mastery to spend, more than he ever had before. But everyone seemed supportive, so he opened up his status and spent it. The non-hunter slave count incremented from zero to three. The rune for people changed to two runes he didn't immediately recognize. He also got a popup message that the base Capitulation of his slaves had increased. A quick glance at the status of his compatriots confirmed that they'd all gotten a windfall of Capitulation. He supposed it made sense, that he'd need enough Capitulation to trigger a submissive urge in a new slave that wasn't already a member of the Alliance.

Most importantly of all: when his hunter slave limit increased to six, the number remained green. He'd still have a chance to put seals on Michelle when the August recess came. And then he felt a surge of emotion. He wasn't angry, exactly, but he felt frustrated, righteous. Entitled. The rational part of him recognized the dominant urge taking effect, the rest of him... wanted to speak to the manager. He looked at the women in his party. His slaves. His. "Strip." He decreed.

A smile graced Sophie's face. "Oooh. Yes, Master." She cooed lovingly as her clothes began coming off.

His gaze fell on each of his slaves in turn. "No. All of you slaves. Strip." Reactions varied from surprise to alarm to arousal, but every one of them began taking their clothes off. "Chaeryn, Miriam," he called out to the two hunters who had divested themselves of their clothes the quickest, "undress me." He held his arms out so that the two naked slaves could remove his jacket, with his legs slightly apart so that they could easily get his pants down. When they had done so, it was revealed that his cock was engorged with blood and dripping with precum already. Five sets of eyes locked on the dollop of Essence, each woman holding out hope that they could secure that Essence for themselves.

As he strode over to the pile of ropes, his rod bounced with every step. His triumphant elephant's parade ended only when he picked up the first cord. Brandishing the cables, he issued a new decree. "Alright Slaves, turn around and put your wrists together behind your backs. I'm going to bind each of you." There were some appreciative murmurs, and all five naked women turned their backs to him and presented their wrists for his ministrations. Part of his mind wanted to line them up by height: Chaeryn, Fiona, Miriam, Sophie, and then Ulzhari, but he pushed that part of him down, recognizing it as a desire for control he found excessive and repugnant.

What he did not find repugnant were the backsides of his party members. His slaves. Every one of them covered with the intricate seals in red, green, and silver that marked them as his. The red seals glistened when they followed his commands, when he touched their bodies. Every time he claimed them, the red seals became a tiny bit more intricate, growing by an amount that was imperceptible at the time but obvious in retrospect. The red heart-shaped seal on Sophie's lower back was once a small tramp stamp and had become the centerpiece of a sprawling artwork two hands across. "Sophie, you want me to activate your submissive urge. To dominate you. To take control of you." It wasn't exactly a question, but it beckoned a response.

"Yes Max," she hissed, "I want that so much. Please own me. Never throw me away." She pushed her wrists back, giving a hint that she wanted her binding to begin. The change in stance arched her back and pushed her breasts and buttocks out. Hers was a swimmer's butt, muscular and tight, but with a feminine curve and enough heft to fill a hand with either cheek.

He wrapped the rope around her wrists and tied it firmly. With her super-human strength, she actually could break free, but not doing so was progressing her binding seal and made her very happy. "Sophie, bend yourself over the bench."

"But Max, you haven't stored me, I'm..." He cut her off.

"I said: bend over the bench, Sophie." He didn't sound angry, but he was firm, and she bent over the bench. He stepped to the back of Chaeryn. It was a canvass of darkness, and the red, green, and silver seals were starkly displayed against her coal-black skin. "Chaeryn, you belong to me. You want me to activate your submissive urge. To extend my ownership of you. To fill you with Essence and remind you that you are mine." He didn't even wait for her reply before he started tying her wrists together. She thanked him, and he sent her to bend over the bench next to Sophie. She had the smallest butt, almost flat. An adult woman's butt, but one that was very thin. There was a flare to the hips, even if it was much subtler than typical for a human woman.

"Ulzhari," he intoned, as he roughly tied the orc's wrists together, "I have neglected your pussy. You've been so good about sucking your master's cock that I haven't needed anything more from you. But you still have needs. You need me to fuck your pussy until you forget any other lovers you've ever had. Until your pussy belongs to me alone." The powerful Berserker could have easily broken his hold on her muscular arms, but she did not want to do so. As he bound her and sent her to the bench, she oinked with happy anticipation. The clean lines of her different skin colors ran across other boundaries of her body, the dark skin met the light skin and the meeting of those patches continued past the crease where her rump became her thigh. Only within her vagina did her jigsaw of colors give way to the same inner pinkness that all humans, elves, and orcs shared.

He put one hand on the Asian American's wrists and the other on her neck. He brought his mouth to her ear. "Fiona, you wanted more of the girlfriend experience. Sophie and I will provide some of that for you. But for right now, you will get the experience of a girlfriend who submits to being tied up and dominated by her boyfriend's cock. Is that acceptable to you?" She'd barely started to breathily whisper that it was when when he started tying her wrists together. When she bent over the bench, the dark skin of her labia was framed by the ivory skin of her thighs and butt. A stray thought in Max's mind compared it to raisins dropped into eggnog, but he kept that thought to himself.

"Finally," he said, while cupping Miriam's butt, "you said this ass belongs to me." He hadn't asked a question, but the redhead nodded. "You want more. You want me to own more of you. To be your master." She nodded again, and shuddered as he tied her wrists together. She bent over the bench without being told, her pale and freckled ass contrasting with Fiona's Vietnamese complexion.

Max surveyed the upturned rears of his women and smiled. He brought up Sophie's status and advanced her shield of swords, noting that it now parried magic in addition to physical attacks. He brought up Chaeryn's status and advanced her find weakness, noting that she could now show the weak points to allies. When he advanced Ulzhari's reckless strike, he noted that it reduced the target's defenses after it landed in addition to her own defenses while it was being deployed. Fiona's shadow puppets now made eerie noises. Miriam's hands of stone now crushed enemies. It was a useful set of upgrades, and at that moment Max didn't care at all. Five beautiful pussies all were dripping with submissive urge, and it was difficult to care about anything else.

He grabbed his Valkyrie's hips, and lined his cock up with her slit. "Sophie, my love, what do you want me to do to you?"

She sighed. "Aaah... anything, Master! You can beat me, whip me, piss on me, sodomize my filthy ass! I'm completely at your mercy, Master! There are no limits, we are Master and Slave. You can do anything to me, and I will take it. I will be such a good submissive slave for you, Master Max. Completely owned. Totally corrupted and depraved for you." She was literally crying, and it made Max feel awful.

"Stop it," he declared, "It doesn't matter what I can do to you. It only matters what you want me to do to you. For you. What you really want." His grip on her hips intensified. "So stop all this nonsense about what you'd be willing to submit to. I don't need you to be humiliated, I love you. So I'm not going to spank you as punishment for being bad, if I spank you it's because you want to be spanked and you deserve to get what you want. Nothing more." He looked at the upturned asses of four other beautiful women. "The same goes for all of you. If you want to get spanked or tied up, you tell me that you want it. Don't imply, don't try to play reverse psychology games to trick me into giving you what you want. Just beg, and your master will provide." He raised his hand. "So tell me, Sophie, do you want me to spank your naked ass?"

"Yes! Oh Max, I want that so much!" Smack! "Oooh!" Smack! "So..." Smack! "goooood..."

Despite the reality that the Valkyrie's durability was far beyond what Max's strength could reasonably expect to wear down with an open palm, a part of him still worried for his girlfriend's safety. On one level he understood that her magically augmented resilience far outstripped his magically augmented strength, and had done so even before she gained a bonus from his own seals and her higher level, but he also loved her and a part of him felt a great unease in raising his hand to strike her. That part of him was locked away by the dominant urge, and the forefront of his consciousness reveled in the feel of her smooth behind under his hand and the sweet sounds of aroused submission that came from her mouth. "No more games, Sophie. I'm not going to fuck your ass just because I can. When and if you really want me to fuck your butthole, I will do that for you. In the meantime," he slammed his meat stick into her pussy, "I'm going to make sure your pussy gets all the attention it needs." His cock slid partially out and then rammed back in.

"Ooooooh..." the blond woman moaned as Max began pistoning into her soaking vagina with increasing power and speed. "I. Love. You. Max. Thank you. Thank you for owning meeee!" She came, squealing and flailing. Max's own orgasm wasn't far behind, and Sophie was treated to the feeling of being filled with Essence. "Aaaah!" She wailed. She panted. When she finally settled down enough to regain the power of speech, she looked over her shoulder at her lover. "Max? Which one of your slaves should I share your Essence with?"

Pulling his still-hard member out of her with a shlahk sound, he chuckled. "None of them, my love. That cum is yours alone. I'm going to fuck all of my pussies, and every one of you is getting your own Essence infusion." It was, he was aware, an insane claim. With his magically enhanced vigor, he had found that he was able to cum six times in a day without much strain, but cumming five times in a single session was still pretty ambitious. But ambitious or not, it was the course of action he had committed himself to. He put one hand in Chaeryn's small behind, leaving the other caressing that of his girlfriend. "Chaeryn, who owns your pussy?" He smirked while asking the question, his wettened mushroom creeping up on the hole in question.

The Shadow Elf answered immediately. "Master Max owns every part of me. My sex belongs to you as much as anything can." That was enough for him, and he pushed his rod slowly into her hole. The stretchy skin of the labia parted for him, and her body sheathed his sword like it had been made to do so. She didn't have nearly the physical strength of the Valkyrie, but the simple tightness of her orifice was enough to make his dick feel as sqozen as it had in the powerful grip of Sophie's core. Once he was fully inside, he allowed her a bit of time to get used to him filling her, and then he began pumping into her. "Oh! Ow!" His cock schlicked again and again as he railed the smallest of his women. She loved it. "It's yours! Your pussy! Pussy! Yours!" She gibbered with decreasing coherence until she came on his dick and milked his milk sausage into her cervix.

He popped out of his second conquest of the afternoon and lay his slightly softened cock on Ulzhari's powerfully muscled rump. It didn't take a lot of lewd thoughts or physical stimulation for his rod to get back to solid state. "Ulzhari, I want you to know that I consider you an important part of my harem. I know that by putting the Essence lock in your mouth that you are silenced much of the time, but I still value your thoughts. I want to hear what you have to say. And right now, what I want to hear from you whether you want me to fuck your pussy until it's mine."

The Berserker only oinked in thought three times before she was ready with her decision. "Please," she whispered, "own me with sex." Her desires were beyond her English skills, and she defaulted to the filthy curses used by the muck divers of the Banemires. {Fuck my needy cunt, clan-head!} A special sex of profanity understood only by Max and Ulzhari, though the meaning could probably be guessed by the other women. Max obliged and her oinks turned to grunts and squeals. A lot of people assumed that orcish vaginas would be larger than those of a human because orcs were larger, and that wasn't meaningfully true. The truth was that the depth of the vagina was so poorly correlated with height that the difference in average vaginal length between the women of humans and orcs was just a quarter of a millimeter. Ulzhari had given birth, and there had been a time when her vagina was very floppy indeed, but since then it had tightened considerably and to Max's massive member it nearly felt virginal.

While it would have been reasonable to expect that sticking a dick into the orc's birthing tunnel would be like getting lost in the airport, the opposite was very much the case. Her muscles were powerful and undisciplined, so while pussy was soaking with natural lubrication it was still difficult for Max to move forward or back through the vice-like grip. He did not achieve long strokes or fast pounding, but every centimeter shift he could manage sent waves of pleasure through both of them. From the outside, it looked like Ulzhari was tense and twitching, but her squeezings of his cock were having an effect. With a squeal of pleasure and a clamping on his rod that was almost painful, she had her orgasm. Max left her a deposit of Essence, and she oinked dreamily on the edge of sleep.

Having cum three times in quick succession was already taking its toll. Magically enhanced stamina or not, his dick was partially deflated when he contemplated the beautiful tail end of Fiona. That contemplation caused some new life to twitch into his cock, and sliding his hand up and down his shaft made the cobra rise to threaten once again. Looking back at him, the Night Caller smiled. "You've activated my submissive urge," she pondered out loud, "but you've already used it to take ownership of my cunt." She waved her backside as instigation. "You can fuck this hole because it's yours. The Capitulation makes me want to give myself to you, but I don't know how. You already own my pussy."

Max's cock easily found its way into the diamond shape bordered by butt and thighs in which her dark labia was displayed. It was wet and welcoming for him, and he slid into its warm embrace. He slid in and out gently, but with a firm hold on her hips that left her in no doubt who was in control. "I think I know how you can succumb to your submission, how you can belong more thoroughly to me." Her hole squelched as it accepted his entrance. "Slave Fiona, how do you feel about me?" She moaned in defeat, and Max smiled.

"Ooooh..." Her eyes shut tightly, reveling in the sensation of being penetrated and owned. "I... I... I love you, Master!" Fiona's eyes snapped open as the gravity of her admission registered in her brain. Max did not let up in the slightest. "Oh wow, I do. I fucking love you, Master Max. And I love that you're my master. And I love that you're fucking me in my pussy hole." She turned her head back to look at her master. He smiled at her, and she came. When he squirted his Essence into her, she moaned in gratitude.

It was a most enjoyable gauntlet, but Max could feel himself flagging. Beautiful as they all were, Max was kind of glad that Miriam was the last one. He wasn't sure he could manage if there more women to fuck after the Geomancer. At the very least, he might have to take a break and drink some water.

Perhaps sensing that Max needed some encouragement, Miriam gave him some. "Max, I feel bad about things and you need to spank me. I heard what you said to Sophie about not trying to piss you off to receive punishment, but could you punish me? You own my ass, Master, you're the only one who can." Her freckled rear twerked to get his attention. "I've been a bad girl, please spank me."

He ran his hand over her smooth butt cheek. "You don't need to be bad to be spanked, Miriam. I know that the binding seal gets you all crosswired and you get pleasure from being spanked. I'm even kind of glad, because you have a fantastic butt and I really do like spanking it." Smack! Smack! "What do you have to say, Miriam?" Smack!

"Ngh!" Smack! "Thank you!" Smack! "Thank you, Master. Thank you for spanking your naughty slave!" By that point, Max had had sufficient encouragement for his cock to be ready to be inserted into her fuck holes. It was hard enough and she was ready enough that he could have poked it into either hole, but he chose the pussy. "Nnnngh! Oh wow! Master Max! Front and back! You're taking ownership... nnngh... my pussy. Your pussy. Nnngh." Miriam's words became increasingly incoherent as her orgasm approached, and did not recover immediately afterward. When her pussy was filled with Max's Essence, she was still moaning in overstimulation.

Max surveyed the five pussies he had jizzed in. His dominant urge was receding, but it was still a marvelous and prideful feeling to look at five different beautiful women and know that they had all sexually submitted to him. "Alright ladies, that's enough. You can all get up from the bench. I think showers first, cuddles afterward." Both promises were met with murmurs of gratitude. "Does anyone need anything before I untie you all?"

"Master Max," Sophe asked bashfully, "can we have a self deprecation session before we get untied and take showers?"

With a sigh, Max agreed. "But we're not ending things on that note. I'm going to tell all of you how great you are after the showers." His dick felt like it had been subjected to a meat tenderizer. He'd need a light shower and something to drink before he'd be ready to go again.

####

"Apparently the Queen's Council and the Tree Speakers want you to maintain an empty slot in your party." First Lieutenant Cortes looked like she hadn't had nearly as much sleep as she would have liked. "Now personally, I do not understand elvish politics. I don't know very much about it, and what I do know distresses me. Maintaining the Alliance is worth more than my life, or yours obviously, but I normally sleep well knowing that these are problems that are dealt with far above my pay grade." She looked at the pad in her hand and shook her head. She looked back to Max. "So imagine the joy I felt when I found out that the crop I'm babysitting is now important enough in elf politics that two of their august bodies are giving planet-level instructions to me personally." Her face left little room for doubt that the amount of joy involved was very small. "So how does that work? You need to comply with those orders. Do you need to kick out one of your party members?"

"Um... no," he said with real concern, "currently we have five members of the team besides me, and I am high enough level to put seals onto six hunters." He'd told them about the growing parameters, but he had not yet admitted to the government that he could choose which actually grew by spending Mastery. They'd gambled with Chaeryn's life to test the limits of his slave storage ability, and he was still fairly upset about that. The last thing he wanted was to get orders to do more life and death experiments with his class. Although it sounded like he was indeed getting exactly that. "Did they say what they want me to save it for?"

She put down the pad and scrutinized him. "Apparently they think there is a chance that you could find an additional hunter in the dungeon." She let that hang for an amount of time that certainly felt excruciatingly long, despite that is was probably less than a minute according to the clock. "Now, Hunter Mitchell, why on four worlds would they think that was a thing that might happen?"

Setting his Space Force issued phone to doodle mode, Max drew two runes. "The part of my class that allows me to put seals on hunters has advanced. It doesn't restrict me to people anymore, it's this." He handed his phone to the officer.

"Potential guests?" She was a First Lieutenant in the Space Force, assigned to one of North America's two military bases on the Ancient's world, she was actually quite familiar with Ancient script. But what he'd shown her was a weird set of runes to appear in any context. Very little of the available Ancient text referred to catering.

Max shrugged. "Chaeryn thinks it means any of the Alliance races as well as any of the monsters that can get their own hunter's runes. So like orcs, but also Tartarians." He shrugged again. "So I guess now the crown heads of Ithil think that too. Or at least, they think it's sufficiently possible that they want me to leave my party undersized on the off chance that she's right. The potential advantages of bringing home a loyal Tartarian are obviously... significant." Unprecedented. World changing. Words like significant were such an understatement as to be classified as wry humor.

First Lieutenant Cortes did not rise to the bait. There was no sputtered coffee or double-takes to be had. "Hunter Max Mitchell, do you have any idea of how that might actually work? A Blood Lord of Mictlan or a Hird of the Jotunheimer trolls is not going to just come up and ask to join your team." She seemed suddenly uneasy. "Right? You do have a better plan than just waiting for something like that to happen?"

He thought about it and shrugged again. "Sort of. Maybe? We have a thing we think might work on a Tartarian woman. We do not yet have any idea of how we would recruit a Blood Lord of Mictlan, Hird of Jotunheim, or Pack Leader of Patala." The audacity of what he was saying was breathtaking, but the acknowledged limitations made it sound almost plausible. A Tartarian traitor who might be able to tell the Alliance what Tartarus thought it was doing and maybe give some clues as to how to make it stop. The beginnings of the end of maybe a quarter of the Longest War.

And it all rested on this one kid who was described by Kaitlin's mission brief as "The fragile leader of a BDSM sex cult." Feeling like a migraine was coming on, First Lieutenant Cortes rubbed her face with her hands. At least the Khans weren't up in her grill. Yet. It was inconceivable that this nonsense wasn't going to make its way to the clan moots once the February recess happened. When the hunters came back in March, this was going to be so much more of a shit show than it already was. She hated elvish politics. But she fucking hated orcish politics.

####

The USO came to Camp Acheron just twice a year. Troops stationed in more accessible places had entertainment much more frequently, some bases even having permanent staff who would organize movie nights and game nights and such-like when there weren't acts on tour. But for the troops at Camp Acheron, there was the Thanksgiving concert and the Memorial Day concert and that was it. Each a bit past the halfway mark of the tours and carefully selected to be centered on celebrating non-denominational civic virtue that could be observed by Non-Americans and even Non-humans without getting weird. It was all so clever and well researched that the cultural sensitivity looked effortless. Max wouldn't have been surprised to learn that the entire September to February and March to August standardized hunter's tours had been created with the non-objectionable nature of the midpoint holidays in mind.

Three acts were on stage for two performances over two days. The headline act was Boomstickz, who weren't really Max's kind of music. The other two were Peppa Grinda and Sidewinder Kate, who also weren't his kind of music, but his harem wanted him to test out the possibility of one of them joining. It still seemed absolutely insane to him that his party members thought that he had a shot at turning one of the radio stars into a sex slave. The event took place in a basketball court that was normally used by the non-hunter guardians. Max didn't blame them for not letting him play their reindeer games. Sophie could literally fly, and would make an absolute mockery of the sport of basketball, but even the modest magical strength and agility that Max was blessed with was considered cheating in team sports.

With all the basketball stuff taken out of the hall, the building could apparently host three thousand people, which meant most of the camp could be in one of the performances if they didn't have to continue running the camp. Only one hundred and sisty-six of them were hunters, with the rest being guardians in other capacities. Max's own crop was forty-five hunters, and the fourth tour group was only thirty-four. While a good deal of that attrition wasn't literal death at the hands and teeth of monsters, probably a good deal of it was. There was also crippling injuries, pregnancy, and good old fashioned PTSD, but the raw numbers spoke plenty about what a dangerous life they led. A crop where two thirds of the hunters completed the two year program and were still hunters at the end was considered good. He wouldn't be surprised if Thelenia or Rosalita quit the program before finishing, and he thought it would almost certainly be his fault if they did.

He had dressed up as much as he was able to with what he had available, which meant that he was wearing his dress uniform. The rest of his party all had their own nice clothes from home. Except Ulzhari, who was also wearing a Space Force dress uniform. He wasn't sure if she simply hadn't brought anything to the appropriate to wear to a party or if his own aesthetic preferences had made her breasts grow too large to wear any appropriate clothing she had brought from her home world. While she seemed pretty calm about that aspect of his powers, his class had adjusted her body shape more than it had any of the others. Part of him felt guilty about that, but her newly massive mammaries were magnificent and she was the only member of the party with a frame large enough to carry them gracefully.

The six of them entered the building together, Max just one hunter in a party. The baskets had been taken down and the room done up as a dance hall. There were still lines on the floor, but decorations and refreshment tables drew one's eyes away from such things. It all reminded Max of a school dance, which in a way it was. Like the school dances back home, Max noticed a lot of male attention directed toward Sophie. He didn't blame them, he directed a lot of male attention to her as well, even if he had to spare some for the four other beautiful women he had come with. It was probably the most first world problem thing he could imagine, and there was absolutely no one he could discuss it with. No one who wouldn't roll their eyes or literally slap him anyway.

Looking at the refreshment table there was a lot of different baked goods available. His initial impulse was to take one of each and try them all, but he didn't feel that that particular impulse had served him well of late. Instead he grabbed a rice krispie square and some eggnog, things he was pretty sure wouldn't disappoint. The eggnog had a warning label on it, and at first he thought it was because it was full of brandy, but it turned out to be a nutmeg warning for non-humans. Nutmeg could cause tremors or even seizures in orcs and elves. If eggnog wasn't such an important part of Thanksgiving celebrations Earthside, the USO would probably leave it off the table entirely. He went back to the women in his group, who were standing in a circle the way women do when they are contemplating heading to the dance floor.

They'd arrived early, which meant that the music being played was just stuff off a playlist. A mix of hip-hop and country, as befitted a concert with the promised lineup. Max couldn't identify more than one song in three. "I know all of you want to dance, and while I am not really well acquainted with this kind of dancing, I'll come dance with all of you. I don't mind looking like an idiot for you guys." He looked at the faces of his party members and it seemed that he had said the correct thing.

Sophie, of course, called dibs on the first dance, with Fiona claiming the second. Max felt like a jackass, since he was pretty much just holding onto his girlfriend and trying to mimic her gyrations. His self-consciousness wasn't really warranted, as Sophie wasn't doing anything horrendously complicated and he did have super-human agility and vigor. To an outside observer, any man who was able to mostly follow along with a gorgeous woman on the dance floor looked like they were winning at life. Putting her arms around his neck, Sophie pulled him in so she could speak in his ear. "I love you Max, and it's going to hurt me to see you dancing with Fiona. But it's also going to feel so very good, and you need to do it. The party needs you to give her that girlfriend experience. And I've become such a pervert that I need it too." When he pulled back to look at her moistened eyes she pulled him in again and gave him a big kiss.

When it was Fiona's turn, she clung onto him and buried her face in his chest. The music washed over them, and they simply swayed on the dance floor with little in the way of plan or progress. With his arms wrapped around the Vietnamese American, he couldn't see much more than her black hair and the red shoulders of her dress. He felt like he wasn't adding much, but she nuzzled in happily. "Thank you Max, I know you don't love me the way you love Sophie. But you own me, and I'm glad that you let me feel loved sometimes. Even if it's only for a while." She gazed up into his face and he leaned down and kissed her. It had just seemed like the thing to do, and Fiona seemed to agree because she returned the kiss with a hunger.

When they went back to the group, Fiona approached Sophie cautiously and with flushed cheeks. Sophie looked both upset and turned on, so Max didn't know what to expect when she strode up to the black haired woman. He was immensely relieved, and more than a little aroused, when the Valkyrie grabbed the Night Caller's cheeks and gave her a kiss on the lips. The two women smiled at each other and their heads bobbed as if they were having a deeply interesting conversation that explained a lot of things despite the fact that neither was actually saying anything at all.

The third dance partner hadn't yet been decided when they were approached by two other hunters. They were from the crop above them, which meant that they might be able to team up with Max and his associates after the February recess. "I'm Danika, Alchemist," the darker skinned of them introduced herself, then pointed to a woman with an athletic build and a brown pixie cut, "and my associate here is Jessica, Paladin." C-tier support and defender respectively, sufficiently eminent in the field that they might be expected to largely ignore green recruits on their first tour. That they weren't doing so indicated that they already knew something about Max's rule breaking class powers. "So, is it true that we can gain super powers by sucking Max's dick?"

"Yes." Sophie answered before Max had formulated a denial. "His class gives him magic sperm and the number of hunters that can go into the dungeon with the raids he leads goes up as his level does. We completed two raids with seven hunter parties and that number is still green." She looked over the two women like she was appraising meat at a store. "So watch this space. In March, you might be selected to swallow Max's magic seed and raid dungeons as part of an eight or nine hunter party."

"Max's Essence is very good to drink." Ulzhari added helpfully. Max literally facepalmed. Surprisingly, at least to Max, the two of them did not immediately flee in a mix of confusion and offense. Instead they just hung out and talked with Miriam about the C-tier life.

The lights dimmed and a young woman stepped onto the stage. Long, straight hair that was just in that bronze range of color where it could arguably be called blond or brown. She wore cut-off jean shorts that barely covered her ample butt cheeks more than a swimsuit would and a plaid shirt that was tied up under her breasts so as to leave her flat belly and deep cleavage open to the public. Cowboy boots and hat completed the ensemble. "A lot of people say they want to support the troops," she shouted out to the crowd, "I'm just a singer, so there ain't much I cin do but play y'all a few tunes!" There was some whooping from the crowd. "What y'all do here is jist so important, and if I cin make yer day a bit better, well a gal can't ask fer more'n that!" There was quite a bit of hollering at that, and then someone handed her a fiddle and she began playing.

The song had gone two whole verses before Max realized that the song was called More'n That and that some of the cheering was because they recognized the song that was coming rather than being whipped into a frenzy by the naked audience pandering. The other thing he realized was that the experience of live music was enjoyable enough that he was able to overlook what he saw as deficiencies in the pop-country genre. If the song had popped up on the radio or been generated by a streaming playlist, he would probably change the song before the singing had even started. But with the woman actually present and belting it out, he was having a pretty good time.

Chaeryn pulled him off to the dance floor. "This music has similar structure to some elvish music," she assured him, "this would be a good time to learn some of the dances of the Shelflands." As Max literally could not think of a better time to learn dances of the Shelflands, he had to agree. She showed him some basic footwork and he soon found himself dancing some kind of Elvish Jig. Although he wasn't really sure what made a jig different from other dances, so maybe it was an Elvish Mazurka. Whatever kind of dance he was doing, he was apparently doing it, although he realized that he was getting looks from other elves in attendance. Chaeryn laughed at some of his missteps, but she was happy that he had tried.

Seeing her in person, the fact that Sidewinder Kate was only two months older than he was seemed pretty plausible. He would not have expected that from listening to her music. First of all, she had a strong, mature singing voice that sounded really professional and didn't seem to belong on someone who was legally a child less than a year ago. Even more striking was the fact that the content matter was almost entirely about sex and drinking. That wasn't weird for pop-country as a genre, but Sidewinder Kate wasn't a hunter or a member of the military, and as far as Max knew it was actually illegal for her to buy the bourbon whiskey that she sung about. He wondered if it was because most of her songs were written by much older people, she was basing the content of her songs on other songs from the genre, or she had a fake ID and genuinely did sneak into bars to get tore up on hard liquor. One of her songs was even called Fake ID, but that was still consistent with all three explanations.

When they came back, Miriam was still discussing things with her new friends, both of whom gave Max unsubtle check outs. Sophie and Fiona wanted to dance with him together, and with a brief detour to get more to drink, he headed off to the dance floor with them. It turned out that they didn't really have any specific dances they wanted to do, they just wanted to rub themselves on him. It was an attractive proposition, and he mostly just stood there on the dance floor while Sophie rubbed her white dress on his right side and Fiona rubbed her red dress on his left side. He put his arms on their shoulders and they practically humped themselves against his thighs. All in all, he found Sidewinder Kate's music much more enjoyable than he had expected.

Peppa Grinda was a similar experience. Max wasn't much of a fan of the music that she got on the radio, but he found himself charmed by her performance in the Camp Acheron basketball court. Between every song she joked with the crowd and threw out weird rhymes. She was speaking to the Space Force and she rhymed "guardian" with "accordion" and "Victorian," as well as rhyming the Space Force itself with "race horse" and "trace source." It really made it feel like she was talking to Camp Acheron rather than that she simply had a bottled performance that she delivered everywhere she went.

Her songs were mostly about blowjobs and how nice her tits were, and she did seem to have very nice tits. Max pondered how little the military seemed to care about propriety. When Peppa Grinda did her performance live on the military base there were a lot more curse words in her songs than what made it to the radio edits. She relaxed her hair and kept it short, and wore clothes that were tight across her breasts and butt, a look that implied she spent a lot of time thinking about how to attract the male gaze. It was working. Ulzhari wanted to go out and dance "like Fiona and Sophie did." Max looked plaintively at his girlfriend, but she smiled and helped the Berserker drag him off to the dance floor. He noticed that Sophie seemed much less torn about sharing him with Ulzhari or Chaeryn than she was about sharing him with Miriam or Fiona. Where with the human women, the Valkyrie was massively aroused but somewhat sad when he played with them, with the aliens she just went all in on being sexually assertive. When Sophie moved his hands to Ulzhari's breasts and encouraged him to grope them, he wasn't even surprised.

"Ulzhari has wonderful tits," Sophie spoke into his ear, "and you own them. Everyone in this room wants to grope this orc, but she's yours alone." Ulzhari herself oinked happily while he squoze her melons through her dark blue uniform jacket. The Valkyrie kissed him on the neck and then gave him more encouragement. "You're doing so well, Master. It's so good that you own us. She has such good tits, and they're all for you. Did you see the racks on Peppa and Sidewinder? They could belong to you just like these do." His orcish party member leaned in to his groping hands and smiled at him.

When Peppa Grinda's set was finished, Max was back with his group. Danika and Jessica were still hanging out with his group, being very interested in prying information out of them. It wasn't exactly a job for Mata Hari, as Chaeryn in particular seemed entirely happy to describe everything about how their party worked. He really understood how little was being filtered when Danika smirked at him and said: "So, nineteen centimeters, huh?" He rolled his eyes, knowing that there would be more stories about him all over the base before morning.

When Boomstickz came out to a round of cheers, Sophie excused herself. Miriam wanted to twerk her ass into Max's crotch, and he allowed himself to be dragged back onto the dance floor because he could not think of a reason to stop her. On the whole, he thought Boomstickz probably benefited from post production, as they seemed clumsier with their shouting and their harmonizing than in their radio tracks.

####

"Holy shit! 'm gonna hurl my chai, t' see a white girl fly." Monique Jackson, AKA Peppa Grinda, riffed on the entrance of the floating woman. It was quite an entrance. The hot blond literally flew through the air, her white dress smooth against her skin to show how effortless it was for her.

"That was a good one." Katherine Davis, AKA Sidewinder Kate, snapped and pointed finger guns to acknowledge her compatriot's rhyme. She turned to the newcomer. "So, they said you was a B-tier?" Subtle changes in her expression indicated that she had remembered that B-tier was actually very very good for hunters partway through her question. That surprised a lot of people, which was understandable because B-movies and B-grade singers weren't held in high regard at all.

Sophie smiled warmly. "Absolutely. I'm a big fan, and I want to share something with you. As you know, hunters have magic that makes us stronger and faster to a super-human degree." The Valkyrie casually lifted a couch one handed. "Some of us can even share that power using seals. You probably also know that if one of us put seals on you to give you super-human strength and stamina, that it would wear off long before you got back to Earth. That there just isn't any way for someone without a hunter's mark to access these powers in any kind of long term way." She smiled conspiratorially. "But what if there was?"

### End Chapter 13 ###

History Corner Time: Orcs.

So a question I get asked sometimes is "Why do the orcs in Fighting Them There have piebald skin?" And the answer is because I'm the author and I prefer it that way. But the more accurate answer is because orcish skin has been a big bone of contention for a long time.

First of all, orcs come from Tolkien, period. While there is an old English word that it comes from in terms of spelling and pronunciation, the word "orc" meaning a kind of goblin simply didn't exist until Tolkien started using it that way, and no version of the word orc had been used for anything for centuries before Tolkien decided to use it. Secondly, the reason we use the word orc is because Gary Gygax shameless ripped off Lord of the Rings when making Dungeons & Dragons and was able to win that portion of the ensuing court case precisely because of that obscure term in Old English (other parts of that court case were won by Tolkien's estate, which is why we talk about Treants and Halflings rather than Ents and Hobbits).

With such a short folk process to look at, why then is there so much variation in skin tones for orcs. The first reason is that Tolkien himself wasn't really clear on what orcs actually looked like. Descriptive terms such as ugly and hideous are thrown about frequently, but it is usually left to the reader's imagination to fill in the frightening details. This is literarily effective, but not useful to Gygaxian monster classification. To the extent that Tolkien did describe the orcs, he basically describes them as malnourished Turkish soldiers. And we all mostly pretend he didn't, because for people who didn't serve in the trenches of World War I, such an image is not a nightmarish reminder of the constant danger and unending cruelty of war, but instead gets described as "comical," "pathetic," or even "kind of racist." Which is why when it came to Gygax he laid down a list of skin colors that sounded gross to him. Importantly, that included green and purple.

These bizarre and alien skin colors were taken on board by other games. Games Workshop originally had many colours (they are a British company and put extra Us in things) of orcs but eventually settled on green. Even after going all-in on "greenskins" the orcs remained capable of breeding with humans for some time before they were later retconned into being genderless fungi. Half-orcs continued to be mentioned in the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game into the 21st century. Warcraft uses green skinned orcs because it was originally based on Warhammer, but it also still has female orcs and half-orcs because it branched into being its own IP when licensing talks broke down in the early 90s. Purple orcs appear primarily in video games such as Dungeon Keeper and Disgaea.

The picture drawn for the AD&D Monster Manual shows them with pig heads, which is pretty much the genesis of all orc-pig connections. Lots of anime uses orcs who are fairly explicitly boar-people, and all of that can be traced to a pen and ink drawing in the Monster Manual from 1977.

In any case, the orcs in Fighting Them There are intended to be visually distinct from humans, but still obviously primates. These are, after all, people that the protagonist can have sex with. In the backstory, they are another branch of hominids, sharing common ancestors with humans. So I went back to the well of pig-orcs, giving them the kind of skin that pigs can have and humans generally cannot: piebald. Ulzhari has a few pig like traits, having tusks, oinking and grunting, and having piebald skin. She does not go full pig furry or even as far as Miss Piggy, having neither snout nor curly tail.

Next is going to be a sequel to Stop Enslaving My Friends! because it was requested. A lot. I want to be perfectly clear that I definitely notice when people rate and favorite and comment on my works. Engagement is what makes these things happen. There will indeed be a chapter 14 of Fighting Them There, and it will have more dungeon action in it, but I suspect it will come out in early May.