Fighting Them There Ch. 41

Thank you for sticking with this story this long. As of this chapter, Fighting Them There is now half a million words long, and I think the first year arc is about half over. I've put over a million words on Literotica, and I'm glad that people are still reading. Anyway, on to the story.

### Fighting Them There ###

### Chapter Forty-One ###

Colonel Pierce looked at the rosters prospectively provided for the March influx. It wasn't bad, but there were concerns. Two mortalities from the first and third crops, one from the second. They weren't getting below the ten percent conscript mortality targets with numbers like that, but it wasn't unreasonable. Given the apparent new capabilities of Jotunheim, such numbers were easy to justify. Plus they'd recruited three hunter-equivalent defectors, which was the kind of achievement that the higher ups would trade many more lives for than Colonel Pierce had to offer.

The larger concern was how many hunters had retired. Two from the first crop, two from the second crop, and four from the third had each taken the honorable discharge option after their respective catastrophes. There was still an entire month for hunters to get injured, pregnant, or religion that made it so they couldn't possibly come back to fight monsters to the death on a distant nightmare world. There were always a few.

Hunter Mitchell's unusual abilities were going to take a number of other hunters out of the normal rotation. He wouldn't dare to say the beachhead wasn't exciting or important, but it was essentially a whole extra front to fight on. The incoming second crop was going to be really short of hunters to do normal dungeon raids. Of course, they were not actually doing normal dungeon raids, with the moratorium on suspected Jotunheim dungeons still in place. Using only professional teams for dungeons which had only the potential to be occupied by troops Jotunheim had already led them to throwing an actual Rapid Response Team at a genuine magnitude two dungeon. It was a waste of resources, and a substantial loss of training opportunities for hunters in their first tours. There wasn't anything he could do about it until they figured out what Jotunheim was actually doing to mask its advances.

Until then, the professional hunters were going to be overtaxed. That meant they'd need to activate more Rapid Response Teams. Which would take time. And people. He swapped tabs to Doctor Arumugam's report. "It looks like Hunter Costanza is not going to be joining us in the coming year," he said with disgust, "he's even taking that feather coat with him." Naturally the man had a legal right to all the equipment he had captured from dungeons, but the fact that the largest acquirer of gear from the last two years was taking all of that gear off the table made the colonel even grumpier. It wasn't even literally all of the equipment, since he'd covered his chest debt in total well before finishing his fourth tour.

"Sir?" Lieutenant Cortes asked. The hunter in question wasn't one of her charges, but everyone at the base had been aware of the B-tier flanker. The expectation of any B-tier hunter was that they would spend two to five years in elective service before retiring. Although describing it as retirement was a bit of a misnomer, since they would be leaving the Space Force in their twenties as heroic celebrities with awe-inspiring magic powers. Most B-tier hunters could find themselves a second career buoyed with fame, strength, and public good will.

Colonel Pierce grunted. "We need more hunters and more equipment. And we're going to have less than we projected."

Somehow it seemed that every conversation came back to Hunter Mitchell, and that annoyed the Lieutenant very much. "Hunter Mitchell's mission to Nurn was successful in mobilizing extra equipment, Sir. Perhaps he could utilize some of the materials in Nevada? Are we any closer to making that happen?" She'd put in a request some time ago, and no one had bothered to tell her anything.

"Nueva-Lima," the Colonel said inscrutably, "is willing to open its stores. Getting things out of the Nevada vault is... a work in progress." He said it in a way that left no particular hope that that work would progress anywhere before Hunter Mitchell's team returned to the dungeon.

Lieutenant Cortes was dubious. "Sir. Hunter Mitchell's dungeon equipment... adoption," she fumbled over the words, because she wasn't really sure what they should be calling it, and the various acronyms that had been suggested by people at the Department of Defense were not very useful, in her opinion, "His equipment adoption only works with the help of his defectors. Are we really sending first tour conscripts and Nemesis World monsters to a protectorate country on a diplomatic mission?"

Putting his pad down, Colonel Pierce let out a heavy sigh. "We can't send Hunter Mitchell anywhere. He's off duty right now." It was true, of course. Hunter Mitchell wouldn't be subject to military law until he was already coming back to Camp Acheron. There wasn't a legal framework for making him go anywhere in particular during his time off. "But we can offer them tickets. Do you think that the team will decline a trip to the Vieja Lima Lápida?"

She did not. In fact, she suspected that if Hunter Mitchell was offered the chance to go, he'd figure out how to pay for the trip himself. "There are few hunters who would refuse a journey to anywhere on Earth if the promise of dungeon equipment was dangled in front of them," she conceded, "and Hunter Mitchell's people are probably more advancement oriented than most. They, um, spend a lot of time working on advancement. Sir." They exchanged a look. The innuendo had not been lost on him.

Picking his pad up again, the Colonel rolled his eyes. "It's out of our hands. They didn't even tell me they were trying to get them down there through official channels." Being off world meant that no one would or even could say things face to face. Somehow, gossip still found a way.

####

Travel from San Diego to Palo Alto by car was considerably slower than taking the fast train to San Jose and an SBART up the Peninsula. And yet, Doctor Heidi Kwok had asked Melinda to drive all the way down to San Diego in order to pick her up at the base. The reason for this was that certain elements of the Space Force had declared that they did not want her to take the very important data tabs on any form of public transport. It was, in Doctor Kwok's opinion, a ridiculous stipulation, but one they were within their rights to make considering how large the grants the military had signed off on were.

Melinda was clearly annoyed, and she had every right to be, considering that she'd probably been on the road for nine hours and then the Space Force had made her wait around for another hour while they ran security checks. She was not, Doctor Kwok believed, going to get any less annoyed any time soon.

Not having any more luggage than a book bag with a pad in it, Heidi got into the passenger seat of the vehicle and relaxed into the chair. Everything from the clothes that still fit to her diagnostic equipment had been left on the Ancient world. There was simply no reason to send her stuff back to Earth when she was returning to Camp Acheron in less than a month. Mass and volume through the planetary gate was a limited resource, and she needed to show the Space Force that she was a good steward of public resources. Keeping a separate wardrobe on different planets reassured them that she was being responsible "We should probably get something to eat, I'm quite worn out from my travels." She treated herself with a glance at her graduate student, and confirmed that she had not yet developed laser eyebeams.

Fortunately, there were a lot of places to eat in San Diego, and it didn't take very long before the two of them were sharing a booth, waiting for their tacos to arrive. Melinda had synced the menu to her glasses and ordered for both of them with a few waves of her hand. "You're looking good," Melinda said when she refocused her eyes on non-augmented reality, "Actually, you're looking very good. Being off world obviously agrees with you."

Doctor Kwok smiled at the complement. "The beauty secret," she said ominously, "is sex magic."

"What the fuck?" Melinda blurted out.

"That's my line," Doctor Kwok said with a shrug, "But it's true. Master Max, he's the semi-anonymized Hunter SA113 from the data I've been sending you, can make women prettier. With his sex magic."

Melinda looked scandalized. "You had sex with your research subject?!" Her tone of voice indicated that she actually was scandalized. "Once the journals find out that you have a conflict like that, they're going to retract our papers." Obviously, it was a valid concern. Getting multiple papers retracted would torpedo Melinda's career more completely than almost anything else she could do.

And yet, Doctor Kwok did not seem particularly worried. "There is a dungeon that we can enter, but the gate is based on Master Max's sex magic. So if you don't become his sex slave, you can't go to that dungeon and come back. I've put in a request for you and Vanessa to go to the dungeon, but obviously you'd have to become the sex slaves of Master Max. Just like me." The Chinese American woman smiled and pointed at her own dimples.

"Wait," Melinda's brow furrowed, "Do you mean Doctor Rosenkrantz? You want me and Doctor Rosenkrantz to become... sex slaves... for a teenage hunter with weird powers?" She thought about it for a few seconds and had a gradually more horrified expression on her face as she did. "No! Obviously no!"

Heidi huffed. "Oh, what the fuck, Melinda? This is beyond a once in a lifetime opportunity. You'll get to go to a planet that doesn't even have a name. Every measurement you take will be the first of its kind for that planet's entire history. You want to publish about thaumaturgical radiation signatures? How would you like to be the first person to measure a Nemesis World gate going into a dungeon?"

Curiosity was battling to reassert control over Melinda's righteous indignation. "You can do that?"

"You can do that," Heidi corrected, "We know when and where a monster attack is coming to try to retake that dungeon. One of the other hunters, she's the SB114 by the way, has an ability that predicts their arrival. It's been put to the test once, and she nailed it to within zero point three seconds. We have three and a half weeks to get whatever equipment you need, and you'll have about four days in the dungeon to set up any detection array you want. Just... have the data sent back remotely, you won't want to be standing next to it because of the monsters." The physicist's excitement was positively infectious.

And yet... "But you're saying I'd have to fuck a hunter...?"

Heidi cut her off. "No, Melinda. I'm saying you get to fuck a hunter. Several hunters, even." A dreamy expression passed across her face, and then she started explaining it like an excited fan obsessing about her favorite show. "Master Max has actual sex magic, and his penis is every bit as fortified as a defender's shield arm. It makes us beautiful and strong. He surrounds himself with strong, beautiful women, obviously, and he lets you fuck them too! Once you're one of his sex slaves, we'll be able to fuck him together. But we'll also be able to fuck each other. I know you wanted us to have sex after that party, and I gave you all that bullshit about how it wasn't right and stuff. But that can all end once you get slave seals. In the dungeon, we can sleep together and I can get your holes wet for our master to fuck."

"Are you serious?" Melinda scoffed, "You're going to hold that over me? I was drunk!"

"I'm not holding it against you," Heidi was quick to clarify, "Quite the opposite. I think you were right. We should become lovers. It's just that the optimal way for us to become lovers is by Master Max turning you into a super powered sex slave." The tacos arrived and Doctor Kwok began eating the hand-sized morsels of deliciousness.

Melinda took a couple tentative bites while considering this. "And you want Doctor Rosenkrantz to be part of this... sex thing?" No answer was immediately forthcoming as Heidi had a mouth full of taco, and so Melinda got increasingly worried as her boss chewed calmly.

After swallowing, she gestured at Melinda with the remaining half of her taco. "Of course. We can be with her together, rubbing her pussy and stroking her hair while she sucks Master's cock for the first time. Vanessa can be tied up completely helpless while she watches Master Max fuck me." She thought about it for a moment and hastily added: "You can too, of course."

"That's your plan?" Melinda asked, "You're going to gather up all the thaumaturgical physics specialists and have this hunter of yours train us all into sex slaves? What the fuck?!"

Her outburst earned a shrug from Doctor Heidi Kwok. "Not just thaumaturgical physicists, Melinda. In addition to sex magic, there's also like, a castle maintenance magic. So we need some carpenters and scullery maids and such. Also, women with guns are pretty helpful, because we're going to be attacked by an invasion force from one of the Nemesis Worlds."

"OK," Melinda said as the gears rotated in her head, "So you need researchers, soldiers, and Ren Fair people?"

Heidi looked momentarily concerned. "Guardians, Melinda. Soldiers are in the army. Don't let the Space Force people hear you call them soldiers, they hate that."

####

Alicia looked down at her feet, avoiding eye contact with the guardian in the doorway, and especially avoiding eye contact with Miriam and Fiona. She was taller than any of them, but her slender frame meant that she did not loom over them the way Ulzhari or even Sophie would. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize... I just heard that Sophie was in town." The other women were dressed in underwear, and not the sort of underwear that people wore to the gym. It was all lace and extraneous straps.

Miriam looked at the woman on the front porch and grinned. "Oh, come on in. Max and Sophie are with Max's parents and Luhgra watching Michelle run around an oval, so that leaves the rest of us to hide out under armed guard until they get back." The redhead waved for the young woman to enter, and issued her to a seat in the middle of the couch. Miriam and Fiona sat down on either side, and the guardian closed the door and rolled her eyes.

"You're Alicia, right?" Fiona said, proving that she recognized her from Sophie's photos, "Any friend of Sophie is a friend of ours."

The newcomer looked at the very exposed parts of the women on the couch with her. "Are you sure you don't want to... put clothes on?" It was hard to give side-eye to both women at once, and so she found her eyes darting from one side to the other.

They seemed to find the idea pretty funny. "We'll put clothes on before Max's dad gets home," Miriam assured her, "In the meantime, if you wanted to strip down, you're a friend of Sophie's and we'd be absolutely OK with that."

"You're not going into a dungeon," Alicia protested, "you don't have to be nudists right now." Since hunters could only bring dungeon equipment through the dungeon gate, it was well known that many hunters had outfits that would be scandalous in other contexts, especially during their first few tours. Hunter service did not necessarily come with a shirt or shoes.

None of which had anything to do with why Fiona and Miriam were dressed in lingerie. And when Chloe walked into the living room in nothing but a dark blue matching bra and thong ensemble, that also had nothing to do with the logistical restrictions of dungeon gates. "Alicia, this is Chloe. She's part of Max's harem. And Chloe, this is Alicia. She is Sophie's best friend from high school."

Recognition flashed across the brunette's face. "Oh, of course! We're in New Mexico," she said, as if that connected some important dots, "Max can add women to his harem who aren't hunters now. I'm sure Sophie would be happy for you to become Max's sex slave."

While Alicia was too flabbergasted to answer, Miriam placed her hand on her jean-covered thigh. It was seemingly meant to be a reassuring gesture. "Space for sex slaves is actually really tight, Alicia. Right now we need sex slaves who can do archaic crafts like, I dunno, pottery or blacksmithing. But I want you to know that even if there's no room to make you a sex slave, I'm sure we'd all like to watch you have a threesome with Max and Sophie."

A look of panic crossed Chloe's face, making it clear that the Hoplite was not necessarily one hundred percent onboard with the idea of watching sex that involved people who weren't in the harem. Fiona noticed the unease of both Alicia and Chloe and attempted to navigate the gulf between them. "Alicia, even if you don't have some kind of dungeon craft skill, we can have you on a waiting list, where we all acknowledge you as one of Max's sex slaves even if we can't get seals on you yet. I know that Sophie values your friendship very much, and we fully support you being integrated into the harem to the extent that it's possible now, with an eye to making you into a full sex slave as soon as possible. So for right now, you and Sophie can service our master together, and we'll get you the actual magic powers as soon as we no longer need to save all the spots for people who can work metal or whatever. We can treat you like a real sex slave right now, even if you're technically a provisional sex slave." The relief on the brunette's face was obvious, and indicated that Fiona had successfully navigated Chloe's anxieties.

"I'm not going to be a provisional sex slave!" Alicia confidently predicted.

"Great," Miriam responded happily, "What kind of dungeoncraft do you do? I'm pretty good with stonework, Lamiryl is solid on cloth, and Becky is a cook. But we still need someone doing wood or metal."

Fiona was having none of it. "Don't sell yourself short, Miriam. You're an actual Geomancer. You're very good with stone." The redheaded hunter basked in the praise.

Alicia, on the other hand, was not happy with how things were progressing. "What are you talking about? What are dungeon crafts?"

The guardian who had until that point been silently watching the proceedings chose that moment to interject. "I'm sorry Miss, they seem to be like that most of the time. It's not just you." While her statement was not particularly reassuring, it was illuminating.

Looking to be illuminating in her own way, Fiona attempted to explain. "Max's seals can go on a limited number of people, and it turns out that he can take the women he has put seals on into his personal dungeon. That dungeon is going to be attacked by monsters, so we need all the sex slaves to be useful in the dungeon. Obviously anyone who can fight can be a big help," she nodded toward the guardian on duty, "but the dungeon also gives us credit for people doing historical reenactments in the dungeon. So anyone who can do some old task with a historical job title can be a valuable member of the team even if she can't shoot a gun or swing a sword."

"Like Riveteer Rosie?" Alicia asked. When it was clear that the others didn't know who that was, the young woman found herself explaining. "She has a show on the Housework Network, she dresses up like a two hundred year-old character and makes things out of metal." It was intriguing enough that the other women asked her to bring the show up on the Mitchell family screen. Sure enough, there was a woman whose auburn curls escaped the edges of a kerchief and whose arms were almost orcish in their proportions. She was talking about welding.

Chloe was excited. "She's pretty and she's strong. That's perfect," she said, "let's call her!" Confused looks went her way, but the Hoplite was undeterred. "I know she's a celebrity and wouldn't take our call, but we all know whose call she would take, right?" Being a host on HouseNet wasn't the same as being a celebrity who got invited to the Grammys, but maybe that was OK.

Before Alicia had a chance to ask what the women were talking about with respect to celebrity contact details, she saw something even more surprising. An orange woman with black spots on her skin walked into the room. She had black and red boy shorts on and a swishing tail. Her breasts went uncovered and unsupported, but seemingly did not suffer the effects of gravity for it. Night-black wings extended from her back, but the most frightening aspect of her appearance was the strangeness of her face. Almost human, but somehow neither quite elvish or orcish, giving the impression of an animalistic predator on the prowl. "Holy shit!" Alicia exclaimed.

Fiona moved her hand to Alicia's shoulder. "That's Kwrtzl. She's a demon from Tartarus. And she's one of Max's sex slaves."

####

The sky was the color of television, turned to a dead channel. Cloudless except for a few trails left by aircraft, it was a monochrome blue from those white bands all the way down to where the mountains poked over the horizon. It was a pretty good day for racing. In the summer, the track would be a place to break visiting track teams with extreme temperatures, but at the moment it was one of the kinder places in the country to run.

According to Michelle, the four hundred meter was both a lactate event and a sprint event, and that meant that one had to balance one's endurance ever so slightly while going nearly all out. At least, that's what she had to do until her hunter's mark came in. Having a magical endurance reserve would allow pretty much any hunter to complete a four hundred meter dash at a sprint, though not necessarily much more than that. Max could complete such a race in forty seconds, though he wouldn't have much left in the tank after doing so. Sophie could do it in thirty-five. If she was flying, Sophie could blast past the finish line in less than twenty seconds. Michelle's times would improve drastically when her hunter's mark developed, though she was justifiably proud of her forty-eight second finish. For someone without magical augmentation, it was a very good time. For Max, it was a reminder of how short the distances between places in his domain really were, how little time they had to pick off enemies who were able to close that distance at high speed. Luhgra, on the other hand didn't have a lot of context for such events, but she seemed to be enjoying herself.

"Nine months," Sophie declared ominously and without warning, causing Max and his parents to jump in their seats, "If we had held off on me gaining levels, it would still probably take about nine months to advance my class to whatever it becomes as an A-tier." Considering other things that could have been meant by the declaration, the clarification caused visible relief. "Michelle is going to need to build up a lot of Capitulation. If she gets a B-tier class like me, she'll need eight or nine months of training to go up a tier. If we start now, she could be ready to run dungeons by October."

Max shook his head. "We can't start now, she's not a hunter until the mark opens." He looked at Luhgra, who wouldn't be a hunter for many years. At least Michelle would get her class abilities in a matter of months.

The Valkyrie looked at him with an eye that appraised his weaknesses. "You can't make her a hunter-slave. But you have non-hunter slots now. You could give her the same kind of seals that Cat and Fifi have. Build up her Capitulation, spend it on advancing her skills when she gets her class in July. It's five months of extra training she could get. She might be able to be an A-tier hunter in her first tour." It wasn't the first time the idea had been floated, but it was the first time that it had been discussed with Max's parents present. Both of them looked at Max with indescribable mixtures of hope and fear.

Feeling the attention placed on him from all sides, Max's cheeks colored. "I... We can't take that risk." He looked at his parents plaintively. "We don't know what the limits of the non-hunter seals are. It looks like they can go on Michelle even though she isn't a hunter yet, but we don't know if she can ever change them into having the hunter seals that improve skills and classes. We don't even know that they won't prevent her from becoming a hunter altogether." The worry on his face was obvious. "It might be a way to cheat her progression to get her months ahead on improving her stats and skills. But it also might permanently ruin her advancement as a hunter. I can't take that risk. Not with Meesh. Not with anybody, really. But especially not with Meesh."

Absent any rulebook or instruction set for Max's class, there was no way to evaluate the relative risk of Max's fears. No promises or reassurances could be based on anything other than hope. It was very evident that Mark and Mary were searching for something to say, some piece of parental wisdom to impart, but they were badly out of their depth. Luhgra, on the other hand, was pointing to the track. "They run!" she informed them.

"Yes there are, Sweety," Max agreed readily, "they are running very fast." He had actually lost track of who was running, but he didn't think he needed to admit that to a small child.

The phones of both hunters groinked, and the blond woman was much faster on the draw to check the message. "Wanna go to Peru?" The answer came immediately in the form of blank stares from Max and his family, so Sophie elaborated. "They're giving us, all of us, tickets to Nueva Lima and a hotel stay."

"Why...?" Rather than attempt to articulate a complete question, Max pulled out his own phone and started reading. "Huh... So they want Quirky to evaluate some dungeon equipment and see if we can put it to use." He stared at his phone. "Why is this all written like we won a contest instead of just telling us to report to the airport?" He looked at his parents for answers, and they had none. They hadn't even gotten a copy of the message.

After puzzling over her own copy of the message, Sophie thought she'd figured it out. "We're not on duty right now," she decided, "I don't think the Space Force is allowed to send us to work right now. This must be like when we went to Nurn, and got to rummage in Ulzhari's clan treasure closet. That's probably why we're going to look at trophies in South America instead of anything monsters have dropped closer to home."

Max wasn't entirely sure that made sense, but he didn't have a better explanation. "OK, I guess we're going to Peru?" His parents had many questions, and so he found himself answering them as best as he could. "Dungeon equipment used by the monsters during dungeon breaks can't normally go with us into dungeons, and our status windows can't read their properties. Quirky and Pribatar are on our side, but they are monsters, and so they can examine equipment and show the Planetary Defense Force how to use it. And they can even bring that equipment onto our side so that our hunters can use it. Chloe's ranseur is originally from a Nemesis World, and she can take it into dungeons because of Quirky. And I guess, now they want to fly us to Peru to see if we can do something similar."

A visibly tired Michelle walked heavily up to their place on the bleachers. Alongside her was her friend and teammate Camila. "You remember Max," she told Camila, "He's a bigshot hunter now. Being recruited for the SDRF and everything." While her friend was suitably impressed and immediately became bashful in Max's presence, Michelle noticed her family were vexed and possibly disgruntled. "What did I miss?" She asked.

"They run," Luhgra said while pointing at Michelle and Camila.

"We're going to Peru," Sophie said, no less cryptically. Michelle looked to her parents for answers, and found them to be as baffled as she was.

####

When they got home, Chaeryn told them the news. "Sophie's friend Alicia is here," the elf said, "And we are going to the place that was attacked by The Dragon Kaiju of Lima." The black skinned alien didn't have much context as to where or what Peru was, but she was aware of the Dragon Kaiju of Lima. While it had happened over a decade before she was born, it was one of the most consequential black gate events of recent history. When asked about the first fact, Chaeryn gave further information that Alicia was upstairs in Max's room with Fiona, Miriam, and Kwrtzl.

Michelle was excited. "Alicia's here! All the way from Arizona?" Despite her speed, she had only made it a few steps toward the stairs before she was intercepted by Sophie. The Valkyrie put her hand on Michelle's shoulder and shook her head. "What? Why? Alicia's my friend, too!" While Alicia was definitely considered to be Sophie's friend, it was undeniably true that hanging out with Sophie throughout high school necessarily involved hanging out with Max and Michelle as well. If Michelle and Alicia weren't friends, Max and Sophie would have heard quite a lot about it from both of them.

"Max and I have something we need to talk to Alicia about," Sophie declared. When Max looked at her questioningly, she lowered her voice. "Alone. We're going to need to talk to her alone." The fact that she had already been described as being in a room with three other people left Max to ponder what definition of alone the blond woman was using, but he cautiously agreed. Michelle was put out, and Max apologized.

When they got up to Max's room, the door was closed, and Sophie knocked on it with an odd cadence and Chloe opened the door a crack. "It's just Max and me," Sophie whispered, and then the Hoplite ushered them inside and closed the door.

What awaited them inside was something that surprised Max, though in retrospect he realized that he should have expected it. Alicia was naked on his bed, her long and pale legs splayed out with Kwrtzl between them like a jaguar waiting to pounce. "prt-prt-prt," the Tartarian said, her vocalizations presumably wordless as it was not translated to anything in Max's ears. Alicia covered her face with her hands, murmuring in embarrassment when she realized that Max and Sophie had come into the room. The winged alien's tongue darted out and touched Alicia's bare pussy lips, eliciting a groan from the young woman. Max could see that Alicia's inner-lips poked out from her outer lips, the left considerably more than the right.

He wondered if she'd want him to adjust them so that they stuck out the same amount, or tucked in entirely. It had been something that Monique had been quite adamant about when she agreed to become Slave Fifi, and he wondered if Alicia had similar ideas. Her ideas about her body had always seemed a little strange to Max, he still remembered when she got back to school after recovering from heart surgery and insisted that he and Sophie admire the "cuteness" in the pictures of her newly-trimmed heart valves that had been taken by the surgical robots. She was, in Max's opinion, reasonably cute. Before he'd gone to Camp Acheron, Alicia had been the tallest woman he'd known. She was often critical of her own small breasts, flat butt, and negligible hips; but her long and flexible legs were always distracting in their own way. Alicia's muscles were not as substantial as Sophie's, let alone Ulzhari's, but they were close to the skin and they twitched enticingly as she responded to Kwrtzl's ministrations.

Sophie seemed a lot less surprised than Max was. She put her arm around his shoulder and whispered into his ear. "Alicia's going to be such a good sex slave for you, Master." From her grip on his shoulder to the growing edge in her voice, the Valkyrie's excitement was obvious. "You can take her. Fuck her. Make me watch as you make her yours."

Max shook his head. "I don't have any slave slots," he protested, "And Alicia doesn't..." He didn't want to say that she didn't have any real abilities that would justify taking her into a dungeon over a specialist like Lamiryl or even a random guardian who happened to be able to be able to pull the trigger on a battle rifle. He liked Alicia, but she was a long way from her dream of becoming a vet. With only part of her freshman year completed in Arizona, her days of taking care of animals were still years in the future.

While he hadn't finished his sentence, Sophie was pretty sure she knew what the gist was going to be. "Alicia has been our friend for a long time," she said, blithely ignoring the fact that many people would not consider three years to be a long time, "having her join us as one of your sex slaves is something that's going to happen. Maybe she can't get seals right now, but you can still fuck her until she realizes that you own her. Even without seals, you can still break that skinny bitch and make her into your fuck-doll." Fiona, Miriam, and Chloe were all nodding in anticipation.

"What?" Max was so perplexed that he was almost apoplectic. "No seriously, what? There's so much wrong with that. None of you are just fuck-dolls, and without seals my skills wouldn't work on her at all."

A counter-protest came from Miriam. "Master Max, we all love being your submissive sex slaves, and Alicia is completely prepared to be impaled on your cock and learn to be your bitch." The redhead casually reached over and pinched one of Alicia's thick nipples, eliciting an aroused yelp from the darker haired woman. "Isn't that right, Alicia? If you're ready to submit to Master Max, all you have to do is beg him to fuck you."

"Please," Alicia babbled, "Please fuck me, Max!" As soon as the words had left her mouth, Fiona tugged lightly on Kwrtzl's tail, and the Tartarian gave Alicia's clit a lick. "Oooooh," Alicia moaned.

Max looked from woman to woman in shock and confusion. "You're talking about cheating," he said, "Alicia isn't..." He didn't finish the thought, because Sophie kissed him on the mouth. "Mmmph!" was all that remained of his statement.

When Sophie released him, her lips were still tantalizingly close to his own. "It's not cheating, Master. Alicia is one of us. I don't know when she'll get her seals, but she can get her dicking in right now. We won't be able to progress her envy seal by making her watch you fuck us, but she can progress our envy seals by making us watch you fuck her." The blond hunter left it like that, as if she had somehow produced an adequate explanation.

Max didn't think she had. But he was coming around to seeing their perspective. "Are you guys really OK with that? With having someone who is in the harem but doesn't have seals?" It turned out that they very much were, and after quite a bit of cajoling, Max found himself pantsless and kneeling between Alicia's legs.

Those legs were pulled out to either side as Fiona held one ankle and Miriam held the other. Miriam was against the wall, but Fiona was almost in the center of the room. Alicia's hip joints, like all of her joints, were extremely flexible. Her dark and wavy hair was mussed against the bed where the hunters had dragged her around, and she looked down across her body to see Max's angry-looking cock pointed at her slit. "That's amazing," she breathed, "Sophie said... I didn't believe... holy shit, that's going into me." When Max started pushing forward, Sophie's hand was there to help guide him into the warm embrace of Alicia's cunt. "Oooooooh! Fuuhck!" She called out with enough volume that the other occupants of the house probably had a pretty good idea of what was going on, even if they hadn't already guessed.

Her hole was very wet, but it was also quite tight. She did not have the strength of the hunters. In fact, she didn't even have the strength of Cat or Fifi. Alicia was genuinely the first woman he'd ever had sex with who wasn't augmented by seals that increased physical strength. The effect was interesting, where her pussy was narrow but also powerless to stop him from invading deeper into it. Each thrust was like the application of overwhelming force against a determined but futile defense. Shlp. Shlp. Shlp. She grunted beneath him, giving ground in her cunt again and again. A stray thought went through his mind, wondering if sex was simply normally like that. It occurred to him that everyone he felt comfortable talking about the sex slave stuff was themselves quite abnormal, and he couldn't see an easy way to get that question answered.

Fucking Alicia was quite enjoyable for Max. And from the yowling that was emanating from her, it seemed that she was enjoying herself quite a bit as well. Max felt a little conflicted, feeling how much stronger he was than the tall young woman. He felt better about receiving submission from Sophie or Ulzhari, knowing that they could easily throw him across the room if they chose to. Every moment that the hunters in his harem submitted to him was something they had actively chosen. With Alicia, he'd need to be a lot more careful. With her feelings, but also just with her body. For the first time, he really had real context for how much stronger he was than people who lacked hunter's marks, and it made him uneasy.

Chloe seemed to have other ideas. "You should turn her over and stick it in her butt," she suggested, "Tall women are naturally weak to butt sex." Her declaration was such a curve ball, that Max stopped pumping. He had no idea where she got such an idea, but he was certain that it wasn't the case.

His pause was noted by Alicia herself, and she made it clear that she would prefer him to continue. "Moooore," she whined. Alicia tried to pull her legs together to grab Max and pull him in. At first she made no progress, as both Fiona and Miriam were physically much more powerful than she was. Once they realized what she was doing, they both released their holds, allowing Alicia's ankles to cross behind Max's butt. Encouraged by her obvious enthusiasm, Max renewed his thrusts and was rewarded by watching Alicia writhe before him with orgasmic spasms. Sophie whispered something in Alicia's ear, and Miriam whispered something in the other ear. "Yes!" Alicia exclaimed. "Yes, I'll be your slave! Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuhck!"

It was an undeniably arousing proposition, and Max responded by pushing into her deep and hard. Her words lost meaning, and Max accelerated his thrustings. Shlpshlpshlp, it all ran together. The pleasure was intense, and he released into the woman he'd counted as a friend since high school. He was still hard when he withdrew, and a dribble of his semen came out from her lower lips. Sophie pushed Alicia's legs open like she was pushing through a beaded curtain and then knelt between them. The blond kissed her friend's hairless cunt lips and then extended her tongue in between the inner lips to collect as much of Max's semen as possible.

Kwrtzl flapped her wings just once as she literally leapt across the room to arrive in front of Max. The Tartarian looked down at Max's slick and bobbing cock with obvious hunger. "Mahastr Mahaks," she said, "{We have done well in making this} Ahlsah {into your slave, yes? Would you reward me with your Essence?}" As she bent her knees, it briefly looked like she was on an elevator descending until her mouth was at his crotch level.

Max had a lot of things he wanted to say to his slaves, and he wasn't sure where to start. He continued to think about it while his first slave from a Nemesis world demonstrated her ability to take his cock all the way into her throat.

####

A freshly showered Alicia sat between Sophie and Michelle. "Alicia is going to be one of Max's slaves when he gets a free slot," Sophie declared.

"That's great!" Michelle said enthusiastically while Alicia blushed, "I'm going to be one of Max's slaves once I get my hunter's mark. Kwrtzl was E-tier, but Max's abilities promoted her to D-tier. So even if I get an absolutely garbage class like Brawler, Max is going to make sure that I have enough power to go into dungeons and fight them there for real." It seemed that as the date when her hunter's mark would open up, her thoughts had turned from gleeful wishcasting of becoming a Flamen or a Snow Queen to dwell upon the worst possibilities. Max could relate, as he had spent quite a bit of time in the run-up to acquiring his class worrying that Sophie was going to leave him behind.

There weren't a lot of classes that were considered incapable of dungeon raiding, though Brawler was one of them. As an E-tier class, it only started with two skills, and both of them only mattered in the absence of equipment. Since the Space Force made sure every working hunter had a weapon taken from a silver-sigiled chest, the ability to punch as hard as an ax taken from a lead-sigiled chest was almost literally worthless. And yet, after those equipment-replacing skills were progressed by Max's abilities and some extra skills brought in from a class change, even Brawler would probably be good enough to do some real dungeon work. Max was glad that his abilities had brought Michelle the kind of peace of mind that had completely eluded him when he was her age. He had been painfully aware that if his hunter's mark opened up to show something like Brawler, he'd simply wash out of the program. He would not have gone off world to fight the monsters there, he would have had to scramble to get late admission to a vocational program or something. Having a birthday in August really made that whole scenario so much worse. Michelle's birthday being a month earlier would make a big difference in how easy it would be for her to radically change the direction of her life after high school, but it looked like she wouldn't have to even if her class was one that would normally derail a prospective hunter's career.

Alicia was pleased for Michelle, though her reaction was bit muted. "I think it's going to be a long time before I can be one of Max's slaves," she reported glumly, "I won't be a real veterinarian for more than seven years. Maybe I'll be the dungeon's horse doctor or something. If there even is still a dungeon in seven or eight years. Meanwhile, people like Rosie have skills that can get them a space in his slave harem right now."

"I'm sorry," Max interjected, "like who?"

It was Chloe's turn to be excited. "Riveteer Rosie does two hundred year-old metalworking, and she's hot. She's big and strong, so you'll want to take her in the butt."

"Chloe, what are you talking about?"

Miriam came to the rescue. Sort of. "There's a show on HouseNet that Alicia showed us, and the host is a woman who does cosplay and metalwork based on techniques from two centuries ago. So obviously we're going to get Cat and Fifi to bring her on board to work in your domain. She has all the important skills. I'm sure she'll join up before we have to go back to the dungeon."

Not believing for a moment that any of that would be as easy as Miriam was implying, Max was about to ask a series of additional questions when an excited Sophie reported that the Sidewinder Kate and Peppa Grinda performance was up. The Grammys actually had a lot of awards like best album notes and best ambient composition, and many viewers wanted to watch celebrities in the audience more than anything that was happening on any of the stages. Navigating which stream to watch to see the part you wanted to see could be pretty tricky. However, in this case the performance they were looking for was considered something of a draw, and so it was quite prominently labeled and surprisingly easy to find.

The two of them were introduced by a pair of celebrities that Max did not recognize. One of them was a woman who was in movies that he had no interest in, and the other was a man who was in a comedy show that he had even less interest in. The fact that they expressly said that the two singers had recently returned from a dungeon full of monsters was very interesting. Max had gotten the impression from what Susan had said that the Space Force had wanted that information to be kept at least a little under wraps. If any secrecy had been the plan, obviously someone had changed it. Rumors of Kate and Peppa having been involved in something magical had been swirling and the people on the main stage just said the thing. Out loud.

The performance itself was a rendition of Crawl 4 U, a song they had performed for him several times in various states on undress. The production on the stage was obviously cleaner, armed as it was with studio musicians and live access to a technician with a sound board. Katherine and Monique had explained the advantages of using those resources, and he thought he mostly understood it. Despite that fact, he definitely preferred the energy of the two of them actually rubbing their naked breasts on his body while singing. Not just that he liked having skin to skin contact with beautiful women, but also he felt that the performance was actually superior when it was less note-perfect and polished.

One thing Max had never understood was the rules on what could and could not be shown in a public performance. Crawl 4 U wasn't particularly opaque about its subject matter, and the two singers were wearing collars and clothing that was hardly more than leather straps. It was, Max thought, the kind of performance that was relegated to strip clubs and the like, and yet it was obviously allowed and even encouraged by the Grammy people. Perhaps some of that was a simple desire to court controversy and attract eyeballs through the lens of scandal, but perhaps there actually were some vague rules that Katherine and Monique were adhering to that made what they did acceptable to show to all-ages audiences in the way that Becky Boulevard's works were not.

Sweaty and nearly naked, the performers on the screen finished their set to raucous applause. They dedicated their performance to "Max," and warned their fans that they'd be spending some time off world, going into a dungeon and fighting them there. The crowd loved it.

####

The very moment that Max stepped through the airport's scanning arch, several beeps went off. He had to show his credentials to airport security, because swords normally had to be checked into the cargo hold. As an active hunter, he was allowed to carry magic weaponry even on international flights, which made passing through the scanner almost as easy for him as it was for the unarmed members of his family. Michelle and his parents could only accompany him as far as the passport line, but they'd left themselves an extra half an hour to make sure they didn't miss the flight in Albuquerque traffic. It meant that they had some time to eat a last meal together. For that purpose, they'd brought sodas and burritos that he'd picked up along the way. Purchasing food at the airport itself was a possibility, but would be much more expensive than the food they'd bought in town.

It was actually a little surprising that there would be a direct flight from Albuquerque to Nueva Lima at all, Max would have expected to need to fly to Houston or Los Angeles and change planes before flying to South America. Albuquerque was generally an international airport only in the sense that it had flights to and from Mexico and some island countries. But for whatever reason, on that day there was a commercial flight that went all the way from Albuquerque to Nueva Lima, and his entire group were going to be on it. It had already been more of a hassle than dropping Alicia off at the train station. Alicia had walked through the station's security scanner easily, she wasn't carrying an arming sword. She also wasn't taking one of the international trains, which meant that she avoided the passport control entirely.

Passport control was a little more complicated to get through than security had been. The simple fact that six members of his group were aliens, and three of them weren't even from Alliance worlds really made the explanations quite difficult. Max was armed with an invitation from The Peruvian Protectorate Authority and a travel waiver from the Space Force that both obliquely but definitely included Kwrtzl, Pribatar, and Berry. The electronic documents were valid, but also well outside the experience of the people at he passport kiosk. Managers were called. The manager had to call someone else, and after being on hold for a while, was transferred to yet a different person. After all the fuss, max's entire group were able to walk on through to the gate. It was much less impressive than the gates that connected to other worlds. It was basically just a door that opened to the outside. Max's heart fell when he was told that they'd have to go through passport control on the other side. He supposed that it made sense that the Peruvians wouldn't have people in Albuquerque, but the whole process was a lot less streamlined than it was to cross the border into Mexico. There were no commuter waivers for people traveling from North America to South America or vice versa.

On the plane, Max's group was assigned the seats four entire rows, on both sides of the aisle. And while there were a few unoccupied seats in their area, they weren't really empty because Ulzhari and Kwrtzl did not fit easily into a single seat. Max himself was placed into a middle seat, flanked by Sophie and Fiona. All the seats in front of him and behind him were taken up by his own delegation, a fact that he didn't think anything of until they were flying Southwest toward the Pacific Ocean. Lima was actually well to the East of Albuquerque, but for reasons that Max didn't understand, it was apparently better to fly around both continents and approach the city from the water. He was just considering why that might be when he felt hands stroking his thighs.

Looking left and right, he realized that both the Beacon Wizard and the Valkyrie were sneakily opening the fly on his jeans. "What are you doing?" Max whisper-shouted at the two women. It was a technically inaccurate question, as what they were doing was rather obvious. However, the fact that he meant "Why are you doing this?" or perhaps "Don't you realize that you're going to cause an international incident?" was probably pretty well implied.

"Relax," Sophie commanded, "It'll be just like the train to High Market." Both women giggled and Max sighed in resignation as they freed his willy. With just a few strokes from the Valkyrie's hand, his erection was at full mast. "Master is ready for you," she said to Fiona.

The Beacon Wizard pushed the armrest up and draped herself over Max's lap. The Vietnamese American gave the head of his penis a few licks and then opened her mouth to engulf it entirely. "Mmmmm," she moaned around the bulbous end of his mouth. Suction increased, and her lips became concave. Max's shaft became harder, longer, like a leash pulled tight by an eager hound. Fiona was pulling her head up, and such was the force of her sucking that it felt like she was pulling his cock up by its roots. Max placed his hand firmly on the back of Fiona's head, preventing her from absconding any farther with his penis. "Mmmmph?" she asked.

"You need to understand," he told the woman whose hair was in his hand, "We are not in my domain right now." He began pushing down on her head, sliding his cock into her mouth. "I know you need me to give you Essence sometimes, but you Need. To. Be. More. Discreet." With each forceful word he forcefully fucked himself into her mouth.

Fiona tensed at first, and then let herself relax as the facefucking began in earnest. "Glp. Glp. Glp." was all she managed as her master's manhood traveled the length of her tongue in both directions. Tears formed in her eyes, the moisture running from her epicanthal folds down her cheeks. A few drops of joyful salt water spritzed onto Max's clothes, but most of it stuck to Fiona's face through the magic of surface tension. "Mmmmmm." She moaned happily as the first spurt of Essence came into her mouth. Max abruptly released her head and she pulled back to show him that she had a load of his cum on her tongue. "Thank you, Master. I'll trade seats with Chaeryn."

"What?"

Placing her jacket over his crotch to hide his saliva-covered rod during the exchange, Sophie giggled. "Master Max, it is an eight hour flight. Every one of us is going to need a turn to join the Mile High Club. Chaeryn's turn just happens to be next." The tickets claimed that the trip was ten hours, but two of those were actually just the change in time zone. Max looked for Chaeryn and found that she was already next to him. The elf had already been ready for the seat change, and had slinked into the seat next to him without Max even noticing her doing it.

As Sophie pulled back the curtain to reveal his flesh to the Assassin, he comforted himself with the knowledge that at least she was being tolerably stealthy about it.

####

"¡Hola y Konichiwa!" proclaimed the sign, though the passport lines rapidly divided incoming airline passengers in a way that indicated that not all countries were equally welcome in Nueva Lima. People from North American countries got to be in the faster moving line with the Japanese and actual Peruvians, but it seemed that citizens of most other South American countries had to go in the slower moving line with people from "other countries."

English was not a preferred language, as instructions in that language came after those written in Spanish and Japanese, though before those in Portuguese. The customs and border control people were pretty gruff when they realized that there was a large group of armed people who had come from America. They asked a lot of pointed and repetitive questions, though their attitude changed quite abruptly when it was revealed where they intended to stay, and what type of invitation they actually had. Suddenly the doors opened for them, and they were waved through to baggage claim.

In the baggage claim area, they were met by a group of military police and also a black-haired woman wearing a mask of makeup and a monochromatic skirt suit who introduced herself as Kyoko Escobar. She had some kind of government position that caused the military police to defer to her. When their suitcases were secured, the old man monitoring the screen that displayed the outputs from the scanners opened his mouth in alarm. When he noticed Kyoko and the military police were already walking with Max's group his mouth stayed open, but at least he didn't yell. Sophie gave him a princess wave, and they exited to the terminal and proceeded to the road, where a half dozen government vehicles awaited them. The first rays of sunlight were breaking over the mountains, a reminder that they had crossed the equator into late summer, where morning light came at an absolutely unacceptable time. Changing seasons and time zones on his own world was no less jarring than the time changes inflicted when he stepped through a gate to an entirely different planet.

Max was allowed three members of his team in the black SUV, and he decided it made the most sense to bring Kwrtzl, Pribatar, and Berry. The three of them had difficulties communicating with people who weren't him, and it was obvious that it was their presence that had justified the entire journey. The driver wore a military uniform, and Kyoko Escobar joined him in the vehicle. Half the seats were facing backward, which gave it the feel of a train ride or a limo rather than a normal car trip. In the early morning traffic, the vehicles made their way up the hill easily. Most of Lima was over a hundred meters higher than the airport, and their destination was higher up than most of Lima. "The Colonial center of Lima was eradicated by your people and the Dragon Kaiju," Kyoko said casually, "You'll find that Nueva Lima has been rebuilt as the most modern city on Earth. Probably the most modern city on any world," she said, leveling a meaningful glance at Max and also at his alien companions. Not that Kwrtzl, Pribatar, or Berry were even aware that the human woman had implied something disparaging about them.

"These three women are Nemesis World defectors," Max said, "and they can identify dungeon equipment from Nemesis Worlds. My class is such that those items can be put to use in dungeons by hunters." Every word he'd said was wildly unbelievable, and yet someone had agreed to send him with more than twenty other people because it was true. He wasn't bragging, exactly, he genuinely wasn't sure how much the Peruvians knew or believed about the capabilities of his team.

Her face was immobile, like he'd told his wild tales to a porcelain doll. "There are indeed many items that we wish your... associates to appraise. However, we would not want you to attempt ground breaking feats while struggling with fatigue. We are taking you to your hotel, and we will pick you up after almuerzo. Feel free to avail yourselves of the hotel's excellent cuisine. The Michelin system does not operate in The Protectorate, but I assure you that the chef would be rated with stars if their critics dared to cross the mountains."

Max did not know how international chef ratings worked, and so he simply nodded. After an over-night intercontinental plane trip during which he had been denied sleep by a parade of sexually voracious women from six different planets, he was both hungry and sleepy.

The hotel itself had trees in the lobby. Not little citrus trees in pots either. The center of the high-ceilinged room had a big broad-leafed tree that was ten meters tall. Max didn't recognize the big tree, though the gigantic lobby was obviously built to house and draw attention to it. Around the big tree were six blossoming trees that he figured would transform into cherries, plums, or almonds if they were allowed to fruit. Considering how much Japanese money had flowed into Peru since the Kaiju attack, the smart money would be on cherries.

At first, the hotel wished to give all of them their own rooms, which was suitably decadent but not something that Max could agree to. Not because the bill would be excessive, as it had been made clear to him that the finances were being taken care of by someone else entirely, but because some members of his party would not be OK on their own. Luhgra was a small child who needed someone with her, and the Nemesis World aliens needed him specifically if they were going to communicate.

He ended up with a honeymoon suite that had a king sized bed. He was just about to pass out when Kwrztl lowered her pussy onto his face. It tasted different to that of any of the other pussies he had sampled. He wasn't sure if that was because she was a Tartarian, or if he was just getting better at discerning the subtle differences of pussy taste. In any case, the hairless orange and black skin between Kwrtzl's legs had a faint molasses taste that was absent from the pussies of any of his other slaves.

With the Tartarian's lower lips mashed against his mouth, Max couldn't see what the other women were doing. He could certainly feel it, however. Tongues and fingers stroked his body all over, and when he finally passed into the realm of sleep, it was with a little bit of regret.

####

The hotel restaurant specialized in local cuisine, and it had sushi that was prepared right in front of the delighted guests. Exquisitely thin slices of raw fish, served with seaweed-wrapped quinoa, green paste, and red soup. To Max it looked delicious, but it also looked like danger. He didn't think that his alien companions would appreciate the citrus-infused chilies or the wasabi on their food. There were other local specialties that were less challenging in the spice department, and so he made sure that there were plenty of potatoes, ramen, and cuy.

Ulzhari was actually quite surprised by the rainbow-hued stack of potato slices that had been placed before her. Purple, yellow, and orange, the difference colors of potatoes had been sliced thin, fried with onions, and then stacked to make a dish that Max thought looked and smelled wonderful. "{Master} Max," the orc asked dubiously in her native tongue, "{What is this?}"

"They're potatoes?" he replied, "Like the ones we eat at the mess hall at Camp Acheron, but touched by an actual chef. We can probably get Susan to make this for you, if you like it."

The Bloodletter's surprise was all over her face. "{These are} Potatoes?" Incredulity dripped from her voice.

At Camp Acheron there was probably a potato dish available every meal. Between french fries, home fries, curly fries, potato wedges, potato chips, hash browns, scalloped potatoes, mashed potatoes, shepherd's pie, baked potatoes, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, potato soup, and potato skins, Max seriously could not recall a single time he had gone into the mess hall without a potato product waiting for him to consume. And so, Ulzhari's surprise was in turn something of a surprise. "Yeah, those are just... potatoes."

Miriam came to his rescue. "The potato is grown all over Earth, but it's actually from the mountains we can see out our hotel windows. In Peru they have more different kinds of potatoes than anywhere else in the galaxy. Different colors and flavors from potato varieties that haven't ever left Peru." He was grateful that the Geomancer had so many food opinions, and quite relieved that Ulzhari and Luhgra seemed to like the meal.

That wasn't the only food question that Max was asked to field. Berry wished to know what the meat in the ramen was, and he found himself trying to explain what a guinea pig was. "It's basically like a hart rat, I guess. But they don't have antlers. Or any defenses at all, really. Like, across between a hart rat and a potato." Berry was enthralled, and wanted to see them alive. He had been worried that she might be offended at being served rodent meat, but she seemed to think it was normal to eat animals that were not part of the swarm. "OK, I'm sure there are guinea pigs to see. Maybe in like, a pet store?"

He hadn't even finished his thought when Fiona had busted out her phone. "There's a pet store in walking distance," she reported, "we can be there and back before the planetary defense people come to take us to the Lápida."

And that was how they found themselves walking in the very pedestrian-oriented portion of the Nueva Lima shopping district. Everything was very clean, which from Max's understanding was something of a departure from how Lima had been characterized prior to being demolished by a fifty-meter-long dragon and a nuclear bomb. The pet store was physically quite close, as Fiona's net searches had indicated, though most of it was dedicated to food and gear for pets rather than live animals. However, in the back there were terrariums that had various small animals in them, and guinea pigs were one of the offered creatures.

Berry was fascinated, and got down on her hands and knees to better look at the furry creatures. A shop assistant came and after a few false starts, commenced in passable English. "The cuy is an important animal to the Peruvian people," she said, "Incan shamans would use them in medicine."

"What, like, eating them?" Max asked dubiously.

The shop assistant laughed. "Well yes, but also in rituals. The white cuy were used to ward off evil spirits. The black cuy were used diagnostically to find sources of sickness." The small animals in the glass enclosure groinked and squealed, and Max could imagine one of them being held like a Geiger counter or ultrasound probe. The mental image was surrealistic, and he wondered how genuinely real such a scene might have once been. The past was a weird place, sometimes.

After a quick discussion with the other members of his harem, it was decided that getting a guinea pig for Berry to use as a guinea pig was entirely reasonable. The plan was presented to the shop assistant, who immediately shot it down. The store was not allowed to sell single guinea pigs, because they were social animals and needed to be in pairs or herds. And that was how they were convinced to get two guinea pigs. One was white, with such long hair that its eyes weren't visible, and the other was black and had fur that was short and soft to the touch.

Berry added them to her swarm mass, and reported that she was able to perceive through them. {Master,} she thought at him, {these animals have quite poor defensive capabilities}

Having been joined into Berry's swarm, they wouldn't wander off and get lost, but they were also small and slow, with legs that were quite tiny compared to those of humans. Fortunately, Luhgra was quite happy to carry one of them, and there was actually no shortage of women who liked the idea of holding a rodent. Especially one that was as well behaved as one that had mind-melded with Berry.

####

The company was an unknown, but the promised pay was pretty good. Becky Boulevard was well aware that the companies that made the kinds of videos that she starred in came and went all the time. Fashions swept through West Hollywood and Miami as quickly as they spread through Paris and New York. An imprint might find that its strengths became weaknesses over night as being strongly associated with the last big thing could be as devastating to distribution as being associated with the next big thing promised growth. She was aware of at least one company that had rebranded itself five times in ten years, always trying to position themselves in front of the curve. So it was that when Tiffany had told her that a new company was looking to hire her, it was something that seemed entirely plausible. Not that being tied up by complete strangers she'd never heard of was something that was entirely without concerns, but it was genuinely the sort of thing that happened in her line of work. The last completely new employer had turned out to be the actual Space Force, and part of her payment had been in the form of being granted magical powers.

Basic precautions still had to be taken on any new assignments. It was regrettable that she had to leave messages that would autosend if they weren't canceled, but that was life in the gig economy. Since returning from Max's dungeon domain, she had started including her master on the autosend list. She wasn't sure what Max would be able to do about her going missing from New Mexico, but at least he'd know something had happened to her. And he'd know where she had gone.

The place she'd gone was just a rented house in an upscale part of Glendale. Three stories, and many bedrooms and bathrooms, the whole house would doubtless command an entirely egregious price tag if someone wished to purchase it. Renting it out and using it as a studio was still quite expensive, but well within the means of any production company serious about making mass market erotica. Even low-end companies often rented out mansions and fancy cars in order to make videos that appeared to demonstrate the lifestyles of the fantastically wealth. Many videos could be made during a quite short lease, and the result was that an expensive house was really no barometer at all for determining whether the company was doing well or not.

A disinterested camera-woman answered the door. Becky recognized her vaguely as a woman who did mercenary work for various companies as a set decorator and camera operator. That she was there meant that the new company had decided to hire actual professionals, which was mildly reassuring. "You'll have to do most of your own scene design," she told Becky, "The new guys don't really know how anything works." That sounded exhausting, but also wasn't unexpected. Lots of people wanted to turn some money into making porn without necessarily doing a deep dive on how porn was actually made. Sometimes it was simple money laundering, sometimes it was gambling to try to hit it rich, and sometimes it was just for the love of having attractive people fucking in their vicinity. That last group were the worst, the most likely to get handsy with the staff. The kind of people who would happily drop a wad of cash at a strip club and thought they'd get even more lap dances if they just rented out the whole club.

Inside, the house hadn't been modified much from how it had been staged to attract potential renters. Unobtrusive art hung on the wall, the living room had a bowl with plastic fruit on it on the coffee table, there were even some dishes laid out on the dining-room table. It was the least surprising layout the house could have, but it also didn't suggest any special vision or competence on the part of the people who had financed the operation. She would have really wanted furniture that wasn't in the expected frames to be cleared out so that the camera operators could do their jobs easier. The last thing she wanted was for some scene to get ruined because a potential camera angle was cut off by a bookshelf that was stocked with remaindered books that a realtor feng shui expert had decided on. The pile of bondage supplies was literally in a pile, which seemed less than ideal. It wouldn't be the first time she'd had to wait on set for people to find an appropriately sized set of cuffs in an unsorted collection, and it was definitely not how she'd do things if it was her money financing the project.

Becky found the director, a man with a shaven head and dragons tattooed on his arms. He was conventionally attractive and looked like someone who would start and win a fight in a bar. Becky had always been iffy on bad-boy types; but since acquiring an actual master, such men didn't warrant a second look. Nevertheless, she identified his position of leadership immediately, because he had a different kind of over-confidence than the dudes whose job it was to actually whip it out on camera. "So what are we actually doing?" she asked, "I gotta know what I'm consenting to before I can do the proof of life segment."

"The what?" he asked in genuine confusion. "You get tied up and fucked. We film it. You get paid."

Her face fell, her heart sank. The guy in charge revealed that he quite literally did not know the first thing about making a pornographic video for commercial release in multiple legal jurisdictions. She was about to say something explanatory and cutting, when another man walked into the living room with a sword at his belt. Having spent some time living in Max's dungeon, the sight of a man wearing a sword simply wasn't as surprising or interesting as it would have been before she had left Earth, and so her eyes wandered to take in other places on his body. She noticed his sport coat and his squared handkerchief, unmistakable marks of a man who felt they had something to prove. But the thing that really drew her attention was the amulet that hung from a gold chain on his neck. It was a gaudy thing, adorned with a seven-pointed star and some symbolic gibberish. "Is that a Seven Heavenly Kings necklace?!" Becky fumed so hard that she dropped into a Susan-voice. "You can't show us shit like that! If you want to launder your shit by giving us dirty money, that only works if we don't know it's dirty. I'm out of here."

The camera woman huffed. "Fucking for real? Yeah, you can't flash gang signs on set. Everybody knows that." She began putting her camera equipment back in her bag. It was quite an ordeal, because there was a lot of equipment and it all had a very specific way that it had to be tied together in order to make it all safe and easy to use.

The man with the dragon tattoos turned his annoyance to the man with the medallion. "Man, why you gotta fuck things up. We coulda had a Becky Boulevard exclusive."

In answer, the man drew his sword. "We're moving the timetables up, I'm afraid. You'll have plenty of time to look at Becky Boulevard after she is tied up for real."

Susan screamed. She knew that her voice wouldn't reach anyone who cared to do anything about it, and yet it definitely seemed like the thing to do under the circumstances. There wasn't enough time to make a call. She ran for the front door, knowing that the man with a sword would reach her before she made it outside. It seemed like the thing to do under the circumstances.

####

The Lápida was a parade ground with monuments to Vieja Lima around the periphery. The wide expanse of flat flagstones was meant to serve as a focal point for meditations about the awesome destructive power that was unleashed on the innocent people of Lima some three decades prior. It was a sobering thing to walk through, and walking through it was necessary to get to the armory. The area around the site of the Dragon Kaiju's fall seemed to have a higher propensity for dungeon breaks, and more than one group of monsters had appeared in the memorial grounds themselves. Having a planetary defense station at one end of the grounds was simply logical. Nueva Lima had one of the world's most sensitive dungeon break detection systems, and a map that displayed every previous dungeon-break's location did give the feeling that perhaps they were all darts thrown at a singular target.

Unlike the house treasures they'd been presented with in Nurn, there was no questions as to what items were actually magical. Hyperspectral imaging could already determine which items did and did not have magical capabilities with a high degree of accuracy. However, the fact that Alliance hunters were not normally able to see the status windows associated with Nemesis World gear meant that there were still many items whose purpose was unknown.

Kyoko showed them the first item they were being asked to identify. It was a sphere of opaque crystal that weighed over forty kilograms. "This thing was taken from the body of the Dragon Kaiju, where it had been embedded in the scales of his chest," she explained, "Naturally, it has been called el Dragon Ball, and has prompted generations of hunters to attempt to figure out how to use it."

Since it was a Patalan artifact, Max had Berry take the first crack at identifying it. She set the two guinea pigs next to the orb, and they sniffed it. The local planetary defense personnel seemed to think that was pretty normal, so Max swallowed his planned apology. {Master,} the Patalan woman thought at him, {It is a memory of trampled grass that can serve as an escape hole} she sent him some images of a pile of leaves, a game trail, and some shrubs that seemed to part like the automatic door at a grocery store.

"Uhhhh..." Max considered what he had been told. "I'm going to need a second opinion. Pribatar, you're up. Put your hand on the orb, and tell us what the status window actually says."

"{Yes Master,}" the Mictlanian agreed.

### End Chapter Forty-One ###