Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 48: Mermaid Cave

Beginning

<- Previous: World Tree

One rampaging monster queen down, three to go.

Next on the hit list is the mermaid tribe.  We already know where their base is.  It’s just to the west of Esta, here:

Mermaid base, surprisingly not at sea as you'd expect, which I guess makes it a good spot for a hidden base

Previously the cave entrance was blocked by a mermaid general and Luka was too gentlemanly to force his way in.  Now, with the Mermaid Queen in our sights, we get the option to fight our way in.

Fishy bouncers

Inside is a cave system filled with mermaids.  There are also some of the adorable ickle sea horse marines and sea slugs.  An NPC tells us that the pay isn’t very good in the navy, so some of them also work for the Mermaid Queen.  As far as I know, you still can’t recruit them if you chose the pirate route way back in the beginning of part two, which is a shame.

The other monster girls are the new mermaids we encountered while defending San Ilias.  The mermaid generals were an encounter in the original series.  The new fishy babes are Lorelei and Mermaid Knight.  Lorelei, as we found out in the invasion of San Ilias, gives a nice bubbly bath.  Mermaid Knight’s scene is a sloppy blowjob with plenty of saliva to perk us up into the right mood.

Who wouldn't turn down a sloppy mermaid BJ?

I suppose you could describe it as vanilla, but that will probably be a relief to those scarred by MGQ’s various angel and demon abominations.

The other NPC wandering around is El, the little mermaid princess.  We bump into her multiple times while walking through the caves.  She seems very conflicted about her role in the attack on San Ilias and is unsure of what to do.

I’m guessing no-one is pulling Queen Mermaid’s strings here.  She has a massive chip on her shoulder against humans as they murdered her love back in more barbaric times.  She didn’t need much prompting to join in on the attack on humanity.

You can encounter her in the centre of the cave system.

Queen Mermaid's location

She is also a returning boss from the original series.

Tragic mermaid back story.  Does not like humans.

Sure enough, there is no surprise boss to attack us after frying Queen Mermaid (she’s rather vulnerable to lightning).  She was happy for any excuse to bash humans.  Having resolved some of her crisis of conscience, El, shows up to try and talk her mother out of the bad stuff.  Queen Mermaid decides to call off the war and offer herself as prisoner on the condition that she and only she is held responsible for the actions of the mermaid race.  She also tells El to go along with us to learn to be a better future queen.

We are again the peace delegate and it’s off to San Ilias to present Queen Mermaid’s terms.  These are fine to Robo-Pope.  He’d rather form an alliance than punish her.  He also gives us a few rewards.  We get the Swift God’s Soul, which is the unlock item for advanced dragon knight, thief and ninja jobs.  I think.  He also hints of other goodies to be found in the makina workshop beneath his throne room.  It’s worth going down there as one of the engineers gives us the book to unlock the advanced engineering job as well as what looks like a multi-way rocket launcher.  That seems moderately unfair in a fantasy game.

Then back to Queen Mermaid.  She was fully expecting to be executed.  Alice informs her humans have gotten much better than they used to be.  This makes Queen Mermaid feel even worse for bringing up El the way she has.

We’re not quite done here as there is another long callback to events in the MQ:P [part 1].  You’ll remember that we’ve been carrying around a dried bit of squid that was the Queen of the South Seas temple until Astaroth sucked all her energy out.  Poseidoness couldn’t restore her, but suggested Queen Mermaid might be able to.  And here we are, talking to Queen Mermaid.

She does indeed have the magic to restore Kraken, who is very relieved to be returned to normal after many narrow escapes of nearly being eaten by accident by Alice.

Kraken, un-besquidded (and thankfully for her, uneaten by Alice)

She joins the party and suggests we go back to the North Sea Temple to recruit Poseidoness.  Talk to Poseidoness (Kraken doesn’t even need to be in the party) and she’ll join.  She also seems a bit gropy with her tentacles, much to Sonya’s disgust.  Alice tells her most of the deep sea monster girls are like that.

We’re a bit short of the smexy stuff, given that the only new monster girl is Mermaid Warrior, so here’s a pic of Kraken getting her tentacle grope on.

Sea monster girls like to get their tentacles in all sorts of places

Then back to Queen Mermaid for the set?

Nope.  Not yet.  She’s still concerned about El.  I’m guessing we’re waiting for the same quest unlock as with Queen Alraune, Elf and Fairy.

Anyway, that’s it for the frisky fishies.  Next up it’s time to take on the spider girls, where I absolutely won’t deliberately kick Luka into a web so a trio of delightfully kitsch spider girls can have their wicked way with us.  Ahem.

-> Next: Spiders!

The Heart Squad (part 5)

Beginning


A shape flowed out of the darkness and stepped in front of him.  It was the tall and busty flame-haired woman.  She was still wearing nothing more than a longcoat over frilly pink lingerie.

Had she been waiting out here all this time?  She must be freezing her nips off, Kurtzburg thought.

If she was, she gave no outward sign.  She greeted Kurtzburg with a breezy smile.

"Mr Kurtzburg, we never realised you had to work so late."

She glanced up at Kurtzburg's floor, where everything was in darkness.

"You must have been so lonely, working up there all on you own.  You should have let us know.  We would have come up and kept you company."

A stretch limo—sleek and gleaming white—pulled up alongside them.  The back door opened and two excitable women leaned out.

"Hello, Mr Kurtzburg," they said in unison.

Both looked younger than the flame-haired woman and were just as attractive.  He recognised them from the pictures that had been sent him.  In person they exuded a strong aura of wanton sexuality.  They seemed like the type of girls that did anything and everything.

"I think there's been some mistake," Kurtzburg said.  "You have me mixed up with someone else."

"You are Mr Piotr Kurtzburg, of..." the flame-haired woman reeled off Kurtzburg's home address and even his date of birth for good measure.  "I don't think there's been any mistake."

Nope, that was rather... specific.

"Why me?" he asked.

"Someone thought you deserved it," the flame-haired woman said.

That didn't help Kurtzburg at all.

"What did you think of the chocolates?" she asked.

"Um, I didn't... um... eat them.  The QA women shared them."

The woman looked disappointed.

"Oh well, can't be helped," she said.  She smiled.  "Their husbands and boyfriends will be in for a good night tonight.  What about you, Mr Kurtzburg?  Are you ready to embark on a night of unadulterated passion and hedonism?"

She held out her right arm, simultaneously blocking Kurtzburg's path and directing him in the direction of the back of the limo.  The two girls, all smiles, beckoned him to join them on the back seat.  A third girl regarded him with sultry interest from an open window.  Wow.  They'd looked attractive enough in the pictures, but were even more gorgeous in the flesh.

Kurtzburg was tempted.  Sorely tempted.  But...

...this was way too good to be true.  There was no way it could be legit.

"I don’t think I can get into that car with you," Kurtzburg said.

"Aww," the flame-haired woman said.  "Don't be so uptight.  Those inhibitions aren't healthy.  Come with us.  We'll help you lose them.  It will be fun."

She moved forwards to caress him.

Instinctively, Kurtzburg stepped back.

"Sorry, I think this is all one big misunderstanding.  You have the wrong guy.  No-one would arrange all this for me."

The woman placed a hand on her hip.  Her lips pouted in irritation.

"My, you are an awkward one."

Her sensual lips turned up in a smile.  Her eyes twinkled.  For a brief—split second—moment, Kurtzburg would have sworn he saw a pink flash.  Then...

...Kurtzburg was sitting on the back seat of a luxurious stretch limo surrounded by four gorgeously uninhibited young women.

What the hell.  You only live once, he thought to himself.


to be continued...

The Heart Squad (part 4)

Beginning


The first text message arrived at two o'clock.

"Are you excited for tonight?  We are.  xoxo, the Heart Squad."

Number withheld.

Kurtzburg was less rattled about this one.  It was his work phone.  It wouldn't have been hard for the Heart Squad, whoever they were, to get it.

A picture followed.  It was a close-up of the flame-haired model kissing the camera with the other three girls in the background behind her.

All four women were exceedingly attractive.  They looked just like the women you saw on TV gliding around the swanky parties.  Starlets.  Celebs.  'It' girls.  Ironic given that his own profession, which also shared the same two letters, was often at the opposite end of the spectrum when it came to glamour and social skills.

Then it clicked.

If they looked good enough to be TV people, they might be TV people.  Which made this a... Valentine's Day prank?  Yes, that sounded plausible.  Probably one of the cheap'n'nasty reality TV shows.  Kurtzburg had no idea which.  He didn't watch much TV nowadays, preferring instead to spend his leisure time playing videogames or solving coding problems.  He also had no idea why they'd singled him out.

Okay, he did.  It was because he was fugly and surrounding a mumbling fugly with four bombshell beauties would make for appropriately cringe-inducing TV.

He had no idea why they'd singled him out in particular.

Oh well, that mystery would have to wait for later.  He had to fix this bug before the end of the day.

Betts came back with the box of chocolates and a guilty expression.  The tray was empty.  For all of Betts's talk of sharing them with the whole office, Kurtzburg doubted the box had even left the QA section.  He didn't mind.  Given their suspect origin, he hadn't been planning on eating any of them.

* * * *

Kurtzburg got another text at three.

"We're going to have so much fun together."

You're going to be so disappointed, Kurtzburg thought, deleting the text.

Another at four.

"We'll be waiting for you outside after work."

You'll be waiting a long time then, Kurtzburg thought.  Judging by how this bug fix was progressing, Kurtzburg didn't think he'd be finishing until at least eight.  He wasn't too thrilled about it.  He'd been looking forward to getting a few hours in on the new space Civ game, Master of the Crimson Nebula.

Later:

"It's almost time.  We can hardly contain ourselves.  Can you?"

The innuendo was obvious.  Kurtzburg felt it in his loins anyway.  Despite not being the most active in that department, he still retained some sexual desire.  He really wished he lived in a world where four hot girls would whisk him of the street and take him out on a wild night of partying and debauchery.

This was not that world.

Kurtzburg was not a chump.

He was also too busy anyway.

He looked at the screen.  Goddammit.  Comment your goddamn code, people.

The messages stopped after five-thirty.  The office had already emptied out.  Kurtzburg was the only one left still tapping away at his keyboard.

He did feel a little sorry for whoever was behind these Valentine's Day fun and games.  They must have realised something had gone wrong by now.  That Kurtzburg wasn't coming out or had already given them the slip.

Sorry, hah.  What was he thinking?  They were likely only doing this to set him up for embarrassment... or maybe even worse.

Shame though.  He would love a wild, sexy night with four hot, gorgeous women.

Yeah, right.  Like that would have actually happened.  He wasn't a chump.

He got up and trundled to the drinks machine to pick up a can of Red Bull.  Caffeine makes code.  He looked at the screen and focused on the problem at hand.  It was trickier than he'd first thought, but he felt he understood the problem now.  He reckoned he'd be able to fix it before leaving tonight.

He checked in the solution at 8:31.  Half an hour later than he'd estimated, but not too bad.  He got up and stretched.  Most of the office was dark.  Kurtzburg packed his things together, walked to the exit and switched off the lights.  His stomach rumbled.  Maybe he should have eaten some of those chocolates after all.  He could pick up a kebab on the way home.

He walked down the stairs and out the front entrance.  The night was a little nippy.  He adjusted his coat and turned right.  His bus stop was at the end of the street.

A shape flowed out of the darkness and stepped in front of him.  It was the tall and busty flame-haired woman.  She was still wearing nothing more than a longcoat over frilly pink lingerie.


to be continued...

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 47: The World Tree

Beginning

<- Previous: Fairy Isle

And we’re back.  Kind of.

We’re in the middle of taking the fight back to the monster queens.  After knocking some sense into the Elf Queen, it turns out the real malodorous influence is happening over at the neighbouring World Tree.  The normally passive and peaceful Queen Alraune has become rather warlike all of a sudden.  So over we go to bring peace by setting everything on fire.  Starting with the Walraune blocking the entrance.  I suspect Inferno Mage Alicetroemeria is going to enjoy this particular dungeon.

We come in peace.  Burn everything down.

The world tree has a very similar structure to the slug and harpy towers of MQ:P part 1.  There are three floors with multiple stairs (or rather, vines in this case) leading to the next floor.  Some lead to dead ends with treasure chests.  The central path pretty much gets you to Queen Alraune.

It also gets you to the rainbow material required for smithing prism weapons.  That is reached by climbing down a vine in the southeast corner of the 3rd floor and gets you to here:

Rainbow rocks

Before we show Queen Alraune the error of her ways by setting her on fire, I suppose I should go over the wandering monster girls you can find in this region.

Walraune was in the original series.  She likes to trap Luka in her petals and give him a very long blowjob.  Also present is the Dryad you fought around the same time.  In the original she was also brainwashed and switched from sweet to sadistic after taking enough damage.  Both versions are present here.

Nice 'n' nasty dryads

If I remember correctly, you probably don’t want to lose to either of them as their Bad Ends involve attaching their roots to you and leaching out all your moisture.

We also get two new Forest versions of Alraune and Dryad.

New model Alraune and Dryad

Forest Alraune likes attaching a special flower to our dangly bits and gulping down all our juices.

Forest Dryad starts innocuously enough with what looks like a blindfolded handjob.

This doesn't seem so bad

She doesn’t seem too bad to lose to.  Sweet and innocent and... what’s that?

Wait!  That isn't a hand.

A plant gal’s got to get her moisture, and her favourite way is to attach her tentacle root to the crotch and start sucking away.  At least she’s considerate enough to keep Luka around afterwards rather than sucking out all his fluids and leaving behind a dried-up mummy.

In the original series Queen Alraune was brainwashed by one of the doll weapons designed to beat the heavenly knights.  They haven’t showed up so far in Paradox (thankfully, they were a bit shit compared to the other bosses), so I’m guessing it’s either Lilith or another one of Black Alice’s creations behind all this.  Queen Alraune can be found in the middle of the third floor.

She's big, bouncy and flowery... but mostly bouncy

She’s also no less flammable than the other plant girls, so prominence away Black Alice!  Uh, I mean, Alicetroemeria.

Queen Alraune does have a few annoying AOE status effect pollen attacks, including an instant kill one, but her vulnerability to fire should make this a fairly straightforward fight.

Afterwards Mephisto is brought in to clear the brainwashing, which causes the real culprit behind it all to reveal herself:

Who and what are you?

And you are... Aži Dahāka.  Whoever that is.  It looks like someone added a bunch of extra nonsense to the letters to make the name sound more mysterious.  That seems a really lame thing to do (ahem).

In this case Aži Dahāka is the name of an ancient Persian demon.  I must confess to not knowing too much about that particular mythology.

This Aži Dahāka looks like a lamia with other bits thrown in.  She reveals she’s acting on behalf of Black Alice which triggers a very suspicious facial expression from our own Black Alice.  Seeing the respective Black Alices face off against each other is something I’m rather looking forward to, even if the most likely outcome is they team up to snu snu Luka to a particularly icky Bad End.

But first we need to take out the real boss for this area.  As she appears to be a lamia, I figured it would be a simple switch from fire magic to ice magic.  And it worked... ahem.

Ilias’s evaluation afterwards (and the monsterpedia) reveals Aži Dahāka is strong to both fire and ice.  Really, I didn’t notice.

(Alicetroemeria might need a teensy bit of a nerf.)

But Aži Dahāka is a new gal, so what we’re really interested in is what debauchery she gets up to if you deliberately throw the fight lose to her.

Her temptation move is to hold Luka up and tempt him with her pussy.

Seems tempting enough.  Why not.  What’s the worst that can happ...

Snakes on a... particularly sensitive part of anatomy

Um, Aži dear.  Why is there a snake biting the end of my cock?

Aži.  Why is there a motherfucking snake biting the end of my motherfucking cock!  I’ve had it with these mother... yeah, we’re just going into cliché now.

Afterwards is more conventional sex.  Being a lamia, Aži Dahāka has quite a mobile pussy and uses it to full effect to squeeze and suck out all our semen.  Rather refreshingly for one of MGQ’s snake gals, she even refrains from opening her vagina wide and shoving us in face first.

She's a good squeeze

But that’s alternate!Luka’s fate.  Our Luka froze her into an icicle (despite her being resistant to ice – have I said enough times already how OP Alicetroemeria is).

She’s one of Black Alice’s minions, so there are no opportunities to recruit afterwards.  She does a runner and I imagine we’ll see her again in part 3.  With the snake demon gone, Queen Alraune returns to her normal placid self.  Unfortunately, we can’t seem to recruit her either as she’s too busy recuperating from being set on fire repeatedly.

There is also a very long callback to MQ:P [part 1].  If you remember all the way back to the harpy tower, we were able to cure all the harpies of the lust plague afflicting them, but not the queen.  She needed a special fruit from the World Tree.

Well, we’re here now, so does that mean we can recruit Miss Fluffywings?

Not quite yet.  Queen Alraune needs some time to grow the fruit.  I suspect we’re waiting for the requisite plot trigger.  Maybe after we’ve dealt with the other three queens.  However, she does give us the soul item that unlocks the advanced singing and dancing jobs.  Sonya is curious as to why Queen Alraune had this item and she reveals she wanted to be a star when she was younger.

Returning back to the fairy isle has Queen Elf reward us with an item.  Unfortunately, both her and Queen Fairy are still not recruitable as yet.  I suspect it’s the same trigger condition as the World Tree fruit.

Now that we have the requisite material for the elf blacksmith to make prism items, there are some side quests to catch up on.  Papi can be taught how to make prism gear.  There is no quest here, just bring her along to chat with the blacksmith.  Papi fails the first couple of times, but then gets some help from Salamander and between them they learn how to make prism items.

Unsurprisingly (as this is a 3-part series), this is not the ultimate material.  The elf blacksmith talks about the greatest blacksmith, Randolph, and legendary weapons forged from meteorite iron.  Alice also mentions she knows about this as the weapons were forged in the demon castle in Helgondo.  As for Randolph, nobody knows where he is, but I suspect he’ll show up sometime in a future chapter.

And that’s that for the World Tree and Fairy Isle (at least until we come back to recruit the queens).  One Queen down, three to go.  Next up, it’s time to have some fun with some frisky fishies in the secret mermaid base.

-> Next: Mermaid Cave

The Heart Squad (part 3)

Beginning


There was email awaiting Kurtzburg when he got back to his desk.  Also not a surprise.  There was always email waiting for him.  One of them wasn't like the others, but Kurtzburg wasn't aware of that until he opened it up.

"Hi Piotr.  We're the Heart Squad!"

It was followed by a picture of four extremely attractive and provocatively attired women sitting in the back of an expensive limo.  They were all smiling at the camera and holding their arms out.  Kurtzburg recognised one as the gorgeous flame-haired courier who'd delivered his card and chocolates this morning.

"We're so looking forward to making your Valentine's Day an unforgettable one."

Kurtzburg frowned.  He was normally super-careful about which emails he opened.  He was sure this had been another work email when he'd clicked on it.

He lifted his small round spectacles and rubbed his eyes.  Must be tiredness.  It had been a hard slog over the past couple of weeks to get the latest patch ready.

He became aware of someone standing next to his desk and hurriedly deleted the email.

He looked up and saw it was Leah Betts from the QA department.  She was looking down at the chocolate box.

"Aren't you going to open them?" she asked.

"I dunno," he mumbled.

"You do know it's customary for employees to share their Valentine's chocolates with the rest of the office."

"It is?"

He tried to remember if anyone had ever brought chocolates around to his desk.  Not that he would have remembered or even registered if they had.

He glanced back at his screen.  Was that email with the picture of the four hot semi-naked women in the back of a limo gone yet?  Yes.  Thank fuck for that.

Not that he needed to worry.  Betts was still staring down at the chocolate box.  "Go on.  Open it up," she said.

Kurtzburg shrugged.  He opened it up.  It was a box of chocolates.  The cover was sickeningly saccharine.  Kurtzburg flipped the lid.  Yes, they were chocolates.

"Ooh, those are fancy," Betts said.  "Have you got a posh bird you've been hiding from us?"

Her hand hovered over the tray like a vulture about to swoop.

Kurtzburg was reluctant to take one.  Where had they come from?  Why him?  You heard stories.  Food being tampered with.

Betts selected one she liked—a little brown nut from near the centre of the tray.  She plucked it out and brought it up to her mouth.

"Wait!" Kurtzburg said.

Betts stopped, eyes opened wide in sudden surprise.

"I don't know where they're from," Kurtzburg said.

Betts's frozen expression of surprise thawed out into a contemptuous grin.

"They're Valentine's Day chocolates.  You're not supposed to know who they're from."

She rolled her eyes and popped the chocolate into her mouth.  She chewed.  Her eyes widened.

"Ooh, these are yummy," she said.  "It tastes like... ooh."  A hand involuntarily drifted down to her crotch.  Her cheeks reddened.

"Mandy, you have to try one of these," she called back to the adjacent QA section.

She looked back at the box with naked avarice.

"You look busy," she said.  "You want me to share them around the office for you?"

Kurtzburg mumble-grunted a yes and Betts went away, taking the box of chocolates with her.

Then his attention was caught by something on his monitor.  A heart-shaped balloon floated to the top of the screen and popped to reveal the word, "Tonight."  A lipstick kiss flashed on the bottom right of the screen and was followed by, "The Heart Squad."

Kurtzburg's stomach lurched.  Had that email downloaded a virus onto his machine?

He went through a series of diagnostics and found nothing untoward.  He rubbed his eyes again.  He couldn't have imagined it, could he?

And what did they mean by "tonight"?

* * * *

The first text message arrived at two o'clock.


to be continued...

(Also, Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] playthrough to resume tomorrow Wednesday.  One was more ready than the other so I flipped the days).

The Heart Squad (part 2)

Part 1


Kurtzburg didn't get around to opening the card until after he'd cleared all of the morning's urgent tasks.  Not that it shed any more light on the mystery.

It was one of those standard giant-size Valentine's Day cards you could pick up in any high-street shop.  Kurtzburg's name was on the cover of the plain red envelope, written in elegant handwriting.  Kurtzburg didn't know of any other Piotr Kurtzburgs in the company, so it must be for him.  For whatever reason.

"Happy Valentine's Day from the Heart Squad," was written on the inside in the same elegant handwriting.

Kurtzburg had no idea who or what the Heart Squad was.

Someone had drawn cute little cartoon bats all over the inside of the card.  Some of them were carrying pink hearts.  The ones that weren't had long tails—that looked more like devil tails—looped around in the outline of a heart.

Maybe he had a secret admirer.

Kurtzburg nearly laughed out loud at the thought.

He was no catch.  Even by the not-that-high standards of the typical IT male, Kurtzburg was distinctly below average.  He knew his nickname around the office was "moleman."  His co-workers didn't seem to care that he knew either.

He supposed it was different.  At school they used to call him Penfold after the character in the Danger Mouse cartoons.

It didn't bother Kurtzburg all that much.  Maybe at some point in the past, but he'd long grown out of letting it upset him.  You couldn't help what you were born with, as far as he was concerned.  There were a few people in the office he didn't like, but he just tended to avoid them.  As for the rest, they were fine.  They let him get on with his work and he let them get on with theirs.  The only time they interacted with Kurtzburg was when they wanted something done.  This was also fine with Kurtzburg.  That's how work worked.

Now there was this card.

Kurtzburg would have put it down to a prank played by Dave Gregg, except Gregg had left the company two years ago.  Foxtrot Tech had been a different place then and 'Greggsy' was the office prankster—a larger than life character with a big mouth.  Kurtzburg hadn't got on that well with him.  Gregg was a massive extrovert.  Kurtzburg was a massive introvert.  There were clashes.

That was then.  Times moved on.  The kind of 'hijinks' Gregg used to get up to, especially with the female staff, were no longer tolerated in the modern workplace.

Kurtzburg turned the card over.  There were four glossy lipstick impressions of kisses on the bottom left corner.  They'd been added later rather than printed on the card.  Written over them in the same elegant handwriting were the words:

"Look forward to tonight."

This was just like one of the 'jokes' Greggsy liked to pull.

But not anymore.

Not since that business.

* * * *

That business had involved Roberta Ross.  Kurtzburg was dragged into her office just before lunch.

"Care to explain that little incident this morning?" she asked.

Ross was all cold angles and hidden landmines.  She was a short, mousy-haired woman that favoured power suits despite running the traditionally laidback IT department.  Kurtzburg respected her professionalism and efficiency, but he couldn’t ever bring himself to like her.  There was a furious intensity about her, as if she was always a couple of countdown ticks away from an explosion, and Kurtzburg didn't want to be anywhere near the blast radius.

"I don’t know," he mumbled.  "A mix-up, I think.  Someone set up a prank and got the wrong man... person."

Ross fixed him with steely grey eyes.

"I don't know or care what you and your friends get up to outside of work, but if they are your friends you should let them know the next time they pull a stunt like this it will be you that has to bear the consequences."

Ross turned back to her monitor.

"The latest patch is running late.  I need that bugfix done before you leave tonight."

Meeting over.

Ross had joined the company as a junior programmer three years ago and had risen meteorically to the position of department head.  It was her complaint of sexual harassment that had resulted in Dave Gregg's termination.

It hadn't come as much of a surprise.  Greggsy had always been a little too free with his mouth around the female staff.  Even freer with his hands.  That kind of behaviour was no longer tolerated.

There had been a similar controversy involving Ross and another senior developer, Jake Packman, about a year later.  Unwelcome advances.  Hands touching parts of the anatomy hands should not touch.

That had been a surprise.  Like Kurtzburg, Packman was a quiet person who kept to themselves.  Unlike Kurtzburg, Packman was married and seemed happy with domestic life.

You never could tell with the quiet ones, the office had gossiped.

Packman had 'resigned'.

Kurtzburg turned off the voice-recording app on his smartphone as he left Ross's office.

With Gregg it hadn't been a surprise.  Packman, however...

* * * *

There was email awaiting Kurtzburg when he got back to his desk.


to be continued...

The Heart Squad (part 1)

This the story I wanted to enter into Literotica's Valentine's Day short story competition.  I didn't finish it in time and it isn't finished now.  I seem to have a problem finishing stories at the moment, which is rather vexing.  So, I'm going to do as what some nice soul in the comments suggested - start posting what I have as a serial here in the hope that will provide the impetus to get the rest done.  The first parts will be pretty slow with uneven breaks as this was originally intended as a 5-6K word short story rather than a serial with classic cliff-hanger hooks.

As a quick aside, I'm not going to abandon my current playthrough series of Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2].  Currently my write-up has caught up to where I am in the game and I need a bit of breathing space to get ahead again.  If all goes to plan I'll get back to it next week and run it alongside this.

The Heart Squad (part 1)

Piotr Kurtzburg didn't expect to receive cards and chocolates on Valentine's Day.

He certainly didn't expect to receive cards and chocolates hand-delivered by a statuesque bombshell of a model.

Her visit caused quite a stir in the office.  A six-foot-tall, jaw-droppingly beautiful woman walking around in nothing more than a longcoat and sexy lingerie was not a sight the average British office worker expected to see on your typical miserable and overcast February morning.

"Happy Valentine's Day from the Heart Squad," she said to Kurtzburg before handing over an oversized card and heart-shaped box of chocolates.

Dumbfounded, Kurtzburg just accepted them.  He was blown away by her appearance.

One.  She was really tall.  Taller than Kurtzburg's five-ten.

Two.  She was still perfectly proportioned despite her height.  She had a perfect feminine physique—full hips, fuller chest, and long long legs.  She also had big big hair.  It was red—flame not ginger—and complexly coiffured in a style Kurtzburg hadn't seen since the kitsch sci-fi films of the sixties.  Her smile revealed perfect white teeth.

Three.  She was clearly wearing nothing more than underwear beneath her longcoat.  It was pink, frilly and sheer enough for her nipples to be visible beneath.

That alone should have been enough to have her stopped long before reaching Kurtzburg's desk.  Except...

Four.  She had overwhelming presence.  This was the hardest to explain.  Not only did she look absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, she also had this aura that flooded out of her and subsumed all around her.  She seemed the sort that had the chutzpah—and looks—to blag her way into anywhere.

What Kurtzburg couldn't understand was why she was here for him.

When he'd finally gathered enough presence of mind to stop gawping at her like an open-mouthed yokel, he said, "I think there's been some mistake."

"Are you Piotr Kurtzburg?" she asked.

Kurtzburg gave her a slight nod of affirmation.

"Then there's been no mistake.  Happy Valentine's Day."

For one awful moment, Kurtzburg thought she was going to perform a striptease for him right there and then and in front of the entire office.  Under other circumstances, Kurtzburg might have been okay with this.  He was your typical sex-starved male nerd and her body was extraordinary.  But not here.  Not with the whole office watching.  Not with his cheeks almost burning as brightly as her hair.

Instead she dipped her head forwards and kissed him on each cheek, continental style.  On the last kiss her head slid on until her sumptuous lips were level with his ear.

"See you later," she whispered.

Then she turned on the spot and walked away, leaving a very befuddled Kurtzburg standing there with his mouth open and holding a heart-shaped box of chocolates.  He was still surrounded in a cloud of her perfume.  Faint traces of it stayed with him for the rest of the morning.

to be continued...