Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 52: Recruiting the Queens I

Beginning

<- Previous: The 6 Orbs

Right, sub-quests today.  Lots and lots of sub-quests.  I’ll be picking up the queens in reverse order to fighting them, mainly because that’s how I did it.

Vampire Queen – Fatima

Go back to the throne room in the vampire castle.

Vampire Queen will agree to be Luka’s “concubine”, on the condition he helps her achieve her aims of world domination.  Sonya is not impressed by this.  Then it turns out Vampire Queen’s sinister plan to achieve world domination is to... open a chain of vampire pubs?

Um.  Okay.

Alice (or Sonya) points out it’s basically a rip-off of what the mermaids are doing, but the vampire queen is undaunted.

The vampire queen wonders if anyone in the vampire family is good at business.

Well... there is that former bandit queen who runs the shop in the pocket castle and has negotiated trade deals with pretty much every settlement in the world and even some on other planes.

This is Vanilla’s time to shine.  She talks with the vampire queen about opening a pub in Sabasa.  Vanilla already has a list of possible locations, with the old assassin’s HQ at the top of the list.

At this point you need to go to Sabasa.  The house you want is the one where Salaan (the assassin battlefucker) can be found hanging out.

The soon-to-be first Vampire Pub

Talk to her and she’ll sell the house to Vanilla.  Then it’s back to the Vampire Castle to talk with the queen (You’re going to want a time mage able to cast Warp in the party, as this and the next few quests require a lot of bouncing around the map).

After talking to the vampire queen she’ll relocate to Sabasa, where she can be found inside the old assassin building along with various vamps engaged in interior redecoration.  She will then set two quests.

The first is to find a nice carpet.  Remember that mysterious sheep island right near the start of [part 2], well finally we have a reason to visit it.  It’s just west of the Navy HQ if you’ve forgotten where it is.  Go and talk to the sheep girl blocking the door to the building and she’ll provide the carpet the vampire queen is looking for.

So this island of drunken sheep was actually here for a reason

Quest two is the one where I initially heard rumours of it being broken if characters were recruited in the wrong order.  Those characters are Lazarus and Merlin.  They can be recruited in the pub in Gold Port pretty much the first time you visit there.  I’ve left them there after seeing a forum post about this quest line being broken.  Whatever that problem was, it doesn’t appear to be present now.

Queen Vampire wants beer.  Going through the brewer’s guild is expensive, but fortunately there is a shadowy underworld figure capable of bypassing all that.  You’ll need to go to Lazarus.  If, like me, you haven’t yet recruited him, you can talk to him in Gold Port and he and Merlin will join the party.  After being recruited he can then be found in the casino of the pocket castle (and will be here if you recruited him ages ago).  Talk to him to satisfy the second part of the vampire queen’s quest.

Then it’s time for a night’s sleep at the inn and then return the next evening to see how the vampire inn is faring.

Very good as it happens.  It’s full of happy patrons.  They’re drinking the beer.  The vampire girls are drinking the patrons (non-lethally).  In fact, the men seem a little too happy.  They're all paired up with very willing and rather attractive vampire girl hosts.  There’s even one squirming away in bliss in one of elder vampire’s tentacles.

Looks around.

Wait a minute.  I don’t think this pub is a pub...

And the world was doomed as a chain of high-quality vampire brothels spread across it.

To be fair, I suspect the mermaid “pubs” are running the exact same business model.

Anyway, Queen Vampire is happy, and that’s her quest line done.  She reveals her real name is Fatima and joins the party.  Vanilla reveals she doesn’t have a real name as no-one gave her one.  So Fatima, as head of the vampire clan, bestows one on her.

Awwww.

You dun gud, little Vanilla.

And we get a lovely new concubine for our harem, where we can look forward to nights of pleasure just like...

A date with a vampire.  BYOB.

...eep.

Moving on.

Spider Princess – um, Spider Princess

Getting Spider Princess in the party involves throwing all common sense out of the window and having Luka behave like a complete idiot.

Go to her throne room.  Thankfully, an arachne lord is on hand to teleport us straight to her rather than battling through the maze-like Isle of Solitude.  Spider Princess will tell you she wants to ascend to the throne of Queen Insect again, but needs the votes of Queen Bee, Queen Ant and Queen Roach to do so.

That’s an interesting teaser.  I wonder if we’ll get to see a Queen Roach in part 3.

Hmm.  Are we sure we want to see a Queen Roach?

Queen Roach isn’t around, so it will have to be the votes of Queen Bee and Ant.  Agree to help Spider Princess out and you’ll be teleported to Queen Bee at the top of the insect mountain.

I don't think Queen Bee is going to agree to this...

She is not too happy about letting Spider be queen again and is totally not convinced by Spider’s claims that she’s turned over a new leaf now that she’s found her “love”, Luka.  Queen Ant shows up and is also for vetoing Spider Princess’s claims.

This is where I initially thought I’d fucked up as it ends up in a battle where you have to pick a side.  I thought it was going to be another of those either/or scenarios, but it doesn’t play out that way.  Side with Spider Princess and you’ll have to fight Queen Bee and Queen Ant.  Win and Spider Princess wrangles her way to Insect Queen and joins the party.  Fortunately, you don’t lose Queen Ant and Queen Bee in the process.  They can still be found in the pocket castle afterwards as if nothing has happened.

This means that the correct course of action is to side with Spider Princess, even if all common sense suggests Luka should not do this and definitely be nowhere near Spider Princess’s bedchamber when she starts to feel a little frisky.

Because, well, we know why...

How many times have we told you...

-> Next: Recruiting the Queens II


Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about my other writing.  Currently I'm queuing up the MQ:P playthrough posts for the next few weeks.  Once that's done, I'll get back to writing.  Not sure what that'll be.  The rest of "The Heart Squad" hopefully, but if I find that's gone a little stale, I'll try changing things up.  2,000 words a day on a random story I'm not supposed to be writing is better than 0 words a day on a story that has gone cold and stubbornly refusing to be written.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 51: The 6 Orbs

Beginning

<- Previous: Vampire Castle

Hmm.  This section of the game is going to be a little awkward to write about, given that it’s a big chunk of exposition and a ton of random side quests.  Bear with me.

We’ve defeated all four of the monster girl queens that declared war on humanity, so it’s time to convene another war council to figure out what to do next.  The consensus is to take the battle to Alice (Alice’s mum, Alice) in Helgondo.  The main problem is getting there as the continent is ringed by impassable mountains.

Now comes the part that will be familiar to anyone who played through the original series.  Alice suggests resurrecting the Bird God and flying over.  This requires a ceremony at the Bird God Shrine and 6 magical orbs.

So about those 6 orbs.

Queen Noah tells us she’s already given us the green orb as a prize for winning in the coliseum.

Sphinx has the yellow org, which we haven’t yet picked up.  That will involve a trip back to the pyramid.  Who knows, maybe we’ll be able to recruit her now.

Robo-Pope has the information on the red orb.  That was lost to/carried around by merchants.  He thinks it’s ended up in the secret elf village just outside of Yamatai Village.  Alice suggests asking Queen Elf to help with negotiations to try and obtain it from the shut-in Elf Princess.  (This is a deviation from the original series where, I think, Queen Elf held the orb.)

Grangold mentions the purple orb was in possession of Pirate Queen Selene.  That’s already been looted from the ghost ship, so we’re good here.

The silver and blue orbs were given to the ocean queens for safeguarding.  We’ve already grabbed the silver one from Poseidoness, but it looks like we’ll have to go back to the South Sea Temple to pick up the blue one.

At this point Kraken informs us that the blue orb was destroyed by Astaroth when the shikibus besquidded her.

Ah.  I guess we won’t be following the plot of the original series after all.  Hmm.  Why would Astaroth want to blow that orb up?

Then it’s Black Alice... sorry, Alicetroemeria of all people to save the day.  She suggests snatching the blue orb from her reality where it is still intact.

That is... a sensible suggestion?  Are you okay there, Bla... sorry, Alicetroemeria.

She points out the tunnel route into Helgondo is still open back in her day.  They should be able to sneak in and take the orb, as long as they take care to avoid Black Alice.

JRPGs aren’t always the best medium for characterisation, but our Alice’s line of “............”s here is absolutely hilarious.

Alice knows Alicetroemeria is really Black Alice.  I think Alicetroemeria knows everyone knows she’s really Black Alice, and the fact everyone is pretending to not know she’s really Black Alice is what’s making the game fun for her.

Okay, we’ll cross that bridge when Black Alice inevitably sets fire to it.  In the meantime the quest goals are fairly obvious.  We need to pick the yellow orb up off Sphinx, get the red orb from Queen Elf/Elf Princess, and fetch the blue orb from a parallel demon castle.  I’m guessing the first two are simple fetch quests, while the third is an actual quest in a new location.  At this point, having glanced through the graphics folder, I’m wondering what monster girls are left.  There are the muscle succubi drawn by the guy (or gal) that actually makes Luka look like a proper hero in their art.  I suspect we’ll see them in Helgondo/demon castle.  After that... some weird angels?  Oh, and La Croix’s circus.  I’m wondering if she’ll be the overall final boss of [part 2].  It would give some symmetry with [part 1] considering that “good” La Croix was the final NPC we found in the tower at the end of the universe.

But that’s for future consideration, we still have a fair bit of game to get through (which surprises me, as I thought I was somewhere near the end).

And side quests.  A lot of side quests.

We do want to recruit all those lovely monster girl queens after all.

Randomly, the max party size is increased to 12 at this point.  This is pathetically inadequate for the purposes of levelling up Luka’s monster girl army, but I’ll take what I can.

Right, this is the point where the game throws a ton of separate side quests at you to unlock and recruit various characters.  While I did these in some sort of overlapping fashion, I’ll break them out into an easy follow guide, rather than the mess of an order I actually did them in.

Yellow Orb

This is a straightforward fetch quest.  Warp to Sabasa and walk out west to Sphinx’s pyramid.  Thankfully, we don’t have to fight our way back through the pyramid.  Talk to the scorpion girl outside and she’ll give an option to teleport us right to Sphinx.

At this point the trickiest part is talking to Sphinx without accidentally selecting the “challenge her to a battle” option.

Oh, yeah.  We don't have Alma Elma with us this time...

All you have to do is ask for the orb and she’ll hand it over.  Sphinx will also tell you that she senses the presence of Black Alice’s old “gods” wandering around and is getting the urge to get out and about.  This means she’ll now join the party if you ask her.

I’m not sure if having Sara in the party affects things here.  There are some comments about how pleased she is to fight alongside her great-great-great-great-this-could-go-on-for-a-while-great granny, but I think you get those whether she’s in the party or not.

Red Orb

For this you need to talk to Queen Elf on Fairy Isle.  She’ll tell you that contacting the elf princess is rather difficult as she’s a hikikomori (shut-in) waiting to find an impossibly perfect man.  Alice suggests sending her a picture of Luka.

Now, if you went purely by the art of the game, you might be scratching your head at this point.  Luka, as he is most frequently depicted, would not seem your typical manliest manly man.  But to be fair, MQ:P is a game playing with femdom themes, and to reinforce those themes most of the Bad End scenes depict cartoon Luka getting curb-stomped (sexaphorically speaking) by big and busty monster girls.  The Luka of the story is a legitimate hero at this point with all his various deeds and probably quite a dish to blushing maidens everywhere.  (Good luck to those blushing maidens in getting past Alice and Luka’s growing harem of horrors.)

Elf Princess seems to think so anyway, as she agrees to meet us at the snake shrine in Yamatai Village.

New elf waifu

Then runs away.

You can find her in the main shrine building.  She’s too shy to speak to us directly, so does everything from behind a screen and through some elf minions we haven’t seen before.

Elves we won't see naked until part 3

And she likes, Luka.  I mean really likes Luka.  Not only does she give us the red orb, she also hands over the God Hunter’s Soul, a nice sword, and a whole bunch of goodies.  There is also lots of wedding talk and other dating stuff.  Sonya eventually snaps from pure jealousy and charges behind the screen to confront the princess.

It does not go well for her.

But we have the red orb.  That leaves just the blue orb and a trip to an alternative demon castle to go, but before then I’ll go through the various side quests required to recruit the various queens... in the next post, as this one has run on for a bit.

Hmm, a bit short of lewds today.  How about a blowjob from Alicetroemeria.

Her other scenes are worse.  A lot worse...

And don’t anyone complain about the vanilla-ness of it.  You never saw her teddy bear in the original series.

shudder

-> Next: Recruiting the Queens I

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 50: Vampire Castle

Beginning

<- Previous: Spider Lair

And we’re down to the final rampaging monster queen.

The vampire castle is in the ocean northwest-ish of Yamatai Village.  It’s a bit of a pain to find.  For some reason I always manage to sail right past it.

It's here... maybe.  I swear this damn island keeps randomly shifting east or west every time I try to find it.

The castle itself is fairly straightforward.  The queen is up on the second floor, but the corridor to her is protected by a loop trap that teleports you right back to the beginning.  To deactivate that you’ll need to go down to the basement.  There you’ll find a coffin containing Carmilla.

Unlike the previous queen lairs, where the chief-henchwomen were too shagged out from the beatings they received in the cities to be up for a round two, Carmilla has fully recuperated from her loss in Sabasa and is spoiling for another fight.

As a vampire, she’s also still highly flammable.

Take it away, Alicetroemeria.

Defeating her will give you an item to get past the loop trap on the second floor.

However, as we’ve already had a second bout vs Carmilla, it will come as no surprise that we also need to fight our way through Elizabeth again to reach the queen’s chamber.

She’s also rather flammable.

But before going on to the inevitable boss fight, we should also cover the other sexy distractions awaiting us in the vampire castle.  There are three new vampire women in this area.  We already saw them during the defence of Sabasa, so let’s check them out in more detail.

First up, there’s Elder Vampire.

You know how it is when you get old.  Tentacles start sprouting out of the most inconvenient places.

My, what lovely... leeches... you have.

Luka, run!!!!

Slurrrppp!

Too late.

She’s sort of a multi-leech girl in one.  Like the basic leech girl, she likes to draw a man into her mouth (one of them) and draw out their semen with her fleshy walls.  She’ll leave you pleasantly drained and... a bit too drained to be honest.

Then there is Conquista and Vendetta.

Not quite so ancient vamps

One looks like a student, and I think is a student.  The other is lady of the night merged with the other type of lady of the night.  She also has a rather splendid ass.  If you knock her (un)life down low enough, she’ll plonk that lovely ass down on your crotch.

Vendetta used finishing move: Ass.  It was super-effective.

Her Bad End is more ass, but not anal (I think).  It’s some sexy reverse cowgirl without the fishnets this time.

She'll suck it all up and more

Oddly, she functions more like a conventional succubus.  There is very little in the way of blood-sucking going on, and way more in the way of semen-sucking.  Her tight little pussy is quite powerful in this regard and she talks about how much vacuum she can create while sucking out the contents of our balls.  And everything else.

She does briefly consider keeping Luka around but in the end keeps going until we pass beyond the realm of pleasantly drained and enter the not-so-pleasant realm of Hades (again!).

A nice scene, but an odd one given how much the vamps of the original series played to various blood-drinking/vampire fetishes.

(I’d have put vamp fangs in her pussy just to spice things up a bit… hyuk hyuk.)

Back to the vampire queen and she also didn’t require any manipulation from Black Alice.

I don't think that's her cloak, you know...

Her philosophy seems to be a mix of Noblesse Oblige and Might Makes Right.  Which makes it rather simple.  Beat her and she’ll recognise our greater power and call off her vampire hordes.

Seems easy enough.

"I didn't mean this type of suck!"

Damn it, Luka.  Stop fooling around and let the inferno mage torch the highly flammable bat girl.

After beating her, she recognises our greater power and calls off her army.  She also loans us Elizabeth and Carmilla as fresh recruits for Luka’s “harem”.

And that’s that.  All four monster girl queens have been defeated.  Now I have the awkward task in the next few posts of making a whole bunch of background exposition and goofy side quests interesting without screenshots of smexy new monster girls.  Hmm, maybe I’ll be showing some screenshots of the queens in action after all.

-> Next: Our balls are missing

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 49: Spider's Lair

First up, apologies for the week off.  I was out of the country the weekend before for work and managed to bring the plague (okay, flu) back with me.


Beginning

<- Previous: Mermaid Cave

So where were we again?

Ah, it’s time to put a stop to the dastardly four queens’ warmongering.  Elves and Mermaids have already been crossed off the list.  Now we’re into ickier territories.  Arachnophobes might want to skip this one, just saying.

As with the Mermaid Cave, the spider lair should already be known to you.  It’s one of the first locations accessible when picking up a boat at the Navy HQ.  You can get to it by following the shoreline to the north from the Navy Headquarters.  Or by going directly north from Saloon, I think.

Here be spiders

Also, as with the Mermaid Cave, the entrance is blocked off by a bodyguard, in this case a pair of Arachne Lords.  And again, as with the mermaids, Luka is no longer prepared to put up with their bullshit, so to battle it is.

When you have so many spider girls, a simple "Arachne" is no longer good enough

Ahem.  To “battle” it is...?

This is really a heroic battle and not the femdom bondage handjob it looks like.  Honest...

Arachne Lord is a returnee from the original series.  As is Tsuchigumo.  They have all the moves they had in the original series, which includes some rather unusual boobs and nipples.  But it’s the new gals we’re interested in and... be still my beating heart.

Spiders from Mars (or should that be Venus?)

I really like this artist’s kitsch style.  It seems very appropriate for smexy monster girls.  And you know how I said I wouldn’t deliberately kick Luka into their web...

“Alice, please push Luka into the lovely kitsch spiders’ web.”

Their temptation move is a pile on that ends up with us balls deep in spider pussy.

This is also a heroic battle and not a wild spider girl orgy

This can also be revisited in an extended form as one of their request scenes after you recruit them.

Once resistance has been... ahem... sucked out.  It’s time to plonk Luka in a web for some sexy cocooning.

Trapped in a web and at the mercy of lewd spider girls

Two wrap him up in aphrodisiac silk while the third wanks him off/fucks him with her spinneret.

(Yes, biologists, I know you’re getting agitated by the just plain “things do not work that way” of it.  Fantasy world filled with nympho monster girls, just roll with it.)

Nicely wrapped up and ready for plenty of sucky fucky

With Luka nicely wrapped up, the three take it in turns until the tap, regrettably, runs dry.

After we’ve had our sticky fun (and Death has kindly let our mummified corpse back out of Hades), it’s time to get back to the main mission.

There are a few NPCs scuttling around that dole out some interesting background info on the Spider Princess.  She used to be the overall queen of all insects, but then they booted her off the throne for basically being a massive asshole.

The spider’s lair is another big maze.  For some reason there are plenty of stairs that take us up to the surface of the Island of Solitude for no discernible reason I can think of.  Maybe TTR originally had it planned as a different location?  There are various chests and treasures found in these dead ends, so it’s sort of worth checking out every route.

(Sort of, in that there is so much loot in this game that very few of the chests actually hold anything interesting.)

Keep going right and eventually you’ll reach the red carpets of the Spider Princess’s throne room, where it’s boss battle time.

Not sure the red carpet makes it any less a dank cave

Spider Princess is another returning character from the original series, so we’ll skip the Bad End bits.

A perfect concubine... hahahaha.

Spoiler: Do you like unbirth?

As with Queen Mermaid, there’s no need for Black Alice to stir the pot behind the scenes on this one.  Spider Princess, like Cassandra, has always been a fairly unambiguous villain in the series.

She does keep to her word though.  After being defeated she promises to call back her arachne army.  She also offers herself up to be Luka’s concubine.  I say “offers up”, but it’s more “forces herself on Luka and refuses to take no for an answer.”  And then she’s straight on to talking about marriage, much to Sonya’s disapproval.  Marriage might not be too bad.  I’m fairly sure she knows a few tricks in the bedroom.  Surviving the wedding night without being eaten might be a little tricky...

You were warned...

Then it’s off back to Grangold to pick up our reward.  This time we pick up the Magic God’s soul.  This is pretty good as it allows us to unlock all the advanced magician jobs.  One thing I missed at the time, but have spotted now, is that these souls also unlock some of the advanced monster girl races as well.

Unfortunately, I’d already played through the section (and the follow-up quests to recruit Spider Princess later) before seeing Stephen’s advice in the comments to have King Grangold in your party when interacting with Spider Princess.  I suspect there might be some spicy banter between those two...

But I didn’t think to add King Grangold in the party for this section, so I’ll have to leave it to the folks in the comments to supply the juicy details.

Next up it’s time to receive a good vamping.

-> Next: Vampire Castle

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...