The cruel banshee I called a student decided to wake me up by ripping the blanket off my bed. My adrenaline spiked and I barely registered the time it took to go from lying on my side to crouching on my mattress, ready to defend myself.
Annie was standing at the foot of my bed, hands on her hips, and smiling like a psychopath. I blinked at her in the dim light of the single lamp she'd flicked on. She was still dressed in the shirt and panties combo from last night, and her hair was stylishly disheveled in a way that let me know she'd woken up only minutes before me.
"Morning, shifu!" she exclaimed proudly, mischief burning in her eyes.
I glanced at the two little basement windows that were my sole source of natural light in this room. The sky outside had yet to turn even fractionally towards the grey of pre-dawn. Only the distant hum of the 18-wheeled freightliners coming in to make their deliveries hinted at the time, which had to be after 3:30 at the earliest.
I winged a pillow at her. Annie didn't bother to dodge or parry, letting it whomp her in the face. Her smile grew wider. There were morning people – hell, I was a morning person – and then there was whatever the fuck this was.
"Christ, Annie. The birds aren't even up yet, you lunatic." I sat down cross-legged with a strangely graceful plop, and rested my chin on my palm. "You're worse than my mother." She'd made us get up earlier in the Summer. Didn't want us to build bad habits, like sleeping past sunrise, for example.
She stuck her tongue out at me. "Suck it up, champ. As your cornerwoman and the only member of your fight team, it's my responsibility to make sure you're fighting fit by the Qualifiers."
Annie hopped forward onto my bed, landing on her knees in front of me. "Luckily for you, I'll be handling the load for this next exercise."
To make sure her double entendre couldn't be misinterpreted, she swiftly pulled her shirt up and over her head, throwing it behind her. Her panties were next as she shimmied closer and worked them past her knees.
"Some dual cultivation before work?" I asked. I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck. The soreness had passed and my Qi had settled down, but while I may have mechanically been fine, that didn't mean I was feeling my best. My eyelids still had that early morning fuzzy sensation around them; my body's way of asking for another fifteen minutes.
"Yep! And then we can have breakfast and do some filming and training. After that, a quick shower, and I'll drop you off in Riverside to meet Kas for your duel on the way to work."
"Think you can bribe me with boobs and an annoyingly reasonable explanation, do you?" I smiled and relaxed. That did sound like the perfect way to start today. "Well you can. Good job. And nice tits."
She laughed. "Thanks, James. You really know how to complement a girl."
"I call it like I see it."
I started to take my shirt off, but Annie leaned forward and caught my hands at the hem.
"Nope," she said to my unasked question. "As the leader of this team, you need to learn to delegate tasks. Luckily for you, you have me to teach you the basics."
"I don't think taking my shirt off even rises to the level of a 'task'."
"Oh yeah? Do you think princes undress themselves? No, they have highly trained staff for that." She nodded smugly.
"It's so early to start mixing metaphors, in more ways than one."
She pouted. "Shut up, James! Let a girl unwrap her presents."
I held my hands up in surrender. "Gladly. Go for it."
Annie grinned and did an adorable little shimmy of joy. Leaning forward she kissed me softly, lingering just past a peck. "Thanks!"
"I do want to point out that was your third metapho—oof."
Annie pushed me onto my back mid-sentence. "Metaphoof? You're not making any sense, James. I'm afraid this calls for a full physical. Just lay back and let me work."
"Was that a fourth? I think that was a fourth."
Her hands slipped under my shirt, hot fingers pushing it up to reveal my lower abdomen. Grinning like the cat who caught the canary, she took her time to trace out every curve on each boulder-hard ab and let out a satisfied sigh. She bent down and nuzzled into them, digging her nose in, resting her cheek against them, and in general working to make sure every inch of her face came into contact with every inch of my exposed skin.
My body was idle, but I was not. Passively, my Erotic Sorcery skill fed me a wealth of information. Annie's skin was phenomenally sensitive, and the situation was suitably erotically charged enough that every even passing touch was sending signals up and down her body, growing the fires of her arousal. Curiously, she was also releasing tendrils of a strange mystical energy, invisible to everything but my Erotic Sorcery.
I let my mind play with the energy. It wasn't Qi, but I could sense that it could become it with a bit of finessing, and was probably much easier for me to do as a skilled martial artist than it would be for another. I could both draw it into me from her through touch as well as manipulate it in the air around us. The latter rendered it fragile though, and anything more than very intentional wrangling saw it fracture off and slip into the ether, to go where or become what, I didn't know.
After satisfying herself with my lower abs, she kept pushing my shirt up, dragging her lower lip against my muscles as she did. I both saw and 'felt' a shiver run through her. I found her foreplay tantalizing, but I could tell that she was more teasing herself than me at this point. I wondered how long it would take her to snap. Annie's libido likely rivaled any teen's after yesterday's ritual.
I lifted myself up to let her pull the shirt up to my neck. Annie sat up and stared down at me longingly, as if enraptured by the sight. I had never seen such raw desire directed at me in either life. I couldn't help it, my cheeks grew warm and I knew I was blushing.
Annie scooched forward, straddling me and sitting on my still boxer-clad waist. She practically purred as she wiggled against my half-hard dick through them. I lifted my arms at her direction and let her pull my shirt off over my head. My hands went to her waist, but she captured them, interlocking our fingers and moving them to next to my head.
"Nope," she said, popping the 'p'. "It's my turn today. You're going to lay there and let me pamper you."
Still holding my hands, she leaned down and kissed me. This was much more than a peck, but lacked the urgency and zeal from yesterday. This was pure passion, Annie's attempt to non-verbally communicate all of her affection.
The kiss let me roll my first Sensuality check of this encounter. A total of 12 dice were in the pool with only my Attribute and Skill involved, once we started Dual Cultivating there would be 16, a completely unthinkable number to me only days ago. And Annie had been worried I'd be jealous of her ex-boyfriend. Ha. I'd basically elevated myself to a sexual demi-god. Me being jealous of an ordinary man would be a divine act of insecurity akin to Hera conspiring to destroy Troy over a beauty contest – and if there was one kind of God you didn't want to be compared to, it was a Greek one.
I didn't dominate the make-out overtly, I could tell that she wanted a softer session than our last. But 10 Successes was an impossible kiss to ignore. Even in the passive role, I was leading her on, capturing her lips and mind at once, leading her towards a finale, her lips an instrument and I a virtuoso. Her hips began to rock against my clothed dick involuntarily, and through my Sorcery I could see her arousal rising to her first climactic peak.
Annie ripped her lips away before she could cum. Panting hard, she closed her eyes and forced herself to stay still. I lay back and enjoyed the sight of a drip of sweat rolling down her athletic body through the natural channel between her heaving breasts. They were a truly perfect shape, perky and rounded in such a way that her diamond sharp nipples pointed up – retrousse was the term, I believe. I'd gotten to admire them jiggle as I'd fucked her hard on the floor yesterday, but today they'd were free to bounce about without her leotard keeping them in place.
She puffed up her cheeks and pouted down at me. "Jaaames, you're supposed to be letting me pamper."
I smirked. "I'm not sure what you're talking about. Was I not supposed to kiss back?"
She rolled her eyes, a mischievous fire sparking in them. "You aren't the only one who can show off."
Annie shifted her weight off my waist and onto her hands. Her muscles, from her arms to her core, tensed as she lifted her lower body into the air, moving into a front lever position. The move was hard enough normally, but Annie was doing it on a soft mattress without the support of a hard surface or the tension of hanging rings, but she wasn't finished. Next she tucked her legs into her chest and hooked her big toes into the waist of my boxers.
I lifted my butt up slightly to allow her to peel my underwear down and off my legs. In a show of incredible athleticism, she dragged them off me with a slow, controlled pace. I could see her muscles flexing under her skin, Annie's body honed from years of training, without an ounce of unnecessary fat.
"Holy shit, Annie. You're going to ruin sex with normal women for me," I said. It was flattery for the most part, but I was genuinely impressed by the display.
"That's the idea. And I'm not done."
Still in the air, she brought her legs back up and used the soles of her feet to hold my now fully erect penis. Angling me up and guiding me into her with her feet alone, she began to lower herself down onto my dick, clenching her teeth and hissing to ignore the intense sensations. Annie had to pause as my head entered her fully. She was more than wet enough to go further, but I could tell she was fighting to control her arousal and urges. This was a first for me, seeing a woman have to fight back an orgasm during sex, and appropriately flattering enough for me to be content laying back and watching.
Her Yin energy flowed through her sex into my Qi network, starting our Dual Cultivation. I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes, reveling in the unique heat of Annie's soul. She didn't have much Aura in total, but it was dense with the warmth of a hot hearth after a cold day's hard work. Tendrils of it, like cords of flame, wrapped around my bones with deliberate intent, traveling down my spine and into the root of my cock.
"Ah!" I gasped involuntarily and grew harder than I'd previously thought possible.
Annie let out a delighted little laugh at the feeling of me twitching and swelling inside her. I looked up at her in surprise. While I couldn't read her 'character sheet' I could tell how much it would cost to buy her skills and work in reverse. That had felt a lot like Erotic Sorcery to me, and sure enough, she had gained a die in it.
"Nice trick," I gasped out. "Very nice. What was that?"
She smiled. "I have no idea, it just came to me. But don't worry, I have plenty of more tricks to show you."
She began her descent again, just as slowly as before. Her eyelids fluttered and her bottom lip dropped open. For all her bravado I could tell she was teetering at the edge of climax.
"Why fight it?" I asked. "I love watching you cum. You're beautiful."
Annie moaned. "Want it all, hah," her concentration slipped causing her to drop down a few inches on me before stopping herself suddenly by clamping her vaginal muscles as hard as she could. "…inside me, f-first." she finished.
I considered helping her telekinetically, but her self-inflicted torment was impossible to look away from. Even as the enhanced sensations from my dick made me want to throw my head back, I watched. I watched as her breasts jiggled with the little shuddering steps she made further down my shaft, as she gasped and whined with every inch of me, and as her face told volumes by twisting into and through dozens of expressions.
Finally, Annie touched down, our thighs coming together, and exploded on top of me. She moved her hands to my chest in order to prop herself upright, besieged by trembling waves of pleasure. I grunted and likewise came, filling her with the first shot of seed for this session. The feelings from inside her were just too much to deny.
I crushed the check to remain hard, but the first was the easiest and her Sorcery was helping. The thought of putting a pause to this for even a few moments was intolerable to me. Luckily, I had over 500 Experience points and hundreds of potential solutions to the problem. After thinking about it for less than a second, I spontaneously made the least irresponsible purchase I could make, which was to bump Endurance to 6 dice. I was fairly confident that the system would reward me with an answer to the problem.
[Hidden Quest Completed!]
Have 6 Dice in Endurance.
Reward: Gain Special Feat Unrelenting
[Special Feat]
Unrelenting – Your ability to shrug off pain and discomfort is legendary. You may go much longer without food, drink or sleep than even humans who have trained for such feats of endurance. Pleasure is easier to ignore than pain naturally, and as a result your ability to prolong an orgasm is similarly improved.
[Hidden Quest Completed!]
Buy an Attribute die mid-coitus out of uncontrolled passion.
Reward: 10 EXP
Bonus, Bought Endurance: Gain Minor Feat Multi-Orgasmic
[Minor Feat]
Multi-Orgasmic – You have the refractory time of the most naturally blessed woman and are capable of multiple orgasms in quick succession. This only slightly enhances your fluid production, and you may still grow tired from physical exertion during sex.
The sudden shot of wakefulness that followed, and a little post-nut clarity, made me realize that I had been the victim of a Successful Seduction roll from Annie. Not that I was upset, turnabout is fair play, but it was worrying to confirm that I could fail Social rolls like that without noticing. At least I'd gained a virtual 10 Experience discount on the Endurance die along with two feats this time.
Still, I took a moment to remind myself that I was ghost busting later and had literally no idea what that would entail – Probably not the best time to be making impulse purchases.
Our Qi continued to dance within us, and soon Annie was twisting and rocking her hips to the same rhythm. I let my hands drift up her to her thighs, but continued to follow her unspoken instructions, reading her desire to control the pace herself. Instead of bucking my hips, I willed my body to relax into my mattress. My hands likewise ignored the impulse to seize her by the waist and start pumping her up and down, and settled for massaging her quads.
"God," she said staring down at me, "you're so fucking hot."
Annie's soaking wet walls started to pulse in waves, her powerful pelvic floor trying to wring the cum out of me as though she was jerking me off. All the while she kept up her gyrating, sinful belly-dance, grinding her powerful ass onto me. Her hot sex was dripping out from around the tight seal around my cock, soaking my balls and inner thighs.
"Touch me," she breathily demanded, before leaning down to capture my lips.
I ran my hands from her hips to her ass and squeezed down appreciatively, drawing a moan from Annie. My finger tips drew lines up and down her back and sides. I could feel the neurons firing under her skin, and could sense her arousal climbing to new heights. The erotic energy was dense around us now, like a thick cloud of steam rising from our bodies. Were I not so distracted I might have been able to do more than simply overcharge our Dual Cultivation with it.
Annie mewled into my mouth as she climaxed again, continuing her slow pulsing gyrations through it without missing a beat. I thought about joining her in orgasming, but decided to let the pleasure build out of curiosity about how far I could push it and masculine pride. I was of the opinion that a woman should cum before and more than me if possible, and my recent feats hadn't changed that.
I flexed my cock, showing off my own pelvic floor, so that it was angled up against the top wall of her pussy and pressing harder into her g-spot. It was enough to make Annie pause her movements for a few seconds. Her pace began to quicken as she recovered from the sudden sensation.
Yesterday, we had fucked. Today, we made love. Even as her movements became more frantic and jerkier, her kisses remained soft and sweet, much like her little moans and gasps. Her hands, growing tired of molesting my chest and shoulders, moved to the top of my head where they began to massage my scalp lovingly. Instinctually and impulsively, I wrapped my telekinetic tendrils around her and pulled her tight against my chest. My hot Qi flowed into the force 'Pythons' to where they were like hot compresses twisting and massaging her core and back.
I lost track of Annie's orgasms. We held one another in that position for the remainder of our Cultivation. I saved my own for the end, joining her for one last mutual climax. By that point I was seeing stars from my self-inflicted edging, and my vision went white when I finally came. My cum was dense with lifeforce at that point and it took what felt like eternity to finish unloading inside of her. Annie's meridians lit up like fireworks as her body worked overtime to process it all. She screamed an orgasm before going limp at the flood of pleasure and power.
[Dual Cultivation Results]
10 EXP
[Recurring Quest Complete!]
Have a sex scene.
Reward: 5 EXP, +1 Random Skill (Tracking)
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Have romantic sex.
Reward: 20 EXP, Gain a random Minor Feat you qualify for from your Romantic Archetype (If It's You, It's Okay)
[Minor Feat (Harem Protagonist)]
If It's You, It's Okay – You are not only supremely attractive, but your charisma is also enough to wile its way through any passive resistance. So long as someone is capable of romantic or sexual attraction, they will make an exception for you regardless of their normal sex, gender, race, or body-type preferences. You can still fail for other reasons, but you no longer suffer the usual penalties to seducing these characters.
[Ally Quest Complete!]
Make love to Annie.
Reward: 20 EXP to both of you, +1 Acrobatics
Annie rolled off me onto her back. I mentally added, 'wash sheets' to my day. They were completely filthy, and the smell was sure to raise a few brows at the laundromat later.
I clapped my hands. The sky had lightened to a dark grey. "Okay! Good warm-up! Ready to start the day, my student?"
"Yes, Shifu!"
Annie's van had a lingering scent of old cigarettes that undercut the smell of the air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, but I had to admit, it was still nicer than riding the bus. I could get used to being chauffeured, especially if all I had to trade for the service was sex and training. She certainly didn't mind, if her smug satisfaction was any indicator. My student had been buzzing since we'd finished cultivating together, cheerful and relaxed as usual, but more confident than ever.
As she ought to be. Annie was leaving our first day and a half of training with 5 dice in Martial Arts and the Artful Dodger feat, with some Experience to spare. I'd contemplated increasing her Aura to 3 dice, but the first thing that had happened to me after doing the same was gaining the attention of a Hungry Ghost. I didn't actually know those were related events, but it couldn't hurt to be cautious. This way she'd be able to defend herself from most mundane attackers, and would hopefully fly under the radar of supernatural threats.
"Here's fine," I said to Annie as we neared Kas's place. "It's an even fifty-fifty if the old man didn't fall back asleep after texting me. I think I'll grab a couple of coffees to kill some time."
Her eyes nervously flicked to the time displayed on her dashboard. "Sounds good."
"When's your shift start?"
"Oh, you know." She looked chagrined. "About ten minutes ago. It'll be fine though, I'm never late, and there's a million waitress jobs in the city anyway."
"Ha! Nice." I shook my head. "We're going to need to find an actually responsible student or master if we want this school to survive."
"Hey! I'm responsible most—much of the time."
I gave her an amused look and stayed silent.
She pursed her lips. "Yeah, yeah. I'll keep an eye out. Maybe I'll win someone over at my Taekwondo class. What time do you want to meet tomorrow to train and film, by the way?"
God, how I wished I could attend that first Taekwondo class with her. The look on her instructors' faces would be priceless as they realized how far she'd gone in so short a time. That would be a real ego-crusher.
"Right, forgot to mention. It'll have to be in the morning, I'm helping the Shinto temple in Little Tokyo hunt a ghost tomorrow."
"Huh?"
I scratched my chin. "And I might need Wednesday to recover, being realistic. According to the Miko at the temple, this thing's been eating martial artists for decades."
Annie sputtered. "Bwa—what? Ghosts? What? Ghosts are…real?"
I ignored Annie and her short-circuiting brain, opening the door and hopping out of her minivan. "Anyway, we can figure it out later. See you tomorrow, Annie!"
"They—they eat people?" Noticing me get out of the car she called out, "Wait, hey! James, are ghosts real? Are you being serious?"
I smiled. Ah, the joys of having a student. This would never get old. "You're late for work, Shine. Bye!" I said cheerily, closing the door and walking into one of the many hipster coffee shops in Riverside.
Riverside, the neighborhood, was about thirty or so blocks on the southern shore of the Beagle River. A hundred years ago, when the Beagle had practically run black with pollutants and the docks to its east had been a busy hub of longshoreman and sailors, Riverside had been known for its unique mix of struggling artists, the new middle-class bourgeoisie, and the growing population of small artisans, printmakers, butchers, bakers, etc., that had set up shop in the then cheap properties.
The artists remained, but they were no longer struggling, well, not financially at least. Now they were almost exclusively trust fund kids attending the handful of private arts universities in the neighborhood. You could still find some of the best family artisan shops in the city here, but many had opted in recent years to sell their real estate for the massively inflated values and retire or move to more affordable locations.
I passed Renauld Park on the way to Kas's. Six black nannies had gathered on the benches to watch over their young, mostly white, wards together. The kids played on the newly renovated playground while the women spoke loudly in Patois with one another, crocheting or knitting to pass the time. Their eyes flickered between the kids and their surroundings constantly, occasionally scowling at anyone who dared walk their dog too close to the playground.
This was an ubiquitous sight north of the Beagle, where Black Harbor's old money had historically resided, but was becoming more common in Riverside and other freshly gentrified neighborhoods to the south. One of the little girls asked her nanny for a piece of her jerk chicken as I walked by. I always got a kick out of thinking about all the rich kids who would inevitably grow up with Jamaican Patois as a second language, though I'd yet to meet one. As many people as I knew in town, those just weren't my circles. I knew wealthy Chinese people of course, but they weren't the types to hire nannies, and when they did, they typically went for fellow Mandarin speakers. Sometimes, if the family did a lot of business in Hong Kong or in New York's Chinatown, they'd hire a Cantonese speaking nanny, but even that was rare. It was the same story as always – new world, old politics.
Kas lived in a gorgeous brownstone with all of its original stained glass transoms above the doors and windows. The man was down-to-earth and could be, as a high functioning drunk, fairly chaotic in his personal life, but he definitely had style, if not, perhaps, class. Though what did I know? I lived in a hobbit hole underneath a half-built hovel. Maybe playing the minimum bets at blackjack until three-thirty in the morning for the free drinks was considered the height of class these days.
I rang the front door to his place, holding my coffees up to the little camera. It buzzed back almost immediately, unlocking the door.
"Good timing," came a voice from scratchy intercom, "I was just about to run a pot. Come in, the foyer's unlocked."
I kicked my shoes off in the foyer. Kas had been a true Karateka in his youth, having spent most of his Summers as a teen training in Okinawa. As a result, unlike a lot of Westerners, he was pretty strict about not wearing shoes inside, even hanging up some complementary slippers and flip-flops for visitors in the entrance.
The interior was well furnished and decorated, but without the sterility or thematic sensibilities that would have implied he'd hired a designer. There were old weapons hanging from the walls, along with a mix of different handmade art that the veteran stuntman had collected in his travels. Amid them were photos, both of family and of Kas with various famous actors and directors. I eyed the photos of his daughter and his ex-wife a little differently this time around.
Bet you'd get some decent rewards for seducing them, whispered a churlish voice in my head.
There are lots of ways to get Experience, I responded.
Kas was in his kitchen, mixing up some batter when I entered. He was shirtless and freshly showered, wearing an apron that read 'Wok and Roll' and had an image of an 80's hair metal guitarist wailing on a wok. Without his shirt on he looked considerably less like the ethnically ambiguous everyman that he had made his fortune portraying, and much more like the dangerous martial artist that he was.
"Yo!" he called out without looking. "I'm making pancakes. Blueberries okay? Figure we should carbo load before our fight."
"No such thing as a bad pancake. And carbo load? We're sparring not running a marathon."
"Ah, thought you might want to stick around after to traiiiii," Kas trailed off, having finally turned to look at me. "What the fuck happened to you?"
I checked myself for injuries. "What do you mean?"
His jaw dropped. "What do you mean, 'What do you mean?'?" He waved his egg beater at me. "Look at you! You look like you walked out of one of those weird French cologne commercials."
"In a good way?"
"In an insane way! What happened?!"
"Uhh, I unlocked my Qi?" I shrugged and let out a little pulse of force in an omni-directional wave from my body, ruffling the pages of a nearby newspaper. "That can make people look better, right?"
"It can fix fucked up skin and teeth, but you didn't have those to begin with. And that takes months to years to take effect. What did you do, James? You didn't make a pact for fame with something, did you?"
Huh, that was the first time I'd ever heard Kas make a reference to the supernatural. I don't know why I hadn't thought to ask him about that sort of thing. He did have a supreme talent for coming across as a normal guy, I supposed.
"Like with a…Crossroads Demon? Is that an option?"
"No!" he said emphatically.
"Then why did you ask?"
"Er, well it's a thing that you could do. But it's not an option! Not a good one, at least."
I sucked my teeth. "Hmm, so…you'd say it's a rare occurrence to undergo drastic physical changes after awakening your Qi?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Holy shit, kid, where are you going with this?"
"Well, you know, it's just that…" I looked around his kitchen as I stalled for time. I wasn't entirely sure of how much I wanted to say. "Hey, is that a newspaper? You still get a physical newspaper delivered?"
"The Harbor Moon is print only. And don't try to distract me."
"Print only?" I picked up the paper off his kitchen counter and did a double take at the top headline. "New Jersey To Repeal All Obscenity Laws With Bipartisan Support," I read aloud. "Is this real? I haven't heard anything about this."
Kas snatched the paper away, rolled it up, and whacked me on the head. "I will happily explain Dark Media to you, after you explain what's going on."
"Right, right." I took a deep breath and made a split-second decision to trust Kas. He'd honestly been a great mentor as a stunt man, and had never given me a reason to lie to him. I'd leave the stuff about the reality show and the system out, of course; I wasn't looking to test how the Producers felt about me breaking the Fourth Wall, but I could trust Kas with the rest.
I took a seat on a stool and sighed. "The reason I asked is that Annie is also undergoing some physical changes after awakening her Qi. They've been positive so far, but I've been – well worried is the wrong word – concerned, I guess. It is my responsibility after all. Oh yeah, I took on Annie as my first student by the way."
"How did Annie—" He paused, slapping his forehead and shaking his head. "James, it's been four days since I saw you. How – what – Argh! Goddamnit, I just remembered you were already getting hotter when I took you out for steaks. Okay, kid, start from the beginning. Walk me through your batshit weekend, from me dropping you off at home, to you buzzing my door."
"Sure, no problem. So, I basically just crashed Thursday night. But the next morning I get up and there's this piece of shit, dickhead rat in my refrigerator…"