The sun rises over NAU Samoa. Soon, it'll be a new day for the plantation slaves...but hardly a new dollar.
Back in the jungle, the carcasses of last night's vamps remain. They won't for long. Soon, the sun trickles through the trees. One ash at a time, the carcasses disintegrate.
Worried about Lt. Grant, Carolyn comes uphill, with a shovel in hand. She'll have hell to pay if she's caught this far away from the plantation.
She restrains herself from screaming when she stops and beholds all of the vampires' disintegrating carcasses. It's very macabre indeed...
With sure feet, she stalks among the carcasses, armed only with her shovel. Into the jungle's noisy shadows, she whispers Lt. Grant's name. She's trying not to get any attention. But when you're a slave, life is just so damn hard sometimes...
She's not looking where she's going. As a result, she falls into the mosquito aardvark's pit.
On her way down, she grabs many things, that slow her fall. Alas, they all come undone moments after she grabs them. She loses her shovel first, of course.
She's reunited with it at the bottom. Down here, she lies facedown for a bit, coughing from the dust that her fall has dislodged.
The first thing she sees is a giant mosquito's head...upside down. She screams, and crawls back in shock.
In doing so, she rear-ends into the dead tick elephant's hide. It feels weird, so she turns around...and has another scream, when she sees it.
At last, she finds control of herself...although she struggles. She regains even more sobriety when she stumbles across a pair of familiar sights.
One's a wooden gladius. The other is a strange purple-jeweled ring. She takes the ring in her hand, and surveys it. She swears that, when she was first bought by the Pope family, one of the other slaves shared a stolen book with her...which had this exact ring's diagram in it...
She's distracted by an electrical explosion nearby. That's when she sees the lamprey dugong's hoverchair. It doesn't hover anymore, of course. The murder of its owner will ensure that.
Shame; Carolyn knows of a lot of co-slaves back at the plantation who wouldn't mind using a hoverchair to follow the Drinking Gourd to freedom...if that's even a thing out here in Samoa...
Slowly, Carolyn approaches the hoverchair's remains. She bends over, reaches forth, and collects a few severed cables that're tied together. She studies the frayed ends...and almost touches them...
She screams and drops the cables when they spray sparks in her face. She's been blinded. She broods, for she thinks she'll never see again...
The tick elephant's trunks look more like actual ones, now. Their heads have been frayed off by the sun.
Carolyn's bent over, brooding over her eyes. Her ass is facing the tick elephant's trunks. In her blindness, they all seize the opportunity. They slither up behind her, and grab her ass from behind.
Carolyn screams and leaps forth. She trips over her shovel. She grabs it, and slowly regaining her vision, she prepares to meet the three trunks in armed combat...
Alas, she has no need. She watches, and surveys the trunks a bit, as a big shaft of sunlight comes down from above and starts disintegrating those trunks from the tips towards the beast's face.
From the heffalump's side, a spot is eroding. A ball of growing flame emerges from it...
"SHIT," Carolyn shouts, as she runs and takes cover behind the hoverchair...
Above, the smoke and fire of a huge explosion down below bellows from the crater that the pit opens into. The pit is now an even bigger crater than before. And for clicks around, the jungle has been razed.
All around, only tilled soil and severed roots can be seen. Many troglobytes, unearthed by the explosion, struggle to re-bury themselves.
With the wooden gladius in one hand, and the purple ring on the other, Carolyn crawls from the dirt. If she was underdressed before the explosion, she's even more so now. At least the soot doesn't stand out on her. Being black has its advantages.
She's lost her shovel. Shit; now the Popes are going to make her work harder to replace it. And all of the earthworks without a shovel...
Still woozy from the experience, Carolyn starts to make her way downhill, back to the plantation. On the upside, at least all of the vampires' carcasses have been destroyed.
Carolyn scoffs. This experience might actually be worse than what happened in a little children's book titled "Stand Back," Said the Elephant, "I'm Going to Sneeze!"
Carolyn hesitates, as the brush twitches around her. She senses she's not alone... But with luck, it's just a civet being mischievous. So, she makes the long way back to the...
Before she knows it, she's surrounded by native Samoans with spears. They're all manly, and shirtless, and paint-marked, and feather-arrayed... They take Carolyn's breath away.
The tips of their spears gleam in the growing light of morning. Carolyn would hate to think they're poison-tipped. Poison dart frogs aren't really a thing in Samoa. Even so, she knows loaded weapons when she sees them.
She realizes she's carrying a wooden gladius. Sighing, she drops it, to spare herself the Samoan's rod...or, spear, rather.
In his burly hand, Mr. Pope holds a cane switch. It sure looks like it would hurt, if he slapped a girl's ass with it...
He's got Carolyn tied up, and leaning over his bed. One at a time, he turns up his sleeves. Carolyn gawks, as he does this.
She's been in trouble with her Master before. But this time, it's a bit more awkward. And not because of the BDSM that's about to happen.
"Carolyn, is it?" He unbuttons his shirt, and keeps his cane switch close. He lumbers around the room, showing off his girth. "It's been a while. I was almost convinced that I'd finally spiked your bloodstream with the Holy Spirit. Apparently I was wrong."
"Mr. Pope? I know how this looks...but it's not what you think."
"I'd like to think not. But for the sake of fairness...as unfair as I must acknowledge BDSM to be...what work of rhetoric have you composed this time, in a femininely desperate bid to exonerate yourself of these impending charges?" He scoffs. "Like I'm going to stop wanting to spank you if I like what I hear..."
"Lt. Grant," she starts lying, "is a warrior who defends your plantation. He's identified a threat in the highlands. It's more dangerous than anything that currently poses a threat to any of the garrisons here; Russian, CAU, ours, and otherwise. Hell, I don't think even the natives can deal with it."
He's slowed. He seems interested.
"He's asked me to be an envoy for him. He's going to be up there for a while, taking them down...or, REAPING them, as they themselves would describe their own attacks on us."
Barely flinching, Mr. Pope retires the cane switch. At this, Carolyn breathes relief.
He now stands over her, and crosses his arm. "And...does your Lt. Grant request any armed assistance? A volunteer platoon, perhaps?"
She shakes her head. "No. He's a very capable warrior. I believe in him. Plus, the threat he's gone up there to take down is kind of," she clears her throat, "kind of the reason that his old post transferred him here in the first place. I know that doesn't make sense, but... Like I said: if the Russians and Latinx aren't afraid of them, they should be."
He nods, and relaxes his posture. "Very well, Carolyn. My apologies. You will continue to be his envoy. You will make constant reports, and warn us if this threat gets too close."
At this, Carolyn smiles. She didn't think she could do it... But by golly Uncle Johnny, she has...
"Alas, I regret to report," Mr. Pope adds, "that I'm still a married man who's WAY too sick of his wife to turn down a perfectly good opportunity to play BDSM on one of my slave girls, when doing it is already SO practical, and fresh on my plate." With that, he raises his arm up high. "Bottoms-up, bitch!"
With that, he spanks her bare ass. She squalls, as this happens...
