NB: There is some hypnosis and girls-live content in this chapter, beyond other suggested sexual themes. Reader discretion is advised. But since I gave this a Mature Content tag, you should already know that by now.
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In the throes of Futaba's despair-induced slumber, a dream began to take form. She found herself kneeling atop a tall tower overlooking a vast mansion, its sandy colours illuminated by the waning sunset. A nearby oasis was the only natural feature she could see that wasn't just featureless sand dunes. Whilst the setting itself was unfamiliar, she had been in dreams like this before, and instantly recognised her situation. Here, she was no longer Futaba Sakura, nor Oracle, but an entirely new Phantom Thief identity, which she called "Alibaba".
Looking down, she saw herself wearing a shoulderless bra, a cutoff vest, and a pair camouflage-print sirwal pants, all in varying shades of olive green. Her head and face were covered by a forest-green scarf, some cross between a hijab and a ninja's hood. On her wrists were a pair of golden armbands; the left-hand one contained a miniature keyboard for a magical computer which projected augmented-reality data onto her glasses, and the right-hand one contained hidden sensors for collecting said data. A curved scimitar lay strapped across the small of her back, and holsters along both of her thighs held a pair of chrome-finished machine pistols. She had chosen these guns from a certain classic first-person-shooter game; they weren't particularly powerful or accurate, but they were easy for her to handle and, when dual-wielded, fun as well. And topping it all off was her new Persona, Sheherezade, which took the form of a green-skinned, hourglass-figured genie woman who cast wind and support spells from her magical tome.
Still taking stock of her situations, a thought flashed within Alibaba's mind. She had a vision of a young woman, lying half-naked and chained up in a squalid dungeon somewhere. The firey red ponytail of her hair made her instantly recognisable. Atsuko is trapped somewhere in this Palace, thought Alibaba, and she must be the Treasure I need to steal in order to trigger a change of heart in… Whose Palace was this, again? She racked her brains, but could not recall whom this Palace belonged to. It must have been someone she had no cognition of in the real world. But now was not the time to question the logic of this place - her friend was in danger, and she was dead-set on rescuing her.
Alibaba scanned her surroundings some more. Her eyes drew themselves to the focal point of the mansion, a large, boxy structure capped in a giant golden onion-dome, and fronted by a vaulted entryway elaborately decorated in turquoise tiles. Surely, this would be where her target, the treasure of this Palace, would be found. But how to get in there? In front of this grandiose entrance lay a vast courtyard patrolled by Shadows, taking the form of burly, barrel-chested, obsidian-skinned men in white robes, turbans, and stone masks. Without the other Phantom Thieves backing her up, fighting too many of them was inadvisable. So, the front door was a non-starter.
Instead, she took a second look at the dome. There was something dotting the base of the giant dome, but Alibaba couldn't tell what it was with her naked eyes. She typed a command into one of her armbands, and pointed the other in its direction, using it as a camera. The zoomed-in image that now appeared on one of her glasses' lenses revealed what these decorations were: some sort of grated windows. If she could break through one of those grates, she would have easier access to, and egress from, the main chamber. Her route confirmed, she dropped down the tower, jumping between series of wooden rods sticking out from the sides, and landed with a somersault on the rooftop below.
While mostly flat, the roof of the mansion was dotted by some smaller domes and crenellations, and lined with walkways leading into the upper floors of its interior. As such, its owner saw fit to plant a few more Shadows on guard duty, although they were far more spread out than the ones in the courtyard. Hiding behind the tower, Alibaba peered out at each of these patrolling Shadows and logged their routes in her photographic memory. Two of these shadows passed her by without so much as a glance, but as she approached her goal, she considered the risk of being spotted in the middle of her escape attempt, and struck out at one of the Shadows patrolling around the base.
Leaping from behind her cover, Alibaba ripped off the Shadow's mask, transforming it into a trio of Lilim, winged demon girls. She grinned wickedly. This selection of female flunkies made sense for a Palace owner keen on collecting controlling ladies in the real world, but their weaknesses played right into her strengths. Alibaba opened the skirmish by casting a Magaru spell, courtesy of Sheherezade, stunning two of the Lilims but missing the third. Unfazed, she followed up her spell by pulling out one of her guns and spraying some fire its way, clipping its wings. With all three Lilims now piled in a quivering heap on the roof, they were easy pickings for Alibaba to carve up with her sword. As her blade rended gaping, inky-black gashes into the demons, she stretched her arms in front of her and quipped, "Game over!"
The threat subdued, Alibaba headed on to the window grate. The stone covering was hefty, and refused to budge when she tugged on it. Unable to look inside at a decent angle, she relied on her wrist-camera once more. She was treated with a bird's-eye view of a grand room, its floors covered in ornate carpets and its walls lit in kaleidoscopic colours by the green-tinted chandeliers and stained-glass windows. In the middle of the room, several girls were dancing about, gossamer silks trailing from their bejeweled wrists and scant bikinis. Their faces were not visible from her viewing angle, but one of them had a fiery red ponytail - that had to be Atsuko, the damsel-in-distress of this operation. All of the girls were chained by their ankles to an alcove recessed into the back wall. They must have been dancing for somebody, but from her angle, Alibaba couldn't see whom he, or they, were. But that wasn't important now. She had identified her target, Atsuko, and already had a plan set to rescue her from this place.
Alibaba took a mound of plastic explosive from her pack of infiltration tools, strategically stuck it to points along the grate's edge, and stuck the split ends of a detonation cord into each. The other side of the cord plugged into her smartphone, from which she launched an app to trigger the bombs from a safe distance around the dome. The ensuing explosion blasted chunks of the grate out across the roof, as expected. In order to secure her entrance, she summoned Sheherezade once more to cast a Garula spell inside the chamber, knocking and disorienting everybody down there with a blast of gale-force wind. Then, seizing the moment, she threw her grappling line inside and slid down. But as soon as she set foot on the lush carpets below, something she saw froze her nerves. It wasn't just the identities of the other slaves - in addition to Atsuko, she saw Ayame and Honoka, and even Yuki resting to the side with a giant feathered fan. Instead, it was whom the slaves were dancing for that shocked the wits out of her.
A man who must have been the sultan of this palace sat atop a gilded, velvet-cushioned throne. Even up close, his face was obscured in ethereal darkness. He must have been a cognition of somebody the real Futaba had yet to meet. However, the two men on his side were clearly visible. To his right was an older man, perhaps his grand vizier, whom she recognised as Youji Isshiki, her wicked uncle in real life. And to his left was a younger boy, perhaps his prince, and her heart all but stopped when she recognised whom it was: Ryuji Sakamoto. To see one of her friends, one of her comrades-in-arms from the Phantom Thieves, in this position of wicked power was devastating. Making matters worse, curled up in his arms was another girl she hadn't been able to see from afar. Ann Takamaki, or at least this twisted cognition of her, was "dressed" and chained up in the same manner as the other slave girls, and was gingerly stroking "Prince" Ryuji's buff, exposed chest, her fingers trailing down dangerously close to his naughty bits.
As upsetting as these familiar faces were, they only served to steel Alibaba's resolve. She whipped out her guns and trained them on Youji and the sultan, the two targets she had prioritised. To the sultan, she tried to make up a heroic speech as she went along, which inevitably devolved into anime quotes. "You there, who would… enslave these poor girls, and… defile the beautiful art of raqs baladi… that is unforgivable! In the name of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, I will punish you!"
The sultan was the first to recover from the breach. When he brought himself back upright, he was unfazed by the sight of the gunbarrel now jammed toward him. A defiant snarl across his formless black face, he snapped his fingers. All of a sudden, Alibaba felt a cold presence behind her. A trio of Shadows had spontaneously sprung up from puddles of inky primordial goo, and were now taking her hostage. Two of them pried the guns from her hands and pointed them back at her head, while the third slid her scimitar from its scabbard and turned its blade against her neck.
The sultan spoke in a distorted voice, like multiple voices speaking as one in some sort of demonic harmony, due to her lack of real-world cognition of whom this man represented. "I don't know who you think you are, but you will pay for crashing my good time! Guards! Execute th-"
"Whoa, hey!" Prince Ryuji interjected. "We don't gotta kill her! I bet she'd make a great addition to the harem, your majesty!"
"Hmm…" The sultan pondered this possibility. "What say you, my trusted Vizier?"
Vizier Isshiki gave Alibaba a thorough looking-over. Eventually, he told one of the guard Shadows, "This one looks familiar… Take off her headscarf." She willed herself not to resist as the Shadow did so, unveiling her face for all to see. The Vizier's eyes shot open upon identifying her as his own niece, then squinted as a devilish grin spread across her face. "Yeah… she's good," he told the sultan. "It's my niece… Futaba Sakura." To himself, he added sotto voce, "I'm gonna have loads of fun with you, Futaba-chan…"
"Very well!" announced the sultan. "Futaba Sakura, will you join our harem willingly, or shall we recruit you by force?"
Futaba replied in a lengthy, furious retort which incorporated all the nasty language she had picked up from Ryuji in the real world. In summary, her answer was "no". She was stopped only by her own blade being pushed further into her neck, ever so slightly, but deep enough to draw a few drops of blood.
The sultan was outraged. "Why, you insolent little… If you will not join me willingly, I'll have you tortured until you comply!"
He was cut off, once again, by Prince Ryuji. "Chill out, your majesty, I got this." To the cognitive Ann, he softly ordered, "Hey, Sexy Cat, how 'bout you give her one of your hypnotic dances?"
"Ooh!" she purred. "Good idea, master Ryuji!" She rewarded his idea by giving him a kiss on the cheek, and he repaid her with a light smack on her bum, to which she blushed and giggled in vacuous pleasure. The Shadows pulled Futaba towards the alcove, where Vizier Isshiki took an empty manacle and clamped it upon one of her ankles, and then they backed off, their commandeered weapons still trained on her. Prince Ryuji clapped his hands twice in succession, and the music paused. Ann trotted out to take her place in the centre of the room, and the other girls, including Futaba, sat down in a semi-circle to face her.
On the cue of Prince Ryuji snapping his fingers and shouting, "Hit it!", a new song began from its unseen source, led by a pulsating hand-drum beat and complemented by droning reed-pipes. Once the music started, Ann opened her performance by lifting her arms above her head and swinging her hips back and forth, subtly at first but growing in magnitude. Futaba wasn't keen to fall for her little trap, and tried her best to look away. But the Vizier didn't make it easy for her as he clamped his hands on either side of her head, forcing her head to face the dancing vixen with all the grace of a brutish troll. The best she could manage was to try to focus her eyes upwards, not on Ann's body but her hands. Unfortunately, the twirling motions of her hands and arms were so elegant, an attribute accentuated by the translucent red silks trailing from her wrists, that she felt herself starting to slip into the charms of those delicate arms.
However, Futaba caught herself before her senses were too far gone, and shifted her focus to Ann's other extremities, her feet. At this point, she trotted from one side to the other and back, her body waving seductively with each and every step. Vizier Isshiki was doing his niece the favour of slowly turning her head to keep her facing the alluring dancer at all times. But even her continued attempts to stave off stimulation proved in vain, as Ann's dainty feet and vibrantly-pointed toenails exhibited their own form of radiant beauty.
Desperate for any change in stimulation, Futaba darted her eyes in random directions, but this only served to tire herself out. Inevitably, she settled her gaze upon Ann giving her a shoulder-shimmy, waving her own arms in sensuous, snake-like motions, and shaking her plump, perky breasts in her direction. The pendulum-like swaying of her cleavage spurred a nascent desire within Futaba that compelled her not to look away from what may come next. And what came next was Ann leaning her torso backwards, which revealed the giant ruby stuck in her belly button. It felt to her like it had some sort of hypnotic pull which beckoned her to focus on this especially, more than even the rest of her alluring body.
The hypnotic assault wasn't over yet, not by a longshot. Ann turned around to face away from her audience, and continued to sway her hips left and right. The coins hanging from her sash bounced with every wiggle of her shapely tush. Then, without warning, she slid her legs apart and dropped onto the floor in perfect middle splits, looking back over her shoulder and coquettishly blowing a kiss in Futaba's direction.
Her back still turned to the audience, Ann folded her legs into a kneeling position, leant her torso backwards until she was looking at them upside down, and resumed waving her hands upwards in flowing circles around each other. She bent so far back that her head nearly touched her feet, and the skin of her stomach was stretched taut between her ribcage. With what limited conscious brain function Futaba had left, she admired the flexibility and grace her erstwhile friend put on display. I guess it doesn't matter if you're just stripping for some guy… or girl… she reasoned, you can still show off a lot of talent. And that's the sexiest part of all.
Even yet, Ann wasn't finished toying with her prey. She unbent her back, and twisted around so she was leaning on the floor, supported by one outstretched arm, and began waving her belly. By now, Futaba's attention was fixed solely upon the glistening jewel in Ann's navel. Even as she continued her undulations in a standing position, Futaba's eyes followed it and it alone. There was nothing left in her cognition, other than this goddess presenting her gorgeous body in all manner of enticing methods. The undulations ramped up in speed, building up the lustful desire in Futaba's heart in equal measure, until Ann worked her abdominals to perform smaller, rippling waves, gently rocking her hips side to side to contrast with the intense motion of her fluttering belly. Futaba had never seen such expert control of one's body before, not that she was in any mental state to recall any other examples. The excitement of the moment made the core of her body heat up, and her breath to come out in panting bursts, as if she were approaching the climax of some other salacious act. The intensity of Ann's fluttering built and built, until without warning, she jerked her hips far to one side with a pop, standing still with arms raised.
The dance of seduction now complete, Futaba was fast slipping into its hypnotic spell with no chance of escape. Her breath slowed and deepened, her eyes stared blankly into space, and the slipping faculties of her mind lingered solely on the immaculate dance she had just witnessed, and the divine beauty who had performed it. The other girls of the harem, who had long since given up their free will under similar circumstances, applauded politely, as had the men whose hearts had long grown callouses to such lustful magic. And yet, Ann had one more coup de grace to deliver. She slowly strode back toward Futaba, each foot carefully placed in front of the other, then leant forward by the waist, lifted her chin with a gentle caress, and kissed her prey softly on the lips. This final act shattered the last of her remaining willpower, and she fainted at the feet of Vizier Isshiki. The last thing she heard before blacking out entirely was the Vizier commanding, "Take the girl over to my chamber. I've got a lot of work to do on her…"
A couple of hours later, Futaba slowly awoke to the sight of a dark room. Her mind still half-occupied by her nightmare, she wondered with trepidation what horrors had just transpired, and what her fate would soon subject her to. Nervously, she felt across her body to determine what clothes, or lack thereof, her captors saw fit to put her into. And they were… a T-shirt, a long-sleeved undershirt, and a pair of hotpants. The same clothes she had worn when she fell asleep earlier that morning. Thank God, she thought, it was only a dream.
And yet...
Unlike most unconscious dreams, which faded out of memory soon after the dreamer woke back up, this highly dream stuck inside her mind. She wished it hadn't. Too much of it felt too close to what she and her friends were dealing with at that very moment. Was what she saw truly how her friends felt about belly dance? Even her closest comrades like Ann and Ryuji?
No.
The more she questioned herself, the more a rebellious spark kindled in the pit of her soul. She refused to let anything resembling the fate from her dream befall her in real life. I'm not going to let anybody else dictate what baladi is, or what it can ever be, she told herself. And I'm not going to fall into despair again like I did before. I am Futaba Sakura, and I will become the best dancer I possibly can! With that silent declaration of intent, she sprung out of bed, and practised her heart out. Not for those creepy men after Ann. Not for Ann. Not even for Sojiro. Only for herself.