from ao for TTS

by The-Geek-Who-Lived

for TTS

9. RAM OK, ROM OK by SamsonHF (TBC)

Chapter 1: Crime City Missed You

Chapter Text

RAM OK, ROM OK

Part I ‑ "Plot Reasons"

By: Jesse Racine AKA Samson

Original Date Written: August 25th, 2023

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Her chin was down against her chest, but the instant those police sirens sounded off, her head jerked up in a snap, eyes popping open, lungs sucking air. She needed only a second to process what was about to happen before groaning at the top of her lungs, eyes screwing shut.

The schlub driving that shit-box of a taxi shrugged as he swerved to the side, panicky and damn-near frantic, blurting out "I've got no choice, got no choice" over the radio's roaring funk music. He was already parking the thing, killing the engine. She was dead in the water.

The cop car wasn't far behind her taxi. They even had their cherries and berries lit up, flickering red and blue through the rear window. The skinny, short-haired brunette sitting in the back of that taxi quickly replaced the abject exasperation on her face with fuming annoyance, sitting rigid with her bony hands balled into fists over her knees. When she heard the female officer's familiar voice, demanding from over her cruiser's speaker that the taxi's occupant exit the vehicle with their hands above their head, the woman sitting there clenched her hands so hard her arms quaked, nails cutting her palms. For a long twenty seconds, she sat there, fuming. Still, in the end she complied.

Not five seconds after she'd slowly stepped out of the car with her hands high in the air, she was being kicked behind the knee, was grabbed in a headlock by a pair of hard, tattooed arms, and started getting the ever-loving shit choked out of her. Why would she have expected any other kind of welcome to Crime City?

"Hck-!"

"Driver," the cop still on the speaker hollered, "leave immediately! Depart the vicinity!"

The kneeling woman, stuck in the middle of the street with a cop crushing her windpipe and carotids, could only watch through one squinting eye as the ride she'd paid with the very last of her money casually rolled further and further away. Her face had already started going deeper and deeper purple-red from lack of circulation; the female officer cackled over her, giddily taunting "You keep choking up like that, I'll give ya somethin' to really choke about, you dumb bitch – you never should've come back here!"

The kneeling woman screwed her one open eye shut, brow furrowing, jaw clenching, teeth baring-

"C'mon, Violet," another female officer's equally smug voice popped off, "you'll give the cunt a stroke, you keep that up. It'd break my heart."

The woman in the headlock sucked a massive gasp as she was abruptly released, collapsing almost face-first into the concrete beneath her, barely catching herself over her hands before she could bust her own nose against the cement. She didn't get more than a moment or two to cough in air before a boot was slamming into her stomach, knocking the wind back out of her; with a loud wheeze of pain, she was partially flipped over, thrown onto her side. The downed woman tried to recover, tried to be stoic about it, but when they demanded she roll onto her back and look at up them, she could only grit her teeth and comply.

As soon as she'd rolled over onto the hot, rough asphalt, making herself utterly helpless and prone against the ground, the three female officers in purple-green uniforms came into her line of sight, looming so directly over her they may as well have been stomping her face, already. They were loving this.

The downed woman breathed ragged from pain, staring up at them with open defiance.

"I know you," she slowly muttered around her huffs for air, tone flat.

"Yeahhh, we know you, too," the leader boldly returned, grinning down at her. She didn't sound nearly as imposing, away from the cruiser's speaker. "Oh yeah, we remember your ass, for sure. How could we ever forget our lil' buddy, huh? You're like our lil' sis, always needin' your goddamn ass kicked in. How you been, girl? Long time, no see."

The one with the tattooed, steel-hard arms and punkish purple bob cut, Violet, grinned down at her and snapped "We had you pegged the fuckin' instant you stepped offa that plane. You ain't slick, kid."

"Why'd ya come back, y'stupid bitch," the leader practically groaned, rolling her eyes. "You were out. You were safe, out there." Briefly puckering her lips – full, thick lips a rich, matte blue with lipstick – the blonde lead cop remarked an almost sorrowful "Shit's been real calm, since you've been gone. Not so much shit to deal with in all the hoods, y'hear me? Less…Cocky lil' assholes runnin' around, like you, always stickin' their shitty lil' antennae-heads in everything, bitin' up crumbs that ain't theirs before running their lil' asses off as soon as a light turns on – two lights, y'feel me? We had shit controlled – well, more or less, anyway. Point is, it was comfortable. Now your stupid ass shows up, again?"

"Nuh-uh," Violet laughed, shaking her head. "Some motherfuckers always gotta ice skate uphill."

With a big grin, the third lady-cop, the one dressed in the skimpy tube top and mini skirt uniform, nodded her chin up at the downed woman. "How's the family, Ariel," she asked, all calm politeness.

The downed woman's eyes went wide in split-second fury. "You fu-"

The mouthpiece immediately jerked up a knee, stomped her foot back down, and slammed Ariel's stomach, instantly bugging her eyes out, emptying her lungs, and damn near making her vacate the impact zone. They all laughed as she writhed underneath the woman's grinding boot, the leader grinning down at Ariel, eyes peeled and taunting. "Y'know, we used to joke that if it wasn't for dirtbags like you, we'd be out of a job. Shit, times change."

"And y'know what," Violet chortled, "we were wrong. We're not out of a job, at all. We fuckin' love having a nice, boring, easy job. Ever since you left, we've gotten things nice and stable: stable crime rate, low rate of violent crimes, total predictability in procedure. Even got a good pension!"

"Things have changed in Carcer City, Ariel," the third, skimpiest-dressed officer rather gleefully asserted, grinning from ear to ear. "Everything's fallen in line. We're gonna keep it that way. Don't you ever forget it. We catch you slippin', ain't no more chances."

The mouthpiece gave a quick chuckle, raising her eyebrows down at Ariel. With almost as much glee, she explained "Now, you know me, Ariel, I wish I could just draw my sidearm, right now, and just ventilate your stupid fuckin' brains all over the street, but unlike you, I'm a gainfully employed bitch, and that means following some rules. I can't be startling an' freakin' out all the nice, law-abiding folks livin' in this neighbourhood. We aaall follow rules in this life, Ariel, even petty criminal cunts like you, and mine are to watch your flat lil' ass until you either fuck up, right, which you will, or to wait until you head back to the airport and piss off, again. Where are you even staying, anyway? With that skank addict sister of yours?"

Ariel glared at them, defiantly frowning in open hatred.

The leader narrowed her eyes at Ariel, again. Grinning a little, she calmly, quietly asserted "If we haven't made it clear yet, dipshit, we don't want your ass in town – period. Your boney ass has twenty-four hours to wrap up whatever dumb fuckin' shit's going on for you, right now, in lovely Carcer City. If you're not back on a plane to wherever the fuck it was you crawled out of by the end of that time limit, you'll be seeing us, again. We'll drop your dumb rebel ass outta the world, y'hear me? Fuck around, find out."

Their boots scraped the concrete as the curvaceous women in stripper-like cop uniforms finally turned and began walking away, one of them laughing over her shoulder "See you around, bitch! You're lucky we're not taking the shirt off your back, too, hah hah!"

Ariel just lay there over her back and breathed through the pain, staring at the cloudless blue sky until she'd heard their car doors open, slam shut, and the vehicle had driven away, entirely. Then and only then did she sigh and begin dragging herself back up to her feet from the skin-scraping blacktop.

"For fuck's sake," she quietly sighed out, squinting against the sunlight as she scanned around. "…Here we go again."

The information was simultaneously in her mind and within her field of view:

HP: 65

AP: 0

Cash: $0

Rep: 0 (Nobody)

Wanted Level: 0

Time: 13:23

Her lips twisted into an angry sneer as she finished coming up onto her feet, head swivelling around as she dusted herself off. Cars were beginning to spawn in and head her way from either direction, driving predictably, obeying traffic laws. Ariel stared at them in moderate disgust while slowly wandering out from the middle of the road, moving onto the sidewalk and out of any NPC's pathing; she visibly fumed, pacing back and forth for several moments, absolutely and utterly unnoticed by any of the NPCs spawning in around her in from either sidewalk direction. They all walked more or less similarly, each spouting the occasional bit of canned dialogue. Ariel paid them just as little mind, in turn; based on her mental mini-map, she knew where she was in Carcer City, but getting to where she needed to be was a whole other matter.

Without any cash, she wasn't going anywhere any time soon. No matter the version, there was always one universal definite about Carcer City: cash was king.

Slowly, Ariel drew a deep breath, posture straightening. Her pacing slowed to a stop before she ran her hands through her jaw-length hair, preening, slicing her fingers through her brown locks. Her expression became flat, cold. Her eyebrows and eyes jumped around as she again scanned at the surrounding buildings, the cars, the NPCs; it'd been a long time since she'd last been here, but Crime City was never gonna change. For better or worse, it's still the same wild, psychotic den of wanton violence and hedonism it always was. It's just waiting for a spark, and Ariel – well, her mama always did call her a lil' spitfire.

Now free to control herself, the corner of Ariel's vision filled with a system text prompt: "Welcome to Carcer City! Please, enjoy your stay!"

Ariel grinned with open, devilish contempt. Oh, she'll fuckin' enjoy, alright – and maybe she'll just start with a cheeky wee lil' bit of cash extraction. She marked a quick spot on her mental mini-map, then set off on a power-walk, stuffing her hands into her pockets as she crossed two streets over. She kept her eyes out, ignoring the NPCs and being ignored, in turn; most of the building shapes were the same, and so were some of the locations of shops, but most of the particulars had changed. The people didn't really look the same – none of it did, Ariel thought. Had she been gone so long that the entire thing had gotten a facelift, or was she just imagining things? She'd never really known this part of Carcer that well, after all.

She smiled once she spotted one of the only familiar landmarks: a set of apartment blocks, two diagonally adjacent rectangles into the sky, brick cream-coloured and glass vaguely blue-tinted. Walking into one of the two adjacent parking lots, Ariel weaved her way through the maybe two dozen deep set of parked cars, finally finding the empty spot she'd been looking for – but to her dismay, nothing was to be found, there. Brow sinking, she muttered aloud "The fuck, man? Supposed to be a gun spawn, here – a pistol."

Ariel drew a massive breath, lean chest expanding as much as it could. Tension left her face as she rolled her eyes, deflating with an enormous sigh as her hands came up to her face, covering her eyes. She slowly shook her head. "Fuuuck," she all but whisper-groaned. "Shit really has changed…God damn it."

She slid her hands down, hands flat together against her nose and mouth, eyes lingering shut. After a few moments of silence, she dropped her hands, reopened her eyes, drew a breath, and more calmly sighed out "…That's fine, I can deal. Let's see…"

Her eyes shifted to the side, spotting an NPC wandering into the parking lot – a good-looking guy in a suit, in fact, and probably a mild-mannered one, too. Ariel just stared for a few moments, visibly bored and disinterested, one eyebrow barely raised. Her throat flexed in a little swallow before her stare dipped from his face to his crotch. A text prompt appeared in the upper-left corner of her POV: "Mini-game unlocked: Become a Street Whore! Approach random johns to initiate!"

Ariel again drew a little breath, again sighing it back out with more than a little dramatic intensity. Her eyes rose back to his face before she'd started walking again, making a beeline for him, moving to intercept before he'd reached whichever car was his. She was already working her tongue around the inside of her mouth, trying to stimulate some extra saliva production. He'd barely noticed her until she'd just about reached him, already – putting on a smile and giving him a wink, she puckered her lips in a quick air kiss before purring a slow, ditzy "Heyyy, handsome."

His eyes widened. Startled, he almost gasped, hands briefly coming up in caution.

Ariel didn't hesitate to strike a bit of a pose, displaying zero shame about it; turning to the side a little, she bent over, a bit, and held a knee as she stuck out her rear, a finger loosely hooking into her top's neckline for a tugging down. "Where're you headed? You looking for a fun date, today?"

He continued to look startled, but his eyes were obviously laser-focused on her ass. "Oh, uhhh…" He abruptly laughed a little uncomfortably, but he was grinning bashfully, too. He lowered his hands, again, as he remarked "Wow, uh, hah, I mean…I guess, why not…You, uhh, don't really look like a hooker, though. Are you a cop?"

Ariel winked, although he had a point – all she had on was a scuffed-up white tank top and some old blue jeans. Her vibe didn't exactly scream "hot shit," right then and there, but with the cash infusion she'd suck out of this NPC, she'd get a head-start on her comeback. She got a prompt within her line of sight to either accept or reject the john, and very shortly after she'd verbally confirmed with a direct "Not a cop. Hundred bucks and I'll suck your dick. Swallowing's extra. No facials," her point of view faded to black.

Next thing she knew, she was squatting down low in the opened passenger-side door of a sedan; the handsome, harmless NPC had lost his pants, entirely, and sat with his legs sprawled out past either side of Ariel, his heels to the parking lot concrete. He supported himself back in his car as well as he could, and Ariel, still fully dressed, already had her hands resting inside his lap, framed around his instant, rock-solid erection. As soon as Ariel had full control of herself again, she slid a hand over to this random guy's cock, her finger and thumb looping around the base before she'd given it some experimental strokes, gently gliding her ringed fingers up and down along his meat, feeling his rigidity. He watched with anxiousness and excitement, occasionally tossing a glance around through the windows of his car for anybody potentially watching their public indecency.

Ariel's throat tensed in a swallow; glazing eyes locked down on the head, she stroked away at him until finally leaning her head in, ringed fingers down against the base of his cock to pull his skin as taut as it'd go against his throbbing pole of lust. He grunted, but when Ariel dipped her head in the last inch, pressed her nose to the end of his cock, and sniffed, eyelids flickering, he gave a confused, surprised groan of approval. Ariel's eyelashes fluttered as she continued sniffing and huffing, fingers eventually sliding back and forth across his meat once again, delicately stroking him off against her own panting nose. She suddenly dipped her head, squatting so low the bulging crotch to her jeans couldn't help being highlighted; pressing her nose into the space between his prick and balls, she breathed, sniffing deep this random NPC's brain-shuddering musk. The hormonal, hot-blooded surge made Ariel groan against his balls.

She didn't indulge either of them, though. She didn't suck on his balls or slap his cock against her face, didn't work him up by beating him off into her opened mouth and letting him feel her hot, humid breaths slowly moisten the end of his cock. She offered him her mouth without waiting for the request to be given permission; sinking her opened mouth most of the way down his length, his scent filled her nostrils before she'd closed her lips down on him, wrapping them around him in a moist seal, his heat and flavour a sensory explosion within her man-hungry maw. She visibly shivered, tension briefly filling her face – particularly around the eyes – as she was overcome with the heady excitement, the impulsive, self-indulgent hedonism. Her first john in the Street Whore mini-game; she wondered what she might unlock if she went deep enough into it…

Still, it ultimately wasn't very different from any other time Ariel had given head, especially considering he was just a disposable NPC. That wasn't to say it wasn't fun or exciting, quite the opposite! Ariel was aroused, enough, the entire time to make a wicked tent in her jeans, and eventually she even gave in to her inner slut and undid her jeans. Pulling out her meat, she squatted there in that parking lot and beat herself off while she blew her john halfway outside of his own car, the constant wet, fuckin' lewd noises coming from the passing and grinding of his hot, spit-soaked, veiny throbber jumping back and forth through the ring of her lips into the cock-socket of her slutty mouth loud, proud, and nasty.

She let him cook, but not all day – just enough to get his money's worth. A quick, satisfying suck, nothing more, nothing less; nothing grand, nothing extravagant, nothing superbly memorable. Just a quick, casual hook-up in the parking lot: her getting to enjoy sucking some anonymous dick, even pumping her own needy pole to it, too, until he's going tense and groaning up a storm, impulsively begging her to swallow it – and his need, his desperation, his sudden explosive payoff across her tongue clear to the back of her throat, was the push Ariel needed to let go, herself, expression going slack around her packed mouthful of face-corking cock as her pumping arm went into a burst of careless speed, fist clapping her crotch as she savagely beat away at her own lust, until…

"Hnnnngh! Hnnngh! Hhhhgh! Hhhh!...Hhhnh!...Hnngh…"

Her eyelashes fluttered as she started cumming, squatting body rigid with brain-erupting ecstasy as she pumped herself past the point of no return, ejecting a few quick, decently thick streamers out against the parking lot concrete; it made her feel like such a slut, working herself up – at the same time as him, no less! – until she'd nutted, the horny whore wasting her own creamy seed underneath his car as the meek, anonymous man moaned his way through the no-doubt intense spike in stimulation from blowing his load inside her hot, wet, still-sucking mouth. It was like a fever through her brain, the rush of blood to her face and ears as he rather publicly dumped his balls into her mouth like the cheap street whore she'd signed on to be. Her tension melted away as she came back down from the high of her own shivering orgasm, head still most of the way down his slide whistle.

Eyes closed, she swallowed, a little, while she was still deep down his cock, careful to keep her teeth away from him as she got down her first warm, tingly, throat-coating gulping of thick, salty, cloying man-goo. She kept her lips sealed around his throbbing skewer, humming enthusiastically as she eased her head back, cheeks hollowed into deep pits as she sucked him pomegranate red on his way out. Tension twitched across Ariel's face as she kept reflexively gulping little bits of her sloppy mouthful, tongue and teeth completely coated, the overpowering scent of it flooding the back of her nostrils through her throat. He hissed air out of sensitivity, the end of her tongue briefly lapping at the head of his overstimulated member until, with an almost startlingly loud pop, the vacuum suction broke and they'd disconnected, the man's eyes subtly crossing as a harsh grunt rushed out of him.

The info briefly flashed in Ariel's point of view as she swallowed down the rest of her creamy mouthful in one big, gasp-provoking gulp:

Mission Successful!

Reward: $250 ($100 Fellatio + $50 Cum Swallow + $100 Bonus)

She grinned a little, chuckling with exhilaration as she finished stroking herself, squeezing and dragging her ringed fingers up along her meat until she'd milked out the final dribbles, shaking them off underneath herself. The NPC kept laying there, panting away, eyes closed as the no doubt intense afterglow overrode his mind. Ariel patted the inside of his thigh, smirking as she commented "A bonus, huh…I really do that good of a job? You shouldn't have, heh heh."

He arched his eyebrows as he chuckled, still lounging back into his car over his elbows.

As she stood back up and stuffed her deflating self back into her jeans, eyes more down on herself than on him, she absentmindedly asked "So…What's next for you?"

It was almost rhetorical. Breathing getting more under control, he nonetheless innocently explained "Oh, I…I was on my way to work…"

She smiled and nodded, enjoying the pleasantries, for once – not that his answer wasn't typical. He was sweet, though, and tried asking her "What about you" in return, but when he saw her, it startled him into swerving. "Your eyes," he almost gasped.

Ariel grinned, winking as she, tone dripping with glee, uttered a pleased "Me? I think I will cause problems on purpose. I think I like the sound of that, yeah."

He relaxed, some, but still looked a hint off-put; Ariel didn't bother sticking around any longer, simply walking away and abandoning the situation, leaving the NPC to his devices as she marched through the parking lot. Now moving with purpose, hands clenched down at her sides, she decided that if she couldn't reliably depend upon any random weapon spawns, she'd need to obtain a weapon, somewhere; from someone, if need be. Getting a car was a priority, too, but they were everywhere; nothing stopped Ariel, necessarily, from just going up to any of them and commandeering them, existing driver be damned. She left the apartment blocks, entirely, and got back onto the street, now moving with more direct aggression through the sidewalk-crowding NPCs.

She couldn't stop grinning to herself. She could always just look for a fight, if need be…

A cop car, painted up in purple and white, slowly rolled up past Ariel's side, driving in the same direction she was walking. Ariel's grin faltered when she saw it, her pace slowing to a stop, the crowds of gibbering NPCs moving around her in either direction like a mindless school of fish. Face flat now, she glared until the cop car had slowly vanished up the street, then arched an eyebrow and checked over her shoulder; a sedan was rolling up the street towards her, and there wasn't an ounce of hesitation in the brunette's skinny frame as she waltzed out into the road, marched into the car's way, and prompted the driver to slow to a stop. The NPC looked at her blankly from behind his steering wheel, throwing his hands up as if to say "What the fuck?"

Ariel's grin came back in full force, eyes excitedly widening. She marched around the car for the driver's side door, and before he could accelerate and get away, she'd grabbed the door handle – and to his screaming shock, she had the door swinging open, his seatbelt no longer there to prevent her from grabbing onto him and dragging him free.

"I need this," she all but laughed.

Skinny little Ariel almost effortlessly threw him out of his seat and onto the concrete, leaving him scrambling to get up, shouting "What the fuck, man, what the fuck, the fuck's your problem?!"

Ariel's grin reached stratospheric levels of height, the woman cackling as she fell into the seat. "Oppositional Defiant Disorder," she gleefully taunted, "how about you?"

She slammed the door shut and gripped the wheel, hitting the gas – the man didn't even try fighting to get his car back, he just staggered into running away as the ear-piercing burnout went on for a couple more seconds until, whooping with excitement, Ariel let go of the brakes and sent the car screaming forward, taking off down the street in a lurching surge of speed. One hand on the wheel, she hit the car stereo awake with the other hand, excitement only mounting as she spent nearly a minute rolling through radio stations. With every swerve in and out of lanes, with every panicked other driver on the road moving out of her way or honking their horn, her excitement mounted, her enthusiasm spiking alongside her adrenaline.

She didn't know about anyone else, but she was having a fuckin' ball.

When she finally found a radio station playing something that sounded nice, she left it alone, both hands again taking the steering wheel. She zipped across Carcer City like she was the only one on the roads, not even pretending to even so much as observe traffic laws and loving every second of it; whooping it up in her seat, cackling at every minor collision or scrape she got into, she blazed her own path until, at last, she heard the sudden crackling comms chatter of police radios.

Wanted Level: 1

Ariel narrowed her eyes, grinning from ear to ear like a jackal, fists tightening on her steering wheel. Took long enough.

She sharply slowed her driving, effortlessly able to keep an eye on everywhere around her car despite the cracked windows. She intentionally waited until a cop spawned on the sidewalk, calling something as he jogged in her direction. Ariel's eyes lit up as she waited for him to get close enough to her car, then sharply accelerated, jumping the car door out of reach. He shouted in annoyance as he jumped back in alarm, pulling his nightstick, but Ariel just fucking cackled, hollering with acidic laughter as she kept him chasing for a minute, letting him come close before lurching herself away. Finally, more beat cops started spawning in from either side of the street, and Ariel cut the shit – speeding away, she kept things cool until she'd lost the wanted level, again.

That's all she really had to do, at least with the lower levels: lay low, for a little, and the heat would forget. The fun did Ariel's heart good.

Not a minute later, she abruptly spotted through her windshield that made her stomp the breaks, sucking a sharp, shrill, wide-eyed squeal. Practically throwing open her car door, she jumped up out of her seat – not quite as skinny as before – blurting out "Yes, fuck, finally! Awesome!"

She'd jumped out of her car in an entirely ordinary-looking street next to a stretch of grass, a river to the left and an overhanging bridge not far ahead – and an absurdly visible gun out in the open, a very oversized pistol floating and rotating in empty space with nothing to manipulate it, constantly surrounded by a mellow, glowing corona of yellow light. It wasn't much, Ariel could already tell, but it was somewhat simpler than reaching for a cop's gun – and she didn't have to pay a thing for it, maybe best of all. She abandoned her car with the door left open, eagerly marching right into the gun spawn – and as soon as her body had made contact with it, the floating gun and corona vanished. Ariel grinned at the sudden feeling of cold, hard metal in her grip.

She lifted her hand, pleasure obvious on her face as she examined her shiny new pistol, seemingly all-steel and polished to a nearly mirror finish; she recognized it for a Glock, but her HUD identified it solely as "Pistol."

Pistol: 12/12 – 24

Only two clips – she could work with that. After all, just having the gun, any gun, reopened so many doors for her. "Daaaamn," she eagerly whispered aloud, looking the gun over a few more times before holding it up, checking the sights, and nodding with satisfaction. Grinning, feeling more secure in her return already, she switched off from her new gun back onto her fists; in the blink of an eye, the pistol had simply ceased to be in her hand, vanishing into her inventory. Trying not to chuckle to herself, Ariel rushed back to her car, hopped in, and checked her map for the nearest clothing store – only to pause at the realization that it was the Orphanage.

Ariel mentally stared at the fact staring back at her from her mini-map and, after some internal bickering, set a waypoint for it. Wouldn't have been her first choice, but she wanted a change of look now, not later. She'd just deal.

The car squealed like a bat out of hell all the way up to the big, black, red-lit clothing store, a big, matte black block of gussied-up brickhouse covered in crimson neon accents and decorations of women's puckered lips, smouldering eyes, and flashing grins. The windows were all red-lit and filled with absurdly curvaceous mannequins modelling sexy clothing – and a whole lot of straight-up lingerie – made for voluptuous figures and women with bigger curves; each mannequin sported a playful black hairband decorated with little horns, a couple cutesy wings over their backs, and spaded tails off their backsides. The bold, massive sign across the building's face, lit up all in pink neon, used a fanciful, swirling and swinging font: "The Orphanage."

Ariel just halted her car out front, half on the sidewalk – she even ran through a blue city mailbox in the process, blasting it halfway down the street amidst a cloud of swirling paper. Beyond a few gasps and a little momentary shock, the NPCs on the sidewalk didn't care and, shortly after, simply went back to their own business. Ariel likewise was nonchalant, climbing up out of her appropriated car and making a beeline for the racy clothing shop's front doors. It stuck out, even in the Red-light District; Ariel laid her hands upon the matte black double-doors, pushed, and-

-and a feeling washed over, fit to have her shivering, a moment. That AC was strong-

The doors quietly shut behind her, all street noise vanishing. A straightforward system text prompt appeared in the corner of her vision: "Welcome to the Orphanage! Here, you may purchase clothing, new hairstyles, and cosmetics."

Ariel blinked a few times in rapid succession, silently sniffing. The air was…Perfumed. Almost everything was coloured matte black: the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and most every clothing rack, product display, and piece of furniture. Mannequins, typically standing over tall displays, modeled clothing and lingerie of all kinds, primarily showcasing hourglass curves – and they moved, each sporadically shifting into a different sensual pose than the last, bodies jerking into and out of their sudden motions with little rhyme or reason. Every single light was coloured crimson-

"Hello, welcome to the Orphanage," a woman's soft, seductive voice happily greeted, abruptly appearing out of the black, seemingly slicing out into the open from between a couple packed clothing aisles.

She looked like a stripper: huge tits for her five a half foot frame, waistline plunging and birthing hips wide, thighs thick and ass huge – and all of it being wrapped up under a cobweb of black leather bondage straps that just barely covered a minimum of real estate, tight enough to dig valleys in her supply juiciness. Her bright blonde hair – obviously bleached, given her black eyebrows – had been pulled up high into a ponytail with a pink hairband, and her face was practically caked – expertly so, attractively so – in heavy, sultry makeup, her bright blue eyes ringed with black and accented with thick, fake lashes, her pouty lips accentuated with vivid, sparkling pink lipstick.

"Is this your first time visiting the Orphanage," she asked, smiling broadly, every little squirm and undulation in her gorgeous, fleshy figure positively hypnotizing to behold.

Ariel didn't smile much, but she was polite as she answered "No…But, it has been a while."

The petite, stacked n' packed woman in bondage straps, stockings, and opera gloves flashed her a pearly grin, her fake wings giving a wobble behind her as she inoffensively gave a point Ariel's way with both index fingers. "Gotcha, we love a repeat customer," she gushed. Raising her eyebrows, clapping her hands together, she asserted "Well, my name's Raven, it's a pleasure to have you. Were you looking for clothes or a cut, today?"

Ariel smirked, looking at the girl as if the joke was obvious. "Both, actually," she dryly admitted, "I look like shit right now, but I probably don't have the cash for it. I just need some fresh clothes."

As if on verbal command, Ariel abruptly found her POV swinging outside of her own body, rotating around to face herself – and all while different clothing rapidly began blinking across her body, flashing across her torso, her legs, her arms. Entire outfits would blink in and out of reality, there one second before vanishing the next – underwear, too.

The store attendant giggled, cooing "Well, the Orphanage is always open to polite, paying customers. Are you new to Carcer City?"

Ariel continued to flick through customization options for herself, trying to find something that didn't look like abject ass while still remaining within her measly two-fifty price range. Attention mostly on herself, she could see her mouth moving in correspondence with her words as she admitted "No, I was born and raised here. Just back from a bit of, uh…Vacation. San Fierro."

"Ooh, nice," the girl gushed, but she didn't press any further. It was just as well, though – within another minute, Ariel'd settled on something that just managed to hit the mark of good enough: matching plain black bra and panties, a cheap black leather jacket over an orange tank top, and a black pair of jeans with intentional half-tears spread out across the legs, each exposing white fabric fibers. She didn't bother replacing her ratty old running shoes – not just yet. Old clothes gone, replaced by the comfortable fit of these new clothes, she'd been left with about forty bucks in her bank account; as soon as she'd confirmed the purchase, her POV was swinging back around into its rightful place inside her skull, putting Ariel back behind her own eyes.

She gave herself a brief examining, checking herself out. It'd do, for now. Not bad, not great, not even necessarily good, but until she could afford some new makeup and did something with her hair, she couldn't expect a miracle.

"Will that be all," Raven asked with a cheery smile.

Ariel thought for a moment, pausing – then ventured to ask an innocent "Where's the owner?"

Raven grinned, holding back a chuckle. "She's always around," she said, all calm friendliness.

Ariel stared for a second, then abruptly found herself noticing movement in her periphery, glancing over: far in center distance, lingering maybe sixty or seventy feet away in the giant, matte black environment, was a rather short redhead, another stripper-looking shortstack cobwebbed under black leather, hands to her hips, whitish heels to her black knee-high boots, big, ram-like horns upon her head and black wings behind her. She was smiling, her thick lips a sparkling pink crescent from ear to ear – and her eyes were wide. They'd made eye contact for but a second before the redhead's lips split into a giant grin. She lifted a hand, the distance making it hard to discern the way she barely wiggled her fingers in a dainty hello. A second later, she'd dipped to the side, disappearing behind a clothing display.

"Oh," Ariel faintly said, lips subtly shifting. "…Good. Glad to see management hasn't changed."

Raven giggled a little, grin freshly renewed. "Thank you for shopping at the Orphanage, please come again soon!"

Ariel lingered a second, eyes continuing to scan the long distance into the murky red-and-black recesses of the store for a few moments more. Finally, however, she turned and stepped out, finding herself blasted with sunlight, again, and humidity. By the time she'd looked over her shoulder, the doors had swung themselves shut, almost slamming back into place. Ariel didn't stop feeling uneasy, again, until she'd climbed back into her dinged-up car and rolled out of there again, not even considering slowing down, again, until she'd put about two different streets between herself and the boutique's doors. Once she had, she actually bothered to pull into a small parking lot just off of a busy intersection, even going so far as to reverse her dinged-up sedan into a spot.

She moved with confidence as she exited her stolen car, a bit of a switch entering her step on her way out of the parking lot. She ran her hands through her shoulder-length hair, tousling it up a bit more, preening herself and throwing it all back. She couldn't help smiling to herself as she walked into the convenience store she'd spotted from the road, but the smile didn't reach her eyes; the automatic doors sliding open for her, there was a little chiming ding as she crossed the threshold. Text info blipped up in the corner of her perspective:

"Convenience stores are great places to buy energizing snacks and drinks."

"Mini-game unlocked: Armed Robbery! Draw a weapon on the cashier to begin a robbery!"

Ariel's smile finally reached her eyes. There were a few NPCs around the joint, colourful shit filling the shelves, junk food and candy and soda, all that cheap shit. She turned towards the cashier's little boxed-in space; the damn thing was surrounded by colourful, flashy lottery tickets all done up in green, blue, and purple like a peacock's feathers. She'd just about reached the cashier and his three-deep line, had been just about to pull her gun, when a frustrated voice abruptly blurted out "Can we hurry this th'fuck up, already? Holy fuckin' shit, bro-"

A woman yelped.

"Oh, don't you fuckin' start, ho," the voice snapped.

Ariel immediately rolled to a stop, expression falling flat. Her head turned, eyebrow arching.

The cashier looked past the first customer; that customer, meanwhile, looked over his shoulder, alarmed.

The second guy in line, a skinny little douchebag with cheaply dyed blonde hair slicked back with too much hair gel, a pencil-thin moustache, and an equally cheap white suit, turned to the third person in line, a stunningly curvaceous woman wearing almost nothing at all, really. She had the same sort of aesthetic: cheap dye giving her a huge head of curly blonde hair, an all-white ensemble of wildly skimpy clothing barely containing her meaty curves, very thick and sultry makeup, long and colourful fake nails, a lot of jewellery on display, and a little white leather purse that oh-so-tastefully spelled out the word "Slut" in rhinestone.

She had a hooker's rack, easily up in the GGs, straining her fabric leotard nearly to the point of tearing; her enormous, snowy pale shelf of cleavage was visibly sprinkled with body glitter, and the pleated little white skirt wrapped around her narrow waist was barely a couple inches long, blatantly showing off her pinched-in thong and at least half of her big, round ass, too. With a body like that, babe could've been making the big bucks down at the Golden Globes; instead, she's here, in this shitty convenience store in an ass-end of town on this very day, during this very moment. Whatever may have been going through Ariel's mind at the time, this strange, unexpected interaction between NPCs halted her in her tracks, commanding her attention.

The wanna-be pimp who looked like he'd been dipped in vanilla kept laying into the woman at his side, barking "I ain't buyin' you any fuckin' lottery tickets, awright? I wanna get my Menthols n' go, don't fuckin' forget this was your fault fer forgettin' t'get 'em while you walked your ass around, last night."

She already looked worried, scared, even. She tried motioning for him to slow down with her hands, trying to soothe him, already worriedly whining "I'm sorry, Big Blanco, I'm sorry, I didn't mean nothin' by it, I just like the tickets-!"

"Ooh-hooh-hooh, talkin' back? Y'done fucked me up now. What the fuck, Mindy, I told you last time I ain't buyin' that waste o' cash shit – and even if I did, if you won, what do you think would happen, huh? That'd be myyyy moneyyy, you stupid cow, mine! I'm sick of your dumbass fantasies-"

The woman's eyes were getting wet with tears, lip quivering. She shifted a little step back, then another. Her hands weren't trying to calm him down, anymore – but they hadn't gone back down, either. Her voice was audibly on the verge of cracking as she breathed out "I-I didn't mean it l-like that, Big Blanco, I-I would totally give you s-some, o-or most-"

"What did I just say, you worthless cunt, it's my money-"

"Wouldn't I deserve at least a little, Blanco," the woman almost wailed.

His hand jammed into a pocket on his suit jacket, face wroth.

The woman screamed, instantly. She knew.

Out came the knife, a giant, shiny fuckin' Bowie knife-

A thick cloud of red matter exploded out the side of his head and spattered a massive cloud of soupy red against the confectionary stand beside him. The woman screamed, eyes shutting as she huddled up in place, quaking arms coming up in a reflexive bid to shield her head. Smoke plumed from the end of Ariel's pistol. Mister Big Blanco went down in an instant, of course, as his personality was vacated from his brainpan, body collapsing into a limp, undignified heap. A clatter rose up as he smashed over a display in his fall. The other customer and the cashier both finally reacted beyond gaping with their jaws to the floor, both giving a mighty flinch and a panicked cry. The woman in white kept trembling as she opened her eyes, looking down at her dead pimp.

The sheer noise of the gunshot had left Ariel's ears ringing. Same went for the others, of course.

In that first instant of silence, right as everyone was still registering what the fuck had just happened, a few floating, rotating stacks of greenbacks came popping out of Big Blanco's big ol' corpse, followed by a huge knife surrounded by a pale purple corona, the thing also floating and slowly rotating in place. None of them seemed to notice, but Ariel couldn't help cracking that stern shell back open with a big, bright grin, eyes a little giddy. Ariel didn't hesitate to step forward, closing in on Big Blanco's big, fat, bloated fuckin' corpse; Mindy didn't shrink from Ariel, didn't even really seem to notice as Ariel vacuumed up the loose cash pick-ups by walking near enough to them. Ariel grinned, watching her cash counter soar to a solid three-eighty. She could already afford to upgrade her look, again, but…Why stop there? She hadn't even gotten a wanted level, yet.

"Th-Th-Thank you," Ariel heard Mindy shiver out, voice barely above a whisper.

Ariel arched an eyebrow, looking over at her with an almost bemused smile on her face. "Don't mention it, Mindy," she answered – and using her name seemed to startle the woman like an armour-piercing bullet, but maybe that was just the way Ariel made contact with Blanco's knife pick-up and made it vanish. Ariel's all-steel pistol blinked out of her hand, her hand abruptly gripping Blanco's Bowie; an instant later, the knife had vanished, replaced by a sudden reappearance of the all-steel handgun. The other customer, and the cashier, stuck their hands into the air. Ariel glanced at them before looking back at Mindy, lackadaisically teasing "Well, don't just stand there like a wounded baby animal, or somethin', get oouuttaa here, I wasn't done yet-"

Ariel abruptly aimed her pistol out towards the cashier, absolute mania on her face, eyes wide and excited, brow furrowed and grin sharkish. Mindy gasped, eyes wide as dinner plates, hands jumping to cover her mouth, elbows pulled in tight.

"-you, asshole, gimme the money," Ariel enthusiastically barked, "every last fuckin' dollar! Let's go!"

"Oh my God," the remaining customer blurted out, which only had Ariel laughing, cackling up a little storm.

The cashier, eyes wide as saucers, kept his hands up. Glowing green money pick-ups appeared on top of the shop's counter, just between robber and robbee.

Wanted Level: 1

"It's okay, it's okay," the cashier calmly asserted, "take the money-!"

"Gimme it all, y'stupid bastard," Ariel barked, facial muscles getting sore from the intensity of her own wide-eyed grin. She kept her pistol trained on the cashier – even went so far as to shift her stance, gripping the pistol more securely with both hands.

She heard Mindy gasp "Your hair's…G-Growing? What's happening-"

More glowing green stacks of money appeared on the counter. One even appeared on the floor.

"More, and a fuckin' Saints Flow, too," Ariel cackled, waving her pistol at the cashier, gesturing it between him and the cash register he wasn't even touching. "All of it!"

Even more stacks of cash appeared at the floor; the cashier urgently shook his head, asserting "There's no more!"

Wanted Level: 2

Ariel could already hear sirens in the distance. Body hard and ready, heart racing, she rushed forward into the money pick-ups, absorbing them all.

Cash: $3200

Ariel could've roared with excitement – paydirt! She could fucking hear the ka-ching!

Sirens were just around the streetcorner. Ariel lunged for the door, pistol still in hand. The cashier and remaining customer dropped to the floor and cowered, but not Mindy – she blurted out a sudden "Take me with you! Please!"

Ariel froze at the door, long hair swinging past her shoulders. Twisting to look back, free hand resting against the door, she couldn't help glaring Mindy's way at the face-value absurdity of the request.

Mindy the NPC stood there between Blanco's corpse and the emptied cash register, tears running black mascara-rivers down the freckles dusted across the middle of her face. Ariel felt the shift inside, almost instantly. It struck her, made her feel something: the sight of her standing there, so curvaceous and gorgeous, so…Beautiful, really, she was…Helpless and sexual. The look in her eyes was so sincere.

"…It might not end well for you," Ariel warned, reluctance a grimace twisting her lips.

Mindy's hoops earrings and bracelets jingled as she shook her head. "This isn't any better," she sadly croaked.

Car tires were squealing to a stop just outside the convenience store. The sirens blared.

Ariel's eyes rapid-fire darted across Mindy a couple more times before her grimace dropped, mouth a flat, stern line. She held out her hand, hurriedly beckoning. "Come on, then, let's go," Ariel instructed, tone gentle and resigned.

Mindy's eyes lit up, widening. She nodded, quick and jittery; abrupt smile swiftly becoming a grin, her high-heeled boots clicked the tiled floor on the way over, both her hands eagerly finding Ariel's and clasping on tight. "Run for the car," Ariel hissed as soon as they were connected – and then she'd turned and shoved the exit open with her shoulder and elbow, bursting out into the open, gun raised and readied towards the two cop cruisers haphazardly parked in the middle of the street, sides turned towards the convenience store like barricades.

Four different cops were there, positioned behind their cars, guns readied – and Ariel fired first, grinning like a barracuda as she squeezed off a few rounds, one towards each cop's position, each bullet punching into either the car's metal frame or straight through glass. The cops immediately ducked behind cover as soon as fire was taken.

Wanted Level: 3

Mindy yelped with each gunshot, startled by the ear-ringing noise. Ariel cackled, firing off another round or two for good measure, smelling the gunpowder; she took off in a bolt, racing up the sidewalk with Mindy in tow, the woman incredibly keeping up in her heels, frantically running alongside Ariel hand-in-hand towards the parking lot. Ariel heard the police return fire, a few rounds squeezed back, but she didn't feel a thing, nor did Mindy fall behind. Ariel jumped the short metal divider squaring off the parking lot, and Mindy followed; sprinting to the car Ariel'd parked, they finally separated hands, Ariel throwing open the driver's side door while Mindy careened around the back corner of the car, practically diving into the front passenger's seat before Ariel'd squealed out of there.

The noise of their spinning wheels was a high hum. Ariel could hear the cops' comms chatter in her ears, angry voices barking and shouting. She grinned, but flinched when Mindy jammed her seatbelt into place, lunged over, and desperately dragged Ariel's into place for her, too, eagerly grunting "There!" as soon as she'd clipped it in. The dinged-up car constantly shook and quaked as Ariel sped up street after street, swerving around car after car; new police cruisers were constantly spawning in from the oncoming traffic lane, lights flashing as they swerved to try and collide with Ariel's car. Mindy screamed at every near collision; Ariel, meanwhile, was wide-eyed and nearly frothing at the mouth, whooping and hollering like she was having the time of her life.

"Where are we going," Mindy begged after they'd sped past a few more intersections.

Ariel's fists were so tight on the steering wheel, she started splitting the upholstery. "Fuck these cops, hah haahhh," she nearly howled, rolling down her window to better hear the sirens, the revving, the squealing wheels-

"Where are we going," Mindy repeated – and when Ariel twisted her head to look over, an acidic yellow light lit her up, almost bleaching out her details. She squinted, at first – but then her eyes went wide, focusing below Ariel's point of view. "Holy shit, your boobs," she blurted out-

"Wanna see something cool," Ariel frantically demanded, excitement best described as nail-biting.

Before Mindy could even respond, Ariel'd abruptly swerved, drifting the car into a horizontal position before accelerating, cutting across both lanes of traffic through a narrow gap between oncoming vehicles and jumped the curb. The car shot across a brief lot, making a direct collision course into an opened mechanic's garage; as soon as they'd crossed the threshold, Ariel hit all the brakes, bringing the car to a sudden, squealing stop. Maybe a dozen police cruisers just coursed into the lot, but the garage door was already closing behind Ariel and Mindy's sedan. Mindy twisted around in her seat to look out the rear windshield, wide-eyed and mystified by the sight of the door closing, cutting out all exterior light, leaving them in total blackness.

There were some audible aerosol sprays.

Cash: $2200 (-$1000 Pay 'n' Spray)

New engine and paintjob – hope it helps!

Wanted Level: 3(?)

The garage door automatically began sliding back open, and as the light came back in, faint clouds of greenish paint dispersed and faded away from around the car. Ariel chuckled to herself as she listened to the cops' angry, buzzing comms chatter. Mindy watched in astonishment as Ariel slowly backed the car up out of the garage; none of the many police cruisers and swarming cops seemed to be able to see them or their car at all, and Ariel simply backed her nice, shiny, repaired car through their advancing lines like a ghost until she was on the street, again, and could simply leave. None of the cops seemed to care, guns drawn as they advanced on the garage, looking to investigate. Within about a minute of Ariel behaving traffic laws, her wanted level had cleared.

Mindy gaped for maybe a minute straight, then couldn't help guffawing, practically dancing in her seat with excitement, yammering and babbling away on fast-forward out of sheer amazement. She partied like a fistful of party drugs had suddenly taken effect; cranking the radio volume up, she cheered and laughed, wiggling around in her seat like a girl half her age. Ariel couldn't help grinning at her enthusiasm, occasionally tossing glances over at her. It was impossible not to notice the way Mindy's cleavage bounced and jiggled with her happy-dancing. Ariel kept trying to find a moment to say something – kept trying to think of something to say, in truth – when Mindy abruptly lunged over and grabbed onto her arm, a toothy smile making a crescent in her pretty face.

"What's your name," she begged, eyes eager for the answer.

Ariel distractedly tugged at the strained neckline to her top. "Call me Ariel, if you want," she said.

"I, I do want to," the NPC eagerly begged.

Ariel smiled. For the first time, she could smell Mindy's perfume. "You can relax, the cops are gone," she chuckled out.

Mindy giggled – a little nervously. Her grin reached her eyes, though, and left her squinting.

Ariel hesitated for a moment, thinking. Then, still driving like a nice, law-abiding citizen, she slowly asked "…Listen, Mindy, uh…I had a place to go, before, but after that car chase with the cops, I'm thinkin' maybe it's not that great of a place to go, right now. They might check there, for me. Even if it's just for tonight, do you think maybe you might know a place where I could crash-?"

Mindy perked up as she listened, rapt. She was already eagerly nodding before she'd even finished, beaming a huge, happy smile at her. Still basically clinging onto Ariel from the passenger's seat, Mindy giddily suggested "Yes! You can stay at my place, if you want!" She reined herself in, a little, and less assertively suggested "I mean, i-it's not much, but, like, I've got a bed, y'know, and it's out of the way-"

"Where is it," Ariel asked, genuinely curious. "Is it safe? Y'know, a safehouse?"

Mindy stalled for a second, eyes and mouth wide before she eagerly nodded. "It's safe, it's safe," she urged, "it's in the Red-light District!"

Ariel nodded, waypoint appearing…

…

…And after things had faded back in from darkness, Ariel found herself parking the car in a big, industrial-looking dead-end alley behind a laundromat, a single closed door and shut garage lit up by the car's headlights. Mindy was so happy, so excited – she positively burst at the seams with giddy giggles as she jumped out of the car and led Ariel inside by the hand, bringing her into a deceptively quiet sanctuary. It was an absolute hole in the wall: mostly concrete, a futon mattress and a lamp on the floor, a puny TV with rabbit ear antennae, a couple hot plates to cook with, a bathroom with a shower and a few bags of garbage that haven't been thrown out, yet. To a critical eye, it looked like a meth addict's last step before the street.

To Ariel, it was perhaps more than something nicer. It was legit. It was unjudging…It was Mindy's.

Safehouse Unlocked: Mindy's Mansion!

You may now rest, recover, and save your game here.

Additionally, Mindy may be found here when you visit…

They'd fallen into each other's arms almost as soon as they'd gotten inside and shut the door. Mindy'd barely been able to keep herself from lunging into Ariel, breaths heavy and whimpery. They dragged the clothes from each other's bodies, casting it all off – and although she wasn't quite as voluptuous as Mindy was, Ariel's body had visibly thickened up, no longer the scrawny twig she'd arrived as. Her bust had climbed into more than generous handfuls, her hips had widened considerably, her thighs had thickened up, some – and her ass had definitely gotten a voluminous upgrade, not to mention her hair, which damn near hung to the crack of her giant, jiggly dumper, now. Her meat, most importantly, had gotten a buff: longer, thicker, harder, veinier, wider, longer-lasting, balls bigger, heavier, and even more productive-

Ariel let herself be tired, let herself relax in that safehouse, let this strange woman she'd just met during her own armed robbery take her worries and cares away. The room behind that laundromat became a total love shack, the sounds of two women groaning and moaning their way above a non-stop chorus of skin-on-skin slaps, claps, flaps and plaps, the intensity of their vocal sex only escalating as the minutes became ten minutes, then twenty minutes. To anyone in the laundromat listening through a vent or perhaps someone in the alleyway outside, it'd sound like the most absurdly intense, animalistic girl-on-girl porno under the sun; Ariel had the time of her life clapping those cheeks, gasping dirty talk Mindy was so fucking enthusiastic about.

Ariel hadn't needed to start slowly or be overly gentle – Mindy was tight, yes, but obviously experienced, not to mention wet like a goddamn faucet. Ariel flipped Mindy through multiple positions during their marathon of sex, the affair dragging on for thirty minutes, forty; no matter how many times Mindy came, Ariel wouldn't stop. No matter how many times Ariel came, she wouldn't stop – her cock just wouldn't fucking soften up, and eventually they ran out of condoms. Mindy, exhausted and insensate, almost incoherently told Ariel she thought she needed to stop and take a break, but Ariel kept going, gasping she wanted more, and Mindy whimpered her understanding, her consent. Ariel's balls didn't feel empty, her cock was still solid – so she aimed higher and put it in Mindy's ass, shocking the blonde beauty into locking up.

Eyes rolling back, a couple choked, startled grunts emerging from between her lips, Mindy came.

Ariel kept fucking her as she squirted against her swinging balls, eagerly digging, scooping, jostling, probing, and grinding her long, broad breeding pole into her new girlfriend's tight shitter, provoking even more intense moaning, even more responsiveness. Ariel grabbed a big fistful of Mindy's thick, curly blonde hair, gently pulling her head back as she not-so-gently poked away at that big, round, gorgeous ass, feeling those thick cheeks jiggle and ripple on every lap-slapping impact, the humping pokes swinging and bouncing around both women's beautiful bosoms as they had sex worthy of the best lesbian pornos under the sun; by the time Ariel was finally hissing and grunting her way into her orgasm, barking in sensitivity as she humped that ass and dumped her load as deep inside as she could get it, Mindy was borderline comatose, gently convulsing as she came and squirted again, moaning and slurring incoherent words.

At last, they were done. The wet spot Mindy had soaked into the bed was huge. After an hour straight, Ariel finally slid her impressive red joystick all the way back out of Mindy's body and left it that way, leaving behind a blushing red ass punctuated in-between with a gaping red hole, weakly flexing and already leaking a massive load of frothy, creamy white. Ariel collapsed back onto the futon mattress and huffed away, but by the time she'd recovered, she found Mindy still twitching and insensate, sprawled out in an obvious sex coma. Ariel tried saying her name, but Mindy wouldn't come out of it. After a fond patting to her no doubt numb rear, Ariel got up, pulled her panties and top on, and effortlessly found Mindy's stash of weed. She rolled herself a fat joint, pulled her five-finger-discounted energy drink from her inventory, and stepped back outside.

With a heart sigh, Ariel sat down on the little porch stepping up into Mindy's place, slowly scanning around. She'd been right – the place was peaceful. All the windows in the nearby buildings were covered over. The street traffic was far from where she sat, straight ahead within clear line of sight. The night was silent beyond that city din that now seemed so muffled and far away. Ariel lit her joint with a lighter by the back step, holding it between her lips as she cracked open the purple can. After a puff, she took a deep gulp – then another puff. She was finally empty again, inside. It was all out, vented, drained. Her head was empty. Her heart was untroubled. The glee in her eyes was gone. The manic grins had vanished. All the excitement was gone.

She'd just shown up. She hadn't even reunited with her sister, yet. Old habits die hard – this one was oldest of all. She couldn't help knowing the game and how it worked. She was who she was.

Lost in her thoughts, not making a sound, she smoked her weed and drank her stimulant.

After some time, she'd disappeared back inside, quietly shutting the door.

Prologue Complete!

Reward: Rep +

~~End of Ch. 1~~

Chapter 2: None So Innocent

Chapter Text

RAM OK, ROM OK

Part I ‑ "Plot Reasons"

By: Jesse Racine AKA Samson

Original Date Written: February 10th, 2024

…Game Saved.

As consciousness settled itself over Ariel again, she drew a breath, eyelids flickering.

The first thing she noticed was how quiet it was; beyond a faint humming coming through the walls from the laundromat-side of the building, the only thing she could hear was the breathing of both her and her bedmate. She blinked a couple times, watching as her personal information faded into view within her field of vision:

HP: 100

AP: 0

Cash: $2200

Rep: 5 (Back in Town)

Wanted Level: 0

Time: 8:40

She would've expected worse, but her back wasn't even stiff after the night over the floor mattress. Her stomach rumbled as she gave a slow stretch beneath the covers; before she could finish up and even think about slipping away, she heard her bedmate stir. Mindy drew a deep breath before shifting somewhat, her thick, fleshy body warm and soft wherever she made contact with Ariel. All the same, Ariel sat up over the futon mattress, turning to collect her clothing and rise.

Mindy barely hummed, offering an inquisitive purr as she watched from behind.

Ariel rubbed a hand through some of her short, brown hair, scratching the back of her head.

"You're heading out, huh," Mindy quietly asked, voice gentle. "You just got up."

"I know," Ariel answered, not quite as quietly. "Got some stuff I need to take care of, today. I shouldn't fuck around on it, it's family…I need to check in on someone."

She felt Mindy reach across the bed, arm shifting the blanketing until those long, fake nails could delicately drag across her bare back, gently scratching and playing along her skin. "You gonna come back, after," she ventured to ask, timid despite the note of hope.

Ariel slowly looked over her shoulder, turning her head just enough to see some of Mindy's big, thick, dyed blonde curly hair. "Do you want me to," she bluntly asked.

Mindy hesitated a second, eyebrows lifting before she quietly answered "Hell yeah. Of course I do. You saved my life, girl. I know it's not much, but my home's open to you."

"You might change your mind by the evening news," Ariel remarked.

"There's nothing they could say that'd take away how you protected me from Blanco, baby. You're my hero," Mindy reassured, all nurturing coos.

"No such thing in Crime City," Ariel reflexively answered.

Mindy didn't accept it. "Don't rush out the door, baby, if I'd woken up even a little sooner I'd've woken you up by sucking the life right outta you."

Ariel couldn't help smiling into a mischievous little grin, turning a bit more in her spot until she could make eye contact with Mindy; the gorgeous, voluptuous prostitute with an angel's smile had fallen asleep in her sex-messed makeup, otherwise just as naked as Ariel. "You serious," Ariel asked, "I haven't showered, or anything, and last night…I mean…"

Mindy barely shrugged, smile going from ear to ear. "You think I've never gone ass-to-mouth, before? That stuff's tame to a gal like me, sugar. Besides, I don't think I left you a filthy mess…"

Ariel's skeptical smile slowly grew into a sneaky little grin, an eyebrow raising as a mischievous twinkle filled her eyes.

The curvaceous woman in the bed, like some angelic Southern Belle with the body of a porn star, beamed the kind of honest, open-hearted smile with bright, cheery eyes Ariel hadn't seen since childhood – it reminded her of her sister, but not well enough to stop her when Mindy lifted aside the blanket and showed off her thick, fleshy curves, her hot, vaguely sweaty tits drooping together against the bed right there for Ariel to admire. Her nipples were as big as cherries and already poking out like pebbles, and down below, that hairless crotch was already looking red and flushed…

"Fuck, you woke up wantin' it, huh," Ariel teased, grinning, brow furrowing in glee.

"I always wake up horny," Mindy innocently cooed, almost protesting the teasing, even.

Ariel could only stare a moment more before turning in her spot; Mindy lifted the blanket more, beaming as Ariel shifted back into the bed, climbing over her…

It was another whirlwind marathon of hot, sweaty, body-draining sex like the night before, the only real difference being the fresh night of sleep and cobwebs in their heads. Mindy'd started getting Ariel hard almost straight away, and as soon as the latter could, she'd gotten between those legs, worked herself up into that tight, beautiful pussy, and started fucking away at that sopping wet hole, supporting herself over her arms overtop of Mindy as she dicked her down into her own mattress. It was an incredible way to wake up, almost as good as coffee; the physical activity helped clear and sharpen Ariel's mind, all while the steady back and forth, in-and-out motion of her sawing hips and plunging cock rewarded her with hot, squeezing pleasure and the adorably satisfying sound of Mindy's voice going high and swingy with whimpers – and eventually cries – of ecstasy.

When Mindy came, Ariel slowed down her rhythm for a short while – less than a minute, no doubt – before resuming, which of course briefly overwhelmed Mindy, sent her into sweaty, eye-crossing spasm fits, arms stretched up past her head and feet over Ariel's shoulders as the panting brunette had her way with her. Ariel focused on her own pleasure, confident enough in Mindy's bliss to ignore it and let it happen; she was thorough, she was a bit rough, and she made sure Mindy felt it, stirring her hips, every once in a while, as she slammed that hot, sloppy, puffy cooch sore. Mindy couldn't take it for much more than another fifteen minutes before her hands, jaw, and toes all clenched, a long, drawn-out scream-moan from between her teeth coinciding with a hot, wet rippling through her pussy walls and a harsh, gushing spray into Ariel's swinging lap.

Ariel didn't think, she just acted. Pulling out, she stood up over the bed, erect cock red and shiny with pussy cream, and calmly instructed "Start sucking. No hands."

Mindy, huffing and puffing, glazed eyes dewy and barely even open, face red and sweaty, couldn't help but nod her head, smiling dreamily as she groaned her way into sitting up. Legs still slightly spread against the bed, she sat up as straight as she could, pausing with a note of confusion when Ariel widened her stance, standing astride Mindy's legs and looming directly over her, crotch level with Mindy's face. Mindy stared into Ariel's lap, marvelling at the up-close, face-aimed view of the pussy-pleaser and stud balls that'd just gotten through stretching, pummelling, and satisfying her pulsing, achy womanhood. Mindy must've sensed Ariel wanted control, or maybe didn't see herself taking it away from Ariel; she merely opened her mouth wide, her thick, pouty lips a messy ring with her tongue extended between, those eyes up on Ariel's and begging, craving.

When Ariel took hold of her prick around the base and started rubbing it across Mindy's face, the woman's eyes flickered shut, nostrils flaring as she whispered reverent approvals, wholehearted cock worship. It was enough to wake and boil Ariel's blood; she stood tall and strong over her beautiful little sex toy, one hand to a hip as the other held her cock and fed it back and forth into Mindy's gaping mouth, rubbing it across Mindy's wiggling tongue for a tasting of her own nectar straight from the meat that'd frothed her up in the first place. The more Ariel enjoyed it, the more into it she became, the more she came into her own. Mindy rarely broke eye contact with her, even as the acidic yellow light came from Ariel's eyes; the first thing that broke Mindy's concentration was the fresh swelling that took Ariel up a cup size, then a pants size.

Ariel's hips started rocking, pretty soon. She held her hips and rocked her waist, almost sweetly fucking Mindy's mouth, eyes locked on her pretty face as she probed her hot, rock-solid man-meat to the back of Mindy's throat, testing her gag reflex before withdrawing. Mindy did the best she could to sit still, throat humming with the occasional helpless whine or surprised moan, eyes helplessly wincing as her mouth got stuffed to capacity without a single pair of helping hands to steady her, throat tightening and gagging with less and less subtlety. When Ariel's cock, itself, began to expand and swell a little, Mindy's blinking became rapid, her face getting a bit sweatier as one of her hands found itself dunking back in between her thighs.

Finally, Ariel's hips began to swing a little faster into Mindy's face – and then the hands-free portion had ended, the standing woman's mitts coming to the back of Mindy's head and holding on, fingers sinking into those long, thick, curly blonde locks for a gripping. Mindy remained still as Ariel swung her hips into her face, probing deeper, making Mindy tense up and gag as her throat's maidenhead was given a few pokes and prods. Mindy started rocking her head, helplessly squeaking and creaking little groaning moans as her mouth was used for what it was good for: servicing and pleasuring all the good men and women around her.

When Ariel started blowing, her panting went into a burst of speed, and of course she simply couldn't help but pull Mindy all the way down – but she only blew some of her load down Mindy's gullet before easing her hips back, still actively cumming and squirting her thick, rich cream along the way. Mindy's eyes fell shut as soon as she began tasting semen, eyelashes fluttering before her eyes lazily reopened halfway, the renewed glaze in her stare going with the deep, balmy red in her face. Ariel kept the tip between Mindy's pursed, kissing lips until she'd finished ejecting her load into her plaything's molten mouth. Their breathing was heavy, husky, noisy. The eye contact between them as Ariel finished up and Mindy kept playing with herself was almost more intimate than the former could consciously process; it was a view that seared itself into her mind.

When she was done, she disembarked, entirely. Holding her cock at the base, she took a small step back, a string of saliva still connecting them cock-to-lips. Before it'd even broken, Mindy had begun swallowing; it took a few, but she managed to get it all down before Ariel'd finished dragging her clothes back on. Already, Ariel's HUD was updating:

HP: 125

The last thing Ariel saw before heading out the door was Mindy, still sitting there, watching her go with abject horniness across her tomato-red face, one hand down in her lap with two fingers waving.

"I'll try to come back tonight," she offered, smiling, all confidence.

Mindy bit her lip and nodded. "Okay, baby," she answered. "Please do." She paused. "Y-You don't mind if I go to work? Y'know…Hookin'? That won't change anythin', will it?"

Ariel, too, paused, but only for a split-second before shaking her head. "Mindy, baby, I can't mind your work. Compared to what I do, you're a saint just trying to make her way in this shit-ass city."

Mindy's hand paused. Her smile faded, eyes widening – then she beamed from ear to ear.

Ariel was out the door the next moment.

…

She kept to herself, kept to the alleys and side streets.

Ariel saw more police cruisers than she would've liked, but it went without saying that that wasn't a particularly high bar to top. Every time she laid eyes on one of those purple-white cop cruisers, she'd duck behind cover, get out of sight; the city's homeless and ill were on her side, drug dealers knew her name and said hi, hookers and gangbangers gave her props, none would rat her out. In her ratty black pants, leather jacket, and orange tank top, she couldn't have been more one of them.

It'd taken her less than an hour to reach her sister's street from Mindy's Mansion. She followed her waypoint until she'd had to cut across the street; when she spotted the cop cruiser parked out front, the way she clenched her jaw almost had her teeth squeaking. She glared a moment, eyes wide – then decided discretion was, at least for now, the better part of valor. She doubled back in the alleyway, found another exit further away, crossed the street in a hurry, then ducked into the alleyway behind her sister's shitty little tenement building. Ariel's brow furrowed as she glared up the building's rusty, half-busted fire escapes; with a jump, she'd grabbed onto the lowest railing, muscles wiry but well-defined and rock-solid as she dragged herself up onto the rickety platform.

Ariel played it Bogart, climbing the stairs like she owned the place, like she'd never not belonged. She ascended to the seventh level, then simply moved for the nearest window and dragged it up, opening her way into the stranger's flat. The place was a shitsty reeking of mildew, rotten food, and B.O., but it hardly even crinkled Ariel's nose. The only light came in through windows with skeletal curtains haphazardly pulled across them; trash, pizza boxes, and empty sandwich baggies littered the floor. Ariel had been about to head for the apartment's exit door when someone came bursting out from around a corner with a baseball bat raised high, sniffing around nearly every word like some kind of cokehead:

"You, snfff, came to the, snfff, wrong house, fool! Snfff-"

Ariel instantly raised her arm, her all-steel Glock materializing in her grip; she aimed it towards his face, cocking back the hammer.

He immediately froze, hands now up in surrender, one still on the middle of the bat. When she didn't stop aiming at him, didn't stop glaring, he finally dropped the bat.

"No trouble," he barely got out. "Snfff, n-no trouble!"

Ariel uncocked the hammer, but kept it pointed at him until she'd crossed the apartment, unlocked the door, and stepped out. The gun hung heavy by her side as she walked up the filthy hallway, little better than the now-locked apartment she'd just cut through; the walls were covered in graffiti tags ranging from personal handles and cryptic warnings to syringes filled with a diabolical green mystery substance. A few people just sat around in the common area, huddled up and rocking themselves in place, while the worst openly spoke to themselves. None who noticed Ariel's passing so much as dared to look her way for too long, treating her like a ghost they'd only barely caught sight of out of the corners of their eyes.

When Ariel reached door 766, she let the pistol vanish from her hand before she'd started knocking. She didn't hear anything on the other side for a good ten seconds before knocking again, but thankfully that second set of raps earned a response:

"…Wait a second, I…I'm comin', alright? Just gimme a minute."

Ariel waited a good thirty seconds before a chain lock was undone, followed by a deadbolt. She opened the door while mumbling an immediate "Joey, if you're here for more crank, I…"

She trailed off, eyes widening as they roamed up to Ariel's own. She froze up, more internal than external; she croaked a syllable, starting to smile.

Ariel couldn't help but let herself start smiling, too. "Hey, Alex," she said, almost beneath her breath.

"You're back," came the response. "Oh, God. You're back."

Ariel started nodding, a little.

Her sister's eyes were sunken, but they still lit up. When she threw open her arms and lunged in, Ariel let herself be grabbed before hugging back.

…

Within the minute, Ariel was secure inside.

The door was locked, and they'd taken seats at her dinner table.

"…So, how long have you been back in Carcer," her sister asked, hand trembling as she passed Ariel a mug of tap water.

Ariel took the mug and gulped it all down straight away, watching her skinny little sister ease into the seat just across the table corner. "Yesterday," she answered. "I got off the plane and pretty much immediately got my shit pushed in by the cops. Was nice, playing catch-up with the old crew."

Alex nodded, hands looking so very bony around her mug. "Violet, Braeburn, and Hoss?"

"How'd you know?"

"They paid me a visit, yesterday. All three. Asked all kinds of questions about you."

"I knew they would. That's why I didn't come, yesterday. What'd you tell 'em?"

"What could I tell them? Nothin', I told 'em nothing. I told them I haven't seen you or heard from you since you left, and I didn't expect that to change. They told me to call them if it did change."

"They give you a hard time?"

"No, Ari. They're cops, not thugs. They aren't nice to me, obviously, but they don't, like, try to rough me up, or anything. They know I'm no threat. When I tell them I don't know anything, they believe me. They don't like it, but they believe me."

Ariel almost told shot her mouth – almost. Alex looked worse than Ariel remembered her, but then again, that no doubt went both ways. Her sister was smaller than she was in just about every way that counted: height, mass, and sass. Five and a half feet on a good hair day, she was practically skin and bones, lean without fat and even less muscle mass. Her skin was light, but not sickly pale; her hair was shoulder-length, mousy brown but for the black bangs, and in need of both a wash and a cut to ditch the split ends. Dressed in a tank top and comfy short-shorts, the puncture marks on her arm were more visible than the burns on her fingertips, the small scars around her lips. Her eyes were the same brown as Ariel's own; her eyeshadow was messy and navy blue, a faint coating of blue lip gloss coating her thin lips. The familial resemblance between their faces was strong.

"…Yeah, I dunno how much they believed you, sis," Ariel nicely, if bluntly, explained. "When I showed up, they had a cruiser parked just outside. Probably been there since yesterday, too."

"C'mon, I'm sure they've all got more important things to do than sit around the Heights for a whole night," she gently refuted. "Nothing here, anyway, but people just tryin' to survive. We're not worth bothering."

Ariel fixed her with a bit of a stare, finally out and admitting "This place's a lot worse than when I last saw it. I hope you're taking care of yourself. When's the last time you ate something?"

Alex scratched the inside of an arm, eyes roaming the distance. "Uhhh…Yesterday morning," she said, less confidently than Ariel would've liked. "Yeah, yesterday morning."

"What if I called you a pizza? You hungry?"

Alex's eyes found Ariel's, again – and for but a brief moment, Ariel could see her little sister's face the way it'd used to be. Alex smiled a girl's smile, cooing an earnest "Yeah. I'd eat."

"Alright," Ariel commented, slowly looking around, "why don't I put in the order, then I'll, uh…Maybe I'll help you clean up a little, around here. I hate seeing you live like this, you know that. You got a phone?"

Alex shook her head, eyes losing their shine. "No, it got disconnected a while back," she explained like it was no big deal, "you'll have to make it from one of the lobby payphones. Sorry, Ari."

Ariel bit back the sigh that'd nearly drifted out without permission. "It's fine," she answered, rising to her feet, "just lock the door behind me and don't open it, again, until you're sure it's me."

As Ariel reached the door, Alex followed with all the energy of a puppy with terminal cancer. "It's so nice to have you back, Ari," she happily explained, eyes as tired as her smile. "I can't tell you how lonely this city's been, ever since you left. I barely even recognize it, some days. Where're you staying, what're you gonna do now that you're back? I'm surprised you ever risked it, given how things ended last time."

Ariel paused by the door, hand over the knob. "Yeah, I barely recognize it, too," she remarked. "I'm, uh…Staying with this new friend I made. Shouldn't say where. NPC girl, name's Mindy."

Alex's smile was bright, her eyes happy. "Oh, yeah? That's fun," she murmured, "can I meet her, some time? Is she nice?"

Ariel's smile became wide, knowing. "Uhhh…Yeahhh, maybe some day. She's very nice. Listen, hang tight, I'll be back in a minute."

Ariel stepped outside; Alex locked the door behind her. Ariel didn't waste time finding the emergency stairs, didn't care for any of the smells or sounds she heard in the place. She knew she was being followed after passing the door for the fourth floor, they didn't exactly make themselves subtle. Three, maybe four guys, all chatting amongst themselves like they didn't mean anything by it with the way they all but chased after Ariel, who'd started heading down three steps at a time. She hoped they'd lose interest by the time she reached the ground floor, but if anything, they'd simply been given the time to commit and embolden each other.

Ariel didn't try to run or hide. She walked through the building's first floor until she'd reached the front lobby. There'd been three payphones at one point, she remembered that, but one of them was simply missing from the wall, now, and the other was obviously busted. She couldn't see the cop cruiser outside, not through the newspapers glued to the doors' windows with God only knew what – spit, jizz, and ill intentions, most likely.

She'd barely managed to punch in the old number for her favourite pizza joint when the four shitheads had wandered out into the lobby. They looked exactly like the sort of ignorant, desperate gutter trash one might expect from a rundown set of tenement blocks: not nearly as tough as they wanted to pretend, not nearly as smart as they liked to act, not nearly as dangerous as they wanted others to believe. In a group, bravery was cheaper than a Happy Meal and would last just as long, too. Two made it obvious they were there just for her while the other two tried to act aloof, and it was the latter's piss poor performance of faux-innocence that agitated the most. They spread out through the lobby, transparently surrounding Ariel.

Her call was picked up: "Yeah, this is the Well Stacked Pizza Company, where everything's well stacked."

Ariel kept her voice down and her tone calm as she rhymed off the address. "I'll take a Full Rack meal, please, plus a Double D-Luxe on the side. Two sodas. Two dips – surprise me. I'll pay at the door."

"We'll be there in thirty minutes or less or it's free," the pizza guy dryly recited.

She could hear the guys get excited as she hung up the receiver.

"Ey yo, that's a whole lotta pizza for one skinny bitch," one of them snickered.

"Damn, I'm finna eat good tonight."

"Awww, so sweet o' the bitch to order us a whole pizza," another remarked.

"Never seen you before in my hood," another started, cockily walking right up to her, turning, and leaning his back against the wall right next to the payphone, confrontationally entering her space.

"Where's the respec', huh? Where's tha looove, hah hah-"

Ariel immediately pulled Blanco's Bowie out of her inventory, arm swinging out by her side. The shit stain who'd posted up next to her with his arms crossed didn't even seem to understand what'd happened, at first; throat split open, a waterfall of red rushing down the front of his body, he staggered to the side, collapsing like a sack of bricks. He was in too much shock to even try and stop the bleeding.

Chaos erupted.

The other three men shouted, panicking.

One charged Ariel from behind, but she spun around before he could tackle her to the wall. He tried stumbling to a stop, but Ariel just lunged and stuck him in the gut. He'd barely frozen up with a squeak of a gasp before she'd torn the big knife to the side and right back out of him, his hands going to his belly in some vain attempt to keep himself inside himself. The other two gave up, yelping "No" and "Please" and "It wasn't like that!"

One bolted out the front doors, shoving them open before taking off in a sprint, practically whimpering to himself. Ariel's eyes were wide, her lips a hard line. She vacuumed up the money pick-ups that popped out of the two still-warm bodies before quietly following after the fourth and final asshole, rounding the corner back towards the building's emergency stairway. She could feel the blood soaking her hand, tight around the grip of the Bowie; she could still feel the spatter against one side of her face, tongue extending past the corner of her mouth to lick up an iron-tasting dribble. The dickhead was moving too quickly, with too much panic. He wasted time nearly falling over in two separate spots, yelling with a hollow fury just to conceal his terror.

When Ariel followed him into the stairway, she struck like lightning before he could get away, stabbing between the lowest steps of his landing before he could ascend too far. He screamed, collapsing against the stairs and doing his best to scramble to his feet, but as Ariel closed in, those screams were for help. He flipped around, back to the edges of the steps, hands up and face wet with tears. Ariel bared her teeth as she reached him, letting go of her own leash. Her eyes lit him up in a sickly yellow as she leaned over him, plunging the knife into him, arm jabbing out between and around his own. He didn't seem to feel the first one or two, but by the third, shock had properly gripped him. Ariel thrust her arm faster and faster, ears filled with his choked grunts and screams, with the wet mess dripping down the steps beneath him.

Her viciousness didn't match the crime. She didn't think anything of it. She'd nearly taken his heart from his chest by the time she'd stopped stabbing and slashing. Her chest wouldn't stop pounding – her blood was alive, coursing her cardiovascular system like pure, liquid drugs, every cell screaming to the war chant pounding in her skull. Her lungs were filled with a fire she couldn't exhale. When she heard a gurgle come from him, she let the knife vanish from her hand, grabbing onto him before pulling him to the side and shoving his head between two of the railing bars alongside the stairs. With a little yell of satisfaction, Ariel launched her leg out on the other side of the railing, stomping the poor bastard across the side of his head. His neck was trapped – the crunch of his spine snapping in the makeshift vise was a brief, sickening echo.

Wanted Level: 1

He went limp. Police chatter rang in her ears; her hair had already reached the middle of her back, again. Ariel remained tense, agitated, animated. She continued up the stairs before the corpse could start pissing itself, doing her best to get her breathing back under control along the way. Slowly, the blood faded from her body. It vanished from her hands, first, before leaving her face, too. In the end, even her clothing had lost the telltale dark crimson spatters. When she reached Alex's floor, she went straight to her door, knocking.

Her sister had unlocked and opened the door, again, a moment later, and Ariel was already stuffing a hundred bucks into her hands.

Alex looked confused, immediately asking "W-What, did something happen? Aren't you staying?"

"I can't," Ariel calmly explained, "you'll have to eat extra. I'm sure you'll manage."

"Ari, I don't think I can take this, it's so much-"

"You can and you will. You'll be okay. I'll come and visit you again, real soon."

Her sister gave her a sad look, all puppy dog eyes.

Ariel grabbed her by the back of her neck and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then set up the hallway without a glance back. She heard Alex shut and lock her door as she made her way back up to that first unit she'd passed through, shoving the door back open and making the poor bastard within damn near leap through his skin.

On her way back to the window with the fire escape, she glared at the man, asking a stern, simple "You see anything today, broski?"

Plopped on his couch, the man gave her a wary look, blurting out a steady "Lady, I ain't even in this fuckin' room, right now."

Ariel kept watching the NPC, a moment, before muttering "…Well, y'got that right, bub."

She took her time descending the fire escape. Police chatter filled her ears every so often, radioing in for paramedics. She could recognize Violet's voice over the comms chatter, blood boiling anew, brow furrowed deep all the way until she'd reached the bottom of the fire escape. Glancing around for any sign of berries n' cherries, Ariel jogged across the lot and hopped the fence, putting distance between herself and her sister's tenement block; a couple minutes of casual walking later and her Wanted Level had wiped itself, again. She knew what her next step would have to be. She didn't necessarily look forward to this particular phone call, but if she wanted any chance of surviving like she used to, she'd need to update her understanding of the system and get an up-to-date version of the city's map. If she couldn't reliably track down pick-ups, she'd be running around blind, just asking to have her head cut off.

She found a little diner, one with a payphone near the back corner. As soon as she'd walked in, a system prompt appeared in one corner of her vision: "Mini-game available: Armed Robbery! Draw a weapon on the cashier to begin a robbery!"

Ariel ignored it on her way to the payphone. Posting up in that rear corner, she lifted the receiver, a couple coins manifesting in her hand before she'd slid them into the machine's greedy slot. Only once the machine had gotten its shiny little pussy fucked with money did it allow her to make a call; she punched in a long string of memorized digits, keeping her back to the diner as she listened to the receiver ringing. Halfway through the fourth ring, Ariel heard the call connect, receiver lifting. She had to shut her eyes, shuddering at the rush of tingles that coursed through her body, beginning in the ear that met the receiver and crawling down her spine clear to her toes.

A woman's soft voice answered in a breathy, seductive tone: "Hello, Sabrina's Solutions at your service. How may I help you, today?"

Ariel stared off at the wall ahead of herself. "Is this Sabrina," she asked.

"Yes. This is she."

"I'd like to schedule an appointment. Today, if possible."

"And what might the nature of your appointment be, today, miss Ariel?"

Ariel's expression remained stony. "…I need to refresh my maps," she slowly said. "City's a bit different from how I remember it. Having a bit of trouble making my way around…That still a service you offer?"

"Absolutely. For you? Without a doubt. Feel free to swing by any time before closing, tonight. Take the back entrance and you'll be brought straight to me by my lovely assistants. Don't come with a police escort, however, or else the doors won't open."

"Still don't like badges, huh," Ariel couldn't help asking.

"Some things never change, miss Ariel. I'll see you soon, I'm sure."

The line clicked dead. Ariel set the payphone receiver back into the cradle, ears pricking up as she heard the diner's ceiling-mounted television launch into a brief, bombastic theme song. She looked over instead of leaving, straight away. She knew it was a mistake, but she recognized the jingle: it belonged to the local news network.

Sure enough, a big, proud station logo swept across the screen before the broadcast was focused on some media talking head in a suit.

"Good evening, Carcer City. We come to you now with a late-breaking report."

A picture of Ariel, impossibly recent, filled the screen next to the talking head.

"CCPD is urging all citizens of Carcer City to keep on the lookout for this woman, a repeat felon and violent offender. Ariel Belleclaire, known by numerous alter-egos and pseudonyms, has been sighted within the boundaries of Carcer City, once again. A fugitive from justice, she is wanted for questioning in an extensive list of crimes, the largest of which list terrorism, both domestic and foreign, as well as capital murder, conspiracy to commit murder, arms trafficking, kidnapping, and High Treason. Belleclaire is a chameleon known for changing her appearance to blend in with the populace, as well as a serial mass murderer whose number of victims can only be speculated upon; if you see her, CCPD requests you make absolutely no attempt to apprehend her, yourself. Call in a tip at the CCPD's toll-free tip line at 1-888…"

Ariel had turned and started walking before the phone number had even finished getting rhymed off. She played it casual, pushing open the diner's back door and slipping away.

Walking up to the nearest parked car, she simply grabbed at the door handle, effortlessly yanking open the improbably unlocked vehicle; keys just as improbably left in the ignition, she simply twisted and started driving away. The owner noticed and came running out of the diner, hollering and throwing his arms around in the air. Frankly, he was lucky Ariel didn't simply run him down in his own vehicle for the fun of it.

In her mental map, she set a waypoint for Sabrina's Solutions…The witch's lair, itself.

Ariel hadn't seen her old "friend" since before her exile – vacation, rather.

Hopefully it'd make for a warm welcome and an even warmer reunion…

Mission Complete!

Reward: Rep +

~~~End of Chapter~~~

So far, RORO's gotten a pretty warm reception in private circles. Here's hoping it does well on HF and here on AO3, I really enjoyed it and I'd love the excuse to have to go back to it - maybe even at some point in November? I love the excuse to incorporate various OCs of mine, into this. Besides Erika, I'm also determined to include Sabrina, should this story go far enough 3

Please, let me know if you'd like to see more of this, some time soon! 3