Chapter 7

_"Wild roses from the plains, that made hearts tender,
All the funny circus silks
Of politics unfurled,
Bartlett pears of romance that were honey at the cores,

And torchlights down the street, to the end of the world."

-Vachel Lindsay, _Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan_

Jade staggered backwards, slack-jawed, staring blankly, pushed into near catatonia by the sudden memory of her sin. She had been the cause of the Darkbitch's justified anger, and she had directed it onto an innocent boy to save herself. And she had repressed that memory on purpose, shoved it so deep into the recesses of her mind that it was incredible it had reemerged. She had been sloppy back then, and unused to her abilities. If she wanted to, she could cleanly erase that memory, along with any associated information. She would never have to be Marisa Frost again. After all, she was distracting herself -- wouldn't it be for the greater good to just forget?

No. The Darkbitch might have a fragment of memory too, and she was afraid, still, to tamper with that girl's memory -- she had reason to believe that might send the whole universe crashing down. And, even if that weren't so, now was the time to face the truth. The greatest sinner against the Darkbitch before her powers were born was now one of her greatest devotees. That was an important truth. Perhaps not one to share with the Darkbitch, yet, but an important truth for herself. And one that should motivate her to get off her ass and save this whole redemptive project, with what power she had!

She approached the still motionless Darkbitch, looked levelly into her blank red eyes, and simply whispered, "I'm sorry." With sudden force, she threw her arms around Kennedy, and, briefly, met her Goddess's, soft, inert lips with her own. Mechanically, still unawake, the Darkbitch hugged back.

Then Jade slipped away, and the Darkbitch followed.

The crowd of schoolgirls, teachers, soldiers, construction and rail workers, and some whose jobs Eri didn't recognize were streaming into the gym now by the hundreds. Many were holding hands coming in -- and not by dyads only. Those who weren't went looking for a partner, and rarely took more than thirty seconds before finding one. Most of her cheerleaders were spread out along the baseline, giving various kinds of shows to the audience. Many were stripping each other or making out, quite successfully inspiring the same behaviors in the audience. The more experienced girls performed elaborate skits of role-playing and seduction. Although the cheerleaders were quite good at projecting their voices, only those in the lower rows could hear, so those seats filled up in a hurry.

Eri watched them, mostly in silence, as she ran her fingers through Iseul's silky black tresses, guiding the talented girl's licking. Eri had been checking in on the weak sun through the narrow, panoramic window above the gym's circular stands as it gradually dropped in the cloudy sky. When it sunk beneath a distant hill and faded from view, she no longer had a way to measure time. There would be a ke-based clock in the new gym, as there was in a few other places, but the Darkbitch hadn't plastered clocks everywhere. In her daily life, she didn't mind -- her new body seemed to effortlessly get up with the new sun even if she'd been up late into the night with the corybants who populated her dorm. To go to school, to leave it, and to go to most communal activities, she could follow the crowd. But there was nothing urging her tonight. She had no idea when the game would start, and had little to do even then except be serviced.

And her idleness made her feel alone. Her dominance was beginning to feel perfunctory. She needed an equal partner or an owner. And she needed friends, not just toys, and not just the girls she lived with who would fuck anything that moved. She thought of Jordan and her sister Amy, and wondered what they were doing. For days she had tried her hardest to move on. She had focused on the worst parts of her old life, dismissed Jordan as no more a friend by proximity, and thought about her sister only as the uptight and awkward girl who strangled any sort of fun that might have been possible at the old compound. But she knew she was fooling herself. Her friends may not have been perfect, but she had a connection of loyalty and love with them that hadn't been severed. That was the one thing, in all this pleasure, that she was missing.

A familiar scarlet hue flashed in the corner of her eye. Eri jerked out of her seat in surprise and inadvertently kneed Iseul in the face. Ignoring her, she tracked the color and saw Jordan's familiar tresses -- attached to a mouth-watering body -- descending the stairs directly opposite her. The constantly smirking sexpot had benefited even more than Eri from the anomaly -- her tits, milky orbs like huge pillows, bounced hypnotizingly in nothing more than a black string bikini top. When Eri finally tore her eyes away, she noticed the girl clasping Jordan's hand -- a musclebound blonde flattering the hell out of a red leather crop top, her face and body in every way identical to Eri's own. Jordan had brought Amy here -- she'd wished, and her wish had come true.

Eri sprinted across the court, not bothering about dignity, and opened her arms wide. She embraced the taller Jordan first, feeling the taller girl's rock-solid abs against her chest. Then she turned to her twin and hugged twice as hard -- getting, after a moment of trepidation, the same excited response. They both started crying tears of joy, thrilled to see each other again, and excited that they both had such hot bodies. Amy's breasts felt so great pressed against hers hat Eri started imagining more intimate encounters. But she was afraid to make the first move -- Jordan looked awfully possessive, and she didn't want to get on her much larger friend's bad side.

But Jordan whispered something in Amy's ear, and the girl, though still teary-eyed, was suddenly enlivened. Amy leaned in for a kiss, and Eri eagerly obliged. Their identically puffy pink lips parted together, as Amy's tongue probed excitedly. Before long they were both on the hardwood floor, scrambling to get each other's clothes off, no longer caring when the game would start, or whether the Darkbitch would show up, or even about the prefect ceremony afterwards that would give them both beautiful cocks. They only cared about exploring the new world of twinlove, that had been right there all along, but that had required the Darkbitch's help to travel to.

Kaia walked just behind Akiko, matching the tall soldier's strides exactly. The construct occupying Kaia's mind now knew that the building she was entering was the Darkbitch Army headquarters. She prodded Akiko to make the workers sleep. Feeling Aki's familiar touch in their minds, they offered no resistance. One by one, pretty faces went slack-jawed and toned bodies slumped to the floor, their assault rifles clattering on the ground. The construct would reactivate them later, if there was any resistance, but there was no point in wasting energy trying to maintain them when she had the Army's leader in tow.

A few flights of stairs and a few dozen dispatched guards later, Kaia came to a huge steel door with a fingerprint scanner on a nearby wall. Akiko pressed her thumbprint against the soft metal of the scanner, which unlocked a hinge, then lifted the huge door and led Kaia through. The medium-sized room they entered was lit mainly by a disorganized farrago of blinking equipment and computer monitors. Kaia ignored it, instead heading straight to the center of the room, where a large weapon was resting on a table. It resembled a rocket launcher or a very large gun, and a large orb embedded in it was glowing purple. Kaia appeared to examine the weapon for a moment, then adjusted its settings. Akiko stood in front of her, watching impassively, following orders by staying well within Kaia's sight.

Apparently satisfied, Kaia handed the weapon over to Akiko, who, wasting no time, pulled the trigger. The sweet-faced, sky-haired girl, six feet tall, well-developed but not finished by this world's standards, at first appeared to be totally unaffected. Within a half-second, a violet glow gradually faded into existence around her. A half-second later, she began to grow, calves and biceps and tits bulging outward, uniform magically stretching to match, height rocketing up, her waist the only thing shrinking. In another half-second she was as tall as Aki's seven feet. In another half second she was a foot taller. And she kept growing for two more seconds, until she threatened the room's high ceiling. Her arms were almost the size of Akiko herself, and she had acquired a cock that matched her scale. She was a monster, in some sense, but she didn't entirely look it -- she still had her feminine hourglass figure, scaled cartoonishly up, and her sweet smile. Given the esthetics of the place, every last girl in the Darkbitch's world would have wanted to fuck her.

All of a sudden, Kaia heard footsteps behind her. This wasn't right -- she should have seen Some sort of trick? Turning around, she called to the soldiers under her command, and she heard them come running, but before long those footsteps were lost in what appeared to be a mad rush. Only after a moment of confusion did she realize that she should have been able to track the soldiers psychically. She did a psychic scan. The results of the scan implied that no one had moved or was moving. But she could hear them. The implication was that her psychic abilities were no longer working. Could it be that they had learned her own technique--

--Akiko, it must be, had grabbed her neck and thrown her to the ground. She fell with a crash, with incredible pain, far more pain then she should have felt -- the pain of her new bulk or is someone manipulating my pain sensors -- and she tried to struggle up but she had no energy, no strength; somehow her huge muscles were availing her not at all against this tiny girl, and Akiko had grabbed her and lifted her -- she could see the girl's bronze hands mashing her tits and could do nothing to stop her -- and was penetrating her, and her cock felt way bigger than it should have in her huge pussy and it hurt, but it felt so good, and she couldn't think anymore, and why would she want to, she couldn't remember--

--and Jade was in front of her, with a bunch of soldiers, and next to her was Kennedy -- no you must call her the Darkbitch, whose eyes were growing red and staring right at her into her soul and--

CRACK

and nothing

The large main door leading into the arena, which had been shut due to the cold, reopened. A murmur went through the now restless crowd, which slowly transitioned into a cheer as the crowd recognized the Darkbitch walking in. She was flanked by Jade on one side and by a tall blue-haired girl unfamiliar to most of the crowd on the other, with a few other girls standing near, and she was holding a microphone. When she spoke into it, the whole arena could easily hear, no matter how much noise they made. Yet it didn't seem like they were hearing the Darkbitch entirely through their ears.