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Tanthe meets Aire in a "bar"
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Aire has been in the surroundings of the Glisten Palace for two days. They have been an eventful two days. She’s been preferentially spending her time in and around a bar-shaped Room Mimic who’s rather fantastically good at preparing a variety of different drinks, and very committed to looking and acting like a bar. Apparently, she’s not immune to the lure of familiarity.

The basement is essentially a room-sized tentacle pit, which she really shouldn’t have found surprising, but apparently did anyway.

She’s been keeping Christa in a haze of bliss. She doesn’t like it when Christa’s sad. The combination of Aire’s native telepathy with her wearers and Christa’s own telepathy lets her feel it, and it’s nearly as bad as being sad herself. And so, Christa has spent the past two days floating, fucked so pleasantly and so continuously by Aire’s inner tentacles that she can’t think about anything else. It’s satisfying, to reduce Christa to a being of lust and little else. But there’s something missing.

She knows that what she’s been doing to Christa recently is a pale shadow of something she used to enjoy doing once. Somehow, deep down, she knows there’s something that’s a meal, rather than these small nibbles.

What could it have been? It was something about damaging people, harming them, a vague association with leaving them no longer present. It had to do with them enjoying something. What was it?

A vague association there. Two vague associations, actually. Her Mana Drain, and her Sex Magic.

Well, the mana drain one is obvious now that she thinks about it. Too much of that would kill someone. Just leave it on while you pickle someone in so many lust-enhancing effects they decide to keep fucking you despite the danger. But still, that doesn’t have the ring of her favorite thing. No, that was something else.

Did some extreme use of Sex Magic let her do what she thought she was doing to Christa? That feels possible. Right, even. But most of her knowledge decayed while she was locked behind that barrier, and she’s forgotten how.

So, she experiments. She can apply pure sexual pleasure through Sex Magic, and there are all these lovely potential victims out here.

She doesn’t, actually, need victims, she discovers. She offers to blast a lover with her magic, and ever so worriedly warns them that even though it feels good, it might be dangerous. They respond by telling her that as far as they’re concerned, their brain is for being horny, and they won't lose anything that matters as long as she’s at least a little careful.  She has to fight off the urge to pout.

It does, however, work. Or at least she thinks it does. Even after they come down from the high of perfect pleasure, the lover is stupider, hornier, thinking less and feeling more. Not just insensate or so temporarily overwhelmed they can’t think of anything else like Christa. No, after it all, when they come down from the pleasure and sleep it off, they’re still changed by it.

It’s lovely.

The next day she tries it again on a few other people, attempting to sound out the point at which things go from something someone bounces back from as soon as they’re done experiencing it to something that needs recovery time and from there to something that causes lasting damage. She’s careful not to push too much past the point of just enough damage to be noticeable; her story is that she’s doing something risky that people want and have consented to. If she pushes too far the lie of her good intentions will be obvious.

She wants to be good at this. She wants to be able to say to people that this much is fine, but any more wouldn’t be. And have them beg for more anyway. Watching people’s minds as they make that choice, as they come apart under the consequences of it, is the thing she wants most in the world.

After a long day of experimenting, she leaves her lovely volunteers together in a rather large tentacle pit and heads off back to the ‘bar’ to relax.

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There's a new face in here, just settling into a booth by herself as Aire returns. You can tell how far away she's from by the sheer quantity of clothes she's wearing - a long skirt, and are those leggings under it?, and a high-collared long-sleeve shirt, and a heavy cloak. Three small eyeballs orbit her head, spinning to peer in all directions; they're the one thing about her that suggests she didn't somehow teleport here all the way from the Untainted by mistake.

She has a glass of tentacle beer and is sipping it with a thoughtful, appraising air.

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It’s relatively good beer, if you like beer! The kind of stuff a cantankerous innkeeper would be just proud enough of to take offense if you said you didn’t like it. Nothing special though if you’ve tried enough different varieties of the stuff.

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Oh, this one looks very new here. And Christa’s telepathy is bouncing very hard off her shields. That’s interesting.

Aire orders her own drink, something that tastes vaguely of orange and has a name in Tentacled describing it’s taste as similar to the feeling of orgasm, and heads in the direction of this poor lost lamb. Purely for altruistic reasons, of course. Who knows what someone new to this place could get up to without her help!

The first thing Tanthe will notice is probably that this is in fact two people walking towards her, one of whom is rather enjoying themselves and the other of which is very well-shielded. Probably the next thing she’ll notice is that the two people in one body walking towards her are actually wearing clothes. Admittedly some rather revealing clothes; her top is tight and just low-cut enough to inspire slight doubts about its ability to function properly as a top were she to bend over, and beneath that her skirt comes to halfway to her knees and is rather tight. But still, clothes at all!

The person who is actually two people approaches her table and says, “So, would I be wrong in guessing you’re new to the Pink too? It would be nice to have someone to talk to who hasn’t spent so long here it’s all started to feel normal.”

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She observes Aire's approach with a slightly quizzical look, but her smile of greeting is friendly enough. Two of her orbiting eyeballs halt and spread out to keep an eye, so to speak, on the stranger from multiple angles.

"Very new," she admits. "I'm from Peachport, it's on the far side of the Fringe, down south on the coast. I'd never actually met a Tentacled until last week."

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“That is new. I’m from the Dragon Empire myself, sent out to learn about the hazard in the northern Pink. Under most people’s definitions I am a Tentacled, I suppose, but that really doesn’t help much if you’re from the middle of the Untainted.”

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She nods thoughtfully.

"What's your name? I'm Tanthe."

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"Aire. And my occupant is Christa, but she's rather out of it right now. It's maybe not the healthiest coping method for dealing with potentially lethal exile, but I don't really have the heart to tell her no."

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"I... did notice the... um, occupant," she acknowledges hesitantly. "And your mental shields are the solidest I've ever met, while I'm on the subject. Not that I'm especially trying to look, but some things come through even at a glance. So you're... Living Clothes, then?" She tilts her head and studies Aire's body and clothing for a brief but very thorough moment. "But you're not those clothes," she concludes. "So—what's the term again—you're the kind that's person-shaped on the outside?"

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“Yeah, that’s right. The typical term is “skinsuit”. It’s a little misleading because I’ve actually got more to me than just a layer of skin, including more than a few decently sized tentacles, but it gets the idea across. Would you mind if I sat down, by the way?”

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"Oh! I'm sorry, go ahead," she says, gesturing invitingly to the bench across from her with a flustered but genuine smile. "Please."

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And she sits. Once her legs are out of sight she spreads them ever so slightly, just enough to let her pheromones fill the air a little bit faster. With the table between their source and Tanthe, they’ll slowly make Aire seem more and more attractive, and also oddly enough more and more worth listening to. From the strength of Tanthe’s shields she’s got a rather strong will, and so those affects should be somewhat attenuated. But they’ll be there, nonetheless.

“So, what brings you out to the Pink?”

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"...well, I mean—"

She hesitates awkwardly. Possibly something she's not saying, or possibly just feeling off-balance in a new social context.

"I heard about... you know, the Red Queen and things. And I wanted to hear more, and maybe see if I could help. I'm not sure I can. But—I'd rather try than just let it pass me by because it's happening far away to other people, you know?"

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Hmm. It's entirely plausible that there's something else there, given that hesitation, but Tanthe has known her for an entire two minutes, questioning it at this point would probably be counterproductive.

“Ah, that kind of thing. It’s always nice to see people who care about something in a way that makes them actually do something about it.”

This is, it happens, true. Most people are just so boring. Even if the thing they care about is something objectively silly, at least its something. Anything at all.

After all, if they don’t really care about anything all that much, they aren’t sacrificing much if they give in to her, are they?

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"Of course! Though—well, it's not always that simple. I could afford to come, a lot of people can't. I might have ways to help, a lot of people won't. Plenty of people can care a great deal about something like this and still be too busy to journey halfway up the continent about it."

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Aire nods. This one reminds her a bit of Christa, actually, but more- robust, somehow. Positive feelings about people held for actual reasons, rather than blind, desperate hope. Assuming that wasn't a fluke, of course.

“I suppose there are all sorts of people who might like do something but have to stay behind on the family farm or else they won’t have enough grain to last the winter.”

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"Exactly! Or my friend Brin who works in his father's smithy and if he disappears into the Pink never to be seen again they'll be too short-handed to keep up, or my friend Luko who has to look after his baby sister because his mother was lost at sea, or my parents who need to keep the inn running so people have a place to stay when they come into town. They can spare me, though, Cousin Faro will inherit if I don't come back. So I came."

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“It’s sort of sad that replaceability is part of what lets people be heroic. It’s a rather unfortunate filter on our pool of potential heroes. I don’t think I’d ever noticed that before.”

It’s not an honest opinion of hers, but she’s spent enough time with Christa to generate Christa opinions on demand. She doesn’t particularly have opinions on heroism, beyond that it might be useful for preserving the world she lives in.

Hmm. Actually, that thought might make that an honest opinion of hers. The more things there are stopping people from taking up arms against the Red Queen, the worse things look for Aire.

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There's a moment's hesitation before she nods earnestly. "I hadn't either, but it's obvious once you think it through, isn't it? And you're right, it's sad. I wish... I wish everyone had room to be as much of a hero as they want to be." She pauses, considering this. "Or—no, that's not right. I wish no one had to be heroes." A slight, crooked smile. "Got to get my unrealistic wishes in the right order, otherwise how will I know which ones to make first?"

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Aire gives off a genuine smile at the reordering, and looks off into the distance for a moment, thinking.

Does she wish nobody had to be heroes? From a certain perspective she’s something to be dealt with by heroes, so perhaps that would get rid of her. Well, she can imagine a world full of people who enjoy the idea of trying to resist, and giving in to her and failing in the end, reciprocal to her own desires, and if a world full of people like that required no heroes she’d be rather pleased. She wouldn’t even need to worry about people trying to kill her!

She thinks Tanthe’s idea of keeping all her wishes in the right order is a good one; get the order on those two wrong and she’s erased before she can make the second, get them right and she’s in paradise.

“You know, I think that’s a very important principle. Get the order of the wishes wrong and who knows what comes out the other side.”

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"Exactly!" she agrees, with a firm nod. "I think it's very important to understand what you want, even if you don't have much chance of getting it."

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Ah. That’s. Honestly a little painful, just after imagining a perfect, safe world full of willing toys she’s never going to get. She’s not, actually, used to feeling negative emotions just about at all.

She has so few memories. So few experiences with which to buffer that pain, small as it might be. She wonders what all her old ones were, before she lost them.

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She shakes it off to keep talking. Few experiences she might have, but her control over herself remains as strong as ever.

She nods.

"No chance at all of getting what you want if you don't even know what it is."

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Tanthe is apparently perceptive enough to catch that momentary lapse; a slight, concerned frown crosses her face. "Yes," she agrees, more subdued. "Or if you do, it'll be by luck, not by choice."

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She’s not sure whether that perceptiveness is good news. Makes it more fun if she eventually manages this seduction, makes it less likely she will.

“Inadvisable to rely entirely on luck, I think. Better to steer, more likely to end up in the right place that way.“

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"I agree completely."

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