2.00 – Aesthetics

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"Sasha, we're back!"

Maple exclaimed it despite the dozen or so other guests in the dining area of the inn. A lot had happened over four days, and now they were back. The world must know.

Perhaps not literally. Maple had made enough of a name for herself already, and the city had calmed down since she'd last been there. They hadn't seen any more protests, nor, thankfully, heard Maple's name mentioned on the walk to the inn.

Sasha finished up serving a drink, and walked over to them. Her attire was as skimpy as ever; something like a black bikini was most of what covered her. Her tail swirled in the air behind her and she smiled when she saw them.

"Welcome back. I was starting to worry about you all. How'd it go?"

Maple hugged her. She'd missed her, Rachel, and the inn. Her home, for now. And Sasha was either going to love her or hate her, but she was already planning a little prank.

"It went really well. You're not going to believe what the—the thing was. It's kind of a secret, too. Also, we have a ton of stuff, can we like, use your basement for a bit or something? You're also not going to believe Emma when you see her. She's huge."

"Oh, you're great with secrets. Tell me about it later, I guess. But uh, maybe? How long exactly? How much stuff? I would usually charge for that sort of thing."

Sasha gave Thera a look, and then looked at the bags they were carrying. Her eyes widened when she realized the nature of their loot. Thera stepped forward to negotiate.

"Give us a day or two at least? A quarter of it is Emma's, if you're giving out friend discounts. But yeah, there's a lot. We might have trouble selling it, so we'd compensate ya if it ends up taking long. And, lookie this."

Thera dug out one of the garish RGB vibrators and handed it to Sasha. She quickly figured out the controls and smirked. Thera wiggled her eyebrows.

"A bribe, if you want it."

"Very interesting. Alright sure, we'll renegotiate if it takes longer than a week."

Sasha turned the flashing vibrator off. She stared at it a moment and then glanced around the room, trying to figure out where the heck to set it down for now. In the end, she shrugged and just held it. Emma popped her head out. She grinned, but impatiently. Sasha pet her.

"Welcome back to you too, Em. So yeah, feel free to use the basement. I might need to move some things first."

Sasha took a step toward the basement trapdoor but Maple stopped her. Maple was excited—and kind of worried.

"Wait, wait, Sasha. I can just show you something, and you'll get it. Can I do something to you?"

"Hm, about the thing? You do look...kind of different. Go ahead. But if it's something bad, I'll retaliate."

Maple tried to keep from smirking. She looked around, and realized it might be a little inappropriate.

"It's not anything bad. But um, could you move behind the bar real quick?"

"Okay?"

Sasha moved behind the bar. Her waist was safely below, outside the view of other patrons. Maple giggled deviously.

"Hehe, ready? Watch closely, okay?"

"Oh I'm watching."

"[Phallic Transformation]!"

Maple leaned over the bartop so she could see. Sasha's cock grew up and out of her bikini-like bottom. Sasha spluttered and covered it with a hand—then, two hands—but she was more focused on Maple. She'd used prana for that spell.

"What the—you used..? Ah, but, cancel it. What the heck, Maple, we're in the bar."

"You remember how my Skill worked, don't you? You're gonna have to..."

Maple crossed her arms smugly and nudged her eyebrows up and down. Sasha tried to stretch her bikini to cover her new dick. An impossible task.

She stood against the counter so no one would see it and glared at Maple. She didn't believe her. Maple thought the jig may be up, but then, exasperated, Sasha spoke.

"Really?"

"Hehe, no. Here. Canceled. You would have done it though, huh? I would have gotten ya."

Maple the all-powerful laughed and enjoyed her successful prank. She'd almost made Sasha sneak to her room to get off. That was where she'd drawn the line, but, Sasha would have done it.

Sasha chuckled but her expression grew scary. Maple backed up a step.

"I guess you would have. You've changed since I last saw you, you little—[Instantaneous Orgasm]!"

"No wait, I'm sorr—nngh."

Maple cried out before Sasha had finished saying it to try to stop her from casting the spell, but it was too late. Maple doubled over in pleasure and embarrassment. In a repeat of history, she cast [Telepathic Orgasm] on Sasha. Thera was there too, this time.

When it was over, Maple stood up straight again. She could handle a little orgasm. It wasn't even that embarrassing because it'd just looked like she'd doubled over for a second.

What was odd was that none of her prana had been instantly processed like usually happens from orgasm. Maybe because it was spell-induced? Instead, the experience had been mildly arousing and Maple was left with more prana she needed to digest.

Thera laughed and shook her head.

"You two are something else."

"Perverts."

Alas helpfully concluded while Sylla and Dort were speechless. Sasha dusted her hands off.

"She deserved it. But wait, is that a...that you're wearing? Inside of you?"

Maple's eyes widened as she realized, in another repeat of history, the [Telepathic Orgasms] had backfired. She was wearing the plug today as well, and Sasha must have noticed the sensation of her tightening up around it. Maple's face turned red.

"Um, Emma made us do it..."

"Yeah, yesterday. You're wearing it again today, Mape?"

"Shush..."

It was actually really embarrassing. They weren't supposed to know she had it in. She just kind of liked the sensation. Maple quickly changed the subject.

"You saw though, right Sasha? I have changed. I'm a—I might kind of be your archnemesis now! Haha, no, sorry, that's uh, that was a uh—not something to joke about probably. Sorry. But I should also be able to..."

Maple closed her physical eyes and focused on that sensation of other eyes within her. She wanted to figure it out, damn it. Rather than imagining an eye opening somewhere on her body, this time she tried to force the sensation itself open—suddenly it did. All of them did.

She couldn't see most of them herself, but Maple's vision turned confusing as eyes opened all over her body. Many of the eyes were covered by her clothes, so blackness was one of the things layered onto everything.

The extra vision lacked any kind of logical order. Her brain didn't know how to make sense of it or which way was even up anymore. Maple felt dizzy and lost her balance.

When she hit the floor, body covered in eyes, she exclaimed.

"I can't see!"

Maple tried to undo whatever she did. Close her eyes, damn it. She managed to do it, and looked up at everyone with her physical eyes. They were all staring at her, and Sasha, leaning over the bartop, looked the most bewildered.

Other guests and patrons of the inn looked over at the commotion. Maple was drawing a lot of attention to herself. Alas's head pivoted between the Maple and Sasha. What she saw was an opportunity.

"You're staring at her like you just watched her grow another eye."

Dort let out a loud, what might have been a pity, hah. Emma slapped Maple's chest with a tentacle. She wanted all this junk out of her, not to goof around.

"Oof. Sorry. Um, yeah, so I can do that. Maybe you can guess what I am, Sasha? I don't know how well-known it is. Or taught about. But I'm now one-half of a species that doesn't exist anymore."

Maple felt kind of awkward about it, hence the jokes and silliness. Anxious. Remi had implied there was a lot of hostility toward them from succubi. That was a thousand years outdated information though, and—Sasha would still be her friend either way, right?

But gnawing at Maple, was the thought that she was now genetically half of an extinct species. It was weird. What was she supposed to call herself now that she wasn't fully human?

Erogelic human was the term used, but would the erogels have wanted that? Maple figured she'd just continue thinking of herself as and referring to herself as a human. Eventually she'd have to explain why she had wings, but maybe she could say it was from a class?

She should have asked Lili more about it when she had the chance. She had thought to ask Remi, back when she was thinking about the ethical side of things. In the end, the benefits were too high. She intentionally hadn't asked or considered it more, because it was something she'd needed to do.

Or wanted to do.

Sasha moved from behind the bar and extended a hand down to help Maple up. Maple took it and smiled awkwardly.

"You're really not good at secrets. Yeah, from all that, I can guess. I don't understand how, but wait until later to explain. Don't eat all my stuff in the meantime. Seriously. Anyway, basement."

Sasha led them to the basement and the most ridiculous game of charades came to an end. But that was another reason Maple had been concerned; Sasha used her inn to harvest orgones, and she let Maple mooch partly because of what she harvested from her.

Maple's Skills had upped her prana production, as she understood it, and those were gone now. She also needed the energy herself from now on.

All of Maple's silliness had been a kind of...lube applied before their real conversation about it. Maple set Emma's bottle on the ground and stepped back.

"Stand back, everyone. She's huge."

Emma the Hutt slowly removed herself from the bottle. She filled half the basement. As soon as she was out, she opened her large mouth and began spewing objects. Sasha watched a mountain of sex toys form and ran a hand through her hair.

"Holy shit, did you guys raid a sex dungeon or something?"

Thera laughed while unloading everything from her bags.

"Where else would Maple's goddess send us, right? You're not the first to make that joke, though."

"I mean, yeah, no wonder."

Maple patted Emma lovingly while she vomited up a sex shop's worth of objects. She had no hair to hold back, but either way, it couldn't have been pleasant. When Emma was done, she lay on the floor as a blob, panting.

"You okay, cutie? You did it, though. Look at all the loot you saved."

Emma formed a torso and examined the huge pile. It was slightly smaller than Emma had been herself. Her [Bottomless Stomach] must have had some kind of non-linear scaling. She turned to Maple and wrapped around her in a hug.

"Hehe, welcome back. I missed you while you were in your bottle for so long."

Maple felt her press an ILU against her back, under shirt. Maple returned it. She liked that; their silent and secret communication.

"Aw, is that an ILU you're pressing against each other? That's so cute."

Thera's silent and secret communication pulled Maple out of the moment. Emma pulled back and gave Maple a thumbs up. She got the loot. Then she tackled Maple, putting her full body weight against her and pushing her to the floor. Parts of her slipped into Maple's clothes.

While Maple had been having fun with Thera and Sylla, Emma had been neglected. Maple laughed.

"Em, jeez. Wait until later at least—er. I mean."

Maple looked around, abashed, but none of them seemed to expect anything different from the two at this point. Which made Maple's embarrassment somewhat worse. Emma came up with a laughing face. She pulled out her notebook.

I'm gonna visit boss lady first. Gone longer than expected.

"Oh sure, yeah. Marielle might be worried about you. Have fun, cutie."

Emma hugged her again, then got up and gave Sasha an I'm back hug. She waved bye to everyone and made her way up the basement stairs.

Once everyone was unloaded, Sasha stared at the disorganized pile of loot in her basement. They hadn't been able to bring the crates everything had been in, so it was a bit of a mess. Sasha shook her head.

"I guess it's fitting for the basement of a succu inn."

"Mhm. Do you think your customers would want to buy any? We need to get it appraised first, but if you could sell some of it here..."

Thera got the beginnings of a future deal going as they all climbed the stairs from the basement. Once they were all out, Sasha shut the trapdoor and locked it.

"Sure, we could try something like that."

SuQ Dairy's weekend events would have been the ideal spot to offload so many lewd devices, but luckily, none of that concerned Maple. Her only physical loot was the handful of items she'd pilfered for later. For gifts, and for...science.

No, really. Some of them had prana enchantments, and Maple could possibly learn something if she studied them hard enough.

Maple went upstairs to put her bag away and throw on a change of clothes. When she came back down, she grabbed a seat at the bar next to Thera and Dort. Sylla and Alas had already left the inn.

Sylla, to try to get some rock samples appraised before night fully fell. And Alas, to find a wagon or larger bag of holding to rent.

"You're going back? Even after those two guys showed up?"

Maple had considered telling that SIB lady about seeing Maz there, but was worried it'd lead to too many questions. Or what if she noticed Maple's changes herself? It was better to just avoid getting involved any further, and Thera had agreed with that.

It's not like they'd actually seen them do anything nefarious. The other incubus had described themselves as concerned citizens. It was only a weird coincidence that it was Maz.

"I mean, yeah. We left a lot behind. It'll be easier without you and Emma there, to be honest, if it did come to a fight. And I could always call on you to send help now, couldn't I?"

"Yeah, I guess so. But it'd still be at least a day away, and I wouldn't know how to get there again. Just be careful, okay?"

Thera sent a non-verbal thought that summed up to them being adventurers and that Maple would have to get used to this kind of thing. Maple reluctantly agreed. She understood. And they had piled everything up that they couldn't carry just outside the spa. It was free money.

"I'll leave a map for you with the location marked in case we do need help."

Maple nodded mentally and took a sip of the drink she'd ordered. Some fruity thing that hid the alcohol well. She, Thera, and Dort were celebrating a little. They'd done it. Then Sasha came over.

"By the way, Charlotte replied to your letter and had it sent here. I had Rachel put it in your guys' room. Also, Karla came by to hand out vague threats, and she mentioned the I'm Maple thing. I feigned ignorance. Oh, and some green-haired half-elf came by looking for you. I told her you were out and didn't know when you'd be back."

"Oof. Half-elf, though...Anemone?"

"Probably? I was going to make a list of notes if just one more thing for you occurred while you were gone."

Maple had a bunch of things she needed to do.