For most of them? “Were we right? Has he already set his web of seduction around us before we even noticed?” The girls thinking this did not dare share the thought aloud. Not in this company. That would be a sign of weakness which would be pounced upon at a moment’s notice. After all, they had no way to know if the other girls were feeling the same way they felt. Unless, of course…
“Well, that’s that!!” Sachi said, flipping her hair and shrugging. “I guess this means now we're all his obedient lovesl-”
Her intention had been pretty obvious, if you think about it: Feign sarcasm to gauge the reaction from the others. Normally this was the kind of thing the group would eat up. Use it as an opportunity to set up a future gag, maybe pretend as though he had seduced all of them, that they were his willing and eager-to-please harem. Then humiliate him in public. That sort of thing.
Not today though, as the second kind of mentality immediately shot out of her chair and pressed her finger to Sachi’s lips. Ryoko Mendo made a low hissing “shhh” noise that was about as threatening as it was possible to be threatening. Ryoko’s entire thought process was simply “I am Ryoko Mendo. The world bends to my whims, not the other way around!”
“Girls, please remain silent for a moment,” Ryoko began, portraying a much more cool and confident attitude than she was feeling right now. “I shall explain the reasoning behind this shortly. Ataru Moroboshi is not a sex god. I repeat, Ataru Moroboshi is <i>not</i> a god of sex!”
The girls all looked at one another in confusion, but knew better than to interrupt Ryoko when she had specifically instructed them not to. She walked around to each of them in turn, staring them right in the eye and repeating the mantra, over and over again. Ataru Moroboshi is <i>not</i> a sex god. He is not. Absolutely not. The girls within the first group were beginning to breathe a little easier now. It was as though their heads and hearts had been unbalanced before, but now the scales were being filled up equally on both sides. They were calming down when they hadn’t even noticed they weren’t calm before.
“There!” Ryoko said triumphantly. “Now, girls, in a moment I will give you permission to speak. Before that, I should warn you. The container for the hypnotic incense appears to have been leaking. I suspect we have all been made much more suggestible, and talked ourselves into believing things that were not true. The effects may still be lingering, so I suggest we read up on how long the effect is supposed to last before we leave and start believing every silly little thing the common folk natter on about like the buzzing insects they are. Keep that in mind, and you may now speak.”
“Wow, Ryoko!” Tansho cooed. “You’re so smart figuring out something like that!”
“That’s the idea!” Ryoko said, clasping Tansho’s hands with great enthusiasm. “Only speak things that you already know are true. That way we should be completely safe.”
“Um… Doesn’t that mean that Toyoko should shut her big stupid lying mouth?” Hitomo muttered, pressing her index fingers against each other in a nervous, fidgety action. “She’s the sort of girl that might lie about something and - Well…”
“Me, lie?” Toyoko gasped. “Why, I never! The very notion of poor little old me telling a fib, it’s utterly prepost-”
Which is when Aya slapped her hand over Toyoko’s mouth before she could utter another word.
“Might be best if I kept her gagged,” Aya said. “Let you guys check things out while I keep her from doing anything stupid. You know, keep her out of harm’s way, prevent her from saying some <i>really smart</i> lie?”
“… I suppose that might be a worthwhile idea,” Ryoko considered. “Very well. Take her into a side room. No arguments, Toyoko! That silver tongue of yours could cause us no end of trouble.”
“While we’re at it, might be a good idea to play it extra safe,” Aya added. “Come check on us once in a while, just in case one of us goes a bit funny. Better safe than sorry, right?”
“See, girls? A sensible attitude will pull us through this time of crisis. There’s no need to panic. This group has grown so adept at sowing chaos that we almost brought it down upon our own heads! Now let us prove ourselves better than the rest of the world by handling the fallout better than they could ever dream of!”
“Tsk,” Toyoko mumbled while Aya dragged her off by the hand into a side room. “This whole thing is completely daft if you ask me. It’s not like Ryoko to leap to conclusions like that, you know? I bet she’s playing some sort of freaky joke on all of us again. That would be just like her!”
Toyoko expected to hear a response from Aya pretty much right away. But no. Aya simply stood there with her back to the door, staring at Toyoko with this odd look in her eye and an equally odd smile playing on her lips. For, you see, Aya was the third and final group of the three different thought processes among the girls. A group that honestly and earnestly believed that she was already Ataru’s willing and eager sex slave. Willing to do anything he asked. Eager to satisfy his every single need including those he didn’t even know existed.
“I suppose you might be right,” Aya finally said, twiddling her thumbs. “It would be just like Ryoko to get us all panicked like that, just to get a rise out of us. Making a big show of walking around saying that Ataru Moroboshi is not a sex god… Especially when someone as smart as her would know that denying that something is true only makes people think about that thing more, in effect reinforcing the idea in people’s heads! Ryoko would never, ever do something that stupid. Right? Unless it was part of a mind game…”
“Right!” Toyoko said, nodding in agreement. “Ryoko’s just that kind of girl. I bet she’s winding them up just now, all because her plan to hypnotise Ataru failed! Tsk, I bet she even went along with your idea to get me in here alone to show how suggestible she was!”
“That’s right,” Aya said, just a little more coy in tone and body language than she normally adopted. “All to play up the idea that we’re suggestible. After all, I’m the last person she should be sending off alone with anyone, when I’m the likeliest to have accepted the fact that Ataru is able to seduce a woman with a mere glance, and might set about trying to convince you that, what was it he said? A harem is fine too?” She shuddered a little. “How ridiculous.”
“R-Right!” Toyoko said, rubbing her temples. Ugh. Such a headache coming on all of a sudden. “Maybe we should go out there and -”
“Of course, Ataru Moroboshi absolutely is not able to do that,” Aya said, sitting against the door, staring up at the ceiling and twiddling her thumbs, a picture of faltering innocence. “By which I mean, reduce a woman’s legs to jelly with just the right words. That really would be preposterous. Nor could he sweet talk a girl into turning her and her friends into his harem while they watch him, utterly oblivious to his true, magnificent intentions. Nobody could do that.”
“Right,” Toyoko said, for what felt like the tenth time in a minute. “Ataru Moroboshi is not a sex god.” But what if he was? That was the trap Aya had set in her mind, turning the perpetual liar’s thoughts into mush no matter which way she went. If she agreed with Aya’s assertions that Ataru was not any of these things, then it made her mind think that question: What if he was? If she disagreed, then it was as good as accepting that she was already his.
You could call it the psychological mind game equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. Toyoko was so used to lying that in attempting to defend herself from this psychological assault, she was tricking her unconscious mind into completely believing it. She remembered the feelings she had while Ataru was there. She didn’t notice Aya slip in behind her, hold her close from behind and begin to kiss her neck while telling her all the things Ataru absolutely was not.
“So,” Aya asked, “do you have anything to say?”
“A harem is fine too,” Toyoko mumbled, accepting this truth with a satisfied smile on her face that was more genuine than anything she’d ever said in her life. Not that this was a high bar to cross, but regardless….
<hr>
Like hell was Ataru Moroboshi the sort of guy to walk away so willingly from a room full of pretty girls hanging on his every word. You’ve heard the phrase “wild horses couldn't drag him away”? Well, he’d go a step further and drag the wild horses back into the room with him!
“Those girls were acting mighty weird,” he whispered while creeping along the outside of the building, wondering when the moment might arrive when he would be ejected but not really believing it would ever come. Of course, the fact he was talking to himself wasn’t exactly helping his chances. “And if my instincts are anything worth relying on, it’s something to do with that hypnosis thing they were going on about.”
Not that his instincts were ever worth relying on, if one were to review his history. After all. His instincts did tend to lead him into hitting on girls on a nearly constant basis. His instincts did rather cause quite a lot of trouble in his life for himself and everyone around him. Ataru always did tend to let his pattern recognition abilities fall to the wayside, when they could have saved him so much grief. Or maybe not. After all, he is the unluckiest boy alive on this planet or any other.
Still. He’d been pretty lucky so far in this instance. He had almost reached the window to the room he thought they were probably in. All he had to do was keep pressed right up against this wall, move quickly and silently right on the tippiest part of his tiptoes .“Any minute now I'll find out why those girls were acting so weird and hanging all over my every word,” he mumbled aloud.
“Hanging on your every word?”
“Oh, yeah!” Ataru chuckled, rubbing his hands together with glee. “They were really listening to me, asking me all about what I’d do if I had some chick completely under my spell! It was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“Even hotter than your fiancee?”
“Much!”
Which is when the thunderbolt hit him, and some might say he had that coming. Others would look at you agape, then point out that under certain conditions a thunderbolt could quite easily cook a person’s internal organs, and absolutely nobody in history really deserved to die in such a nasty, painful manner. Ataru would probably just scratch his head and wonder why you’re making so much fuss over being struck by lightning, which never really did him any serious harm.
“Tcha!” Lum tsked, affixing an anti-gravity sticker to Ataru’s back and gently guiding him off towards the gate. “Thank you for helping me find him, Shutaro! I’ll try to keep a closer eye on him.”
“Of course. It was nothing worthy of praise,” Mendo said, but in that way that implied that if praise were on offer, he’d hardly be rude enough to refuse it. In fact, while you were at it, he did have this bowl right here you could scoop full of praise if you felt like it; he’d just leave it there without further comment. “And, forgive me, but I do believe there’s an expression on Earth that would fit what you just said rather neatly. ‘A tighter leash’ seems rather apt, don’t you agree?”
“Aren’t leashes used on dogs and wild animals?”
“As I said. Apt. Would you like to use the Mendo kennels while I treat you to a well-deserved dinner? Don’t feel too badly for him. Our worst kennel is more luxurious than his own bedroom could ever hope to be.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Lum said, drifting off and lightly tugging Ataru’s limp, groaning body behind her. “Thank you for the offer, but somebody needs to keep an eye on him before he gets into more trouble. It’s practically a full-time job.”
- Lum drags Ataru off for a few days, keeping a closer eye on him than usual.
- Lum announces an event that Ryoko overhears, and decides to involve herself in.
- The next day, Ataru sneaks off/is brought back in to meet Ryoko again.
- Meanwhile, Ryoko is attempting to undo everyone's conditioning while Aya and Toyoko try to trigger all their submissions.
- Something else
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