A/N: The contents of this chapter may not be suitable for all audiences. Please read at your own discretion. (language, suggestive content, mention of suicide)
Lotte' clutched her head, staggering to one side. Then, out of nowhere, her instincts began demanding something very important from her, something she was quite familiar with.
What she dimly wondered was this: why now?
Why, in a hostile environment where everyone besides her teammates were potential enemies, was she feeling such desires so strongly? Wasn't the need to procreate less important than safety? Especially when it came on out of the blue like this.
However, there was one man she simply could not get out of her mind: Collin, the Progenitor Vampire on their team, whom Alesha had been so vehemently against recruiting.
What the f*ck was wrong with her? He was hot, and nice, and most importantly, HOT. AS. F*CK.
"Sh*t, I wanna do him right now," she moaned, rubbing her thighs together as she leaned against a wall.
Where was his room?
Should she jump him?
No, no, she shouldn't jump him. She'd ask if he wanted to. Yeah. Consent is key, consent is key, consent… is…
"Ah, f*ck it," she murmured. Then, she shouted, "COLLIN!! I need to talk to you!" And started wandering the halls in search of him.
A short time later, she found him and pinned him against the wall. She was rather short and he was quite tall, so the effect was much more adorable than she intended, but that look in his eyes… yeah, he was feeling it too.
A part of her acknowledged that this was unnatural. A part of her knew this was out of character for both of them, and that neither of them would've chosen to do this in these circumstances, at this time, if they were in their right minds.
She just didn't care.
Not when her body's insistent need, which she was already used to giving into, was being so demanding.
And not when his body was this… delectable.
----
In a private viewing booth which looked over the colosseum outside, a certain Patron of the event grinned widely, a voyeuristic look of delight on his face as he watched Collin and Lotte' during their private time.
Contrary to what the Participants might expect, the Patrons would not only spectate the fights.
Instead of being only able to view a close-up magical camera view of the current fights (since there were twenty arenas up and running at the moment), he could also view other things. He could view the cafeteria, lounge, and even the sleeping quarters of the Participants.
They would spectate every aspect of their lives.
Most shocking of all, by placing bids, Patrons could influence the lives of the Participants. It wasn't in the sorts of simple, shallow ways one might expect, either; it wasn't just living conditions, menu options or match fixing (the last of which was reserved for Participants' Advantage Tickets, so Patrons couldn't fix matches anyways). The options provided were far more significant than those.
With enough bids (which were purchased using Arena Tokens), the Participants' lives could be directly affected in a great variety of ways. Romantic involvement could be artificially arranged, various kinds of psychosis inflicted, bestial mutations could be made to occur, betrayal of a close friend could be puppeteered, personalities altered, and more. Things that any normal gladiator host could never dream of controlling -- things that required magic that could influence its participants' physiology and even their free will.
This Story, more than any other, made the Participants mere toys in the hands of the Patrons.
This Patron had instantly liked that fact and wondered how potent the effects would be. Could he somehow cause specific Participants to hook up? By teaming up with a few other interested parties, this Patron had successfully purchased enough bids to influence both Lotte' and Collin into spontaneously seeking each other out for just that.
He giggled and squirmed as he watched the two of them together, finding great satisfaction in knowing that his actions had caused these two mere mortals to become entwined.
It made him swell with delusions of grandeur. He was a god! A deity! In his hands, mortals could only shiver in terror before obeying without question!
As soon as Collin and Lotte' fell asleep, the Patron greedily summoned his attendant to withdraw more funds from his accounts. Savings, stocks, bonds, luxury assets, all of it -- he was high on self-importance and deceived by the false sense of power Zorhellian's clever scheme had given him.
He proceeded to lead other Patrons in altering many more Participants after that, in various ways. This was quite impressive because it was designed to be difficult to do so. At least 30 Patrons had to band together to influence a single person in a minor way -- to directly puppeteer Participants into hooking up voluntarily like he had, it had required recruiting nearly a thousand other Patrons to bid on that happening, about 500 per involved party (in this case, Collin and Lotte').
His silver tongue was incredibly effective for this purpose, convincing even those who hadn't intended to bid at all to try it out.
Of course, the sheer size of Zorhellian's Storytelling Games (and therefore the quantity of Patrons) made this possible.
Mostly, he was rather curious about romantic interests. He caused women to get with women, men to get with men, men to get with women, and even a man and woman to both get together with a nonbinary creature. Not all cases were mutually agreed upon, either. For him, part of the fun was watching the occasional non-consensual act.
Some of the Patrons even found his actions abhorrent, and he gained a reputation as being a "Voyeuristic Swine."
Romantic interests weren't all he cared about, though.
He also drove a Participant insane by making him hallucinate that everyone he saw was himself, caused a Participant to develop a severe sense of masochism, made a Participant into a cannibal, orchestrated the hookup and then brutal betrayal of a Participant couple, and even gave a Participant a mutation that would progressively turn them into a carnivorous worm monster unless they consistently attempted to scam people.
Sometimes, he would request the Participants be informed but bound to secrecy about what was happening to them.
The faces on the Participants when they realized they were being messed with?
Absolutely priceless.
For the most part, anyway.
One man, the Participant who'd essentially been cursed to turn into a worm monster, killed himself rather than live with the curse, and that had left the Patron in a particularly bad mood.
After that, his mood only worsened when he discovered that he no longer had the funds to purchase any further bids, having used up the entirety of his assets on the Games.
That was when sobriety hit him and he realized what he had done.
In a fit of fanatical delusion, he'd developed a sadistic god complex and gone on a spending spree so large he wouldn't be able to rent out the private booth for another day -- or perhaps more importantly, afford the basic necessities beyond that day.
Looking fondly at the screens, an urge to abandon his duties and take out a loan from Zorhellian came over him and, before he realized what he was doing, he had signed the appropriate forms and taken out a sizable loan with Zorhellian, Inc.
He then proceeded to continue messing with Participants' lives like a man possessed.
Later, he would describe that decision as the worst mistake of his life.
Going into debt with a sadistic Chaos Demon like Zorhellian Fa Qinfeerus?
Now that's a fate worse than death.