Malice in the Pleasure Palace

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<<set $tasks = 1>> <> This is about as probation as it gets then, buddy. <> The Ladies' Militia Corporal was right. This //is// as probation as it gets. You look around, the lilac and sky blue walls of the small probation capsule seeming to mock you in their pleasantry. It's all been a little too __pleasant__. <> Well buddy-man, let's get you locked right in, build that future 🌄 <> You distinctly remember snapping at the bastard, attracting the attention and advance (towards you) of their sergeant, her baton snapping open, in response to your aggression. But it's true. Your name //isn't// "buddy man". It's.... <<textbox "$namef" "Forename / Prénom">> \ <<button "and don't forget it!">> <<set $namef to $namef.trim()>> <<if $namef is "Forename / Prénom">> <<replace "#name-error">>Please enter your (character's) "first name"!<</replace>> <<else>> <<goto "0A - ii">> <</if>> <</button>>    \

<<textbox "$namel" "Surname / Matronyme">> \ <<button "Damn right that's my fuckin name!">> <<set $namel to $namel.trim()>> <<if $namel is "Surname / Matronyme">> <<replace "#name-error">>Please enter your (character's) "mother's maiden name"!<</replace>> <<else>> <<goto "0A - iii">> <</if>> <</button>>    \

So here you are. The great $namef $namel , locked up in //real// probation. Still coming down off HU-210 and MXE, still happy to not be pants down, shaking like a leaf, spinning in circles, exploding onto the sides of the capsule. Definitely happy to not be a fentaphenist. But still coming down. Still feeling like shit. Still bored as all hell. Still missing Melba and Haylie from the VR/AR club. Still missing Avalinne and Ethelinda from the holographic dance club, too. Missing everything, and everyone. Missing it all. And wouldn't you believe it, ''bored''. You jump, at the sudden noise coming from a speaker on one end of the capsule, and light, coming from a screen, on the other. It's the waving flag of the Ladies' Renaissance, violet with a large green triple moon in the center. This fades into a panoramic shot of all of the Ladies' Renaissance national flags, lined up quite proudly, at some monument in Vancouver. Violet banners with moderately sized triple moons in the upper left, national colors in lines along the bottom. You roll your eyes, as the camera pans past each. The gentle cooing of the international party congress' most recent version of their global anthem plays in the background of this overly ideological display, as the video image cuts to show a multi-ethnic group of party officials taking turns singing each stanza. It goes on and on, and although they're all quite pretty, and they //do// come off nice enough, it's still just a party anthem. Does anybody just sit around listening to this stuff? <<linkreplace "Do they?" t8n>> Well, you're just sitting around listening to it. So there's that. Probably the party boys. Femboys have their own music, and wouldn't you know it, it's all the exact same "patriarchally influenced arrogance" that gets you and your friends' house parties and shows pepper gassed. But the party girls like the way //they// dance to it... <> It's a wonderful time to worship our goddess, my dearest probationary 😘 <> Her face radiates joy, but her statement, while reminding you of the concept of time, gives you exactly zero information as to what time it actually is. You shiver, with the remembered understanding of the simple fact that you're probably not going to know what time it is for a little while. [[Don't think about it|0A - iv]] <</linkreplace>>

What else is there to focus on? Well, there's the lady on the screen. She looks like a party member, if a young one. She's wearing the dark violet beret of the regular infantry, but that's common among young party member ladies. Her dark blonde hair, plaited into twin braids, gives her blue eyes a rather concerning vibe. But then she smiles again, and your concerns drift off into the distance, being replaced by much more obvious issues. You're still stuck here. <> Today is the first day of your rehabilitation, so welcome 😌 <> You can't quite bring yourself to return her bright and loving smile, but you blink quite acceptingly. The reflective stripe on the pant leg of your rehabilitation center uniform dazzles you slightly, and your gaze shifts down, towards it. <> So there's a small button beneath your communication screen, what I'm speaking to you with, now. <> You look underneath the screen. There is, in fact, a button there. <> Press it! <> [[Push the Button|0A - v]] <<linkreplace "Stare at her with an unimpressed look" t8n>> <<set $disobeyed = 1>> You blink and raise your eyebrows. She begins to turn bright pink. You squint. She squints back. She raises //her// eyebrows, and with great flourish, presses a key on a mechanical keyboard that must be sitting beside her, out of your view. You begin to hear a soft hissing coming from the wall, and see four distortions in the air flowing from each corner of the capsule. <> Have a good rest, my beloved... Maybe tomorrow, you'll be more interested in compliance with the will of your goddess' representatives 😘 <> You begin to drift away, your vision blurring to make the party member on the screen look angelic, with violet and pink sparkles seeming to dance about her eyes. She suddenly seems a lot nicer than before, and so do you. <> Would you like to make the right choices, dear probationary? <> <</linkreplace>>

<<if $disobeyed == 1>> Nothing happens, but you don't care. You feel yourself start to not care about much. All the while, the only person that you've seen for at least a little bit is still just sitting there, smiling at you. You slowly tilt your head to the side, and begin to smell cotton candy. The distortions are still flowing from the corners of the capsule, and you feel a warmth begin to creep up your feet, to your ankles, legs, torso, and shoulders. It hits you, but you don't care. The gentle blanket of fentaphen makes you just curl up in a little ball, and smile into the screen. A smile is the last thing you see of the blonde haired infantry girl, before falling fast asleep. <<linkreplace "Wake Up" t8n>> <<set $disobeyed == 0>> Your eyes slowly flutter their happy way open, and you find yourself, still strangely content, still in the capsule. Your clothing feels fresher in some way, but you don't spend any time at all thinking about that, or what it might mean. Your head is faced towards the screen, which is dimly playing some type of news coverage. The camera pans across footage of some mountain range with black smoke plumes above. A rather slight femboy wearing a too-large helmet and body armor marked "PRESSE" hugs a microphone to their chest, as stretchers filled with wounded men are carted past. The coverage cuts to an older woman in downtown Montreal, screaming through sobs that her son, injured in an insurgent mortar strike, would need new lungs, and a kidney as well. A brief discussion segment begins, filmed in a doctors office. A pair of ladies wearing beige lab coats, speak on the extreme expense of cyberized organs, and the need for the revolution to provide these important lifesaving measures to their heroes. The ladies look so in control of things, the embroidered violet triple moon patches shimmering on their lapels, as they discuss this vitally important issue. You can barely even process what they're saying, before the focus shifts to an informational graphic image, detailing the average cost, in Swiss Francs, of an average man's organs, listed quite extensively. The image zooms out, to show an average looking femboy to the man's right, their average stewardship contract cost listed in Francs, and the CLRP's average contracting tax listed below. The comparison is actually a little interesting to your hazy mind. You process that somehow, the femboy is making the government just as much money being trained and sold to ladies overseas, as this hypothetical organ-doning man would. Fun. The screen once again shows the crying old woman. This time, she's shaking her fist in the air, and bellowing about how "punk rocking hipsters", with their "cowardly ways" have dishonored her son's sacrifice, and that they should be chopped up and used for organs. You can't help but laugh, as you recognize yourself flipping off the camera, in the B-roll footage. You smell cotton candy again, and look up, and to the right. Another distortion in the air, this time, it's only one. You drift off, the screen shifting now, to a music video of ladies in multicolored dresses dancing in a circle, in some meadow. <</linkreplace>> <<else>> You quickly push the button, to the clear surprise of the light infantrywoman on the screen. She chuckles, and makes some facial expression towards a person at her left. <> You complied! Hey, good for you.... Making those positive lifestyle choices already! <> You finally manage to return her smile. It's strained, and it's probably a little on the pathetic side, but it's something resembling a smile. She responds with something between a sigh, and sad, low, laughter. <> You might actually get out of this.... <> <> Well.... Now that you've shown some degree of compliance with the party's representatives..... Hey, it's time to start actually rehabilitating you 👍 <> The woman on the screen stands and disappears to her right for a moment, and you can hear a file cabenet opening, and then closing. You feel a chill, as you wonder who it was, exactly, who creased and starched her uniform skirt to such a degree. Whoever it was, they'd taken it very seriously. She returns quickly enough, giggling and shaking her braids from side to side, as she slots a thin, flexible, plastic memory card into its reader. She bounces up and down, grinning in a way that almost concerns you, before tapping out a quick key combination on a console beside her. [[...|0B - i]] <</if>>

At the last keypress, the infantrywoman disappears, and is replaced by another woman, this time, wearing bright yellow robes. Her dark brown hair is //very// long, and cascades over her shoulders, small plaited braids hosting even smaller crystals, interspersed through her otherwise straight hair, all the way down to her waist. As she smiles into the sunshine, she begins singing, towards a window. She stands, her robes flowing out beneath her, as she makes her way across the room that she's in. It's decorated in a rather baroque style, to match the accompanying music, played on a harp, by another lady, also wearing yellow robes. They harmonize together for a moment, the warm lighting and soft smiles almost making you forget that you're watching Renaissance Party propaganda. Their song is about Lady Artemis, and the way that she heals and protects her little ones, who seem to be coded generally male. Her healing is described vaguely, and with quite floral terminology. She's likened to a mother bear, with the men of the world, being her fluffy little cubs. It's all presented quite nicely. The dark haired woman returns to her seat after speaking, a rainbow shimmering from the window, across her entire body, below her neckline. She looks quite resolutely into the camera, and begins her speech. <> Our nations, and our movement, are dependent upon their beloveds. Our brothers. Our cousins, our sons, and eventually, the fathers of our new society. Our men. You, dear brother, are //the// most beloved of our men. <> She gets a far-away look in her eyes, and you notice the rainbows start to shift and swirl, almost as if the crystal forming them had been spun, somehow. <> The wayward boy, lost in the depths of patriarchal anguish, //yearning// for his goddess... <> You think back to Ethelinda. She would always end her stage dances with a large flourish of holographic glitter, rainbow sheen exploding through the entire club with a flash, brighter than anything you'd ever seen. As your eyes refocused, blindness fading as the darkness retuned, your fellow patrons stumbled around, grasping at the sleetlike fragments of reflected light. <> You, my dear probationary, //you// are the greatest of our movement's beloveds. <> <<linkreplace "Try to smile?" t8n>> The woman moves back to the window, and the camera pans to show a small end table, nicely placed in the light. There's a brown envelope on the table, and the woman gently sighs, running her finger over it, before opening it, and sitting down in the chair. Her companion begins lightly strumming the harp once more, and the viewpoint from the camera shifts to one highlighting the contents of the folder itself. <> Today, we will learn of a young brother, much like yourselves in his nature, but //unlike// yourselves, this poor and oppressed child of Our Dear Goddess Artemis was denied the care and adoration that you currently enjoy. <> The harp player's song begins to take a more mournful tone, as the dark haired woman's fingers play over a small picture, paperclipped into the dossier. Your heart sinks, as you recognize yourself, crouching low on your skateboard, as you flew down the streets of Toronto. The camera's view blurs, as it zooms into the file photo. <> This dear soul, //if// he is recovered alive, will require more intensive and extreme rehabilitation methods. His crimes are more severe, and his consistent escapes make him wholly unsuitable to our party's standard emotional healthcare rehabilitation program. The program which you now enjoy, dear probationary. Relax into the arms of your rehabilitation counselor! Remember that no matter what you feel that you've done, you've //certainly// not displeased your goddess to ''this'' extent. <> [[...|0B - ii]] <</linkreplace>>

What follows is a 44 minute summary of each of your many, many, crimes, or at least the ones that they'd managed to photograph somehow, or otherwise document. About 20 minutes were devoted simply to extolling the grand virtue of the Social Credit Stores System, Canada's next great leap, under its proud new leadership. Once they finished patting themselves squarely on the backs, they moved onto doing the opposite, with you. Quite a few elements of your career had been left out, and you're not quite sure whether that was or was not, for the best. The core element of the piece, quite well shot, with a re-enactor who really //did// manage to capture your essence, revolves around the so called "cyber-hacking" that you'd taken part in, which, from your end, amounted to purchasing pieces of paper from some girl at the lottery arcade, and then walking them over to the stores office. You'd take the package, and walk it back over to the girl. Eventually, you'd started skateboarding, because it was faster. //Then// the topless party girls started chasing you with sticks. Before you know it, the most entertaining and interesting elements of your career have been breezed through, and some old lady, apparently one that you'd stolen a requisition from, is on the screen. She's very irate, but almost seems to find it all hilarious, in a strange way. She suggests that in the past, meaning in Hellenic culture, people like you would be whipped with a whip made from bear's claws, onto a statue of Artemis. She laughs heartily, as the documentary's producer assures her that this is exactly what will be done. The screen fades into a montage of ladies wearing long, flowing, dresses, all different hues of yellow. They're dancing in some meadow. <<linkreplace "Wait" t8n>> The screen pans over a green, lush, field. Bunnies hop playfully among the clovers, birds chirp, and the camera stops its panning on a well carved, marble statue of Artemis, quite garishly painted, in bright pastels. She's even got eye shadow. The day is bright and airy, and you wonder where this is all going. The two presenters, in their yellow robes, with slightly longer hair than when you'd last seen them, saunter into frame, flanking the statue. The two women begin singing again, and the door to your pod opens. [[Who's there?|0C - i]] <</linkreplace>>

At least there's some continuity. The light infantrywoman smiles here in full 4D, reaching out to grab your arm, and gently tug you out of the pod. There's a baton on her hip that tells you not to fight, and a rectangular pepperball marker tucked into her boot, which convinces you, further. <> Here we goooooo 🎶 <> She walks the two of you down a hallway, with one hand holding yours, and the other, over your eyes. Her strong, stout, chest is pressed into your back a bit, as the two of you walk down the linoleum flooring together. Soon enough, you hear buttons being pressed, locks being released, and the lighting suddenly seems to feel a lot less artificial. The air is crisp and very clean. It smells nice, wildflower nectars on the breeze. The warm hands of the light infantrywoman slide away, revealing two more women, the ones from the video. They're still flanking the garishly painted Artemis statue, but this time they're carrying whips. At the ends of each of the dark violet leather braids, is a large, petrified and sharpened, claw. Presumably, and given all of the many, many, context clues, this is the claw of some ancient bear. Dug up by the party someplace, and woven into whips, for marking those in need of //a different// faith guidance routine. <> You made it here without having to eat a baton. At least not from me. Take the faith guidance... <> With that, she spins you to face her, your back perpendicular to the statue's chest. So //this// is Faith Guidance. The infantrywoman grabs both your arms, and in a surprisingly gentle, if sudden, motion, lifts her leg, and presses her foot into your chest. [[Be Guided|0C - ii]]

When you open your eyes, there's nothing but blur, then warmth. You remember blue eyes, narrowing into a smile. Heat from your back, warmth on your hands, easing forward and back, collapsing into an unyielding force, screaming and crying, and holding onto the only thing holding you up. A flash of recognition hits you along with another wave of sharp heat. Your head jerks, and the tears, for a brief moment, sail through the air. Blood, //your// blood, has been whipped all over pretty much everything. The light infantrywoman smiles gravely at you, her face and chest covered in red. The two women scream exhortations to Artemis, swinging the whips above their heads in some dance. Again and again, the sharp heat returns. [[Collapse towards the Light Infantrywoman|1A - i]] [[Collapse towards the Statue of Artemis|2A - i]]

You wake up on your belly, this time on a bed. The walls of the room are lilac and sky-blue, and the first thing that you notice, is what you //don't// notice. There's no pain, but more than that, the crawling withdrawal is gone, too. You shiver, as you hear a book close, behind you. A voice speaks, but you can't turn to face it. It's recognizable, at least. <> //We// scared the absolute ''shit'' out of those probationaries! Do you know how much we'd pumped you up to them? And then you cried and wept like a perfect little angel for us! For ''Artemis''! A wonderful little cub, you are 😏 <> You feel an urge to wince, as she ruffles your hair, and pinches your cheeks. Your body, however, is far too exhausted. Or drugged. You just sit there, and she closes her argument with a few short strokes at your lower back. <> Either way, you'll have plenty of opportunities to enjoy the more important, for you at least, element of this entire experience. Your //fan mail//. Otherwise known as stewardship contract requests.... <> She chuckles nervously, paging through printed sheets, in a slightly thick looking file-folder. <> It should only take a week or so for the lotions and castings to turn that back of yours into //my masterpiece// 🤯 <>

You wake up on your belly, this time on a bed. The walls of the room are lilac and sky-blue, and the first thing that you notice, is what you //don't// notice. There's no pain, but more than that, the crawling withdrawal is gone, too. You shiver, as you hear a book close, behind you. A voice speaks, but you can't turn to face it. It's recognizable, at least. <> The two priestesses said you'd done a good job. I know it probably feels a little off right now, with all the castings and lotions, and you probably can't really move that much just from the drugs too... But I think you're used to most of those, right? <> As the light infantrywoman passes in front of you, she blows a bit of vape into your face. You somehow manage to relax even more, sinking into the bed, as she continues to speak in your direction. <> You'll have about a week to heal up and start making decisions, if you want to be released to personal custody. It's my suggestion, honestly. Your video was great, and it got you a couple fans 😉 You should ride this train to the end, you'll eat a hell of a lot better than I do 🥲 <>