Heist or Farce

"Go ahead and make yourself at home, I don't mind."

Alipheese, without even asking, had basically moved in. She had requested to come home with me to begin training me how to utilize my power to its fullest despite the fact that I'd assume I could do almost nothing with it. My assumptions were right, of course, but "almost nothing", as she pointed out, isn't the same as nothing. She demonstrated first by not even letting me get my key out before she'd unlocked my door using her own magic.

She walked in, and despite the fact that I'd just treated her to lunch at the mall, started rummaging through my refrigerator. She grabbed some bologna and started munching on the slices, not even bothering with bread. Was she going to be like Alice? If so, I now had an ancestor to blame for my gold depleting so quickly when I'd first journeyed with Alice.

"We start working tomorrow morning," she announced. "Half the day training you, half the day going over and rehearsing my plan. If you're a quick study, we can hope on a flight by Friday."

"And… where will you be staying?" I asked.

"Why, right here, of course!" Alipheese said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "My lease at my place in Chicago was up a month ago. Been living out of cheap motels since then. You got anything to drink around here?"

"Soda's in the fridge," I said.

"No, idiot, something to DRINK," she clarified.

"I don't drink alcohol," I said. "And please don't tell me you're going to try to smoke in my place."

"Of course you don't drink," she said with disgust. "I don't smoke, don't worry. I'm trying to live forever, you know. But sometimes I need a little drink to take the edge off. It hasn't been easy these last five years."

"Tell me about it."

"We're going to be spending a lot of quality time together over the next few days, hon," she said. "I'll tell you all about it. I know that even you have a sliver of a dark side that will enjoy hearing all about my troubles adjusting."

"I might surprise you," I said. "Then again, I might not."

"And I might sneak into your bed tonight," she warned. "or not. Don't forget who you're talking to. I created monsters. You still smell delicious."

"You're not strong enough here to force yourself on me," I countered.

"No, but I'm hot enough and I know you've been lonely long enough that as soon as you feel my body against yours you won't be able to say no. Your face is the kind of lonely that says you haven't even had a date with your hand in five years."

"I'm sure you haven't had any problems," I shot back.

"Men are the same in any universe," she laughed. "But seriously, if you're still holding the torch for your lost love that much, I won't take advantage of you. I was just flirting, since I'm sure you haven't even gotten that much in awhile. You need to get used to being desired again. You'll get more than you can handle of that where you're going."

I didn't admit it, but she was right. I probably had been flirted with a few times, in fact I suspected it but never acted on it. Part of the reason was that I'd become so used to the extremely direct and explicit advances of monster girls that I'd lost my radar for that sort of thing.

She sat down on my couch and pulled my remote out of the cushion. I guess I had the world's most awkward roommate for a few days.

I'd thought she had a really complex plan, being a goddess and all, but if she did, she wasn't sharing much of it with me. There were things I needed to know and apparently a whole lot that I didn't need to know. I knew that I was possibly being played for a sucker, but she was my only chance to get back to Alice.

"You play D&D, right?" she asked me. "You look like the kinda guy who plays D&D."

"Not sure what that means, but sure, although I haven't played since I was twelve."

"Think back to 1st level spells," she instructed. "Doesn' t matter what class. Given the amount of power you have, you could probably pull off most of those, even on this world. But the one I'm most interested in you learning is putting people to sleep. It's easy. Just touch your adversary on the forehead and will them to fall asleep. Couldn't be easier, even here. You never did that when you were with Alice?"

"No," I answered. "She didn't teach me much, and Gabriella never got around to showing me any mind tricks."

"Those are my specialty," she chuckled. "Just like they are for your wife. They would have been the first thing I'd tried on you if Ilias hadn't protected your mind. For our purposes, I just want you to make people go to sleep. I'm pretty sure you know why that would be useful for this caper."

"Couldn't you do that?" I asked.

"I could," she confirmed. "But I've got better tricks than that. Not that I need to most of the time, but I can talk men into just about anything. If their lust isn't enough, I charm 'em. I'm betting that seducing guards at a secret facility won't work, so I'll charm whoever I can and you'll put to sleep anyone I can't."

"Do you have any intelligence on the facility?" I asked.

"None whatsoever," she said with a confident tone that dismissed the question as if it didn't matter. "That's a discussion for later. Right now I'm trying to make you useful."

She had me put my fingers on her head and try to put her to sleep. Her mind was strong, so I couldn't really do it, but after a few dozen tries, she expressed satisfaction that I had the idea. I hadn't felt anything. I just willed her to go to sleep and she didn't even get drowsy. Unless I wanted to test it on one of my neighbors, I had to take her word for it that I had it down pat.

She also taught me how to make people drop weapons. It wasn't anything so dramatic as levitating it out of their hands, something which I was confident I could do on Alice's world even though I'd never tried it. It was more just imagining them being clumsy. If I did it right, she told me, they'd trip over themselves. It was really starting to sound like this might actually be possible.

Over the next few days, she made me practice those little tricks and several more. I had to admit she was an excellent teacher. Gabriella had often been too focused on theory. Alipheese simply kept it simple, taking advantage of the fact that my power could allow me to do what I wanted for the most part, if only I could envision it. At least on Alice's world. On my world, I could only do the tiniest, most subtle things. She had been right about tiny little things being incredibly useful. I didn't need to be able to blast people, or blow down doors. I should have been thinking this way about magic from the beginning.

The plan was simple. Despite her promises, she had none, or at least if she did, she wasn't sharing. We'd go there, we'd break them out. If things got hairy, we'd flee. I could see many ways of this ending with us in prison cells. But I'd come to love monsters, and if there were monsters being kept prisoner, they deserved to be free. We weren't doing anything wrong. They had no right to hold them. I was the husband of the Monster Lord. They were my responsibility.

Since it was a planned departure, for the first time I actually bothered to pack. I knew I would never be returning no matter what the outcome. During my year of paradise living in Alice's castle, I'd brought most of my electronic toys with me, as well as memories of my childhood. Those would still be at the castle, unlikely to have been discarded. The electronics, however, would probably be useless after all the time that must have passed there, so I packed an Ipod and a tablet. Electricity existed in that world even before I'd arrived, although it wasn't in widespread use. In addition, magic could be used to charge devices. In theory, I'd be able to do it myself in a pinch, but that wasn't the optimal solution, since I'd be as likely to blow my devices apart as charge them. I figured that 30K songs and almost as many books, along with two thousand movies, and complete seasons of dozens of TV shows, would give me plenty of entertainment, enough for a lifetime should I never make it home. I marveled at how carrying all that around with me took up so little space. I also packed several pairs of pants, because that's the kind of thing you tend to lose a lot of when you're visiting worlds that have monster girls.

Almost as important as pants, was gold. I took a few thousand out of my bank account and bought jewelry with it that I could barter for gold coins wherever I ended up. I feared that if I was to cross endless worlds that it wouldn't even be close to enough. In that event, I might have to sell my electronics, which I assumed would be worth quite a lot, especially to someone who could keep them charged. If many of these worlds were the same except for one little thing, it was safe to assume that electricity would be available in some places on most of these alternate worlds. And thus the electronics would be worth a fortune. Realizing that, I threw my cell phone into the backpack as well. Its primary function would definitely not work, but at least it was a little tablet that could do neat things that would be amazing beyond belief to most people living on these other worlds. Yep, I'd definitely sell the cell phone first. Ipod would be last. Gotta have my tunes.

The flight to Japan was the longest I'd ever taken. I wasn't good at sleeping on planes, so I was exhausted by the time we arrived. Alipheese had slept like a baby when she wasn't laughing uproariously at the in flight films. Of course, I paid for the tickets, first class.

At least she had taken care of the details of getting me into the country. She would also be my translator, having learned Japanese from spending so much time there. She'd learned about fifteen other languages as well. As was true of everyone else from that world, she couldn't understand why there were so many different human languages. I'd always been more interested in how English had gotten to her world, millennia before Yamatai. Not only did no one know, they were all quite uncurious about it. I'd have to remember to ask Promestein what she thought if I ever saw her again. She wouldn't just handwave away questions like that.

The secret site was just outside of a small town called Yoshitomi. We stayed in a small hotel for the day. She pointed out that it was good that I was so tired. That way, I'd wake up around nightfall, which was the best time to try to infiltrate the site. I didn't share her confidence. I knew nothing about any of this and I knew she didn't either. I thought that she must be overconfident in her abilities. In theory, we could open anything and take care of any human opposition within reason. In practice, I was sure there were things we weren't taking into account, not to mention Murphy's Law. When I mentioned Murphy's Law to her, she said that she'd never heard of it.

I won't bore you with the details of how we approached the site(we walked, it was about eight miles from our hotel), but I must say something about the site itself. Looking at it, I began to doubt Alipheese's sanity. It didn't look like a secret site at all. I'd seen post offices that looked more intimidating. There was no fence. There wasn't even a guard shack for people driving in. It was obviously a government facility, the sign made that obvious even though I couldn't read Japanese. It just seemed more likely to be a Drivers License Office than a place to secure aliens. I asked her if she was sure this was the place.

"It's probably the place," she said. "This is my first time coming here. My source said he used to be a guard here."

"How long ago?" I asked.

"Oh, twenty years ago," she said.

I thought of explaining to her how likely it was that the monster girls had been moved since then, but decided to just trust her judgment. If the place was basically a post office, it probably wouldn't even be guarded, We'd look around, find nothing, and call it a night. Alipheese could come back to me when she had something real.

We simply walked up to the front door. She placed her finger on it and the lock clicked open. A security alarm that one would find in an average residence started to beep. She went over to the panel and touched it. It switched to disarmed. While that wouldn't set off an alarm, I knew that someone, somewhere, was being notified that someone had turned off the alarm.

She seemed to know where she wanted to go. We went to an elevator. It opened right up for us. Stepping inside, I noticed that there were five floors. We were on the lowest. I asked her which floor she wanted to try.

"Oh, honey," she replied. "It's not gonna be one you can reach with the push of a button. "

She noted the card reader on the side of the panel. She touched it and we started descending. She was doing more than just unlocking locks! The elevator reached bottom and we exited. NOW it looked like a secret facility. In contrast to the darkness of the entrance, this floor was well lit. There were security cameras everywhere. I realized that I had failed to look for them on the first floor or in the elevator. Alipheese was unconcerned, doing something with her hands and walking down the hallway as if she belonged there. I'd told her when I brought her here five years ago that she was just an ordinary human now. I learned that I had not been completely accurate. I should have remembered. After all, hadn't Ilias put the mind block on me while I was still in my own world? She may no longer have been a goddess, but she was still more than human.

We turned the corner and ran into our first guard. He started in surprise and reached for his sidearm. I tried to rush at him to put him to sleep. I needn't have bothered. He shook his head and walked right past us, as if he'd just seen something and then realized that nothing was there.

"Toldja I was good," she said smugly.

"Why am I even here?" I asked.

"You'll see," she replied. "Trust me."

We walked down more hallways, and encountered more solitary security guards, all of whom noticed us and then… no longer did. Finally, we reached another elevator. She opened the doors and beckoned me inside, then reached inside and touched the card reader. She didn't enter herself.

"What are you doing?" I whispered.

"My tricks won't fool them forever," she said in a normal volume. "I needed a second pair of eyes to get this done quick. You'll go down to the next level while I finish exploring this one. If you find my children, just shout. In your mind."

"Shout in my mind?" I asked skeptically. "How would I even do that?"

"You'll figure it out," she said as the elevator doors closed.

Great, I thought. With my luck, I'll encounter someone as soon as the doors open. My luck was worse. I encountered five someones when the doors opened, all pointing sidearms at me. I put my hands up. They roughly pulled me out of the elevator.

It took about fifteen minutes for them to put someone in front of me who spoke English. I hadn't even been handcuffed, just marched into a room and forced to sit down in a chair. The English speaking person, who I assumed was an authority figure since he was alone with me in the room, while I'm uncuffed, mind you, started off with the obvious question.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm looking for some monster girls," I said. Why not just go with the truth?

"I figured as much," he said mildly. "now tell me how you knew to come here looking for them."

That one I couldn't answer truthfully, nor could I think of a good answer. "Uh….." I said lamely.

"Are you alone?" he asked next.

"Yes," I said. I'm a terrible liar. He didn't buy it for a second.

"You're a terrible liar," he said, repeating my own thought. "Where are your friends? Are you another one of those fans of that game? If you tell us where your friends are, we'll go easy on you. You'll just get a trespassing charge. If you don't cooperate, it will go hard for you. It's a felony to trespass on government property. We can hold you for up to 72 hours, right here in this facility."

Thank goodness this wasn't North Korea. I was pretty sure he'd admitted there were monster girls here, which surprised me. Then again, maybe he hadn't. At least it didn't sound like they were going to make me disappear. I felt like an idiot, not exactly a new feeling for me. I was beginning to suspect that I'd been a decoy, a distraction, so that Alipheese could move around more freely. My suspicions were partly confirmed when a klaxon began to sound.

"It looks like your friends might be causing some trouble," the official said blandly. Were college kids breaking in to this place regularly or something?

The man opened the door and looked outside, into the hallway, where he was promptly pounced on by a blur of fur and claws and disappeared from my sight. I shot out of my seat and ran out into the hallway, where I found the monster girl on top of the man…. Sucking on his nipples as he writhed in pleasure. Two guards came around the corner and pointed their sidearms at the monster girl. I placed myself between the guns and her.

"Don't shoot!" I shouted. "She's not hurting him!"

I don't think they understood me, as they shouted back at me in Japanese. I didn't need to understand the language to interpret the body language. They were ordering me to move aside. I did so, just as they were jumped from behind by what I identified as a one-tailed kitsune.

"No killing!" I shouted, assuming the monster girls spoke English. The kitsune looked up, having quickly disarmed both guards, who cowered in terror, seemingly helpless.

"Are you here to rescue us?" the cute little fox girl asked. "Don't worry, no one's killing anyone. These boys aren't so bad. We're only doing as much as we have to to get out of here!"

"They deserve worse," Alipheese grumbled, striding down the hall with two more fox girls flanking her, each with two tails. "Holding my children prisoner. If I had my full power I'd strike them all dead where they stand!"

"They're just kids with a job!" I argued. "In any case, we're wasting time! We gotta go!"

Everywhere we went, monster girls were chasing guards, most of whom were running rather than shooting. I hadn't heard a single shot fired. The main reason seemed to be that the guards, mostly young men, weren't willing to shoot. I saw at least three cases in the melee where a guard pulled a weapon with plenty of time to fire, while a kitsune, a rat girl, or a rabbit girl merrily leaped at him, laughing. Most of the monster girls settled for disarming the guards and moving on. Some, as in the case of the unidentified monster girl who had tackled my interrogator, were having some fun, a quick meal before they hit the road.

I spotted one man completely naked, at the mercy of a rabbit girl, licking him all over and rubbing him with her furry body.

"No rape, either!" I shouted. "It's wrong and we don't have time!"

I realized how silly it was trying to tell monster girls who had never lived in the world I had tried to create that rape was wrong. My argument about time seemed to convince her, however, as she bounced down the hall after me, the guard she had been pleasuring giving chase. As I said, I don't speak Japanese, but it sure sounded like he was pleading with her to come back and do more of what she had been doing.

It was utter chaos. I couldn't be sure how many monster girls had been here. Alipheese had unlocked all their cells at once, causing an immediate prison riot of the most adorable kind. They all seemed to be small, mammalian monsters. They were jumping and scampering around so quickly I couldn't count them.

We all piled into an elevator. I hoped this was everyone. I counted ten monster girls of various types. Although they didn't have their natural magic here, I was long out of practice at enduring them, so being scrunched among a group of furry monsters after not having had sex for five years was extremely distracting. I almost prayed for the elevator to stop. I'd even assumed it might, since it would be the easiest way to trap us. It did not, however, and we emerged on the ground floor of the darkened building. In a flash, we exited. Alipheese touched the control panel of the elevator and it powered down. That would definitely delay any pursuit.

Our group ran, following Alipheese, who was the slowest among us but seemed to know where she wanted to go. The monster girls kept looking back, checking for pursuit, prepared to run at full speed, which was considerable, should recapture be imminent.

We stopped in a field a few hundred yards from the facility. I was annoyed to see that I was breathing hard. I shouldn't have felt so bad, even the monster girls seemed a bit winded. No wonder, they probably hadn't had decent exercise in decades! There was still no evidence of pursuit.

"Did you plan to leave me in there?!" I gasped. "Was I just a distraction?! I never did anything in there! All that stuff you taught me, I never even got to use any of it!"

"That's your own fault!" Alipheese chuckled. "Yes, I used you as a distraction. You're many things, hon, but subtle isn't one of them. I knew you'd get caught no matter what I did. I wasn't going to leave you behind, so don't give me that look. It's not our way to betray those who help us. We take our debts seriously. And now, my dear boy, you are surrounded by ten very grateful monster girls."

I knew that look I was getting from the ten monster girls. It was the 'you're the most delicious thing I've ever seen' look, thankfully in a good way. Monster girls didn't kill people while thanking them, although accidents can and did happen. I knew that wasn't going to happen right in this field, so I settled for being both creeped out and nostalgic.

"So what now?" I asked, recovering my breath.

"Now, we go far away, where no one can follow," Alipheese said. "Last chance to back out, kiddo. This is a one way trip. I have no idea how to get back. You sure you want this?"

"I do," I said. "More than I've ever wanted anything in the world."

"Suit yourself," she shrugged, and began waving her arms.

With no transition whatsoever, we were in Japan and then we weren't. I looked around. The site that greeted me was a small village, very similar to Ilias Village. The feeling of nostalgia hit me once again. This wasn't home, but I had started to think of that world as more home than the place of my birth. It was peaceful, people walking around, going about their daily lives, exchanging greetings and smiles. What was even more incredible was that no one seemed alarmed that ten monster girls and two human(human-looking, in Alipheese's case) people had just popped into their village.

"So here we are!" Alipheese said, looking very satisfied with herself. "My little piece of paradise! Could be yours, too."

Indeed, it was lovely. I quickly deduced the reason behind the villagers' lack of alarm. Monster girls were everywhere, mingling with humans, often arm in arm with a human male and laughing. This would not be a strange site in the world I so much wanted to return to, but before I'd helped change that world, such a site in a small village would have been unthinkable. It would be so easy to just make a new life here. If there was nothing sinister under the surface, as there had been in other places I'd been that at first had appeared to be like this on Alice's world, it was basically my dream world. Except for the fact that my Alice wasn't here.

"This place is about as close to utopia as you'll find in the multiverse," Alipheese explained. "You listen up too, children, because this is important. I've brought you to a home that will be paradise for you. You can live here among the humans, or you can live in the forests. But there's a catch: you can't attack humans. Be kind to them, don't feed off of any human who isn't willing, and you'll do fine here."

I knew that it wouldn't be much of a problem for these particular monster girls. They were all from species that didn't normally attack males with intent to do serious harm. They would just need to learn to ask before ripping anyone's clothes off.

"There isn't even a Monster Lord here," Alipheese said. "Ain't that somethin'? They never needed one. Here, my counterpart Dark God and Ilias were dear sisters. They didn't repel each other. They worked together to make a peaceful world in which monsters and humans coexisted from the very start. It's not quite a utopia. I'm afraid even among trillions of worlds there's no such thing. Not that I know for sure, but I've been around a long time, and took a few peeks around, trying to find a place to settle. People…. Things can never be completely perfect. They have to mess things up. I guess on some level I was no different. But I like this world. It's just flawed enough that I think they might be able to keep what they've got. And unlike the world you want to go to, it's been like this for twenty thousand years."

"I'd argue that proves me right," I said. "the conflict on the surface was just a proxy war between you and ilias. This is the result of you two not hating each other. Assuming you're staying here, that leaves Alice's world with no gods. Maybe they have a chance."

"Just because I admitted I was wrong doesn't mean you know everything now, kid," she warned me. "but you may have something there. I learned a lot as a mortal. Did you know I got into religion?"

"You?!" I asked, shocked.

"I always thought of myself as a god, because I was the most powerful being that I knew. I even dabbled in creation. But maybe there's something bigger than all of us. Maybe someone created all these worlds. Maybe that person your people just call God did all this. Wouldn't that be something? Aw, I don't know. I just found the whole idea intriguing. I'll tell you what though, if there is a God, above even me and Ilias… that guy's watching out for you. Maybe you will get home. Maybe I'll even pray to him for you."

"You really have changed," I said. "It almost makes what I sacrificed worth it."

"No it doesn't," she laughed ruefully. "That's why I'm not gonna leave this completely to chance, or gods that may or may not exist. Stick around a couple of days. I thought up a spell that might give you a little hand in your search. I couldn't get started on it until I had full powers again, so give me a couple of days. Maybe you'll change your mind and stay here. If not, at least maybe that can be one way I make up for all the pain I caused you."

"I think I would like to stay here a couple of days," I said. "As much as I want to get started, if you've got a way to make my success more likely, it sounds well worth waiting a little longer for. Besides, I'm out of shape and out of practice. I'm sure I'll be running for my life before too long."

"You're also going to be getting raped a lot," she pointed out. "That world you created? It's not going to be the norm. Your tasty ass is going to be jumping from dimension to dimension, most with monster girls eager to get a piece of it. Even with my help, you'll probably be spending the rest of your life running from predators, until you're old and can't run fast enough anymore. Take my advice, kid. At some point, pick a good one, one with an Alice, or even another monster who loves you, and settle down. I'd hate to imagine you an old man, forlornly searching this vast multiverse for your true love."

"To be honest," I said. "I don't know what I'll do if the search seems endless. I can only hope that someone is out there watching over me."

"Well, kid," she said. "I'll try to give you a better shot. It'll be one in a million instead of one in a billion, but it's a shot. See ya in a couple of days."

"Before you go," I said. "If there's a Dark God already here, why is she tolerating your presence?"

"Easy," Alipheese laughed. "They've just been two gods for millions of years. They love the idea of another friend. Even the gods here are too trusting! But don't worry, I'm not gonna upset this applecart. Besides, if things do go bad, those two naïve goddesses are gonna need someone whose seen things."

Indeed, the next two days were amazing and a bit of a revelation. I'd assumed that coexistence meant that horny monster girls accosted males for semen constantly. That's not how it worked at all. This place, having been mostly idyllic for thousands of years, had interactions that just seemed so… normal. Monster girls didn't randomly request semen from men. In fact, the dating scene seemed like anything you'd see on Earth. There were of course the usual random hookups, but for the most part monster girls wanted to go steady just like most humans did. I wasn't asked to feed anyone even once. Everyone was unfailingly polite. No world is perfect, of course. The most common crimes were still rape, mostly monster girls raping humans. Some monster girls could be possessive as well. There were murderers in the prisons as well, most having committed murder out of jealousy. Nothing worse than one would see on Earth, however. This version of Ilias Village could have been a small town in America. Not utopia, but… pleasant. Safe.

In hindsight, I needed this. As anxious as I was to get started, I needed to wade back into this type of world slowly rather than jumping right into the deep end. I'd grown a bit flabby. I hadn't had sex in five years , so knew that all of my resistance to monster pleasure attacks were probably gone. That ironically made it a bit disappointing that the monster girls here didn't show any interest in me aside from some flirtatious looks. I was afraid that my first encounter with a hostile monster might end badly for me. Hopefully wherever I jumped, it would be a version of Ilias Village, like this, so that I'd only encounter weak monsters to start. Sure, I still had my power, but that power could kill. It wasn't my preference to use it in a fight if I could avoid it.

At some point I started wondering if there was an Alice here and what she was like. According to Alipheese, almost all monsters lived among humans. Since there was no Monster Lord, only kings and democratic governments, which could have either monsters or humans leading them, this world's Alice would probably live in one of the cities or small towns. Her mother would probably still be alive. She would probably just be an ordinary girl who did ordinary girl things. That sounded nice to me. I briefly entertained the idea of trying to find her, but then discarded it as a huge waste of time. It would take forever to find this world's Alice, if she even existed, and given her different upbringing she wouldn't have too much in common with my Alice. I needed to concentrate on finding my love, not a physical copy who was completely different in outlook and experiences.

Then I got to wondering if there was a Luka here. Wait, no, I came from another world. My counterparts were on other Earths, not other monster girl worlds.

The two days passed pleasantly. I wandered the forest and took a lovely walk with a wolf girl named Sally, a monster type I had never seen before. She seemed mildly interested, but I told her I was just visiting and she didn't try to make a move on me. Nor I on her.

I went to bed at the end of my second day in this wonderful world. It wasn't really "back", but it was nearly a carbon copy of where I wanted to be and it felt good. I found a cheap inn in the small village. I can't remember the name of the village for the life of me. When you jump from world to world and most of them look the same, it becomes easy to forget details. They all just kind of run together unless something amazing or traumatic happens.

There was a light knock on my door. I got up to answer it and standing before me was a rabbit girl. I'd never met one of these in my time in Alice's world. They didn't tend to hang out in human cities, preferring the forest. I felt feelings of deep sadness for her. She had been ripped from her forest home and spent the next 75 years in a sterile facility. She looked great. I wasn't sure how long rabbit girls lived, but she sure looked fine to me. I wouldn't have guessed her to be a day over 35 in human years.

"Can I come in?" she asked sweetly.

I welcomed her into my small room. As was normal with monster girls, she got right to the point.

"I want to thank you for what you did for us," she said. "we all do, but Alipheese told us you wouldn't like that. So I was chosen because I'm the gentlest. Alipheese told me that it had been awhile for you. She worried that you might not be able to handle a monster's affections. I hear you're leaving tomorrow."

"I am," I confirmed.

"Then I'll be gentle," she said. There was no nervousness in her voice. It was as if this was perfectly normal for her. Which it was. "we can't have you unable to walk tomorrow morning."

"I don't think we should do this," I said. "I'm married, and I miss my wife very much."

"I get it," she responded. "It's just that I came from a different world, just like you. If the worlds you go to are like mine, you're going to get attacked a lot. If you get attacked right now you'll last three seconds in a fight. You at least need to let me remove that five years of sexual tension. It won't help a lot, but I've heard your pretty great in a fight, so having a full minute tomorrow is better than having a few seconds."

She had a point. She hadn't touched me and I had a raging boner just from looking at her and knowing that she wanted to please me. Alice had harped on my vulnerability in this respect for a long time, and used "training" as an excuse to feed off of me. I had to admit it had worked pretty well. If you know me well enough by now, you know that it doesn't take much for me to rationalize getting into bed with monster girls. Alice wouldn't want me running around this vulnerable. I'd never reach her if I just got eaten or enslaved as soon as I set foot on a world with hostile monsters. Better to let my first experience in so long be with a friendly one. After all, this was one of the situations where Alice had been allowing me to step out just before I'd been separated from her. I'd done a huge favor for this rabbit girl and she wanted to repay me.

"You know what?" I said. "You're right. Go ahead."

She giggled and gently removed my pants and shirt. She pushed me down into a prone position on my back and began lightly rubbing herself on me and licking me gently all over, careful to avoid my penis, which probably would have shot off as soon as she touched it. I knew I'd be sensitive down there from the long layoff. Alipheese had been right that I hadn't even had the motivation to touch myself. But I had not anticipated that my entire body would turn into one big erogenous zone. I shivered with every touch, every pass of her delightful tongue over my body, every touch of her fluffy hair, which I was sure was even fluffier than a kitsune's. She'd been chosen well. Most monster girls, whether thanking you or just feeding, tend to just go right for the finish. Since men don't have refractory periods when having sex with monsters, it's no skin off their back to make a man come quickly. They'll just keep going and make him come again. And again. And again, until he passes out. This rabbit girl was representing the gratitude of nine other monster girls. She wanted it to last.

Finally, she moved her head down to my penis and gave it a long lick. I gasped and shuddered and felt the orgasm coming just from that. Going from nothing in five years to monster girl was intense.

"No, no, no," she said, smiling. "As long as it's been for you, you might pass out after the first one. I can't help you with your endurance if you just come and pass out."

She waited a few seconds for my dick to stop twitching, then tried another lick, this time with just the tip of her tongue, very slowly. I arched my back.

"Ohhhh," I moaned. "That is the best feeling I've ever had."

"No it's not," she laughed. Even her breath was making it twitch. "Alipheese told me a lot about you. You've had succubi touch you. I'm just a little rabbit girl. Even if I went crazy on you it wouldn't be as intense as the tip of a succubus' toe."

That was probably an exaggeration but not much of one. She repeated the slow lick with just the tip of her tongue. I trembled. I had sure become weak, but in the safe hands of a nice monster girl, I was sure this was the greatest experience I'd ever had.

"Okay, I don't think you can take another one of those yet," she laughed. "So why don't you tell me something about yourself that I might not know?"

"Okay," I agreed, desperate for the feel of her tongue again but agreeing that this would be over all too quickly if she gave me what I wanted. I wanted one thousand of those soft licks, and if I had to wait for them, they were worth waiting for. "But I feel ashamed that I never asked your name."

"It's Bunny," she giggled. "Don't look at me like that! It's the most common name among rabbit girls. It's like Bob for you humans."

She gave me another lick, this time softly with the flat of her tongue. I was sure I was going to die of joy. Again, she had to stop. She simply held the base in her hand while she made conversation.

"So is it true that you made it so that humans and monster got alongs on my world?" she asked.

"Mostly," I said. "It's not as great as here, but things are a lot better. Monsters are doing a lot of learning, and both sides have learned to start trusting each other a little mo- Oh! Oh wow!"

She had given me a firmer, faster lick that caused my eyes to roll back. She was good. Every lick was threatening to send me over the edge but she never quite sent me over.

"That's good," Bunny said. "I never hated humans. I never had to force any, either. I lived in a pretty remote area, so I didn't know much about politics. Humans that entered my forest were generally looking to feed us, and the forest monsters were happy to oblige. I heard that the rest of the world wasn't so great. Monsters killing and eating human, humans killing monsters. It was pretty peaceful where we were, though. Until…"

Until she'd been transported along with her forest to Imperial Japan and experimented on. The thought actually caused my erection to start to droop.

"No, no, no," she sang, giving it another long, slow lick, which caused it to recover nicely. "No talk of bad things right now. It wasn't so bad the last sixty or so years. They treated us better after awhile. I hated being imprisoned but at least the guards were sweet. Tasty, too."

With that, she gave me another lick, then satisfied that I wasn't about to burst, another.

"Already getting a little stronger," Bunny said with satisfaction. "I think I'm going to be naughty now. I'm going to ask you some questions. If I find your answer interesting, I'll give you just a lick. If you bore me, I'm going to put it in my mouth and go crazy on it and you'll probably come and pass out."

I was pretty certain that I wanted her to do exactly that, but I liked her and decided to play her game. "Okay, ask away."

"What's your favorite food?" she asked.

"Pizza."

"Wow, bored me on the first question!" she giggled, "I don't even know what that is!"

"Well, you see, it's a- AHHHHHH!!!!"

She had put it in her mouth and started moving her tongue as fast as she could. I almost feared that my ejaculate would exit through her skull, I came so hard. I was certain it was the greatest orgasm of my life. When it subsided, I laid there panting, Bunny still holding my still erect penis in her hand and watching me.

"Still conscious?" she said with a smile. "Awesome! More training!"

More training indeed. She pleasured me with every part of her body that night. Four orgasms later, I finally did pass out. I woke up with her still beside me, sleeping soundly.

Alipheese came back to me on the next morning of my stay on this world as promised.

"So here's what I managed to do for you, kid," she explained. "Ever seen Quantum Leap or Sliders? I loved those shows. Cookies and TV, my two favorite things on your world!"

"I'm afraid I've only seen a few episodes," I said. "Do I need to know a lot about it to use this effectively?"

"Naw," she said, "you don't have to do anything, really, except stay alive and make one decision. You're going to be bouncing from world to world. The spell works by channeling your desires into your traveling. You'll tend to end up in places where you have some emotional attachment. Be careful, though, I know you've got a little trauma. It'll also take you to places where you've got some emotional baggage. You won't be in any of these places long. It'll all depend on how close the next parallel world is. Your heart is your greatest strength. I know this sounds cliché, but follow that heart and you might just see your lady love again."

"You mentioned Quantum Leap," I said. "So I have to do things, right wrongs, in these worlds?"

"If that floats your boat, knock yourself out," she replied. "I know better than to tell you otherwise. But no, it's not strictly necessary for you to right wrongs, or succeed, or anything else. You'll probably make things even worse in some places. How long you're in any world is dictated strictly by how close the next one is. WHICH worlds you end up on, and where in those worlds you end up, well, the spell I'm casting is a bit like a divining rod. It wants to send you to where your heart wants to go. Sometimes that will be a double edged sword. I hope you know what you're getting into, kid."

"I have no idea," I said, chuckling. "But today I have a chance, thanks to you. A few days ago, I had none."

"Then I'll send you on your way," the Dark God said. "And kid…. I really am sorry. I worry that I've just made things even worse for you. I want one last chance to convince you to stay here. Remember what you said your favorite book was?"

"I…. I don't remember what I said it was," I answered. "How would you know what my favorite book was?"

"Do you even remember what you write?" she asked, laughing. "You talked about your favorite stories with Alice at one point and included that in your book. Even though you didn't name it, it wasn't too hard to find out what it was. There was a passage in that book that really got to me: What's the only way to hurt a man who has lost everything?"

I did know that passage, and it did make me reconsider for a moment. But just a moment.

"The only way to hurt a man who has lost everything is to give him back something broken," I replied.

"That's the 'gift' I'm giving you," she said sadly. "I'll probably never know if you got what you wanted. I know you won't backtrack through a zillion worlds just to tell me. So I'm going to have to live with this guilt on top of the guilt for what I did to you for all of eternity. So if you're ready for this, I'll send you on your way."

"Wait!" I said. "You mentioned that I had to make a decision!"

"Oh, almost forgot about that!" she exclaimed, hitting herself on the head with her palm. "If you somehow make it to your destination, you won't need to make a decision. You'll just know. You'll feel it as soon as you set foot in that world. There will be no more jumps once you're there. That one was easy to set up. You're bound to Alice in that world. But if you find one where you want to stay…. That's where your decision comes in. All you gotta do is say these words: 'This is my new home.' Can't imagine you'd say that in any context unless you meant it."

"I'm sure I wouldn't," I said, while worried that I might, somehow. Had to remember never to say that out loud unless I meant it. I was tempted to ask her to remove that fail safe, but decided against it. My heart told me I would look for Alice until I died. My head told me that I might just end up in yet another world that needed me, even more than Alice's world.

"Ready, kid?" she said. "Last chance to back out. You know that wolf girl likes you."

"I'm ready," I said, smiling. "And thank you. I guess this is goodbye forever."

"Oh, one more thing!"Alipheese said. "If you do get back…. Please unseal my daughters. I know them, they won't make trouble without me to instigate 'em. They respect your power and they respect their sister Tamamo. I want them to live in a good world."

I wasn't convinced of that, but decided that if this did work, that I should give them a chance. After all, we'd unsealed all of the angels from Angel Halo after the Ilias war ended. I nodded my assent.

Alipheese the First, the First Monster Lord, the Dark God, waved her hands and I was on my way.