TDM 013: BARING IT ALL

[erkumods]

TDM 013: BARING IT ALL

00. Arrival You come out of the water, the Nameless Island's own inherent energy drawing people in. It's like being suspended between realities and abruptly pushed from behind through a rift in dimensions. It may make you sick, or that might be the motion of the ocean, lifting you to the surface and carrying you to shore. Waterlogged and covered in sand, new arrivals will be greeted by robots who welcome them with towels and bracelet devices. The A5 card is already loaded up. If you don’t manage to get away from them quickly enough, they may even usher you toward the Laid Bare Spa, where new arrivals will be offered free massages, a sauna, hairstyling, and their clothing may come up permanently missing. But you will be given a complimentary towel to leave with if needed! Feel free to explore the Island, though there isn’t much to see beyond what arrivals before you have helped to rebuild. Most of the buildings are abandoned and in dire need of repair, and beyond the city lingers a thick fog that obscures much of the wilderness from view. Wander too far into this fog, and you will find yourself mysteriously looping back to where you began, your memories of what you were doing and how you got there erased. With that in mind, it may be wise to stake your claim on a place to live in the now, whether a rundown apartment in the City, a tent on the beach, a bed in the barracks, or your own space at the House of Worship. Your inventory will be found a day later, wrapped up haphazardly and delivered to each person's makeshift home. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● I. THROW IN A TOWEL? Erku's new arrivals may be encouraged to seek out the Laid Bare Massage & Spa for some specialized attention and relaxation, but they and long-time inhabitants will also be offered a chance to earn credits. Anyone interested in earning robot wages will be tasked with being the resident towel person! You’ll stand inside of the room while the patrons are receiving their massages, hot scrubs, or relaxing in one of the saunas holding towels for them should any be requested. Or you may be asked to help with the regular cleaning of the Spa, wiping down all of the tasteful nude statues to free them of the grime and filth (or… other things) that builds up over time. You might even be asked to help lovingly clean the murals of nude patrons (that is to say, fellow Islanders) all over the Spa. But this is a job that requires a very specific uniform. Robots will provide you with your very own chiton or toga. The chitons happen to be very short, not covering nearly as much as they reveal, but the togas might be entirely too long. They brush or drag along the floor and what with being barely held together with the thinnest and most fanciful of ropes, who knows how often they might be untucked? Take care, please, or else the robots might pull you into being the next model for their latest mural portrait instead. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● II. GRIN AND BARE IT Erku’s resident mental health professional, Dr. D. Love of Healthy Body, Healthy Mind Therapy Center, has taken a keen interest in ensuring that the relationships of you Islanders are progressing in a productive, healthy, and open-minded fashion. And to ensure this, he’s tasked his robot staff to pay close attention to anyone who looks like they are having trouble with relationships with other people on the Island. And after months of so few (none) clients, these robots are very motivated to seek out people in need of their therapeutic assistance! Arguing with a friend? Telling someone to stay out of your life? Being a hermit who refuses to come out of your apartment? Accidentally bump into each other on the street? Make a joke at your friend’s expense? Playfully punch someone in the shoulder? Walk by someone you don’t know and not tell them hello? Well clearly all of you need help in repairing whatever may be damaging your relationships! Before you know it, you’ve been bundled off by the robots right to Dr. D. Love’s office and sat down to talk it all out. The fact that you may not even know the other person the robots think you need to work your troubles out with doesn’t matter. Dr. D. Love is here to make sure everyone goes home happy and satisfied. You may have to play along with this confusing farcical situation, even making up wrongs and slights you claim you have done to one another before finally coming together in reconciliation. The more you deny there is anything wrong, the more the good Doctor will insist you need even more help than they first thought. They might even have to send you into one of their Privacy Rooms and work out your frustrations with each other with their wide array of therapeutic sexual devices and supplies. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● III. BARE NAKED AMUSEMENT TOUR The trolley is making its rounds as usual with announcements echoing from the loudspeakers that it’s Bare It All Week at Six Flagellants Amusement Park and to kick it off there will be a grand concert at the Loudinus Outdoor Amphitheater that lasts all week long! Not sure what that means? Well, come to the concert and enjoy hours and hours of music played by robots who seem to have taken their songs right from the pop rock crazes of old. Whose old? Who knows. The music may not be completely to your taste, but something about it may make you feel energized and overly dressed. You might even feel the need to strip down until you’re not wearing anything at all! But don’t worry, the robots performing on stage will give you new clothes to wear by throwing skimpy, sexy underwear and lingerie right at you! How did they know your size? Don’t ask questions, just give into the urge to put it on while you rock out until it’s time for the trolley to take everyone right to the gates of the amusement park! Anyone dressed in less for this week will receive free entry, rides, and food and might even receive special prizes at various booths of sex toys, candies that act as an aphrodisiac (meant for sharing of course), stuffed animals, or even a free sex doll! Those are super hard to win from the ring toss, so you should really take advantage and enjoy all the perks of baring yourself for everyone’s viewing pleasure. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● N A V I G A T I O N

Comments

[karintous]

Oh, good. A cooperative sort. Ema half-turned and looked up at the statue she was just polishing, indicating he should do the same. It was, presumably, a slightly larger-than-life statue of a nude man gazing solemnly to the heavens, perhaps contemplating the meaning of life and labor and happiness. It would have made for a perfectly respectable and sophisticated piece of art, were he not balancing an improbably large dildo on his plaintively raised fingertips.

"I've polished most of that travesty, but I can't reach the upper bits. Think you could get them for me?"

She was a bit shorter than your average resident and now suffering for it. But happily for all, she had no qualms about roping other people in to make up for her lack.

[krempuff]

Krem came up beside her and then paused as she spoke. He looked over at her. Slowly, he raised an eyebrow at her.

He was only about an inch or two taller than her, and didn't even have the benefit of his heavy boots to add to that at the moment. As the two of them stood there, barefooted, he wasn't entirely sure how she imagined he was going to get the upper reaches of the statue any better than she already had.

"So are you riding my shoulders or am I riding yours?" He was a little sardonic about it, but only a little.

[karintous]

He was being sardonic, but she was suddenly smiling. "Well, that is an idea. I'd offer to give you a lift, but I'm not so sure your outfit could take it," she said, giving him a pointed down-and-up look. She was not especially enamored with the idea of an extended tour in his precariously sheltered nether regions, however desensitized she was to sudden nudity.

She slapped her polishing cloth onto her shoulder and looked at him expectantly. "Alright, down you go. No sudden moves, got it?"

[krempuff]

Well, she was right about that. He was a little jealous of her more judicious robe, unsure if that was by hook, crook, or sheer chance. It didn't matter. He didn't relish the ideas of having a strange woman in his crotch any more than she seemed to like the idea of being there, and so it was settled.

He knelt, also stooping his shoulders slightly so that it would be extra easy for her to mount his shoulders from behind. He was broad enough that he'd be able to easily support her, even with the extra weight of her toga wrapped around her as many times as it was. They shouldn't run into too much trouble like this.

"Don't worry," he said. "You're not the first person I've had over my shoulders."

[karintous]

Ema wasn't the most athletic or even coordinated person, but thanks to a recent freak accident courtesy of the island, she was possessed of a preternatural strength. In truth, she would have been an ideal base for this two-person totem pole... but alas, one bare ball to the neck would have been too much, let alone two.

She frowned thoughtfully as she placed her hands on his shoulders. "If that was supposed to be innuendo, you're bragging up the wrong tree, mister."

Without waiting for a response, she clambered onto his shoulders awkwardly, hands and feet finding purchase where they probably ought not be, leg not getting quite as much clearance over his head as would be graceful. But she eventually came to settle into a comfortable seat on his shoulders.

[krempuff]

Krem blinked a little bit, because he hadn't meant for it to be an innuendo, but now he could see how it might have come off that way. No, if he had meant to make the joke, it would have been much more blatant about it.

Despite her clumsiness, Krem held steady. Even when a heel collided with his tit, eliciting a bit of a grunt out of him from the sensitive discomfort of the collision. He put his hands on her thighs, just above the knee, to keep her stable once she was settled on his shoulders, and rose to his feet with ease.

She might have been strong, but she wasn't any heavier than her height might have led him to believe. That made it pretty easy to get up once she was stable.

"Better?" he asked, glancing up as best he could? The angle was wrong to be able to look at her face, but at least he wasn't looking up the toga or anything like that. He stepped up to the statue so they were within arms length. "Just let me know where you need me to stand."

[karintous]

She ignored his grunt, figuring he'd live. As a homicide detective, she could say with professional precision that no one ever died from a mild kick in the tit.

"We're good here for now," she said, leaning forward to steady herself against the statue. Once her balance was secure, she snapped up her cloth to start polishing the statue's immaculately coifed head of hair. It was always tempting to vandalize the already-ridiculous works of "art" around the island, but in this case, she needed the credits. Another day, perhaps.

"Haven't seen you around before," she said idly. "Been here long?"

[krempuff]

"Have you seen everyone that's on the island?" he asked, only a little teasingly. He shifted the way he was holding onto her legs, making sure that she was comfortably stable while she shifted to polish and rub at the statue.

"No, I'm new," he said. "Barely been here at all and they said they needed help. I didn't know help involved having all my clothes taken away and being forced to wear barely anything at all. Should have asked better questions about the job."

[karintous]

She left his first question unanswered, figuring he would see for himself eventually. Between the Sexscape Navigator and the sporadic happenings around town that tended to draw large numbers of the bored population together, it was easy to get a frequent read on who was around.

"Even if you had, the bots are useless at answering questions," she said, expression flattening mildly with distaste. "They're so wired about getting us to have sex that they'll trick you any which way about it. They try to act cute, thinking they're only trying to help us... ha! Conniving tins of lies, all of them."

She was being slightly dramatic, but sometimes a girl just needed to get some things off her chest. On the upside, the increasing aggression in her polishing was prompting a clean, satisfying squeak against the statue's head.

[krempuff]

Krem said nothing, just making sure that her enthusiastic scrubbing didn't unsettle her from his shoulders. There was obviously something going on besides just the togas and chitons, but Krem could let it pass for the moment. Sometimes, you just needed to vent without someone offering their unsolicited and uninformed opinions on the matter.

"...do you think we'd get in trouble if you broke one?" he mumbled.

[karintous]

"As long as the assets remain intact, I'm sure they don't care," she said dismissively, shifting to polish the hand melodramatically holding the dildo and assuming that he would follow under her. The only upside to the statue was that the dildo was too high up for people to actually use. Or so she could hope.

"To be honest, they don't care much about what we all do. There are no solid laws in place, and they don't actually punish us for not having sex. They just put down tricks, traps, and rewards, and hope we'll get intimate and not feel like maiming each other."

[krempuff]

Krem moved, as soon as she started to lean and make it known she was ready to move on to her next section. And, as before, he let her just talk about it all for a moment because he had nothing to contribute to it in any meaningful way.

"Well, that's good, I suppose," Krem finally said, when he gave it a bit of thought. "That they don't go out of their way to shove us together so much as they just point and hope. Don't know how I feel about tricks and traps, though..."

He looked up at her, as best he could. Discretely as he could. Once again, he was grateful for how much extra fabric she had that he didn't. "Have you been on the island very long?"

[karintous]

A glass-half-full type, this one. But that was fine; as cynical as Ema could get, she didn't actually mind optimistic people. Someone had to look on the bright side, dystopian sex island or not.

"It's been... oh, about nine months for me. Longest nine months of my life." She frowned at a small amount of buildup on the carved dildo, which she was going to pray was just... calcium deposits. She scrubbed at the overly detailed, overly endowed phallus, using her nails through her polishing cloth to get at the tricky spots. "Some people go quick, I've noticed. Then there are the unlucky winners the Augur likes to hold on to. No rhyme or reason to it, as far as I've been able to tell."

She spared a glance down at him, raising her eyebrows mildly. "For your sake, I hope you didn't leave home on a cliffhanger. Could be a while until you get back." If ever, she chose not to say.

[krempuff]

He had, actually. Leaving in the midst of battle, watching the Venatori approach, waiting to hear what would be their fate in the next moments. Now that she mentioned it, he found himself worrying for the other Chargers, what might happen to them--and if he was still standing there on that cliff with them, poised and waiting, or there was some other situation that occurred in the mean time.

He remembered the story the Inquisitor and Dorian had told of their time in the time dilation, and now, he couldn't help thinking of that as well. It wasn't a comforting one at all.

"But...people do go back, is it?"

[karintous]

"Probably. Shuffle over that way, if you would."

She gestured to the other side of the statue's raised arm before continuing clinically, "There's no way of knowing for sure. Too much variance in people's experiences. But you do hear stories of people who disappear from here, only to reappear later with additional memories from home."

For all their sakes, she hoped those glimpses were real and not just data getting uploaded into their brains. But the robots were never forthcoming, and why should they be? They were just sex-obsessed tin cans, as far as she was concerned.

"If you ask me, it's best to operate like we'll all get home eventually. You'll go mad otherwise."

[krempuff]

He shuffled along as commanded, easily following along with the commands as they made their way around the statue and she continued to talk about it. It wasn't a bad bit of information--and honestly, it was important to know these sorts of things, going into all of this. He had to be prepared, if he was going to survive whatever this was.

"I suppose," he said, thoughtful but noncommittal over all. A verbal shrug. If he was honest, he wasn't sure where going home meant for him any more. Just back to Thedas? Back to Skyhold specifically--all the way back to Tevinter? Who knew anymore.

"I guess as long as we don't have to keep wearing these stupid outfits every day, it's not the worst."