by Yuli Ban
A Gamelit Harem Brawl!
Copyright © 2018, Yuli Ban
The right of Yuli Ban to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by his under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part maybe reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Autobiography Part
Yuli Ban is an East African Plains Ape living in Louisiana, USA with a canine, a feline, and two other East African Plains Apes. He has been alive since he was born and will live until he dies. He was born less than a lifetime ago. Thank you for buying this book.
Now you’ve done it. You’ve really done it. El Sexorcisto! could have faded into oblivion, but instead it has become one of the most successful stories I’ve ever written. And I warned you that I’d be taking your money. Because of your uninterest in holding onto your dollars, I’m charging you with interest, and now you wrought this upon humankind— a sequel. Yes! A cash grab whose sole purpose for existing is to sell me to the world in exchange for a few extra thousand dollars. You slavers. I still need your money, and I am selling out at speeds never since equaled in humankind. As I write this, a neural network is refining the narrative structure of all my concepts and realigning them to mechanically follow every beat imaginable. You’ve never seen a verse-chorus-verse structure like this before. This is the narrative equivalent of a 3-minute 16-second-long radio pop song. There’s even a Millennial Whoop! You should see it, eighty Millennials cough to death.
That’s eighty fewer sales for me. And trust me, I’m counting every incoming penny. I’m gonna make a career out of this, goddammit, so like a capitalist, I’m going to exploit you to maximize my profits. And if those communists at Amazon Corporation try to stop me, there’ll be hell to pay. Because I’ll be exploiting Hell too.
But first and foremost, it has come to my attention that I ought to have this at the start of the story to enslave entice subscribers. So if you want to be exploited subscribe to my newsletter to stay on top of releases and potentially learn something about early-2000s video games and cartoons and future robotics, be sure to click on this link.
I mean this one.
I’m sorry, I meant this one.
Table of Contents
Ready Steady Go
Like Blackened Sunshine
Known Unknowns
Prelude to Madness
Madness
Batzor From Satan’s Core
Ghosts of Gunpowder
Blood on Fire
A Jazzy Death Dance
Making Sense Of It All
Commercial Break!
Where is My Mind
Noirville Blues
Fly Away
Ready Steady Go
What’s it gonna be then, eh? What’s it gonna be then, eh? What’s it gonna be then, eh? What’s it gonna be then, eh? What’s it gonna be then, eh? What’s it gonna be then, eh?
I awoke to an alarm blaring at me from my watch. But what got me hopping onto my ass was Maria, staring right at me. Red skin, Hell-red skin, all of which looked uncanny— imagine waking up to that and then you had to try to keep your lungs and heart inside of you before you had a total internal breakdown and started throwing up your own stomach.
When I pushed myself away from her, I fell into the elfy arms of Olga, whose long-pointed ears drew my eyes every time I tried looking at her face. I couldn't help but keep focusing on the pointed ends. That elf, my god.
And she was giggling, too, and once I was all up and chipper from my heart attack, she pushed me into Tatiana. Out of all of them, Tatiana was the only 'normal' one. Like those old lyrics— big black boots, long brown hair, sad sunken eyes as well, just human perfection. And she pet my face until I thought she was going to try dribbling my head like a basketball. That's what it felt like when she picked me up, not minding my spinal column, and lifted me up and over until I fell over on my face right into the pillow. By that point, the pillow was cold again. Maybe one of the girls flipped it over. It wasn't cool enough for me. The only thing that was cool enough was that icy cold spot in the middle of the room, that vortex of spectral energy from beyond the grave that could only be seen on an Xbox Kinect visor— until the specter decided to pop into existence.
There she was: the glorious fluffy orange tabby girl, Anastasia. She was in lingerie for reasons undefined. Very, very red lingerie.
I asked, "How did you change your clothes if you're dead?"
She put her paw over her face and said, "Can't really answer that yet, Boss."
"Why not?" Rage rose within me. If there was one thing I didn't like, it was Nazis. But if there was another thing I didn't like, it was cryptic BS. "Just tell me! Stop hiding it from us, good god!"
Maria smacked her lips and pointed at Ana to say: "You keep running late."
"It's not my fault! The servers are just slow!" Then she glared at me. I didn't like it when Ana glared at anything, but when she directed it at me, oh boy oh boy, it made me excited. "I know you did this because you messed with the game servers that one time!"
"Did not!"
"You did, big man." Maria ran her wrist through my hair and rested her chin on my head. "You fucked with the entire game when you went El Sexorcisto!."
"And why do you keep putting exclamation marks after Sexorcisto!?" I ranted. Then I saw my dialogue and said, "No! No, stop it!'
Ana giggled and I was diamonds. "You still have so much to learn."
Maria added, "And learn, you shall. You're still behind on two punishments for failure to listen."
Olga pushed Maria away and set her own chin on my head. However, she circled around in order to do this, so when she said, "Wait, wait, wait a minute, sister! I don't think we're even done talking about the night we broke out of the military base,” I was grinning right into her cleavage.
With that grin still holding firm on my face, I exploded, "Get off me!"
"No."
Tatiana jumped in and tackled me, pushing me forward and knocking Olga and me down. "But don’t you want to sing Dancing Queen with us? We were about to break out in the acapella version to wake you up, but since you denied us that privilege…"
Fumes started erupting from my ears like I was Majin Buu. In my head, at least. In reality, I couldn't even facepalm because the girls pinned me down.
Except this wasn't really reality. I didn't know what I was doing in reality other than rotting in some pod. This was a different world entirely. I was in an MMO game known as 'Violence Online,' a pastiche of Grand Theft Auto and old shlocky, sleazy exploitation movies from the 1970s. There weren't supposed to be any limits on what you could do, and violence was rewarded. The developers were cheeky little thundercunts who were still in that edgelord phase, Mommy's Little Satanists or whathaveyou. As a result, we also got succubus characters like Maria— damn fine succubus, if I do say so myself, though I still had reservations about the gasping amount of tit on her chest. Ever since I first met her, it seemed like her tits got larger. And that thick tail of hers— that was the most erogenous part of her. The only thing that was real iffy was that she didn't seem to have eyes. Proper pupils, I mean. They were just white.
She wasn't just a succubus in looks. Because the developers took a dizzying number of psychedelics while coding this mess, they also gave her 'ultrastrange' abilities. She only used one such ultrastrange ab
ility during the crazy day I met her— that is, her ability to phase through solid matter. But ever since we all crashed at this no-tell motel, she's been playing with my sense of reality as a means of breaking me.
Funny story, how we met. If you want to know, please pay $2.99 for a copy of my autobiography, El Sexorcisto!, on Amazon.ca, buy now, beat the rush. But if you want an abridged version, it all started—
Wait, hold that thought. Olga just brought out some elven hash browns. HASH—browns. Those greasy THC potato patties were gone within a minute, and I picked at the bowl for crumbs. It was so greasy, it was perfect. And then it went down with a glass of orange juice so cold, it hurt. Guess what else she had: if you guessed greasy bacon, come join us by buying a copy of El Sexorcisto Z!, buy now, beat the rush. Then, after you have parted with your money, go get some bacon and sprinkle some marijuana sprinkles on top.
This bacon was so perfectly crispy. Not blackened, not too crunchy, but very greasy. The grease gave it its real flavor.
Tatiana was eager to stick her tit down my throat and make me choke on her titmilk, but I wasn't in the mood for milk so I politely set her aside. You ever drink orange juice and then milk? It tastes like shit. Even if that milk had healing properties like the vanilla-flavored nectar in her breasts, it’s not something you actively seek out unless you’re a gustatory masochist.
“You sure?” She raised an eyebrow. “It goes well with the purple haze.”
So I had to outright tell her, “Not with orange juice. Citrus and milk do not go together.” As she was the most grounded member of the harem, she shrugged and left me alone. My eyes passed over Ana, who I know would have jammed her boob against my uvula regardless. But she was too busy hogging all the laced food.
As we all consumed our edibles in tandem, Olga spoke first, "It looks like the new book is starting in a few minutes."
"What?" Maria went, lifting her brow. I mimicked her motion.
"The book started over a thousand words ago," I added. "We're literally halfway through the first chapter and we’re pretty much skipping the recap." I stared at nothing as if looking towards the viewer— please humor me and imagine I was looking at you. “Hear that? You either stitch together context clues or go buy the first book— buy now, beat the rush.”
She shrieked, "We started?!" Then she fanned herself. "Oh my god, no. But, but what about—" She pointed to the window. "Does the sun know the book started?"
I moseyed on over to the blinds, shut them, and sat back down next to her. "Now it does."
Right on cue, a gust of wind beat against the windowpane. The radio came to life and a man spoke, his Mid-Atlantic accent crooning, "This just in— Hurricane Sinatra Jr. is now within one hundred miles of the coast. All residents of the Greater Amville area are advised to take shelter and not engage in any unnecessary activities. I repeat, all residents of the Greater Amville are advised to take shelter and NOT engage in any unnecessary activities."
I chomped away on my bacon and said, "I just realized, there's no TV in here."
"It took you that long to realize it?" Tatiana said with a gasp.
Maria smacked her lips again and said, "He's messing with you."
"No, seriously, I just realized it. Honestly. Because now I just wanna watch Mad Men."
"No, you don't," she replied. "You're just saying that because of all the tropes."
"Who are you to say what I do and don't want to do?"
She tapped her temple and said, "I can read minds."
"Since when could you read minds? Why didn't you tell me that before? And wouldn't that have been useful before now?"
She put her foot down and said, "I can't do it all the time, obviously!"
Then she said it. She said the one word that shattered everything. My entire universe came crumbling down and washed away because it was perfect. Finally, at long last, the word stuttered from her crimson lips: "B-baka."
I breathed in and screamed, "YOU. SAID. IT." At long last, she'd become what she always should have been. Now that she had said it, there was no going back. There was only B.B. and A.B.— Before Baka and After Baka.
Also, I looked like a ponce pointing at her while all the other girls gave me the crazy eye. Maria, too, folded her arms beneath her supermassive gravity wells of tit and gave me a stinky look. "Are you okay in the head?"
Ana tried resting on me, but she phased right through my body. "We should get his noggin checked out. Should I bring 'im to Doctor Shotgonavan?"
"Shotgonawhat?"
"Sure, you can."
Maria uppercut me while twisting upwards and I went flying out of the roof. She cupped her hands around her mouth and screamed after me, “I forgot to mention I can do that three times in one day!”
When I landed and sucked pavement waiting for the girls to collect me, I was giggly and delirious.
"Nothing makes sense anymore! Nothing at all! I’ve gone insane."
And the wind blew. The rain hadn’t started, but I knew not to expect a sunny day. Ever since we arrived in Amville, the skies fell low and oppressed our moods. For all the neon signs and painted advertisements along the sides of buildings, the sun didn’t want to lend its color. Death, rather, colored the city instead. For all the neon signs and painted advertisements along the sides of the buildings, Death wanted to give back a blackened grey. Where Death learned to paint, I knew not. Only that it painted with our unspoken anxieties.
All of which made me anxious— at times unbearably so.
Like Blackened Sunshine
When I recovered and got a mouthful of yuck thanks to mixing the aftertaste of orange juice with milk, Tatiana helped me back into the motel. As we walked indoors, I pushed her along, my body tense from the fear of invoking the wrath of Sam— the leader of the Rocket 88s. Just to wash away my frayed nerves, I took a shower and spent the time thinking about what was about to happen.
The water hit my face, splashing against my cheeks and running down my hair. It also went into my eyes, and that just irritated them. You ever get water in your eye? It's usually not bad, but it's irritating. And then comes the shampoo. God, man, soap and shampoo in your eye can ruin your entire day. And that's not even the worst part of it: imagine getting water in your nose. Now your nostrils burn. Why did I do that? Was I that distracted? Perhaps. While in the shower recovering from the nose burn and irritated eyes, my mind kept coming back to that haunting image of a newspaper stand exploding against a Nazi biker as his gun vanishes from reality. Over the past few days, it started to tear at my sanity. How was that real? Was it just a glitch? Or was there something truly evil afoot in the game?
Once I was out, Tatiana was there in the bathroom, sitting on the closed toilet, waiting for me with her hands under her chin.
"What are you doing here?" I shouted as if her eyes weren't staring at the answer.
But it was too soon for that.
Instead, she opted to start licking me dry. This, I didn't understand at all. Now I had to take a shower again because I had spit and wet food crumb residue all over me. So, after wasting more virtual water, I dashed past Tatiana, slipped into the wall, and earned myself a gash across my face. The blood meant another shower. However, the sudden loss of health points tickled me in such a way that I decided to check my stats.
For all that I managed to accomplish last time around, I hadn't done much since. Having my own harem was enough for me and Maria refused to risk having me ascend to the level of El Sexorcisto a second time before she knew I was ready. None of which bothered me. Most notably, my sexual experience bar had been completely reset down to 'Intermediate Level 1'. I didn't understand this. When I first started having fun in the game, I discovered many hours in that my sexual experience was already in the Intermediate class. I'd never used it before but I was able to level up to the point that I exploded beyond the mortal realm into a holy transformation that turned me into the god known as El Sexorcisto. What that was supposed to be, I don't know, but what I do know is that
the aftereffects sucked. This, I want to spend a length of time discussing.
Besides that, I was a Level 9 at two-wheeled vehicular proficiency as well as a Level 10 at one-handed weapons. This was just a bit higher than before thanks to Maria giving me some extra training as well as a bizarre event the other day. There was also my mana bar— that had gone completely unused, though I had one level for it thanks to our assault against a Nazi lieutenant named Scumlord, though I still did not understand just how I managed to level up in the first place. Never before had I needed to use magic. But as I listened to the winds whistling through the window cracks, I felt the worst sense of unease, as if my hesitation to use magic was about to come back to fuck me.
Something else I noticed was that I had a jumping stat boost— I could jump 10% higher for some reason. But I never once had to use that ability. Not once.
Besides that, I had an automatic power: if I thought the word 'Shoryuken', I could pull off that classic attack. That, I had no control over learning. It was one of the first things that happened when I first started the game and, once I discovered the prevalence of guns in the game, one of my least used abilities yet. Then again, I hadn’t been in combat ever since we arrived at Amville. What with the full-immersion and the fact I couldn’t log out, I felt that there was no point in trying to live a high-octane life any different from my old one.
Last but not least, there was my health. Normally, health started at 100— that’s what I remembered during my time playing Violence Online back in the day. But after I leveled up a couple times, my total health rested at 110. Each level gave me five extra hit points, but I knew from my old gaming sessions that health didn’t increase beyond 250 anyhow— if you wanted extra hit points, you needed armor.
And that was it. Nothing else had been touched. No stamina upgrades, no two-handed weapon upgrades, nothing. I had a whole world of leveling beyond me, and I hadn't used any of it.