NT veRse - Bad End Guide 33 - Request Journal (Patreon)

You wiped sweat from your brow as you, Dierdre, Milk, Nina and Synra walked off stage in your newly designed costumes. You wore a skin-suit that revealed one leg completely on one side and opened up around your stomach and torso to show off a bikini with a short jacket around it However, most of the suit was still locked to your sex and basically impossible to remove.

`At least it's not itchy.` You thought. In fact, you were able to scratch yourself quite effectively though it. You looked to Dierdre in her skirt and leggings version of the suit, admiring her legs for a little too long before you snapped out of it. The Passive Hypnosis worked between the group as well to some extent. It was to the point that you actually kind of thought of Dierdre as a leader, and an extremely hot one at that. You moved past those thoughts to voice your annoyance finally as you stepped backstage.
“Fuck! Is this seriously all it is? Organized dance battles? This isn't a revolution, we're just dancing in their palm.”

“Is that what you think?” Dierdre lifted a towel to her face. It was handed to her by a Bee. Her, a non-Bee was being waited on by a Worker when usually, even a Worker was above a Drone like them. She smirked, seeing that you were understanding a little bit at least. She threw the sweaty towel away carelessly. The Be caught it and ran off with it, seeming intent on keeping it.
“You're partially correct. That's what they think, too.” She closed her eyes and listened to the buzzing of the crowd outside.
“We're an act and maybe soon, we'll be one of them. They're content to feed us attention and give us whatever we want within reason because all of this is within their own plan. To them, we're working our way up and any thoughts of resistance will always fade as the limelight catches our eye and we begin to rely on the comfort and attention. Each one of us would probably be promised the role of a Princess or an Elite in the future. How could we do anything but go along with it?” Dierdre let out a scoff and grinned. You smirked back.
“As if.” She remarked.  You walked with her only to be stopped by another Bee that looked like far more than a Worker. It was her sister. Dierdre put her arm out in front of her.
“What do you want?”

“Oh come on, Sis? Why the aggression? We're all on the same team, right?”

Dierdre did not respond in the negative or the affirmative. Instead she lifted her chin and asked. “Wow... Still an Elite, huh? Mother spoke about raising me to be a Princess like her but what about you.?”

The sister gritted her teeth, eye twitching along with her antennae. “Tch! I'm on my way up.” She argued.

“Sure you are.” Dierdre said smugly.
“If you're mad, maybe you wanna hop up on that stage with us.”

She narrowed her eyes at Dierdre, then reluctantly reached behind her back. You both leaned back in response. She pull out your notebook and tossed it at you.
“Your stupid book. The Queen herself-” She looked at you both with a wide smile,a s if it meant anything to either of you for her to drop that name. Her smile became a sneer.
“Whatever, then.” She stared you down.
“The Queen told me to tell you that she liked your book.”

You nodded, then understood the implications a moment later. “W-what?” You desperately opened to the last passages and saw five whole pages stripped out neatly.

`At least she didn't tear them out...` You thought, blinking.

`Wait, what am I thinking.` You looked up at the sister nervously.

Dierdre spoke before you. “Don't you mean 'Mother told you to tell her the Queen liked her book?' An Elite like you doesn't have access the same way a Princess does, hee hee.”

“H-hold on. That shit doesn't matter... What did you mean by that?” You asked.

“Huh?” The Bee was annoyed, so she was not eager to offer up the info. Thankfully, she seemed to enjoy your stressed look.

“Oh. I'm not sure. Probably just that the Queen read your book and liked it. Consider it an honor.” She turned on her tall, black heels and began to strut away with her big rear wagging behind her.
“Ta.” She waved.

“This is bad...” You whined.

“It's weird. They would've checked your things but unless it was really interesting it would never make it back to the Queen. Hmm. Maybe it has something to do with our status right now? We're pretty high profile.” She pondered out loud.

“It doesn't matter why or how! This book is a guide that will tell me how I meet my End!”

“What? How?”

“Basically, I resolved to write in the book. There's a quirk with me where if anything really, really bad happens I get re-rolled into another time, basically. The book is outside that cycle and therefore retains everything I write in it. That means I could have died any number of times without knowing it without this.”

She looked down. “You couldn't have written in it until now, anyway so we probably didn't miss anything, right?” She furrowed her brow, straining.
“But wait... There's pages missing. So that means that you wrote in it for the Queen to read those pages before tearing them out to hide how you died a bunch of times after this point? This feels like it shouldn't be possible right? Fuck, what do I know?”

You sat down to think, looking at the book. “No... You're right. If this is the point in which I get the journal, I always get the journal through asking for it and therefore I will always get it after the Queen looks at it, because theoretically nothing has changed. But then, that means that from the first moment I will have always had a book where the pages are torn and therefore could not have written on... Them?” You held you head in your hands.
“Aaaaaugh! My head hurts...” You whined.

“How many passages are missing?”

“Like... Five, based on the missing pages. A lot. That's a lot of Bad Ends.”

Dierdre closed her eyes and tapped her chin lightly. “I think I get it, actually.”

“You do?” You looked at her skeptically.
“How can you get it if I don't?”

She sighed. “Forget that. Listen to me. They happen one at a time, right?”

“Right.”

“So what happened is, you got the book the first time and there was nothing in it because nothing happened yet.”

“Oh... Wait, that's right. If nothing happens, it's an empty book except for boring passages of me describing my day.”

“Right. So the first time you ran up against a bad end, then the second time when the Queen looked at it she saw the Passage and tore that page, sending it back. So on and so on until we land here. But... That doesn't help us.” She held out her hand. You gave her the book. She stared at it scrutinizingly.
“What does help us might be the subtle indents from words on the previous torn out page.” She handed the notebook back, open to the last page where you were then able to see what you missed before. Letters very subtly indented into the page before the last page that was torn.

“Holy shit, Dierdre you're a genius!”

She scratched on of her long ears while closing one eye. “Mhm. I guess. So anyway you got one page. What does that get us?”

You smiled. “I'm also pretty smart, I think.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Most of the passages after a certain point are written with Aura. But, I probably figured this out in one of the iterations that even if the page is torn I can read the page after. These indents weren't just through regular writing, but intentionally hard strokes.” You smiled smugly, as you tried to read the inconsistent indents on the second page. Slowly your face began to turn.

“What? Is it bad?”

“Yeah... Can't fuckin' read it. It's like trying to play a word-guessing game... Nooooo!” You cried out. Your cries were cut short by Synra snatching the guide from you.

“Gimme that.” She grumbled, closing her eyes while running the hand over the page.

“Can you read that, Synra?”

She opened her eyes and stared at you in disbelief. “Of course I can READ a BOOK. I'm not stupid, Master!” She uttered indignantly.

“That's not how you read a book though...” Dierdre commented.

“What do you know about books, idiot!? I'm the Writer, I know everything!” Synra exclaimed.

“Oh yeah and I'm the Musician.” Dierdre joked.

Synra tossed the notebook at you. “R-really?” Tears filled her eyes and she dropped to her knees, pulling on the Beastfolk's skirt and wiping her face on it.
“Buuu Huu.... Big Sis, haaalp! I got captured and- and I'm bein' tortured!” She sobbed.

“I was joking...”

Synra let go, sniffed and stood up, dusting herself off. She turned her face to look away and crossed her arms over her modest chest, standing as if nothing happened. You sighed.
“Synra...” You spoke in a way that sounded sympathetic. She reluctantly turned to look at you.

“Y-yeah?” She asked before swiveling her gaze to see your warped expression.
“Guh!?” She jumped back.

“You think what I've been doing to you is what torture feels like? Huh?”

She looked left, then right, then bowed deeply at the waist. “Sowwy. Sincewely.”

“Don't talk like that in private.”

“But it's my character, Boss! I'm the cute one.” She smiled very hopefully, placing her hands under her chin in paw position and lifted one leg while keeping her eyes wide open in an attempt at being cute.
“This's how ya told me ta act Boooooss, Ah-wu.”

You sighed, patting her on the head. “It's Uwu. Anyway... What'd it say. In real language.”

She cleared her throat. “Basically, the Queen made you a Queen below her after you got seduced into betraying everyone and giving her the secrets of K-pop, making her an Empress. You love licking honey off her toes. It's your favorite thing in the world and you love her a lot and she trusts you more than anyone in the world because you got the Guide. Cappy visits some times and he's actually really, really nice apparently. Both you and the new Empress are helping out with his plan. It involves gathering more people into Hives from all across Aoia in preparation for something but you're annoyed by plans because it eats into time where you could be licking honey off the Empresses body.” She stopped.
“That's basically all I could get out of those lil' indents. Uwu.” She winked.

“Stop. That. In. Private.” You stared at her.
“It's a character. You're the cute on on stage, but you're the annoying one back stage.”

Her jaw dropped. “B-but-”

You pulled her into a hug. “But, you did help us out. Thank you Synra. I'll give you something cool if we make it out.”

“Woah!” She seemed excited.

You gulped, nervously looking to Dierdre. Synra recited out loud that you betrayed everyone, and it probably was not the first time. Oddly, she did not look upset.
“Dierdre.”

“You're wondering what I'm not mad? I actually thinks it makes a lot of sense that you got seduced. It's what they do. I don't blame you for it. In fact... I'm very happy. This gives us something to work with.

“It does?”

She smiled. “It does. Think about it. The Queen is working off of the last passage every time. She's probably iterating her approach to reach the best ending for her each time. We have failed five or so times already and she knows it. She succeeded really hard last time. That means she's gonna start getting comfortable. Comfortable is just another word for complacent.  I hate to admit it but using this info we got this time around gave us a few things to use against the Queen. The first... Who the fuck is Cappy?”

“Oh...” You blushed.
“He's my Ex, kind of. Ex Mentor. He's an Ancient Traveler that is creating this big project which is absorbing souls out of the natural cycle of life and death in order to create enough energy that he can challenge Gods and usurp the planet for... Some reason I don't understand.”

Dierdre stared at you flatly. “Okay.”

“Just... Okay? You believe it?”

“I don't think you're lying, Eve. At the same time, I am currently a Beastfolk girl using otherworldly moves to defeat Bees in psychic dance-battles. I HAVE seen stranger things. I'm living in one. If you say this guy is a thing, sure. I believe it. We can use that shit. You say he's your Ex? Maybe there's a way to get a hold of him and have him save us?”

“I don't know if he'd want to... To be frank, we're actually looking for a way to stop him at the moment.”

“I see... Other than that we only have the fact that the Queen is probably expecting to use you in her plans. I'm just going off of Bee psychology based on the way my Sister and Mother changed but... I'm guessing if she had a reason to want to go through more iterations it would be to make it so that she isn't beholden to that Cappy guy while still becoming Empress of the many Hives across the plains. We can play on that. Lure her into opposing him.”

You smirked. “If we could do that... It's risky but Cappy would probably come to deal with the problem. Either he wins and we are already out of here in the confusion or he loses... And we've saved the world and can try and figure out a way after that.”

“So, which is it, Eve?” Dierdre asked.
“You're the one taking on the risk, here.

You lifted brow. “I mean... I seem to be the one that gets the best deal.”

She cocked her head to one side. “If I was a Bee lover, I'd tend to agree. But... I don't have any love for these things. I just want...” She pursed her lips and sighed.
“Anyway... My point is, I don't think this is an enviable position. It's your call. I should say that even if this is currently one of our best options, we can continue going as we have been. We take a shot at the top...”

“What's that mean?”

“We keep taking this act as far as it'll go. Ride the Hysteria to the top and challenge the Queen. That was the original plan but I always considered it a long shot... I- I don't know what Dance the Queen has that she was able to bring a whole hive, including the previous Queen, under her Hysteria as a Warrior. In terms of risk... tricking her into having to fight that guy or challenging her are the safest options for you.”