Just that. What he was just thinking. Finished. Stretched back on the couch, struggling to lift one foot up onto it. No complete comfort possible. Maria made a movement with her glass like she wanted to cheers. He didn't respond. Their drinks fizzed lightly, motionless. Fucking again, he looked so stupid. Music, the thing that seemed so important moments ago had all of the sudden become mundane, nothing was playing, it would have sounded like shit to them if it was. Fuck music. Maria tensed up defensively and pushed on against life, "Of course I know about crypto, it's always being talked about around Toji. Even my Tamagotchis are learning how to trade, sort of." She flipped through some CD booklets, maybe some new music will help. She threw back her hair. Some strands blew forward and got caught in the pages of the booklet, more flipping, more strands getting caught, little hair strands of poetry across the CD sleeves. Joffrey decided he liked music again, "Put something on." There was a creaking noise outside the apartment in the hallway. Misty turned her head sharply, eyes wide and anime. That's better, Jofella thought, everything is so much more beautiful when she's animated.
Headphones still on and blaring, Larissa needed to finish that song before coming in. Unlike Maria she had no shame on the speakers, catalogs of playlists precisely curated from expansive knowledge and intuition for genre and mood, such a powerful cradle of cushioned sound over the ears of such human fragility, nervous headphone cord twirl in the fingers, death-pause button hit, door buzzer next. With no music on it was all shame. Frenzy of shoes and clothing, body parts adjusting, thighs rubbing and recently played song's effects dissolving. Human conversation again, never stops its habit of interrupting. Queer talk Joffrey, trying to explain his queer crypto hobby. Maria offered Larissa the spot on the couch beside him. It's the human body now she tries to feel welcome, Joffrey's, sense of familiar space and belonging. Wine sip first, in this seat I am cool.
"I can't believe this Earl guy is making an even deeper reality version of this crypto shit."
"Seems kinda gay, but I guess you can make money or whatever." She was kinda relieved to know he could use a computer and navigate a digital network, she had thought he was mainly a turpentine brain damage painter boy.
"Ya, I think it's cool, well I haven't really made much money yet, but I feel the potential. I do feel something with it I think."
"What?"
"Like I've been trying to write some stuff, trader fiction I call it." He went on to explain
Larissa leaned her shoulders in awkwardly, mouth agape, trying to keep up. She didn't know anything about this stuff. She felt she had no interest in technology finance, so she never bothered to understand, but she wanted to fit in with Joffrey and Maria, she wanted to belong to something. Despite Joffrey making fun of her when they first met, despite Maria seemingly clinging to her as some kind of friend accessory, she did clearly have something redeemable to her, visible even at these early stages of the game. She was a 23 year old painter girl, she had that hot artist girl edge. She felt that edge, she felt cool sitting there with them at a real artist gathering, she finally thought to ask, to join in, "So what do you paint then?"
"The usual, imagination, flowers and birds. I try to avoid my sexual fantasies."
"You don't paint this trader fiction as well? Or it's too sexual for you?"
"Well I did try to paint some crypto shit, some coin logos, blockchain abstractions, portraits of crypto people, but I don't know, it all turned out like shit and just seemed lame, like swapping in crypto content to already existing painting styles. Things are changing now with the rise of the NFT, so who knows what will happen. Who knows what we will even be able to make."
A Tamagotchi clipped to Maria's belt loop by her crotch was grumbling. She pulled it up, "Oh, see, I told you. He's just happy, the price of bitcoin is going up a lot right now. See, look at the chart." She showed them the crude pixel ratio chart on the tiny screen then slipped the little guy into the crisp threads of her thigh tight pocket. "So what do you paint, Larissa?" Speaking up over the muffled glee of her pocket monster.
"My sexual fantasies."
Maria stared. "And what are those?"
Larissa hesitated.
"The brush fucks the canvas, ejaculating paint," cut in Joffrey.
"Yeah, something like that."
"I'm just so happy it's pumping," he exclaimed. "Are all of them into it, or just that one?"
________
Deep breath. Jofella had to pause the game. Maria would be upset, she was playing so hard for him. Don't worry, Misty, I'm not leaving you, I'm just switching tabs. Her audio channel was blocked on his system, he couldn't hear her screaming at him. A special plug-in from the Pokemaster's Cuckdom Playhouse Suite had taken over his computer system. It sensed Jofella's brain overloading from her nostalgic torture and muted her from driving him over the edge. The Pokemaster understood Jofella in his struggle, and Jofella had learned to respect the Pokemaster in his. While they were both slaves to Misty in their own ways, she was also a means to an end for each of them, the creation of art for Jofella, and global domination for the Pokemaster. The Pokemaster did not want Jofella to collapse before he could complete his masterpiece for the Toji corporation, but he also wanted to push him to his limits. The Cuckdom software split the screen in two, freezing the artist hangout on the left side, and pulling up the first sex tape on the right side. Maria's voice in his head, ringing bossy screams, pouting. Jesus, Misty, can't you leave me alone for just a minute, why dont you just go fuck whatever fella it is you're fucking now.
Harakiri was ending, samurai death screams, banging dramatic ancient japanese music soundtrack. It was Maria's turn, it was special for her, she was off at school, such a nice child learning at school, Jofella had to pay attention to her outfit, it wasn't the same Misty outfit she uniformed in her youth, but it approximated it with more maturity and style, nipple form visibly curving the fabric, some color coming through like an underpainting, yes I like your outfit, Jofella had to say to keep her happy. The movie was over. He hadn't made a move. Now what?
"Is it okay if I stay over at your place tonight? My Tamagotchis seem to like it here." Joffrey remembered he still had the one she had given him in his desk. By this point he had actually inseminated it.
"Do you want the other one back? I think it's ready for, uh, incubation."
"Yes!" she said with a drawn out emotion to the s sound while clasping her hands over her heart.
"Bring the ones you have and we'll put them together here." He went over to his desk to grab them, pushing his webcam delicately to the side, the aperture was now facing the bed. When he turned around she was taking her top off. She didn't have a bra on. Her boobs were not giant but they were very nice. The fleshen nipples were pointing out as if in the manner of offering themselves to the Tamagotchis, to himself, and to the universe. He had never seen such a hot naked girl.
—-----
"This is fun," reassured Maria, flipping through a CD booklet, flipping faster, smack, smack, smack of the CD stuffed plastic sleeves.
"Just put on another Spikey mix. Is there one there?"
"Right there," Larissa said, pointing to a pile on the floor.
Maria looked. Sure enough, there it was, a blank CD scrawled with a heart with spikes all over it, Spikey Dj's St Valentine's day party mix. "You know Spikey Dj?"
"I've heard of him, yeah."
She didn't know Mifella though, she didn't know those guys, it was just from downloading so many music torrents, more than she could ever load on to one iPod, she had stacks and stacks of hard drives.
"Well maybe you should just DJ."
"No it's okay, let Spikey play, he's cool."
It started off with some erotic italian disco.
The mood chilled out. Everyone was pleased.
Joffrey fingered a plastic wrapped half crumbled ecstasy pill in his pocket, but he decided they weren't drunk enough yet for that. Maria was going through more CDs, picking them out and asking if Larissa knew what they were. She was familiar with and had opinions about many of the artists.
Maria raised a CD up towards the light, peering into it as if she could read the music from its later cut lines, and it seemed possible to the other two that she really could. The bottom of her shirt hiked up, exposing her belly button with a tattoo around it and a little piercing above. Joffrey was entranced by her movements before them, she was really getting into some kind of performative groove, dancing and interacting with the shiny CDs to the seductive music. Joffrey zeroed in on the belly button tattoo, finally registering what it was. An egg-shaped inked line around it formed the basis of a Tamagotchi, three natural freckles on her skin just below the navel represented the three standard interface buttons, and a tattooed square directly around it represented the screen. Most importantly, her belly button itself, that cute little riffle and twist of natal skin formed the exact likeness of an advanced Tamagotchi life cycle stage, while above, a delicate piercing hooked through her skin at the apex of the egg right where the chain should be.
She saw him staring at it through his reflection in the CD she held above her and began swaying her hips more earnestly to further entice him. "Kiss it!"
"What?"
"My Tamagotchi belly button tattoo. The Pokemaster had it done to me when I first started out at Toji Corp. I want you to kiss it."
Larissa giggled, splashing white wine into her lap, dripping down between her thighs.
Maria nodded to him and smiled. He had a flash back to playing spin the bottle at a childhood birthday party. So he got up and walked over to her, a war waging inside him. He was getting to kiss the Tamagotchi queen, but was she just humiliating him, why would she want him to kiss her in such a sexual way if she wasn't into him. The cyclone of vision fading and expanding into that vortex, looking in, complete the task, complete the task, the inked lines, her skin, he was on his knees in front of her, looking up at her, he had to get down lower, sitting on the backs of his feet, caught in the vortex of her vagina looking down on him through the seemed threads of tight denim gently contouring it, come on, she said, the little monster smiling at him, cracked eggshells, button outlines curving her flesh, he leaned in to do it, her slender fingers keeping her shirt rolled up just on top of it, just as his face came to make contact she pulled her shirt down, mouth full of sweet scented fabric, she jumped back and laughed, a laugh ringing through his head, a laugh that snapped his neck back and made him nauseous.
"Cunt!"
He went back to the couch, pretending all was fine. They kept on drinking wine and listening to the increasingly emotional and love tortured music, which instead of bringing them deeper into the fuck zone as they had hoped, was simply making them more depressed. The alcohol was no longer producing the euphoria it did in the beginning, the excitement Maria had felt in humiliating Joffrey had faded, leaving her own vulnerability exposed to herself, deep inside, she wasn't sure what were her own feelings and what was some kind of manic self destruction, or worse, what was implanted in her by the Pokemaster or even larger forces beyond her knowledge. "Guys, I know I've told you about my Tamagotchi condition, but please don't tell anyone else, I mean just how far it goes, I just want to be known as a normal artist, well like I make Tamagotchi art works, and that's it. I shouldn't have said anything. There was just something that hit me when I got to Vienna, something that made me want to come out to you guys. But it doesn't feel so good now."
Joffrey, despite feeling his own vulnerability and depression, had some force acting within him as well, call it turpentine stupidity.
"Probably because you're groomed by the fucking Pokemaster."
They both stared cockified at him.
"I looked at your fandom forum, which is fucking crazy, I had no idea you were this queen of the weebs, like all these weirdos are following your life story through the Toji Academy, they all call you Misty the Pokemon queen or Tamagotchi princess and shit like that. But you do realize you're being controlled and manipulated by him and this corporation right? Like he will probably use you as a sex slave in the end when you are washed up and miserable."
Maria was trembling. She sucked in her tummy like the Tamagotchi tattoo was about to explode.
"He didn't groom me!" she screamed. "He's the only one who understands me, okay! Obviously you don't."
Maria fingered the virtual playstation style controller, devious, tongue half bitten out through teeth to the side, thumbs whacking the buttons, tilting her head to the other side from her tongue, as if her character would move better that way, there was only one acceptable maneuver as far as she was concerned, telling them to get the fuck out of her apartment, words across the screen in a text bubble rolling, written in VGA graphics digital stone, pointing her finger to the door. Jofella watched himself, almost understanding something, putting together the pieces of the past, clouded by the cringe welling up, Maria's trolling, that horrible cringe, he understood nearly nothing. The two characters bobulated around the bird's eye view of the room and filed for the door.
On the way out Joffrey turned back to Maria, "I'm sorry, I was just trying to be nice, you don't have to be such a whiny weeb about it." Larissa came up hard behind Joffrey and smacked him in the ass––she spanked him. She then looked back at Maria with a face to further signify her disapproval with Joffrey and regret of the situation.
Maria was left alone with all her emotional energy. On the verge of buzzing out of control she began to organize her shit, better herself up, round up the Tamagotchis, care for them, be with them. She paced the room, went back to the Tamagotchis, she went to her laptop at the desk, flipped it open, a chat window popped up, the Pokemaster's avatar floated over her desktop icons. But he wasn't there, she didn't expect it either, he never appeared to her live, he couldn't bare the cuck torture, he would never be able to get the words out to her seeing her face to face like that, he could only leave messages, tokens of desperation: "Joffrey is the one." He wasn't trying to be cryptic, he was just too nervous to fully articulate himself, it was always like that. Maria would sometimes ask him what he meant, but he couldn't get the words out for fear of exposing too much of his inner feelings to her. Did he want her to take Joffrey as her boyfriend, or did he want her to punish him in some way. The Pokemaster had to trust in his knowledge that he had groomed her properly and that these words would stick with her and lead her to perform her task in the way she discovered to be appropriate. But at this moment she didn't give a fuck either way, she was pissed at Joffrey and whatever she felt like doing would be done.
Joffrey and Larissa were out on the street with nowhere to go.
"I'm sorry for spanking you."
"I was just trying to be nice."
"What?"
"To you I mean. I thought you would find it funny. She was being such a bitch, and acting like she was so cool and hot. She thinks you and me are losers compared to her. If I made her feel bad about herself I thought it would make you feel better about yourself."
"She was flirting with you, you moron, anyone could see that. Well you fucked it up for yourself now."
"You didn't think I was being funny?"
"Why do you think I spanked you?"
"Flirting?"
It really wasn't flirting. It was her gut reaction to the look of horror she saw on Maria's face. It was one thing to attack her for being groomed, as horrible as that was for someone who has suffered so much, but when he called her a weeb, Larissa saw it as an offense against Maria's entire being as an artist, and thus an offense against art itself. Like almost everyone else, Larissa felt some sort of deeply special attraction to Maria. Larissa arrived in Vienna looking for something, needing something. There was little chance of success for her in the black hole of the universe, art, everything sucked empty by failure, jealousy, contempt, aimlessness––the worst thing––having no idea what the fuck she was doing or why. In Maria it was clear what art was and what it was supposed to do. Maria was art itself, she would sacrifice anything for art, everything she touched turned to art. If it wasn't Tamagotchis it would have been something else, if she decided to dance, she would be God's personal stripper in heaven while he taught Picasso how to program, if she wrote poetry, kids would throw away their cum screened Toji Pocket 3's and read her poems every night before bed. This is what Larissa thought, which again came from that artist's feeling of worthlessness and the feeling that since you are doing so bad, this other person must be doing so much better, surely Maria, someone so dedicated to her craft, sacrificing her body and womanhood for it, someone so beautiful and charming, someone with her own army of weeb fans, the prize jewel of the Toji corporation, surely she is someone I can connect with, be inspired by, grow in the movement snowballing around her. If it didn't help her out as an artist, at least it was a small sense of belonging. She didn't really have any artist friends she respected back home in Latvia. The art academy there was shit, filled with brain dead rehash of parents' post soviet generation sinking in brackish water baltic dick pool of no effort brown paint stain and free the pussy performance art, it had potential in that, but her hopelessness made her want to strive for an art truly of the future, rather than old art but uploaded to the latest server technology, if she were to have any hope of escaping the black hole.
She was confused like everyone else, she could not fully comprehend that Maria was not on to some artistic conceptual revolution, she did not have the experience and intelligence to see it was simply the beginnings of some new niche hype cycle, a market bubble, but she didn't care to understand, she wanted to make good art and have fun, and at least it was the beginning of the bubble, not the top. This was the chance she needed, a chance to prove herself. Plans were one thing but acting out the realization has to happen in the moment. And then its impossible to think, have to be who you are, where your self is revealed, your shit ass fucking self. Who the fuck knows, she was still so inexperienced, still had no idea, no fucking idea at all.
She was stupid enough to still be here talking to Joffrey. But why? Joffrey did have something, a cock? Perhaps capable, as yet not determined by the gameplay info. She was looking to fuck to the extent all young ones are. He was a painter, wasn't that enough to earn his worth, he thought so, and she? She wanted to be loyal to Maria. Well it was all just business, they were co-workers in a sense, in a job where workplace harassment was not a thing, swapping discs a free enterprise, but what the fuck did he say to Maria, he should not be so mean to her, she got furious again. "You're a fucking idiot."
They weren't tired, that was the simple lubricant to keep them going just enough, grab a couple beers from the sausage stand, then talk about how fucked up everything is, the best way to get a friendship going, to expose their inner feelings, see each others vulnerabilities, connect, night walking the streets. Joffrey lived close by. He had a little painting studio in his room. She wanted to see it.
Something felt right in the beginning, in the beginning the moment was beautiful, maybe it was just horniness, no horniness can't be that magical, there was something transcendental, even seeing it again now, it appeared like a beautiful dream, it must have been the simple desire for love, alcoholism depression, artist depression, loneliness redeemed in the shroud of love's submission, he even had a full on erection when she saddled up on top him, on top of it, stabbing it in to herself, then it all started to go wrong for him, the magic turned into a nightmare. Maybe it was chemical, digital, the receptor glands in his penis absorbing her DNA signals, it was like doing it with another species, no it was like incest, she was too much like him, he needed another species, no it was his stupid cock telling him this, he was too dumb to comprehend her sublimity, how perfect they were for each other, something deep in the back of his brain was trying to tell him this, but he had been warped by the Toji Corporation into retardation, they were controlling him, trying to get him away from Larisssa and towards Maria. All he had really wanted in that moment was to sleep in the same bed with her, lightly cuddle her, softly whisper the secret insights into life with each other, the endorphinal wisdom only decipherable in these tender moments.
Larissa needed his cock. It was as simple as that. First sex, then they would be together. A real couple. No, no, what was she thinking? What if Maria really did want him? So what, what could she do, she couldn't force fate, if she was meant to be with Joffrey, Maria would understand, they could still be friends. She had been at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts for a month and she still hadn't been fucked. Joffrey had been acting so stupid, but also so cute, so boyish. Fuck this, I'm doing it. The problem became clear half a minute into it. She was fucking him, but he wasn't fucking her back. She liked dominating him, but she also wanted some reciprocation.
"I can't do it. I don't know. I just can't."
"Come on."
They went to sleep, bodies just lightly touching here and there, or not at all. But he still needed her, they still needed each other. In the morning he made them coffee. They laughed and chatted. It felt right, at least for him, he couldn't be sure about her. After she left he had to text Maria, he tried to think of something, a long time passed, after several edits, fighting the 160 character limit, "The colour of my first Tamagotchi was yellow, just like the one you gave me."
She read the message some hours later, hormones still wet and dripping. She couldn't respond with anything but how she felt in her Tamagotchi shaped heart, "Mine was blue. I guess we are just different species or something."