I didn’t take protecting my inheritance very seriously. Given that it was mostly ugly costume jewelry from my grandmother, I was working out how to sell it without losing access to the actual cash. She had assured me that even “a lazy boy like you” would profit from what she would leave me.
I loved D&D and fantasy stuff in general, but never thought any of it was even close to real. Even so I spent a lot of time thinking about it all, the minutia of even the weirdest corners of things. Anything might make for a good game if developed far enough. I also hit flee markets regularly for props. An old broach or storage box could really make a game that much better.
We came to the ancient temple out of desperation. Rin had lost a leg during our last expedition, and so I had to do most of the heavy lifting. By the time we got to the temple’s remains we were both exhausted and desperate. If it couldn’t heal us we wouldn’t be making it home.
I had been investigating a group of con artists for an expose. They preyed on lonely young men on the Internet, promising to get them perfect women without any pickup artist bullshit or the like. Seemed like it would be a quick assignment, pose as someone on the older end of their target who was getting real desperate, get some dirt, make an article mocking them and keep going.
It started with a little it of graffiti on the walls of my new place. But that wasn’t the image I was going for. It might not have been a great neighbourhood but I wanted my gallery to be classy, the first wave of a new look for where I grew up.
My roommate said he’d turn me back after some pictures. I didn’t have much choice, being transformed into a woman by this weird statue he bought at the flea market. So I showed off my new tits and let him tie me up and he took some pictures.
How could I refuse the offer? An elvish lord traveling through our town, offering a simple labourer like myself a place in his retinue, it was the stuff of dreams. He warned me that it would be different, “My boy, you understand I do not need the sort of labour you are accustomed to, yes?” He asked many questions like this, and said many other things like that, but all I could hear was getting to do one better than the adventurers that would occasionally sweep through the village.
I had drifted into majoring in Chinese and Political Science, and finding myself with no other majors I could jump into I just went full throttle into them. Grad school for International Affairs and internships with the right government organizations followed. Soon enough I found myself positioned to be an analyst, which was as close to a spy as you could get. After all, field work was a fools game—even if I played the part of some foreign businessman I’d stick out.
Greg and I had found the device while doing some location scouting for our film. As soon as we realized what it did we were overjoyed. Makeup, costumes, actors: the thing would save us a fortune and make the film look far slicker than we could have managed even with that fortune. We briefly considered using it for some porn to help raise funds for other things, but figured that would just be a huge distraction from getting our film done. Besides the economics of it wasn’t right.
I don’t regret giving up my twenties, and a bit more, for a life of luxury. I would have thought that Greg would have wanted a woman my previous age, but he wanted more than just a pretty young trophy. He confided in me that he was looking for a beautiful woman around his own age. Someone who knew the lay of the land and who he could really share his life with.