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Chapter 3 - Niska

Star Pleasures Club takes up a large lot on this level, and is about as dark, and as seedy as you might expect a club to be on level three-hundred-and-forty-two out of a rumored five-hundred or so. The Ceraphrixii had jerked his head for me to walk inside and make my way to the bar to check in with the staff for my shift. When I enter, my eyes struggle to adjust to the combination of the dark and the strategically placed neon strip-lights in various colors. A loud, strange music with a rhythmic base that I can feel in my chest draws me forward. I’m not wearing any shoes, and the floor is sticky as hell, which is honestly… disgusting. There are two huge lit-up tanks flanking the entryway, and inside, there are some aquatic alien species - naked female ones, to be precise. I turn to one of them. She has green scaled skin and bright pink hair, with webbed fingers and toes, and a thick tail that looks like it would propel her really fast through water.

She notices me and blows a ‘bubble-kiss’ in my direction before pointing at a section of glass on her tank. I squint, seeing the strange, glowing, alien lettering before my translator kicks in and the words melt into English. ‘Tip amount for a show, tip amount to touch, tip amount to enter my tank…’

Oh.

I shake my head at her. “Oh, no. I’m not a patron,” I blush. “I-I’m here to work.”

Her whole demeanor changes, her engaging smile, morphing into a snarl before she whips her tail in a way that makes an aggressive wave of her tank water spill over the top of the glass. I gasp, jumping back, narrowly avoiding getting drenched.

“Hey!” a female voice calls out angrily above the music. “What the hell, Aquixia? We just mopped this floor before opening!”

It really doesn’t feel like the floor has been mopped in the last decade, but looking at the angry, tall, purple woman coming toward me, I don’t think it would be wise to mention that. “Sorry, that’s probably my fault,” I crane my neck to tell the woman. “I-…She thought I was a patron, I think? And I think she got her hopes up.”

The tall woman who I now see is wearing a little, frilly apron and… not much else besides strategically placed strips of leather, tuts and shakes her head. “Don’t mind her. She hasn’t figured out which land-species are the spenders around here yet.” She then looks me up and down and jerks her chin in my direction. “You here to work off a debt?”

I’m nodding my head and barely get to answer her verbally before she turns and gestures for me to follow further into the belly of the club. I don’t know why my anxiety has waited until now, but my stomach drops, my heart starts to beat double-time, and I find it hard to swallow. It all starts to become very real as I’m led past booths and tables, some with various alien women dancing nude atop them, with a group of transfixed males gathered ‘round, and some with women writhing in the laps of the vastly varied patrons, too.

I stop dead in my tracks when I’m led past one booth in particular. Right there, for anyone to see, is some kind of species of man where he almost looks part-shark, with a wide, toothy grin and markings that resemble the ripples of sunlight on turquoise waters. His attention is solely placed on the two orange-skinned females kneeling between his wide-spread legs, both their heads bobbing up and down over a cock each.

“Keep up!” the purple female calls over her shoulder, causing Mr Sharky-Two-Cocks to lift his head, run his tongue over his razor-sharp teeth and… wink at me.

Oh, hell no. I feel my face pale as I scurry to catch up with the woman while she weaves and bobs her way to the bar area. I can sense a few heads turn, and eyes following me as I go, and at one point, I’m sure I hear someone shout out ‘I claim first service from that human!’

I shudder at the thought.

But what really guts me is the thought that Jaya might be sent here one day. She’s technically an adult, but she is a sweet girl with little life experience and she is not adapting well. The whole situation with her has sparked a fire within me to try and get us out. Or at least to a safer kind of situation than part of Mama Z’rykby’s stock for sale.

And this place…well… maybe I can somehow learn something here? Turn a negative into a positive?

I get to the bar and take a look around while the purple woman is barking orders at the bar staff. There’s an area where the neon lights are lit up in red, looking like the patrons in that section are all bathed in blood as club workers sit in their laps and hand feed them their meals - all while being groped by tentacles. Off to the other side is a huge cage with neon light bars where several dancers show off their writhing bodies to the beat of the music. A group of males crowd the cage, occasionally one will enter enough credits at the scanner so that the cage door pops open and he reaches in to grab a dancer to take back to his table. Like a vending machine I guess, but instead of a bag of peanut M&Ms, you can select a woman.

Ok, yes, this place is terrifying.

But maybe if I work the shift and try to stay unnoticed, I might be able to find one of the species that Yix said are normally fair and… not quite kind to their servants, but at least not abusive. Those are always the ones he’s trying to sell us to. Which is still pretty shitty, but I figure the alternative guys that Z’rykby wants to buy us are far worse…

…and all of those kinds of guys are probably in this club right now.

“Ok, human,” the purple woman says, finally turning back to me. “You work a full shift. You keep my patrons happy. Every service you offer is chargeable by tip.” She pauses, raising a deep purple eyebrow at me as she points a finger in my face - a finger tipped with a glowing green nail. “You do not get to keep those tips. Remember, you’re working off a debt to Master Joolyx.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I nod my head, a little uncertain about these ‘services’ I’m going to need to provide as the base of the music keeps thumping through my chest and a very large, bulky male squeezes past me to get to the bar.

I watch as she taps on a handheld tablet, and without warning, a glowing orb zooms out of nowhere to come floating by my head. “Anchor it to you,” she says without looking up at me.

“Uh…”

The woman sighs. “Touch it, so that it’s programmed to follow you around.”

I do as instructed, noticing that the floating ball now glows brighter as it bobs in mid-air.

“That’s how you collect the service fees and tips,” she explains. “Oh, and wherever you can, up-sell Trixi dust.” The purple woman roots around in the large pocket of her apron and hands me a Barbie-pink vial.

I take the thing, and on closer inspection, can see it’s filled with pink powder. “Trixi dust?”

The woman rolls her eyes and pinches the vial I’m holding between her thumb and forefinger, plucking it out from my grasp to give the thing a shake. The powder starts to glow like she’d just awoken a whole swarm of multi-colored glittering fireflies. “Offer it out to patrons, it makes most species get goofy and glowy. Do not sell for less than a thousand credits a shot, and make them feel like big, important males for being able to afford it.”

I blink at the vial and then around the room again, spotting a few people dotted here and there who are wearing the twinkles on their skin, just like the little fireflies in the vial. So this stuff makes you… sparkle? It makes little fireworks erupt all over your skin?

Sales. I can do sales. I don’t want to sell myself, but I can sell a product like this. Even if it is drugs, I think to myself, wincing as I hold the vial up for inspection again, wondering about any side-effects from ingesting the pink powder.