The Penalty for Failure: An Edge Story

This is my first post using AI generated artwork. I think it came out rather well.

The Edge novel focuses on Jenna and Kara's small group and their battle with Harder as they learn about how to be good Edge slaves. There are a whole host of other characters out there that I just didn't have the room to include. This is one of them. One of my personal favorite parts about Edge is getting to write action sequences. It's something I don't do a lot of since, you know, hot fucking and action sequences rarely go hand-in-hand. I'd love a like or comment on it, though to know your opinion, so leave one if you're so inclined. Enjoy PrettyNPInk's Edge hunt.

For those who have not read the full story of Edge:

Edge is an augmented reality game and social engineering experiment, in which the female players are forced to compete in slutty challenges for rank and rewards, both virtual and real. They are kept in chastity, only released for good behavior or for the requirements of the challenges. They are constantly fed Obsequium, which is filled with aphrodisiacs and drugs to keep them compliant, anxious and confused.

Haloes are an augmented reality technology first shown in Love, Lust, and Erin. Essentially, they are smart lenses with built-in AI companions. Halo Technologies is a DomCo company looking to put DomCo, quite literally, in everyone's head.

Hunts: Only one hunt was described in the novel. It was already a long book, so for the sake of brevity and telling the essential story, some other content ended up on the cutting room floor. During a hunt, female players are made to evade capture by male players. If caught, they become the player's toy for a set period.

The Great Hunt

Player PrettyNPink had once been a girl name Melly, but after eight months in Edge she no longer thought of herself as anyone but PrettyNPink. During those months, she'd met girls that hated the game, just as she'd once hated the game. Edge, in those early days, had been a mindfuck, scary and confusing. Sometimes, it still was, but that was part of the appeal, the rush.

At rank 69, PrettyNPink didn't fear much. What she did fear, though, was failure. Anyone of her rank had monumental barriers to overcome if they wanted to keep increasing, and the price of failure became more dire. The loss of money wasn't the issue. PrettyNPink had earned more cash than she could reasonably spend. What she feared was the loss of rank, which, more and more, seemed to be part of every failure penalty.

The challenge she'd accepted for today was no different. Pretty had been hunted her fair share of times. Over eight months, she wasn't certain exactly how many. Things like that were difficult to keep track of when one was constantly kept in a state of horny confusion by a chastity belt, forced to consume a red drink that made one aroused and stupid, and made to think of nothing but sex every day. She only knew it had been a lot.

Some of the hunts she'd evaded capture. Some she'd failed. Today's, though, was her first willing participation in such an event. This was no ordinary hunt, though, lasting some fifteen to thirty minutes. This was an all-day event; a challenge called The Great Hunt. The rewards were phenomenal, but the penalty for failure was equally miserable.

The Great Hunt: This all-day special event challenges only the craftiest players to outwit their opponents over the course of the duration. During the course of this event, total freedom is granted. Hunted players are marked with geolocation, pinpointing their location within fifty meters. The Great Hunt is conducted over a 200 square mile location, cordoned off specifically for this challenge. The rules for this challenge dictate that there are no rules, short of inflicting permanent bodily harm. Hunted players will have a one-hour head start to seek concealment ahead of the hunters.

Reward choices:

-Cash prize of $120,000, Motor Pool Vehicle Selection

-14 days freedom, Level 85 item choice, Cash prize of $15,000

-Rank up X 10, Epic level equipment selection

Result of failure: Rank down X 10, Cash deficit of $15,000, one month enforced chastity, seven days with Free Use designation, geolocation active, available to all players.

Consolation Prize: Level 55 item selection

Ten ranks for a single challenge were something that Pretty couldn't pass up. The chance for Epic equipment on top of that made this impossible to avoid. She had to do it. Having prepped her best equipment, her EV approached the challenge zone.

Begin Challenge

The challenge zone was an abandoned mining town, nestled in the desert hills. The place was a fitting location for an Edge challenge, Pretty thought, dark, dirty, and scary. The boarded-up buildings along the cracked main road were something out of a post-apocalyptic horror movie, the kind one would expect to be populated by some kind of radioactive, vampiric monsters. In an hour, that wouldn't be far from the truth.

This sort of challenge, she knew, would draw a crowd of skilled hunters and other girls looking for rewards. Many of them would fail. She slowly drove the EV down the main thoroughfare, noting the presence of other Edge player's vehicles parked between buildings. It was a good start, a way to kill the time while staying relatively safe from the hunters. Eventually, though, the EV battery would drain, forcing them out of the cars. Out here, there were no charging stations, so if she wanted to keep the car, that battery was going to need to have charge enough to get her home after the challenge.

Pretty followed the example of the other hunted girls, parking the EV behind an old general store, where she wouldn't be blocked in easily. She checked the charge, estimated that she could safely use the vehicle for two hours, shut it off and waited.

Her anxiety increased as the countdown ticked away, the heat of the desert and the warm glow of the Obsequium causing a sense of detachment. As the countdown approached the start time, though, that detachment began to fade as the familiar adrenaline rush of the coming hunt began to replace it. Another quick check of her inventory killed the last few minutes. The timer reached zero.

The sound of the hunt horn in her Halo earbud, though it was expected, still made her jolt. A message in her Haloes stated, "The hunt has commenced," and a new timer, counting back from 24-hours began. An entire day of evading capture was going to take its toll, she knew, but she felt ready.

Zooming her Haloes in on the distance she could make out a dust cloud approaching the town, bearing down on the abandoned place rapidly. More of them came from different directions. As the clouds approached, the zoom allowed her to make out motorcycles and cars. There weren't as many as she'd imagined, but then, she usually tended to imagine the worst. She counted eighteen from where she could see, but the buildings blocked a significant portion of her view.

When the dust clouds closed in on the city she flipped on the EV and engaged the anti-hunt package, tapping at the screen. This would give her, perhaps, another hour. The vehicle's adaptive camouflage kicked in, the exterior now reflecting back its surroundings. She knew, from experience, that it wasn't perfect. Anyone that got close enough to the car would be able to detect the electronic waver in the camo, like a heat shimmer, giving it away. From a distance, though, it would buy time.

She waited. Through the quiet, she could hear the purr of other vehicles with gasoline engines, but the hum of EVs would be far too quiet. Through the windshield, she saw a girl in a short skirt dash from the corner of a nearby building, maybe fifty feet away from the car. The girl whipped around on her heel, threw up a Sorcerous Barrier, deflecting a virtual fireball, then she ducked and raised a hand with an Arrow Shield, which batted away a hunter's shot.

Two men closed in on her from either side, hunters, both of them cloaked in desert camo, faces covered. Whether the garb was a Halo illusion or their actual clothing, Pretty couldn't tell. Silently, she cheered the girl on, but made no move to help. In Edge, one did not take risks on account of other players. One of the first things she'd learned was that no one else could be trusted. All over the world, save for some little pocket of players, that was true. That little pocket had some kind of group, who worked together, but they were the exception.

Pretty watched as the hunters crept in on the girl. She raised a hand and blasted one of them off of his feet with a gale from a Gauntlet of the Gale, then pivoted with the Arrow Shield to catch a second shot from the other. For a moment, the three of them were lost in the dust cloud from the gauntlets effect, but then the dust blew away and she saw the second hunter getting back to his feet. The girl noticed him, too, but too late. He rolled to his feet and grabbed her shoulder.

The girl shrieked, her body seized up, and then she fell to the dirt. Pretty winced as the player count in her Haloes reduced from twenty girls to nineteen. A moment later, the two men were taking turns fucking the limp girl in the dirt. Only twenty minutes of the hunt had elapsed and one of the girls had already fallen. A moment later, the number dropped to eighteen.

She watched the two hunters go at the girl for another twenty minutes before they decided they'd had their fun. They left her in the dirt with semen dripping from between her legs. The girl, a rank forty-four Fluffer kicked at the dirt in frustration. Being forcibly fucked by two men at that rank was nothing. It was the loss, Pretty knew, the fact that she'd just downranked to a thirty-four that had her kicking at the desert sand in anger. She watched the girl stalk off until she'd disappeared from view.

By the end of the first hour, the number of hunted girls had dropped to thirteen and Pretty knew that she couldn't keep the camouflage running any longer. If she wanted to get her two hours of use from the vehicle, she needed to drop it and leave herself visible. Geolocation was already giving the hunters a fair idea of where she was, but at present she didn't see anyone around. Still, she waited another minute, pushing the camo for every second.

A blue EV soft top, with the top up came barreling from between two of the buildings ahead, followed quickly by a hunter on a black bike. The two of them vanished around a corner in a cloud of dust, heading into the outskirts of the town. Finally, Pretty couldn't wait any longer. She dropped the camo and waited, the EV's engine humming, her foot on the accelerator. Another ten minutes passed and then she heard the rumbling of a bike from behind the car, looked up and saw it round the general store behind her. The hunt was on.

She shifted the car into drive and slammed the accelerator. The tires threw up a cloud of dust and grit in the rider's face and the EV shot forward, accelerating behind the line of abandoned buildings. Through the dust in the mirror she saw the bike dodging to the side to clear the rider's view. The bike lurched forward and then he was closing, drawing up alongside her quickly.

"Kendra," Pretty said to her Haloes, "Take over driving. Evasion."

The EV kicked into autopilot and Pretty rolled down the window as the hunter drew alongside the car. She reached into her bag, leaned out the window, and adjusted her aim. The hunter leveled a virtual crossbow at her with one hand, the bike wobbling from side to side as he tried to keep it on course while targeting. Pretty had the advantage, though.

"Brake," she commanded, and the car complied, the wheels locking.

The hunter on the bike followed suit but wasn't quick enough. He dropped his crossbow, gripped the handlebars, and as he passed by Pretty tossed her Sticker Shock at him. With a whoop of triumph, she watched the little thing adhere to the rider, who glanced down at it, swerved, and then went flying from the bike as the thing burst. The bike slid away into the dirt.

The rush was instantaneous and Pretty cackled wildly, then gripped the edge of the window in fright and screamed as her EV lurched to the side, dodging a pickup truck as it sped out from an alleyway they'd just passed. She slipped back behind the wheel and took control, braking hard and darting between two more buildings, the car lurching over the cracked roadway, then flying onto the main street. The pickup, much more suited to the rough terrain closed the gap easily.

The main street was a warzone like nothing she'd ever seen. The girls battled hunters in the streets. She saw flashes from inside the empty buildings. A girl in a sequined mini dress flew from the doorway of an abandoned bank to land on her back in the dirt.

She rocketed past two girls, back-to-back, deflecting arrows and lightning strikes from a closing group of four hunters that had surrounded them. Pretty veered off, whipped the car into a donut that sent a shower of sand and gravel at the two hunters closest, and the men leapt out of the way. She grinned manically as she gave the two girls a little breathing room and then giggled with nervous energy as she watched her pursuer brake and bring his wider vehicle back around to bare down on her again.

She slammed the accelerator, raising up another dust cloud in the faces of the cursing men and sped back down the road with the truck in pursuit. Another motorcycle joined it a second later. Pretty swerved in front of the motorcycle, denying him the opportunity to get alongside her, then slid the car in a drift down another empty street. Her whole body tingled with the rush of the pursuit, her palms sweating on the wheel. The pickup surged up alongside her, battering the side of her car and nearly making her lose control in the slippery sand.

Pretty turned into the skid, gained control, but the truck hit her again.

"Fuck!" she screamed, fighting the car.

She braked again, hard and watched the truck do the same. The motorcycle went past, turned, then came back her direction. Pretty reversed, driving by view of the rear camera, then whipped the sporty little car backwards between two buildings, then again and again, until she had come back out onto the same road. She kicked back into drive, hit the accelerator, tapped at her screen and watched a line of caltrops topple over the road as she shot forward.

The truck's driver braked and skidded to the side, avoiding the obstacle, but the cycle rider wasn't as quick. She saw, in the rearview, the bike's tires exploding and sending the man flying. She didn't feel bad in the least. She quickly checked the battery and the hunt stats. She could keep the car going for another hour at this rate, but the screen was showing side panel damage from her collision with the truck, and she could hear something scraping against one of the rear tires. The hunters had done their work on the girls, too, leaving nine still evading with twenty-two hours left on the challenge.

Pretty had no idea how many hunters were participating. That was part of their advantage. She needed to ditch the truck and get a look at the damage to the car. As the driver came up alongside again, Pretty handed control off once more to her Haloes, and swiped up her inventory. She pulled a Fog of War from it, leaned out the window, and tossed the thing onto the ground.

Betting that the hunter was manually driving his own vehicle, this might buy her a chance to slip away. Her own Haloes dimmed, nearly blinding her, but she knew that the hunter would be getting the same effect. The AI driver, though, would be seeing clearly until it faded. Sure enough, the truck braked as the driver got lost in the fog.

"Duck and hide," Pretty commanded and held tight as the car jerked and bumped down a side street, coming to a stop behind an abandoned home.

Quickly, she leapt out of the car as the fog began to fade from her vision. She assessed the damage, which didn't seem all that bad at first glance. The driver's side was crumpled in from the impact, paint mangled, but otherwise okay. When she saw the rear wheel well, though, she groaned. The quarter panel was crushed in, a sharp, broken corner pressed against the tire. The friction of the sharp carbon fiber rubbing the tire through the pursuit had left a deep gouge in the rubber. She cursed, pulling at the panel until it broke free with a sharp snap.

The pickup, dogged in its pursuit, rumbled slowly into view. The driver saw her and barreled down. The truck came to a stop and the driver's door opened. The hunter dashed out, leveling a crossbow and firing, but he'd been hasty. Pretty tossed the broken panel in her hand at him, making him dodge, then snatched a Writhing Dark from her inventory and tossed it his way as she ducked behind the car. She heard him curse at the blindness, but then a flash from the corner of her vision told her he'd dispelled the effect easily.

She reached into her bag, found a Smoke Bomb and threw it over the car as she cut around the other side, coming up behind him as the thick smoke began to disperse in every direction. She slipped on her Grip of Paralysis and grabbed the man's shoulder just as he whipped around at the sound of her approach. The shock sent him crumpling to the ground with a cry. Pretty ran to his truck, flipped open her knife and jammed it into one of the tires, before leaping back into her car and speeding off.

More than half of the girls were down, now, leaving seven left. The EV had thirty minutes of use left. She needed to find somewhere to make her stand for the rest of the challenge, over twenty hours. That didn't seem hopeful. Still, she wasn't giving up.

Evade

Pretty pulled up an aerial view of the challenge area. The remaining girls, she could see, were clustered around the main town. It was reasonable to assume, then, that the other hunters were with the prey. Of course, she'd be visible to them, so there may be others already converging on her location. She had two hundred square miles to use, but most of that was desert and scrub, hills and barren wasteland. If she went out that far, there would be other things to fear.

Humans weren't the only hunters out here. This place had been abandoned a long time. No doubt there were snakes, scorpions, and wildlife out there that posed an actual threat to her life, not just a threat to her rank and pussy. No, the surroundings were not a place to make her stand. There was the mine itself, but the thought of being trapped underground in a hazardous, abandoned mineshaft in the middle of nowhere was not a realistic option either.

Outside of the town proper lay a sprawl of homes, likewise abandoned, but she could reach it before she had to give up the EV. Once the hunters had finished off the other girls, as she felt certain they now would, they'd come for her, but she'd have some time. The homes it was, then. She set off, leaving the town behind and pulled into the empty row of dilapidated homes some minutes later.

Parking the car behind one of them and giving it a regretful glance, she entered through the back of the house. The old door groaned open, resisting the years of weathered rust on the hinges but finally giving way. The dusty interior gave her a chill as she took in the sight of the disused kitchen, imagining what it must have looked like when it was clean and new, lived in. The thought of spending the night evading capture through this ghost town gave her another chill.

She quickly staked the place out, finding the ingress and egress points, then carefully laid a few traps at the doors. Then, there was nothing to do but wait for them to come. Reluctantly, but necessarily, she put her back to a wall and set a timer in her Haloes for fifteen minutes to try to nap. The desert wind caused the house to creak and shudder around her, moaning like the ghost that it was. As the jolt of the adrenaline from her recent hours of flight began to fade, she napped.

The timer woke her with a start soon after, but outside everything seemed quiet. The remaining count of girls stood at six. That was after her nap and time it took to drive to the houses, so those remaining girls were likely of high rank, with an abundance of gear, tricks, and resourcefulness. Hopefully, they'd keep the hunters busy and away from her for a while. She napped again, another fifteen minutes.

When she came to, the count had dropped to five and there were nineteen hours left in the challenge. Still, outside things were quiet. She drank from a bottle of Obsequium from her little supply pack, then rested again.

***

Night fell by the time the last of the girls were captured, leaving only Pretty. The sigh of the wind and the creaking of the house were the only sounds, still, but she knew they'd come for her. They were, no doubt, already on their way. It was no use wondering how many of them there would be. After taking down the others, though, and having done so over sixteen hours, she had the advantage of rest. That long, in the desert heat, battling and fucking their conquests, they'd be less alert, tired. She hoped.

Pretty stood and stretched, limbering up, drinking deeply and preparing to move again. The sound of tires crunching on the roadway brought her fully alert. She crouched in the shadows, her Haloes illuminating the cloying darkness of the abandoned home, holding her breath, heart hammering. Eight hours left. The vehicle stopped.

The rumble of two motorcycles, and then the sounds of two more, larger vehicles, echoed through the broken windows of the house. At least five hunters were out there. Not good odds. Distantly, she could hear their muffled voices as they began to sweep the area. It wouldn't be long. They could pin her within fifty meters, which covered an area of roughly three of the small houses. That would be easy to divide and conquer.

The sound of footsteps crunching on broken glass outside the house reached her ears. The front door creaked open a booted foot stepping into the entryway, sending a loud groan through the aging floorboards. The hunter paused, listening, sweeping the room. Her back against the wall, just around the corner Pretty pulled an Orb of Invisibility from her inventory and tossed it over herself. She hated to see the thing go, but what other time would it be useful if not for this?

This wasn't a low-level Cloak of Concealment, easily dispelled. For the next hour she'd be completely invisible to anyone wearing Haloes. No one would risk taking theirs out. Not during the hunt, and certainly not with the total darkness of this deserted place. She waited for the scream that would, no doubt, have the other hunters converging on this place. Then it came.

The Step Mine she'd laid at the front door, unnoticed by the hunter, triggered. The little trap sent a bolt of blinding agony up his leg, straight through the rest of him and he howled in pain as he collapsed to his knees. The effect would last only seconds, but it was enough. She bolted toward the kitchen and out through the back door.

A second hunter stood by her car, peering into the windows. She cursed herself for not having the presence of mind to take a house away from the car. Stupid. The hunter whipped around at the sound of her feet on the creaking steps of the place. He pulled a glowing orb from a pack and activated it, but the thing failed to dispel her invisibility. She smirked, dashed down the steps and closed the distance, flicking her wrist and sending a Sleep Dart into his leg. He gave a groan and fell.

Pretty rounded the car, intending to make a getaway and put some distance between herself and the remaining men, but she paused just before her foot hit a Step Mine left by the hunter she'd just crippled. Two more men rounded the house and ran toward the fallen man. One of them pulled a knife and punched it into the tire of her car. Pretty bit back a cry of anger and slunk away into the darkness, skirting the car and rounding the house.

In the street she saw three more hunters, standing near the little gathering of vehicles. Fuck! She'd misjudged the number. Some of them must have been riding together. Likely, they were part of the same clan. She crept across the street and behind another house, ducking down behind the remains of a collapsed shed, where she waited.

Her location still being broadcast, the hunters could see that she'd moved and those that remained began to round both sides of the house. She counted seven. Pretty reached into her pack, pulled out another piece of Edge tech and palmed it. She'd endured a long, dirty gangfucking for this thing, but it had been done with a hunt in mind. She dropped the Sink Hole into the ruin of the shed, then darted for the next house, activating the tiny thing as she moved.

The hunters approached the collapsed shed, crossbows leveled to fire or hands outstretched, glowing with virtual fire. The Sink Hole tripped and all of them stopped as the very slight tremor in the area, twenty feet from its location, quickly became a rumbling thunder that had them backing away, then turning to bolt. They weren't quick enough. The ground underneath the shed gave way with a thunder of cracking stone as the hardpacked sand and stone of the place collapsed.

The remains of the shed were swallowed whole as the sink hole spread, rapidly from it center. Two of the men dove in time, but the other two weren't so fortunate. Down they went, into the six-foot hole created by the little device, screaming in shock. Pretty slipped by another, tacking a Lillith's Embrace onto his back. He wheeled toward her at the touch but the thing put him on his knees as a wave of mind-breaking pleasure enveloped his every nerve.

She suppressed the urge to laugh out loud as he grabbed his crotch and hosed his pants with cum, then lay screaming with the painful pleasure as he experienced a ten-minute-long orgasm that would leave him braindead for minutes afterward. She knew, from experience, that a ten-minute orgasm only sounded like a great thing, until it happened. Then, it was torture.

With twenty-five minutes on her invisibility and six hours left in the hunt she let herself feel hopeful. Everyone she'd put down would recover long before then, but she was buying time.

She scrambled behind another house, as two more hunters rushed toward the sound of the screams. Pausing to drink and catch her breath, she got her heart under control and watched two of the hunters work at extracting their comrades from the sink hole, while another carried away the goon she'd hit with the Lillith's Embrace. That left three of them, who were now fanning out and coming her way. She estimated that the one she'd hit with the Sleep Dart would be on his feet shortly, while her Step Mine victim was, likely, already recovered.

To her dismay, she saw him hobbling around the end of the house to join the three already searching for her. That left her, perhaps, a couple of minutes before the other uninjured ones rejoined the group. That would leave six of them against her and her invisibility was ticking away. She scrolled her inventory, selected a Digital Shunt and activated it. The hunters paused and began to look about in confusion as the shunt disabled her geolocation for the next twenty minutes.

With five minutes of invisibility left, she quietly padded around the other end of the yard and across the street, then dashed down to the far end of the row of houses. She needed distance, time to pause. Even the adrenaline wasn't enough to keep her clearheaded. Hell, she hadn't been clearheaded for eight months. The lack of sleep and pump of adrenaline from the day of being hunted, though, was sapping what little energy she'd regained from napping in spurts.

With five hours left in the hunt, her invisibility failed. She'd made it to the last house in the row and five minutes remained on the shunt, then they'd start toward her. She waited, preparing, sipping Obsequium. At least the total freedom for the duration of the hunt meant that the fucking belt wasn't vibrating her twat right now. She wasn't sure she could handle it suddenly going into "fuck you" mode and edging her to a near orgasm.

The shunt died. From her vantage point, well down the road, she could make out the hunters moving in her direction as she zoomed her vision in. Six of them, advancing on her, splitting up to surround the area as they approached. When she judged them near enough, she removed the Cloning Factory from her inventory and tossed it on the ground. The thing started pumping out copies of her, which began running in all directions, perfect replicas, complete with geolocation.

The six hunters began firing at the clones wildly, unable to tell which one was actually her. In the confusion, she tossed a Cloak of Concealment, this time the lowbie item, giving herself one minute of invisibility. Betting on the hunters' confusion with the clones, she figured it was a safe bet that no one would be attempting a dispel. She darted past them, around the back of the house, leapt a broken fence into the yard of the next, then came out into the street.

The hunters were still busy sorting out the clones, but one of them turned her direction as her location, moving away from them, signaled that she was the real thing. The message quickly passed to the others, who ran after her. She sprinted, tapping and swiping, pulling a Rabbit Hole out of her inventory and tossing it behind. One of them hit her with a Writhing Dark and she stumbled, tripped, went down in the dirt.

"Dispel!" she cried, and her Haloes complied, burning the cooldown on the simple spell.

She rolled to her feet, spared a glance backward, and watched the Rabbit Hole send the six hunters into Wonderland. Unless they removed the Haloes, they'd spend the next five minutes stuck in an illusion of The Mad Hatter's tea party. Breathing hard, she ran to the group of vehicles and commandeered one of the bikes, starting it up and racing back across the dark scrub toward town, the desert wind whipping her hair.

"Fuck you!" she shouted wildly into the night, letting loose a laugh of triumph.

She sped across the blackness, pushing the bike as fast as she dared. The Haloes gave her stellar night vision, but there were plenty of rough spots and holes out here. She didn't want to hit one and send herself flying from the bike, helmetless as she was. A miniskirt and tube top did not exactly provide the greatest defense. The dark and abandoned town lay below as she broke the rise of a hill and the bike's tires gripped the remains of a paved road. Accelerating down the hill she caught the sight of distant headlights when she chanced a glance behind.

Four hours left in the hunt. She slipped between a pair of old shops, killed the headlight and idled, waiting, thanking the girl that had once been Melly's father for teaching her to ride. This was, undoubtedly, not the sort of situation he'd foreseen those years ago. Still, it had just saved her ass and pussy from a good fucking for another hour, maybe longer.

Pretty knew, if she did fail this, she'd put these fuckers through hell to get to her. They were going to be pissed and they were going to be mean. If they caught her, out here, with the game rules suspended, she was in for a long hard night of brutal fucking. As she waited, idling, she hoped they were good sports.

The sound of the trucks and the remaining bike rumbled down the hillside, making for the town. She waited until they hit the town limits and began moving toward her, then eased the bike out into the street, forgoing the headlight, relying on her Haloes, and sped off. Her pursuers changed course, roaring in behind her.

As long as she was able, she led them on a chase through the streets, darting into alleyways, cutting between buildings, killing time and staying ahead. On the bike, it proved a fairly easy thing, given that the trucks couldn't follow her down the narrow side streets and alleys. The other bike rider was more of a pain in the ass, though.

Stopping around a corner, she waited for the other rider to come around. The cooldown on her Sleep Dart reset just in time, so she punched one into him as he came around, putting him down for the count as the bike crashed into the side of a building. Hopefully, that would keep him out of the hunt for the remainder of the two hours. As she prepared to take off, though, the two trucks rolled up at either end of the alley and she realized, too late, her mistake. She'd trapped herself in. Fuck!

The doors of the trucks opened, and the remaining five men ran toward her from either side of the alleyway. She had seconds. No time. She kicked the bike into gear and shot down the alley, in the direction with only two men.

The one rule stated no permanent bodily harm, but she supposed hitting them at this speed might only break a few bones, so it wasn't really breaking the rule. If they were smart, they'd get out of the way. They were smart, dodging to either side and pressing themselves against the walls of the alleyway as she barreled past. The thuk of a virtual arrow whizzing past her head sounded in her earbud, but the shot was wide and sailed past.

The truck ahead blocked her exit. She'd have to give up the bike. The best way, she decided was to do so in spectacular fashion. Sweat pouring, Pretty leapt at the last moment, allowing inertia to carry her forward, and sailed over the top of the truck. Fingers scrabbling for purchase to slow herself, she gripped one of the top-mounted lights, the muscle in her arm complaining painfully as she jerked against her momentum. The bike crashed into the side of the truck in a thunder of metal on metal, bits of the motorcycle flying around her like shrapnel.

She cried out as a bit of some part of the cycle left a small gash as it shot past her shoulder. The truck tipped up on two wheels, for just a second, and she released her hold, sliding across the roof to roll across the dirt. Adrenaline pumping, she staggered to her feet and ran, with no clear direction. She heard shouting and the sound of the second truck, distant, as it rumbled away on the other side of the buildings. Just under two hours to go.

The two hunters she'd nearly run over were behind her, having scrabbled over the ruin of the truck. At the end of the streets, the lights of the remaining vehicle came around the corner. Pretty bolted between two more buildings to avoid the truck but the sound of feet behind her was getting close. Her lungs burned. She had to catch her breath. She needed to do something about the two behind her.

Reaching into her pack she grabbed the first thing her fingers touched. A Sunstone? Alright. She ducked around the corner, shut her eyes, tossed the thing back in the direction of the two hunters and gave a grateful sigh as they both cursed, blinded momentarily by the bright flash. She fumbled in the pack but all her bits of collected gear were a jumble from all the running, dodging and leaping wildly over a crashing truck. She had no idea where anything was.

She pulled out two items. Yes! She shoved one back in the pack and then activated the Orb of Deception, giving herself the appearance of one of the hunters and dropping her geolocation again, for five minutes. She ran back out into the alley, where the two men were still holding their heads in their hands, waiting for their disrupted vision to return.

Pretty ran past them, slapping her last two Lillith's Embrace on each of them and then bolting out into the street as they enjoyed their ten-minute orgasm. Jesus, that one never got old! Looking to gain distance during her remaining four minutes of cover from her geolocation, she ran between the buildings, away from the sound of the truck. Just over an hour to go.

With one minute left on her concealment, she slumped against a building, quickly drank and caught her breath. Three hunters remained. The two she'd just put down with the Lillith's Embrace would be back up before the end of the hunt, but given what they were going through, partaking in her charms wasn't going to be possible, should she be caught. Of course, it didn't preclude their giving her a good old-fashioned kick in the cunt for being such a pain in the ass.

Her deception faded and the geolocation reactivated. Pretty moved again, ducking between the buildings and hiding in spurts as the sound of the truck rumbled closer. She heard it crunch to a stop and shut off, the night going quieter as the doors opened and three pairs of boots hit the broken pavement. They'd decided, it seemed, that they'd never catch her if they stayed in the truck. She could just dart down alleyways and between buildings to avoid them all night. If they wanted her, they'd have to catch her on foot.

Fifty-eight minutes.

She bolted, selecting a World Tree from her inventory and tossing it out as the three men swiveled toward her. All around her, the illusion grew, tall, thick trees springing up from the ground, transforming the town around her into a primaeval forest. The trees provided further cover, but the illusion would be short lived. Still, this was a game of minutes, now.

She weaved between the big trees, where she thought she remembered the street being. The hunters ran after her, dashing through the illusionary trees. Though they posed no physical obstacle, they still obscured their view of her and that was all she could hope for. Suddenly she was stopped cold as she impacted the side of a building, knocking the wind out of herself as she staggered backwards.

Panicked, she looked about, saw only trees, then she cursed and shut off the illusion. The town reappeared and with it came the three remaining hunters, not a hundred feet away. One of them fired a crossbow and Pretty deflected it with an arrow shield, to her own surprise. She ran again, around the side of the building she'd just crashed into, dodged through the alleyway, and emerged into the street behind. Forty-five minutes. The three men rounded the building, spreading out around her.

This was it. She'd have to fight. One of them drew back a longbow and the others leveled crossbows. Pretty threw up her Immovable Object, blocking any virtual weapon they might hit her with, which would mark her captured and cause her belt to paralyze her into submission. She rushed the closest of the men as he fired, his arrow pinging uselessly off the barrier.

Once she was in range she hit him with her gauntlet, blasting him off his feet into the dirt and making a hole that she ran through. Another arrow bounced off the shield. The two men ran after her again, while the third staggered to his feet. Thankfully, they were as tired as she was. Thirty-eight minutes. Pretty rounded the corner, smashing into another man and knocking them both off of their feet.

She rolled, sprang up, cursing herself for forgetting about him. This was probably one of those she'd blinded in the alley, recovered from his torture of the Lillith's Embrace. The man grabbed her ankle as she tried to run, sending her sprawling again. The other three caught up. Fuck!

"No!" she screamed, knowing the end was coming.

She'd been so fucking close.

The Penalty for Failure

Pretty kicked at the man holding her ankle, but his grip was tight. She grabbed the first thing from her pack that her fingers touched then the first item in her inventory. Someone hit her with a Writhing Dark and as she went blind, her dispel still on cooldown, something stuck to her skin and two pairs of hands grabbed her arms. As her body exploded with pleasure, she realized that they'd returned the "favor" of her Lillith's Embrace.

Her body convulsed as the long, long orgasm turned from a thing of beauty into a thing of pain and torment. The four of them carried her jerking, spasming body away as she shrieked in painful pleasure. The words, "You have been captured!" flashed across her Haloes, but her mind was currently melting with orgasmic overload and the only thing she could do was endure it.

Writhing and screaming, Pretty felt the click of the belt's lock disengage and she was tossed on her back onto an old wooden table. They held her convulsing body down and tore away her skimpy top, which was already ripped and dirty. She hardly even noticed. Likewise, she couldn't even tell when the first of them began to fuck his cock into her, jerking and wriggling in her orgasmic throes as she was.

Two of them held her legs apart for the first to claim their prize. Their laughter and jeers were a distant thing though, and even when the tortuous orgasm faded, she hardly noticed. After cumming for ten minutes straight, her mind had turned to mush and she lay, drooling on the table, as the hunter rutted into her. Two more of them groped and pulled on her tits roughly, but poor Pretty's brain was still attempting to stitch itself back together.

Someone else pushed their cock into her open mouth and began to fuck it as she drooled and twitched. Slowly, ever so slowly, she began to regain the realization that she'd been captured. They were going to fuck her for as long as they could stay awake, as long as they could get hard. Their compatriots, who she'd so skillfully wounded, paralyzed, or otherwise incapacitated, would recover before long.

This wasn't the first time she'd failed a hunt, but it was her biggest failure since she'd been forced into Edge. More of them would be joining their friends. Out here, alone, in the middle of nowhere, they were going to use her. A new message appeared in her Haloes, along with a timer.

"You have failed the challenge. Free Use penalty applied. Geolocation active. Available to all players."

The first of many cocks exploded into her tired pussy as she groaned around the spurting cock in her exhausted mouth. Pretty sobbed, not because of the long line of players that would soon be receiving a Free Use invitation with her location attached, and not for the loss of money, not even for the hard slap across the face that one of them was delivering this very moment.

She sobbed for the loss of rank and the thought of what she'd have to do to win it back. She sobbed for the entire month of enforced chastity she'd now be sentenced to. An entire month of being edged by the fucking belt, while forced to drink the Obsequium and deny herself any form of orgasm. All of this while she had a Free Use penalty for a week. Every orgasm was another day in chastity.

As the next man stepped up and pushed his cock into her, Pretty knew that it was only the beginning of her worst days in Edge since the start. This, though, was the penalty for failure.

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