Chapter 3

Poking the Bear

As Junior year starts for our hapless victims experimental subjects, three new students move into the dorm for their freshman year.

"Hey! They all look kind of familiar. You wouldn't be trying to be a b*tch and slipping that black haired gal V is secretly interested in into the dorm, would you?"

Now would I do something like that? Really?

"Hrrrph. Yes, you would."

*flips through a stack fo papers* Here, let's look at the manifest, er move in information that arrived with them. The fellow on the left is Rory Murphy. He's from a large family over in Farmer Cheese Valley. He's a... heh... farm boy.

"I think I could've figured that one out for myself."

The other two are sisters, Selene and Lilaea. They're... ah... transfers from a college in the city.

"The two girls still look awfully frelling familiar. You better not be lying to me."

Oh trust me. Besides, Vlad's paperwork *flips pages* says right here "His closeness with Luna is questionable.". Neither of the girls have a name anything like Luna. Or like Luna's sister, Lilith.

*whistles and tries to look innocent* *watches K2 storm back into the dorm*

Now Mao warned that getting Vlad and Luna together, especially without family ties restricting them, is a dangerous thing. I'm counting on something to liven things up here a bit. I'd planned on adding one more playable to the dorm (Rory in this case) to try to even out the boy/girl balance in the dormies and decided to add two more into the mix. Of course, three more playable make it take forever to get through the next two semesters. As for the pending disaster Mao warns about, I have one thing that I hope will make a difference for K2.

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Namely ACR. Through this little venture I've discovered that ACR does somes funky things with relationships, attraction, and faithfulness. I was surprised as all get out when this happened as soon as I turned on free will. I'd turned off free will to generate their ACR tokens and set gender preference, and as soon as I flipped it on.. *BAM!*. Well, Rory is a family sim.

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Now, Vlad will pick Selene over almost everyone else, including K2, during a "scope room". Unless Lilaea is there. Somehow she's even more attractive. WTF. Selene will pick him out, even over Rory, with the same interaction. So Mao is quite right about there being some dangerous levels of attraction here.

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"All right, I'm damn sure now that you're lying to me and this is the gal V's got that crazy obsession over. He hasn't taken his eyes off her since she came down to dinner.

I'm telling you, you're imaging things.

"And why the hell is she trying to be nice to me? Does she know already that I'm a rival?"

Maybe she's just trying to be nice and make friends?

"Oh please, I'm not in kindergarten here."

Maybe she's just trying to butter you up so she can lure you into the woods on the edge of campus and murder you.

"Ack!"

Gods your gullible. I doubt she'd do anything like that.

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K2, would you stop worrying. Like Vlad's going to leave you for anyone else. Now if you'd fooled around on him or something, I could see where you might have a reason to wor...

"Well, there was that time with Clay."

You guys worked through that.

"And... ah... Ray tried to get feelie with me when he was helping me study the other night while V was out. And Stephan whistled at me in the shower the this morning.

Oh good god girl. Okay, I understand why you might be a bit concerned.

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And after watching those two in the den, you can see where those concerns come from. Of course, Vlad rarely turns down an admire. You'd never know he seriously lacked for outgoing points *snicker* Must be that one nice point again.

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And "Selene" has become the queen of staring right at the camera with these smug looks. That or I'm just really good at capturing them from her. You'll notice it as we go on.

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"Ahhh!! Gawdsdammit, she's cheating!"

I don't think you can cheat at Rock Papers Scissors. Besides, she has full nice points. It's not in her nature to cheat.

"They why the hell does she keep winning?"

Um, because you suck at this game?

"Grrrr, she just doing it to show off for V. I am so going to beat her at this game. One more round."

No more 'one more round' You've got stuff queued up.

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Yep, Vlad might've been staring at Selene during the entire game with K2, but K2 was the one he wanted to 'interact' with *snicker*

Someone looks a little confused, don't you think? I got a distinct 'this is war' vibe from her. *chuckle*

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Night class? Ew, I hated those.

"And I hate quantum theory."

I loved my quantum mechanics classes. Engineering mechanics, now that's a different story

"So why the frell did you sign me up for physics?"

Because your LTW is to be a Cult Leader. And physics is useful for the paranormal career track. Besides, it's a fun career track.

"Whutevah. Why do I have this creepy feeling running up my back, like something bad is happening?

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I have no idea. But you might want to check in the library, just to be sure.

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"Oh wow!"

"What?"

"Selene just complimented me. She said I must be really smart because all the classes I'm taking look really tough to her."

Uh-huh *looks skeptical*

"And she asked me if I could help her with her research paper."

Help her with her term paper, or write it for her?

"Ah..."

Gods, you are really gullible.

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So while K2 is all wrapped up writing Selene's term paper, Selene follows Vlad to the other side of the dorm, to pay him a few 'complients' of her own.

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With all the stalking currently going on in Havarti Hall, what's one more stalker? Selene fits right in. Of course, there's only one person she stalks.

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But he doesn't seem to keen on it, surprisingly.

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That's not to say that Selene doesn't try. She's quite generous with the flirts and compliments, and their relationship panel certainly reflects it. If K2 saw their panels, she'd be in tears.

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The interesting thing is, I've never seen Vlad queue himself up to return the flirting (and I'm certainly not going to do it for him) He's spun up plenty of wants to talk/play/entertain (and one other big one which will come up later) with Selene but, as you can see, there's usually someone else on his mind.

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Yep, there's only one lady that he'll autonomously choose to romance.

"Wait a minute. You're talking about me aren't you?

Well duh. I don't see his arms around anyone else.

*squeal*

Ow! That noise! Where the hell did that come from? I don't make noises like that.

"Hey. Ah, before we go tangle up the bedsheets, can you answer me something?"

*facepalm* What?

"Why do I have this feeling that something bad is going to happen again?"

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Well, I suppose it could be because there is one person who might be rather upset to find Vlad with his arms around someone else. And she's coming home from class right now.

I was so shocked that Selene came back from class at that exact moment (yes, if you had been visiting last night you would've heard a loud "oh s**t" emerge from my room) that I completely spaced zooming in for a close shot. Although I think that may be a good thing; that's definitely not her happy face.

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So I'll wrap up this chapter just before a rather ugly smackdown is about to occur. Not like it stopped anything, really. Selene immediately spun up a want to fall in love with Vlad. By the time K2 and Vlad graduated, Selene and Vlad had worked out their differences and were friends again. And maybe something more... but you'll have to wait to see that.

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-- Chapter 4 --

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