It feels like Tuesday. Not mourned like Sunday, not cursed like Monday, not halfway-there like Wednesday, not tolerated like Thursday, not celebrated like Friday, and definitely not partied with like Saturday. Just Tuesday—plain, ignored, unremarkable, invisible.

  Honestly, I’m not even sure what time it is. The light here never changes—bright enough to read, soft enough for sleep, and, right now, romantic enough for a little… intimate gymnastics.

  I’m over my stage fright. No—scratch that. The butterflies are still there, but only a few now, circling lazy laps in my stomach. They fade as I match Jenny, move for move. Tension builds. Toes point. Earthquakes.

  Wow.

  Maybe Tuesdays aren’t so bad after all.

  I glance down as Jenny giggles, licks her lips, and kisses my leprechaun charm. “Happy?”

  I sit up and pull her into another kiss. “Are you asking me or him?”

  “Yes,” she snickers.

  “I’m satisfied with our routine, but let’s be honest—my opinion doesn’t count.”

  Jenny pulls me to my feet and tugs me into the waterfall spray, cool mist clinging to her lashes. "Worse, this judge never flashes the score until the very end.”

  “I’d call it a solid 9—maybe a 9.5—for performance, but difficulty?”

  “Yeah… not exactly our best floor routine.”

  “What’s maddening—and more than a little terrifying—is how well the sneaky little rascal knows me.” My fingers twist the charm, nervous energy bleeding through. “He factors in my skill, then nudges the bar higher every time I earn a point in Intimate Arts. Yesterday’s perfect score—”

  “Today’s omen of doom.”

  I laugh, but it comes out thin, too sharp. The knot in my stomach hasn’t gotten the joke.

  Jenny presses close, warm hands smoothing the tension at my hips. “Hey.” Her voice is soft, steady. “Even if he gave us a one, I’d still call this the best routine of my life.” She grins and tips her head, wet hair plastered to her cheek. “And I’m not talking about the gymnastics.”

  I breathe out, shaky but lighter, letting her smile steady me.

  “You did fine,” Tess assures me, voice warm but sly. “What are your levels?”

  I wiggle my fingers like I’m scrolling a mouse. Script flickers past in the air with each fake click of my pretend wheel. I slow, stop, and fight off the grin tugging at my lips. “Nineteens.”

  “Nice!” Jenny pumps both fists, beaming.

  Tess gives me a dainty golf clap, all mock ceremony. “How close to twenties?”

  I suck on my lip, squinting at the numbers beside the decimal. Levels climb like earthquakes—each one twice as hard to reach as the last. Still, pride swells in my chest, and I can’t quite hide it. “Nineteen-point-three… and nineteen-point-five.”

  Frankie elbows Lenora with a grin. “She’s catching up with you.”

  “No,” Lenora smiles, eyes glinting. “She’s catching up with you. I’m just learning everything I can with this body.”

  “Hey,” Frankie protests.

  “Practice makes perfect,” Lenora purrs, exaggerating the hip-swaying walk I’d drilled into her. She slips into the waterfall, the spray catching on her skin, draws me to her, and tenderly begins washing away every trace of Jenny and my intimate play.

  I join her, hands roaming, fingers sliding over soft, familiar curves. Her breath hitches—gasps, hums, little sounds that make me smile. We slip onto the ledge leading to a magma tube behind the waterfall. I lean in, lips brushing her ear. “Do you like being a girl?”

  She moans, voice low and unguarded. “I like you…”

  Behind us, Jenny and Frankie snicker, their amusement echoing over the water.

  “Everyone!” Tess’s voice cracks like a whip. Her “whisper” could rattle rafters. “Out of the water. Dress. Now. Something’s coming.”

  I freeze, every muscle wired tight. My ears track the sound in the cleft beyond our hidey-hole.

  Scritch.

  Thud.

  Plop.

  The echoing sounds cannon through the crack—scritch, thud, plop—like a rubber band smacking a pillow if both were the size of a Ford truck.

  A stench rides the air. Damp stone, pond scum, stagnant water. My gaze flicks to the pool under the waterfall, then to Lenora. She sniffs her armpit and shakes her head, eyes wide. The reek of algae-choked slime floods our hideaway, clinging to skin and hair.

  We lunge for our gear. Lenora jerks on her smock and skirt. I cinch into corset, thong, fishnets, whip.

  “Is that—” Lenora hesitates, nostrils flaring. “Ammonia?”

  I shrug, bow already in hand, string drawn. A conjured arrow hums against my cheek.

  Crack!

  Ozone slams the air, sharp and metallic, and a blur streaks to my right. Lenora’s shriek cuts off as her legs vanish from under her. She flails, clawing for purchase, and latches onto my feet. My arrow flies wild. The bowstring stings my forearm as I crash hard, stone gouging my tailbone, and together we’re dragged across the rubble-strewn floor.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  My eyes lock on the thing: a slick cable of pink-black muscle tipped with a disk of claw-edged suckers, coiled tight around Lenora’s ankles. Snap! Her scream splits the cavern, sharp and piercing. Something gives beneath the grip, and a spray of red spatters the stone.

  The sound should rattle me, freeze me, but it doesn’t. Fear tries to claw up my throat, and I shove it down hard. The hunter in me takes over. My vision narrows. My breath steadies. Target. Distance. Options. The creature isn’t just attacking—it’s hunting. And now, so am I.

  “Holy shite!” Frankie vaults the cable, sprinting for his stash.

  Electric snaps crackle, mingling with frantic footfalls from where I last saw Jenny.

  Tess’s knives ping uselessly off the… what the hell is it? No time. I yank energy from my core, pulling another bolt to life as my gaze hunts for a target. “Frack…”

  The cleft fills with a face. Glossy obsidian skin mottled with radioactive yellow spots, each pulse faintly like a heartbeat. Twin lidless eyes swivel independently—one locked on Lenora, the other flicking from me to Tess to Jenny in jittery, reptilian jerks. And then the mouth: a jaw unhinging almost ear-to-ear, lined with rows of tiny backward-hooking teeth, not made to cut, but to trap. To hold.

  “Hello, creature from the black lagoon,” I hiss, loosing my bolt. Ping! The shot snaps one of its tiny teeth, sizzling it loose before it spins down the monster’s throat. Hardly fatal.

  “Hey, beastie! Pick on someone your own size!” Frankie bellows, hurling a rock the size of a helmet. It smashes against the wall, showering sparks and shards—but nowhere near the target. Still, the splintering stone drags the creature’s gaze toward her.

  CROAK!

  The sound detonates through the cleft like a thunderclap. Pressure slams my chest. My ears ring. Lenora and I are flattened against the stone, breath knocked from our lungs, while Frankie is hurled backward in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Lenora rips her grip from my ankles, snatching a scalpel from her pocket. Her belly jewel flares—green lightning in the dark—as she plunges the blade into the slick tongue. The tiny edge bites deep, sawing furiously. She’s the first to draw real blood, but she’s only yards from that gaping maw.

  I shove myself to my knees, conjure a bolt, breathe slow, steady. Ignore the heat curling in my belly. Ignore the frog’s bulging gaze fixed on me. Release.

  Pop!

  The left eye bursts like an overripe grape, spraying rot and flooding the obsidian hall with a stench that scorches my throat.

  The frog bellows, writhes, then squeezes deeper into the obsidian hall, hauling Lenora closer with a violent tug. Yet its one remaining eye locks on me. Its body crouches, back legs coiling like springs, ready to launch.

  Tess is faster. She sprints along the wall, launches, and drives both daggers into the beast’s right thigh. Her feet scramble across slime-slick flesh, bare skin smacking wetly, but she hangs on. With each desperate slide, she drags steel through hide, carving a pair of gashes that light the air with ribbons of foul steam.

  A sizzle arcs past my ear—Jenny.

  She explodes into motion, tumbling, flipping, a streak of glitter and grace. Her golden baton spins with her, blazing like a comet as she twists through the air. One flawless roll, one final twist—then she lands astride the frog’s thrashing tongue in a perfect split. With queenly precision, she drives the baton down, skewering the slimy muscle to the floor. The beast bellows, pinned. Jenny rises, spine straight, chin high, and sweeps into a bow—more coronation than courtesy.

  Her pose isn’t triumph. It’s challenge—exactly the same as her final Olympic performance, when a rival dared insult the Queen. “Top that, frog. Hurt my friend again—I dare you.”

  The frog lunges, jaws yawning wide, ready to snap Jenny in two.

  Frankie abandons his stone mid-throw and sprints, launching himself into the air. He catches her, ripping her free—almost. Her robe snags between the beast’s teeth.

  Fabric tears but holds. Jenny shrieks as she’s wrenched upward, suspended from her own clothes, kicking and flailing beneath the frog’s maw. And Frankie? He dangles below her, the two of them swinging like a broken pendulum inches from death.

  The frog twitches its haunches. Tess’s howl splits the air—then cuts off with a sickening squelch and thud.

  Bile rises in my throat. Jenny and Frankie dangle inches from death, Lenora’s half-submerged in her own blood, sawing at the squirming tongue with a scalpel, and Tess… I can’t think about Tess. My fingers tremble around the next bolt. A tear slips free; I brush it away and draw.

  The frog whips its head, flinging Jenny and Frankie skyward. Jaws snap open, slam shut. Jenny screams—then ricochets off the beast’s flared nostrils instead of its teeth.

  Frankie isn’t so lucky. She crashes onto a bright yellow blotch between its eyes. Her back arches, a gasp tearing from her, fingers clawing at the smoking wound in her chest before she slides limply to the floor.

  “Frankie!” Jenny scrambles to her side, tugging her away, sobbing. “Lenora! Help him!”

  “Get me free!” Lenora groans; the tongue still wrapped around her.

  The frog pivots, its remaining eye tracking Frankie’s motion. With a wrench, it yanks its pinned tongue loose—Jenny’s baton tearing free with a shriek of metal on stone. Lenora’s scream curdles my blood as the monster drags her toward its waiting teeth.

  I steady my breath, narrow my focus. My bolt flies. It hisses past Lenora’s cheek, nicking her skin—then slams into the glowing baton.

  BOOM!

  The obsidian hall detonates with light and sound. Stone fractures, raining jagged shards. A shockwave slams into me, tearing me from my knees, spinning me across the rubble until I crash into the cold pool behind the waterfall.

  I lurch upright, gasping, dripping, checking my bowstring with frantic fingers. Wet. Frayed. Dangerous. Exactly what I’ve warned my students never to risk. “Frack!” My corset creaks as I twist. No pockets. My spares—buried in my pack.

  “No!” Jenny’s voice cracks like glass. She’s hauling on Frankie’s limp arm, sobs echoing as the frog gnaws and yanks at his right foot.

  Time’s up.

  I force myself steady, dividing everything I have—every ounce of breath, blood, and will—between bow and charms. “Daddy luck, be with me,” I whisper, and conjure the bolt.

  Green fire bursts from my belly jewel, flooding the cavern with clover-scented light. Shadows scatter. The string groans as I pull—snap. One thread unravels, slicing my cheek. My hands tremble, but I draw further. Snap. Snap. More fibers go. The bow feels ready to explode.

  I release.

  The string whips free with a violent crack, stinging my forearm and splitting the wood at one end. But the bolt is already in flight, tearing across the cavern, trailing sparks that flutter down as glowing shamrocks. Some sputter out on wet stone. Others spin in Jenny’s tangled hair. One lands on Frankie’s chest, green against his ashen skin.

  The bolt swerves like a hunted thing, vanishing into the frog’s flaring nostril.

  The monster convulses. Its remaining bulbous eye bursts with a wet pop, sagging shut as its titanic body collapses. The cavern heaves with the impact, water slapping the walls, dust rolling down like a curtain.

  Then—boom. The frog’s skull erupts. Pressure vents upward in a geyser of bone and cartilage, a curved jaw spinning overhead like a thrown scythe before clattering across the rocks. Slime rains down, painting the obsidian hall in glistening green.

  I stagger forward, angling toward Lenora’s pack, her potions my only hope. My ruined bow dangles from my grip, splintered and trembling. Then my breath catches—light floods my skin. Shamrock-green tracery races over my arms, my corset, pulsing brighter with every heartbeat.

  No one sees. Jenny lies crumpled, Frankie groans in the muck, Lenora’s too pale to move, Tess still out cold. It’s just me and the glow.

  Notifications flicker across my sight, cold and golden:

  Congratulations!

  You have killed a Black and Yellow Spotted Stalker.

  Your Skills have advanced:

  Archery +1.

  Luck +1.

  Endurance +1.

  Your Corset of Compelled Charisma has ranked up:

  self-repair +1,

  charisma +1.

  Self-cleaning now includes your skin and unbound hair. New ability unlocked: Adaptive Defense.

  Five Luck Tokens used during combat.

  Six Luck Tokens awarded during combat.

  I let out a ragged sigh, half hysterical, half relieved. “Yep. Still no pockets.” I glance at the carnage, dripping and stinking. “Figures. It’s Tuesday.”