Happy Father's Day from Down Under, by the way!

A Commission for Al

When four college students uncover a strange board game called Broad Game, they decide to give it a whirl. After all, there’s a storm and the power is out, and it’s too rainy to leave the campus. But they soon discover that the players in this game are doomed to be transformed depending on what cards and scenarios they draw. And those transformations are going to be very feminine, and very lusty . . .

First Part Here

Next Part Here

Part 1: A Terrible Day, Indeed

Charlie groaned as he looked out the window of his expansive campus apartment. “Rain. Another day of fucking rain. Just great! You know, I didn’t have my Dad snap up the best damn real estate in the college just so I could get stuck in the muck.” He turned around to face his three friends. “What a fucking birthday, huh? Event cancelled and everything! My suit cost six grand, ugh!”

The dark-haired Caucasian man rubbed his temple with his fingers and then adjusted his stylish glasses. Everyone knew that Charlie was loaded. He was a handsome, if slightly short, young man of just twenty two years old, but already the world owed him everything, at least to hear him tell it. Such an attitude meant that he didn’t actually have that many true friends, but the band of three with him had at least shown up with a cake.

“You’re really struggling here, alright,” Sam said sarcastically. “And here I was thinking that me struggling to pay rent next month was a tragedy. Or that little Sir Kibbles has another vet appointment. Or that I’ve got another assessment due on Wednesday, and Stacey Ackermann has taken the only reference material from the library, the damn bimbo!”

Charlie frowned as he took in the sight of his oldest friend. Sameen, regularly just called Sam, had gone to the same elementary school as him. She was still the same anxious, nerdy girl he remembered, with olive-brown skin and thick black eyebrows and hair due to her Persian ancestry. She could have been quite the beauty, were she not thin as a rake and tiny to boot, not to mention possessing glasses so thick they looked like a pair of binoculars. Charlie had enjoyed taking her under his more confident wing and using her maths answers to help pass the class. She didn’t share notes anymore, but they were still buddies, and while she was an anxious and utterly neurotic woman to be around, he found it oddly charming. The two were great at tolerating one another. That was perhaps the best way to put the relationship between the two. Charlie’s overconfidence and entitlement failed to impress her neuroses and sarcasm, and vice-versa.

“I’m just saying, this weather is shit,” the rich young man said. “I can’t believe we’re seeing actual flooding here. And thunder! God, if the power cuts off-”

Suddenly, the power cut off, leaving the dark-haired man to groan loudly. Sameen immediately panicked, looking around in the darkened space

“Someone get a light in here!” she squeaked. “I can’t stand the dark! Someone get a damn light in here!”

“Got ya covered, Sam,” echoed a low baritone voice, crisp and smooth. Jessie turned on his phone and used it to wave some light around. “You know, it’s only 5pm, right? You can still see outside.”

“Yeah, and it’s winter!” she declared. “Things get darker soon!”

Jessie shrugged. “Fair enough. Hey Charlie, you tempted fate, man. I always tell you man, when things can’t get worse, they always will. Just ask my leg here.”

The large, powerfully built man gestured to the cast that encased much of his leg. He was lying back on the sofa couch, taking up its space pretty much entirely. But then of course he would: Jesse was a massive footballer, the star quarterback of his team until he broke his leg in two places after a crash tackle turned into more of a crash than a tackle. He was African-American, with a manly square jaw, an incredible physique, and a member that he was most proud of when it came to pleasing hot chicks. His hair consisted of short, tight curls, but despite his incredible handsomeness and natural charisma, the man had become quite the black hole to be around ever since the one-two-three combo of his long-term girlfriend Denise leaving him for his best friend, his teammates all knowing about it and not telling him, and then being kicked off the team for violently assaulting said teammates. That crash tackle gone wrong? That had been against his own side while on the field. There was a reason he had reconnected with his high school friends recently; all his others were gone.

“Man, just when I think life can’t get any worse,” he said, sighing as he laid back. “No offence, Charlie my man, but I really would have thought you’d have enough cash flow to not end up stuck here while your party is happening across town.”

Charlie furrowed his brow. “I thought so as well. Damn drivers lacking all balls these days.” “Or they just don’t want to drown,” Sam said, looking again at the window with fear in her eyes. “The water won’t keep rising up into here, will it?”

“Doubtful,” Charlie said.

But Jesse was in a negative mood again, so responded with, “probably.”

“SHIT!”

All eyes turned to the fourth person in the room, a thin red-headed man with a tall body that made him look almost ghoulishly slender. This was Alex, who had latched onto their group just a year ago to try and date Sam, only to be rebuffed and continue sticking around. Something about his hyper, eager-to-please personality made him oddly endearing, even if he couldn’t stop obsessing over cryptocurrencies and NFTs and AI and whatever the latest tech development was.

“Oh God, is it going to flood?” Sam said, her anxiety getting the better of her.

“No, it’s way worse than that!” Alex exclaimed. He held up his phone. “No reception! I can’t make my online trades today! I won’t be able to check how my shares are doing!”

There was a moment of pause, and then both Charlie and Jesse cracked up laughing, and Sameen shortly after with them.

“Please, I pay people to do that for me, Alex!”

Jesse giggled like a schoolgirl despite his massive size. “Man, I can’t keep up with this shit. Is it AI or crypto now?”

“He’s all in on the AI train,” Sam said. “Which worries me, because you know it tracks all your data! I’ve read so many papers on it.”

Alex groaned. “I’m still getting no bars! Anyone else?”

They weren’t. None of them were, and soon they were all groaning at the realisation, leaving Alex a little triumphant. “Oh, not so funny now, is it?”

Jesse was in a funk all over again. “Great, so now I got no team, only one working leg, my girl has left me, I’m stuck in a flood, and we got no internet reception. Shit man, what are we even meant to do?”

Alex tried again to connect, but couldn’t. He was feeling like an addict without his hit; he needed to check his financials and investments twice an hour! As it was, he slumped in front of the coffee table.

“Damn it,” he said. But the man had a quick nature, and was always on the go in his own high-speed way, because he immediately stood back up. “Okay, I need a distraction then! We all need a distraction! It’s still Charlie’s birthday, so let’s actually eat this cake. Maybe the internet will come back on soon. But for now, we eat, and we think of things we can do and talk about together until I can check my damn investments.!”

“Like what?” Jesse said.

“Uh . . . the future of AI?”

“Try again, man.”

Sam considered this topic. “Maybe how we’re all travelling? I mean, I could use some reassurance here.”

 “Talk about our feelings while we eat? I’d rather kill myself.”

“Fair enough. I have too many feelings to accurately discuss anyway,” Sam said. “I have all the feelings. All the anxious feelings.”

“That’s a no for me too,” Charlie said, though he did take an offered slice of cake. “Again, I-”

“Pay people for that,” they all said in a chorus, which left him blushing a little.

“Fine! Fine! Fuck me for being a classy, sophisticated guy I guess and not believing in little therapy sessions.”

Alex huffed. “Fine! Screw me for trying to think of something. Maybe we can watch something on an iPad?”

“You’d need streaming,” Sameen reminded him.

“The TV?”

“Stations are cut off.”

“Okay, maybe the radio?”

Jesse chuckled. “Who the fuck’s got a radio, man? That shit is old school. I thought you were all about new tech?”

“I am,” Alex said. “But I’m also adaptable. You know, there’s good money in selling retro stuff. I bet if there was an old radio here-”

“Which there isn’t.”

“-we could scalp it for quite the high price. Maybe even make some NFT’s based around the content. Or we could stream our reactions to it, monetise the old radio experience for our generation and-” “Dude, there’s no radio!”

Charlie ate another piece of cake. “Wish there was a radio. At least we could do something.”

None of them had noticed that Sam had disappeared. Instead, they continued to bicker and argue. Charlie was already bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t listen to some refined classical music or read another Tolstoy, while Jesse scoffed at his friend’s obsession with always appearing high-class and cultured just because he was wealthy. Alex, in turn, was stuck trying to mediate, the man’s mind going a mile-a-minute trying to think of what to do, but most of all bending back around to what tech they could use. The man simply couldn’t imagine a world without digital tech, and he was already having trouble navigating the conversation without some AI-generated advice on hand.

“Shittiest birthday ever,” Charlie muttered. “We were meant to be at the classiest, most expensive restaurant in town, my treat!”

“Your Dad’s treat.”

“It’s my money, Jesse. And there were going to be people from DigiTech there, Alex. People you would have liked to talk to.”

Alex groaned. “Great! I could have met my crypto heroes!”

“Bunch of losers if you ask me,” Jesse said. “I could take them all on, and they’re the ones who think they’re alpha?”

“They make far more money than any NFL player,” Alex said, his expression one of annoyance. Jesse just rolled his eyes.

“Still a bunch of losers.”

It was to this scene of misery, frustration, and not-at-all friendly interaction that Sameen returned, having checked the shelves of Charlie’s new campus place and found something interesting. She shuddered a little as lightning struck - this kind of weather always made her anxious - only to turn her attention to the three boys arguing.

“You know,” she said. “Looking from the outside, no one would ever imagine the three of you were friends.”

Charlie blushed a little. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s Jesse’s fault. His misery is infectious.”

“Not misery,” the man replied. “Just realism. Shit luck pouring down like the rain outside. Charlie’s meant to be partying it up as the man of the frickin’ hour, I’m meant to be the alpha male of alpha males, the kind of the football team, and Alex here is disconnected from the internet, a man without a purpose. We’re all suffering.”

“Yeah, and the weather’s got me on edge,” Sameen said. “But we’re all here, and we’re all friends, right? And I figure . . . this is sort of like a setup, right? At least that’s how I’m trying to picture it so I don’t get all nervous. We’ve got me, the snarky nerd girl. We’ve got Charlie, our resident wealthy and classy man of the hour, as you say.”

Charlie smirked and tipped his imaginary hat.

“We’ve got Jesse, our classic jock footballer type, injury notwithstanding.”

“But a jock nonetheless!” he said.

“And we’ve got Alex, our tech whiz and salesman.”

“When I’ve got an actual internet connection to sell something!” Alex emphasised. “But yes, that sounds like me. Huh, it’s funny, when you say it like that, it does feel like we’re a bunch of stereotypes at the start of a story or something.”

“And what every good story needs,” Charlie said, picking up what Sam was putting down. “Is something spooky in the dark!”

“Ew, not spooky,” she said. “But perhaps a fun game. A game of dares and risk. A game like Broad Game!”

She held up the odd board game she’d found at the back of a cupboard and showed them all the lewd pin up cover and the description on the back. With the light of their phones they were able to read it.

Welcome to Broad Game, the thrilling and cheeky game that tests the players against scenarios that will have them rolling with laughter, uncovering naughty secrets, and daring one another to perform outrageous acts! Dive into a spectacular and magical game that promises to change your life, and make it all the more erotic!

“I’ve never heard of this,” Alex said. “I wish I could search it up. Something like this would sell amazingly fast in today’s fast-paced sexual world.”

Charlie looked at it and held up his nose. “I’m sure you’ll all have fun with it, but it looks a little beneath someone like me. No offence.”

“Fuck off, man,” Jesse said. “You’re playing. I bet this game will totally break your holier-than-thou, classier-than-thou attitude, dude.”

The other man raised an eyebrow. “Well, perhaps it will make our resident ‘alpha bro’ stop whining about his lost career.”

Jesse growled, but Sam stepped between them. “Alex, what do you think?”

Their newest friend was tapping his foot repeatedly on the floor, clearly starved for some kind of digital stimulation. “At this point, I’ll take anything until the power comes back on!”

“So it’s decided,” Sam said. “All of you can put your dicks away and butting heads, and we can have some fun.” As she said this, a peal of thunder rolled through, which made her shiver. “And I can be distracted from a thousand different anxieties by focusing my brainpower on the rules. We all in?”

The three men looked at one another, then to Charlie.

“It’s your birthday,” Jesse said.

Charlie sighed. “Well, it’s no fancy restaurant with scallops and oysters but . . . it’s also all we’ve got. Fine. But it better not be too . . . base.”

Jesse snorted. “Man, I hope this thing makes him turn red!”

They moved to the table in the main living space. This was a rental campus home intended for five to six students, but instead Charlie had gotten his Dad to cover the cost of the entire thing. He hadn’t even moved in all of his fancy leather books and art sculptures yet, which he bemoaned regularly as they set up in the otherwise bare space. Alex found some candles and lit them, keeping them away from Sameen who was nervous near them. Jesse used his crutches to get himself to the table and let others set up. He was trying not to fume about his lost status, his lost girlfriend, and his lost career as a future player, so hopefully this would be a distraction. Sam set up the board, which was a surprisingly detailed map that made up a fictional town called Broad City. It had little locations in it: Lil’ Vegas, The Bunny House, Femme Fatale Lane, Bikini Beach, and all of that. The squares for advancement went in a wide spiral around these, moving towards the centre, where a diamond-like half-sphere sat, sort of like a snowglobe. It glowed softly as Sam unfolded the board, almost like it was awakening. The candle flames briefly trembled, then settled down. 

“Woah,” Alex said. “Retro yet futuristic. Need.”

Sam read the instructions, focusing down her thick glasses and occasionally running her tongue over her crooked front teeth as she determined the rules. There were two packs of cards: Transformation Cards and Roleplay Cards. But the instructions were fairly bare, and only explained that these needed to be picked up on the relevant squares as the players rolled the dice.

“A warning,” she read aloud as they took their places around the board. “Once this game has begun, it cannot be ended prematurely. Any player who tries to leave the game will begin to succumb to their new role, and find themselves permanently transformed in mind and body unless they return quickly to the play setting. Cheating will incur a major penalty. Otherwise, enjoy the game, and remember that the life of a woman should be filled with pleasures beyond her wildest imagination.”

At this, Sameen chuckled. “Yeah, right. I think I missed out on those pleasures when God was handing them out.”

“Hey, you deserve to be happy,” Charlie said, giving her a wink.

She actually smiled, blushing a little. She didn’t have a romantic interest in Charlie, finding him too snooty. But . . . he surprised her sometimes. They all did. Which was, she supposed, how they managed to stay friends despite how combative and frustrating they could all be.

“Okay,” she said. “Sounds simple. Looks like there’s some very, er, intricate carvings of sexy ladies for pieces. Everyone, choose what piece you want to play as, and then we can begin Broad Game. Let’s hope it’s a fun distraction.”

“Amen to that,” Jesse said.

“Damn right,” Charlie added.

“I really hope so,” Alex finished.

They began to fish around the box for an appropriate player piece, not even realising the crazy journey they were about to take. Meanwhile, the crystal centre of the board glowed just faintly, anticipating this moment.

The wizard within was happy. His perverted dream was about to begin.

To Be Continued . . .