My Life in Hollywood C43 Exponential (+18) (Patreon)

Marcus had always figured something like this would happen once he had his own place—privacy, freedom, a chance to bring home a girl he wanted. That was half the reason he'd rented the house. But he hadn't expected it this soon, or with the actress he'd just cast as Haley. The thought made him feel like a real Hollywood player already.

Her full breasts grazed his chest through the thin blouse, nipples already pebbled and stiff, dragging lightly like a tease.

Her lips brushed his—soft, plush, fucking addictive. She kissed him slow at first, parting just enough to suck gently on his lower lip, tongue flicking out in a wet, teasing stroke that shot heat straight to his groin.

Then deeper, her mouth opening fully, tongue sliding against his in slick, lazy swirls, tasting him like she had all night.

"Mmm," Marcus groaned low, hands moving on instinct. One traced the dip of her spine, the other dropping to cup her ass—round, firm, goddamn perfection. He squeezed hard, fingers sinking into the plush flesh through her jeans, pulling her tight so she felt the growing ridge of his cock pressing against her.

Lana moaned into him, throaty and needy, the vibration humming down his spine. Her tongue tangled with his, hot and wet, sucking gently before stroking deeper, exploring his mouth like she owned it.

Her hands slid up his chest, nails raking lightly over his shirt, then fisted the fabric to drag him closer. Her tits crushed fully against him now, nipples hard points scraping through the layers, begging to be touched.

Marcus's hand roamed up her side, thumb brushing the underside of her breast before he palmed it completely—heavy, soft, fucking incredible in his grip. He squeezed, feeling the weight spill over his fingers, rolling his thumb over her stiff nipple until it peaked even harder.

She arched into him with a whimper, hips rolling subtly, grinding against his throbbing cock in slow, deliberate friction.

The room filled with wet sounds—the slick slide of tongues, soft gasps, the faint smack of lips meeting and parting. Her scent mixed with the raw heat of arousal, making his head spin.

Finally, she eased back, just enough to break the seal. A thin strand of saliva stretched between their swollen lips before snapping.

They were both breathing ragged, eyes locked, her cheeks flushed deep crimson, lips glistening with him, chest heaving.

"That..." She licked her lips slowly, chasing his taste. "That was something."

Marcus grinned, voice rough as gravel. "Yeah. It really fucking was."

"I didn't know you could kiss like that." Her blue eyes, pupils blown wide and still glazed with lust, stared at him. "Was that your first time?"

'First time?' Marcus thought, amused. 'Not even close.' But technically, this body had never felt this. So he shrugged. "Guess you could say you're my first."

Lana stared at him. "You're a hell of a kisser for a first-timer." Then her expression softened, a flicker of concern crossing her face. "Do you... regret it? I kind of just threw myself at you."

Her eyes dropped, avoiding his gaze.

Marcus chuckled. "Regret it? Hell no. That was fucking amazing." He meant it—every second. This was the payoff he'd wanted: his own space, a gorgeous girl wanting him, no interruptions.

He hadn't expected it to taste this good, to feel this electric.

"I'm a little surprised," he admitted. "But regret? Not a chance." His grin turned wolfish. "Actually, if you're up for it, we could go again. Maybe take it further—"

Lana laughed, pressing a finger to his lips. "Okay, I'm gonna stop you right there." Her smile was warm but firm. "I kissed you because I think you're charming and genuinely nice. But we're not doing that."

Marcus felt the sharp ache of disappointment, his cock still straining painfully, but he kept it cool. No pushing—not after what she'd been through with Christopher.

Lana caught the flicker anyway. "Maybe we start as friends first," she said gently. "And we can talk about... more... when you're actually legal."

"So now we're worried about age?" Marcus raised an eyebrow. His soul was a grown-ass man in this teenage body. "And just to be clear—we made out before becoming friends?"

Lana rolled her eyes, fighting a smile. "Call it an audition. You passed."

The humor faded. Marcus stepped closer, hand settling on her lower back. His voice dropped, serious. "But tell me straight—you didn't do this for the role, right?"

Lana met his eyes without flinching. She shook her head. "I already got the part, didn't I?" She held his gaze, unflinching. "This is different. You're not Christopher. You're actually a good guy. And after tonight—talking with you, getting to know you..." She paused. "I like you. For real."

Then she eased back, putting space between them. "But that doesn't mean we're official. This was a one-time thing." She pushed gently against his chest.

Marcus let her go. "I understand." Even if his body was screaming to pull her back in. Fucking age restrictions.

"Thank you." Lana's smile was genuine.

They talked a little longer, the heat cooling into easy warmth, before Marcus walked her out and called her a cab. He watched the taillights disappear down the street, then headed back inside.

The door clicked shut behind him.

Alone in the quiet house, Marcus pumped his fist in the air. "Yes!" A grin split his face. "First hookup in this world—and she's a fucking ten."

He was going to remember this night for a long damn time.

---ʕ⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴥ⁠ꈍ⁠ʔ---

The next morning, Marcus strolled into school with a little extra bounce in his step. He breezed through his tests, cracked jokes with classmates between periods, and couldn't seem to wipe the grin off his face.

Ryan and Arya noticed. They exchanged a look but shrugged it off. Marcus had been in good spirits lately—this was just more of the same.

After finals wrapped up, life got hectic.

Marcus still talked with Lana regularly—texts here and there, phone calls when schedules allowed, the occasional coffee run between her rehearsals and his meetings. But the kiss never happened again. She'd meant what she said about it being a one-time thing.

He didn't push. Didn't dwell on it either. There was too much work piling up to get hung up on what-ifs.

---◖⁠⚆⁠ᴥ⁠⚆⁠◗---

By early February, Netflicks dropped the first batch of anime from Studio Shaft—including Naruto, episodes one through thirteen.

The show was still in Japanese with English subtitles. The dub wasn't ready yet. But for anime fans, subs were the default anyway.

By now, Netflicks had carved out a decent social media footprint. Their MySpace page was active, and they'd recently launched on Facebook too. Nothing viral, but steady growth—around 80,000 followers combined across both platforms.

The content library was doing the heavy lifting.

Dinsley classics like Pinocchio, Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty were already streaming. Nostalgic comfort food for families and twenty-somethings who grew up on that stuff. Then there were the indie films—smaller titles with devoted cult followings that you couldn't find at Blockbuster.

The DVD rental perk sweetened the deal for subscribers who still wanted physical media. But the streaming catalog was the real draw.

And there was something else happening. Something harder to measure.

Netflicks felt like a discovery.

People didn't just sign up—they felt like they'd stumbled onto a secret. A hidden corner of the internet that the mainstream hadn't caught onto yet. And when they told their friends about it? Friends who'd never heard of the site? That feeling of being "in the know" doubled.

It was free marketing, powered entirely by human nature.

Now, with Naruto live on the platform, a whole new audience was waking up.

---ʕ⁠·⁠ᴥ⁠·⁠ʔ---

A week after the anime dropped, threads started popping up on anime forums across the web.

[AnimeUnderground Forum - New Series Discussion]

Thread: yo anyone else get roped into this ninja show??

Posted by: ll_KENSHIN_ll

ok so my little brother wouldnt shut up about this show he found on some site called "Netflicks" and i finally watched an ep just to get him off my back

im on episode 11 now. i have work in 4 hours. i dont even care anymore

seriously tho this show goes hard. main kid is annoying for like 2 episodes then u start rooting for him. anyone else seen this or am i late

Reply from sailormoon4lyfe:

wait what show?? never heard of it

Reply from gundamfreak83:

wtf is netflicks. is that some fansub group

Reply from ll_KENSHIN_ll:

@sailormoon4lyfe its called naruto. ninja kid with a demon fox sealed in him. sounds dumb but trust me its actually got good writing

@gundamfreak83 nah its like a real website. u pay monthly and u can stream stuff on ur computer. movies, shows, now anime i guess. never seen anything like it tbh

Reply from sailormoon4lyfe:

WAIT. a legal streaming site?? for anime??? thats not some sketchy pirate thing with 50 popups????

Reply from dbikimaru:

just searched it. poodle brings up the netflicks site first. they got a trailer for this naruto thing on the homepage. animation looks kinda clean ngl

might check it out when i get paid... (⁠=⁠｀⁠ェ⁠´⁠=⁠)

Reply from azn_pryde_99:

ok i just watched all 13 eps in one sitting. WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THIS. the zabuza arc had me actually emotional wtf. when does ep 14 drop i need it NOW (⁠≧⁠(⁠ｴ⁠)⁠≦⁠ ⁠)

Reply from gundamfreak83:

ugh FINE u weebs win. signing up. if this sucks im coming back here to complain

---V⁠●⁠ᴥ⁠●⁠V---

The thread blew up from there. Within days, similar discussions were sprouting across a dozen different forums.

Curious fans typed "Naruto anime" into Poodle, and the first result was always Netflicks. They'd click through, see the preview—fast-paced action, a loud-mouthed kid in an orange jumpsuit, ninja battles that actually looked good—and most of them kept going.

Sure, the anime community had been pirating shows for years. That was just how things worked when legal options didn't exist or cost forty bucks per DVD volume.

But Naruto wasn't on any torrent site. Wasn't on any shady streaming page. Netflicks had exclusive rights, and the subscription was cheap—way less than ten bucks a month for unlimited streaming.

So they signed up. They watched. They got hooked.

And then they told everyone they knew.

By early March, Naruto had grown to seventeen episodes—one new release every Friday.

Even better, the English dub was finally ready for the first eight episodes. That cracked the door wide open for casual viewers who couldn't stand reading subtitles during fight scenes.

The growth in the anime community was explosive. Internet word-of-mouth moved fast, and Naruto was spreading like wildfire.

[OtakuBoards Forum - General Discussion]

Thread: chunin exams got me SCREAMING

Posted by: yoyo_joe:

ROCK LEE VS GAARA. THATS IT. THATS THE POST. I AM NOT OKAY RN.

Reply from lucky_star_13:

dude the moment he dropped those weights??? i literally stood up out of my chair

Reply from jim_fan2002:

how am i just now finding out about this show. also what is netflicks and why can i watch anime AND movies in hd on my computer. what kind of sorcery

Reply from shikimaruZ:

bro ive been torrenting since like middle school and im actually paying real money for this. thats how u know its legit

Reply from _sunshine:

the character writing is actually insane tho. naruto went from annoying orange kid to my favorite protag in like 8 episodes.

Reply from matt_likes_dubs:

finally watched now that the english version dropped. they actually didnt butcher it???? voice acting is solid??? is this real life

---

It wasn't just Naruto driving the surge.

Netflicks had quietly become the first legitimate streaming platform for anime in the United States. A legal alternative that didn't cost a fortune. Between Naruto, the other Studio Shaft titles, and the catalog Marcus had licensed from smaller Japanese studios, anime fans finally had somewhere to go that wasn't a sketchy pirate site riddled with pop-up ads and malware warnings.

The numbers told the story.

Monthly subscriber revenue jumped from $342,000 to $700,920—more than doubling in the span of weeks. That meant paying subscribers had grown from roughly 38,000 to nearly 78,000.

For a startup that hadn't existed two years ago, it was nothing short of remarkable.

People were taking notice.

Especially Blockbuster Cinema.

David Lopez had been CEO long enough to know when he was wasting his breath.

He stood at the front of the conference room anyway, clicker in hand, watching the same faces he'd been watching for years. Gray suits, gray hair, gray expressions. The board of Blockbuster Cinema, assembled for their quarterly check-in.

Christopher Doyle sat at the head of the table, chair pushed back, ankle crossed over his knee like he was waiting for a show to start.

"Internet speeds are getting faster," David said. "Bandwidth is getting cheaper. Give it a few years, and people are going to be watching movies on their computers instead of driving to our stores." He clicked to the next slide. "I think we should start building a streaming platform. Get ahead of it before someone else does."

Morrison, one of the older directors, squinted at the screen. "Streaming? Like that Netflicks thing?"

"Like that, yes. Except with our resources and catalog, we could dominate the space before it even takes off."

Silence.

Christopher picked at something under his fingernail. "David."

"Sir."

"What'd we pull in last year?"

David exhaled. "Four point two billion."

"Stock price?"

"Up twelve percent."

"Stores?"

"Nine thousand two hundred fourteen."

Christopher spread his hands like the answer was obvious. "And you want us to dump money into competing with a website?"

"I want us to be ready for where the market's heading."

Morrison shook his head. "Do you know what building something like that actually takes? We'd have to hire entire development teams from scratch. Engineers, project managers, designers—people who know how to build this stuff. That's not our expertise. We rent DVDs."

"And licensing," another director added. "Studios aren't just going to hand us their movies for streaming. We'd have to negotiate with every major player in the industry. You think Dinsley's gonna give us a good deal? Warden Bros? They'll smell desperation and bleed us dry."

Morrison nodded. "We'd be spending years and tens of millions just to launch something that might not even work. And for what? To compete with some kid's website that barely has any subscribers?"

They weren't wrong.

If Marcus Crown had been sitting in that room, he would've nodded along. Building a streaming platform from scratch was a nightmare. The infrastructure costs were brutal. Licensing was a minefield. And without knowing which shows and movies would actually draw subscribers, you could burn through hundreds of millions and still fail.

The only reason Marcus could pull it off was because he had something nobody else did—a cheat code.

The Questclopedia gave him Netflix's actual platform architecture from his previous life. He didn't need to hire a team of engineers—he had the blueprint in his head. He just needed to spend system points to understand it, then build it himself with Ryan's help. What would cost a corporation millions in R&D, Marcus did for basically nothing.

And the Quest Search Engine let him know exactly which shows and movies would be hits. He wasn't gambling on content. He wasn't praying that audiences would like what he licensed. He knew Modern Family would work. He knew Naruto would explode. He was playing poker with marked cards.

Without those advantages, Netflicks would've been just another startup bleeding money into a hole. The board's logic was completely sound.

So yeah—if Marcus had been there, he would've agreed with every word they said.

And then he would've walked out grinning.

Because if Blockbuster actually took streaming seriously? If they threw their billions behind building a real platform, hired the right people, locked up the right content? Netflicks would be in serious trouble.

But they weren't going to do that.

"The dividend stays where it is," Morrison said firmly. "Our investors expect consistency. They didn't buy Blockbuster stock to fund experiments."

Christopher nodded. "We've got nine thousand stores generating reliable revenue. Why would we mess with that?"

David looked around the room. Every face said the same thing.

Why rock the boat?

"...Alright," he finally said. "Just wanted it on the record."

Christopher smiled. "Noted." He checked his watch. "We done? I've got lunch at one."

Chairs scraped back. The board filed out, a few of them clapping David on the shoulder as they passed. 'Good meeting. Don't overthink it.'

David stayed behind.

The room emptied. He stood there for a moment, staring at the blank screen.

They weren't wrong. He knew that. The logic was sound. The numbers made sense.

So why did something feel off?

He couldn't point to anything specific. No data. No trend. Just a feeling sitting in his gut like a rock he couldn't pass.

'Probably nothing.'

He gathered his notes and headed for the door.

The hallway was quiet. His footsteps echoed off the marble.

'They're right,' he told himself. 'DVDs aren't going anywhere. Streaming's a gimmick. We're too big to fail.'

---…⁠ᘛ⁠⁐̤⁠ᕐ⁠ᐷ---

While Blockbuster's board dismissed David Lopez's streaming concerns, Marcus stood behind the monitors on the Modern Family soundstage, watching the cast work through their scenes.

Production had kicked off in mid-February. Now, three weeks into early March, they'd already wrapped two full episodes and were halfway through a third. The pace was solid—nothing crazy, but steady progress that kept them on schedule.

Marcus felt good about the timeline. This show would be hitting Netflicks soon. Hell, it might even drop around the same time as that UBA sitcom Lana had mentioned—not that it mattered much. Netflicks wasn't competing for TV slots. Different playing field entirely.

After filming wrapped for the day, Marcus hung back. He made his rounds—checking in with the cast, catching up with Lana, swapping notes with Nathan about how things were tracking. Once the conversations wrapped, he headed out.

He had another meeting lined up.

Jefferson had set it up. An introduction to someone who could help Marcus expand without bleeding Douglass's seventy million dry.

Nathan was locked in on Modern Family, which was exactly what Marcus wanted. But he needed another project in the pipeline—something original, something that could pull subscribers without him having to bankroll the whole damn thing himself.

That's where independent studios came in.

Marcus wasn't trying to own everything. He wasn't some greedy bastard biting off more than he could chew. Full ownership of Modern Family was enough. For this next project, he'd be smarter—bring in partners who could share the load.

The studio Jefferson had connected him with had a decent reputation. Their shows had aired on cable networks before. Nothing huge, but solid work. The kind of production house that knew how to stretch a budget without the final product looking cheap.

Problem was, they'd recently stepped in shit. Scandal, pissed-off bigshots, the usual Hollywood landmine bullshit. Now they were stuck between a rock and a hard place—blacklisted by the majors, scrambling to stay afloat.

Which made them desperate.

And desperation made people flexible.

Marcus figured it was worth a shot. If they could deliver quality on a tight budget, this could work for both sides.

Back at the Netflicks office on the third floor, Jefferson was already waiting with their guest.

The guy looked rough around the edges—early thirties, red hair starting to thin at the crown. But his posture was calm, steady. He had the vibe of someone who'd weathered some storms and wasn't shaken by much anymore.

"Meet Mr. Palm," Jefferson said, gesturing to the man. "Earl Palm. Owner of Palm Studio."

Marcus nodded, stepping forward. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Palm."