The Scarlet
Cities, in a way, are organisms. Huge beings, surviving off of the blood carried through its veins. The blood is sometimes red, sometimes green.
Sometimes gold.
And like every organism, there were specialized areas of production.
According to certain other organs, some of those specialized areas should be excised. Others thought those areas were just fine, and the organs should just mind their business. The areas themselves largely kept silent on the matter, believing prudence to be one of the better virtues.
Not that they had many.
On any given day, a certain area of a certain organism could be found. It also couldn't be found, unless you knew it was there. (The city planners had thought of the children.) It appeared to be a set of quiet stores, with people in dim coats bustling as silently as possible from one shop to another under a reticent sky. Several were accompanied by large, also-cloaked men, for safety. One of these walked into one of the shops, his heels clicking impatiently on the cobblestones. He knew exactly where he was going, and exactly what he should find waiting for him there.
Why did all of the doors around here have bells on them? It was not like he needed his presence announced.
This was the younger guard's first trip to the Scarlet Market, and his senior had advised him to stay quiet and keep his head down. And above all, not to touch anything. 'Johnny' had nodded, and listened, and was thus permitted to accompany their employer. He looked around at the shop as they came in; it looked like a perfectly generic shop, all earth tones and red. The only thing that struck him as odd was the large amount of containers in the room. The elder guard, being more professional, scanned for people and anything that could be used as a weapon. Finding nothing, he returned to his primary.
The shopkeeper, Mr. Smith(the area had an unusual concentration of Mr. Smiths), turned from the counter in the rear of the shop. He wasn't actually working on anything, but it was traditional.
"Good afternoon, lord." He never used surnames, or real names.
"Smith," said the noble, striding up to the counter. "My wife is having a party tonight. This evening, flush with success, she will expect my attention." He paused. "I hope to enjoy myself for once."
"I see."
"The party starts at seven, so you can make your deliveries quite inconspicuously. Give me the variety I ordered two visits ago. Do you have anything new?"
Of course he did. No one in his line of business was ever caught empty handed. You always held something back, unless someone was pointing a sword at your head.
Smith pulled an unlabeled triangular tin out from under the counter. The substance inside was a purple gel, and the lord ungloved his right hand, and spread the stuff across his forehead.
Nothing visible happened: a few beads of sweat broke out on the lord's forehead, but he didn't show any otherwise adverse effects. Where were the tentacles? The face-stretching? The extra endowment? The things changing to different colors and funny shapes? He sighed, and dropped the small knife he had been toying with.
His boss's cane reversed in the lord's hand, and whipped around to catch the blade on the crossbar. It then flicked it up in the air, only to catch it again, perfectly balanced, precisely on Johnny's eye level.
Oh. Sensory enhancement. Nice.
"I'll take one," said the noble, as his chagrined guard plucked the weapon off the cane. "What else do you have?"
The second tin was square, and the powder within was gold. The lord used a small tool Smith provided to snort some of it, just as the young guard suspected. Like the previous substance, no immediately visible effects, until Johnny noticed his boss's skin darkening.
"You've gotta be kidding me," he muttered.
"I see," said the noble. "What is the extent of the changes?"
"The powder has some-ahem-obvious effects, of course," said Smith conversationally. "But when activated by a given trigger word, it can have certain effects on one's libido." The noble was admiring himself in the mirror. "In this case, the word is Imperative.
The man collapsed.
Johnny jumped, not sure if he should see to his boss or go after the clerk with a knife. Said clerk noticed his indecision and chuckled.
"He'll be fine," he assured. "Andronicus."
The lord stopped twitching, and his coloration and altered features slowly faded. He got to his feet, weakly, and faced the counter again.
The third tin Smith put on the counter without a word. He handed the lord a spelled handkerchief to wipe his hands with. This stuff was probably highly reactive.
This tin was round. Johnny worked it out: if triangles were substances with mental effects, and squares were cosmetic, then circles were probably physical, or biological. This was more like it. Hopefully.
The stuff inside was almost clear, like water. It was a pale green, with little green bits of...something...in it. It looked like nothing so much as a very lightly tinted mint jelly.
The lord blinked at it. It even smelled like mint jelly. Without a word, he took off his cloak, and put it on a clothes horse that the young guard would swear hadn't been there when they came in. Without a word, his senior closed the blinds on the window and door. Johnny wondered why, until he turned around and found that their employer already had his shirt off, and was taking off his boots.
Oh.
The boots went into a corner, the breeches on the clothes horse. The older guard positioned himself in front of the door, to discourage peepers, though there were probably spells in place to keep anyone from seeing anything. Johnny noticed that his boss had a surprisingly cut body for someone his age, and he was nicely, if not largely, equipped, too. If he was another type of Johnny, he would probably be more interested.
The mint smell was stronger now, and the noble scooped half of the gel out of the tin with one hand, then held it to his crotch.
He had done this before, and wasn't surprised when the stuff felt cold against his perineum, then warmed far too quickly. The gel split into two masses, the first one heading for his rear, the second more tortuously winding his way down his half-erect scrotum. The first mass paused for a second before pushing its way past his sphincter. Once inside, it began to massage his anus and prostrate. Meanwhile, the second mass reached the tip of his cock and slid in, with a not-uncomfortable sensation. He felt himself rising, but slowly. This was obviously one of those slow-pleasure ones. Not exactly his best-that had been one night in his twenties-but still very good.
"It can be customized, Lord, to suit your exact tastes," said a voice somewhere behind him. Some part of his brain shunted the information off to the back of his head. "It is also reusable, and self-cleaning. It even self-lubricates."
The thing was just topping off, now, causing the lord to gasp at the heights of his arousal. His fingers danced around it, not touching. Not yet. It had somehow added to the mass of the member, at least a third again as large as it would normally be.
"Conjunction," he gasped, his back arching.
"Ah, yes," said the shopkeeper. He lit a cigarette to consume the smell now rising on the air. It wasn't exactly socially allowed, but the lord would be more or less blind with the sweat dripping in his eyes and the fire in his loins. He waved the pack at the guards, who declined. The older one looked mildly interested, the younger looked downright transfixed. "The...agent works with several other substances. Such as this one." He pushed another unlabeled round tin at the noble, this one with an etching of lips on top. The gel in this one was a darker, thinker red. He removed the label, and guided the noble's fingers into it. Somehow, the man still had enough forebrain left to smear it around his lips, then lick it off. Or maybe he had seen it before.
Johnny felt kinda funny.
The noble immediately spasmed, falling to one knee. His face stretched like taffy, his tongue extending and whipping out of his mouth between the teeth that had suddenly grown. His dark eyes turned to the same pale green as the agent, and his dick changed to gel, with a color to match his eyes. A wave of heat blasted out of his crotch.
Smith blinked. That little feature hadn't been on the invoice.
Somehow, the lord's hands-with the residue of both agents still on them-touched. His hands and forearms twisted, stretched, grew fur and claws, and the heat got hotter. They grasped at his crotch, desperately. Johnny squinted-were those suckers on his palms?
The older guard took a pill from an unlabeled little tin.
The fur spread over the lord's body, his spine lengthening, his legs changing, and he fell to the floor, now more animal than man. Johnny knew from hearsay that his mind was still in there, and it could be reasserted if he so chose, but he still put one hand on a dagger. You never knew, with spells. The creature's back arched.
The salesman pulled a lever, instants before a stream of green fire erupted out of the lord's crotch, describing a grateful arc through the air in defiance of physics to hit the mouth of a specially spelled vase. The guards covered their faces from the heat, and the younger one lowered his arm, only to raise it an instant later when the lord was consumed in a storm of light. When it died, the lord kneeled naked as a jaybird again, all his features the right shape, color, and translucency.
"Impressive," he said, calmly pulling on his clothes. "Most impressive. Add one of each to the order."
"At once, my lord", said the Smith. The smoke and cigarette had vanished, and the tins were somehow full again. "Give them the usual safeword?"
"Of course." His dressing completed, he looked himself over once in the mirror. Once was all it took. He tugged at his cloak, then opened the door, the older guard following close behind.
"Young man?" said the shopkeeper. His accent seemed to have vanished. The guard paused at the door, and Smith tossed him a small unlabeled little tin that rattled.
"What're these for?"
Smith pointed. Johnny looked down. "Oh."
"It happens to a lot of the bodyguards who come here. Don't worry about it."
Johnny left to be berated for leaving his primary alone for so long. Smith hummed a few bars of some song, and said "You can come out now."
A young, dark-haired woman stepped out of the mirror.
"Nice," she said appreciatively. "I know just what he needs." She picked up the vase, carried it behind the counter and emptied the contents into a glass vial. They were, to any casual eye, plain old man juice.
"Don't get too attached," warned her uncle. The cigarette had reappeared. "He's married."
The girl looked over her shoulder. Her eyes-all of them, not just the irises-were now tinted a light blue, and her pupils were gone. "He's a noble."
"Point." Smith leaned against the counter. "What are you going to do with that, anyway?"
The girl gave him her fierce grin. "I'm going to divide it into three parts, and I'm going to mix each part with a different one of those powders we just got in. And then I'm going to find me a bar."
"Poor guy," said Smith.
"He won't know what hit him," agreed the girl.