This was not how Mel had pictured himself.

He had come to this country with one mission and one mission only: he wanted to undermine the local slaving ring. That hideous organization kidnapped young men, transformed them into monster boys and then sold them to greedy female clients as slaves and playthings.

Mel should have been in the streets, gathering information. He should have been in the alleys and bars, making contacts. He should have been mapping out the slavers' den and formulating his intricate plan of infiltration. Instead, Mel was in the arms of the woman who was doing all this for him in exchange for his body. What was even more of a surprise, Mel loved it.

Nuan was not an attractive woman. She was built like a brute, stoop-shouldered and worn out from years of ten-hour workdays, and at that, she was nearly twice Mel's age. He had no right to enjoy it this much.

But enjoy it he did. Nuan sat in her chair, the only one in her apartment, while her hands pushed and pulled and fondled Mel. She squeezed his butt. She pinched his nipples. Her fingertips kissed his cheeks and shoulders and arms. She kept him guessing, and his spine turned to water. His sighs and moans probably sounded fake, but they weren't.

Nuan tightened her arms around him, clasped him with her greedy fingers, then released him. Mel had to catch himself on the table to keep from falling over. He looked back at Nuan, expecting more, but she only leaned back and sighed, finished.

His consent for her help—that had been the deal. But in their day-and-a-half together, she had never once made him cum. She had kissed him on the mouth and made him finger her stocky, powerful body. She had pegged him and once even used his mouth, but only after tying his hands so he couldn't touch his cock. Sometimes she didn't even take his clothes off.

Mel finally mustered the courage to ask. "Nuan?"

"Yeah?" Nuan sat back in her stiff wooden chair as if it were the softest recliner in the world. She smiled a a wide, lazy, closed-lipped smile, as she always did after playing with his body.

"Why is it that you never make me cum?"

Nuan straightened her posture a little. "Was wondering when you were going to ask that." She gave a little sigh, sinking deeper into that old wooden chair. "You see, the way I figure, our best bet for getting into the slavers' place is by going in disguise. I'll pretend I'm one of those boy-snatchers, and you'll be my catch." She stopped, as if that explained it.

"And...?"

"You don't know?" Her face got a little more serious. "When you turn a man into a monster boy, two things need to happen. First, you need to get him to breathe the gas that comes up out of the rocks in the caves under this city. Easy enough. But there's another thing too. He has to cum while he breathes it, or it'll take days. So I figure a smart boy-catcher would make sure he doesn't cum on her watch, so that way his cock will be plump and juicy when it's time to turn him in."

"Wouldn't it look more authentic if you fucked me more?" Before coming to this country, Mel hadn't used the word 'fuck' in half a year, but this was his second time today. "Women who traffic in men aren't above raping them."

"Maybe. I've never met a boy-catcher, and even if I do, I won't ask her about it because I'll be too busy wringing her neck."

Mel approved.

"You're not disappointed about that, are you?" asked Nuan. "When we met, I thought you didn't like sex at all."

"It's true, I don't..." Mel stopped himself. It was an exaggeration to say he disliked sex. He was a man, and all non-asexual men felt desire. "I'm just not a slut." He stopped again. "Er, not that promiscuous men are bad—that's just a matriarchal shaming label that's used to oppress men. What I mean is, it would be a disservice to male dignity to lie back and let a woman use me just because I enjoyed it."

"You just said promiscuous men aren't bad. How's it figure it's a disservice?"

"It's not, but... slutty boys are the reason women don't respect us."

"It sounds to me like you like sex, but you don't want to like it."

Mel was silent. He was right, he simply knew it, but somehow he could not put the words together convincingly.

* * *

Nuan didn't know what to think of this boy. This pale, cracker-fed college boy with muscles like cooked noodles. She wanted to like him. He was brave, coming from his fancy rich home in his fancy rich country to work with the likes of her. He had principles too. Nuan had met a lot of men who'd sell their own brothers to be with her, and it was disgusting. And he seemed to hate the monster-boy trade even more than she did.

But his heart wasn't in it. He had told her, in no uncertain terms, that after they brought down Guan-Yin and her slaver gang, he was quitting and going home. Nuan had tried to talk him into taking up slaver-hunting full-time. Busting one slaver gang would be as useless as crushing one cockroach. But he didn't seem to care. 'It will send a symbolic message,' he had said, 'that treating men as property has consequences.' The truth was that as soon as people realized the slave-hunter was gone, they'd forget he'd ever existed.

If Nuan was a good judge of character, and she liked to think she was, then Mel didn't want the streets to be clean, not really. He wanted to feel like a hero so he could go back home and brag about how he fought against privilege and systemic bias and marginalization and whatever other fancy claptrap they taught him in school.

It was too bad.

Still, he was fun in bed. He was awkward and uptight, but that just made it more satisfying when she got him to cut loose and act like the whore he clearly wanted to be.

"Nuan?" said Mel. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Hm?" Nuan sat up straight. "Oh. Sorry, get lost in my head sometimes." She looked out at the twilight sky. The stars were just starting to glimmer. "I think I'll go see if our map is ready."

She took to the streets, away from her apartment that was shabby but safe—a good trade—and into the depths of the old city.

The map was ready, as promised. It was a nice map, really. It was good paper hand-drawn on both sides, and with good ink too. That was rare ever since the factories had pushed the ink-mixers out of business. The mass-produced stuff just didn't stick the same way.

One side of the map pinpointed the hideout on the city map, with some instructions written in scrawly male handwriting. The other showed the hideout in detail. The tunnels formed a maze, a web. Some of the tunnels were labeled with their purpose, others with vague things like 'Lots of boxes here,' or 'secret room.'

Nuan came back with a spring in her step. Mel saw the map, and for the first time she had seen, he smiled. When she informed him that they could do their caper tonight, he smiled wider.

Already, it was dark. At this time of year, it was always dark after Nuan's shift at the sawmill. For extra measure, they waited a few more hours to let the dusk turn all the way into blackness. Then they set out.

"You know," Nuan told him, "as soon as we go in, if we foul this up, you get killed. Not just, gassed, I mean shot."

"Of course I know that. But it's my moral duty to help my brothers in the world, because no one else will."

"You really mean it, don't you? See, that's what confuses me. If you care this much, why won't you stay and keep up the fight?"

"I told you before. It's a symbol. I'm striking a blow for all men in the world, not just in this country. And when I strike it, other men will rise and do the same thing. They'll overthrow matriarchy and demand equal rights." He grew a toothy smile. "And I'm going to read about all of it on the news."

"You really think one good deed is going to change everything?"

"You think it won't, but how would you know? No one has ever done this before. Women's issues are what receive all the coverage. Women's health, single motherhood, daughter abuse, polyandry, low male-to-female ratios... we hear about them constantly."

Nuan snorted. "I sure don't."

"Women are prioritized, and no one ever considers the social problems men face. Honor killings, castration, and tribal warfare are just the tip of the iceberg, but they are ignored."

"So as soon as you'll do this, people will just start caring about castration, just like that?"

"The world is ready," he insisted.

"Boy, no one ever flipped the table because of something they weren't there to see."

"They will this time."

Silently, Nuan gave up on him.

They left the less grubby parts of the city behind. They snaked deeper into the tangle of old wooden hovels that every generation added to, one at a time, until the heart of the city looked like a giant hornet's nest. The sun was already below the horizon, and the shadows had grown and swallowed everything. Only the fading the haze in the sky and the occasional candle lit up anything. People were scarce and silent.

Nuan felt a pang of doubt. As a girl, she had had four rules: obey her mother, never be dishonest, never fight over boys and never go out at night. She was breaking the last one, and if her mother were still alive, she probably would have been breaking the first one too. She kept the map hidden under her vest, glancing at only a tiny scrap of it at a time. She tried not to make it obvious that she was reading from it. She wasn't sure why. Even if there was anyone watching, how could they know where she was going? But she kept the map hidden anyway. It made her feel better.

The map led them into the rotten center of the city. Then, to Nuan's surprise, it led them most of the way back out. On the far edge of the inner city, just when it started to get halfway decent again, the map pointed to a pock between two walls. Two huts had been built next to each other, but didn't quite touch. The seam between them was comfortably big enough for a small woman. But Nuan was not a small woman. It was a tight fit.

Through the cranny, an ancient-looking carved stone stairway led down. A glow appeared in the distance, a lamp's glow. Two mean-looking women stood in the glow, slouching in baggy coats that probably hid guns. But they weren't the only ones there. Two visitors faced them. One was a young woman with a black braid running down to the small of her back. It twitched as she spoke. Beside her, a young man stood with his hands clasped neatly behind his butt—tied at the wrists, actually—and a short leash drooped from his collar. The woman held the other end loosely in her fingers.

A thick black cloth wrapped over the boy's eyes. For a moment, it looked like tufts of cotton were growing from his ears, but really they were stuffed. The woman had stopped up his ears with cotton and pitch, taking away his sense of hearing. He stood there, none the wiser, while his mistress talked with the guards.

"...but I'm not part of a gang." she said delicately. "This is my boyfriend. He doesn't know where we are, so be gentle with him, please."

"You tricked him?" One of the guards laughed cruelly. "Not bad."

"I started walking him on a leash four months ago, then when he got used to it, I asked if I could blindfold him, and he said yes!" She bounced on the balls of her feet. "It's so much kinkier when he doesn't know where we're going."

"Why do you want him a monster boy?" asked the guard. "You've already got him wrapped around your finger."

The girlfriend looked at her man and gave a high-pitched sigh. "I don't really have any complaints about him. He's a great guy, really. He never drinks, he's really thoughtful and he works hard. It's only..." She looked abashed.

The guard put up her hands. "Hey, it's okay. Just pay us and we'll monster him for you. I was just curious."

"No, no, there's a real reason. He's not as flexible as I want him to be. He's so inflexible whenever I want something to change in our lives, and I don't want to force him like other girls do. I just... I want him to want it."

"I heard that, sister. Come on, bring him in before he figures it out."

The door swung open. Its hinges creaked as if the doors hadn't seen oil in a century, and the cavern's echo turned the creak into a boom. The young woman tugged gently on the leash, and her boyfriend followed her in.

"We'll save you," Mel whispered to the blindfolded boy. "I promise."

Nuan and Mel waited a minute, then stepped up to the guards. Nuan in her rough-and-tumble street-girl getup, Mel in a collar and leash, wearing a tight shirt and pants that were not quite whorish and not quite normal.

"Well that was fast," said the shorter one, who had spoken before. "It's a big haul today." She eyed Nuan up and down. "And a big day for nobodies. But hey, we all start somewhere."

Nuan scowled, and it wasn't fake. A few hypnotized slut boys was one thing, but this place was worse. It was a factory that churned out mindless sex toys as efficiently as the lumber mill spat out beams. It just wasn't right.

"Hey, sister, relax," said the chatty guard. "I was just teasing you." She pulled open the door. "Go on in."

Nuan went in without a word. As Mel passed through the doorway, the guard wrapped her hands quickly around Mel's chin, kissed him on the cheek, then pushed him through the door and shut it. Mel stood shocked, staring murderously at the back of the shabby wooden planks.

"Come on," said Nuan. "Let it go."

* * *

Mel did not let it go. What burned him was not that he had been sexually harassed—that was to be expected, after all—but that the next boy would be harassed the same way. As long as bound young men walked through those doors, they would have their humanity and their self-respect stripped away by those greedy, possessive hands. It was a bitter injustice.

He didn't have time to voice it. Another thug met them just inside the door and escorted them down the stone stairs, into a pale wooden room where a single suspended paper lamp battled against the darkness and the toxic-smelling pipe smoke. It was a room that belonged more in a coal mine than a hideout—perhaps that was what it had been once.

"Pretty good catch," said the thug halfheartedly. "And no handcuffs. Where'd you get a tame guy like that?"

"My friend owed me some money," Nuan lied. "I decided it was time to collect." She patted his groin, and Mel blanched as he felt his erection growing. "I told her, 'just give me your son and the debt's off.' Now he's here for a little... rearranging."

The thug nodded, bored. "Tie him up here," she said, fingering a pile of rope. "Then come with me and we'll talk pricing."

Nuan took up the rope, grabbed Mel and pushed him against the wall. Mell pursed his lips. He'd been hard already, and now being pushed and pulled by Nuan was not helping. She stretched out his arms and tied them together behind him, then tied his leash a bracing grid on the wall where he could easily reach it and undo it. She looked down at his groin, probably considering how she could bind his cock to keep the slavers from using it. With a private, guilty look at Mel, she gave up on it and left him there. "Don't move from that spot," she said. "I'll be back soon." And Mel knew that last command was more than part of the act.

The two women disappeared through the door and shut it with an ancient clatter, and Mel was alone.

Nuan failed to return promptly. Mel's sense of time was far from perfect, but eventually he decided that it must have been at least thirty minutes since Nuan left him tied like an animal to that brace.

"Twenty more," he murmured to himself. Then he would take action.

Ten minutes passed without a sound. Then ten more, and Mel got to work. The knot that bound his wrists was tight, but if he got the correct angle and opposed his right index finger with his left thumb...

The door opened, and a girl stepped in. She was skinny and dirty, not like the guards out front, and she carried herself with a lazy slouch in her back. She leaned against the far wall, her face lit by the muffled, shadowy glow of the lamp. She brought a smoking pipe up to her mouth, then looked at Mel and paused. She smirked.

Mel glared back at her, but she only seemed charmed.

She took a few long drags from her pipe and breathed them out, filling the room with foul-smelling haze that swirled in the bright light, spiraling lazily to the ceiling. Her glazy eyes stayed on Mel. They followed the lines of his sweaty chest, which his shirt did very little to conceal, and wandered down his pants—'did she notice the bulge?' he wondered—to his trembling knees.

"Wonder what kind of monster boy you'll be," she said. "A singer? Maybe a foxtail."

Mel gathered a glob of saliva under his tongue and spat at her. He missed.

"Hey, I'm just asking." She contemplated another drag, but didn't take one. "You know you stay you when you go monster, right?"

"That is not true."

"No, yeah, it is. I grew up with a boy who hated it when you corrected him, even if he was wrong. Isn't that funny? Just couldn't stand it. Guess he wanted to be smart so badly, it just hit a nerve. Anyway, once we were all grown up, my gang and I grabbed him and brought him here, and when we finally got him to cum, he turned into a wisp, and you know what? He still hates it when you correct him."

Mel stared coldly at her, unsure what to say.

"You know what?" she said. "You're boring. I wonder if Fei wants a game of boards."

Finally, Mel was alone again. He barely waited for that verbose woman to close the door behind her before he attacked the ropes. He freed himself from the brace in minutes, but his efforts failed against rope holding his wrists together. It would have to do.

Mel stretched his stiff muscles. Without any female eyes on him, he could stretch his legs, flex his rear and bend over without fear of catcalls.

There were, as good luck would have it, three exits to the room: one that led to the surface, one through which Nuan and that awful smoker had both disappeared and one which had not been opened. Mel took the latter.

Through the door, he stopped. Racks, baskets, barrels, utensils, dirty plates and bowls and even some old pottery lay scattered around the room. And women draped over everything. Mel would have been less frightened to stumble on a pack of sleeping wolves.

They did not take it so seriously. Some of them, he noticed, were sleeping, and the ones who weren't raised their heads listlessly or else stayed focused on their meager, sour-smelling food.

One of them almost broke the spell: "Hey, pretty boy, where are you headed?"

Mel ducked his head and spent a frantic moment thinking of something to say. Finally, he tried, "Mistress says I need to hurry."

He picked his way to the door, awkwardly pulled it open and slipped through, and fortuitously the girls gave him no further trouble.

The next room should have been easier. Only a lone male sitting at a desk, laying out papers. Each sheet went into one of three stacks, and he straightened each one obsessively as he added to it.

The man looked up, and as Mel should have guessed, it wasn't a man. Two lines down his cheeks framed his mouth like mandibles, and he had a hungry look in his monstrous eyes.

"Meat," he hissed. He braced his hands on the desk and got to his feet. "A little bite of meat has come strolling home."

Mel tried not to let his heart race. "Whoever you are, I am not your enemy."

"You are here because you want to know," He crept out from behind his desk. "And you want Mistress not to know."

"I don't know what you're talking about." In truth, Mel would very much have liked to read those papers.

The monster boy moved impossibly quietly. Mel took his eyes off him for half a second, and then the two were face-to-face. Mel should have reasserted his personal boundaries, but something in the monster boy's gravity—something between that spindly frame, that silent step and those lethal eyes—stopped him.
Mel felt the monster boy's warm, sticky hands on his wrists, and panic woke inside him. "No, wait, stop!"

The monster boy grinned. "Too late."

Those hands came away, and Mel tried to bring up his armo, but couldn't. All the way down to the elbow, his right arm was stuck to his shirt.

Now the monster boy had his left, handling it gently as if it were made of glass. Mel felt the sticky sensation on his skin, and suddenly both of his upper arms were pasted cleanly to his back, completely useless.

Mel almost screamed, but stopped himself. If he made any noise, the game would be up. Then again, if he stayed, he was at the mercy of this thing that was less than human.

The monster boy leaned into him, pushed him back against the wall, and this time Mel struggled. But rail-thin as he was, the monster boy was impossibly strong. In a minute, his back was stuck fast against the rock wall.

Mel kicked savagely, but the monster boy brushed his legs aside, and soon one of them was pinned to the stone.

"Damn it!" Mel grunted.

The monster boy barely seemed to pay attention as he rolled up Mel's right pant leg and caressed the tense, sweaty flesh. Those slim hands ran up and down his leg as if applying sunscreen, and with a sigh Mel stopped resisting. He allowed the monster boy to press his slathered leg to the cavern wall.

"Do you know my mistress?" hissed the monster boy, drawing out that last word. "My mistress?"

"I haven't had the displeasure," Mel fired back. "But I already know what she does. She uses matriarchal power structures as a club, an excuse to- hey!"

The monster boy's long fingers dug into the inseam of Mel's pants and tore it open, and his cock flopped out.

"She used to be at the bottom," the monster boy went on. "She used to wear rinds and eat rags."

"I think you have those backwards."

"Even men spat on my mistress." At the word 'spat,' the fingers attacked Mel's outfit again, and his shirt came open like a vest. If the monster boy had pushed a little harder, he would have torn Mel's flesh as easily as his shirt. "But then she captured me. She tied me up. Then..." the monster boy grinned. "She took a risk. She turned me. Turned me into a monster boy. Now she fucks me and doesn't get sick in her belly. Now I bring her food and help her dress and wash her body. And do more."

"You're a whore," Mel growled. He said it fully aware that his own cock was already half-erect, drooping but filling out in size. "You were once a human being, with full human potential. Now you're just an accessory!"

"I control the papers. I know how many boys she has. She takes them, turns them, sells them. I know how much she makes. Better—I know how much each one's worth. Thanks to me, she's an empire." The monster boy leaned disgustingly close to Mel's face, tongue flicking in his ear. "She's a boy-slaving empire. She'll never be hungry again. And if you to try to stop her..." Malice flashed on the monster boy's face, and he grabbed Mel's nipples with a brutal grip. "We'll turn you. We'll make you serve. We'll make you kiss her feet and beg forgiveness, then I'll fuck you while she sits on your mouth and moans."

"Over my dead body." Mel tried to sound tough.

"No." He gave a savage twist on each nipple. "Over your new body!"

The door was open, and a girl stood there, squinting as if in sudden light. "Magma!" she said.

The monster boy stopped. He looked at the woman, still holding Mel's nipples. "What is it, small fry?"

Mel grunted, trying not to let the pain in his nipples show.

"The boss says she wants you up top," said the girl. "Wants to make a show of force or some pitch."

Magma let go of Mel's nipples as roughly as he had grabbed them. Mel's head sagged with relief.

Magma stalked up to the girl, towering over her. "Some pitch, you say? You come here? You interrupt me? And you don't even know why?"

"Hey!" the girl snapped. "When the boss wants her girls, they go to her, and that's that. The boss wants her fuckpet, he goes to her, that's that."

Magma circled her like a wolf. "You dare to call me that only because you don't know what Mistress has in her hands."

The girl turned to keep facing him, answering his glare with hers.

Without a noise, Magma pushed the girl's shoulder aside to turn her around, then wrapped his arms around her. He locked his chest over her shoulder blades, his bare stomach over the small of her back. "Mistress' power demands respect," he hissed in her ear. His hands squeezed her hips, then her thighs, then ran up her sides. Mel could not see her face, but he could still hear the slightest hint of a moan.

Magma shoved her away. "Now get out of my sight."

The girl stood there for a few seconds, rocking on her feet. She looked flustered, baffled, even a little afraid. 'Ravished,' Mel thought. She hurried to leave.

Mel could not keep the words in. "If only I could do that..."

Magma twisted his neck to look at him. "Maybe you will like being a monster boy." Something almost like consideration flashed across his para-human face. "No, you wouldn't. Even as a monster boy, you could never do that. You would become a bunny." He smiled. "Hah. A bunny. You and your little cotton tail."

"I am not submissive!" Mel lied.

"No?" Magma stormed up to him, and fiercely strong fingers closed around his erect cock. "Then why is this?"

"You know exactly why," Mel snarled. "I'm a man. We don't get to choose."

"No. You don't." Magma released Mel's cock. "But that is not the only reason." With one last evil grin, he prowled out of the room.

A silent minute passed. Soreness crept up Mel's thighs, and he wanted to panic. 'How long am I going to be here?' Footsteps approached, and Mel welcomed them.

"Mel? My god, they didn't waste any time, did they?"

'A friendly voice!' Mel came alive.

Nuan stood in the doorway with knives in her hands and worry on her face. "Damn, they raped you. I'm sorry. I didn't think they'd try it."

Mel's head swirled. He wanted to say, 'They stretched me like a Thanksgiving turkey and they almost made me cum. They put me on my knees and made me think I belonged here.' All he could say was, "They didn't."

With her knives, she attacked the slime that glued Mel to the wall. Her arms brushed his. She pushed her body between his open legs, straining her muscles as her knives clawed at that infernal adhesive. Finally, a leg came free, then another, and Mel peeled himself from the wall. He fell forward, and Nuan caught him.

'At last!' he thought. 'I'm in her arms again!' As soon as he had that retrograde thought, he mentally slapped himself for it. But the more he thought about it, the more terribly undeniable it became. Nuan's sheer dedication to him was doing the gas' job for it, and matriarchic power structures were becoming part of his thought process. If this kept up, he'd be wearing a collar and earning Nuan's salary for her in no time.

"I got those dumb girls distracted," said Nuan. "And the monster boy too. Come on. We've got run of the place until they find us out."

Mel tried to readjust his clothes, but got nowhere with his wrists tied behind his back.

"Today!" said Nuan.

Mel gave up on it, and the two hurried out of the office, back into the dank tunnels. After they had been alone a minute, Mel spoke up. "Nuan?... this is strange. That monster boy, he had power. Even though he credited it to his mistress, so he's still a collaborator in matriarchy... he was powerful. And loyal. And dutiful."

"Of course. Why do you think women like 'em so much?"

"That's not exactly it. There's another thing... when you touch me and fondle me... I enjoy it. Monster boys are acting like men, and men are acting like monster boys."

"But you're choosing to feel that way. The monster boy doesn't get a choice."

"Is that really the only difference?"

"What, it's not enough for you?"

"No!"

"Interesting."

They walked a few dozen feet in silence, came to a five-way intersection, and Nuan took the route that led down. She hauled open a cloth-draped metal-bar door, saying, "Prisoners should be this way."

She was right. They lined the wall like sacks of raw meat, seven young men with their wrists chained above their heads. The brute slavers had not even afforded them the dignity of clothes and had hung them so close together that their thighs brushed against each other.

Mel had always known that more attractive boys faced greater risk of abduction. But it only struck him now just what flowers of beauty were taken. A black boy started the line of six, clearly an islander, clean-shaven in what must have been a power play by his captresses, as islander men prized their long hair. Masculine tattoos flowed from his shoulders down his ribs and pointed to the base of his thick penis, the nexus of his manhood. Next to him, a local boy, short and compactly built, with the standard jet-black bowl-cut, gazed back at Mel with shocked, pleading eyes.

"Please," said the black-haired one. "Help us. They're going to turn us into monster boys, all of us! Monsters!"

"So this is where it's done," said Nuan. "And I suppose that's the gas pit up ahead." She pointed at the end of the room, were a curtain covered the way ahead.

The boy nodded quickly, short hair brushing at his eyes.

"All lined up, ready for the change."

"We need to unchain them, quickly!" Mel grabbed the black-haired boy by the shoulders. "Where are the keys?"

"I don't know," said the prisoner.

"I'll find them," said Nuan. She turned to leave.

Mel followed her.

"No," she said, pushing him back. "If the slavers come back while we're gone, they might start turning them."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"These boys have to cum while they're breathing the gas, so make them cum now so they'll go soft. Just don't leave any sign we were here."

"Why on Earth not?"

"If they come back and see cum on the floor, they'll know I lied about getting everyone up top, and they'll start looking for us. Now get on it!" She left, sliding the steel bar door shut behind her.

Mel looked uncertainly at the six hung, helpless boys, a few of them clearly drugged and swooning. They needed help, and Nuan was right that leaving evidence would be disastrous.

"What are you going to do?" asked one of the prisoners, an achingly beautiful teenager.

"What she suggested," said Mel. "I'm going to make you cum."

"How?" asked the islander boy. "You're a man."

In Mel's circumstance, there was only one way to make them all soft. It was a degrading prospect, but Nuan was correct in thinking that orgasm would make these boys safe for a time. It might just mean the difference between life and slavery for these boys.

Mel hesitated. As much as he championed the rights of male homosexuals, he had never even considered doing something like this himself. But if he refused to do it, then these innocent boys had no hope. They would be crushed, their autonomy annihilated by the criminal matriarchy, and that was unacceptable. Closing his eyes, Mel eased himself down onto his knees in front of the islander, parted his lips and found the tip of the boy's cock. Even flaccid, he was already heavy. Mel closed his lips, kissed gently, and as the boy's flesh began to respond, Mel opened his jaw to take him into his mouth. 'Smooch,' went his lips as he gently applied his lungs, and as soon as the islander's cock stood out straight, Mel passed his lips up and down its dark length. Sweat, salt, and the musk of male sex filled his senses, and he knew Nuan's plan would work. But he would need to keep up the pressure. Easing his eyes shut, Mel focused on the sucking and prayed he could make him cum in time.

* * *

'Maybe he's just a slut after all,' thought Nuan, as she picked through the junk in the electronics room. She had thought she had him pegged: a wannabe hero too soft to be the real thing. But maybe all he really wanted was to be touched by a woman. 'Men are so strange.'

That would be fine, of course. Nuan had a plan, a plan that could do what Mel wasn't interested in doing. She knew how to put a damper on monster-boy trafficking for good. But first, she needed to clear this place out. She needed to blow its cover.

She rooted through the things she'd spilled from the hardware box, picking through a radio about the size of a hay crate (it was the smallest radio she'd ever seen) and a generator wrapped in a tangle of cables. She had never been an electrician, but she had talked with a few of them, and she was pretty sure this was how it worked.

She radio made encouraging sounds. "In between the little houses on the corner of Zhufu Street and Qisi Street!" she yelled into the microphone, which was broadcasting on as many frequencies as she could make it. "There's a slaving operation at the corner of Zhufu and Qisi, between the little houses! Anyone, if you don't like it, come here and make a mess."

Nuan spent a few more minutes repeating that into the microphone with a few variations. That would get the rival gangs riled up, and maybe some vigilantes too. And the police would have to put up and clear the place out or admit to the entire city that the slavers had bought them off.

Then Nuan set the receiver so that static came blaring out the speaker, straight into the microphone. That static would get radio authorities on the case too, and it'd remind everyone that what they heard hadn't been their ears playing tricks on them.

Now she ran back to where she'd left Mel. As soon as the slavers found out that their game was up, they would probably try to turn all their captive boys and then scatter. If they did, then whether or not those boys went home today depended on whether or not Mel had finished sucking them off. Assuming he'd even started. Nuan wouldn't put it past him to decide that he was above sucking cock.

"We've been ratted out!" came the voice from uphill. One of the slavers must have had a radio to be so quick to learn. Nuan picked up her pace.

At the prisoner's room, Nuan hauled open the metal bar door and burst in.

The captive boys were lined up where she had left them. Fivu of them sagged from their handcuffs, looking at the ground through eyes barely open, limp, drained. Mel was on his knees, sucking on the sixth boy, a swarthy redhead with narrow, foxy eyes. The redhead breathed heavily, and his sweaty chest swelled in time with Mel's lips on his cock. Mel had done a good job—not a drop of cum left as evidence, although it wouldn't matter unless the boys lost their just-been-fucked faces.

Mel glanced up at Nuan with wide, expectant eyes. Then the redheaded boy let out a gasp, and he started to pant. Mel closed his eyes and slowed his pace. He took a long, slow pull on the cock in his mouth. He swallowed, then released the cock. It shrank, covered in saliva, but the cum had all been licked away.

"What's happened?" demanded Mel.

"We're in good shape. Their cover's blown, and if they didn't come here for the boys, I don't think they're going to."

"Where are the keys?"

"We'll get those later." Actually, Nuan had forgotten about that. "But it's okay. We're already in the clear."

Mel jumped up. "Yes! Nuan, we've done it! We've done what we came for!"

"Not all of it. Come with me." She put her hand on the back of his neck and steered him toward the curtain at the end of the room. "There's one more thing I want to do..."

"What are you doing?"

She brought him through the curtain, and they both got their first look at the place where monster boys were made.

Nuan had not been ready for so much open space. The cavern could have fit hundreds. The ceiling was, at its highest point, at least thirty feet up, and the floor sloped down in uneven steps, like a bunch of sinkholes set inside each other. Towards the middle of the cavern, cracks in the stair-steps let in the gas. It smelled old and earthy, but with a tang to it that hinted at what it could do.

"Nuan!" Mel finally started to panic. "What are you doing?"

She brought him up to one of the cracks, lightly kicked the backs of his legs and brought him down on his knees. She found his cock, still erect. "Sorry, boy, but you're in for that monster boy makeover."

"Nuan, no! Why are you doing this?" She started working his cock, and he screwed up his face. "You bastard! I thought you were better than this!"

"Oh, yeah? You're the one who was planning on skipping town after this one job. You don't want to clean up the streets. You just want to feel like a hero and run off."

"You're a hypocrite!"

"Turns out, I'm not. Didn't I tell you? The smart ones hold the leash, and the dumb ones lick their boots. And you, Sparky, are one of the dumb ones." She smiled. "That's what I'm going to call you, you know. Sparky."

"I will not stand for- alp!" He was interrupted by her fingers in his mouth, fondling his tongue. Once he had her fingers wet, her hands switched places, and his saliva lubricated his foreskin. She could see it pulling back to reveal the head. It was swollen, and it glistened with precum.

"Our deal," she went on, "was that I get to have you for as long as we're busting slavers. Well, guess what? As soon as you're my monster boy, we're going to get back at it. You and I, tearing down the slavers together." She pulled out of his mouth and slapped his cheek gently. "Won't that be fun?"

He sighed, tense and high-pitched. "Oh no... I'm close, I'm close! Please don't make me cum, I'll do anything! I'll lick your boots! I'll be your whore!"

She stopped just as his cock was ready to burst. "Would you be my partner? Help me clean up the streets?"

He hung his head and said nothing.

She angled him up, shifted her fingers and sent him over the edge. His balls clenched, and his cock sputtered one last drip of precum. His stomach pumped like he was having a seizure, his voice shrank to nothing, and his toes curled. Every fiber of his body tried to hold it in, but he was a man, and men can't stop it.

It came out in globs. Thick balls of white pumped from his cock and spattered on the rock.

Mel's cock began to go limp. So did the rest of him. He sagged in Nuan's arms. And then the changes began.

* * *

Mistress says I said we sent a symbolic message. I don't know what that means, but that's okay. I'm just a sparky-boy. She says we're sending real messages now. Better messages.

Mistress takes girls who turn boys into monster boys, and she stops them. I don't know why. When you're a monster boy, you're hot and bouncy and you make women happy. But some women don't want their boys to be monster boys, so I guess it's good that we stop them.

Mistress is secret. If you're a bad woman who makes monster boys, she'll stay hidden from you. But if you're a good woman, and your son or your brother or your husband gets stolen, we can help. Maybe you know someone who knows someone who knows me. I know Mistress, so I can tell her, and together we go rescue him. I'm a decoy. Or a distraction. Or I just carry messages from to other good women and try not to kiss them. I do whatever Mistress wants. And in the end, we save the boy. He stays a boy, not a monster boy like me, which seems sad, but it makes the women happy, so it must be good.

Mistress is training other Mistresses now. Not my mistresses—I just belong to Mistress, and I only use my mouth on other women if she tells me to. No, Mistress is training other women to do what she does. The other women stop the bad women who make monster boys. The other women rescue other boys. And someday those women will train other mistresses—not mine, just women like her.

Mistress says we're going to clean up the streets. She says one day there'll be no monster boys left except the boys who want to be monster boys. She says that's good and it'll make women happy.

She says it's justice. I don't know. I'm just a monster boy. That means I kiss and fondle Mistress when she's sad and I make things for her when she needs it. And I let her strip me and fuck me if she wants to ride my cock. And when she's not horny I help her work. That what monster boys are for.

But sometimes, I feel like something besides a monster boy. I feel like Mistress does, where I think a long time about something and it starts to make me sad. Except it doesn't make me sad. I remember the word 'justice' like it's old, older than when I turned into a monster boy. And when I remember it, it makes me happy.

Maybe 'justice' is one of the women whose boys we rescued. Maybe every time we save a boy, we make Justice happy. I like that idea.