This part of the synopsis will cover Tristan and Maxwell’s backstory, and the events of City of Bears Series 1: Bear Boutique.
Picking up where we left off in yesterday’s post, Tristan, having occupied Professor Erikson with smoking out the resistant students on campus, the president focused on finding a solution to the bear claw pendant’s limited power. The bear claw was the one object Tristan brought with him when he crossed from his home dimension over into the woods on campus. While he appears human, in fact, he is of a different species altogether, a race of humanoid bears inhabiting a dimension of vast forests and mountains. Tristan, however, sought greater glory in crossing over, a dimension of his own away from his oppressive father and the cloistered society he led. Tristan wanted war–he wanted to conquer, and everyday he cursed himself for not being born a true alpha.
Alphas, in his species, are a genetic rarity, born approximately once every thousand births. Fully grown, they towered over the bears around them, and possessed a keen ability to lead and dominate others, even turning them into thralls, devoted to serving their alphas without thought. However, the alphahood he saw as his birthright was instead given to his cousin, Maxwell Longfang, who much to the clan’s embarrassment, was an alpha with a decidedly pacifist streak. He refused to take on a single thrall, and instead sought a life of chastity in a sheltered cave. The details of this failed experiment are difficult to discern, having been rendered taboo by the chief. This vow of chastity nearly drove Maxwell to madness–and when the clan decided to destroy him, Tristan instead offered himself as a sacrifice, calming Maxwell, and earning him his cousin’s lifedebt, a debt Tristan planned on calling in now.
With little choice, Maxwell answered his cousin’s summons, and learned of Tristan’s plan. Using much of the pendant’s strength, he had managed to create a small bastion in a clothing boutique, and had it furnished with a wide variety of items to assist in the conversion of the city. However, he needed Maxwell’s help to get the store off the ground, because Tristan was unable to leave campus for long. Maxwell agreed to run the store for a day–long enough to being the spread of Tristan’s power into the city, and Tristan told him that he had identified three young men who would be both simple to convert, and seed the corruption across the widest area. Tristan gave Maxwell a necklace of his own, equipped with an enchantment designed to mask his bearhood for the day, and left him in the store to begin his work.
The three young men Maxwell was charged with converting eventually wandered past. James, eager to leave and get home to his lout of a father, found himself in possession of a three sample set of scented bodysprays. Kyle, a kleptomaniac, lifted a small necklace and left before he could be caught, heading for the casino to feed his gambling addiction. This left Luke alone with Max, trying clothes in the hope becoming a viral fashion trendsetter. Luke, a gay man who was still closeted to his friends, had always had a thing for James, but as he changed, morphing into a construction worker through Maxwell’s fashion advice, found himself growing more and more attracted to the bearish store clerk. Maxwell, unwilling to break his chastity, completed the transformation, and hid in the backroom away from temptation, figuring that with the three men in possession of items from the store, his job was essentially done.
Certainly neither James nor Kyle were themselves for very long. James, upon returning home, examined the bodysprays, finding them called “Irresistible,” “Deep Desire,” and “Ideal.” As a joke, he tried the first, but soon discovered that the scent made him sexually irresistible to everyone, including his father. His father, Dan, found the sprays, and used “Deep Desire” to turn himself into a giant, raunchy slob, and used “Ideal” on James to turn him into his muscular, redneck cub, desperate for sex with his giant cocked father. Kyle, at the casino, found that the necklace he’d stolen was cursed to force him to steal away the qualities that men disliked about themselves, in exchange for the qualities of his own body. Kyle quickly ended up on the wrong end of the deal, a casino patron stealing his youthful body and leaving him as a dirty, cock hungry daddy bear. Both of them, hoping to fix their respective situations, then set off on a quest to get back to the mall, and save themselves.
Back at the shop, Luke, still wanting sex with the shop owner, found that there was something strange going on with the shop’s mirrors–his own reflection kept speaking to him, and sensing his desire for sex with Max, helped him push his transformation to more extremes, reducing him to a submissive muscle bear dressed in leather and desperate to be owned by a true alpha. Luke’s new look proved to be more than Max could handle, and he finally broke chastity, making Luke his first thrall–and Maxwell felt guilt consume him in the afterglow. He kept Luke in the back office, hoping the effect of his alpha cum would wear off soon, and furious at Tristan for putting him in this situation, watched the clock tick closer to closing time.
Meanwhile, getting back to the mall was proving to be more of a challenge for James and Kyle than they’d expected. James finally convinced Dan to take him back, but only so long as they could stop at the smoke shop on the way. Dan used the opportunity to help out a few of his friends at the smoke shop, and then the four of them had some more fun with James, fattening him up into an effeminate pig slave for their sexual pleasure, and Dan continued onto the mall with James in tow to pick up more bodyspray for a party with his friends and their horrible ex-wives. Kyle, his sports car gone, had to resort to using public transit to get back to the mall, however, a run in with a transient left him newly homeless, and after an unfortunate exchange with the bus driver, Kyle became his sex slave. In a final act of will, he escaped out the bus’s emergency exit window, sprinting towards the mall on foot with Dennis, his new master, chasing after him.
James and Dan arrived first, and while Dan was looking around at all the stuff he could buy for the party, James slipped off, lured away by his reflection, his clarity of thought momentarily regained through the use of some smelling salts. In a desperate gambit, James grabbed the bodyspray away from Dan, using one on himself called “Alpha Brut” and turning the tables on his father, he used “Ideal” to make him a fat pigman capable of changing anyone who had sex with him into a pig as well. When the new James saw Luke watching him from the office, he was happy to join them, and steal Maxwell’s thrall away permanently.
Kyle and Dennis arrived soon after, and in an accident, knocked Max out on the floor. Kyle hid, while Dennis ran into the now piggish Dan, who used is new found power to change Dennis into a pig like him, and together they left for the party. Now alone, Kyle found himself the victim of the reflection as well, ending up as a complete toilet slave before Tristan emerged from the mirror, removing the stolen necklace and sealing Kyle’s fate. Standing over the unconscious Max, Tristan used the bearclaw to sap Max of his bearhood, which the disguise amulet had spent all day sapping from him, rendering Max human, though still an alpha. With a final spell, he forced Max into the destiny of the three men he’d converted, knowing that would be sufficient to entrap him in the store, as Tristan had planned all along, now happy to use Max’s power for what it should have been used for from the beginning: dominating the weak and changing the world.
Max, stripped of his memories, soon found new ones. Kyle, renamed Toilet, was his thrall now, who helped Max remember that his real name was Scuzz, and that he was an older, filthy biker with a mean temper. Scuzz had opened the shop with his alpha partner and longtime friend Brute and his thrall Beast with the help of a generous investment from Tristan Newberry, of course. It would be their job to speed the conversion of the city at large, and Scuzz had just the idea to get things moving along nicely.
Next – City of Bears Series 2: Special Delivery
Bracken's Corner 