Gwen gets on your case about your sisters

From Torg Adventure

Gwen casually starts munching on a piece of bacon. "So, did you hear about Amy?"

You pause in the middle of shoveling some eggs to your mouth. You remembered that Amy and Gwen were as tight as sisters. Which probably wasn't the best metaphor to use, since your own sisters weren't all that tight. Well, at least not in that sense of the word tight. They were tight enough, taken individually. Or in pairs, for that matter. But given the relationship between Gwen and Amy, you wondered what your sister may have told your cousin. "Nope, can't say as I have, Gwen."

Gwen lowers her head, smiling mischievously. "Amy's got a boyfriend! Which is strange, right? Because everyone knows that she's been totally lez since, like, forever, right?"

Well, you hadn't known that, until just very recently. Although it no longer seemed entirely true, either.

"But now she's got this special guy that she's trying to keep all secret and stuff, and getting all girly and non-lesbian about," Gwen gushes, actually picking up some eggs with her fingers and popping them into her mouth. "And the really weird thing is, is that Sam seems to have found a guy too that she's just as mad about, even though she never really dated at all. And she's every bit as secretive as Amy is about who this guy is."

"Well, you girls can be like that," you tell her delicately. "Mysterious and all. But if my sister have found a good guy... then good for them."

"Oh, you aren't curious about their men?" Gwen smiles at you brightly, a piece of bacon about to get crunched by her cute little smile. "Because I'm insanely curious, especially about Amy's guy, because as her BFF, I should definitely know this sort of thing." Gwen looks at you mysteriously for a few seconds. "But it's okay, because I think I know some of what's going on with all the strangeness here. In fact, it's like it's been staring me right in the face the entire time." Uncomfortably, you raise your eyes from the plate to see Gwen looking back at you. But there's nothing ominous in her stare, other than she uses it as a distraction to grab what remains of your first piece of bacon and pop it into her mouth.

You know that you're expected to ask. You're afraid to ask. You're afraid not to, as well. But here goes. "What have you found out about their boyfriends, Gwen?" you finally ask, feigning a calm interest instead of a cold nervousness.

Gwen looks at you with an evil grin on her face. "I think that Amy's secret boyfriend, and Sam's secret boyfriend, are both secret because they need to be kept secret, or it might upset some people." She's quiet for a few second. "So you want to know why they are so secretive about their boyfriends? Huh, cousin?"

You fight off a deep sigh. You're so busted. "I give up. Why are they secretive about their boyfriends?"

Gwen actually stands up now, putting her hands on the table. "Because! There aren't boyfriends, plural; just one boyfriend that they share, and they don't want people to know that they are sharing the same guy."

Gwen sits down again and goes back to eating. "So what do you think, Max? That sounds about right?" She looks to you for approval, as she has always done.

It was a reasonable theory, and actually pretty accurate, discounting the fact that she didn't know who the boyfriend in question was, and that it was actually you, having incestual sex with your siblings. You try to come up with some way to poke a hole in her theory, for obvious reasons, but can't come up with one on the spur of the moment.

"It makes sense, I guess," you admit reluctantly.

"Of course!" Gwen smiles. "Gwen the Teenage Detective always gets her man!" It seems that she was referencing one of the character that she liked to roleplay as when playing games with you. "Speaking of which, Max, have you noticed any strange men around your house lately?"

"Strange men?" You're puzzled again. "No, other than me, of course."

Gwen wrinkles her nose. "You're not strange. You're pretty cool, Max. I was just wondering, because it sounds like Amy and Sam have been meeting this guy of theirs the last couple of days. The thing is, as far as I can tell, they don't actually leave your house. Either they're sneaking out and I'm not noticing it, or they're actually sneaking that guy in with them."

You have trouble swallowing the mouthful of eggs in your mouth. "Like I said, I haven't noticed any strange guys here. Maybe they snuck out of the house together, like they did this morning?"

Gwen laughs. "They didn't exactly sneak this morning. They were laughing and giggling. Amy and Sam, laughing and giggling and actually hanging out together. All of those are serious red flags to my investigation, Max." She chews at another piece of bacon, which you realize also came from your plate. "I don't think they were going to to meet this guy, although I could be wrong. It's almost like they were going to do something to get ready for the next time he was over, or something. Like get their hair done, or new clothes, or something." She produces a little notebook from somewhere, and a pen. "Which means that there could be something big happening today. Right in this house."

Oh boy. Gwen had analyzed this all very well, and could cause a lot of trouble with this info. "Uh, Gwen? Maybe we should just let them have their privacy?"

Gwen looks up at you like you're an idiot. "But this is a mystery, Max! How can Gwen the Teenage Detective pass up that?" She scribbles some more notes in her notebook. "Besides," she said, a little quieter. "Up until now, Amy has never held anything back from me. She told me when she lost her virginity. Then when she decided she was a lesbian. Now, it was it was an accident that she mentioned that she had a boyfriend, and she wouldn't say anything more than that. And she's doing stuff with Sam, instead of me." She closes the notebook and sets the pen down. "Maybe she's just outgrown me and all the childish stuff I do." She seems sad.

As always in a situation like this, your heart goes out to Gwen. "I'm sure she's not trying to exclude you or anything, Gwen. She's probably just embarrassed about having a boyfriend after claiming to be a lesbian to you, and sharing a boyfriend with her sister. And since they're dating the same guy, that kind of forces the two of them to hang out together more."

Gwen crosses her arms across her chest. "Well, the sooner I can find out who this guy is, the sooner things can go back to normal between me and Amy then, right? Because she won't have to be all secretive and stuff, or hang around with Sam so much."

Just then the sound of someone walking came from the living room. You and Gwen both turn around as Lisa walks into the room, wearing her typical short bathrobe.

Her eyes lock on you first. "Oh. Hi, Max." She gives you a timid smile, then appears to notice Gwen. "And Gwen. Nice to see you, too."

"Our kitchen's out," Gwen says, indicating the pots and pans she had used. "There's still some bacon and eggs left, if you want."

Lisa smiles again. "Thanks. I think I'll take a plate upstairs, if that's okay. You see her scoop up some food onto a plate. Then she heads over to the sink with a glass and fills up the glass with water. You see that she has a pill in her hand, and one that you recognize quite well. She pops it in her mouth and starts chasing it with the water.

"So, Lisa," Gwen begins while her cousin is still drinking. "Have you noticed anything weird going on with Sam and Amy lately?"

Lisa starts choking on the water she's been drinking, and slams the glass down on the sink next her, coughing. You get up and start patting her on the back. She glances at you as you do so, her hand covering her mouth, and even with her coughing, you can see that she is also trying not to laugh. She also shies away just a touch from your hands on her forearm and back, but not enough to be obvious of it.

With one final cough, she turns away from you, and towards Gwen. "Nope, can't say that I have, Gwen." She picks up her plate of food and a fork, then heads back upstairs. You wonder how things are now between you and Lisa. You know that her body loved what happened in the bathroom, even if technically it wasn't consensual. And you suspect that she had somehow gamed you into what happened, for whatever reasons she had. She wasn't quite acting herself, which was worrying, but then again, she hadn't narced you out to Gwen, nor been openly aggressive to you, which was good.

"Well, Lisa didn't notice anything going on, and she'd probably be the first in this house to notice-" you begin saying.

"But Lisa was acting weird herself," Gwen says, frowning. She opens up her notebook again and begins writing more notes. It seems you weren't the only one to notice that Lisa wasn't acting like herself.

"The water?" You ask, trying to deflect attention. "I think she just swallowed wrong."

"Not just the water, Max," Gwen replies. "If it was just that, I could maybe let it pass. But she was down here, wearing nothing but a bathrobe, and she didn't try to flirt with you, or accidentally show you any of her goodies. Or wiggle her ass as she walked out of the room, so that you couldn't help but look."

"Gwen!" You exclaim, a little shocked about what your cousin was saying, even though it was completely true. You hadn't realized that she had ever picked up on the teasing Lisa was putting you through. But Lisa had been uncharacteristically non-slutty in her encounter with you this morning, which you hadn't realized until Gwen mentioned it. You had just picked up on the fact that she didn't either tell on you, or try to slap you or something like that.

"I'm innocent, not stupid, Max," Gwen says, rolling her eyes. "And I've gotten far less innocent by watching Lisa work on you all these years. Last year, I was just about convinced that she was going to let you screw her under the Christmas tree."

You remember last Christmas. Eggnog, and perhaps the spirit of giving, had put Lisa into a rare mood that night, even for her, and perhaps put the rest of the family into enough of a torpor where they didn't notice. You had been half-convinced that you were going to screw her under the Christmas tree as well, although that didn't pan out. You hadn't realized that Gwen had picked up on it, too, though. But then again, no one had allowed her to drink any eggnog.

"So we have Lisa that is acting all weird too, now," Gwen says aloud, still taking notes. "It just can't be a coincidence that this is happening right at the same time as Amy and Sam and the shared boyfriend. Is Lisa sharing the boyfriend too? If she's getting enough action, maybe that would cause her to take it easy on you for a while? But if she is sharing their boyfriend, why didn't she go out with them today?" She scratches her head. "Well, other than her and Sam not getting along too well."

Gwen closes the notebook again, then finishes up the last of her eggs. "Max, I'm going to get to the bottom of this if it's the last thing I do. Gwen the Teenage Detective cannot rest when there is a mystery involved." She carries her dishes to the sink. "And once I find out what is going on, maybe me and Amy can go back to being BFF's again."

You feel sad for Gwen, because she and Amy had always been so close. Probably just as close as you and Gwen had been, although Amy was the female influence that Gwen needed. And you were... what? The big brother substitute? The guy always there to play the daddy when Gwen was playing House, which, granted, became much more strange when it morphed into House, MD. You went from being the father to being a crotchety doctor, while Gwen went from being the mother to a nurse. Granted, Gwen did look cute in her nurse uniform. There were times when you would wonder if you could change the game to an honest game of Doctor, without getting into all kinds of trouble. Your guilt at the lust you had felt for your cousin on occasion was tempered now by the fact that you'd now nailed all three of your sisters, although curiously enough, even with all the action you had been getting recently, you still found yourself attracted to your petite cousin.

Gwen returns from the sink and gathers up her notebook and pen. She puts a smile on her face, just slightly forced, and looks at you. "So, Max, are you going to help Gwen the Teenage Detective solve this mystery? You've always been my faithful assistant on all of my other cases, like when Doctor McPanda was kidnapped." She was referencing her favorite stuffed animal, who apparently had drawn the ire of the mafia a few months prior. "And even if Amy doesn't want to hang around with me any more, I know you still do."

You're wondering if you should actually sit this one out, though. There were a lot of things going on that Gwen probably shouldn't know about. Although if that was the case, maybe it would be best if you were involved in the investigation, so you could insert some false information, and maybe guide her to the wrong answer, and buy time for your sisters to change their behavior. And you did actually enjoy spending time with Gwen. Quite a lot, actually. Or maybe what she needed was just a frank discussion that Amy, Sam, and Lisa all deserved some privacy, followed by a promise from you that you would talk to Amy about giving Gwen more time. That was maybe the best response. Even if you weren't sure how Gwen would handle it in the short-term. And you did kind of want to spend some time around Gwen. And you couldn't help thinking, after bedding all three sisters in short secession, and Gwen being of legal age now, that your younger cousin wasn't quite the forbidden fruit she once was. But plucking it might get you kicked out of the current Garden of Eden you found yourself in.

How do you respond to Gwen?

• Join her investigation with an ulterior motive
• Follow Gwen, and see if you can keep her out of trouble