The Department Of Keeping It Real - Chapters 8-9 free porn video

CHAPTER EIGHT: A SCORE WITH CORES The chase was a lot less exciting than what Alyssa had hyped up. It turned out that utility vans that didn't know they were being followed weren't especially elusive. Who knew? They followed the van out past Fort Ruth and a quarter of the way to Charlottesville. Before that, though, the coveralls guys stopped for gas and then for lunch (Brunch? It was only 10:45 am). Both times, she pulled off, too, to avoid shooting past them and having to do an about- face on the highway. She and Bryce ate at a Subbo's across from the fried chicken place coveralls guys were eating at. Bryce ate an entire roast beef sub and half of Alyssa's chicken avocado sub and they hit the road again one minute after coveralls guys. They tried to keep about a mile between them to avoid any chance of being spotted - the ARM tracking was pretty good, so it seemed pointless to engage in risky theatrics. Their final stop was an office park in the town of Mavisville, pop. 11,000. It was the largest building in town by a substantial margin, a blocky 15-story building with Coalition Electronic Systems, Inc. in 10- foot letters at the top. It didn't get much clearer than that. When Alyssa started out of the car, Bryce put a hand on her shoulder. "Wait, Alyssa," he said. "Shouldn't we wait for your parents? This seems like a pretty risky idea." "That's because it is risky," she said. "So we should wait." She pointed to the top of the CES building, upon which sat a fairly conspicuous satellite dish, perhaps 30 feet wide, cobalt-blue, and facing the western sky. "Do you see that dish up there? Today, CoReS has a whole office building with a 30-foot dish. Yesterday, they had the house across the street from Ana's with a 12-foot dish. If we don't stop them, tomorrow, they'll have this whole city and a couple 100-foot dishes - that's the business end of their 'probability flexor'. Do you know what that does?" "Um... flexes probability?" Bryce hadn't been doing his homework - even on a locked device, most of this information was readily accessible. If CoReS knew that the Ministry knew it, there was no point in keeping it secret, even on unsecured devices. She lifted his hand off her shoulder and gave him her best Meghan Bailey 'serious person' look. "Best case scenario, they make little nudges with the flexor until they control the whole world. The world that we happen to be stuck in for the foreseeable future." "That's the best case scenario?" Bryce asked. "Should I ask..." "Worst case, they fuck up or reach too far and this entire universe and all of the neighboring ones collapse. No more us. No more us ever, in any future time lines. This entire branch of reality is a dead end." "That sounds kind of bad," Bryce admitted, shrugging his broad shoulders. Adding a moment later, "okay, like really bad." "That's why we can't wait," she said. +++++ The coveralls guys had since entered the building. It didn't particularly matter where they'd gone, Alyssa supposed - their role in her ongoing mission was over. They walked right up to the van, retrieved Bryce's ARM device, and waltzed into the front of the CES Industries headquarters. They passed through security, the guards inspecting their devices and personal effects without any alarm or suspicion, and then walked up to the front desk. Alyssa stood on her tiptoes and read the names on the little sheet on the far wall behind the desk guards. Her body might have been small, but her vision was extraordinarily sharp. She smiled, teased her hair, and cleared her throat. "Excuse me, we're here to see Mr. Powell?" she said. "Okay... do you know what time?" the head guard asked. "Eleven fifteen." The guard checked that against a schedule and shook his head. "Sorry, ma'am. You're not listed on his schedule or list of expected guests." Alyssa huffed. "That's ridiculous. I'm calling him now." She took a few steps away from the desk. "Alyssa, what the everliving fuck are you doing?" Bryce whispered. "They have our IDs... we aren't on anybody's schedule." "And they haven't arrested or detained us, which means they haven't got us on any watch lists." She tapped some numbers in her ARM and selected the 'spoof phone number' option. "Bryce, you're Mr. Powell. Get us in." Bryce accepted Alyssa's ARM with a shocked expression but managed to calm himself. "Hello, this is... Clark Powell," he said, puffing his chest out. "My eleven fifteen says you won't let her in. Can you please send her up?" "Mr. Powell, sir," the guard said into the phone. "I need an approval code to let her up to make sure she's authorized." Bryce frowned. "I am giving you verbal approval to let the two of them up. Do you really want me to look up some stupid number for a bureaucratic process that popped into existence from thin air yesterday?" "No, sir," the guard said. "I'll send the both of them up, shall I?" "You shall," Bryce said. His face alit with a giddy grin. He returned the ARM to Alyssa and they walked back to the security desk. "I just spoke with Mr. Powell," Alyssa said. "I trust everything's in order?" The guard responded with a worried nod and waved them in, handing them little 'VISITOR' tags. They proceeded toward the elevator, with Bryce ducking into a little side-room at the last moment and returning with something blue. He'd just stolen someone's blazer. "What the fuck, Bryce?" He held it up. It was clearly way too small for him, but it just might fit Alyssa. Sure enough, after she let him put it on her and smooth out the collar, it was only a little bit big in the sleeves and just right in the shoulders. Alyssa examined herself in the hazy shine of the elevator doors. In her black yoga pants and blue top, the blue-gray blazer brought her up to marginal professionalism. Bryce's fitted t- shirt and athletic cut jeans, on the other hand, were still decidedly casual. The elevator doors opened. They boarded the elevator and looked at one another, wondering which of the floors to choose. Mr. Powell's (whoever that was) office was on the 13th floor, but that didn't particularly matter. Alyssa really only had two options: would the equipment be buried in the sub-sub-basement B3 or would it be up near the dish on the 15th floor. She punched 15 and the floors started chiming up. Alyssa hit the STOP button between the 13th and 14th floors and pulled out her graphic pen. "What are you doing?" Bryce asked. "Giving myself an official badge," she said. She punched out the little VISITOR square on the badge and slid her driver's license photo in behind it, securing it to the back with a hair clip. Then she carefully edited the text of the badge to say FULL ACCESS and mucked about with the bar code. "Holy shit, I can't believe we're doing this," Bryce said. "Shit... what if we have to, like, kill someone?" Alyssa rubbed his shoulder. "Calm your tits, Bryce. They let you steal a blazer from some random room. These guys aren't exactly military security." As soon as the ink had dried, Alyssa started the elevator again. Her theory was tested a moment later when the door chimed open to a very short hallway with a guard at the end. No time for half-measures. As she strode up to the man - a man a bit taller than Bryce in a dark blue security uniform - his hand inched toward his sidearm. She presented her badge and he scanned it with a little hand reader. He scanned it again. "Bad code," he said, his hand once again straying toward his firearm. "Do you have any idea who we are?" she asked, gesturing toward her body. "Oh!" The guard's expression quickly became one of fear. "Sorry, ma'am... I thought you'd be... um..." "Taller?" He nodded. "And, uh, older." She sighed. "We have to make do with injecting malicious code into a system that not even the MORE understands. If we could do it ourselves, we wouldn't have to hijack their shifts... but that means the program sometimes fucks up. Now are you going to let us through?" "Um... I have to scan..." "Bad read," Alyssa said. She checked the time on her phone and then looked to Bryce, who nodded gravely. "We do not have time for this shit." "I... um..." the guard said. "Are you going to let us in or am I going to get angry?" "You can go in," the guard said, unlocking the door with a swipe of his card. Being a bad guy Rule 1: be an asshole and Rule 2: act like you're in charge. The door clicked behind them and suddenly the two found themselves in a big, hot room with dozens of whirring machines that looked a lot like servers. With a start, Alyssa realized they were in a supercomputer - the 'brain' of whatever CoReS was running to interfere with the Ministry's program. "I can't believe that worked," Bryce said. "That was freaking awesome!" "Shh!" Alyssa pointed down the rows of whirring computer components - a handful of technicians were busy tweaking some of the equipment. He nodded to them and one waved back. Then she snapped a picture of the supercomputer/servers and sent a Priority 3 report with her parents flagged, labeling it: [Supercomputer stuff at the top of CES Industries headquarters] After proceeding past the supercomputer, they reached a large enclosure of blast-proof glass with batteries of very high-tech equipment inside - quite possibly futuristic technology. There were screens on just about everything, some of them counting up, some counting down, others flashing complex graphs, and others with jumbles of text readout. Her sharp eyes were able to make out one particularly troubling readout: [Piggyback signal shift initiation: 00:04:57], with the seconds column ticking downward. This would, she was fairly certain, trigger the next shift. Not good. "We have to get in there," she whispered. There was only one door into the place, and it was secured with a keypad and some sort of face or eye scanner. Bryce held his face up to the thing and yelped when a laser shot into his eye. The machine beeped angrily. Bryce blinked experimentally. "Can we force it open?" Alyssa asked. Bryce tugged mightily upon one side and Alyssa tugged (a lot less mightily) on the opposite half of the door. It didn't budge. There were no obvious cables to cut or switches to flip. And they certainly couldn't get through the blast-proof glass. The timer for the piggyback signal was at 00:01:30 and counting. "Shit!" Alyssa hissed, pulling out her ARM. "I think this thing has a GPS tag on it somewhere..." She fiddled with it for a moment, eventually finding the right option under the item report app: location tag suspicious object. She set the priority to 3 - even the unlocked ARM wouldn't let her send Priority 4 without full agent credentials. 00:00:50, the timer said. She selected the report and pressed the button on the screen. A little red laser beam shot out and blipped against the CoReS device. She did it a few more times. 00:00:20, the timer said. "It's not working," Bryce said. He tugged at the door again - still no dice. 00:00:08... 07... 06... and then the piece of equipment winked out of existence with a pop of air about as loud as a handclap. Instantaneously, alarms went off. Lights were flashing. Another high- tech display flashed red and then stated: [Backup unit piggyback signal shift auto-send. Approx time to engagement: 00:05:00], it said, counting down the seconds. "Hey! Hey you!" somebody shouted from down the corridor. "Run!" Bryce said, dragging Alyssa by the blue blazer. She shrugged out of it and tagged the secondary unit with another Priority 3 report before taking off after him. Three or four security guys with guns were in pursuit. She ducked next to Bryce behind an especially big computer bank. "At least they have gun-guns," Alyssa said. He looked at her incredulously. "How could that possibly be a good thing?" "They can't shoot them in here. It might damage something." Bryce's eyebrow went up. "So... they'll just take us somewhere else and shoot us?" "Presumably, yes. If they can catch us." "Hey!" A big hand grabbed Alyssa's hair and yanked her to her feet. She shrieked and kicked at the guy, but his grip held firm. Then Bryce popped up from behind the computer equipment and slugged the guy in the face. It was hard enough that he stumbled back, and when Alyssa kicked him between the legs he crumpled to the ground. "Over here!" the guard cried out. They ran to the other side of the floor, passing the glass enclosure where three guards were standing careful watch over that equipment. Another guard came out of nowhere and grabbed at Bryce, ripping the sleeve half off of his shirt. Bryce grabbed the guard back and slammed him into a bank of equipment face-first and hard enough that he wasn't going to be a problem for a while. Alyssa ducked behind a piece of equipment and sent another Priority 3 report, full text: [HELP] [GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE], her father responded. [ALYSSA, PLEASE GET OUT!] [PLEASE] "Shit... we need to go," Alyssa said. Bryce gestured toward the glass enclosure. "But the shift..." "Nothing we can do." She darted toward the exit, with Bryce catching up and soon overtaking her. The guard they'd bluffed their way past stood in front of the closed door shouting for them to stop. When they didn't, he fired a single shot, missing both of them badly, and then dove out of the way in time for Bryce to smash into the door shoulder-first and knock it clean off its hinges. "Stop!" the guard shouted again, bringing his gun back around. "Explosion!" Bryce gestured wildly. Fortunately, the guard's survival instinct outweighed company loyalty, because he holstered his gun and was right behind them down the stairwell. They encountered more guards clambering up the stairs, but they turned around and sprinted down, too, when the first guard shouted, "Explosion, explosion, explosion," as he leapt down the stairs behind them three steps at a time. Then there was a... well, not an explosion. It was a thunderclap that left Alyssa's ears ringing for an hour afterward. It knocked her down a half-flight stairs and on top of Bryce (and not, fortunately, the other way around). The guard who'd been mere steps behind them was nowhere to be seen. Alyssa got to her feet and helped Bryce to his. It was easy to see where the guard had gone: nowhere. Everything above the eleventh floor had simply disappeared. It was a clean cut, severing the building at exactly the twelfth floor on the west side of the building and slowly inclining about two feet higher to the east, where bits of wall and support beam poked up beyond the level of the floor. It was as if a laser from ground level a few miles away had simply vaporized a chunk of the building. That wasn't exactly what had happened, thank goodness, Alyssa reasoned, because then there would have been a lot of heat, slag, and toxic fumes. But it wasn't far off. As it was, there was a whole lot of nothing where a whole lot of building should have been. She stepped out onto the flat plane of the now-missing twelfth floor and sat down. With trembling fingers, she accessed her ARM. [ALYSSA], Meghan had messaged. [ALYSSA R U SAFE?] [PLS RESPND] [Bryce and I are safe-ish :/], she messaged. [Request extraction] [And maybe a glass of wine] +++++ The Bailey parents arrived about five minutes later, which was about the time it took for Alyssa and Bryce to navigate to the bottom of the stairs and stumbled out of the CES Industries building. For the first minute or two, Alyssa was proud of what they'd done - it had saved at least a few realities from CoReS influence, after all. But as the enormity of what they'd done... of what she'd done dawned on her, her breath caught up in her chest and she started to cry. She was sobbing by the time she stumbled past the just-arriving emergency vehicles and to the Bailey's Jaguar. "Oh my god, what's wrong? Is she hurt?" Michael Bailey flung his door open and rushed out of the car, inspecting Alyssa's face. When he lifted her chin to meet his gaze, she stifled her tears. "I'm... I'm not hurt," she said. "I think I just got a lot of people killed. The security guy behind us on the stairs just poofed away when the floors above ours disappeared." "It's okay, honey. They were bad people. We did what had to be done." "I don't think most of them were bad people," she said. "They were just people doing their jobs. Most of them were from this reality, right? I bet most of them thought they were the good guys." "That's very sad," Meghan agreed, she came out of the car and hugged Alyssa. "But we had to stop them to save the whole world. This one and the one we're shifting to. Sometimes, people who didn't do any particular thing wrong get hurt, and that's just something we have to live with. Okay?" "Okay," she said uncertainly. "Do you want one of us to drive the Peyote home?" Michael asked. "The what?" "The SUV." "I think you'd better," Alyssa said. "I'm a wreck." "Can I drive it?" Bryce asked hopefully. "I don't see why not," Meghan said. "It's only ours for twelve-ish more hours." Alyssa rode back home with her parents with Bryce following them in the SUV. Her mom sat in the back with her, holding Alyssa to her chest and running her fingers through her hair. It was like something a parent would do to a little kid, but Alyssa didn't mind it. It was soothing. After a few minutes of that, though, she lifted Meghan's arm from her head and pulled away. "Did you guys get khakis guy?" "Who?" "Bulky blond dude?" "Yeah, we got him," Michael said with a smirk. "He didn't make it easy. Gave us a real run for our money." "We think he wanted to keep us away from the CoReS headquarters," Meghan said. "Lucky thing we had you." "And Bryce," Alyssa added. "You and Bryce," Michael agreed. "With any luck, the other CoReS agent got depopulated when the Ministry blanked the building," Meghan said. "Depopulated? That's awfully impersonal..." Alyssa said. She had all kinds of questions about the Ministry - she suspected it wasn't as simple as 'good guys' versus 'bad guys'. In real life, almost everybody thought they were the good guys. "Anyhow, you didn't get her." "Her? We don't know anything about this person..." "Tallish white female, very attractive, probably looks late 20s," Alyssa said, surprising even herself. "How could you possibly know that?" Michael asked. "I pretended to be her to get into the supercomputer room. The guard said he thought I'd be taller and older, no other remarks on how I looked. Based on the contact sheet I saw, she was going by Mrs. Reardon at CES Industries, which means she's passable as an executive." Michael chuckled and looked back to Meghan in the rear view mirror. "She's a regular chip off the old block." "She is," Meghan agreed. "But not a she for too much longer, I imagine. We'll submit the paperwork as soon as our shift is over and get you and Bryce back to your new and improved selves in no time." "Two Bailey daughters is plenty," Michael said. "Um... about that," Alyssa said. "I'm going to have to talk with Bryce about it... but I kind of think we might stay who we are. I know that'll be weird, with him looking like your son and me looking like, I dunno, whatever I look like now but more so. I mean, is that messed up?" "It's not messed up," Meghan said. "We just want you to be happy. Isn't that right, Mike?" Her father nodded, grinning. "Sure... but if you two are going to be this way 'but more so', you two have got to keep the noise down." CHAPTER NINE: KEEPING IT REAL The last shift was a bit anticlimactic after the previous day's events. Alyssa spent the night sleeping next to Bryce and woke up the next morning still sleeping next to him, albeit with an even greater discrepancy in size. It was almost comical, as her final form was a bit below five feet and his was a few above six - he was nearly a foot and a half taller than her and weighed more than two of her and a decent-sized dog added together. After doing a semi-respectable job of keeping the noise down, the two of them showered together in Alyssa's very nice bathroom... though they had to stand, since the tub still wasn't big enough for joint 'activities', and there did an even more questionable job of keeping the noise down. Then they padded downstairs and found the rest of the Bailey family (minus Sydney) already waiting for them. "It's after seven," Alyssa said, checking her phone. "We didn't want to disturb you... it sounded like a hell of a wake-up," Michael said. Alyssa blushed. "Sorry... you know... fantasy bodies and all that." "I'll say." Indeed, everybody's changes had completed overnight. The Bailey parents' change had been more subtle than the others - they both looked to be in their early thirties, fitter and finer than before, but they'd been pretty fit and attractive to begin with. They were marginally believable as the parents of teenagers, though they must have been teenagers themselves when they had their first two. Bryce, of course, had assumed Trevor's dream-form, and as such was quite believable as the son of two such gifted specimens (though, obviously, he wasn't actually). He stood around 6'3" with a visibly athletic frame and rugged features, cheeks dark with stubble, eyes dark and brooding, and expressive lips. Olivia still looked like Olivia - if you'd Photoshopped her every feature to idealized perfection and stretched her across the frame of a busty fitness model. She stood close to six feet tall with enough toned muscle to make it clearly a bad idea to mess with her. If she hadn't diverged much from the 'basic enhancement' package, there wasn't anything basic about it. Her hazel eyes glittered, her features had a feline grace, and her coppery brown hair had a lustrous shine not seen outside of fashion shots... or perhaps her own older sister's mane. Not that Alyssa looked much like an older sister. She'd inadvertently fashioned herself to look like an amazingly petite and cute-beyond-words fifteen-year-old. As she descended the stairs after Bryce, she couldn't help but be self-conscious of her appearance. Even her parents seemed stunned at the final transformation, and they'd known better than anybody what to expect. Her strawberry-blonde hair hung to mid-back, its thick locks framing an adorable face with pouty lips, brilliant emerald eyes, and a cute little nose with the slightest upturn. Her body was slim and svelte, except for where it counted - 28FF-cup breasts (she'd checked her bras) just large and high enough that they couldn't possibly be natural on such a petite body (though, obviously, they were) and hips that curved out from her slim waist like an exclamation, her firm rump making it clear that she invested a lot of time doing squats. Yes, in his dream that first night, Trevor had done his damnedest to make Alyssa a sexual tour-de-force concentrated in a petite package. "Alyssa?" Michael said in disbelief. "Yeah. Fantasy body," she said. Her voice was high and sweet - not so high as to sound strange, but she'd definitely be singing high soprano. Though, as Bryce was sure to point out later, still not very well. "I'll say," Meghan said after a moment. "We're all here now, so let's debrief." Debriefing consisted of a rundown of the successful completion of the shift and a list of tasks for the next few days - especially catching up on social circles and news media. They were to use the 'integration' abilities of their ARMs only sparingly and as necessary. And, as school was starting in a few short days, the three teens would have to make every effort to appear like normal denizens of this reality. "How am I supposed to do that?" Olivia asked. "I have like..." she checked her phone, "...thousands and thousands of friends now. And I'm doing some kind of fitness model thing." "NO modeling," Meghan said. "Nothing big or glitzy until we've got our bearings and your father and I have our new assignments. With your physical... giftedness... it will be easy and naturally tempting to take advantage of that. And you absolutely cannot do that..." "Well..." Michael interrupted. "You have to do it a bit. It would be just as conspicuous if you didn't. All kids your age do. You can be popular. You can even make a little money. But you cannot get actual- famous. Understand?" "That hardly seems fair," Olivia grumbled. "It's not all bad," Meghan said. She tugged the sleeve of her salmon- pink silk blouse. "As ancillary agents - that is, anybody under the Ministry umbrella without independent agent status - you have to keep up appearances and keep the MORE secret, so that means you get a budget - 1000 credits after the shift, plus 100 credits a month thereafter." "Credits?" Alyssa asked. "Is that, like, MORE currency?" "It is." Meghan tapped on her ARM. "One credit is about $6.25, so that's $6,250 now, plus $625 a month for wardrobe, transportation, things like that. That's so you can better transition from whatever the shift has provided you with to something more natural for you. The less you have to act, the better you can fit in. Any questions?" "Only one," Olivia said, "but it's super important." "Go ahead." "Can I borrow the car? I've got some back-to-school shopping to do!" "We're coming, too!" Alyssa shouted. +++++ Alyssa wound up driving them for their shopping expedition. Olivia crammed herself into the driver's seat at first, but soon found that, not only was the seat adjusted way forward for Alyssa, there were 4-inch extenders on the pedals so her little feet could reach everything. Olivia shifted to the passenger's seat, laughing the whole time. "It's not funny," Alyssa said. But at least she got to be the first to drive a car that probably cost half as much as the Bailey's old house. Bryce spent most of the first leg of the trip sitting in the back and playing with his new ARM device. With the shift finished, his changes included a neural interface, which meant he could now 'integrate' memories and get visuals projected right into his brain from the device just like the rest of them, and both capabilities could be quite useful. "Hey, it's even got a social manager function," he said. "When you activate it, you just have to look at someone and it'll tell you stuff about them on the ARM or... yup, in your vision." He looked at Olivia. "Olivia Bailey, sister of girlfriend Alyssa Bailey, you still sometimes call her by childhood nickname Liv, which she doesn't like..." "I don't mind Liv," Olivia said. "Ha! It just blinked out," Bryce said. "Has expressed attraction for you in past, have not progressed past flirty banter." He raised an eyebrow and looked to her, perhaps expecting objection. "You look kind of like my brother did," she said. "But you're not him... and you're way hotter." "It's not blinking out..." "Good," Olivia smirked, bringing up her own social manager program. "I'm right here, you guys," Alyssa said, keeping her attention on the road. "Your sister is very defensive regarding obvious mutual attraction with Bryce," Olivia read. "It does not say that!" "Prove it!" Their bickering was short-lived, though, because they stopped by the Parks' house to recruit Ana and Lukas for their outing, and Bryce soon discovered that he and Lukas were 'best bros', apparently... and that Lukas was two years older than him and Alyssa now. He'd gone from twelve to nineteen across the shift days. "Sup, nerds. Sup, Liv," Lukas said, getting into the car. He held up his fist, and it took a few seconds for Bryce to realize he was meant to fist-bump. He did so. "Why are you going back-to-school shopping?" Olivia asked. The seeming non-sequitur confused Alyssa, who didn't have the benefit of having her social manager program open, but she made the connection just as Lukas was explaining that college was also school. Being two years older than her, Ana, or Bryce, Lukas was entering his sophomore year of college this year. Majoring in... "What are you majoring in again...?" Alyssa asked. "Oh ha ha," Lukas said. "Laugh it up. I'm going to be making tons of money while your skinny butt is starving as an artist." "My butt is not skinny," she said. It had been a serious question. And why was everybody picking on her all of a sudden? "Damn straight it isn't skinny," Bryce agreed. They parked in old town Fort Ruth. Alyssa remembered the place being a struggling mall surrounded by bland mid-rise condos, but now the mall had never existed and the old brick buildings had been repurposed into luxury apartments with four or five blocks of street-level commerce and more boutique and high-end shopping than a mall could reasonably house. She used her ARM to integrate her memories of the area and was suddenly awash with such an array of shopping knowledge that she stumbled out of the car and nearly collapsed. Bryce had to catch her. "Are you all right?" "Um... yeah. I think the unlocked ARM gives a little more kick to its memory integration," she said. "What about your arm?" Ana asked. "I almost hurt it getting out of the car. I'm such a klutz." "Didn't you take gymnastics for like four years?" "Yeah, and I stopped it because I wasn't any good." Alyssa said. She had no idea whether any of that was true, but Ana didn't second-guess her. +++++ As a guy, the last thing that Trevor would have wanted to do was tag along as his sister clothes shopped. Hell, he'd barely wanted to tag along when Madison went shopping, even if she promised to model racy things for him. He'd get to see those racy things eventually, after all... and, better yet, if he didn't tag along, he wouldn't have to answer a dozen loaded questions about them ('which one of these makes me look thinner?'), nor be expected to foot some significant fraction of the bill. But Bryce and Lukas both insisted on playing aides de camp to offer their 'expert opinions' on the ladies' clothes. Upon reflection, there were likely a few reasons for the boys tagging along. First off: Olivia had been cute in a way that was a bit of an acquired taste - wonderful personality and nothing particularly wrong that a modest cardio regimen couldn't address. Madison had been actually-cute (and cute-hot in Trevor's probably-biased opinion). Now, though, all of the ladies present were well into the unapproachable echelons of the hot scale - so much so that it was a bit embarrassing how many double-take looks their group got from men and women alike on the street. Secondly: who was paying wasn't really an issue. The three of them who'd knowingly shifted reality each had a few thousand dollars to play with, and Alyssa and Olivia had platinum-obsidian Royal(TM) cards, whatever those were. She suspected their credit limit was a bit higher than the $400 hard-limit 'Starter Visa' that old-Trevor kept in his wallet. Thirdly: there was every expectation that the ladies would watch the gents model their new things, too. In other words: every possible motivation had been nudged toward mixed-gender clothes shopping. "Not clothes shopping," Olivia was quick to point out. "Ensemble shopping." Ana was the first to model her new outfits. Alyssa offered to pay for one outfit, and it wound up costing close to $500 - a charcoal-gray skirt and a form-fitting indigo-purple sweater with a looping drape of cream-colored almost-scarf knit around the head hole and looping out to the shoulder areas. Her long violet hair shimmered against the sweater and the snug waist emphasized her best features. "What do you think?" Ana spun around, the skirt swishing and her nude hose emphasizing those cream mocha legs toned by... Alyssa checked her ARM's social app - yup, still futbol. "I'm thinking of switching teams," Alyssa said - though, she was pretty sure, she was a switch hitter already. "I'm feeling things I shouldn't feel," Lukas groaned, possibly seriously. Bryce whispered something to Ana's brother and gestured toward Alyssa, making the older boy's eyes bug wide. "Really?" Bryce just nodded. Alyssa would have thought that Olivia would go next. She had a killer body and half a dozen outfits ready to go... but she seemed hesitant for some reason. Alyssa was hesitant, too - it was her first time doing anything like this - but Ana shoved one of the outfits into her arms and corralled her into the dressing room. She carefully donned the outfit and modeled by herself for a moment, convinced she'd look ridiculous in the satiny red skirt with its white cardigan and black tank top underneath. The top combination de-emphasized her bust, probably the most 'mature' part of her figure, and the skirt was a swishy little thing half-way to her knees. She looked like a little tween modeling trendy clothes. That, plus a small-yet-very-persistent part of her mind was screaming that she was a guy, not a girl, that she shouldn't be wearing anything close to girl-trendy. Not when jeans and tees were perfectly ok. But she was not, she realized, a jeans-and-tees kind of girl. "Stop preening and come out already!" Ana said. She popped the lock on the dressing stall a moment later and physically dragged Alyssa out. "Sweet fucking Jesus," Lukas whispered. Was he disgusted by her? Nobody else said anything. Alyssa looked down at herself and blushed. "I look so dumb!" She ran back into the stall. Bending down to rummage through her stuff for a comfy pair of jeans. She must have picked one pair that wasn't crazy tight... "Alyssa," Bryce said. "Stop." "What was I thinking? I look like a little kid!" He put a firm hand on her arm and coaxed her up. Looking at the way he loomed over her in the mirror made her feel even worse. She was basically a kid tagging along with her much-more-mature friends. If it was physically possible, her blush intensified. "You really, really don't look like a little kid," he said. "You saw how hot Ana was, right?" "Exactly," she sighed. "And I'm a cross-dressing teenybopper here." "You're Ana to the nth degree. You don't believe me... do you believe this?" When he pushed against her, she could feel the firmness of his erection. Whatever he thought about how she looked, he definitely wasn't faking that. She stroked it with her fingers and giggled at his strained intake of breath. Then he nudged her away: they'd discuss precisely what Mr. Bryce felt when they were alone. She came back out to the others and struck a pose. "Bryce has convinced me that I do not look dumb," she stated. "You're fire, girl," Ana said, shaking her violet locks. "The only reason you aren't a model is because you're five foot nothing." That was a generous estimation of her height. Alyssa nodded graciously. "Dear sister, I believe you're next..." "Um... right," Olivia said. She was definitely nervous about something. "Do you need me to go back with you?" Alyssa asked, feeling like the older sibling for the first time in a while. "Do you mind?" She didn't mind, but it was definitely unorthodox. She'd been mostly- joking when she offered, only wanting to cajole her sister. Olivia handed her an armful of outfits and proceeded back with an armful of her own, making her way to the larger, recently-vacated corner stall. Once there, she locked the door, double-checked the lock, and proceeded to slide her jeans off, revealing a purple thong and a lot of firm, pert, fitness buff butt. "What in the world is this about?" Alyssa whispered, gasping when Olivia slid her thong down, too. Awkward! "Olivia!" "I have a problem," Olivia said, pointing to her smooth mound. She sure did - she was touching herself in front of her sister, rubbing her fingers around an unusually prominent (though not freakishly so) clitoris. "What in the everliving fuck are you doing?" Alyssa hissed, reaching for the door. Olivia kept her there with a vise-like grip. "Wait... here it comes..." With a little rubbing, her not-freakish clitoris soon became less and less normal, and then extended out, swelling inch after inch until a veiny cock jutted out from her abdomen. It was close to the size of Bryce's... and he was not small, or even remotely average. Coming out from Olivia's otherwise very-feminine body, it was a stupendous protrusion. "Fantasy bodies, am I right?" Alyssa sighed. "So what's the problem? It keeps getting hard?" "Yes!" Olivia hissed. "At least a little bit. Whenever I'm turned on... which is, like, all the time! You're the only one who might understand... well, maybe Bryce would... hmm..." Thinking about Bryce wasn't helping her erection. She shook her head, her thick tresses tumbling around. "Damnit... what do I do about it, Alyssa?" Alyssa had to chuckle at the absurdity of the situation, crammed in a dressing room with her statuesque amazon of a younger sister who, it just so happened, was naked from the waist down and sporting an erection well-suited for porn. It was pretty hot, actually. And... Alyssa was staring at it. Making an awkward situation even worse. She chuckled. "It's not funny!" Olivia said. "Alyssa!" Alyssa rolled her eyes. "Deep breaths, Liv. This is a no-brainer - I think. Does it, you know... cum?" Olivia blushed. "Yeah. A lot." Alyssa wondered where the stuff came from, but it was not time for sexual theoretics. "That's good," she said. "Wait, hear me out. All you have to do is get it to do that and it'll behave for an hour or two. Even longer if you manage to rub a double out. If you can't do that, you just have to think of something really unsexy for a while." "So... I just jerk it and it'll deflate?" "For a while. But I'm not about to show you how. Not here... but maybe later." Olivia's eyes bugged out. "Really?!" She made what she hoped was a mysterious smile. "I'll tell everybody you need a minute." "Thanks, sis." It took closer to seven minutes, but when Olivia came back out, she was flush with... they'd assume it was embarrassment. She'd probably wasted a dozen or so tissues from her purse, but you'd never have guessed she was packing anything unusual under that dress, not even when she flipped it up and gave them flashes of thong. That was definitely on purpose, a little confidence-building exercise. After that, it was on to the gentlemen. Alyssa didn't think she'd get much out of it, given how humdrum men's fashion was compared to women's, but she hadn't counted on two things: 1) Bryce was nearly as terrified about looking ridiculous in manly clothing as she'd been of the womanly equivalent. She couldn't for the life of her think of why, given his overall size and chiseled frame, but the bashful blush on his face and the way his mumbled voice dropped half an octave had her wavering between laughter and sympathy. 2) She'd seriously miscalibrated on what she found attractive these days and how maddeningly attractive she found it. If watching cute-as-a- planet-of-buttons Ana pose in her pleated skirt got her engine running, ogling Bryce's solid thighs pushing a pair of wool slacks to the limit had her burning wheelies in the parking lot. She wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do with those sculpted buns, but she definitely wanted to do it. 2b) Lukas was pretty cute, too. "These pants are digging into my ass," Bryce said. "Really?" Alyssa smirked. She rather liked the sculpting effect. "How many times have you worn a thong before?" "A thong, dude? Really?" Lukas was incredulous. Of course, he wasn't in possession of the full facts: Madison had worn a thong a few times a week since she got her first pair at fifteen. Her favorite had been the little black one from Victoria's Secret... which gave Alyssa some ideas about new things to get. As far as she knew, Bryce no longer owned any of the things - a pity. They didn't spend all of their MORE money (or credits, however those got translated into dollars), but they made a decent dent in it to the tune of half, with the girls occupying the lion's share of that expenditure. Bryce didn't object too strenuously about spending a thousand dollars of his own slush fund buying racy things for Alyssa, though. After all, who was the real beneficiary there? Alyssa had five new outfits - ensembles - Olivia had six, and Ana picked up two - but they were both sexy- adorable. All things told, it was going to be a stylish September. +++++ They enjoyed the last few days of summer, the August sun lending itself to skimpy clothes that showed their beautiful bodies to fine effect. Alyssa was pleased to find her bicycle largely intact - the same color, the same hybrid tires and gear system, but with a proportionally smaller frame and nicer shifters. While her time was her own, Bryce went to work on Friday and Saturday - he was doing summer roofing work for one of his dad's friends now and figured it might look suspicious if he suddenly stopped showing up. He had a reputation to maintain in this world, after all. Alyssa biked past on a few occasions, watching him labor, sweaty and shirtless in the sun. She'd ogle for a few minutes before calling him over, reaching into her pack, and tossing up some chilled water for him and his co-workers. After her ride-by on Saturday, Alyssa was a little hot and bothered and distracted after the trip. She parked her bike in the garage and came into the house through the garage entrance, transferring her ARM device from her purse to her pocket - a course of habit. As she was wearing a breezy lilac summer dress, of course, there was no pocket to transfer to. The ARM fell to the ground and skittered across the floor, stopping right near the feet of her youngest sister Sydney, curled on the couch and reading a book. "Hey, what's that?" Sydney asked. "Did you get a new phone?" "No, it's just an old music player," Alyssa said. "Here, give it back." "It is a phone! This is yours? Do mom and dad know?" Sydney turned the ARM over in her hands, trying to find a button or input port. "Come on, Syd, give it back." Alyssa reached for the phone but Sydney pushed her away, and they struggled over it for a minute. As they did, Alyssa realized that, not only was she obviously smaller and less athletic than statuesque Olivia, she was smaller and probably weaker than her twelve-year-old sister, too. That was a blow to the old ego. She couldn't even touch the ARM with Sydney pushing her away like that. Then her younger sister pivoted, wedged Alyssa down into the couch cushions, and rolled away, using own her body to block Alyssa's subsequent attempts to get at the ARM. "Sydney!" Meghan snapped. She stormed in through the kitchen. "Give your sister back her thing!" "But mooom..." "Do I need to repeat myself?" "No..." Sydney said. She handed the ARM back to Alyssa, being very deliberate in doling out the stinkeye. "Sorry, Alyssa," she said with about as much insincerity as she could manage. After Sydney stormed off, Meghan sat next to Alyssa on the couch. She pursed her lips and tapped away at her own ARM - she was messaging Michael. But why? Really, it hadn't been that big of a deal. "We need to get you into self-defense and fitness classes," Meghan said abruptly. "Because of the thing with Sydney?" Alyssa frowned. "Look, she took me off-guard..." They both knew that was a flimsy excuse. "Not exactly. Not just that." She beckoned Michael over. He set himself down on Alyssa's other side, putting a protective arm around her. Uh-oh: parental heart-to-heart. Meghan continued: "There are a lot of benefits to you looking like you do, but a lot of drawbacks, as well... and we want you safe. Your father and I have a big ask of you..." "Ministry business," Alyssa said after a moment's thought. "You need my help for part of your mission." "See? You're definitely sharp enough," Michael said. "The MORE only accepts agents, even junior agents, among people who have a natural resistance to reality-shifting and with intelligence in the top one percent - maybe one in five or ten thousand people qualify... which you definitely do." Alyssa rolled her eyes. "I hate to break it to you, dad, but whatever you think of your eldest child, apple of your eye, she doesn't rank in the top percent in the brains department. Take a look at my GPA and tell me I'm an uber-nerd." Meghan bit her lip. "How have you felt these past few days?" Alyssa took a deep breath. She closed her eyes. That made sense. She'd assumed that the shifting had something to do with her change in mindset, but that wasn't it. Not entirely. "You drugged your own children?" "Alyssa, honey," Michael said. "Our family has to keep a low profile." He glanced around the expanse of their 800 square-foot living room. "Reasonably low. How could we possibly keep a low profile with three genius-level children winning national awards and destroying academic records?" Her apparently-genius brain churned through the implications of what her father had just said. "So you're still drugging Sydney," Alyssa stated. Her heart pounded in her chest. She couldn't even out-wrestle her youngest sister, so that anger would do her a fat lot of good against her parents, but she was legitimately angry. "You're making Sydney stupid because it's convenient for your mission." "Sydney isn't stupid. We're making her 'only' gifted... it's mandatory until we can tell her about... well, us. MORE protocol." "Okay, well if you want my help, you'll find a way to stop drugging your youngest child. That's my condition. If my help is that important, you'll have to risk all of your daughters being however smart they naturally are. You said you had a big ask - well, that's my ante." "It was a lot easier having you 'only' gifted, too," Michael sighed. "We might be able to make it work..." "You'll make it work." "We'll make it work," Meghan agreed. Alyssa shook her mother's hand, as if that somehow made their pact official. Regardless, she warned: "if I'm as smart as you think I am, I'll figure it out if you're tricking me." +++++ The Ministry of Reality Enforcement had detected signs of CoReS technology activity at or near Thurman Mills Preparatory High, which was (apparently) where she was going to school in two days' time. The school hadn't even existed in her world - in Trevor's world - a few days ago, but now it was where she was going to school. The mission of Junior Agent Alyssa Bailey, who thought that Deputy Agent or Associate Agent would have been a more germane title, was to find the source of the threat and report on it so that more senior agents could engage and deal with it as needed. The first day of school was on Monday. Two days to get ready. Alyssa needed to decompress and process what her parents had told her before that. She knew that the MORE weren't 'bad guys' - as far as she could tell, even CoReS were only greedy and overambitious, not necessarily evil. But the 'good guys' Ministry definitely did some questionable shit and she didn't like it at all. She arranged to spend the night at Bryce's, but he was out at work until suppertime, so she spent the day working on comics with Ana who, much to her chagrin, was unambiguously better at inks than she was. Ana's inks were great and her linework was next-level, and this skill, displayed in character studies and professional-level anime homages, had earned her an art scholarship to Thurman Mills. In a way, that surfeit of talent was Alyssa's fault - because of her time investment in Ana, reality had to find a way to keep them best friends and Thurman Mills was too expensive for the Parks. It was hard to be too annoyed. Alyssa, a co-star in the Thurman Mills art program, could still paint circles around Ana, and pencils and charcoals were a dead heat. She spent the late afternoon doing shading work on Ana's waifus and husbandos (she had broad tastes, apparently) in her 'Bait & Switch!' manga while Lukas packed his things to head back to Ticonderoga College. They worked at Ana's drafting table amid the footballer posters and the several larger waifu drawings that she'd kept for personal display. Most of her work these days was on commission or for her online manga series. Between panels, Alyssa filled Bryce in on the drama with her parents via their resonance band secure ARM messaging app. [Yeah, they stopped drugging me], she messaged him between page ten and eleven. [Apparently I'm really smart now] [Really?], Bryce replied. [Say something smart]. [I don't think a regular person is able to differentiate between something really smart and made-up gobbledygook] [ok], he messaged [So that sounded really smart] Alyssa giggled at that. Ana snuggled up next to her and leaned over her shoulder, reading the last few exchanges in her conversation with Bryce - good thing the shady secret shit was just off screen. She felt bad about lying to Ana about the ARM - she told her friend it was a super secure government phone that her parents gave her because of their classified government contract work - absolute bullshit, but half-true (kind of) and a lot easier than trying to hide its existence from someone she saw six days a week. Ana tried to scroll back to earlier in their conversation, which Alyssa did not want, given how classified... not to mention racy... some of that content was. Pics included. She smacked Ana's hand, which made her giggle into Alyssa's ear. She giggled back - two former boys spiraling deep into teenage girl stereotype. Still, Alyssa liked the intimacy she could share with Ana - the jocular familiarity that Anton and Trevor had shared paled in comparison. This was an entirely different level of friendship. "Your giggle is so cute, you know?" Ana said. And then there was... that. The intimation that their friendship could become something else if Alyssa wanted it to. Ana kissed Alyssa's cheek and snuggled in closer. God, she smelled so good - like vanilla and persimmon and feminine musk. When Alyssa turned to her, their noses were tip to tip, Ana's dark eyes looking into her emerald ones. "You know I can't cheat on Bryce," she said. Ana kissed her on the lips - in and out, just a soft peck. "It's not cheating." "It is," she insisted, pulling back just a little bit. She returned to her ARM and texted Bryce: [Can I make out with Ana?] His response was almost immediate: [omg] [:-O] [yes] [god yes] [Send pics] Of course she did. She snapped a dozen semi-clothed pictures for Bryce and Ana did likewise for a mystery boy - she wouldn't say who. +++++ Making out with Ana got Alyssa hot and bothered. They didn't progress past under-clothes groping despite Ana's gentle (and very persuasive) insistence, and despite Lukas calling from the next room over that he wouldn't tell Bryce if they didn't. One of them must have been moaning a bit to tip him off, almost certainly Alyssa. So that whole situation had her hot and bothered. Thinking of what she was going to do with Bryce once she got to his place had her hotter and bothered-er. Riding on a bike down bumpy roads on the way to Bryce's didn't really help things, either: hotter-er and bothered-er-er. In her fanasy body, there wasn't a whole lot that didn't get her amped up. Everything sexual felt so salient, so sensual, so fucking pleasurable. Bryce assured her it wasn't just a male-female thing, either, because he felt about the same way. Whatever old-Madison had experienced, Bryce's capacity for pleasure was an entirely different ballgame. It was a 'fantasy body' thing... when your body was the product of a teenage boy's sex dream, things just trended in the direction of erotic excess. Fortunately, their willpower was unaffected, or else they'd never do anything together but sleep in and fuck. Alyssa would have gotten Lukas to drive her to Bryce's. He'd have done it. But when she found out that he was the guy who Ana had been sending the pictures of their make-out session to, she didn't have the nerve to look him in the eye, let alone ask for a ride. By the time Alyssa left Ana's for Bryce's, it was after dark. She definitely should have driven. Fort Ruth was pretty safe (or at least it had been and, presumably, still was), but she was an improbably attractive teenaged girl biking by herself at night. She was not dressed conservatively. She couldn't even fight off her own twelve-year-old sister - what was she supposed to do if somebody actually wanted to cause her bodily harm? Her mom's idea of taking self-defense classes was sounding better and better. Maybe her ARM had a taser function or something... Speaking of which, it was buzzing. She had it in a little clip-on holder on the bike's handlebars. She slowed a bit and took a glance... nothing strange, but it was buzzing nonstop. She made sure nobody was around and pulled onto the sidewalk and to a stop. An unlisted device had been pinging her ARM device nonstop for ten minutes. She didn't even know there were any unlisted ARM devices. What could it be? Somebody from CoReS? Presumably, they had something a lot like the Assistant for Reality Management that their agents used. She was about to block the number, but instead pinged the number back and used a ping off of Bryce's ARM and Olivia's to triangulate the source. It was very near to her location... and getting closer... Alyssa spun around. It was a bit anticlimactic. The woman in black was still perhaps twenty feet away and she slowed down when Alyssa spotted her. She pulled her hood back - an absolutely stunning, dreadlocked black woman with one pale eye. She slowly approached with her hands slightly raised - not that it would have mattered, given that Alyssa didn't have any means to defend herself. "We need to talk," the woman said. Her voice was silvery smooth. "Are you CoReS?" "No. Nor am I MORE. Will you hear me out?" [I'll be at your house in 25 minutes], she messaged Bryce. [If I'm not there by then, something is wrong - get my parents ASAP] [My ARM is on auto-ping - Meghan will know what that means] Alyssa pointed to the Starbucks across the street. "We've got eighteen minutes before I need to leave. I'd like to spend them somewhere public." "Fair enough." Alyssa got herself an iced coffee and joined the woman at a table - she needed something to cool herself down if she was going to deny herself Bryce's handiwork and heavy ordinance delivery for an extra almost- twenty minutes. The woman glanced at Alyssa's ARM, her own device picking up the ping pattern she'd set. "It was reckless of you to bike alone like that. But what you did with the triangulation was smart," the woman said. "You need training, but you'll be very good eventually." "I've already agreed to help MORE," Alyssa said. "My parents are Ministry people... I assume you know that." "I know your parents. Not well, but we're acquainted - I used to be MORE, too. But some of us have qualms about the Ministry's mission. Tell me, Alyssa, what do you think MORE does?" Alyssa crunched a piece of ice and thought for a moment. "I know they work to keep our multiverse from collapsing. And they keep CoReS from taking over whole universes with their own schemes - or from obliterating those universes when those plans fail. The Ministry saved this world and who-knows-how-many like it just a few days ago with my help. So, whoever you are..." "Zelda." She offered her hand. Alyssa accepted it with some hesitation, shaking the woman's work-calloused, considerably larger hand. "MORE calls us Rogue Department, but we don't really have a name." "Why did you go rogue?" Zelda's fingers fidgeted. "I wish I'd gotten a coffee," she mumbled and then cleared her throat. "The fact that you didn't call your parents on square one tells me that you know about some of their shady shit. Like how they drugged you and every other agent kid who shows a glimmer of promise, just to keep you manageable for most of your childhood? That's very gray, ethically speaking, but it's small potatoes... think about what they do. Stabilize reality. Do you know how?" "Something about keeping their resonance frames from interfering with one another?" Alyssa started to sketch out destructive interference on a napkin, blushing when she realized that Zelda definitely knew all of this. "Because of the instabilities to reality, they have to nudge things along to keep the resonance constructive." "A fine theory," Zelda nodded. "But ask yourself: what is stability? MORE tries to nudge things as minimally and efficiently as possible. Also a fine theory. But you know what's really stable? Brutal dictatorships. And CoReS worlds, when that lot gets their way. The crushing of humanity underfoot for countless generations of misery. That's really, really stable, Alyssa. And worlds where humanity has nuked itself back to the stone age or to complete extinction - very stable, too. Great places for setting up research and development field offices. As far as I know, MORE has never been responsible for a nuclear holocaust, but it's in their operations manual as a last-ditch effort. They have been responsible for letting the bad guys win because it ties their mission up with a nice neat bow. MORE works heir magic and America is a stable, CoReS-free dictatorship - crisis averted." "Um..." Alyssa said. It made sense, what this woman was saying, but she'd have to verify it. "That's kind of a lot to take in. Look, Zelda, they're my parents. I know them. They're good people." Zelda nodded. "They're good people. Like I said, I know them. They've had the chance to put me back in the clutches of MORE management more than once and didn't do it. The Rogue Department isn't anti-MORE. We don't want the universes we inhabit to end any more than you do. But we're pro- doing it the right way, even if that's the hard way." Zelda slid a small plastic card across the table. It was about the size of a credit card but had circuitry and a faint fluctuating coloration to it. The rogue agent's fingers and hands were tough, work-worn, and crisscrossed with little scars. Alyssa picked up the card - it was slightly floppy and could be rolled up or folded. "What is this?" "It's how you get in touch when you want to talk. You're a smart girl - you'll figure it out. And... I believe we've got thirty seconds." "Shit!" Alyssa stuffed the card in her bag, took a last gulp of coffee, and dashed out to her bike. She had a lot to think about and, with school starting tomorrow, she'd soon have even more on her plate - CoReS, classes, and a brand-new social life. But for now, she just wanted to unwind, to forget all this craziness for just one normal night. And she and her fantasy body knew just the way to do it. END VOLUME I