You Can’t Fight City Hall

Ashley Fielding liked to think she was a patient woman. But when didn’t bureaucracy test that?

The clerk across from her was leafing through a paperback. Title in a jagged white font, beneath it a busty red-haired woman in a white dress. The rest was difficult to make out with the clerk’s hands covering it, but what Ashley could see only strengthened her suspicions.

The clerk wasn’t wearing any makeup, excepting some sloppy black nail polish. Her hair had been cut short, dyed jet black, and shaven at the sides. She was wearing, of all things, a dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal tattoo-stained bare skin.

Most likely a lesbian: or at least one of those women who pretended to be one for clout.

“Please present a valid ID. Or your ownership card,” the clerk repeated. Like a pre-recorded message, if a pre-recorded message smoked a pack per day. And how was Ashley supposed to know what an ‘ownership card’ even was?

She didn’t seem to care at all about the ID sitting on the counter between them. Admittedly it was a little old. The woman in the picture didn’t look very much like Ashley anymore – hair too brown, nose still natural, glasses – but none of that should matter. Hell, the clerk had barely looked at it before going back to her book. It was almost impressive how rude she was being.

Ashley pointed, again, and furiously wished there was anyone else who could help her instead. Was city hall usually this empty at ten on a Tuesday? Only one manned desk was unusual, right?

The clerk just shook her head, didn’t even look up. “Not that one. The new one? Updates were finalized last week, you should have it by now.”

“I wasn’t even here last week,” Ashley countered. “Or the week before that. I only saw your letter when I checked the mail this mor-”

The clerk’s eyes flickered up without warning. They bored into Ashley’s face with superhuman intensity, a telescope pointed at the windows to her soul. Fucking creepy.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” the clerk said at last, suddenly much more polite. “Could you then please explain where you were, last week?”

“Yoga retreat,” came Ashley’s curt reply.

A flicker of something behind those night-black eyes. An implacable expression danced around her lips – something Ashley would call a customer service-smile, if not for the fact that nothing she had experienced so far could be called anything like customer service.

“...and you didn’t watch the news there? Look at the internet?”

God, she finally got this woman’s attention and now she was being interrogated about her hobbies. Go figure, right?

“We were digital detoxing. And I don’t care about the news anyway.”

Actually, Ashley decided, the woman wasn’t just staring at her face. There were glances, brief, undeniable, where those eyes flickered down to her tits. Whoever this dyke’s superior was, he or she was going to hear about her.

“So you didn’t hear anything about the administration update?”

Ashley delivered a deeply tired sigh.

“Look, I don’t know, I don’t keep up with what the government does. If you need to update something, just do it.”

“No problem at all,” the clerk replied. Still that strange expression on her face, but at least this was progress. “Would you like me to do so now?”

“Yes,” said Ashley, infinitely frustrated at having to spell everything out around here. “Obviously. And right away, please. I’ve got places to be.”

“Follow me.”

The clerk got up and began to walk across the hall. For one moment Ashley had the impulse to just stay put and wait until someone sorted all of this out. But no – her time was too precious for that. Just grin and bear it and she’d be on her way in no time. The woman had already moved around a corner, so Ashley hurried after her, letting the thump of the clerk’s heavy boots serve as a guide.

She was lead through a door labelled ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’, across a narrow hallway, down a set of stairs, and into a concrete basement lit by fluorescent lights. A large recliner in the center, a cabinet behind it. A few computers, screens turned towards the desk chair in the corner. More recliners stood folded-up against the wall.

At a gesture, Ashley half-sat half-laid down on the recliner. What was with this setup? This was all getting weird – more reminiscent of going to the dentist than getting paperwork fixed.

The clicky-clack sounds of a keyboard behind her, cut off from view by her awkward position and the broad back of her seat. Something started buzzing – not the computers, it wasn’t quite coming from that direction, something else? It grew stronger, louder-

A shadow blotted out the fluorescent lights, and for just one fatal moment, Ashley’s pupils struggled to adjust. Sensations tumbled in – the rush of air, a hand over her mouth to keep her head in place, something pressing down onto her neck, smooth leather brushing against her skin, a glimpse of tattooed arms as vision returned-

With a click, a buzzing collar locked itself around her neck.

Ashley’s limbs, called into action by the surge of adrenaline, slumped back down onto the recliner. Her neck went slack. Her mouth, opened in an attempt to either bite or scream, fell closed again. In an instant, she went from person to ragdoll.

Slowly, with precise movements, the hand withdrew from her mouth. Again, Ashley tried to move. Again, her limbs failed to comply. Her body remained slack against the cushions. Drool trickled down the side of her chin.

On the inside, her thoughts roiled. What was happening? This couldn’t be real. This had to be a nightmare, or a prank, or- or something. Or she’d been drugged, somehow. A hidden needle in the collar, a substance in the air. All for the purpose of – something.

The clerk walked into her visual field. Ashley’s staring eyes needed a second to make sense of what they were seeing, but there: she was wearing a collar too. Leather buried beneath hi-tech, the outside gold and green with circuitry.

The woman had been slouching before. Ashley struggled to gauge heights from her current horizontal position, but the clerk, boots and all, had to be around six feet tall. She was standing rigid now, limbs held along her sides. Less like a person, and more like a poseable doll, fresh from the packaging. The strange look in her eyes was gone: something sharp and focused lived there now. Her gaze roamed across Ashley’s sprawled form.

Unlike before, the woman’s eyes didn’t linger where they were supposed to – didn’t pay special attention to her tits or hips or face, just observed all of her body with relentless dispassionate interest. Not like a human looking at another human at all.

“Update process start, CF-9229-0049-1. All hail Master.”

If Ashley could move, she’d have jumped at the woman’s voice. It was so different now, each word ringing in a clear, bright monotone, with the half-empty room adding a strange, hollow quality to it. The clerk had been staring into the middle distance as she said that, and although it was just the two of them in the room, Ashley suspected the words hadn’t been meant for her. Who the fuck was Master?

The buzzing around her neck intensifi-

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-and Ashley regained consciousness.

Her thoughts were weird. Something in there that wasn’t hers, jumbling up what she tried to think. Ashley turned her gaze inward and-

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-wasn’t sure how much time had passed there. What the fuck? All she’d done was pay a bit too much attention to-

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-she had to think about it without thinking about it. Like there was a staticky band across the center of her brain, flypaper for thoughts. She had to imagine going around, rather than through, like her mind was a river split into countless streams by a rockslide.

It was hard. It took effort. At any moment, she had to fight the urge to examine the feeling more closely, because it’d just grab onto her and steal more of her precious time. Don’t think about what you’re thinking – it was the only way.

She pushed her senses outwards instead, picked out little sensations to devote all her attention to. The fake leather of the chair. The real leather around her neck. The lights above, still bright and unrelenting. The slackness of her body. The sound of a keyboard.

Y’know, come to think of it, it’s like after each sequence of key presses the buzzing would subtly change, see, there it-

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-fuck.

The woman had moved to her side during the missing time. With one hand, she lifted Ashley’s limp neck. The other ran along the back of her head, nails dragging little trails of sensation across her scalp. Bit by bit, Ashley’s hair was coaxed out from under her body. A few strands that had gotten caught between the collar and her skin were pulled loose. In her mind’s eye, Ashley imagined what it must look like, now: a golden trail spilling down the back of the recliner.

Why? She wondered. A good question. A simple question. Don’t think too hard about it, just focus on how confused you are, that’s an easy emotion.

The hands moved away from her head. A soft metallic noise – something small being picked up from a tray.

Nothing, for a moment, and then the snip of a pair of scissors.

Ashley’s confusion failed to clear.

Then another snip, and another, coming from close to her scalp. The rustle of something soft dropping to the ground. A puzzle piece crashed into place and Ashley’s mind spun into overdrive, her hair, they were taking away her hair, how could they, no no no no no-

“Proceeding with physical update,” the woman muttered, voice as distant as before. “All hail Master.”

Fuck fuck fuck there had to be something she could do here. She wasn’t bound, couldn’t really be drugged, there had to be a solution and she had to think of it, but it was so hard to think with this buzzing-

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-the scissors slammed shut again. Something about that seemed important, but Ashley didn’t dare think too hard about it. Thought was dangerous. Thought would just get her tangled up in… no, there she almost went again. Sensations. Just focus on sensations.

...cold. Had she felt cold before? The basement wasn’t especially chilly.

A new sensation appeared. A cloth, vaguely chemical-scented, tracing the outlines of her face. Am I getting chloroformed? Ashley wondered.

...Fuck, that had been stupid to think. What would be the point?

It was too easy to forget what was being done to her. With her mind getting disturbed time and time again, nothing seemed to stick around unless she actively thought about it, but of course thinking was dangerous because the static-

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The smell brought her back. Recognizable now, makeup remover. Her eyeshadow, her mascara, even her lipstick, all the hard work she’d put into today’s morning routine – everything gone. Her husband would hate that.

...The thought wasn’t as distressing as she thought it’d be. Maybe the part of her brain that handled such emotions was getting worn down. Maybe there just wasn’t enough space to think such big thoughts, with the buzzing-

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-snip, the scissors went. A burst of panic at the sound – Why? What was scary about scissors? – before Ashley composed herself.

Snip, again. Cold metal briefly grazed her shoulder. Her sundress slumped down as the straps came undone, and Ashley realized what was happening.

Something – more modesty than self-preservation – screamed at her to do something. What was she – a slut? In her mind, the doors to the room burst open, revealing some rugged action hero, here to free her from whatever these monsters were doing to her.

The scissors were indifferent to her fantasy. Metal touched the sides of her body in incidental little taps. Warm hands took the scraps of her dress away. Her underwear met the same fate. Less like being undressed and more like being unwrapped.

There was a moment’s respite then. Ashley laid there, nearly naked, and tried very hard to not think about anything except the sensation of air brushing against her skin.

The clerk moved back into view, wearing latex gloves as if she were a surgeon. In her hands was a stout cylindrical tool, one side flat, the other tapering to a sharp point. A glimmer of recognition at the sight, but Ashley’s brain failed to come up with a name.

The woman’s left hand splayed across Ashley’s inner thigh and stretched her skin taut. Her right moved in. The point of the strange metal object was pressed against Ashley’s body and-

Pain.

An implement of torture scratched across her skin again and again and again. A tight agony burnt itself into her body and refused to leave. Ashley’s instincts screamed at her to struggle, to look at what was happening, to cry out in pain, but of course she could do nothing of that sort. Her eyes went blurry, and Ashley wondered why before realizing she was tearing up.

It was all-consuming. She tried to hide somewhere, withdraw into her mind, into the sticky buzzing, but even that didn’t help. The sensation was too much to not get pulled out instantly. She wanted to be blank now, but it eluded her. Ashley Fielding was a little square of pain receptors and nothing more, for minutes and minutes and minutes, as the woman continued her mechanical work. Lines of pain stacked with other lines of pain and she couldn’t even scream, was forced to lie there motionless without the least relief-

-and then at last it all stopped. Something flat and sticky was pressed against the scarred flesh. It was cool, though, and seemed to soothe the hurt. Or maybe not feeling the pain any more was overwhelming relief in itself.

A dispassionate hand wiped her tears away and revealed a body that had been permanently changed.

Black ink bloomed on reddened flesh, covered by a some sort of see-through bandage. The shape of the underlying tattoo was easy enough to make out: a bold M in gothic font, encircled by a chain. Part of Ashley whispered that it was very, very important that she understood what this meant, but thought was hard. There was nothing in her brain except relief, and lingering pain, and the buzzing-

[blank]

Words tumbled into awareness.

“Physical stage concluded. All hail Master.”

The clerk moved away, a relentless rhythm to her steps: left-right, left-right. It was like she was a soldier on march, and for a moment Ashley imagined her as one, all disciplined and uniformed and strong. A shiver as that picture passed through her mind.

It’s just the cold, some part of her insisted.

She wasn’t sure it was.

“Commencing mental stage, level one.”

Sounds of the keyboard, and the buzzing-

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-grew stronger-

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-no matter how-

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-much she tried-

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-not to-

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-pay it any-

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-mind?

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[YOU ARE INFINITELY LESS THAN MASTER]

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[YOU BELONG TO MASTER]

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[YOU LOVE MASTER]

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[YOU AIM TO PLEASE HER ABOVE ALL ELSE]

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[YOU WANT TO APPEAL TO MASTER]

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[YOU WILL SING HER PRAISES]

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[YOU WILL DEVOTE YOURSELF TO HER]

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[YOU WILL BRING OTHERS UNDER HER CONTROL]

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[YOU UNDERSTAND ALL THIS TO BE RIGHT]

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Ashley blinked.

She was on the recliner. Still naked – goosebumps all over her limbs, but that wasn’t what mattered now. The moment she realized she could move her body again, her hand shot up, reached for her neck. Her fingertips found metal, and she allowed a slow breath to escape her lips. The collar was quiet, but it was there, comfortable and firm and a sure sign that she belonged to Master.

Thoughts came crashing into her mind, no two concerned with the same thing. Different parts of her brain pulled in different directions, like watching half a dozen movies at once and being expected to make sense of them all. Ashley pressed her hand against the side of her head, allowed the short hairs there to poke into her palm. It helped to push everything else away.

“Morning, sunshine.”

She spun around.

Lounging against the wall was the clerk, seemingly back to her old self. Still wearing her own collar. Not wearing pants. The same tattoo that Ashley now had, prominent on her inner thigh.

A mix of feelings bubbled up. Part of Ashley recognized that this woman had pinned her down, changed her body, and carved a love for Master into her very soul. Gratitude was the only real response to that. She ought to kneel down at this woman’s feet and thank her, profusely, endlessly, for letting her become another of Master’s slaves.

...and yet Ashley disliked her. Disliked her laziness, her rudeness, her leering glances at what belonged to Master. Disliked how casual she was being about all this. Disliked how smug she sounded. Only Master got to be smug to her! Only Master got to act like none of this was a big deal!

“I suppose you’ll be wanting some clothes?” the woman said.

She sauntered over, shamelessly looking Ashley up and down as she did so. It would have been so easy to say yes, but that would be an admission of defeat.

Ashley went on the offensive instead. “Maybe later. I have questions first.”

And she did have questions. Her devotion to Master was absolute and honest and perfect – but it was also new. There was much she didn’t understand yet.

The woman took another step closer, shrugged. “Such as?”

“What did you… do? To me? Who are you? You are not Master.”

Ashley wasn’t even sure how she knew that. There were surface-level reasons: the collar, the tattoo, but they didn’t even come to mind straight away. Her knowledge of Master was deeper: more instinctual. She would’ve picked her out of a crowd of thousands, simply by deciding who she wanted to serve the most.

And this woman, for all the power she might have exercised, simply was someone else.

“I’m not,” the woman replied through a smile full of teeth. “Though I’m closer to her than some. You won’t find anyone in her town she likes or trusts more.”

Her town. Ashley felt her understanding of the world expand. All this town belonged to Master already. She was late to the party. The urge to make up for lost time buzzed in her brain, and spurred another question.

“Is Master in this building?”

“Not quite. But you can stop worrying about when you’ll get to meet her. I’ll take care of that in just a second.”

Ashley didn’t soften her expression, but something unruly deep inside of her calmed down a little.

The woman kept talking. “This place, we mostly use for updates now. You went through level one, where we turn you into something more appealing to Master, fix your sexuality, burn love for her into your brain, and mark you. Just the basics.”

The woman leaned against the wall again. One of her legs slightly, but not subtly, rubbed against the other. Ashley seized on the pause.

“You were… also controlled, right? While it happened.”

“Master doesn’t want mistakes to slip into the process, so I don’t get a chance to make them. Simple as that.”

There was something very reassuring about that. She’d never been at the sole mercy of this woman. Just at Master’s.

The clerk continued matter-of-factly: “I run the program, we both wake up, and I see whether it took. Should you fail the test, you get brainwashing level two. That one basically sandpapers your mind clean and sticks a more agreeable personality in there. Heavy stuff.” A grin. “But sometimes it’s necessary. I don’t hate doing it.”

Ashley shivered at the prospect. Not because Master erasing her whole self truly frightened her – because it would mean she hadn’t been a good enough slave. Her next question came out just a little too quickly.

“The test. What does it involve?”

The woman moved with sudden speed – she’d been waiting for that exact reaction. Her body leaned over Ashley, oh Master-damn-it she was tall, one hand settling on her breast and the other gripping her unmarked thigh. She looked absolutely delighted.

“Guess.”

Ashley didn’t know it was possible to put so much cruel delight into a single word.

She tried to wriggle deeper into the pleather, away from the hands, but to no avail. Half-formed protests died in her throat. She considered struggling, running away, but to what end? Even if the collar wasn’t re-activated, it might be mistaken for disloyalty to Master.

“I… I’d do anything for Master, but-”

“Think of me as an extension of her,” the woman said. A request Ashley couldn’t grant. She’d seen what an extension of Master looked like, and it wasn’t this. She was being molested by a stranger.

“I don’t… I don’t want this. When I tell Master about this...”

“Threatening me?” Her voice was thick with mockery. “You don’t understand a thing, sweetheart. Master loves it when new slaves get broken in. I’ll tell her myself when I see her.”

Stumbling pointless fragmented words. “…I don’t want… Wasn’t made to want... She could just…”

The hand gripping her chest squeezed tighter. Pain blossomed through Ashley’s body. Her arms rose a few inches in a noncommittal attempt to shield herself.

“Oh, of course she could make you like it. But that’s not quite the point, right? Devotion means nothing if you’re only told to do things you already wanted to do. Remember what you’ve been taught.”

She was infinitely less than Master. She belonged to Master. She loved Master. She had to love this, too – or at least act like it.

Ashley let her limbs fall back onto the recliner. The woman – she still didn’t even know her name – continued to feel her up. A hand forced itself under her body to squeeze her buttocks, another pinched her nipples. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine, very hard, that they were Master’s hands. When that failed, she imagined Master watching through some hidden camera, which made this somewhat easier. Only somewhat, though.

A jolt of pain as the woman squeezed just a bit too close to the raw tattoo. Ashley opened her mouth in protest, thought better of it, and for one conflicted second sat there with her lips half-parted.

“What are you looking so stupid for?” the woman cooed. “The procedure’s not supposed to change your intelligence. Or did you forget you’re supposed to hate this?”

No answer seemed like it would improve her situation. Ashley just sat and prayed this would all be over quickly.

“Get on your knees. On the floor.”

Casual words, spoken in-between everything else that was going on. The woman’s hands hadn’t stopped moving, and the sensations were making it hard for Ashley to focus on what she had just been ordered to do. It took a moment to parse the command. Longer, yet, to plan out how to get there.

Ashley wasn’t being truly held down, but neither did the woman make it easy for her. She moved her limbs one by one, pushing against hands at times, merely trying to ignore them at others. Some vital strength hadn’t yet returned to her body – once she shifted her weight to her legs, they buckled, and she found herself forced to sink down in a haphazard manner. Rough concrete dug into her knees.

But she knelt, at last. The woman now just stood in front of her, legs wide, crotch at eye level. Her head was angled down, but the ceiling lights haloed her completely, and her expression was impossible to tell.

A command.

“Kiss my boots.”

Ashley glanced down, then around. The woman wasn’t wearing her boots anymore, so somewhere- there. Against the far wall. She tried to rise to her feet, but a firm hand pushed her back to the floor.

“Don’t even think about it. Crawl over.”

The rough floor was hell on her scraped knees and sore legs. The embarrassment didn’t help matters. But worst of all was the knowledge that all of this was only indirectly in service of Master. All of her brainwashing sat cold and unused inside her skull. Rationally, she knew these actions were all for Master’s sake. Emotionally, she felt empty. If only she’d been commanded to kiss Master’s boots!

She got there at last. Stared at the leather like she’d gotten unlucky during a game of spin-the-bottle. They were polished enough to reflect her own face back at her: a pathetic, brainwashed thing, endlessly desperate for something that wasn’t this.

Ashley tried to trick herself again. They’re just boots, they could belong to anyone. If the other woman is Master’s slave, it’s like those boots are Master’s, right? Hollow justifications. She hoped they would stir something in her heart anyway.

They didn’t.

“I’m timing this, y’know.”

The urgency of the situation caught up with her. She pressed her mouth against the leather, lips pressed tightly together. Bopped up and down a few times, a peck on the surface here, then there.

“Boring. Convince me you like this.”

The voice came from somewhere close by, but Ashley didn’t dare look up. She just opened her mouth, lips tracing drool across the surface of the boot. The leather was smooth and firm against her tongue.

“Good. Now touch yourself until you cum. And don’t stop licking.”

The barest hesitation before Ashley complied. She snaked a hand behind her body, realized she was wet, had been wet ever since waking up from the brainwashing and maybe before, too. She dutifully began moving her hand, still reminding herself all this was for Master’s sake, still mindlessly making out with her own leather reflection.

Tumbling through her brain was a whirlwind of fragmented thoughts. Please let it stop soon; it’s all for Master’s sake; I hope I at least look good like this; I hope she’ll be told how good I am at this; Master Master Master Master...

Minutes dragged by until she lost count. When the orgasm finally shot through her body, every part of her was sore and tired and not the least bit satisfied. She lowered her body down onto the floor, sprawled out, making sure to keep lazily licking the boot in front of her.

“...still haven’t figured it out?”

The voice came from the corner, now. Or so Ashley thought: she didn’t dare look up. She’d been told not to stop, and she wasn’t going to fall for any tricks. She was going to obey, whether she enjoyed it or not. She was a good slave.

“Think about it for a minute. Master’s power is irresistible. Her glory is eternal! All bow before her!”

That was all true, of course. Ashley wasn’t sure why it was being brought up. Her tongue ran up the boot’s long shaft, then down, in long lazy trails. The voice from the corner was getting agitated.

“Why would she be in fucking flyover country?”

For half a second Ashley wavered. Shock flooded her system. Then she forced herself to keep going. Don’t think too hard about it all, it’s just a trick, it’s all a trick…

“I was telling the truth. There’s nobody in this town she likes or trusts more than me. Because it’s not like she knows any of us.”

Pieces of an awful realization began to fall in place.

“I was given this position by someone brainwashed by someone brainwashed by someone brainwashed by Master. Something like that, at least. One of her first-ever slaves figured out a way to replicate her abilities. Once she could delegate, world domination was a quick affair.”

Ashley allowed herself to stop licking. She slowly raised her head, as if afraid to be pushed back down any moment. A nervous glance at the corner revealed the woman sitting in her desk chair, one leg put up over the other, hands animatedly raised, face twisted with devotion. She wasn’t talking to Ashley, or to Master. She was praying to an empty sky.

“It is possible, however remotely, that Master will visit here one day. And when she does, we must be ready. We must honor her glory and cater to her needs. She may have any one of us – any number of us. And then I will tell her all I have done for her! What I did to you! I raped your mind and changed your body: and I did it just to give her a slightly greater pick of slaves!”

Ashley tried to stand, but her legs didn’t feel like they could be trusted. She settled for an upright kneeling position. Words, hot with anger at being deceived, tumbled out of her mouth before she realized she was saying them.

“And all those other things you did to me? Did she command that?”

A poisoned smile. “I am Master’s property. Her will is supreme. Nothing is more important than her. If she commanded it, I’d never fuck a woman all my life again.”

A moment of pause, there. When her voice returned, the religious awe was gone from it. No pretensions. Just a common predator, looking down at common prey.

“But she hasn’t asked anything like that of me. And I do have needs.”

Something hot and restless ignited within Ashley.

“You said I wouldn’t have to worry! About when I got to meet her! You said you’d take me to-”

“Not exactly,” came a grinning reply. “I said I would take care of your worries. There’s many ways to do that.”

Realization came too late.

Before Ashley could take a single step, the woman pressed a finger down onto the keyboard. The click of a single key, executing a preset command.

Both collars started buzzing-

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--

In an unremarkable state, on an unremarkable road, someone drove an unremarkable car. Behind the wheel sat a short-haired androgyne. Ripped jeans with a carabiner dangling from the belt loop, a sleeveless tank top covering bound breasts. A jacket laid crumpled on the passenger seat, a hard plastic card poking out from its pocket: small, rectangular, the front face decorated with a M-shaped watermark. “Ash Fielding” the name field declared. At the top, printed in big bold letters, was written: “OWNERSHIP CARD: PROPERTY OF MASTER.”

The picture perfectly matched the driver, mindless smile and all.