Friendly Competition
by Fractured Puppet
Tracey looked over the spreadsheet on her office computer for the third time, but the numbers still hadn’t changed.
Bookings were down thirty percent. Thirty! In a month!
She needed to know why.
The Relaxation Station had been going strong for more than five years now. It had been her idea to bring a little day spa into the Jacobs Square Mall, offering a nice break for busy shoppers and many of the other employees who liked to come down for a quick massage, a mani-pedi, or a facial.
It had taken a few months to really dig in, but once people knew the Station was sticking around, they’d build a customer base, and addition of tanning and waxing services had done even more to grow the business.
Until now.
“Sammy? Jane? Can you come back here?”
The other ‘technicians’ who helped her run the place didn’t take long to come back, and Tracey let them both get settled before she spoke.
“Girls, our numbers for this month don’t look very good. Have your guests said anything about why they aren’t coming back as often?”
She’d expected shrugs, not Jane flushing and looking over at Sammy nervously, and Sammy grimacing back at her.
The silent debate ended with Jane biting her lip and shrugging, and Sammy letting out a sigh, rolling her eyes before she turned back to face the desk.
“Have you been down to the other side of the mall lately?”
Tracey blinked. “No? I usually park in the lot by our entrance and I hit the food court sometimes for lunch - I usually don’t go down that way unless I have gift cards for a store down there, or if I feel like checking out the movie theatre.”
Sammy nodded and stood up. “We should go for a walk. Jane can cover the front, right?”
Jane slumped in her chair, her freckles almost disappearing under her embarrassed flush, and nodded meekly.
“OK then,” Tracey agreed as she picked up her purse. “Let’s go for a walk.”
It only took a few minutes to cross the expanse of the mall, and when they reached the escalator up to the second level, Sammy pointed up. “Up there, and we’re gonna hang a left.”
Tracey still didn’t quite see what the point of this was, but as she stepped off the escalator she saw what Sammy meant, and quickly saw red.
“Digi-Spa?!”
Sammy nodded as she caught up. “Yeah. I guess they went in after the Zigbee Toys closed up.”
She let Sammy lead her over, trying to look casual, and not at all like the pissed off owner of a store that apparently had a competitor.
At a glance through the window, it didn’t seem like much. Some couches, a front counter, a few product displays, and...loungers?
Tracey frowned, stepping closer. “What the hell are those?” They didn’t look like massage chairs, and she didn’t see any sign of the foot baths she would have expected for pedicures.
A third voice joined the conversation, nearly making Tracey jump. “Those are what make Digi-Spa so successful!”
The woman who had come over to speak to them had a rosy complexion that seemed to radiate good health and friendly warmth off of her tawny skin, inky black hair put up in a loose bun, and carefully rounded and buffed fingernails that had been given what Tracey was pretty sure was an ivory gel coat.
Black slacks and a mid-sleeved blouse hugged her curves without looking trashy, and her white apron had “Digi-Spa” picked out on it in blue, and “Sandra” embroidered on the breast.
Tracey had to admit it was an eye-catching look, especially on her.
“Oh really,” she replied as she turned towards Sandra with her best “difficult customer” smile. “Could you tell me more?”
“Of course!” Sandra gestured for them to follow her, and Tracey noticed Sammy following out of the corner of her eye.
“You see, we appreciate how much care goes into a traditional spa treatment, but those just help relax your body, not your mind!”
She walked them back to one of the loungers, and she reached down to pull out what looked like a giant pair of goggles with blacked out lenses that read “DIGI-SPA” on the front.
“With our digital spa experience, we relieve stress right at the source!”
“With our digital spa experience, we relieve stress right at the source!”
“Huh.” Tracey tried not to be too obvious about looking around. “So you don’t offer massages, or nail treatments?”
Sandra just kept smiling, but it didn’t quite reach her deep brown eyes. “We have some traditional spa treatments, but they’re normally add-ons to our digital services.”
Well, that was something, at least.
“Would you like to try a quick demo?”
Tracey actually considered it for a moment, but shook her head. “No, not right now. Thanks, tho.”
“Of course!” Sandra pivoted to where Sammy had been lurking, and raised the goggles in her direction. “What about you, miss?”
“Of course!” Sandra pivoted to where Sammy had been lurking, and raised the goggles in her direction. “What about you, miss?”
She had to admit it was a relief to see Sammy shake her head right away. “My break’s up soon, sorry.”
“That’s OK,” Sandra assured them both. “We’ll be here!”
Tracey turned to head out so Sandra wouldn’t see the bitter smile on her face as she left the store.
We’ll see about that!
She didn’t speak out loud again until they were past the Pottery Shed and the other, other bath and body store.
“So how long ago did you find out about this?”
“Two weeks ago,” Sammy confessed. “Jane’s boyfriend took her out for a movie date after work and they saw people checking it out.”
“Did either of you go in for one of those...treatments?”
“Nah. Not my thing, and I think Jane is pretty sure you’d fire her if she did.”
Tracey sighed and shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t. But I do wish you two had said something to me.”
“Sorry. We weren’t sure what to say.” Sammy quicked her pace a bit to catch up, and looked over. “So - what do we do?”
“We’re going to ask Janey to cover the shop for another hour or two, and then we’re going to Circuit Shack.”
A couple hours of tech demos, hard sell attempts, and mansplaining later, Tracey sat on her bed with the cheap headset she’d bought to figure out how to make her own virtual spa, and a couple of more expensive units to take into the shop tomorrow.
After being given a demo that had let her put on the top of the line model and fly around New York City like a superhero, she had to admit she’d been tempted to pick one up for herself, but she’d balked at the cost.
Maybe if they got the shop’s numbers up, she told herself.
The cheapo one was...well. Cheap. Limited. But it let her learn how to set up and add programs to the headset, at least. She’d found a few apps that could play pre-loaded videos or environments, but nothing really like what Sandra had claimed DigiSpa offered.
And nothing that explained why so many of her customers were giving DigiSpa their money.
Tracey had searched for Virtual Spa, VR relaxation, and every other way of phrasing it she could think of, and nothing felt like it would be some kind of magic bullet.
The next try was “VR Massage,” and one of the first results was...different.
BrainRub, it said, and Tracey’s lips parted, a little tingle running up her spine as she clicked the link.
Virtual Hypnosis Tool, it advertised. Just relax and let your mind get wiped away.
“Oh, holy shit.”
Tracey clicked on the specs. The dinky headset would just barely run it, but the better ones she’d picked up would be able to load it without any problems.
She was damn sure the headsets at DigiSpa could.
She wasn’t sure if it was what Sandra had done to steal her customers, but the more Tracey looked at the program, and the “FileForge” tool it came with, the more she was pretty damn sure she wanted to use it to steal them back.
Six hours and three cups of coffee later, Tracey was feeling pretty good about the setup she’d loaded on a thumb drive to take to work.
She’d never be a computer genius, but the “programming for business majors” course she’d taken in college had given her enough of a foundation to load the program and configure settings for a few files.
The deeper Tracey went, the more she wanted to know. When the FileForge had asked her about binaurals and brain waves, she’d put the terms into google and educated herself, getting more and more fascinated by the results.
Well. More than just fascinated, really.
When she’d finally finished working, Tracey loaded the BrainRubber onto the basic headset, put some batteries in the basic remote it had come with, undressed, and put her hair up in a wrap for the night before she got into bed.
Slipping the goggles over her eyes, she waited for the menu to float up in front of her eyes before clicking on the BrainRub icon.
There was a flash as the file loaded up to run, and suddenly she was on a beach, the sound of soothing waves and distant bird calls in her ears.
Even though she’d written the script, the words that floated up in front of her eyes surprised her.
Welcome. It’s time to help you relax with a nice, gentle brain massage.
She smiled as the lines of text swirled into a spiral in front of her before disappearing, and the next words took their place.
Just relax, and listen to the waves, it instructed as the soft binaural tones began.
Relax, and let yourself drift on those soothing ocean waves. You deserve it. You’ve been working so hard lately!”
Those words formed a larger, slightly slower spiral that drew her eyes in. She really had been working too hard lately. It seemed like she barely got to enjoy anything lately between managing her books and keeping the girls in line.
It feels so good to finally relax, doesn’t it?
God, it really did.
It’s so nice to just drift deeper and deeper, just letting yourself to relax and feel good.
It really was so, so nice, and the more the spirals began to swirl, the more Tracey felt her whole body start to tingle, the pleasure and relaxation flowing into a warm, gentle arousal.
Some part of her knew this wouldn’t be allowed at the spa, but the rest of her just fell deeper and deeper into trance, one of her hands drifting to stroke and pinch at her nipple, her breast feeling so warm and heavy beneath her fingers.
It felt so right to let herself feel good like this. To relax and surrender to the pleasure, just like the spiral told her to. To suck on her fingers, coating them with slickness before reaching down to her curly bush and the dark folds beneath, slowly circling her clit as her mind shut itself off.
It feels so good not to think.
“S-so...good…”
It feels so good to relax.
“Relaaaaaaaaaax…”
You should let yourself have this more often.
“mmmmmMmmmM,,,”
You want to come back.
“Come….back…!”
You want to get your brain massaged again.
“Aaaaaagaaaainnnnn.”
You want to look into the spiral and let it all go, because you know how good that will feel.
Tracey wanted it so bad. She was so close and she knew that if she just let go, she would...
Because you know you will feel so relaxed. So refreshed. So good.
The worlds looped around again, forming their little spirals, bigger and bigger each time as she pleasured herself, the waves of the beach and beats of the headset blending together into a constant murmur that lulled her brain deeper and deeper into relaxation even as her body wound itself tighter and tighter, until the messages looped for a third time, and Tracey came, soaking her fingers as the tension finally broke.
She finally shut her eyes and used her clean hand to push the headset up, blinking the spiral afterimages from her eyes.
“Fuck...It worked!”
She picked her phone up off her nightstand, and made a note to herself that they should keep the customers on a timer.
But, she thought with pride once she’d cleaned off and gotten back into bed, it had worked.
Watch out Sandra. We are coming right back at you!
Tracey had to borrow a hand truck to get the headsets, charging stations, and other gear into the spa, and it took almost an hour to move around two of the massage chairs, placing them where mall shoppers would see them as they walked past.
Sammy came in a few minutes later to get ready for her first client, and she whistled with surprise.
“You’re really going for it, huh?”
Tracey nodded as she finished a drink from her water bottle. “Bigger and better. We keep offering all the stuff we already do, and we add a “mental massage” to our packages.”
Sammy tilted her head a bit to the side as she considered it. “I guess that could work. What’s it like?”
“I found a bunch of beach stuff. Ocean waves, big blue skies, white sand, that kind of thing.” Tracey gestured at the chair. “Give it a try.”
Sammy looked down at the equipment again, then nodded. “Sure, why not.”
It only took a minute or so to get her comfortable on the chair with the headset in place. Once she was reclined and the chair set for a gentle vibration, Tracey picked up a tablet next to the chair and loaded a five minute session into the headset.
“Oh. That’s pretty,” Sammy murmured as the program loaded.
“You like the beach?”
“Yeah…” Sammy’s usual snarky tones had softened into a warm murmur. “Grew up in LA. Miss the beach.”
Tracey smiled. “Well, now you can visit whenever.”
“Mmmm…”
As Sammy visibly relaxed, Tracey watched her sink deeper into trance with a nervous flutter in her stomach. She knew her reaction to the VR had been...extreme...but she also wanted to be careful that she wasn’t selling a “Happy Ending.”
As the timer on her tablet clicked down, Tracey let out a little sigh of relief when the program didn’t seem to hit the younger woman the same way.
She looked relaxed - maybe even blissful - but not like she was going to start playing with herself. Good.
Two minutes later the tablet pinged as it automatically shut off the VR, and Tracey stepped in to gently lift the headset off.
“Welcome back! How did it feel?”
“Good,” Sammy said as she blinked a few times, her blissed out expression slowly fading. “Really good, honestly. I can get why the other place has been kicking our asses now.”
Tracey couldn’t stop from snorting. “Well, that stops today.”
Sammy raised herself back to a sitting position and stood, then looked thoughtfully back at the VR setup. “Yeah, I guess it does.”
Three of their regulars came by that day, and Tracey added her “Mental Massage” to their packages as a free bonus.
Within a few days, they’d all booked new appointments, and so had two new clients.
It wasn’t going to fix things overnight, but Tracey could almost feel the momentum shifting back in her favor. They were going to turn this around.
By the end of the month, things weren’t quite the same, but Tracey didn’t want to scream when she looked at her books.
It was nearly time to wrap it up for the day when there was a knock at her door.
“Boss?”
Tracey looked up with a frown. “What’s up?”
Jane looked like she was about to vibrate through the floor when she stepped in, her hands wringing together. “You gotta come see who just came in!”
“Is there a problem? I thought Sammy had the last appointment for the day.”
“Not exactly,” Jane’s red curls bounced back and forth as she shook her head as her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “But you really need to see who it is.”
“Not exactly,” Jane’s red curls bounced back and forth as she shook her head as her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “But you really need to see who it is.”
Tracey stood and followed her out with a deepening frown, wondering if she’d need to call security.
“Oh,” she breathed as she stepped onto the Salon floor. “Oh, shit!”
Sandra was dressed down in mom jeans and a sweater, her dark hair on a loose ponytail rather than a bun as she let Sammy guide her over to one of the foot spa chairs for a pedicure.
Tracey tried to walk as casually as she could over to the reception desk, and checked the calendar. The appointment had been booked as “Sandi”, but one glance over at how their new “client” was checking out the place made it obvious that she’d decided to come in and see just what the competition had come up with.
Well, fine. You want to play games? Let’s play games.
She waved for Jane to go ahead and start on her closing work, and waited for Sammy to get the foot bath going before walking over with her best customer smile.
“How are things going over here, ladies?”
“I think we’re doing great,” Sammy replied cheerfully, but the moment she turned back to get her supply cart she gave a look that made it clear she knew what was going on, too.
“It’s very nice,” Sandra confirmed as she settled back into the massaging chair. Her voice was a lot less obnoxious when she wasn’t parroting out bullshit. “I really needed a break.”
“Tough week, huh?”
“Mmhmm.”
Tracey clucked her tongue in mock sympathy. “Well, I know you just booked a mani-pedi, but would you like to try our “Mental Massage” relaxation package?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sandra said with feigned reluctance. “Is it expensive?”
Tracey had to remind herself to just keep smiling. “Actually, we’re doing a special for new customers. We can add a five minute demo session onto your service today at no charge, and if you’d like to try a longer experience, we’ll take twenty percent off.”
She could feel Sammy staring at the back of her head with confusion, but Tracey didn’t care. She and Sandra both knew why she was really here, and it was a good excuse to give a taste of her own medicine.
Besides, the offer she’d made up actually did sound like a pretty good trick to get more people interested. She’d print up some cards to hand out later.
Sandra seemed to make a show of considering it, then nodded slowly. “I suppose five minutes can’t hurt.”
“Great! I’m sure it’s just what you need today. Samantha’s going to take good care of you here, and when your nails are dry we’ll set up the rest.”
Tracey didn’t think of herself as a vindictive person, but it felt pretty damn satisfying to see Sandra slip the VR headset on and get blissed out that afternoon.
They didn’t see Sandra back the next month, but they managed to convert a few more curious bystanders into regular customers, and Tracey finally felt comfortable buying herself the more advanced VR setup for her home office, and started playing around with making more files.
Some were just basic relaxation, centering, and energy boosting suggestions to offer to customers.
Some were very much for her own private use.
She’d found a BrainRub discord run by the group who made the original software, and quickly found an interest in trading or downloading files made by other users.
Tracey experimented with a few and tried to leave some feedback for their creators each time, but didn’t find something she really clicked with until she got a message from another user.
MissMelter#4022 - I really appreciate the feedback you’ve been leaving for creators on the BR server. I made a file that I think you’ll be interested in. Hope you enjoy! ;)
Attached: PleasurePet.brr
In the back of her head, Tracey knew there were all kinds of reasons not to try a file from someone she didn’t know, or to at least skip the induction and try the rest before she really got into it, but it was a Saturday night, she was horny, and she was letting Sammy open tomorrow.
“Fuck it,” she murmured to herself as she downloaded the file and sent it to her headset, then undressed and settled herself in bed. She pulled the headset on, got comfortable, and grabbed one of the controllers.
She loaded up the file, and the loading screen faded into an inky void, the only sound a faint hum.
Tracey was just starting to wonder if the file had been corrupted when a woman’s low, smokey voice came over the headphones.
“Hello,” the mystery woman (MissMelter, perhaps?) said, and a burst of color and light appeared with each word. “We are going to begin by taking you deep into blank, mindless trance.”
Cool, she thought. This is really slick so far.
“Lie back and let yourself get comfortable. I want you to find a nice and supportive position that will let you rest and relax your body while your mind focuses on my words.”
Tracey scooted herself a little on the bed without consciously thinking about it, making sure she had things just right.
“You can keep watching the bursts of light in the darkness as I speak, but it’s ok if your eyes begin to get heavy. It’s fine to just let your mind drift on my words as I wrap them around your mind like a nice fuzzy blanket.”
Her eyes were starting to feel a bit droopy as the soft tones beneath MissMelter’s voice helped to lull her mind into compliance. She thought she could just barely hear the sounds of a countdown, but it was quickly overlaid by the woman’s voice again.
“It feels good to let go, doesn’t it? So good to relax and listen...no worries, no cares, no responsibilities.”
Tracey hummed in agreement, just as she heard the word Drop in one ear, and Good Pet in the other. A tingle ran up her spine as she gasped, and almost missed the next words.
“See how easy it is to go deeper? How good it feels when you submit?”
Pleasure for my pet, the whisper echoed, and Tracey let herself be taken deeper into bliss.
“The deeper you go, the better it feels,” MissMelter continued. “And the better it feels, the deeper you go. Deeper into pleasure. Deeper into submission. Deeper into bliss, my pretty pet.”
Tracey felt her arousal growing even as her conscious mind slipped further away, the controller left on the bed as her hands began to caress and fondle her curves.
“All you want is to feel this bliss,” MissMelter purred. “All you want is to submit and obey.”
“S-submit and o-ohhh-obey…”
“That’s my good pet. And good, obedient pets get so much pleasure.”
The more pleasure she got, the more Tracey wanted. Driven quite literally out of her mind by the teasing whispers and subconscious triggers, she happily fucked herself into greater and greater bliss at the voice’s command.
“Our time is almost up, pet,” MissMelter said wistfully, her words just barely breaking through the fog of orgasmic bliss and endorphins. “But I’m going to leave you with rewards for being such a good toy for me.”
“I am giving you a trigger,” she continued. “When you are somewhere you feel safe, hearing me say ‘PleasurePet’ will put you back into this space. Your mind will empty until it’s nice and blank, and it’s going to feel so good to submit to me. You’ll feel so much bliss when I say ‘PleasurePet’ that you’ll be right back here, drifting on my voice. Eager to listen to my voice. Warm, soft, wet, and needy, just like a good little pet should be.”
Some detached part of Tracey could almost feel the trigger settling into the back of her mind, capturing the way she felt right now and saving it away for later.
“You’ll be my good little PleasurePet, and I will be your Keeper. You will obey me when I speak to you, and it’s going to feel so good that you won’t even want to resist, will you?”
“Nuh…”
“Good little PleasurePet. Obedient little PleasurePet.”
The part of Tracey that was still capable of thought felt her fingers sink into more and more hot slickness.
“You have been so good for me, pet, but I need to ask you something important. Something your deep self must do for your Keeper.”
Her fingers slowed, just slightly.
“You are going to forget to remember,” Keeper explained. “You will remember to forget what happened during this session. You will remember to forget that I gave you triggers. You will forget to remember how much pleasure and bliss I gave you, but it’s OK - we both know that your deep self is always listening, PleasurePet, and how much it loves to obey.”
Tracey gave her Keeper a weak mewl of agreement.
“When it’s time to wake, you can drift back up gently,” her Keeper said as the sounds of voices counting up began to hum in her ears. “Taking your time, letting yourself enjoy the journey back into your body as a reward for how well you behaved, PleasurePet.”
“You will wake up, you will feel warm, loved, and satisfied,” Keeper continued to explain. “You will know you had a wonderful experience, but not recall any details, and of course, you will want to experience this again.”
“Yeaaaaah…”
“And now it’s time to let you wake up, and know that you will forget to remember, and remember to forget.”
The count up reached “Ten” as Tracey slowly felt her way back into awareness, riding out one last orgasm as the whispers of “Wake up, time to wake up, wake up pet, it’s time…” finished guiding her back to full consciousness.
Her eyes opened slowly to the BrainRubber menu screen.
The file had ended, and she felt amazing, but also a bit like she’d gone a few rounds with Laila Ali in a boxing ring.
“Water,” Tracey breathed as she gently lifed the headset off. “God, fuck, I should get some water.”
She took a little time to rehydrate, shower, and dry off. When she went back to the bedroom the headset was resting right on her pillow, and it took an effort of will to put it back on her desk instead of putting it on.
“Tomorrow,” she told herself as she slipped back beneath the sheets.
“I can do it again tomorrow.”
After six more months of offering “Mental Massages,” The Relaxation Station wasn’t just surviving, it was thriving.
Tracey had hired two more technicians to help with the different service packages, and spent more time creating “Relaxation experiences” than she did on day to day management now that she’d made Sammy her assistant manager.
The candy shop next door had announced they would be closing in two months after the owner had decided to retire, and she was seriously considering looking at getting a loan to cover expanding into that space.
I could probably hire a couple more nail techs, maybe even look for a couple of LMTs, and a few more VR beds…
She kept daydreaming of ways she could expand and improve the shop until the sound of a knock on her office door startled her back to reality. “Hey, you’re gonna go home, right?”
“Huh? I - oh. Sorry, Sammy. I guess I lost track of time looking at some numbers.”
“I figured it was something like that, but I didn’t want to turn off the lights and set the alarm with you still in there.”
Tracey sighed as she stood, shaking her head. “Yeah, no, thanks. You go on, I’ll finish up here.”
“Sounds good - see you later, boss!”
Laughing a little at herself as she watched Sammy grab her coat and leave, Tracey had just finished making sure everything was put away properly when she heard footsteps behind her, and started to turn around.
“Just stay right there, PleasurePet.”
The world went fuzzy at the edges as she stopped in place, watching patiently as Sandra walked over to one of the couches, her hair falling like a silk curtain over her shoulders, the calf length raincoat tapping against the backpack she carried in one hand.
“I should have done some more research before I opened up my shop,” her Keeper admitted as she set her bag down and got comfortable, legs together at a little angle, hands in her lap. “You’re quite the businesswoman, pet.”
“Thank you, Keeper,” Tracey replied softly, her voice sounding a million miles away in her ears. “I wanted to make my own way.”
“I can tell, and I’m very pleased,” her Keeper said with a smile that made warmth flood into her pussy. “If I’d know how...interested...you were in hypnosis, I would have just asked about being business partners.”
“Would have said no,” she admitted dreamily. “My place. My rules.”
“Oh, I can tell. It’s part of what makes you such a good girl, PleasurePet.”
It was a struggle not to moan as her knees went weak at her Keeper’s praise, particularly with the reinforcement from the trigger.
“T-thank you.”
“It was so funny to see you using the program I wrote! I didn’t even go half as hard on the binaurals as you did, clever pet.” Keeper really was beautiful, and the way she looked at her was a constant reminder of what a wonderful pet she was.
“Would you close the shop gate? I think we can leave by the service exit tonight.”
Tracey nodded as she lazily walked to the front and turned her key in the lock so the gate would lower, and by the time she was finished, her Keeper had already removed her coat to reveal the lacy underwear she’d had on beneath it.
“So - DigiSpa will keep going with a bit lighter touch,” Keeper explained as she beckoned her pet over, “and I’ll let you really turn up the intensity. Maybe we’ll have another little game where we play with our prices, hm?”
“I’d like that,” Tracey murmured as she knelt down between her Keeper’s legs and began to gently rub her cheek against her thigh. “I can think of some ideas…”
Sandi chuckled as she spread her legs a little wider. “Not for long, pet. Not tonight. But you can tell me later. Tongue, now.”
She did as Keeper told her, and Tracey let her mind surrender to happy bliss as she eagerly ate her Keeper’s pussy, a firm hand in her hair helping to urge and guide her.
“There’s nothing quite like some friendly competition,” Keeper purred as lips found her clit, and after that, they had much better things to do than talk.