On day 2, Adrian called his friend and co-conspirator Lex over for a huddle.

“Do you think we made a mistake?” he asked nervously. 

He glanced over at the scene across the room. Ginger- submissive, wide-eyed, bottomy Ginger- was holding a crowd of 8 people in her hypnotic thrall. Some had their eyes closed already, while others were staring at her with the rapt look of early trance. 

“I don’t know,” Lex responded.

Ginger swayed.

The group swayed as one in response.

“She seems to be having fun?”

She did seem that way. Ginger wore a wicked, crafty smile that they had never seen from her before. She looked entirely confident and in her element- like she did this every day.

Damn, she was a hot top.

Who would have guessed?

Lex might have guessed, had they paid attention. They had played with Ginger before, they knew how creative and quick witted she could be. They knew she always had the best play ideas. Still, when they had raised the question at the Thursday night room party- what if Ginger was a top?- it had been mostly as a joke.  Ginger was known for being a particularly fun and responsive subject and pretty proudly identified as submissive. She was also excitable and cute and a little shy around others. It might be fun to see her do something so out of her nature. 

Adrian had laughed at the idea and said Ginger would probably be the most adorable top. Ginger had smiled and said that she had never been particularly interested in topping itself but she was always up for new experiences and was curious to explore the role as a headspace. She liked playing with headspaces after all- from being a cat to a bimbo to a robot- and was curious what a toppy headspace might feel like on her.  

They quickly negotiated a dual induction trance. All three had played together previously so it was easy to quickly re-establish safeties and the ability for anyone in the scene to check in at any time. Then, after Ginger was under,  Lex and Adrian took turns building a toppy headspace that Ginger could occupy for a while. She would be be confident, in control, self-assured. Dominant. 

When Ginger woke up, she had a look in her eyes that neither Lex nor Adrian had seen before. 

They had negotiated Ginger trying out her topping skills on Lex first. She beckoned Lex over.

Took their hand.

And suddenly dropped them with a rapid induction. 

Ginger did it again, waking Lex up and dropping them with the same gesture. Then again, improvising. It was dynamite. Ginger may not have had much practice, but somewhere along the way she had learned how to fractionate the fuck out of someone. Ginger played with Lex like a gleeful cat with a toy mouse, only stopping when Lex’s head was delightfully spinning.

And she worked, she started getting the attention of others in the room. People turned around and watched a sight they hadn’t expected- Ginger the expert hypnotist. When she was done with Lex, other friends asked if she would play with them.  Ginger agreed, dropping people effortlessly and creating new ideas for inductions and suggestions as she went.

At some point, Adrian decided to check in.

“Ginger, is this OK? Do you want me to bring you out of top mode? Check in with me.”

Ginger barely glanced over her shoulder at him. “Green,” she said. She refocused on what she was doing.

Eventually, the party wore down and they all went to bed. Adrian and Lex checked in with Ginger. They all assumed Ginger’s suggestion would wear off overnight.

It did not.

Throughout the next day, Adrian and Lex saw Ginger in the halls hypnotizing different people. Old friends. New con attendees. Each time, they would do a quick check in, just to make sure she was OK.

Eventually Ginger looked like she was barely restraining herself from rolling her eyes. “Green,” she would say, annoyed. 

That afternoon after classes, Adrian and Lex were walking when they saw a group of some well-known community educators gathered in a cluster. When they pushed into the group, they saw Ginger in the middle.  She was teaching the crowd the 3 new variations on a handshake induction that she had come up with during the day. She had also figured out some nice wording to use with the deepener that would help the person being hypnotized with amnesia later in the scene.

“Green,” she said automatically when she saw Adrian and Lex.

Lex was getting a little worried that Ginger would get stuck like this.

———————————-

Ginger was NOT afraid of getting stuck like this.

She knew herself, both as a person and as a subject. She knew when she was reacting to a suggestion and how to stop reacting to it if she needed to. She knew when a suggestion provided a fun excuse to do something she wanted to do anyway. And she knew there were times, like now, when both things were happening at the same time.

Ginger did not want to be a dominant or a top. Not really. She didn’t even really consider herself a switch. Playing with topping this weekend was fun but it felt very much like a role- something she was putting on right now and then would easily discard. She enjoyed bottoming too much to really even imagine wanting to top in any significant way as part of ongoing play. 

But she had always been curious- what would she be like if she were a switch? And when Lex and Adrian had approached her with their idea, she knew it was her chance to give it a try.

There was also something about the way they had approached her. It was like they thought she couldn’t top or that her topping was some kind of joke. It  made her want to excel at it- if for nothing else, then to show them not to underestimate her.

After all, it’s not like she hadn’t spent hours and hours thinking about and analyzing and figuring out trance. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been regularly hypnotized for years by some of the best hypnotists in the community. It wasn’t like she hadn’t demo bottomed for (and thus attended) a ton of classes. She was creative, she was clever, she was quick on her feet. She could do this.

Plus, It wasn’t like hypnotizing people  was hard or anything. Not at this convention.

It was kind of fun, she had decided. And a rush. It was a unique experience- like skydiving. Just because she only wanted to go skydiving once didn’t mean that she didn’t enjoy it while she was doing it or that it wasn’t worthwhile

She raised her hand, watching the group of deeply hypnotized people swaying before her, all waiting for her command.

She’d probably stop acting on this suggestion later tonight, she decided. After all, she had really wanted to get some good bottoming scenes in this con and she was running out of time.  From the look of Adrian and Lex, they would probably be relieved when they formally cancelled it. 

But for right now? She wasn’t ready yet. 

She was too thoroughly enjoying proving them mistaken.