Buoyed up by the encounter with her idol, Robin stayed on campus over the Christmas vacation so she could continue soaking up her studies.

It had been a wonderful evening, although little of it had stayed clear in her memory. As it was wrapping up, headmistress Gunderman had called for everyone’s attention.

“Bids will be entertained over the next forty-eight hours,” she had begun. “I thank all of you for your time and interest, and I will remind you that if you were not entirely satisfied but saw something of interest, customisation can be carried out upon receipt of a downpayment.”

Robin didn’t entirely follow what that meant, but as it was clearly addressed toward the guests, she knew that didn’t matter.

“Class of 2026,” Gunderman continued, “return to your rooms.”

Across the ballroom, every one of the upperclasswomen either rose and headed for the door or, in the case of Valerie Dixon, detached herself from the arm of one of the guests where they were stood on the dancefloor and did the same.

“Class of 2027, dream, perchance to sleep.”

At that point Robin and the other student staff in attendance all walked back into the changing room. They stripped briskly out of outfits which had been groped, fondled, stretched, ripped, and even stained and set them aside, dressing in whatever fashion each woman preferred (the top flight favouring figure-hugging but expensive clothing that hid but showed off their bodies at once, while other classes had evolved their own styles - a careful observer could almost determine each woman’s rankings based on the way they dressed and moved) and started walking back to the main school.

As Robin walked, her memories of the evening seemed to swim and twist somewhat, and after her head had touched the pillow in her bedroom and she had slept, she remembered only scattered impressions of the evening, of which the two biggest were telling Jocelyn Russell how much she admired her, focused on her so totally it might have seemed rude to her husband, and coming away from the event somewhat jealous of the upperclasswomen.

Robin was not the only one who stayed on campus over the holiday. A little over half of the sophomores did, with a higher proportion among the top flight. Nonetheless, with about half of the teaching staff absent, no freshwomen on site, and more than half of the upperclasswomen departed, Northrop’s grounds could feel surprisingly lonely at times.

Robin was particularly glad that Angie had also elected to stay. Privately she had realised that one of the reasons she was friendlier with Angie than the other women in the top flight was that she didn’t consider Angie to be competition. She didn’t altogether like what this said about her, however, and so she tried to avoid thinking about it too extensively.

The two of them took to walking in the woods within Northrop ground, well bundled up against the cold, over the vacation. There they could talk freely about their progress, their dreams and aspirations. Angie began one particular conversation by saying “You know, I’m not sure I actually want to go to work after this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Angie temporised, “for this to work, I’m going to need to have someone to support instead. But the more of the lessons I go through, the more I feel like I fit a society hostess role more than any of the others Northrop offers.”

Robin nodded slowly to herself. It seemed to her, as time had gone on, that Jocelyn’s powerful advocacy status was founded in part on the skills of a society hostess or housewife. Looked at through the perspective that the Northrop Finishing School had given her, a lot of the ways she did it started with big functions, with the big statements coming from those.

It was a reminder, she thought, that women wielded power differently to men. What headmistress Gunderman was really doing was giving them the tools they needed in the world as it really existed, rather than fostering the determination to change how it worked.

And Jocelyn was an effective woman indeed. Robin had seen that for herself during the Gala. She was an effective advocate for her husband’s viewpoint.

Robin blinked. Something about that idea seemed wrong. Wasn’t it Jocelyn’s own viewpoint she was advocating for? Hadn’t she said something like that in the video? Thanks to the skills I learned at Northrop, I married Michael Russell. Now we share a vision for the future and our goals are aligned. The School did that for me, and it can do the same for you…

Did that mean that her viewpoint was her own, or was it given to her by her husband?

“You’re very quiet,” Angie said. Robin started. She’d been so deep in her thoughts that she’d completely forgotten she was walking with another. Unforgivable in any case, but the other woman was a genuine friend. That made it so much worse.

“I’m sorry, Angie,” Robin said. She tried to recover the thread of the conversation. “Remind me, what was your plan originally?”

“PR,” she said immediately. “I know someone who recruits in the field. Northrop’s proposal sounded like a great background to rise up the ranks soon. And once I could choose my clients, I could start to shape things. Have a positive impact on the world.” They were both silent for a few moments, as their aimless wander through the woods had come upon fallen tree requiring tricky negotiation. “Show more of the people who need to understand that women have as much value as men.”

Robin nodded. This was a familiar teaching of Northrop’s. “Just a different value,” she said, which was the teachers’ clarifying refrain whenever it came up. She was queasy, the strange dizzying discomfort returning, but she wasn’t sure why. At the same time there was an itch at the back of her brain, like a thought she knew was there but still couldn’t put her finger on. What was -

Their conversation cut short when the sound of jingling bells abruptly cut through the air. Robin and Angie looked at each other, startled at first. In each others’ eyes they read a growing puzzlement which swiftly turned to curiosity.

Angie smiled first, and Robin answered with one of her own, and in that moment they had agreed wordlessly to head toward the noise and try to find out what was happening.

The woods of the Northrop Finishing School for Accomplished Women are old, and thick, but far from impassable. Indeed, tracks broad enough for vehicles criss-cross the property, some of them marked out of bounds but most simply left as they are. Only students, staff, and expected guests should ever be on the property, after all.

These tracks often lead either to buildings or clearings. The lakehouse (with its small artificial boating lake) and the ballroom, like the house, were built a long while ago, when the school was a residence. Other spaces have been cleared by the Finishing School itself, and for other reasons.

In one circular clearing, perhaps fifty yards across, the source of the bells was revealed. Karl, one of the groundskeepers, was seated in a black trap, a two-wheeled buggy, which was being pulled through the snow by two women in skintight bodysuits, one white and one black. In deference to the weather, they had on equally-figure-hugging grey fur waistcoats with high ruffs around the collar, and wore galoshes on their feet where Robin was sure tall boots would be worn instead. Their arms were strapped to their sides by the same leather rigs which attached them to the trap and to a pair of reins.

The woman in white sported a dark pixie cut, the woman in black had a long red ponytail which had been tied on the very top of her head. Both also sported ‘pony tails’ emerging from their rumps, and both wore belled collars. Karl was enjoying himself by using his whip liberally, sending it licking out over each of them in turn, while he manipulated the reins expertly with his other hand.

There was no question of his expertise in this field.

Robin was familiar with the word ponygirl, if only because it had been whispered with a kind of reverential distaste by a friend at a sleepover just a couple of years earlier. The friend, whose name now seemed so unimportant her memory would not provide it, had evidently embarked on an exploration of unusual porn practices, and this had been for her the acme of the unreasonable and demeaning practices men visited on women.

It did not seem like a proper pastime for an employee of Northrop.

“Isn’t that Skylar Weston?” Angie whispered, a delighted frisson in her tone. For her this was a new tidbit of gossip about a celebrity, the famously feminist and frequently combative songstress Skylar Weston. Robin remembered hearing that she was a Northrop alumna herself, but hadn’t thought much of it until this moment.

The woman before her was, unquestionably, Skylar Weston. And once that had snapped into clarity for her, Robin knew who the redhead next to her must be, recognised the face even with the changes to it wrought by a different hairstyle, recognised the strong but shapely thighs, even matched the rough heights.

Jocelyn Russell was being used as, or possibly taught to be, a ponygirl. At the Northrop Finishing School she had attended, alongside another former student. CPD, they called it; continuing personal development.

The itch in the back of her head became a sudden ache. She grunted at the pain.

“Robin?” Angie asked.

But Robin was barely listening. Instead, her eyes squeezed shut, she was doubling over, hands to her head. The sharpest headache she’d had was cutting through her. She’d heard people call them splitting before and now she felt as if she knew what that meant; as if some barrier in her head was splitting open, pushing information back into her head that she’d stopped questioning, stopped paying attention to, stopped even noticing.

She could not reconcile what she had seen with the way she had become accustomed - no, been taught, even trained like a pet - to see Northrop and its goals. She had thought of that despicable, twisted training those women were receiving as personal development, right up until that had become the last straw.

Suddenly it was obvious why there were fewer and fewer upperclasswomen as the year rolled on, and why so many of them disappeared in twos and threes (and why seven had left between the Winter Gala and the start of vacation).

It had to be some kind of brainwashing, she thought, as more and more fragments of memory stirred. That must be why sometimes Gunderman called them ‘Class of 2027’, a codephrase to make them react differently to the next few words. Like that video game her brother had been obsessed with when they were kids.

The knee of her thick winter leggings had settled into the snow, and for all that it was good at keeping the heat in during weather like this, when it got wet that changed immediately. The cold reached her in an instant. It was clarifying. Energising. Robin stood decisively.

“Robin?” Angie asked again. “Are you okay?”

Politeness demanded she be answered, of course. Robin squeezed her eyes back open against the throbbing headache of restoring memories, and looked at her friend. Angie was looking back at her with concern and compassion, but Robin couldn’t see a trace of awareness that what they’d seen was wrong.

Revulsion filled her. Without the manners Gunderman and her team had been trying to program into her, with nothing but a need to flee, she turned and started running blindly through the trees.

Branches whipped against her as she fled. The ground itself was unsteady and slippery in places. Robin just ran; from time to time she stumbled, but all that mattered was getting away.

And then she broke free of the woods and found herself on the Academy’s long drive. She turned to face the gates, still running.

She couldn’t have run for this long, of covered as much distance while she did so, before coming to Northrop.

The thought almost seemed to appear in her head, although now Robin was noticing that it, like other thoughts she had, sounded like a member of staff, or a self-assured man. As if she’d heard it from someone else first, before it became a thought.

The idea was chilling. Was she going to have to watch every thought she ever had?

The gates themselves, once she reached them, were open - which was a good thing; Robin was fading. Once she was past them she could start making plans, she thought; it wouldn’t be pleasant, it certainly wouldn’t be easy. But there was going to be some way, whatever it turned out to be, that she could get out into the public arena.

At that moment, getting to the public only meant safety. Later on, a fugitive from Northrop might consider whether to blow the whistle or to lay low; they might remember being shot with an anaesthetic dart and finally realise why there was a part of their scalp they avoided touching while washing their hair, investigate and find the exposed tip of their implanted control device. They might add to that the names of famous alumni they knew and realise there was evidence now scattered all over the world, in the ownership of powerful men or women like Lucille Dawn.

But there was no room for those thoughts. Not until they were safe.

Seeing the gates galvanised her, and her exhausted legs picked up their pace. She couldn’t manage much longer, but she wouldn’t need to.

Suddenly her ears filled with a clatter and a kind of rolling rattle; She knew looking backward would be a bad idea, but she couldn’t help herself. Over her shoulder she saw the trap had bumped its way off track and onto the road behind them, with Jocelyn and Skyler pulling it as eagerly as if they hadn’t already been exercising steadily for who knew how long.

And sitting on the trap she caught sight of Angie besides Carl. She had the reins in her hands and was steering with an air of intent concentration.

Robin tried to coax even more speed from her exhausted feet. She had memories of a year and a half of fitness classes, and so much treadmill time. So much work on the gym horse.

As she tried to find more endurance to call on, more fragments of memory rose up unbidden, of sitting astride the horse, straddled on a vibrator projecting upward from the horse itself, bucking and humping on it, while Miss Datson directed her on was she should amend her form in order to give greater pleasure to her user.

She remembered watching others in the same class, observing their own techniques with the hope to beat them out. Remembered for the first time the taste of an excited pussy’s juicy slickness, and the hours spent teaching her to eat out a woman. There had been two styles there, one which presumed the act was done for the satisfaction of the woman being pleasured, one for the pleasure of the man who had required it.

She had, perhaps, not done as much running as she had thought, although certainly she had been given good cardio training.

The sensation of Nadine’s skilled tongue between her thighs bubbled up to interrupt her thoughts - and her panic. She stumbled, but managed to catch herself.

The trap was closer in any case. She realised with a start that Jocelyn and Skyler had drawn level with here.

Her heart was pounding too loudly in her ears for her to hear the phut of Carl firing the dart gun, but she felt the impact, even felt her buttock jiggle around it.

Her heartbeat was as fast as it had ever gone, and so the drug was through her system even faster that it otherwise would have been.

Carl’s hands caught her and dragged her onto his and Angie’s lap as her awareness gave out.

*

“What the fuck happened?”

“Not entirely clear, sir. Karl was filling me in.”

“Karl, talk to me.”

“She was out walking, sir. She stumbled across one of the advanced lessons.”

“Which one?”

“Russell and Weston, sir.”

“Shit. So, what, she snapped?”

“Yes, sir. Ran for it. Luckily Thornhill was with her.”

“Thornhill was in a lower class, sir. We’d already used some of the more intense methods on her.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“She came down to alert me and we were able to outrun her.”

“How? Oh - you had a vehicle.”

“Yes, sir. In related news I think they’re both ready.”

“Good. Ship them back off before it snaps anyone else.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do we do about Kliner, sir?”

A long moment of silence.

“How far gone is she?”

“We haven’t had the chance to assess yet, sir.”

“Is she still out cold?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. Put her in the VR training. Strap her down. And wake her up by turning the pleasure on.”

“Right, sir.”

“Give her forty-eight hours and send her to Gunderman for assessment.”

*

Robin was whimpering in ecstasy as she woke up. Her body was already shivering with arousal and excitement; she could feel sweat beading on her skin. Opening her eyes, she saw the Northrop logo rendered three-dimensionally, rotating steadily. The VR headsets! Of course, she realised. They must be part of the brainwashing. She closed her eyes.

They didn’t close.

She tried again.

They still didn’t close.

That should have scared her, but it didn’t. That had to be the arousal; she was so horny, so needy, it must be drowning out any other feeling.

Orgasm shuddered through her, and as she whimpered she realised it couldn’t be the first one she’d felt, that one had woken her. She wasn’t sure that had been the first either; she was aching, not just with pleasure but aching throughout.

Her arms were tight against her side (she couldn’t help but think of the two trainee ponygirls), and the twitching and shuddering the orgasm had touched off had made her incredibly aware that her widespread legs had been secured at the ankle - and were high above her head.

She would need to be Houdini reincarnated to escape from this trap. She tried to wriggle forward on her shoulders, on the basis that it might give her legs freedom of movement, but the moment she started to move the dizzying discomfort came back. Robin groaned, suddenly feeling very weak.

Had the brainwashing done that to her?

Now that her struggles had passed, the pleasure was back, and it seemed twice as strong for there having been a gap.

She was going to have to endure this, whatever happened, for as long as she was left there. They would have to release her eventually.

Robin relaxed fractionally and another orgasm rippled out through her, spreading deliciously through her whole body, setting her skin tingling. It was the best she’d ever had, one which took all of her along with it, washed along in the passion of it all.

For whole long moments Robin didn’t think a single thought. The Northrop logo hung in front of her eyes, and she whimpered.

Days passed. Pleasure rolled through her, wave after wave, and her eyes stared unblinkingly into the logo. She felt as if she could hear voices whispering, just too vague for her to make out. They must have been poor recordings, scratchy ones, because the most prominent thing she noticed about them was the way they seemed to scratch at her mind.

Robin had entirely lost track of time when she heard a sound, wherever she was, that she hadn’t made. Another human voice.

Angie’s voice.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect this. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Robin took nearly half a minute of long, ragged, exhausted, blissful breaths just to understand what she’d heard and realise who had spoken. She heard the sound of wood scraping against concrete, pictured a chair being drawn up near her. “It’s for your own good, you know,” Angie said. “Headmistress Gunderman came to speak to me after we brought you back, and explained. I’ve been commended.”

This, Robin felt she understood more quickly, but her understanding was still far from instant. As she hung there, another orgasm took her.

She wasn’t whimpering into them anymore. At some point she had moaned, and then more loudly the next time. Later, she had wondered if perhaps someone was listening, either in the room or through a microphone, and had tried to silence herself again. This had become a point of pride.

As time had continued to pass she had become convinced someone was listening. And a little later, she had decided they would be happier if they enjoyed the sounds of her pleasure. Since then she had been loud, expressively so, with each one.

“She asked me to come here and talk to you,” Angie said. “Said she thought you’d lost your school spirit, and I should talk to you and help you get it back.” She had paused through the sounds of Robin’s ecstasy, and had then continued with her conversation as if nothing had happened. The polite way to handle someone’s unseemly public outburst, she thought.

That was a lesson she’d learned at Northrop, it occurred to her. She was surprised to find herself feeling proud at the thought.

“So I just wanted to say,” Angie was continuing, “that I admire you tremendously, aside from this… unpleasantness.” She paused. “And I’m sure once you recover you’ll be a credit to the academy and a jewel of society.” Part of Robin ached with pride at how well Angie was handling her own unfortunate circumstances. Part of her wondered at the fact she could still feel pride on behalf of the school.

“Thank you,” she said. It was little more than a croak; her other exhortations had made her hoarse some while ago.

Angie patted her hand. It was surprising to Robin how natural that felt given that her hand had been strapped to her side. “You’re going to make some lucky man or woman an excellent wife or mistress,” she said. “And I’m sure, if you think about it, deep down you want that.”

Robin whimpered. She didn’t want to admit to herself how true that felt.

“Anyway,” Angie said. “I hope this helps. I feel like it’s not enough, but we only brought you back two hours ago, and I’m afraid I haven’t had time to compose my thoughts yet.”

Robin shuddered again. How long? It couldn’t possibly have been only two hours. Could it?

She dimly heard the sound of the chair moving as Angie stood and left. She wondered whether her friend would remember any of this once she’d spoken to headmistress Gunderman again. Wondered, too, if she’d experienced anything like this, if it was part of what was done to weaker students to turn them into star pupils.

There was a sudden strange feeling of pressure across the base of her skull. Robin gasped as Angie’s voice started to repeat, echoing through her head with an accelerating series of orgasms supporting it. “You’re going to make some lucky man or woman an excellent wife or mistress. If you think about it, deep down you want that.”

*

They came back two days later, when the impact would have become unavoidable. They unstrapped Robin’s arms from their restraints and left her with her feet suspended in the air, her head in the VR headset, and they had left the room by the time the headset shut down.

She lay there for some time, recovering. At length she forced numb, protesting fingers to reach up and remove the headset, and then she worked painstakingly to shuffle forward so that she could bend her knees, bringing her ankle restraints closer to her so she could undo them.

Food and drink had been left beside her, waiting; the smell of cooked meat had been part of what had finally coaxed her into motion. She ate and drank, hungry and thirsty, but she did not gulp down the water, did not guzzle the food; she behaved more carefully, ate and drank daintily, not because bolting food on an empty stomach leads to further disturbance but because a lady behaves in certain ways.

When finally she rose, she left the room, walking almost demurely but with a languid roll to her hips.

She would make some lucky man or woman an excellent wife or mistress, she thought. She couldn’t wait to find out who.

*

“Hi,” Robin said. She was standing in front of the 2029 freshwomen, gathered together in the great hall, watching her “My name is Robin Kliner, and I’m a proud alumna of the Northrop Finishing School for Accomplished Women.” She gave a warm smile. “There are those who would say the concept of a finishing school is outdated,” she continued, “especially those who think the college experience is suitable for all.

“I would argue against that. For one thing, it’s become clear in the past decades that college is not necessary for many career paths, and in fact it can hinder progress. For another, these institutions do not teach you the soft skills.”

She looked around the individual faces in front of her, imagining what they would soon be doing and discussing.

“Alumni of the Finishing School are often in the spotlight, moving among the rich and powerful, acting as hostesses and more at gatherings where international policies are decided. This positioning gives Northrop girls an insight that can’t be matched, and the lessons taught here can help us apply that influence effectively.

“Take me, for example.” She brought her hand up to her chest, resting fingertips against herself, the palm held just above. “My name is Robin Kliner, and for the last year and a half, Michael Russell has been my mentor, working hand in hand with his wife Jocelyn, another Northrop graduate.

“I don’t know all of you, but I know that some of you will have very similar stories to my own. My parents were fairly well off when I was young, and. I went to a pretty good school, but nothing special. But I worked hard, I got good grades, I went in for sports. I made a lot of friendships, some of them with girls I had nothing in common with.

“I worked hard, but I was lucky, too - and that probably describes you, too.” She smiled warmly, confident and welcoming. That brunette, the short blonde, they would probably be among the top flight, she thought. The way they carried themselves said so. “Because our mutual luck came in the form of someone bringing us to the Northrop Finishing School’s attention. They extended an invitation.

“I had always planned to go off to college, but my circumstances changed. My parents couldn’t afford to support me.” Her smile changed slightly, showing how bittersweet she found it. She looked across to headmistress Gunderman. “Northrop represents an opportunity to step beyond your limits. My fellow alumni have joined the rich and famous; my contact book has details for the private lives of presidents overseas, of multinational CEOs, of oil tycoons from the Middle East.

“Thanks to the skills I learned at Northrop,” she continued, “I am connected with many of these people. I have sat in on many of Michael and Jocelyn’s discussions.” She didn’t mention the fact that she was often kneeling below his desk, her mouth full, while these discussions took place. You did not try to teach a student everything in the first week. “Now he accepts what I have to offer gracefully, and our goals are aligned.

“The School did that for me, and it can do the same for you.

“You’ll still learn many of the things people expect from the college educated. You won’t just appear knowledgeable - you’ll be knowledgeable, ready to walk the walk as well as just talking the talk.

“For the people you’ll be moving among, faking it is not an option. You have to be the real thing, and that’s exactly what Northrop will help you become.” She smiled. “Beautiful, accomplished, and talented in all the ways that matter. I can promise you, you’ll never regret it.”

Headmistress Gunderman rose smoothly. “Robin Kliner, ladies,” she said, moving onto the dais where Robin had stood. “She graduated cum laude, and I think you can now see why.”

Robin flashed them a warm smile and stepped down gracefully. She made polite small talk with the freshwomen for twenty minutes, then made her way out and across to the accommodation block, where Michael Russell had Jocelyn pinned against the wall of her old room “for old times’ sake” as he took her from behind.

Robin slipped into the door, closing it behind her discreetly.

“My duties are discharged, sir,” she said, stepping across to him. She reached up, running her hands over his shoulder and back.

Michael turned to face her, stepping back, his cock sliding out of Jocelyn’s pussy. He slipped an arm behind Robin’s back, pulling her closer, and put his lips to her ear.

“Robin, fuck-me mode,” he murmured.

Robin’s thoughts abruptly ceased. “Yes, sir,” she said. “How may I please you?”

Michael stroked her cheek, admiring the glassiness of her eyes, which mirrored the look Jocelyn currently wore. “Sluts,” he said, “on your knees.”

“Yes, sir,” they chorused. Robin sank directly to her knees; Jocelyn, her pussy dripping on the carpet, turned to face Michael first, then settled down beside Robin.

“You know what I want,” he said, and they did.

“Yes, sir,” they agreed. Their mouths settled into open Os and they both leaned forward, tongues darting forward to tease his prick as they settled in on either side of it, moving in tandem to worship it.

In a few moments more, Robin’s mouth had enveloped his shaft and she began to tease his cock, her tongue flicking across its tip. Jocelyn’s lips and tongue roamed across his balls, and the two of them combined to coax a deeply satisfied noise from his mouth.

They really did spectacular work here, Michael Russell thought in satisfaction, looking down at the glassy, unseeing eyes of his ‘student’. He hadn’t actually intended to buy a second; when he’d visited a year earlier he’d been thinking of trading Jocelyn in for something younger.

If it hadn’t been for Robin’s hero worship, he would probably have sold Jocelyn on through Northrop’s secondary market and bought one of the upperclasswomen the year before. Instead, the appeal of having the two of them together, of using Jocelyn to pass on all the extra training he’d sent her to Northrop for, had led to a different idea. It was more expensive, of course.

On the other hand, his VP of Culture had been on the verge of blowing a whistle before offered an evening with them both, and he was pretty sure that the man would be loyal for life now.

It turned out that dolls was a more satisfying game to play if you had more than one.