There's a knock at the door. 

For a startled split second he's afraid it's the interior design assassins, and then he catches up with himself and snorts and goes to open it, wondering who the hell it is and how they managed to show up so fast without literally taking the same elevator.

There's a man in a gray suit and a gray hat standing there. He walks right past Sean as soon as the door opens, sitting down on the couch in the room. "Nice new place you have here, Sean," he says. "Or should I say, nice new place your father has." 

At first he's too bewildered to protest, and then the man is already on his couch and he might as well accept it and not stand here like an idiot holding open the door, and then—

He slams the door shut, stalks over to the living room, and stands with his arms crossed, glaring at the man on the couch, just barely out of the range where standing over him so aggressively would constitute an immediate physical threat.

"What the fuck do you want."

"Oh, just to have a bit of a conversation, Sean. See, I know you've never really had anything of your own in your entire life -- well, except for that lovely new car downstairs, bought with your father's money, but still truly yours, for once. Everything you've ever wanted or enjoyed your father always put his strings in, one way or another. And honestly, I think that's pretty awful, and think you might want a way to change that. But if you're not interested, well..." he makes as though to stand, with a mocking look in his eyes. 

He moves like he's thinking about walking over there, grabbing the stranger, and shaking answers out of him, but stops himself before he's done more than shift his weight and loosen his arms.

"...Who are you?" he asks—guarded, curious, simmering with anger.

The man sneers and sits back down. "Does that really matter? Someone who knows who and what you are and with the ability to really change your life. To give you the power to actually take control over something, to make it yours and yours alone. Do you really care about anything besides that?" 

"Fine. Talk to me."

"What I plan to give you," he the man says, "Is full power over whatever it is you own, to change and reshape them as you see fit. Your own places, and your own people. Right now, well, there isn't very much of that in your name," he says, widening his sneer, "besides that lovely new car down there. But who knows, maybe someone as clever as you can make progress with such a paltry beginning." 

"...you realize that sounds... insane, right? Like, literally crazy?"

"Oh, yes. But you're secretly hoping I'm telling the truth, aren't you? And really, what do you have to lose? If you will a change and nothing happens, then your mundane life continues under your father's thumb. But if it does work, well. I'm sure you can think of all kinds of things to do." 

"And is there some kind of mysterious magic reason you're making me this offer in the most infuriating way possible, or do you just get off on being a pain in the ass?"

The man simply smiles. "Did you want any more details? Or should I just leave you with the power for 24 hours to try it out on your own?" 

"What makes something mine? What can I do in a place that's mine? So far it just sounds like you're giving me the magical power to... remodel an already gorgeous car. That's not nearly as exciting as you're playing it up to be."

"Anything and everything yours, or anything in a domain of what can be considered to be yours can be changed, as long as it remains inside your domain. Any people who consider themselves to be yours can be similarly changed, mind and body, whether they're in your domain or not. Does that clear things up for you, Sean?" 

"So if I do something to someone and they leave my... 'domain', it's like I never changed them? If I hurt someone and then fix them, and they leave, do they come out hurt or not hurt? If I hurt someone and make them forget I did it, and they leave, do they come out remembering or not?"

"Any changes you made will cease. Any thing you didn't... change will remain, unless changed back. They will remember as much or as little as you choose them to." 

"...all right," he says grudgingly, "I can see some use in that."

"I thought you might."

The man pauses. "So. Do you wish this power? The only thing I ask in return is, at some point in the future, I may ask you to do something for me. A favor, if you will. Chances are, though, you'll probably never see me again. I'll even give you 24 hours to try it out, no strings attached. Do we have a deal?" 

...he thinks about it.

This is probably stupid, and he's probably signing away his soul to the devil or something, but... fuck. The devil, or whoever he is, isn't exactly wrong, however infuriating he may be. Sean does want this.

"...yeah, all right."

(After all, with the way the stranger phrased it, Sean isn't really agreeing to do anything more than let him ask for that favour. Granting it is another matter.)

"Excellent. In 24 hours I will contact you again. If you are satisfied with the result you will have the ability permanently, subject to the condition I mentioned. If not, the ability will be removed, and I will never contact you again." The man stands and walks to the door. "Enjoy your trial period, Sean." He opens the door, and closes it behind him. 

...Sean glares suspiciously after the stranger, but doesn't move to follow him.

Okay. He didn't need a dozen reminders that this apartment isn't his, but there are some things he owns inside the apartment. His clothes, for one thing.

He heads into the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror.

As soon as he touches the power, his eyes flash a fiery red-gold, which is, honestly, fucking cool all by itself. But he blinks and focuses on what he was actually trying to test.

His jacket changes from black to red, to red with gold trim, to black with gold trim, each time with no more than a thought. He gives it swirling flame patterns stretching up the sleeves from wrist to elbow, and they appear just like he pictured them, only prettier than his imagination could deliver.

He turns the jacket back to how it was.

He looks at himself in the mirror some more, staring for a long thoughtful moment, and thinks to himself: my body.

And—just like that, with no more than a thought, he's half a foot taller. A little broader in the shoulder, a little better muscle definition—he's actually kind of surprised that his ideal body isn't bigger and stronger than that, but looking like this feels right.

"...fuck," he says aloud. "I'm definitely keeping this."

Okay. Next stop: the car.

The car is as gorgeous as ever and it breaks his heart a little to even contemplate altering it but he's gotta know.

He gets in, shuts the door, rolls up the window, leans back in his seat. How much can he change the car? Like, the car is gorgeous, he doesn't want to change the car, but maybe...

...it's a little less comfortable in here at his new height. He tries adjusting that. Cautiously, very cautiously, because he doesn't want to ruin those sleek lines and he has a realistic view of how his design sense stacks up against the people at Lamborghini.

And... yeah, he has a little more headroom now. More legroom, too. But... something about the way that felt...

He gets out of the car, and checks that the outside hasn't changed in any way visible to him. But the inside is still bigger. And when he takes a closer look - yeah, the car is just plain bigger on the inside now. Not by much, but enough to spot if you're paying attention and you have reason to think your eyes aren't just playing tricks on you.

That opens up all kinds of possibilities.

He climbs back in, shuts the door, turns the windows opaque with a thought because he doesn't want passersby watching him crawl into his car's nonexistent backseat - and then he makes the tiny cargo space behind the seats bigger. And bigger. And bigger.

After a few rounds of tweaking, he has a space he can climb into fairly easily, and if you don't know it wasn't always back here, it doesn't look too crazy at a glance.

And before he gets any more carried away, he should find out what happens if he drives the car with its dimensions warped like this. (He fixes the windows first, because it's a little hard to drive when you can't see out of your vehicle.)

Driving the car works just fine.

All right then.

Time to go looking for someone he can charm, force, or threaten into entering his car.

Jenna is so happy to be here. Even if she is just a little bit lost. Her first day at a new school, in a big new city and, well, she's not exactly sure where she is right now and she might have forgot to charge her phone before she went exploring. But that's ok! Right now she's still perfectly happy to look up at the big buildings and see all the people (so many people!) and if she can't find her way back in a little while she'll ask someone for directions, or worst case -- flag down a cab and pay. She still has her wallet, she's not stupid. But it really is starting to get dark out. But there's a really awesome tall building over there! Maybe she'll start looking for a way home a liiiiitle later. Once she goes and sees the building. And all the people. Jenna pulls away from the crowd, and half-skips (with repressed excitement!) down a quiet side street to get closer to whatever-that-building-is. 

Ooh, that one's pretty. And adorably excited about something. He wonders what she'd look like crying. Hopefully he's about to find out.

She's headed straight for him; he parks on the side of the street, a little ways away from his apartment building. Is that where she's going? Does she live here, or what? He rolls down the window and watches her.

Jenna exits the little side street and ends up on another. She looks left and right to see if if she can figure out where to go next and gosh that's a car. The guy inside it is kindof cute (ok, very cute?) and looking in her direction which is a little creepy but it's not like she hasn't had that happen to her before. She wanders a little closer to the car just to get a better look at it. She briefly considers asking for directions, but, well, she has more exploring to do! And something rubs her not quite the right way about him, regardless of how cute he is. She'll get to an area with a few more people in it first. 

Oh, she has a sense of self-preservation after all. Pity.

Still, might as well make an honest effort to get her into the car of her own will. He leans out the window a little.

"Hey, you all right over there? You look a little lost."

Jenna turns and grins in his direction. She's still a little worried about him watching her, but, well -- he seems nice, right? She can get a little bit of a closer look and if he seems fine, well, she can always check out the really big building tomorrow when she has a charged phone. She walks a little closer. 

"Oh, I'm doing just fine, sir! It's just my first day in a city like this, you know? I'm just having a good time exploring." She pauses a half-dozen feet from the car. Something in the back of her head is still gently warning her of danger, but wow is he cute. She takes another step closer. 

"I... might have gotten turned around a little bit, though. Could you be so kind as to point me in the general direction of campus, sir? I'm sure I can figure out the rest of the way from there." She puts on a small winsome smile. 

"'S that way," he says, gesturing. "I'd give you directions but I'm terrible at giving directions. Could drive you there, if you want."

This is in fact one hundred percent true. He always makes a mess of it if he tries to give directions out loud, and he will happily drive her wherever she wants to go, if she does him the favour of getting in his car.

He's still cute but she's not getting into this stranger's car in her first day in a big city and proving her mother right, nope nope nope. Even if statistics (which she showed her mother again and again) say that that really doesn't happen, even if the car looks amazing and he's so pretty, no, she's not going to get randomly abducted on her first day and vindicate her mother's silly fears, that would be so stupid. She takes a couple steps closer. 

"Oh, that's quite alright sir! I'm pretty happy just taking in the new sights and sounds and smells and... well, everything! If you can just point me which street to go down next I'm sure I can find someone else to give me something more specific in a bit, no need to put yourself out for me." 

Okay, what would he do here if he was actually just being helpful?

(He resists the urge to just tell her the full truth. She'll think he's crazy and she definitely won't get in his car.)

"Here," he says, getting out his phone and opening Google Maps, "I can just show you."

It'd be a bit silly at this point to stay in the car, so he gets out (stretching a little as he does it, he loves the way this body moves) and heads around the front to step up onto the sidewalk.

Oh my gosh he is so hot. And cute. And hot. And... some part of her that's... some primal cavegirl thing is afraid of his muscles and size (even while she's admiring them, because, well, dang) but it seems silly and impolite to not go over and look at the map and... see what he's like up close? For information. Science. Not for any other reason. Definitely. And well, honestly, she really should get back home and a quick look at a map would be helpful. 

She puts on a wide smile and starts to head over to him, still a little cautiously. "Sure! That would be great, thank you!"

"So we're here," he says, pointing out the location marker on the map and then zooming out a little, "and you want to be there," he gestures at the general area of campus. "So you wanna go down, uh, whatever the hell that street is called. I am not a very verbal navigator."

His phone screen is pretty big but she still has to get pretty close to get a good look at it.

She stands next to him to look over his shoulder. Well. Next to his shoulder. She can't look over his shoulder because he's so big and his muscles are so big and some demented part of her brain wonders what else might be as big and... nope, nope, she's just getting directions from this very rich, very attractive stranger. Nothing else. 

"Wow it looks like I've been wandering for a while, doesn't it?" She glances back up at the darkening sky for a second and then back down at the phone. Then over at the car. She really shouldn't get a ride in this stranger's awesome car just to see what it's like. She really really shouldn't. "I'm, are you, um, that's a really nice car you have there, you know? Like, wow!" Great. She's supposed to be studying to be an actress, but apparently this is the best she can manage? Perfect. 

He grins. "It is! I've only had it for like a week, my parents got it for me as a present-slash-bribe for going to college, and it's the fucking best. Sure you don't wanna ride in it?"

She shouldn't. She shouldn't she shouldn't she shouldn't. Even if it is a cool car and a hot boy and her ability to speak is starting to desert her for some reason. "Really? That's... some bribe! What... what did they have to bribe you for, anyways?" She takes a step closer, hand hovering over the car. It's so sleek and black and awesome and she's a little afraid to touch it (will it mess it up somehow? No that's silly, it's a car, he's driving it, it's made to do things. Touching it wouldn't be a problem) but she kindof wants to. "What school are you going to? I'm going to study here too, I'm at MTC." 

"Oh, yeah? Me too. I hate school, way too much sitting still and reading, but apparently having a kid who never went to college is just too much shame for them to bear so, as with most problems, they decided to solve it with money."

He watches her hand for a moment, then adds, "It won't break if you touch it, promise. Although if you really wanna feel something special you should check out the seats."

She touches the car. It's... well, it feels like a car, to be honest. He's almost certainly right, the interior is going to be much cooler than the outside. She leans over to look through a window at the.. yup, those look like nice red leather seats. Jenna never really was into cars that much but wow this one looks nice. And, one ride wouldn't hurt, right? Would it? Her mother, just, never needs to know. The guy seems nice (well, hot and nice) and people are nice and she's probably not going to get another chance to ride in a car like this again (well, at least not until she's rich and famous, but, well, that might be a while) and he seems... well, maybe she should scope him out first. Maybe just a little? 

"They... sound like not the best of parents if you ask me." (Wait, don't insult his parents!) "But they do give really good presents!" (Change the subject, change the subject, stop talking about his parents!) "Um. What would you be doing if not going to college, then?" 

He laughs. "Man, I don't know, I'm honestly kind of a failure as a person. I like dance but I'm not good enough to go professional, I've messed around with art but same... if I actually had to worry about money I'd be in trouble."

Jenna can believe he dances. He looks really good. She also has no idea what to say to the rest of that. "You look like you'd be really good at dancing." Well, that works. Probably. "And... I'm sure you could do something. I bet you could get into acting, or, well, modeling, at the very least!" And now he knows she thinks he's hot. Great. "That's what I'm here at school for! I mean, acting, not modeling, that is."  

"Aww, thanks!" He grins. He has, it must be said, a really nice smile. "Good luck with that, I hear it's pretty tough."

After another moment spent watching the way she looks at his car (and the way she looks at him, for that matter), he cracks the door open and reaches in to roll down the window. "Here," he says, "if you wanna see what I mean about the seats..."

She shouldn't she shouldn't she shouldn't. "Oh, I wouldn't want to impose," she says, her hand already reaching in.

Jenna leans over a little more so she can touch the seat. Aaaand... yep. "Wow, these are really nice. I bet this girl handles like a dream." Why did she say that it's what all the girls in all the movies say but it's not something she'd say in a million years what is she doing. 

He giggles.

"Oh, you have no idea how true that is."

It wouldn't hurt to get in, right? No matter what her mom says, she's not going to get chopped up into a dozen pieces and dumped in a back alley. "Well... I guess... I guess I wouldn't mind if you drove me back. It is getting a little dark." Her phone isn't charged what is she doing. "I mean. If that's still okay! I really don't want to impose the directions are good enough!" She's not into cars but seriously when is she ever going to get another opportunity like this? She pulls her hand out. "You've been so nice I wouldn't want to impose any further." 

"Trust me, it's not imposing at all. Driving this car around is not exactly a hardship." He smiles a little. "What's your name, by the way? I'm Sean."

Jenna blushes a little when she realizes they've never introduced themselves. "Oh, I'm, Jenna." She puts her hand out for him to shake. "Nice to meet you." The handshake is totally not necessary but the part of her that continues to be really attracted to him is jumping on the opportunity to touch him, even in this perfunctory sort of way. 

He grins and shakes her hand; his grip is gentle but firm. "Nice to meet you too!"

And then he opens the door so she can get in the car.

His hands feel really nice. 

Damnit what is she doing she should not be getting into this car with a stranger like this who is very cute and friendly... But she wants to have a ride with the cute boy. And she... Well, she's only going to get a ride and maybe give him her number and make any further decisions when she's had a few hours to clear her head. Period. But maybe this could be more and he clearly thinks she's cute and... Fine. Fine. She really is curious, and he goes to school too, and, and...

She gets in the car. The seats are even more comfortable than they looked, and the whole thing still has that new car smell. She sighs and relaxes backwards into the lovely leather seat. 

"So," she says, by way of making conversation, trying to cover her heart flutter. "What are you studying then? And where?"

"Architecture, which I hopefully will not suck at!"

He shuts the car door and goes around to get in the driver's side, and rolls up the windows, and takes a moment to just enjoy the fact that he did it, that he has her in his power now, that he can do whatever he wants with her and make her forget it afterward—

Okay. He should probably be, like, at all cautious or responsible about this. Do something minor and make her forget it, to check that he can do that, that he knows how. If he was being *really* cautious and responsible he'd make her whole first drive innocuous enough to not get him arrested if she remembers the whole thing and gets his license plate afterward, but, really, fuck that. It's not like it'd be the first time.

He glances across the car at her and smiles as he rolls up the windows. She's so pretty.

—and then—he has magic powers in here, he can do something that she wouldn't even trace to him if he couldn't figure out how to make her forget it—he does make the car impervious to sound, no need to attract extra attention—

He wishes for her to suddenly have an awful headache. Nothing that will cause damage, because he doesn't yet know how much he's capable of fixing or how easily he can do it, but he wants it to hurt.

"Architecture. Huh, what's that like..." Jenna winces suddenly. A sudden spike of pain sparks in between her temples. She raises her hand to rub her head. "Sorry, give me a moment, please?" She was enjoying a nice time with a cute boy, why is she getting a headache now? He's going to think she's a silly girl prone to stupid things like this and... And is this what serious headaches are like? Ow. Ow. Maybe it's some weird reaction to a chemical in the car? Owww.

He leaves the headache on for another couple of seconds, then stops it and takes away her memory of it ever happening.

Jenna blinks a couple of times, feeling an odd sense of discontinuity. What had she just been doing? Oh right making conversation with a cute boy in his really really awesome car. "So, architecture, huh? What's that like?"

"I wouldn't know. Classes haven't started yet."

All right. Man, he's too excited to even really know what he wants to do next—

Basic precautions first, though: he opaques the windows.

Okay. Okay. He needs to not immediately go nuts, here—imagine if he made her bleed all over the seat and then couldn't clean it up properly—or broke her arm and then discovered he couldn't fix it—he really should take it slow—

But he's so excited and it's so hard to not just immediately do a hundred different things.

Space itself seems to twist and shudder as he bites his lip and stares at her and tries to pick just one thing to start with, just one reasonable thing that he's confident he can manage, that doesn't involve trying to pull them both into a pocket dimension or expanding the interior volume of the car a hundredfold to make a nice easily cleaned space to drag her off into or or or—

Jenna is suddenly terrified. The windows are dark which is bad because it would mean he could do all sorts of terrible things and though she's never heard of kidnappers using polarized light or anything like that though she assumes they could and plus now her mother was right which is the worst thing except now everything is weird and twisting and awful and hurts to look at and and...

"Do... Do you see that Sean? What's...what's going on?" she asks in a small voice. 

...he can't help breaking into a grin.

"Oh, I have magic powers and I'm going to do terrible things to you and then fix you up and make you forget it ever happened and take you home safe."

Fuck it's such a relief to be able to just tell her. It calms him down enough that the edges of the car's interior stop rippling, and he can take a breath and look at her thoughtfully and then—ooh, logically speaking in his own space he's got to be telekinetic, right? It'd be insane if he could change things but not move them. So he should be able to just... pick her up by force of will alone, and toss her into the suddenly much roomier back of the car.

Jenna hardly has any idea what to say to that. There's the fact that what he's saying makes no sense except that well, weird horrifying stuff going on that thankfully seems to be calming down and the slight reassurance (that she's not sure she believes but not sure she has any choice) that she'll be safe at the end which is good and at least kindof proves her mother wrong and well her mother certainly didn't predict this and then her thoughts are interrupted as she's suddenly thrown backwards into a... large... trunk. Which is much bigger than it has any right to be. Much bigger than can fit in the car. What. Well, he did say magic. Also, fuck she's terrified and has no clue what's going on. 

He follows her a moment later. Oh she's so cute when she's scared.

Hmm, this space should be a little bigger. Enough room to stand up, enough room to stretch out. And instead of all this black plastic there should be tile on the floor—black glossy hexagons, marbled with red and gold, he didn't know he was such an artist—and the walls should be solid obsidian, and there should be light, enough to see by but not enough to make those black glass walls any less intimidating—he grabs her arm and, hmm, as much fun as it would be to rip her clothes off, he should probably get them off her intact so he can pile them up in the passenger seat to put back on her later. Maybe someday he'll have enough practice repairing things to really trust the ability, but that day is not today.

Half by hand and half by magic, he pulls all her clothes off and tosses them to the front of the car.

Ohhhhhh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck fuck fuck. She was taught never to curse unless she really meant it and she mostly did that unless she was really feeling it but fucking hell if this didn't qualify. By a mile. Being abducted by some kind of evil wizard who could change everything around her into a creepy demon temple with a... thought? Effort of will? How the fuck was she supposed to know? Regardless it qualified. And now here he was pulling her clothing off and every time she tries to stop him he does something and the clothing comes off anyways and he's so much bigger and stronger than her which she still thinks is hot which is a stupid thing to think when he's clearly going to do awful awful awful things to her that she is not going to want or like, probably rape her and... she has no idea what else, he said he'd leave her safe so probably not sacrifice her to his demon gods but who knows! How the fuck is she supposed to know?? She backs up a little into a corner of the thing, then gives up on trying to stop him and doing her best to do what he wants so that this.. whatever this is will go easier. 

"Please... please don't hurt me," she says, putting on her best terrified look which isn't particularly hard right now is it. Fuck. "I'll... do what you want if you promise to let me go, just please don't hurt me." She cowers in the corner doing her best to look meek and helpless (and probably succeeding, because, well, wizard. Fuck). 

"Oh, I'm definitely gonna hurt you," he says, shrugging off his jacket and tossing it up front with all her stuff. (Everything else he's wearing, he doesn't mind getting blood on.) An obsidian wall shimmers into view, blocking off the opening to the front of the car.

He looks down at her, smiling in a not particularly friendly way, and then he grabs her wrist and squeezes until he feels something crack.

oh fuck oh fuck oh FUCK "aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" Jenna screams. He broke her wrist he broke her wrist why what the fuck why and it hurts it hurts like nothing she ever felt before what the actual fuck it hurts and when she tries to pull away to get away from the evil fucking wizard it just hurts more and she can't stop screaming and can feel the tears streaming down her face in the pain why why why??

Jenna sobs and catches her breath and manages to stop screaming. Barely. It really fucking hurts and he isn't letting go. "Please... please don't do that," she sobs. She doesn't have to even try to put anything on her terror has to be bubbling out of her like crazy because she is terrified. "You don't have to do that, Sean, please, just, I'll do whatever you want, please." 

Oh she scares so good. She screams pretty good, too. He likes this one. He wants to keep her.

(He can own people, the sketchy guy said so—if they consider themselves to be his? He should investigate what exactly that means. Later.)

"I don't have to," he agrees. "But I want to. So I'm gonna. If it's any consolation—and it'd be pretty fair if it wasn't—I really am going to take you home and let you go, after I'm done with you."

He squeezes her wrist again, then lets go and wills it to heal.

fffuuuCKKKKKKKK it hurts so much when he does that and makes her scream and scream and ... scream and... what? She turns her wrist back and forth, looking at it, bending it experimentally back and forth. It feels... fine. Almost better than fine. He just healed it perfectly using whatever demon magic he had. This is no less terrifying than everything else the evil wizard has been doing but at least she's not in agonizing pain anymore. But... Jenna plays back the last dozen seconds or so in her head. He wants to. He wants to see her in pain? What a fucking asshole sadist but... she can do that. Especially if she actually is in pain which she expects to be. Wow is it easier to think without all that pain, amazing how lack of pain clears her head, and brings her usual self to the forefront so she can actually do crisis control and think about what to do about this horrible situation, isn't it? Maybe it'll get this over more quickly with if she does what he wants. And then she can get back to her normal life, as long as he's telling the truth which technically she has no reason to trust but she's going to cling to that hope because fuck how horrible would it be to... live like this, or die like this. She doesn't want to think about it she's not going to think about that. 

"Th-thank you," she finally manages, putting her gratefulness as forward as possible, continuing to bend her wrist back and forth to show what she's grateful for. "Please... I'll... I can't stop you at all but I'll do whatever you want, if, if... I'll do whatever you need me to if you have to, if, if you're going to let me go and, and heal me so I'm ok. Th-th-thank you for healing me." She sobs a little and shrinks backwards a little involuntarily. 

"I'm not exactly doing it for your benefit, but you're welcome anyway, I guess."

She's really a lot more fun when she's screaming than when she's trying to bargain for mercy. He makes a thoughtful humming noise, and then there's a knife in his hand and he's grabbing her by the throat and lifting her off the floor.

(This body is so good. The power would almost be worth it just for that.)

Oh fuck he has a knife. Why does he have a knife well the obvious reason obviously but fuck what is he going to do with the knife fuck. A dozen things flash through her mind and she struggles in his grasp which is around her neck shit shit shit when did she get in the air fuck well he... wants her to be... screaming, well, it's not like it's hard for her to do under the circumstances. She reaches down into her terror and... fuck she has no idea what's going to happen and he's going to hurt her and hurt her and.... fuck! She screams, and struggles and tries to get away, kicking and punching at him and trying to get away from the hand on her throat on and the knife. Why does he have a knife. 

As nice as it is when she struggles, he doesn't want to accidentally kill her. So he takes away her ability to move, just for a few seconds, and opens a long slice down her ribs and makes the knife disappear and runs his fingers along the cut and licks blood off his fingertips and then lets her move again.

Jenna gets cut off in midscream and midpunch and .... shit. She can't move a muscle at all and that just makes her want to scream more and she's not even breathing and he's cutting into her and it hurts again not as bad the wrist thank goodness but it still hurts and she can't do anything about it at all she's paralyzed and... then he licks it which is disgusting and weird and only brings back thoughts of being bled to death in this creepy demon temple for his demon gods and then she can move again and she's screaming again and she clutches her side to try and keep the blood in which she realizes is probably fruitless under the circumstances but that's what her body and instinct is telling her to do. She tries to pull away from him but she has no leverage being suspended in the air by her neck fuck how is he that strong. She screams and hangs there limply, waiting for whatever horror he's going to bring on her next (and secretly hoping he'll heal her again, the healing is nice, at least, even if the rest is awful and despicable). 

He does, in fact, heal her again. It's good to be thorough about testing what he can fix. Everything's worked great so far but it'd be a shame if he screwed something up and couldn't make it better.

And then, still holding her up by her neck, he pins her against a wall and makes his clothes disappear and fucks her. He could draw it out more first but he doesn't want to, not with how gorgeous she is when she's bleeding and screaming and helpless.

At first, she's grateful to be healed again. Not that he cares, apparently. Asshole. And then she's getting raped. Apparently. She's so shocked at how sudden it is that she forgets to scream for the first few seconds, glowering down at him, for, of all the stupid things, proving her mother right. She was perfectly happy to have a good time in a new city with new people that her mother kept telling her to be careful in and she kept telling herself her mother was crazy and yet, here she is, getting hurt and raped by a sadist evil wizard, which is apparently a thing that exists. She almost wants to giggle with the way in which her mother is being proven right, probably because of being overwhelmed with shock in this stupid, horrible, awful situation, and wait shouldn't be wrapped in a blanket and have her feet raised when she's in shock and now she is giggling at how stupid this is, how there's some awful evil sadist rapist wizard raping her and she's thinking of what is supposed to happen when she's in shock. Which almost certainly means she's in shock right now, fuck. The fucking honestly doesn't feel too bad, though really she would have much rather her first time not be with an evil rapist wizard raping her in the back of his magic car but well, beggars can't be choosers, right? Oh, she's definitely in shock. She screams a little, but not as loud as he would probably like, which means he's probably going to hurt her more, but well, what's a little more pain, right? Fuck. Oh, this next one is going to hurt, she just knows it. 

She's very right! It is going to hurt!

It takes him a couple of seconds to decide she's not in enough pain and a couple more seconds to decide what to do about that, and then he bites her shoulder. Blood pours down her side. He licks it.

She was right! How predictable. And horrible. Fuck. Jenna screams in pain as she feels his teeth dig into her shoulder, and watches in horror and disgust as he licks it up again. Why the fuck is he doing that, does he seriously get off on licking up blood what a fucking sicko. Not that it's much worse than everything else he's been doing, but well. Ugh. And she's bleeding again and how is there so much blood and it hurts again still not nearly as much as that time he broke her fucking wrist and she really hopes to never repeat that experience (but she might, oh fuck she might, better scream louder so he doesn't do it again so she screams louder terrified of that), but it still really hurts. She tries to struggle a little but she knows it's fruitless, she just screams and is raped and tries to pull away from his disgusting blood-licking habits. Ew. Fuck.

That sounds like someone screaming louder in the hope that he won't hurt her more. Which is hot in its own way—especially given that just being somewhere where he can let them scream is already a treat—but he'd still much rather hear a sincere performance.

Obvious solution: hurt her more.

Hmm, how about burns, he hasn't tried burns yet. He tightens his hands, on her throat and her thigh, digging in his fingers and willing the flesh to sear under them—not heat, just burns, it wouldn't be any fun if he burned himself in the process.

Oh, fuck, what the fuck she thought the wrist thing was bad and now he's making her skin bubble and scar and blister under his fingers and he's pressing on them and it feels exactly like her finger felt the next day that time she tried to pick up a burning pot when she was seven. Only that was a small burn that went away in a week this is ow ow oW OWW holy fucking shit why?? This is a hundred times worse and he's pushing his fingers into him like an asshole and holy fuck she's screaming now, no need to try and scream louder if she does that her lungs will probably explode this is literally pain like nothing she's ever felt and it's just hurting more and more and she struggles to get away and that just makes it worse how is he so strong and he's still fucking her and her first time should not be like this but at least she's not going to remember this, well, he said but in some ways that's worse she just wants this to end and she's still screaming and struggling and making it worse but she can't stop it just hurts and hurts and hurts and why won't he just get this over with. 

Oh, that's much better.

He bites her shoulder again, tastes blood and loves it and fucks her into the wall, she's so pretty and scared and in so much pain and he did that to her, he can do anything he wants—

"Mine," he says, and the only imperfection in this glorious moment is that it isn't really true, he can't claim her by his will alone—but she's in his power and that's nearly as good—and he comes, and for a moment just stands there holding her pinned against the wall, and then he licks blood from her shoulder again and wills her to sleep.

Okay, cleanup time. Heal her, revert her memory again, wish his clothes back on, wish all the blood away, get her clothes back on, get them both back in place in the front of the car, take down the opacity and soundproofing, put on his jacket—as far as he can tell, all the things he wished away came back fine, maybe next time he'll trust wishing to work—take a minute to catch his breath a little and get used to the fact that he just did that and it was real, so that when he wakes her up he won't be weird about it...

...and then he starts the car, and smiles at her.

(Ugh he hates lying. He wants to own her just so he can tell her what he did to her and not suffer consequences for it. Okay, he wants to own her for a lot of reasons, but that one looms particularly large just now.)

"You okay over there? You kinda spaced out for a second."

Jenna blinks a couple of times. She definitely did space out for a second but that's probably because she's talking to a cute boy and her brain won't stop bouncing up and down at him. She's also a lot more nervous than she should be; her heart is pounding and her blood is in her ears, calm down body it's just a boy, there will be lots of cute boys and who cares that he's rich you're going to be a famous actress and then get all the cute rich boys you want. If she wants. For now, though, she should keep talking to this one. 

"Oh, sorry about that!" Jenna says. "Probably just a little tired, it's my first day here and all!" Yeah, that'll work. She mentally plays back the past few seconds of the conversation. "So um, wait, you've never done architecture before? And you're planning to study it?" Wait no bad direction. "Well, hopefully you enjoy it!" Better, but still not great. "So, you dance? I've done some dancing, though not a ton, since it tends to be really good for learning how to move your body and act and such! Mostly modern and ballroom, though -- and not a lot of it, yet. What kinds of dance do you do?" There, much better. An actual shared interest. Instead of babbling like a lovestruck schoolgirl. 

"I did a couple years of ballet as a kid, that was surprisingly fun, but then I got kicked out for getting in too many fights with the other kids. I've done some ballroom, too, I'm a little rusty but maybe we should go dancing sometime."

Did he just ask her on a date wait shut up brain hush hush hush. Don't squeal just take this slowly. And calmly. And pretend you're not jumping up and down for joy inside like... like yourself. Just pretend everything is fine. Which it is. Jenna takes a small breath. "That'd... be really fun! I haven't done it for too long, I bet you'd be a lot better than me but honestly that gives me a lot of chance to learn from a good lead. You do lead, right? I don't necessarily want to assume. I'm a follow, pretty much." 

"Yeah, I lead." Aww, she's cute. "We should definitely go dancing, then!"

Oh gosh it is a date it is and it's on her first day at college which is insane maybe she should pull back just a tiny bit. Well. All she promised was to not do anything further but giving him her number is totally legit as long as she doesn't kiss him or see his place or invite him to hers (and she has a roommate anyways but she should be careful) and... 

"Sure! You said you're going to MTC too, right? I bet they have a dance club, or a ballroom club, or something! Possibly more than one, given the acting program at the school. I was totally intending to check it out, but it'd be cool to see you there and dance with you?" There. Nice and non-committal. And she doesn't even have to give him her number. Though she kindof wants to anyways. She probably might still which is a bit much on her first day and classes haven't even started yet. But. But. She is here to have fun, not just to learn to act really well. So. 

"Sure, I'll join the dance club."

"Awesome! It'll be great to see you there." She should proooobably do a bit more she just invited him to a place with a bunch of other cute girls and is only now realizing how stupid that is she should give him her number but that can wait until the end of the ride so she's not too forward and it will wait until the end of the ride and speaking of the end of the ride...

"Hey, I think I recognize where we are now! I'm in the Sampson Dorm, do you know where that is? If not I can probably direct you when we get a little bit closer. I think. I have only been there once but my parents did drive me in." 

"I do not know where that is! But I bet we can figure it out together."

There's enough people around now that some of them are looking at his car. He really, really likes the way people look at his car.

"Awesome!" Jenna starts pointing at things she finds familiar, directing him through the semi-crowded streets (still full of other students and parents still moving in!) and only going down one unfamiliar path, they finally make their way to her dorm. 

"Well, this is me!" she says, giving him a (honest!) thankful and delighted smile. "This was really sweet of you, thank you so much!" 

"Hey, no problem!"

(She's so cute and enthusiastic and into him and ugh he hates lying to her like this, it itches to be so dishonest. Someday he really hopes he can tell her what he did to her and let her keep the memory. Even though she'll definitely hate him.)

Jenna moves to get out of the car, but she really should do something else first. And so what if she's nervous she's going to be an actress she can totally act like she's cool and confident and do this part without tripping up. Yes, yes she can. "So, um. In case I don't see you at dance or if you want to meet up somewhere else before. Or after! Um. Would you like my number?" Damnit. Well it could have been worse and she's going to college for it, isn't she? 

Aww. He grins at her.

"I sure would!"

Oh well, ok. Good. Sure. Excellent. "Great!" She says aloud. "It's 555-1823! Er, I can say that again slower when you put it in your phone."  

"Thanks, one sec—" He gets out his phone. "Okay, go."

She reads the number off to him again, and then smiles and opens the passenger side door. "It was really nice to meet you, Sean!" she says. "I should probably get back and settle into my room, though, I think I'm a little more wiped than I thought I was." See, much better, why couldn't she have been like this thirty seconds ago. 

"Sure thing. See you later!"

Jenna smiles and waves and exits the car (and it is still such an amazing car) and manages to make sure she's out of sight before bouncing up and down several times in unrestrained glee. And then shrinking a little when several people are looking her way. It's fine it's fine no one knows her yet but she met a cute boy with an amazing car and it might be nothing but it will probably be fun and and.... she should go back to her room. She really is tired. Exploring must have taken more out of her than she thought and she has classes in two days. A good night's sleep and then more orientation tomorrow and then everything should be good to go! She'll look into the dancing club as soon as she can tomorrow, for now she's going to go back to her room and say hi to her roommate and remember to put her phone on charge and get some rest. 

And Sean...

...is going to go for a drive.

He did that. He raped and tortured a girl in a magic dimensional pocket in the back of his car and made her forget all about it and then got her number and he's going to get to dance with her like the whole thing never happened. As much as the dishonesty itches, the power is incredible. Get somebody into his car and he owns them for as long as they're there—

...but no longer than that. He can't do magic outside of a space he owns, and as great as this car is, it's not exactly a big space.

He's... going to have to figure out how to buy a house, isn't he.

And how to convince someone they're his.

...but maybe first he can pick up and torture someone else.

Evelyn regrets not taking the car to go shopping this time.

She's been getting tired of using the treadmill every day and thought this would be a more fun and less time-consuming way to get some working out done, but the bags are heavy and bite into her hands, and it's a lot less fun than she was expecting. She's seen folks doing this all the time, but they seemed like they were carrying fewer bags than her. They probably didn't have two cute and ravenous kids to feed. Maybe if she got some canvas bags? She'll try that next week, she's seen some for sale in the store, but didn't go for them thinking they weren't necessary.

She puts down the bags for a moment to wring out her hands, and considers for the third time trying to call her husband to come grab her. And he'd be happy to, but she knows he's having a good time with the kids and she doesn't want to interrupt. She sighs, and picks up the bags again, wincing as they bite into her hands, and starts walking down the street again, thinking about dinner plans for the next week. Beans and rice would go well with the pork chops that were on sale, probably, and Sam really likes beans and rice, especially when she mixes in onions and some cumin and some other spices. And maybe something fun for dessert? What does she have in the pantry, again...

Huh, grocery lady is not bad looking and seems like she could use some help.

"Hey," he says, leaning out the window a little, "you all right? You want a ride somewhere?"

Evelyn is startled out of her thinking about peach tarts and well that's a car isn't it. And a young... college student? In it. He looks pretty young, at least, so probably a college student. Possibly a nice guy trying to help out someone he sees on the street, but the extravagant car is honestly making her a little wary. Rich kids aren't quite so generous generally, and there's no way he can be driving something like that if he isn't a rich kid. She's reminded, however, of the pain in her hands, annoyingly. She puts the bags down for a moment to wring them out again. "Thanks," she says, "But I think I'll be all right in a moment. Thanks for the offer, though!" 

"Seriously, that looks like it hurts. I'm just driving around aimlessly, here, giving you a lift wouldn't be going out of my way at all unless you live clear across town in which case I'm a little tempted to call you an Uber or something."

Well, maybe he is trying to be helpful. Still. "That's very kind of you. Thanks for the offer, but worst case I can call my husband to come pick me up." She sighs and rubs her hands again. "It's my first time trying to carry groceries home," she tells him, "I think most of the people I've seen do it don't have kids, though. And probably don't have as quite as far to go." She gives a bit of a laugh. 

"Also maybe their grocery bags suck less. Or they're just used to it?"

Evelyn sighs. "Yeah, probably. I think next time I do this I'm going to get some canvas bags. It is good exercise, you know?" She hefts the bags again, wincing. Wow that thin plastic really smarts and ow, shit. One of the bags' handles snaps and falls from her grasp, sending cans rolling around all over the street. Damnit. She puts her bags back down again and goes to go and gather up her wayward groceries. 

...he parks the car properly, turns it off, and gets out to help her clean up.

"You sure you don't want a ride?"

She cannot properly hold the bag with the snapped handle. And if she puts more weight into the other bags... this is all the more reason to make sure she buys a full complement of canvas bags next time. And make sure they have comfy handles. Maybe she can search some stuff up online? But there's a present problem to deal with. 

"Does that... thing even have a proper trunk?" She asks. He really does just seem like a nice helpful boy. Nice to know they make them sweet. Even if he is rather big and strong. She hopes Sam grows up like this one. "I don't think there's enough room to carry it all on my lap. I really can just call my husband." 

"It's roomier than it looks."

He pops the hood open to show her—there's a little space in there, not by any means as big as a normal car's trunk, but big enough to handle most if not all of her groceries. (Also bigger than the car normally comes with, but she doesn't need to know that.) "And there's some space behind the seats, too."

Big enough to put all of her groceries in, at least. Evelyn holds onto the eggs -- no idea how this boy drives, especially with a car like this, but manages to fit all the rest of her groceries in the trunk nice and snugly. "It's really not very far," she tells him as she leaves him to close the trunk and heads for the passenger door. "Only about a dozen blocks thataway, I can give you the address if you want. And really, thanks for the help, I'll plan better next time and maybe buy a little bit less." 

"It's no problem, I promise."

He closes the front of the car, opens the driver's side door—

—wills her asleep, carefully extracts the eggs from her grasp, sets them down on the driver's seat and drops his jacket on top of them as he tosses her into the back with telekinesis, opaques the windows and soundproofs the car, follows her back there, sets up the floor and the walls again, wishes away his clothes, wishes her clothes off her and into the front seat—

—wishes her on fire and lets her wake up.

Holy shit she's on fire the house is on fire the kids the KIDS she screams for Sam and Mary shit she has to wake the kids up and her husband up and get them out and shit wait... 

She's not in her house last thing she remembers she was in a car. Her kids are home with Michael and safe and very much not on fire. Good. How did she get here was she in an accident? This doesn't look or feel like she remembers what did they crash into? Figure out later get out of danger first. Trying to ignore the agonizing pain, even as it makes her scream in agony, she feels around for the door handle and tries to open it. 

Aww.

The only light available is from the fire eating at her skin and hair; it makes it hard to see anything.

The walls are hard and smooth and reflect the flames like glass and there's no sign of a door handle anywhere.

Now—can he make himself impervious to fire, or make the fire something he's impervious to? He reaches hesitantly into the flames... and isn't burned.

That opens up a whole lot of possibilities, doesn't it.

But the first thing he's going to try is: he grabs her and tackles her to the floor, and makes her burn even worse everywhere he touches her, and pins her down with her face pressed into the cold tile. It's an incredible thrill, just being able to do this to someone. Look how much he can hurt her.

What. 

Evelyn isn't sure where she is or how she got here or even where here is. Or why she's burning and how the thing doesn't seem to mind. The only reasonable thing is that she was in a horrible horrible accident and she's dreaming or hallucinating...whatever this is, as a way of interpreting the pain she's in. Unfortunate. It's really not a fun way to be interpreting what's going on, but she doesn't seem to be able to change the dream. Or wake up. She really hopes the thing manhandling her is just a rescue worker and she's doing a pisspoor interpretation of being pulled out of a burning wreck of a car. She really really hopes that she's not too horribly damaged by this and her kids aren't traumatized by this. She hopes it's just a funny story for everyone to laugh about at thanksgiving. She does her best to stay still and try not to fight the rescue worker, even with the agonizing pain. 

He is, it must be said, not behaving very much like a rescue worker.

Also, she's on fire and it hurts and it hurts much worse wherever his skin contacts hers, but the damage never gets more than (excruciatingly) superficial; all her limbs still work, nothing is ever damaged enough to stop responding, nothing is ever damaged enough to stop hurting.

(He expected, when he brought her to the floor, that he'd want to rape her pretty soon; but instead he finds himself getting a little lost in just playing with her, burning her and healing her and touching her and holding her down. There's a thrill to it that goes beyond mere sex. It makes him feel like a god.)

He really really isn't. It's a bit perplexing. 

This is a really awful dream interpretation or nightmare or whatever this is. Evelyn really wishes they would get her to the ambulance and pump her full of morphine so she can get to hallucinating about something other than fire. And maybe less creepy aesthetics. She's managed to stop screaming, at least. Even if she is doing a bunch of gasping sobs instead with what is now a very dry throat.

Most of her limbs seem like they're working still, so maybe things aren't as bad as they seem. Hopefully. Unless it's phantom limb pain or a dream, which would really be a problem, but there's not much she can do about it. 

She manages to open her mouth and croak "Can you get me some painkillers, please?" Oh wow it hurts to talk. "Something really strong would be nice. Not sure if it looks it but I'm in a lot of pain. And definitely hallucinating." She coughs a couple of times. "And maybe some water? Water would be real good around now." 

...on the one hand he can't help admiring her a little for being so sensible under this amount of stress. On the other hand, he kind of wishes she'd believe in the concrete facts of the situation—

Suddenly, in a shock, Evelyn realizes that she is not actually hallucinating. This is real. She's not entirely sure how she knows this, and almost wants to chalk it up to further hallucination. But well, she really knows it. 

She's not sure how she managed to get from the car to here, or why this man is pressing his hands into her causing her even more pain and burning. Or for that matter, since this is real, why she's not already dead, burnt to a cinder. Nonetheless, it hurts and he clearly knows this and seems to be enjoying it. And Evelyn very much wants him to stop. He seems to be immune to fire, well, lets see if he's immune to other things. 

It's really hard to move with the pain, but Evelyn uses the thought of getting out of here and getting back to her children (and possibly a little bit of fury), and manages to reach around behind her. She'd much rather use a knee or a leg, but doesn't have the leverage and can't see behind herself very well. Fighting through the literally burning pain, she reaches up, finds his crotch, and squeezes as hard as she can, gritting her teeth and not letting go. 

"Get. Off. Me. Now." She says, gasping and squeezing. 

—he snarls, and there's a moment where she's freezing and burning and her whole body unraveling into an abstract sculpture of flesh and bone and exposed nerve—

—and then he realizes what happened, and most of his sudden rage fades away, and she's whole again and on less than the maximum possible amount of fire, but she can't move or breathe—

—and then he takes a deep breath, methodically breaks both her arms, and lifts the paralysis.

Ok well, something horrible just happened and Evelyn did not like it. Really really really did not even a little bit. Of the worst things that have happened in her life, including everything else that's been going on in the last minute or two, this one was the worst. Yup. It's a little hard to process exactly what it just was which is why Evelyn is going in circles a little bit and should... probably... calm... down. Okay.

And then the man, person... whatever he is had put her back together and which even still on fire is much better than whatever that was. She can't move. But honestly, that's still fine. In comparison. And then he goes and breaks her arms, which, ok, it hurts, but it's still better than... that. And then suddenly she can move again. And talk. 

"Okay." She says, her mouth still dry. "I would really prefer it if you didn't do that again. If you don't mind." There's more that she wants to say, but she still really hurts (though honestly, not remotely nearly as much as she could), and it's still hard to talk. It was really important to say that one thing first, though. Really quite important. 

"Lost my temper," he says. "I think you can guess why."

With the distance of a few seconds between him and what happened, he can be a little more reasonable about it. (He kind of has to find a way to be reasonable about it; if he carries a grudge out of here she'll notice.)

"Yes." Evelyn takes another deep breath. "Won't happen again, if, um, that won't happen again." She breathes again. "Is there. Anything in particular you'd like from me? I would prefer to be let go. If there's anything I can trade. For that. Please."

She really really hurts, but well, she has him talking. And really this pain is basically nothing. And she'd do quite a lot to be able to get out of here and see her children again. She isn't going to mention them. She will never put them in danger from this horror. Nightmare. But, maybe something can be arranged. Shit she still can't stop thinking about it. Keep breathing. Just keep breathing.

"Oh, I'm gonna let you go either way," he says, idly trailing searing fingertips down her spine. "You'll be fine, you won't remember a thing. Probably won't ever see me again, either."

His words send a wave of relief through her body, though she realizes after a moment that he could be lying. (And, does that voice sound familiar?) Even if the thought of forgetting. That. Forever. Really really quite appeals. More than many many things she's ever wanted. Either he's telling the truth, in which case, well, excellent. Or he's lying, probably because she has nothing he wants. Well. She can test that, at least to some degree. 

She breathes a sigh of relief (for his benefit). "Thank you. That's, very very good to hear. But is there anything else you might want. Anything I can do. In exchange for making whatever this is. Easier? Please."

"Unfortunately for you, I'm pretty much just torturing you for my own amusement."

Well that doesn't answer any question. In any direction. And Evelyn still can't quite place the voice. And... shit this is going to suck if that's what he's doing. And there really isn't anything she can do about it. Well, she just has to hope he's telling the truth. It's a very very nice thing to hope for. 

"Oh. Well. I don't think I can do anything about that. Clearly. How long will. This take? I don't want. My friends. To worry." 

"Not that long."

He presses his hands against her back. Skin blisters and crackles.

"Your friends'll be fine. Promise."

She, on the other hand, will be on fire. He's kinda done with the talking thing and would rather go back to hurting her.

Well, let's just get this over with then. 

Evelyn screams, burning once again. Even if it's essentially nothing compared to... before... it still hurts and she wants it to end. But she has no way to put it out. No way to make it stop. So she'll just lay there unable to make it stop screaming in agony as the man continues to magically torture her until he's done. Which he said would be soon. And... shit this really hurts but she stopped screaming last time, maybe she can stop this time. She takes gulps as she feels her skin crackle and peel and burn, trying to hold on, process the pain, switching out some of the screaming for gasping sobs. It helps. Some. 

Now. He wants to recapture that feeling, of being incredibly, wonderfully powerful, able to do whatever he wants. It's a good feeling and he likes it.

He leans on her, sinking his fingers deep into her shoulders, burning through flesh all the way to bone. Yes. That's it. That's what he wants.

Now he's going to fuck her. And keep the burning effect while he does it. Everywhere they touch, she burns like he's made of red-hot iron. But she heals, too, fast enough that she never loses sensation for more than brief flickers before the nerves grow back.

Well. So much for being able to catch her breath.

The hands dig into her back and hurt and hurt and hurt. Evelyn's mouth opens wide again and she screams. It's horrible and awful and painful but it's going to be over soon. And it still isn't as bad as the other thing. It's going to be over soon and she'll see her children again and she won't ever remember this ever again and it will be fine. 

And then he's raping her. And the indignity of it makes her want to hurt him again but she remembers... and it's not like she can do anything about it anyways. And honestly the once the first shock of the pain and rape wear off, the constant blistering agony is all that's left. She knows her husband, if he knew about this, would forgive her, it's not like any of this was her fault and he loves her. He'd probably be horrified of course. But he loves her and would forgive her, wouldn't even blame her. And even with the added disgrace it's still not as bad. And Evelyn knows she keeps coming back to that thought, but the feeling of what happened is still fresh in her mind. And it helps her endure this, knowing she's had worse. And survived. And she'll survive this, she'll forget it all, she'll see her kids again and her husband again and everything will be fine. She really hopes he isn't lying. She's screaming, and crying, and the agony simply does not stop, but she can endure this, she can survive. She will survive. 

Shit it hurts, so very very much. Please let it end soon. Please. She can endure this. Please. 

It's such an incredible rush, fucking someone like this. Hearing her scream and sob. Knowing that the only reason she's surviving what he's doing to her is that he's healing her constantly as he does it. At any moment he could just stop doing that, and she'd die screaming under him. It's beautiful.

It only lasts a few minutes, but they're a top contender for the best few minutes of his life.

And then he's done, and he lies on top of her for a moment, catching his breath, enjoying the way it feels when she burns and heals and burns again.

All right, that's enough playtime. He wills her to sleep and fixes her up and takes away her memory and puts her back in the passenger seat with her clothes and her eggs, and restores the car into its ordinary driving configuration with transparent windows and no obsidian-lined torture closet, and settles himself back into place in the driver's seat, and sits for a minute just breathing until he's sure he can pick up where their conversation left off. And during that minute he remembers that he put her down while he was in the middle of getting into the car, so he gets out again and wakes her back up as he's sitting down and closing the door behind him.

Finally, finally, finally he's done. He's done, but he doesn't stop, he just lays there, and Evelyn still burns. She wants to ask him if that's it, she'd been hoping it would end when he was, well, done with her. But he's still lying on top of her and her skin keeps blistering and peeling and he won't get off her. She wants him to get out, wants it to end needs it to end. But he's lying there, taking his time. And there's nothing she can do about it but scream, and occasionally gasp for breath. And then-- 

Evelyn smiles at the boy as he sits down, suddenly feeling a bit more out of breath from carrying all those groceries than she expected. Isn't she in better shape than this? Well, regardless she has a ride home now. And she'll do this somewhat smarter and less spur-of the moment next time. "You're going to want to start heading down that way," she says, pointing down the street in the direction she'd been walking. "You'll turn right in a few blocks, I'll tell you when we're getting close. Sound good?" 

"Yep," he says agreeably, proceeding down the street in the indicated direction. Contrary to her expectations, he's actually a pretty careful driver; her eggs will be safe.

Evelyn really must have just misjudged this boy. It's always nice when someone exceeds your expectations.

After a few minutes of direction-giving, they arrive at Evelyn's home. "Alright, we're here. Give me a hand with a couple of the bags, would you?" She opens the car and goes around to the hood to get her groceries. 

"Sure!" he says cheerfully. He gets out of the car and helps her carry in her groceries.

"You can put them down on the porch," she tells him when they get there. "I can make two trips from here." Evelyn still feels just a little bit awkward about the situation -- she'll tell her husband about it, for sure, it'll still be a funny story, but she doesn't necessarily want him to see right this second.

She gives him a small smile. "Thank you very much for the help, it was greatly appreciated. I hope you enjoy the rest of your driving." 

"Aww, you're welcome! Bye!"

And he goes back to his car and sits behind the wheel and contemplates how this evening has gone so far.

...yeah, there's no way he's giving up this power, is there.

Okay. Okay. He should maybe... think about things a little, here.

Problem number one: he got this power through some kind of deal with, if not the devil, a pretty good imitation, who is probably not going to be kind enough to let him slide through the 'I only agreed you could ask for a favour' loophole if it comes up. He's not sure he wants to do that favour but he is sure he'd be devastated to give up this power. So he's probably going to agree, and then he's probably going to have a problem someday. Unless all the devil wants is for him to torture or kill somebody, or something. As long as he doesn't have to give up anything he owns it'll probably be fine. Maybe. Ugh, who even knows. This is a problem for Future Sean.

Problem number two: as much as he fucking loves this car, it's a car. He really needs to get his hands on some more substantial territory. A house would be good, a condo would be probably adequate, the ideal might be to own something like a mall or a movie theater that gets lots of people coming through every day...

He doesn't quite feel able to think things through properly, sitting here in his car in front of Evelyn's house. He starts the engine and heads out, not going anywhere in particular, just driving for the sake of driving. Thinking is easier in motion.

The thought occurs to him that he could go home - well, 'home' - and try to think in his apartment, maybe pace around or see how good the building's gym is, but that place has never felt like he belonged in it and after how the devil-or-whoever kept talking about it earlier it probably never will. His car is better. His car is his.

Okay. Think and drive.

How is he going to get his hands on land?

The first images that come to mind involve finding some wilderness somewhere and building a log cabin in it by hand. He's not sure that would count, and it would be a hell of a lot of effort, and it wouldn't be near anywhere he could get victims from, so it might work as a proof of concept or a way to explore what his power can do with territory but it's not going to work as an actual starting place from which to build his ideal future.

The next thought he has is to get somebody to assassinate his parents, but as annoying as they are he's not sure he wants them dead, and they're useful to have around sometimes, such as when he gets caught committing violent crimes. So maybe not that one.

His experiences tonight with Jenna and Evelyn suggest that he's surprisingly charismatic, much more so than he would've thought if you'd asked him yesterday. Maybe he can do something with that. Convincing someone to buy him a house sounds... maybe a little overambitious, but he's got magic powers, he can probably work something out. Find another rich kid with better control of their money and get them to marry him, maybe.

Could he use his powers, in their current state, to somehow convince someone to just give him land or money? By torture or mind control or some other means?

...not, he thinks, unless he can first convince them that he owns them. If he gets someone into his car and mind-controls them into giving him all their stuff, they're going to figure out something is up even if they don't have any way of knowing exactly what, and whatever happens afterward he suspects it won't end in him still having all their stuff. If he wants to use magic to force someone to give him a house he's going to have to be able to use magic on them permanently whenever he wants, and that means making them his.

Well, it's not like that's going to be a big step out of his way. He wants to make someone his anyway. He really, really wants that. Now that he's thought of it, it's kind of hard to think about anything else. He doesn't know exactly what the requirements are—if he gets a chance, he should ask the devil about it—but making someone believe that he owns them... sounds like the kind of thing he could maybe do, now he has the example of what happened to Evelyn when he wished she'd get with the program.

Being able to force people to believe things by magic is, he reflects more soberly, actually kind of fucked up. It makes him feel... uncomfortable. He could lie to someone and force them to believe him. He's kind of already doing that, when he brings people into his car and tortures them and then lets them go without their memories of his transgressions.

But being able to torture someone with absolutely no consequences is undeniably also really hot. Overall, he thinks it's a pretty good trade.

And now...

He's already been luckier than he could reasonably have expected twice this evening, stopping to offer rides to people who turned out to be pretty easy to talk into his car. Going out hunting for a third would probably be pushing it, even though he really wants to get started on figuring out how to own someone and the thought of owning people has gotten him very thoroughly in the mood to rape someone again.

Okay. He's going to head home—well, head back to the apartment—and if he spots any really good opportunities on the way back, he'll stop and try his luck, and if not, he'll check out the apartment and the building some more and maybe say hi to any neighbours he happens to run into and then go to sleep and he can go hunting again tomorrow.

Sean doesn't run into anyone of particular interest on the drive home. 

Bob really doesn't like working late nights, but every once in a while they have a crunch at the office to get things done on time for the next release, and it's a lot better for morale if the manager is there when all the testers are. At least that's what his bosses tell him. Most of the time during these crunches he has little to do; he mostly just collects the various bugs his testers find and relay them to the software engineers, as well as directing his own team to recently changed pieces of the UI, as directed by the programmers' manager. His job is honestly a lot more interesting when things aren't almost done, when prioritizing what has to be changed and what doesn't and when and how is a much more interesting puzzle. Nights like these he mostly plays games on his phone. 

He's a bit surprised when he gets into the elevator at his apartment building to see his floor already pressed, and the only other person in the elevator a rather imposing young man who Bob is sure he's never seen before. And he's at least met everyone on his floor, he's pretty sure, even the quiet ones in 14-B who almost never leave the room. But one of the rooms did just open up...

Bob decides to be friendly, and puts out a hand to shake. "Hey there," he says, "I live up on 14 myself, 14-D. Did you just move into 14-A? The Templetons moved out a month or so ago."

"Yeah." He shakes the man's hand, smiling. "I'm Sean. Gonna be studying architecture at MTU."

A good firm handshake. Not surprising, given his build. He returns one in kind. "Oh, nice! I know some people who went there, it's a pretty good school. I work for remote medical solutions -- you've probably never heard of us; we make software for, well, remotely controlled medical and surgical equipment." He resists getting into his whole spiel; the elevator ride isn't that long, and he wants to go watch tv and fall asleep. Plus he'll probably run into Sean again. 

"Huh! That's pretty cool," he says. "It's, like... useful in a way a lot of stuff isn't."

Bob smiles a little. "It is! There's a whole bunch of times where surgeons might need to control medical equipment smaller than their hands can possibly manipulate, or move tubes around when they're inside people, or be in another room due to infectious diseases. And in those cases it's important that the equipment not break or malfunction, because it's not like the surgeons can use their hands if..." 

The elevator bings and the door opens. Bob does his best not to look sheepish. "Er. Sorry about that, we're already here. I can tell you more about it later if you're curious, though? But I should probably be getting to bed."

"Super reasonable," he says agreeably, getting out of the elevator. "See you later! You can tell me all about it!"

Bob smiles, stepping out after him. "Well, it was nice to meet you, Sean. I'm sure I'll run into you later, as long as school doesn't keep you too busy, hah! And if you need something, feel free to knock." 

He seems like a reasonable enough new neighbor, and nothing wrong with making new friends. He probably needs a few more of those. For now, though, he's gonna take a nice hot shower, Netflix binge a couple episodes of the comedy he's been watching, and get some sleep. 

"Sure thing!"

He turns toward his apartment and heads inside. It still looks infuriatingly well-groomed in there, but there are no assassins waiting to ambush him for throwing out the flowers on the kitchen counter. And he can throw his clothes on the floor and watch porn on his laptop for an hour and go to sleep, and in the morning—

Well, in the morning he remembers vaguely that there's some kind of school orientation thing today, and he should probably find out when and where that is and then go to it. Maybe there'll be cute girls he can hit on or victimize! Maybe he can find out where to sign up for dance clubs!

If he checks the various and sundry emails he's received from the college over the past few months, Sean will see one with the subject line "Orientation Guide". It's been sent to both his personal email address and his school email address account, which, being Sean, he may not have set up yet. Regardless, the email starts with a small form letter from the dean, welcoming him to the college, and then a longer explanation about how orientation is a great time to meet and learn about his fellow floor-mates, which will include people from majors other than his own, learn his way around campus with a tour from his RA, eat his first meal in the state of the art MTC cafeteria, find out where to go for various campus services (including health services, physical mail, and admissions), sign up for various clubs based on his interests, and learn about the history of this fine institution.

This is followed by further, more specific detail about his orientation group and schedule. Since Sean doesn't actually have a dorm floor, he's been slotted into group OFFCAMPUS-D, and apparently, his RA is named Rachel Quinn. Because he doesn't live in a dorm, his meeting group's designated meeting place is in the lobby of the Wendell Sciences Building -- which is circled in red in a map in an email attachment. (The outline is clearly drawn by hand in marker by someone on top of a campus map and scanned in, and the PDF of the map is upside-down.) 

Orientation starts at 11, and runs until 3:30. There's a further detail of the exact schedule, but he's expected to stay until the end -- and the end is when his group gets to see various booths made by a number of clubs at the school, learn about them, and sign up for them -- so it's likely he'll want to stay until the end. 

If he shows up to the orientation location a little early, or reasonably on time, he will see several students in various positions on the floor, in the lobby of the marble building, standing or sitting, talking in small groups to one another or off on their own. Several of them may catch his eye. 

Standing towards the middle of the circle, and a little off to one side, talking helpfully to a couple of other students, is the girl who is very likely Rachel Quinn. She looks a little older than everyone else (though that might be confused by the fact that she is surprisingly tall), but most importantly she's wearing a brightly colored MTC shirt with the words "Orientation 2019" on the front. She is, as previously mentioned, surprisingly tall, about as tall as Sean is now, with long red hair and a pale complexion. She's very happily and helpfully explaining something to a couple of students, and a third is standing behind them impatiently waiting. 

There's a girl sitting towards the outskirts of the circle, on her phone. She's got spiky purple hair, a couple of piercings in her ears and nose, and her body language is pretty clearly giving off "don't bother me" vibes. She is, however, rather attractive, even if she's acting extremely standoffish. 

There's another girl who is black-haired with nerdy glasses, in a dark green cardigan that attempts to but still doesn't do much to hide her, well, rather large breasts. She's got two boys trying to chat her up and she looks really uncomfortable that they're doing so. 

If Sean looks around the room, he'll probably see a diminutive boy wedged into a nearby corner, with his knees up and his arms wrapped tightly around them, looking small and nervous and trying not to be seen. He's got sortof light wispy blonde hair that's sortof blown about his head, almost like dandelion fluff.

There's another girl, wearing, well, somewhat more revealing clothing than would be expected at an orientation meeting, makeup, and bottle-blonde hair. She's chatting up a couple of guys -- one of them seems to be pretty into it, but she's more interested in a more buff guy that is mostly keeping to himself. But she's acting all flirty with them both. 

He does in fact show up early, mostly because leaving early for things means he gets to be in his car sooner. And, ooh, people.

Can he keep them all? Probably not, but he wants to. Okay, time to prioritize.

He instinctively wants to rescue the nerdy girl, except that it would feel dishonest to rescue the nerdy girl intending to torture her later. Can he rescue her intending to befriend her and see if he can convince her that he owns her without any torture? Still feels kind of dishonest, but maybe. Call that a backup plan if nobody else takes precedence.

He also instinctively wants to go talk to the shy guy, but this time the instinct in question is more of a directly predatory one. Shy nervous people trying not to be seen put him in a hunting mood. And the guy's pretty cute. Overall he prefers women to men, though, so he probably won't end up going for this one unless he rules everybody else out for some reason. Or tries them and can't get anywhere. (Oh, but the way he's curled up so small in his little corner... Sean can't help a wistful little sigh before he turns his attention elsewhere.)

The hot girl who doesn't want anyone to bother her is nice to look at but looks tough to crack. Probably not the first place he should look. She'd be tempting if there weren't so many other good targets around, though.

The flirty girl is definitely drawing his attention and kind of makes an obvious first target. She looks like she'd be easy to pick up at least as far as getting her into his car. (It's so useful that all he has to do is get somebody into his car.)

And finally his RA is pretty hot but he doesn't really have to target her, they're going to end up interacting either way, so it doesn't make sense to make her his first stop.

Okay, that leaves his decision pretty clear-cut. He heads for the flirty girl. But along the way, as he's passing the standoffish one, he says, "Hey, cool hair."

The girl looks up from her phone, rolls her eyes at him, blows a bubblegum bubble at him with an audible snap, then goes back to her phone. 

He laughs.

And—hmm.

It occurs to him, as he continues walking, that just because the flirty girl is the easiest target doesn't mean she's the best one. A girl this flirty is probably still going to be this flirty in ten minutes; it doesn't really matter when he goes for her. But if he wants to rescue the nerdy girl, there is a best time to do that, and that time is as soon as possible, at least if he wants to credibly act the way his innocuous helpful persona would act.

Okay. Quick question to himself. Can he actually rescue her, and make friends with her, a process which may involve her and her delicious body ending up in his car, and not torture her even when it would be really easy? Because the way he treated Jenna and Evelyn is one thing, but 'hey, I'm here to rescue you from uncomfortable sexual attention—just kidding I'm actually going to rape you the minute I get the chance' is a level of dishonesty where he would rather just steer clear of her in the first place than end up telling that big of a lie, even if it's only implicit.

...yeah, he's pretty sure he can manage that. And if it gets tough he can remind himself how much the thought of that much insincerity makes him want to crawl out of his skin.

The bigger question is, with rape off the table does he still want to rescue her?

He slows down, then stops. Looks at the nerdy girl as though seeing her for the first time.

If making friends with her turns out to eat too much of his time and attention for too little reward he can always stop later. And he does want to find out if he can convince someone to give themselves to him without torturing them into it, and someone who has a pretty good reason to be grateful to him and who he has a really good reason not to torture seems like an ideal place to start figuring that out.

And every time he looks at her he gets an instinctive feel for how he could step in and start convincing those guys to clear off, and he's not even sure that seeing how is the same as wanting to, but it feels pretty similar.

Okay. Yeah. The flirty girl can wait.

He settles into the helpful mindset that worked so well with Jenna and Evelyn, and turns to head for the nerdy girl and her unwanted suitors.

Karen really thought it would be different here. Well, maybe just hoped. Well, maybe just wished. Here she was, in a new school, a place where people could pay attention to her for her mind again and not her body, just like they did when she was 12. Before, well... 

Back then it hadn't mattered that they were boys and she was a girl, she was just as smart or smarter than the rest of them, just as inventive, and she'd enjoyed talking about all kinds of science and math and fiction, getting better grades than them on math tests, playing her first dungeons and dragons campaign. They'd loved her because she was clever, because she was just like them, no matter what the bullies said. 

And then, one day, she wasn't. 

Some of the boys she thought were her friends expressed lewd and vile things and acted in ways she never would have expected from them. Others... didn't, but wouldn't stand up for her, and she still watched their gazes drawn to her chest when before they'd looked her right in the eyes. And they still treated her differently. Like she was other. Like she was less.

Thank goodness for the internet, thank goodness for fandom and fanfiction and everything in between, or she'd have had no friends at all during her teenage years. Not real friends, anyways. But she'd come here with a hope to make new friends, real ones, ones who would actually look her in the eyes. And here at orientation, she'd tried, shyly, to make some. But this was just a repeat of high school, with a couple of nerdy boys looking at her chest and trying to impress her, not realizing or caring that she already knew everything they were telling her about. And it looked like they wouldn't take the hint, either. Karen, was, well, just a little bit crushed. 

"Hey, what's up?" he says, directly to the girl, bypassing the two guys who are trying to talk to her. He's only been this tall for a day, but he already finds it natural to adjust his posture for the right effect: friendly, open, cheerful, but still a little imposing, and subtly reacting to her body language to maintain a comfortable conversational distance without crowding her, but ignoring the other two and therefore incidentally pushing them away a little with the implicit weight of his presence.

(It's surprisingly easy to just not even think about looking at her chest. His helpful persona has other priorities, and even the predatory part of him has already decided she's off limits.)

Karen's thankful for the intrusion, but she's a bit surprised that someone like that would be talking to someone like her. She shifts her body towards him, and away from the boys, taking his proffered lead to shut them out. "Oh, not much," she says, managing a wan smile. "Just waiting for everyone to show up and orientation to start." He's looking at her face, not her chest, which is weird and unexpected. What's an obvious jock like him doing helping a nerd girl like her if not for the obvious reason. Maybe he's gay? She decides it's ok to maybe continue the conversation a little more, especially if it'll keep the other two away from her. "What about you?"

"Same. What's your name? I'm Sean."

One of the boys starts to say something in protest, the other boy elbows him and gives him a look. They both go and wander off in the direction of the flirty girl. 

Karen's still a little surprised by his, well, not looking at her breasts. And a little put out by her earlier revelation. But well, if he wants to try and be friends... "Karen. Nice to meet you." She sighs, and decides to go in a little deeper, with the standard "meet your fellow college student" patter, hoping that if he is straight, he won't think it means she's interested. He is attractive, she admits, but almost certainly not her type. "I'm here for the CS program," she tells him. "What are you majoring in?"

"Architecture. CS, that's, what, computers? Pretty cool."

"Yeah, computers. Software engineering. Programming. That sort of thing." She pauses for second, a little confused. "Architecture, huh. I've heard that's supposed to be pretty hard. What got you into that?"

"Honestly? My parents decided they would be forever shamed if their kid didn't go to college, so they picked a school and a major and bought me a car as a bribe and they're paying me a slightly stupid amount of money to give it my best shot. Who knows, maybe I'll fail. School has never been my strong suit, I can't think sitting still."

On the other hand, architecture as a skill is going to be undeniably useful to him once he's got some land to build things on. He's kind of warming to the idea the more he thinks about it.

Karen is mostly inclined to dismiss him as, well... She's not entirely sure. But certainly not as anyone very intelligent, just someone with rich parents who are making their poor child overreach, when he seems like he's much better suited for other things. Physical things, mostly. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But not necessarily anyone she'd want to make really good friends with. 

Still. His statement about not being able to think sitting still, and the way he acted, imposing himself and getting those boys off her back clearly meant he had some kind of intelligence. And maybe he'd learn better in a college environment, who knows? Regardless, he's the only person she's met so far who's treated her like an actual person; she probably shouldn't brush him off. And worst case she can always impress him with her intelligence by being just that much smarter than he. Even if it feels kind of hollow doing that to a maybe-disabled boy who wasn't given the right opportunities to grow.  

"Hah. Well, I hope they give you opportunity to move around when you learn in class. You might want to mention it to the teacher, they might have some things you can do that will help. Might try fidget toys too, if you never had? Have you? Do they help?"

"Huh, I haven't," he says thoughtfully. "I should give that a shot. Thanks." He smiles. Making friends sometimes pays off in helpful suggestions, who knew?

"Glad to help!" she says. And means it. What kind of awful schools and parents does this poor kid have? Rich ones, probably. And terrible ones. Well, hopefully she can help?

They seriously never tried fidget toys? Seriously? Ugh.

"Well," she asks, still trying to be friendly, mostly because he still isn't looking at her chest, wow, "if you're not a fan of school, what do you like to do? What kinds of things do you get up to?"

"I'm thinking of getting back into ballroom dance!"

...gosh, ok then. That makes sense. He's definitely built well for it. Or built well for something, anyways, dance would certainly be a thing. And also makes it much more likely that he's gay. Some part of her is disappointed at the realization, that she's being treated as a person because he's never going to be interested in her. Or see her as a rival. Oh well. A friend is still a friend, right? "Huh. That does sounds fun, I think? A lot more active than what I do, at least, I've never done anything like it. How'd you get into that?"

"Oh, my parents signed me up for lessons when I was like twelve, and I kept up with it for a few years and then got out of the habit."

...weird parents are weird. "Well, neat! It seems like something good to get back into." Karen really is curious what he's been doing in the interim that has him, that, well, well built. But she's way too polite/shy to ask. Well. Maybe she can direct the conversation to something more familiar. "Did you check what classes you have yet?" She asks. "Hopefully there aren't too many early morning ones. My only morning one is a math of CS survey course once a week which is annoying because I've done most of that stuff already, but they wouldn't let me test out. I was considering just skipping it, except for tests, but apparently they have a test each class. At least it's only once a week."

"I'm not nearly organized enough to have taken a close look at my schedule yet, I barely remembered there was an orientation thing today. Wow, a test each class? That'd suck for me, I hope you're good at tests."

"Well. More of a quiz really. A review of material from last week at the start of each class in lieu of homework, which normally I'd be a fan of, but, in this case when I know it all already..." She sighs. "But yeah! I've always enjoyed tests, especially math ones. Used to do math contests for fun back in school, it's always delightful to work your way through a tricky problem." Karen smiles wistfully. "That's honestly where I picked up a lot of this stuff up! That and just reading about it in books or on the internet for fun. I just really enjoy working my way through a complex and difficult problem, or seeing the clever trick in the brainteaser, if you know what I mean?" Karen blushes just a little. "Sorry, that might have been a bit much."

"No, I think it's great! It'd drive me batshit, personally, but it's really cool that you can do that!"

Karen blushes a little more. "Yeah, it seems like you're better at other kinds of things. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Your brain is just wired a little differently than mine. Honestly we're both probably wired a little differently than the norm. Which is kind of neat! And useful, if you can figure out what your comparative advantage is! And then hopefully make tons of money off of it."

"Yeah, that'd be the trick. Well, if I never figure out how to cash in on who I am as a person, at least my parents are already rich."

Karen snorts. "Well, that's true."

It's at this point in time that the RA clears her throat to get everyone's attention. "Alright everyone! I think everyone should be here by now. Let's all get in a nice big circle of the middle of the floor here, and we can play a couple games to get to know each other." A couple people make audible groans. "I know, I know, these are always silly," she says. "And I know you all don't live together, like most of the other groups do. But we're going to be hanging out for the next four hours, and it'll be a lot more fun if we break the ice some! Plus it's good practice for meeting your other classmates. So come on, let's go! I'll go easy on you all, promise, and then we can get on to the important stuff."

A quick look around will show that several other people have trickled in over the past few minutes, but no one of particular interest. Bottle-blonde flirty girl now has several people in her orbit, but the person she's been concentrating more on still isn't paying much attention to her. The rest of the interesting folks are pretty much exactly where they were, doing the same things. At least until they start to get into a circle, just as the RA told them to. 

Sure, he'll sit in a circle and play icebreakers.

Karen will attempt to sit with Sean, not having anyone else in the group that she's really made friends with yet.

Rachel starts them off with two truths and a lie, which does elicit some groans from the rest of the group -- but she mixes it up in an interesting way. Rather than it being two truths and a lie, it's two truths, a lie, and a dream (something you wish to be true/something you plan to make true about yourself, but isn't yet true) -- and you can do any combination of 3 of those, which actually leads to far more interesting and animated discussion about which things were which. Rachel's example is: "Plays basketball" (false), "owns a dog named ginger" (true), and "works out at the gym regularly" (dream). Of course, she still has them discuss/guess which is which. Once her turn is done, the RA tells them to introduce themselves with their name and major, and then, of course, the requisite three facts, true or dream or lie. (Rachel's major, she adds before they start to go around, is acting.)

The small scared boy's name is Elliot, and he's majoring in acting. He seems to be very softspoken, and rather nervous talking about himself -- or possibly talking to a crowd in general. The most interesting fact about him is that apparently he grew up in Kentucky -- the other facts and dreams he has are rather straightforward, bland, and relatively obvious. He might have done better if he hadn't been so close to the beginning. He occasionally speaks up when they discuss facts about one another, but mostly continues to try and look small and keep to himself. 

The standoffish girl, Zoe, is a art major, specializing in pottery, of all things. Her lie is that she's been working on that piece of gum for a whole day -- it's actually been two days. She told two other truths -- one that she changed her hairstyle and color every couple of weeks -- and that she'd dated 7 different boys before college. 

The buff boy that the revealingly-dressed girl has been concentrating on had a dream, and two truths -- but his truth is that he's gay -- which he confirms with a bit of a nod towards the girl, which makes her turn a rather bright shade of red in embarrassment. 

Her name turns out to be Valerie -- and she's majoring in art history, which she goes on to describe as "probably super easy" and "was really here just because her daddy thought she should have a college experience, y'know?" She doesn't really seem to care about the point of the game, apparently a little steamed at the buff boy showing her up like that -- she mostly rants for a minute about how her daddy could buy and sell the whole college, and how she's richer than the rest of the other students here, before Rachel steps in and suggests they move onto the next person. 

Only one of the boys who was hitting on Karen is a computer science major, interestingly enough -- the other is majoring in Architecture. 

And after a couple more students, it's Sean's turn. 

"I'm Sean, I'm studying architecture for no good reason."

He's been trying to think of three questionable facts. It's hard because he doesn't really like lying and also because he could truthfully say he has magic powers and the temptation is incredible but everyone would think he was crazy. But now it's his turn and he doesn't want to hold up the game, so he just goes with the first set of things he can come up with.

"I own a Lamborghini, I've danced with a professional ballet company, and I got expelled from high school for lighting a teacher on fire."

All of these obviously sound blatantly false to everyone -- but they've been playing this game enough to know that at least one of them has to be true. Everyone very quickly settles on the lighting the teacher on fire being the false one: "if anyone had ever done that, they wouldn't be allowed here!" "That sort of thing gets kids sent to juivie, not a nice school like MTC!" Most of the class assumes that the ballet company is real (something he did as a small child, probably) and the Lamborghini is a dream -- but Karen has the presence of mind (with a little bit of glitter in her eyes from being sure she's figured out the puzzle that no one else did) to put together the fact that his family is rich, and that he'd mentioned that his parents had gotten him a car as a bribe. When she brings this up to the group (without calling it a bribe, she doesn't want to make Sean look bad), most of the rest of the students are pretty dismissive about it, but Valerie comes to her defense. "Oh come on, that's totally the sort of thing my daddy would do for me. If his parents are rich that totally makes sense. It's obviously the Lamborghini". Eventually, everyone is settled on what they think, and the RA asks Sean to reveal the truth. 

Sean grins the whole time they're discussing it, and laughs occasionally when someone makes a particularly ironic comment.

"The Lamborghini's real, professional ballet is a dream although I did take ballet as a kid and some of my classmates got to dance with a real company, and I was only nearly expelled."

Karen smiles when she finds out she got it right, then opens her mouth a bit in shock when she realizes what he meant by the last bit. And then there's quite a bit of hubbub as the rest of the students clamor and demand to hear the rest of the story, some of them a bit scared, the rest disbelieving or morbidly curious or all three. Rachel cuts them off after a moment. "That sort of thing is often private," she says. "Only if he wants to tell us how any of what happened." She does give him a bit of an eye, though, one that implies that it's probably in his best interest to give a bit more of an explanation -- even if she is giving him an out. 

"No, it's fair that people wanna know," he says. "All right, all right, I'll give you the story."

He smiles at Karen, because she picked up on the thing about the car.

"So, my philosophy teacher was kind of a character. He smokes, and he used to do Zippo tricks in class when he was bored. Most of the time I actually got along with him better than most teachers, but one time I'd finished an assignment on time for once in my life and I couldn't find the damn thing to hand it in and he refused to believe I'd done it and we got in a yelling match and the lighter was on his desk and I went for it. There was a real big fuss and I got suspended for a week and also they told him to stop having his lighter out in class. It is not really my proudest moment but it sure does make for a show-stopping icebreaker."

"It certainly does." says Rachel. Some of the classmates are appeased, some are still a little scared of him, and Karen is looking at him with an odd and thoughtful look on her face. 

"Well, then," the RA continues, motioning at Karen, "it's your turn." 

"Oh! Right!" she says, shocked out of her concentration. "So: I was invited to the USAMO and placed in the top 50, senior year -- that's a really rather selective math contest, for folks who don't know. I'm a huge fan of Star Trek, and I've written a semi-popular Avengers fanfic under a pseudonym." 

Huh. Sean really isn't sure about any of these. He suspects the math contest placement is an almost-not-quite like his nearly dancing with a professional company or nearly getting expelled, but he isn't sure; and the other two seem about equally sure-I-guess-that-could-happen in a way that makes him suspect them both of being lies just because they're so mundane. What's a 'semi-popular' fanfic anyway? Actually, that one feels like it should be true just because 'semi-popular' is a weird level to either lie about or aspire to. Unless that's what she wants people to think. He is not good at this game.

There's quite a lot of discussion about this, most of the folks deciding that the math contest pretty much has to be a dream, or a lie. The fanfic thing, which, someone asks a similar clarifying question to what Sean is thinking, Karen makes a face and explains that she means popular in fandom, but not necessarily outside of it. Everyone pretty much decides this is too specific to be false. And that leaves being into Star Trek as probably but not necessarily true. 

But when made to answer -- it turns out the math contest is in fact true -- she apparently tied for 46th with a couple other people. Which a couple people in the students kindof bug their eyes out at, and Karen looks a little smug when they do. The fanfiction was of course, as pointed out, also true -- though when pressed for which one it is, Karen says that that would be telling. Which leaves the "huge fan of Star Trek" as the lie -- which, as Karen explains, she never got into. It's Star Wars that she's a huge fan of. 

Aww, Karen looking smug is great.

Karen's pretty happy feeling smug as well. And some of the people are now looking at her as though she actually has a brain, a little bit shocked at the revelation. One of the two boys who were hitting on her before is actually looking a bit sheepish and sorry -- which means, maybe, just maybe, she might actually make some good friends here. Even if it looked bad to begin with. And worst case, she can still be friends with Sean. She's still rather confused by Sean, but he's clearly more intelligent than he appeared at first glance (or at least, that's what she's telling herself), and it seems like he had a rather troubled childhood. She's perfectly happy to help him out to settle into a good place. Still -- once this is over she should probably try and make other friends as well. There's a part of her that wants to keep making sure that Sean is ok, but Karen reminds herself that he seems pretty good on his own. He's the one who helped out her. And now she has the opportunity to make more friends. 

The last couple of people do their icebreaker. By then, everyone does actually seem to be a lot more friendly with each other -- not so much because of the game itself, but because of the debates they were having around it. It's not perfect, of course -- Elliot is still shrunk and hiding, and Zoe is still keeping to herself, as are a couple other people here -- but for the most part, the discussion and argument over the past hour means that everyone is actually pretty comfortable with each other -- or at least understands who one another is. 

"Well, I hope that was fun!" says Rachel. "We're going to be heading over to the mess hall in a few, so why doesn't everyone stand up and stretch themselves out a little." Pretty much everyone does so, stretching out the kinks from sitting for so long. "I know you all aren't ever going to be as close as the groups that are actually living together," she says, "but you do all live in relatively similar locations, off-campus. You all live in and around Kingston Hill -- so you might be seeing more of each other than you would expect. Regardless, I do hope you've started to make a few new friends. Next up -- everyone's favorite part -- lunch! Which in theory, is the first part of your tour. The mess hall is thataway," she says, pointing. "Come on and follow me." 

The students do, forming a ragged group, as people in general are wont to do. Karen sort of pulls away from Sean for the moment a little bit awkwardly, not because she doesn't like him but because, well, she wants to try and make some other friends, too. Sean can probably tell that's what her intent is. Regardless, that leaves Sean the opportunity to try and talk to someone else, if he wants. 

He thinks he'll go for the flirty girl who had a rich kid tantrum. If she's got that much money to throw around she might be useful. At least if she's got better access to it than he does.

Valerie is still pretty miffed at John for showing her up right in front of everyone like that. At least that explains why he wasn't falling for her charms (she's still a sexy hottie, not like these other loser girls). And she's still got a couple other boys who still are clearly into her (and it really is such a rush watching them bow and scrape and bend over backwards and laugh at her jokes, even the really awful ones. It's always gratifying to see the effect she has on men) but really no one particularly hot enough that she really wants to fuck them. The only other really hot boy in this crowd is the rich weirdo who was talking to the nerd girl of all things; doesn't he know he can do better than her. Seriously, people like them should really associate only with people in their proper station. 

That's not to say that she isn't going to fuck one of these pimply boys if she has to, though. She moved in a couple of days ago and it feels like she hasn't fucked in weeks. And she so very much wants to fuck someone, it's always a rush, and it's even more of a rush dumping them outside when she's done. She's going to give one of those boys the best night of their petty little lives, and then dump them on the sidewalk like the worn-out trash they are. She just has to get through this dumb lame orientation first. It's not like she really cares about this school; it's just something that'll make Daddy happy so he'll give her more money. Which he already had done; all her cute smiles and telling him how she was going to need to make sure she was ok without daddy to protect her had doubled her allowance -- she'd be able to buy tons of pretty clothes to make all the boys want her and all the girls jealous. And here she was, walking and talking to a couple lameo boys, when she'd really hoped she'd find someone a little bit more fun. 

But wait, is that weirdo rich boy coming to talk to her? Huh. Maybe he's figured out that the stupid nerdy girl is below his station and is coming to talk to someone of his proper class. Valerie figures she can probably use someone like him a dozen times or so before she gets bored of him. She puts on her best coquettish smile and slyly bats an eye in his direction as he approaches. 

...wow. The helpful persona has nothing to say here; even his predatory side is kind of uncomfortable. She's so intensely fake it's actually kind of hard to look at her.

But if he can figure out how to keep her, she'll be useful, and that's worth putting up with a fake smile or two, right?

He still has a hard time making himself smile back.

She gives a little smile back, still flirting with the other boys. She's not going to go over and talk to him, oh no, she's gonna make sure he does all the work here. That way she can always snap up one of these little boys if the big boy doesn't end up working out for some reason. She's sure one of them would love to comfort her if she gets all sniffly about how it didn't work out. Maybe even make them angry at the big strong man being mean to her. There's lots of kinds of fun she can have with these dumb boys, and so little time to do it in. She's gonna have such a fun time at college. 

It is perhaps a good thing for Valerie that Sean can't actually read her mind. Reading her body language is bad enough. The dismissive-possessive thing she's got going on with the two boys currently flirting with her, and the undercurrent of contempt in how she looks at him, and...

...you know what, fuck it. He's at least pretty sure that if he gets fed up enough he can resort to telling her off before he resorts to violence.

"Hope I'm not interrupting anything," he says, stepping up to her little group. This time he hangs back, giving the other two guys clear precedence, deliberately not intruding on their space or putting himself between them and her.

The two boys, given the opportunity presented, circle in closer around the girl, the one that Sean scared off from Karen before especially. 

Valerie is a little miffed. She wanted to see him push the other two out of his way, or stand in front of them, or something. It's always such fun getting boys to fight over her. Besides, can't he see she's the hottest thing in the room? And that she wants? Valerie turns up her smile. What is he doing giving these other stupid boys a chance. 

But that's fine. He's just a nice, polite boy. Thinks he's a nice big boy scout, does he? Maybe that's why he was talking to that ugly nerd trash. Well, she can enjoy a challenge. And it's always fun to have a nice polite boy at her beck and call. 

Valerie carefully flattens out her "come hither" to a warm glow, and, with a smile, says. "Oh, not at all! We were just talking about what we think the food is going to be. Would you like to join our little conversation?"

I find being in your presence almost physically painful, he does not say, because he is trying very hard to keep his eye on the prize here.

"Do we have any reason to think the food's going to be good?"

Valerie gives her best amused snort. "Probably not compared to what you and I are used to, of course." Actually, hm, she could see a bit of a dark look on his face. Maybe, given that he's a boy scout, he doesn't respond to superiority so well. She decides to tone it down a little. "Well, at least compared to what we've had, I'm sure. But that isn't really a fair comparison, is it? I'm sure it'll be at least passable, and likely nutritious! At the very least. I'm sure it'll be fun, don't you think?"

"Man, I don't know what kind of food you think I eat. I think my favourite meal I ever had was pizza at Costco."

This is a really unstrategic thing to say but it's true and it's so hard to say anything else.

Valerie doesn't let her emotions appear on her face, or stumble at all when she hears him say that. She mentally downgrades Sean several notches. Clearly he's a simple boy who, well, even if his parents are rich clearly is mostly being lifted up by their wealth. And doesn't have a good appreciation for the finer things in life. Well, maybe if he shows him a really good time, he'll be super thankful. And... if his parents are in the habit of just giving him expensive presents like the car, maybe she can get him to give her expensive gifts too. Like clothing. Or jewelry. And, if she's being honest with herself, Valerie is pretty jealous of that car of his. Her daddy only ever got her a BMW. Maybe once they've been alone for a little bit, she can convince him to let her borrow it. For a while. Admittedly, she's never actually thought to ask daddy for a nice car like that. Maybe she will when she calls him later, and then she'll have two really expensive cars.

Still, it takes her a couple seconds to figure out how to respond to that. "Oh, really? I didn't know you were so into pizza! I bet I can take you to a really good pizza place in the city later, if you'd like to have a dinner with me?" She bats her eyes at him, just little, giving him a small hint of a seductive smile. "I'm sure it'll be delicious, and we'll have such a good time together."

Oh thank fuck. He smiles a little, and if he's more relieved than flirtatious, well, he does his best to cover it. "Sure, I'd love to."

Valerie gives him a warm grin, all the while smirking internally, and starting to mentally plan the date. What best to wear to catch his eye and make him want her... he still doesn't seem to be as into her as she'd like, for some reason, well, she's sure a bunch of makeouts will change that, but what to wear to get him to do it. Maybe, if he's so attracted to that trash with the giant tits, well, maybe she'll wear something that shows off her breasts, maybe the lovely red number with the cleavage that goes allllll the way down to her belly button. Yes, that'll do nicely.

Valerie also wonders if there's some way she can show up that bitch before the orientation is over. Maybe better not to, though, if he seems to like her, and she doesn't want to make this any harder -- though the fact that he's a hard nut to crack is making her want to have him all the more. Besides, there will be plenty of opportunity to prove that she's better than that brainy trash once she parades him in front of her.

"Awesome!" she says with a coquettish grin. "It should be a fun little outing! We can figure out the details later, maybe once this is all done, just give me your number and I can text you mine so we can work out the details!"

One of the boys glares angrily at Sean, and walks off to talk to someone else.

He manages to summon up a semi-genuine smile by picturing her lying on the floor of his torture closet bleeding in a dozen places.

"Sure thing," he says agreeably, and gives her his number.

She puts it in her phone with a smile. "Great!" I'll see you soon~" Valerie adds a bit of a seductive lilt to the "soon" before skipping off to talk to someone else, to see if it'll make him jealous. There aren't that many great prospects in this small group, but well, that guy over there looks reasonably cute. She'll also wait, oh, lets say 20 minutes or so to text him, just to make him anxious. Really, whatever it takes to make him a nervous wreck by the time they go on their date, the easier it'll be to manipulate him into being her rich boytoy until she gets bored of him.

Oh thank fuck he doesn't have to talk to her anymore.

He does his best not to instantly drop her from his attention, because he bets she'll be checking to see how interested he seems. Maybe he can just... stop trying to be an extrovert for a little while and just eat lunch and not worry about it. Good plan.

That will probably work fine, they're just coming up on the mess hall anyways.

It turns out, once they're inside, the mess hall, while it does have a cafeteria section, also has about a dozen small, fast-food-like restaurants in addition, kindof like in a food court at a mall. There's a burger place, a chinese food place, and a number of others. They're not restaurants anyone will recognize; they're pretty clearly specifically made for this college and don't exist elsewhere.

"Alright, who here has signed up for the meal plan already?" the RA asks. Some of the hands are raised, but not all of them. "Well, for those of you who haven't -- each of you are assigned meal blocks which can be used here, at the cafeteria, which will have one of several dozen rotating options every day. You can see the schedule on the meal plan website. A few of these, such as chicken finger day, you probably want to use your meal block on the cafeteria, and get to lunch early." She gives them all a grin.

"Most of the rest of the time, while the food is available, it isn't necessarily what I'd call, well, good. Though your personal preferences may differ. Regardless, on those days, you may wish to use your meal block at one of these other fine establishments here," she waves her arm in demonstration, "instead. They offer 2 or 3 different options, but always the same ones every day. If you're the kind of person who likes eating a cheeseburger with fries for lunch every day, well, you certainly have that option."

Rachel holds up a bunch of plastic cards shaped like credit cards. "Because you're all here for orientation, your meal plans haven't actually started yet. These cards have 2 meal blocks on them, one for lunch and one for dinner, as well as an additional $5 to spend on extras that aren't necessarily included in your blocks -- a number of these places will let you upgrade your blocks for an extra dollar or two, and depending on which meal plan you decided to sign up for, you may get a weekly allotment of flexible money, as well as blocks." She starts handing out the cards. "The blocks and money on these will expire after today, so if you do want to use it, you're going to need to do so before the end of the day."

She pauses for a moment, with a smile, making sure they all look like they understand, and that they all get their meal cards. "Feel free to check out and buy food at any of the many places here, and have lunch with whomever you'd like -- there are a number of other orientation groups here right now if you want to talk to any of them. If you're not on the meal plan, and you want to be, you'll want to talk to the nice folks over at that table over there." She points to a table with a short line, with two students with Orientation 2019 shirts in bright colors. "They'll be able to explain it in more detail and help you pick a plan. Regardless -- I want all of you back here by 1:20, to make sure we can get going on our tour at 1:30. That should give you all plenty of time to eat. Understood? Great! Go have fun, and feel free to talk to me or anyone else in a shirt like this if you have any questions." 

Wow this is all so needlessly complicated. Oh well. Sean is going to have INTROVERSION and BURGERS.

(Should he be getting on a meal plan so he can use this place as a hunting ground? Nah, there'll probably be plenty of other places he can pick up victims, no reason to restrict himself to fellow students. And probably there is some way to eat at the cafeteria with real human money once in a while if for some reason you really want to do that. And if there isn't, oh well.)

The line for burgers is somewhat longer than most of the rest of the lines. This is probably not too surprising. A reasonable fraction of the people from their orientation group also head for the burger line as well, including Karen -- though that's mostly because the other people she'd been talking to are heading there as well -- and seeing Sean get into that line clinches it for her.

While they're in line, Karen comes up next to Sean.

"Hey, Sean," she says. "What were you doing talking to Valerie, of all people?" She's still somewhat confused about how smart Sean is and in what ways, but she still very much wants to make sure she can help him grow. And she's sure Valerie is bad news, and is a little worried that he doesn't seem to notice, or care. (It's also a data point against him being gay, which was a bit of a surprise, but who knows.)

He smiles wryly. "I wanted to see if I could tolerate her. The answer seems to be maybe."

Well, at least he knows, at least on some level, that she's bad news. Still. He has the perfect opportunity here to get better and see what he can really do, and she doesn't want him to blow it. "I'd be careful around her," she tells him. "I think she's bad news, and she keeps glaring at me." Sean's phone gives a single buzz in his pocket. "I... I would be very careful around her. Okay?"

"I'll be all right," he promises.

"If, if you're sure, ok? Just, if she's a jerk to you, or tries to manipulate you, or something, you don't have to listen to her." Sean's phone buzzes again. "And you can always talk to me if you need to." Sean's phone buzzes a third time.

"Aww, thanks. Seriously, though, I'll be okay."

Well, it's not like she can do any more. Not without being much too overbearing. Well, hopefully she'll be able to keep an eye on him. She feels a little awkward asking for his number, or anything like it -- she doesn't want to give him the wrong impression. She can probably just find his student email in the student directory and email him later. Or ask him for it later when it's not quite so awkward. She turns back to the conversation with her new friends (it's amazing how much easier it was once the other nerds realized she was smarter than them. They still keep glancing at her chest, and some of them are being a little awkward, but well... it's a lot better than it was in high school. Thank goodness). She turns herself to try and include him in the conversation with the rest -- they're talking about their class schedules seeing if they have any classes together, and when the classes are, or what electives they're going to take next semester when the college lets them start to pick classes.

Sean doesn't have his class schedule on hand and so can't super participate in this, so he takes the opportunity to find out who the hell was texting him just now.

It's Valerie.

The first text is "This is (heart emoji)Valerie(heart emoji)! You can come pick me up at 6 PM this evening!". The message is followed by her address, and several more emoji hearts.

The next one is "We're gonna have sooooooo much fun! Hope you're looking forward to it! (winkyface emoji)".

And the last is "XXXOOO(heart)(heart)(heart) (winkyface) (winkyface)".

...okay. So. Kinda jealous, huh.

Well, at 6PM tonight that will hopefully stop mattering one way or another.

He texts her back sounds good, I'll see you then!, and can't quite bring himself to add a heart emoji. Wow this is painful.

If he can see Valerie at the moment, or looks around for her, he'll see her look up at him and give him a wink while standing next to yet another attractive boy (she's scoping this one out for more fun and games later, but she doesn't have the kind of plans for him as she does for Sean. This boy's just a one time fling, Sean is going to be wrung dry before she's done with him. Plus it might make him jealous if he looks over at them).

If he's not looking in her direction, she's going to glare pointedly at the back of his head for a few seconds or so before turning back to her current target and continuing to flirt with him.

He does in fact glance over at Valerie, and spots her with the other boy, and smiles, because pretending to be into her is already painful enough and pretending to be jealous on top of that would just be way too much.

Nothing further interesting happens while they're in line; the conversation moves from school to math and computer science to various other more nerdy topics. Sean is welcome to contribute but may not have too much to say, if this sort of thing isn't in his interest. Karen is having a great time though.

Eventually, they manage to get their food, with about a half-hour to spare. The four of them head off towards an empty table, Karen included, with their trays of food. There's enough room for Sean to follow if he wants, or he can go try and talk to other people if he desires. Valerie is chatting up the same boy from before at a table, Elliot is sitting by himself all small again at the corner of a table, still looking small and nervous, Zoe has a sandwich and is alternating taking bites of it and typing on her phone, still acting standoffish, and Rachel is in a small knot of people, all of them wearing Orientation 2019 shirts, having a conversation about something.

There are also a number of people he hasn't met yet in the cafeteria if he wants to look around at those.

He does glance around halfheartedly, but no one really catches his eye, probably because dealing with Valerie is stressful enough that right now he would have a hard time getting excited about even the literal most attractive person on Earth.

As fun as it is to watch Karen have a great time, he doesn't really understand what anyone's talking about and there's a lot of them and it's a bit much. He hangs back and looks for somewhere isolated to sit. Elliot looks to have taken the most isolated available spot. Well, maybe he can sit near there and just ignore everyone. Yes. Good plan.

Elliot shrinks back a little when he sits there, and makes no attempt to communicate. If Sean doesn't say or do anything he'll relax a bit after a dozen seconds or so and go back to picking at his Chinese food with his chopsticks.

This is exactly what Sean was after and now he can happily eat his burger in peace.

The burger is decent, but not great, the fries are, well, normal crinkle cut fries. It is a pretty bog-standard burger with fixings and fries. There's ketchup and mustard and mayo and things in various stations around the food court/cafeteria, along with napkins and straws and such, if he wants any.

Once it gets to be about 1:15, people start tossing their trash and putting their trays and silverware and glasses in the relevant depositories for such things, before gathering in various locations. Each of those locations has an Orientation-shirted person standing in the middle. If Sean looks around he can spot Rachel pretty easily (since she is rather tall).

It's convenient how she's so findable. And everything feels much less terrible now that he has eaten something and not had to talk to anyone for a while. Over to Rachel he goes.

There are, once again, people in groups of ones and twos and threes and fours, conversing happily with each other or keeping to themselves. By now, the conversations are much less awkward than they were this morning. Karen is happily explaining something to her new friends, Elliot also looks somewhat better for having food inside him, and Zoe is as standoffish as ever. Valerie is nowhere to be seen.

When it gets to be 1:25, a couple more stragglers show up, and Rachel says "Alright, that's everyone -- Valerie told me that she had something she needed to do, and won't be around for the rest of the day, in case anyone is worried." She does her best not to make a face, though Sean will notice if he's at all paying attention. If Sean manages to look at their reactions, several of the other students look disappointed, and another several (including Karen) look relieved. "We can get an early start on the tour! All of this is on your campus map, of course, but it'll be a lot easier to find your buildings and classrooms tomorrow if you've already been to them once, so keep an eye out for the rooms from your class schedule so you know where they are! For our first stop, we're going to be heading to the arts building, which is..." she points. "...thataway! We'll head out this exit." She leads, and the rest of the group follows. 

Well, Sean has only the vaguest idea which places he needs to be figuring out how to locate, but whatever, he'll just get to know the whole place and then wherever he needs to go he'll be able to find it.

Rachel is very happy to show them the whole place! And she will give additional mention of where certain kinds of classes tend to be held (architecture is mostly in a specific hallway in the arts building). And plus she adds random details that are useful to know about campus that are clearly not on the sanctioned tour, such as the fact that the library study room blinds are not actually opaque enough to hide everything going on inside them, which may not be immediately obvious since the inside of said rooms are so much brighter than the hallway outside. ("But," she adds, "you can always turn off the lights.")

There are various conversations that happen during the tour, of course, but Rachel has more than enough patter and additional facts and answers to whatever questions they have to keep their attention the entire time. They pass various other orientation groups going in various directions as they go through the buildings, clearly on the same tour in a different order.

Eventually, they come back to the main quad, which has several paved paths running through the large green field, the sides of which are peppered with various tables and posters advertising various clubs.

"And, this is our last stop!" Rachel says. "Telling you from experience, college is a lot easier and a lot more fun if you join a club or two. It's a lot easier to go to campus, especially when you live off-campus, if you have a fun activity to look forward to at the end of the day. You don't have to join right away, and not all of them are here today -- there will be a bigger fair in a week -- but feel free to peruse the various tables and talk to the people there, and sign up with your college email for whatever you're interested in. Signing up is not a commitment, you're just putting yourself on their mailing list, so feel free to sign up for a bunch now and pick which one or two or ten you want to do later."

She pauses for a moment. "Also, this is where I leave you all to your own devices -- I'll be over at that table" she points to a table full of Orientation folks "in case you need anything, so feel free to come over and ask me, or anyone else with a shirt like this if you're curious or need help with something. And if you want to follow up later, my school id is easy enough to remember -- it's just rquinn -- so my email will be rquinn@mtc.edu . Feel free to come to me with any questions or concerns you might have, no matter what -- I'll be glad to help out with anything, or direct you to the folks who can!" She gives them a small bow. " That's all for me for now! Hope you had a tolerable time, and hope you all have a great first semester here!" And then she stands and waits, in case anyone comes up to her for a few minutes as everyone disperses.

That tip about the study rooms is hilarious.

Okay, time to find all of the dancing clubs that he might be remotely tempted to join, and anything else that looks interesting, and he should've set up his email before now but he does at least know what it is and with any luck he can figure out how to check it later.

There are a number of dance clubs! Similarly-categoried things are clustered together on the quad, so once he finds one of the dance club tables, the others are nearby. There's a salsa dance club, a swing dance club, and yes, a ballroom dance club, along with several non-social dance clubs. Several other performance-based clubs are nearby as well (including a magicians club, of all things).

He gives his email to all the social dance clubs, although he probably won't end up joining literally all of them.

Magicians club makes him laugh a little, but he's not going to join it just for the amusement value of secretly having real magical powers, so he gives it a pass.

If he pays enough attention to the ballroom dance club signup he'll be able to see that Jenna has already signed up (and find out her last name and email).

There are various other clubs he can see if he wanders around some more, math and science and video gaming and tabletop gaming and orchestra and choir and student ethnic groups and social change groups, along with various others. But also a number of students are peeling off and heading back to their dorms at this point; it seems like nothing else is scheduled. He's perfectly free to leave if he wants.

Yeah, none of the rest of that looks interesting. He doesn't even bother looking through all the clubs, just heads back to his car and...

...well, at first he intends to go home, but then he's sitting in his car and realizes that he doesn't want to leave it, so he parks briefly within range of a building with free wifi and sets up his student email on his laptop, then spends the rest of the afternoon driving aimlessly around town. Somewhere in the middle of all that it also occurs to him to text Jenna and report that he successfully found the ballroom club.

Jenna is rather ecstatic to see that he's signed up. "Awesome! Can't wait to see you there!", she texts him. She refrains from doing anything more; after having thought through her experiences yesterday, and having been a little overwhelmed and everything by all of orientation, which had been really fun and let her meet a whole bunch of new people, she decided it might probably be best to take things a little slow. But not too slow -- if it turns out she can handle her classes fine she really wants to take more drives in his car and maybe do other fun things in his car. Eventually. With some calm consideration beforehand. Probably.

After driving around for a while, Sean gets a call on his cell phone. It's marked as "unknown number".

Oh, is it.

He picks up.

"Hello, Sean," says the voice on the phone. "I will require your decision." It's rather clearly the person he met in his apartment, yesterday.

Wow he'd forgotten how much he hated that guy. The voice really brings it all back.

"I'm keeping it."

"Excellent. Do enjoy yourself, Sean," he replies. And then the phonecall ends.

...huh. So he actually didn't ever have to agree to anything.

Only time will tell if that even makes a difference, he guesses. Meanwhile, he has a date with Valerie to dread and/or look forward to.

Date time approaches! She told him to be at an address at 6 PM; when does he manage to show up?

5:55.

The address is of a very nice apartment building, in a richer part of town, not too far from his own. Valerie is not yet anywhere to be seen. 

He can wait until it's actually 6.

There is still no Valerie by then. 

At exactly 6:00 he texts her ready yet?

He will not immediately get a response. 

Okay, sure.

He puts on music and waits. If she takes more than ten minutes to answer, he's gonna get out his laptop and watch porn or something.

At 6:24, the door opens, and Valerie finally exits the building. She...

Valerie is sure she looks incredible. Especially after that delightful romp with that silly boy that she dragged off during orientation. Not up to her usual standards, perhaps, but it had been days and Valerie always thought better after a nice hard fucking. Plus, watching his face when she threw him out and told him that she had a real man showing up in a few hours was priceless. Almost as fun as the sex itself. It's always such a rush when she dumps them. 

But after she'd tossed him out on his ear, she'd had a few moments to think. 

The big boy had been much less into her than usual. He'd still agreed to the date, possibly because he wasn't the smartest boy, but he was eager and friendly. So Valerie probably would need to not quite stir the pot so much until she had him well and truly hooked. And some of her regretted leaving him with that huge-chested nerd trash in case the bitch managed to reel him in without her, but she managed to reassure herself that he'd at least show up. He was too nice not to. Besides, by then it was too late to do anything about it. 

She showered, making sure to wash her hair and put on lotion, and then started preparing for the date. She really wanted that car; she was going to pull out all the stops until he was hers. She very much needed to wear her fun little red number, especially to make sure she drew his eye better than that bitch. It was perfect for it, too, a dark red length of fabric that went from the back of her neck, over each breast, pulling them together, and meeting together at her waist, where it filled out into the bottom of the dress. It was backless, as well, just for maximum effect. And no panties, of course, in case things got, well, fun. Which she was sure they would. Along with that she put on some sensible matching red heels, and a necklace with a large dark stone that sat between her breasts, drawing attention to them. Valerie looked at herself in the mirror, grinning snidely at herself. Ravishing, as always. There was no way he was going to resist her like this. 

She did up her hair, and makeup, and then sat, watching out the window. 

When he arrived, she smirked (after taking a moment to be, well, impressed with the car. It would be hers soon enough. And worst case... she took a moment to snap a few pictures of it to show daddy to ask him for it. She knew he'd cave before long after such an impassioned request from his best and lovely daughter; her pout always did him in. But that could wait.

His text made her smirk. He was on the hook. Still, she knew she didn't need to make this take too long. She waited for his next text; she'd respond to that one. 

But none came. Eventually, slightly aggravated that he hadn't even texted or tried to drive away, she exited the room and went to the elevator. 

The elevator ride was calming, and she took a moment to get back to herself. He was clearly anxious at this point. Normally she'd make him wait longer, but, well. She needed that car. She needed to show up that brainy nerd trash. And she needed to wrap him around her little finger, and make him hers. And she would. 

Valerie flouces out of the building, with a seductive smile on her face, makes a show of looking around for his car, smiles seductively when she "finds" it, and waves, walking over to him slowly. She wonders if he'll play the real gentleman here and get out and open the door for her. Probably not, few men do these days, but it's always nice when they do. 

He sees her coming out of the corner of his eye, closes the laptop, and leans over to open the door.

She was hoping he'd get out of the car to do it, but well, better than nothing! And soon he'll be falling over himself to be chivalrous, Valerie is sure. She pauses just in front of the open door, keeping her frown that he is still wearing the same clothing to herself. It's ok. If anything, it'll just make him feel embarrassed and shameful. She can work with that. 

"Sorry it took so long! You know how long it takes us girls to get ready!" She giggles vapidly, fluttering her eyes in his direction, and spinning around so he can see all of her. "I bet it's worth the wait, though!" 

"You do look pretty hot," he acknowledges. "I like the dress."

Valerie grins happily at him, tittering a little at the compliment, pretending to be overwhelmed by his (admittedly, underwhelming) compliment. Always good to make them feel good for doing nice things for her. Pretty soon he'd be doing very nice things for her. Like letting her borrow his car. 

She daintily gets inside, and closes the door behind her. The seats are way too comfortable, and the car is incredible. She needs this car. She's so glad it'll be hers soon. 

The moment the door clicks shut, he wills her to be unable to lie or conceal her feelings. And then wills the doors to lock themselves and stay that way. (His eyes glow briefly, but he blinks them shut long enough to cover it.)

"So, I found a great Italian place for us that serves pizza," Valerie says, and frowns. She hadn't quite meant to say it like that, but, whatever. "Let me just put in the address for the dark alley where I plan to make out with you first before we get to the restaurant in your GPS." Wait what that definitely wasn't what she intended to say. She tries to smile but instead she can feel the confusion and dismay on her face appear, and she can't make it go away. "Er, because that'll be a fun start to the date and will definitely make you more inclined to listen when I tell you to order the real food instead." Wait what why is she saying all of this out loud. "Er, I mean..." She wants to say that she's just kidding but she can't. She blushes. What's happening? Um. She needs to make out with him, now, to cover over this, that way he'll totally ignore it all. She tries to act all sexy and needy and show off her body and lean over for a kiss, showing off her tits, but for some reason she acts all tentative and scared. What the fuck is happening? She tries to kiss him anyways. 

As she leans toward him, he freezes her long enough to comment, "It's amazing how much less infuriating you are like this."

This time he doesn't hide the fiery light in his eyes. It flares when he takes away her ability to move, and flares again when he gives it back.

She pulls away from the kiss, terrified. His eyes glowed, fuck, he was doing something to her. Froze her and unfroze her. Made her tell the truth. She has to get away from him. Valerie scrambles backwards towards the car door, and attempts to open it to get away, trying the handle madly. It doesn't work. She tries changing tactics. She still can't act all sensual, for some reason, even if she is a little turned on by his power. "Well, you have me," she tells him, "now what are you going to do with me?" She tries blinking coquettishly at him to act all seductive at him, to gain back some measure of her power, but her body just won't do it. Damnit. Well, maybe... "I want to give you pleasure," she says. "I bet I can give you pleasure like you've never had before, if you'll let me. It'll be the best time of your life, if you just let me act a little more freely." It's really annoying having to say things like that without the usual seductive lilt in her voice, but well, hopefully it gets the point across. And maybe with a little bit more play she can have this... magic boy under her spell again. She feels compelled to speak. "I really want to seduce you," she tells him, trying her best to choose her words carefully. It doesn't work, she needs to say more. "I want to seduce you so that I can, can, make you more enamored of me." She's struggling. "Want to please me. Want to do whatever I say." Damnit. 

"Yeah, this is so much better."

His eyes flash again; the windows are opaque. Again; his laptop vanishes from his lap (and appears in his backpack, which is sitting in the cargo space under the hood).

"So! At this point I feel like it's only fair to be straight with you, and I hate lying anyway, so here's the deal. I have magic powers. In this car I am effectively a god. You piss me off immensely, and I kind of want to murder you, which, fun fact, I can do at any time just by thinking about it. But all things considered I think I'd rather make you swear to be my slave forever. Then I can do whatever I want with you at any time whether you're on my territory or not."

Valerie has no reason to disbelieve him. And... to be honest, she's a little turned on by his sudden strength and power. And, what power. He could make people do all kinds of awful things. She, she needs to be a part of this. She spends a few dozen moments stammering, deciding on a course of action. This, of course, compels her to say "I'm trying to figure out what to say next, to convince you to make me a part of this." Which really makes her rather cross -- but at least she doesn't have to stammer. She takes a few moments to breathe, and figures out what to say next. 

"I didn't know you were strong, and I'm sorry for pissing you off," she says. Damn. Why can't she act all seductive? She can still talk about it at least. "I think I can be a lot more use to you alive, and I think you'll have a lot more fun if I get to serve you as more than a slave." Still no problems. "I can help bring you other women, and men too, if you're into that sort of thing. Especially men. I've always found it easy to make them do what I tell them to. Until you. But if you're not into them, I know I can turn plenty of girl's heads, even some who thought they were straight." 

"Anything you can give me if I don't own you, you can still give me if I do," he points out. "You're really not negotiating from a position of strength here."

"I, um." Hmph. "I think if you make me into a slave, you will ignore me, and not listen to my ideas," she says very carefully. "If you give me power over your slaves and let me give you advice, I expect I can help you enjoy yourself more, and please you while you do it. I, do, want the power as well because I will enjoy using it," she says. "But I want to suck you off while you crush the will of the lesser slaves under your heel. I think it, will be hotter, for you, if I can teach you better ways to control others, to humiliate them, and let me egg you on." Frustrating as this is, she is getting a little turned on right now. "Wouldn't you love it if you did horrible things to someone while I sucked you off? Or fucked your nice hard cock as you made them bow and scrape and take their dignity away?" The idea turns her on. And some of the seductive lilt is coming back into her voice, and she smiles. Maybe she is changing his mind? "I can show you the kind of pleasure I can give you now, if you'd like to see~?"

"Oh, trust me, I'll like you much better as a slave. I'll listen to you more, too, because you won't be able to lie to me. As long as I don't own you, you're that annoying manipulative self-centered girl I kind of want to murder. But once I own you you're mine, and I plan on taking good care of my things... if you give yourself to me willingly. If you waste my time making me torture you into it, I'll probably just use you to test how deep my mind control powers can go."

Valerie curls her lip into a frown. "Well. I." Hmph. A slightly different tactic, then. She is ok with being his slave as long, as, well. "What... does care mean, exactly? Caring for me is... I enjoy power. Want power. Deserve it. I... can be your slave, but I want to be your best slave. Your top slave. If you promise to let me rule them, I'll submit to you willingly. I want to have power over your other slaves like that trash of a girl, what's her name, Katie?" Whoops, she hadn't quiiiite meant to say that. Shit. "I know that sounds bad, but, if, if you promise to let me be your top slave, let me rule and control your slaves, show you how hot it is to humiliate them, you'll see how much more fun it is that way. And I'll be better able to help you convince others to become your slaves forever, just like me. You want that, don't you? I can show you just how hot it is to have power over others, if you make me your favorite. And you know I'm not lying." 

"Karen is worth ten of you," he says flatly, "and you are incredibly lucky that I'm basically not into humiliating people, because I bet you'd hate the kinds of things I'd do to you if I was. As it is—"

His eyes glow sun-gold again, and he grabs her by the hair and drags her into the obsidian-lined torture closet that's now in the back of the car. His magic provides just enough light to see dim shapes; the glow of his eyes reflects off the walls in glittering red-orange sparks.

"Get on your knees," he says, "right now, and swear to me that you're mine, that I own you, that you're giving yourself to me to be my slave and my property forever. Or I'll light you on fire and then ask again. And I will keep hurting you, and keep asking, until you give me what I want. And every time you make me ask again, you're taking another step away from the world where I might eventually let you earn a slave of your own, and toward the world where you die right here in the back of my car and a mindless doll who lives only to serve me walks out of here wearing your skin."

Valerie doesn't understand. He's strong. And powerful. And can make people do anything he wants. What he says doesn't make sense. "Have... have you ever tried humiliating people?" she ventures. "You... you should try it, you must never have tried it. If you try it, you'll love it, I can show you how much you'll love it!" 

And now she is on fire.

Valerie has never been in as much pain in her life. She hasn't really been in pain at all, before, she realizes. It hurts more than anything. She screams, and screams, and screams. "I, I, I'm sorry, please, make it stop, please! I'll, I'll..." no, no, he said Karen was better than her, better than Valerie, he can't. He wouldn't. She won't submit, not yet, not until she gets something. "Don't.... don't make her better than me," she screams, "She doesn't deserve to be better than me, you deserve better, you deserve me, please! She'll never be as good as me, she doesn't know how to please you the way I would!" 

The fire lingers through her screams, through her begging, through her pathetically misdirected attempts to convince him she's worth something.

And it occurs to him, as he stands there watching her burn, that maybe he could... correct a few of her mistaken assumptions here.

So he wills for her to know exactly how he feels right now.

The rush of power, the contempt, the frustration. The arousal at the sight of her shaking blistering body, at the sound of her screams. The patience, more patience than he would've expected to have at this point, the willingness to keep doing this for as long as it takes to break her. The complete indifference to all her offers of pleasure, because he understands with a deep and tired clarity that she has no idea what he wants, that she barely has any idea it's possible to want things other than exactly the same things that she wants, and that no matter how good she thinks she is at sucking cock she will never succeed at painting a picture of a future he finds enticing as long as all she's doing is describing her own fantasies and telling him to want them.

This.... probably hurts more than anything he could have ever done to her. With fire, or whips, or.... or... anything. She isn't being particularly inventive right now. He disdains her. He disdains her. He disdains her. How can he disdain her. And he... her mind balks at the concept of what he likes, he likes this and he... doesn't... like... humiliation. Not everyone does. He has the power to humiliate her, someone strong with the power to make others kneel and... person he.... no.... he doesn't see her as strong or powerful at all. As weak and... fake and.... pointless. And he isn't rubbing her nose in it. He isn't doing this to humiliate her, her wants her to understand so he can get on with things. And she can feel just how patient he's being, with wanting to get on with things. He wants her to understand and she doesn't understand at all. It does not and can not make sense to her. 

But she does understand she has no way out, without swearing herself to him, and that she has nothing he wants but that. That part is clear. That part is ever so clear. 

"I'll do it!" she screams. "Turn it off and I'll do it, I'll kneel and say whatever you want me to say! Just turn it off so I can do it!" 

He lets up with the fire, and lets up with the empathy a moment later, and waits.

She gets on her knees, quickly, grateful not to be in burning on fire and in pain, mind still confused and reeling. "I'm... I swear to be yours, to be your slave, I, I forget what you wanted me to say, just tell me and I'll say it, I'm sorry, please!" 

"Tell me you're mine," he says, grabbing her by the hair again. "Tell me you're mine and you'll always be mine. Tell me I own you."

"I, I, I'm yours!" She shrieks, still confused, and slightly terrified by the sudden violence. "I'm yours and will always be yours! You own me!" 

She can say it, which means that she believes it. She knows she means it. She knows that it's true. 

Good.

It would be convenient if there was a way to verify that it worked without letting her out of his car, but that can be a problem for Future Sean, because right now he would like to take out his frustration by violently fucking her face.

(But, because he does want to take good care of his things, he wills her to know that he's satisfied. Still angry, but not going to torture her again, at least not right now. She did what he wanted and she's not making anything worse for herself.)

Valerie blurbles and gags with surprise when he shoves his cock in her mouth, and starts fucking her, roughly. She, does her best to please him with her mouth (like a good slave should? Right? That's how she made her toys behave, so that's how she's supposed to behave in this sort of situation? She's still very very confused) but honestly, the fact that he's being so rough and moving her around entirely on his own and not giving her the slightest bit of control makes it somewhat difficult for her to use her usual techniques. At all. She's... really really glad that he's not going to torture her again, even if feeling his thread of anger makes her shiver in fear. She really wants to, to, thank him somehow, for his kindness and generosity in not torturing her, (because, again, that's how... slaves are supposed to behave?) but given his speed and roughness, she can't really figure out how. The best she can do is not resist and let him do exactly as he likes, while trying to figure out how to do more. 

He finishes quickly, and, as expected, feels much better afterward. He wills her to know that too. And he heals her, and runs his fingers through her scorched and tangled hair.

It feels good to own her. (And she should know that, too, definitely.)

Valerie is... grateful and confused by the feelings he keeps sending her way. Even if they don't make a ton of sense. Even though they violate her every sense and understanding of how this sort of thing should work. And then something weird happens. 

A part of Valerie's breast burns, not with heat or light or anything that hurts, but with energy, burning a symbol of ownership onto it, his symbol, his ownership. A stylized tattoo of a sun, burning brightly as it becomes a part of her. 

And as it does so, she becomes Sean's. She really, truly, is his slave. She belongs to him, and it is her purpose to serve her owner, her Master, her... whatever he wishes to be called, to be, his. An extension of his will, of his desires. She... knows now that she has no idea how exactly to do that. Before, she had been a tangle of conflicted desires, focused on her own needs and wants and pleasures, and even when he showed her what he wanted, she still was so blinded by her own thoughts and desires that she couldn't understand anything. Now...

Now, while she still has no idea how to properly serve, no idea what he wants, she can feel that a lot more clearly. See it more clearly. Now that she has proper focus, the proper, incentive, she can cut through all her foolish preconceived notions, instead of trying to get her owner to fit into them. She can change the way she thinks, and how she understands the world, to better understand her Master's perspective, and better serve him, more easily serve as an instrument of his will. Most importantly, she can ask.

"Master," she says, kneeling and bowing her head, but making sure his mark is displayed so he can see, and know. "Or Sean, or owner, whatever you wish to be called. I am yours now, and I will always be yours." Valerie pauses, trying to figure out how exactly to phrase her next statement. "I... it seems I have much less of an understanding of what powerful people might like. I am, honestly, not entirely certain how to serve you properly, given my prior, well, close-mindedness. I have, well, a lot of assumptions I've made that don't... seem to be correct. Now that you've pointed this out to me, and I've gained some, well, clarity and focus from being yours. Please, help me better understand you, and your needs and desires, so that I may serve you better, in whatever way you wish me to."

Valerie pauses for a few more seconds, before deciding to add with a slightly snide smile. "And if there are any of my talents, Sean, that you would like me to use for you, please don't hesitate to tell me. I still enjoy making others crawl for me; I expect I will be even happier making them crawl for you." 

...huh.

That's interesting.

Since she did ask, he shows her what he's thinking and feeling as he considers this new development.

He didn't expect this to happen. He likes it—it's hot when she calls him Master, and maybe even hotter when she calls him Sean in the same tone of voice, and it's taking him a serious effort of will to avoid just getting lost in staring at that fucking glorious tattoo—and it's useful, because now he knows she's his, he doesn't have to do elaborate careful tests, although he's probably still going to do the elaborate careful tests just to be on the safe side; useful because now that she's devoted to serving him, he doesn't have to figure out how to make her devoted; useful because with the magic having shaken her out of her self-centered assumptions, he won't have to keep correcting her about what he wants.

But, all that aside, it's bad incentives. He set up a game with very clear rules, and he intended to play it fairly, and the magic has gone and cheated at it without his approval. He didn't intend to take her this far this fast—and now, given who he is as a person, he's going to have to take this effect into account whenever he asks someone else to willingly belong to him; he's going to have to tell people that this is what happens when they agree to be his. Or at least that this is what happens when he fucks them afterward. He might have to experiment a little more to figure out exactly what the trigger was.

He's probably going to have her keep her new devotion, with some adjustments, in the long term. But his sense of fairness won't let him get away without at least consulting her original self; and it's important to know if her original self can even still be reached at this point.

So, much as it pains him to do it: he wills her mind to be temporarily freed from this effect of his ownership. She can keep her memories of what being devoted to him is like, but he wants to talk to her without the magic forcing her to worship him.

What an, odd, yet gratifying sensation. She's, well, happy to have turned him on. Happy to do things he likes. Probably because she's devoted to him, now, his slave forever, but... Making other people happy like this, when it's not being used as a tool to control the weak and stupid, is, well, interesting. She's not sure how she feels about it yet. 

She is however, unhappy that things aren't quite going according to his plan? She, well, the old she isn't entirely sure why he cares, keeping promises are for people who are weak, they're just tools made to control them. And she's his now, so what does it matter? Except, she's clearly wrong about something in there, because that's not how her Master, how Sean feels about it. (And is it hot to call him things he likes, even in her own head.) 

She wants to tell him not to be so worried, that she's still (she's pretty sure) mostly herself, but then he makes his eyes glow again (and wow is it hot when he does that...)

Valerie makes a bit of a lustful smile. Nope, that's not just her devoted self, it's still hot when he does that. It's such a rush to have her mind rearranged like that, to know that he has the power to do whatever he wants to her. 

...Admittedly, she's a bit, well, stuck now. And he's probably going to turn her back into her slavishly devoted self once he satisfies his silly ideals about morality and fair play. (And goodness does she wish she could seduce that out of him, let him really let loose. Even if he does like other things than the kinds of things she likes it's foolish to adhere to the laws of petty men and women when you can literally be a god to them. Rules are for mortals, like, um, Karen, or that boy she fucked this afternoon. Not for him. Not for... who she used to be. But he doesn't quite seem to understand that. But maybe she can help him figure that out.) But while she's still herself, well... if he wants to give her a chance to say what she really wants, well, she's not going to lie, is she? And maybe she can just improve both their lives that way. 

Valerie gives him a sultry seductive smile, still on her knees, because she feels like being on her knees. It was still pretty hot, belonging to him like this so utterly. "Well, hello, Sean," she says, with a sultry smile. "You had questions, did you?" 

...and she's still unable to lie either with her words or with her body, which means she's kneeling like that and looking up at him like that because that's how she honestly feels right now, even without the magic forcing her to.

Now that is really fucking hot.

He pets her hair again, because he can and he feels like it. (He still hasn't turned off the empathy.) "How do you feel about being mine so far?"

Nfff. Yuuuup. It turns her on to turn him on. In a weird way, it's still a kind of control. Even if he holds alllll the reins. Which is still hot. And he's still doing whatever he wants to her. Nnnnfff. 

"Turned on," is her first and immediate answer. "I don't think I ever quite realized how good it would feel to be controlled by someone else like this. It's almost as good as playing with other people myself... and I really~ can't wait to watch you do this to someone else. Hopefully someone I bring you? Even though you don't want me to for some... weird reason." She wrinkles her brow. "I still am pretty confused about some things, though, but I'm super glad you don't seem to... despise me anymore." She shudders a little in memory, then brightens up. "But now I turn you on so maybe we get to fuck again, how you like. And, it, feels really good to turn you on. It's hot how much power you have over me." 

"Oh, I might ask you to seduce people for me eventually." It is kind of hot thinking about her bringing him people to enslave. "The trouble is, I hate lying."

Not for any moral reason; the empathy makes that clear when he thinks about it. It's just uncomfortable. It itches. He wants to live in a world where he's powerful enough that he never has to lie to anyone ever again, that he can tell everyone exactly what he thinks of them at all times and still get everything he wants.

"So I don't want you to lie for me the way you usually do when you're trying to snare somebody. Outside this car I'm not going to let you remember that I have magic powers, most of the time, but if you can bring me people without lying to them about who I am or what I want, yeah, I'd like that."

His hand slides through her hair and down to the back of her head. His eyes glow, and the light in the room brightens, so he can get a really good look at her face right now. It's hot the way she looks at him, and he kind of wants her to suck his dick, but not yet. Not until he's done talking to her.

Valerie brightens when she hears that she might get to bring him new toys, well, new slaves. And wriggles a little bit with arousal.

And then she twists her face with annoyance at that feeling he gets. What a horrible, awful feeling for someone like him to have! People like him should be above the petty mortals below him, to have the freedom to act howsoever they desire, treat everyone below them with impunity and whim, but to be chained by such a stupid mental hiccup... well, Valerie doesn't think her Master, her owner should be held back by such things. Especially not if they're getting in the way of his pleasure. She wonders if there's some way she can get rid of it, so he has no reason to restrict his (or her!) actions.

And then there's that scrap of a vision of him ruling, being strong and powerful enough to do whatever he wishes, with utter impunity, without having to lie or trick anyone, just going everywhere and taking it. And this, this vision really turns her on, making her press her legs together in excitement. She imagines a castle, full of dozens, hundreds, thousands of obedient slaves, all enslaved to him, kneeling, serving whatever pleasures he has, whatever whims come to mind, and no one else being able to change that. Strong enough to go out in the world and find a pretty girl (or boy?) and tell them "you're mine now, I'm going to do whatever I want to you and there's nothing you can do to stop it." And there wouldn't be. She presses her legs together a little harder and moans gently at the thought of someone with that much power.

(And maybe, just maybe, in his castle of tens of thousands of beautiful slaves waiting on his every beck and call, surely he could spare a few dozen, or hundred to be her slaves too. Answering to her and obedient to her in everything except their Master's word. The idea of being pleasured by a dozen men (or women?) was electric, as was the delightful thought of being interrupted by him, telling them to stop because he wanted to her to please him, an exercise of power that showed just how much she belonged to him... well. It would be a while. She could dream, and try to persuade him.)

She pouts when he tells her that he doesn't want her to lie like that. She doesn't know how to ensnare like that, the whole point of seduction, of control was to drive them along chasing the promise of something delightful, something incredible and amazing, to make them fall head over heels for something that she always kept... just... out of reach. If she had to be honest well, she might actually have to give it to them. And then what reason would they have to keep doing what she wanted?

And then his eyes glow again as he exercises his power, his will, and the room brightens, and she grins at him, feeling the rush of control that he has. She'd much rather have this power for herself, of course. But watching it in action, seeing it used... it makes her so hot. She can settle for being his loyal slave if she gets to watch him do this over and over again. Not that she has any choice (which is both slightly sad, and hot).

He smiles slightly, looking down at her, watching her face while she thinks. It's so hot how turned on she gets about him.

And he—

—wants to know what she's thinking.

And boy does he.

His eyes are glowing again and she knows that means he's using his power again and she can't wait to see what that means, what he's going to do to her, to the room, to something next. She loves it every time he changes things with a simple thought or expression of will. She is jealous, she wants this power for herself, but she still delights and is aroused whenever she sees it in action. She can stand being his slave forever and ever if she gets to watch him do this, and she can't wait to see him do it to others, watch him make them kneel and pledge themselves to him forever as someone as strong as him deserves.

And the thing standing in the way of that is that stupid feeling of his, that silly tugging chain around his neck that would have made her useless if she'd ever had anything like that growing up. She still can't figure out how to get rid of it for him, to leave him as free to do as he wishes, as someone with a power like his should be able to. But she's going to keep thinking about it, even her more slavish self will want that for him, she's sure, and maybe she'll be able to come up with something he'd agree to.

Either that or just work faster towards that world where he has freedom to just tell the truth, where he has a castle of hundreds of thousands of devoted slaves and can go out and pluck anyone, from anywhere in the world, by telling them just what he's going to do and he's too strong and powerful to stop and they'll just have to do it. Where she maybe hopefully probably definitely has her own set of slaves to please her but he can interrupt whenever he likes which is so hot. The faster she helps him get there, the faster her Master can act the way he should be allowed to, without being held back by whatever silly things his mind is doing, and she can watch. She cannot wait to watch. And getting there will be such fun, even if she has to work around such silly and annoying restrictions to do it.

"...heh."

He grabs her by the hair, hauls her up to stand on her feet, and kisses her forcefully. She is hot and he wants her to know it. The way she's so aroused by his power, the way she dreams of a future where he owns thousands of people. It's amazing. It's beautiful. These thoughts and desires, her thoughts and desires, are beautiful.

Just one thing—

He breaks the kiss and says, staring into her eyes, "My desires are mine and I'll do what I want with them."

It's so hot when he kisses her, when he's turned on by her, when he just takes what he wants from her and drags her around and uses her like this, and she loves that her thoughts are beautiful, that he enjoys her fantasies about him. And she's so very turned on by just how much he can do, how he can just read her thoughts and see what she's thinking on a whim, she wishes she could have such a power so she can know just what about her her targets want, it would make seducing them so much easier. She greedily kisses him back as he takes her, uses her however he wants, as his is right.

And then she pouts a little when he tells her that his desires are his; her slavish self will likely follow that the way he wants her to, she won't be able to make his life better (and incidentally, hers as well) in ways he might not originally condone. He controls her enough that his word is law and so this could be her last chance to... "Are... are you, sure, Master? Things will be... easier if you let me... help you become even stronger, and more powerful. I want to help you become strong and powerful and put whatever hangups you have aside. Please, please let me help you?"

"Nah," he says. "I'm exactly who I want to be. And if I decide to change that, I doubt I'll need your help."

The core freedom, the first and most important freedom, is the freedom to own your own mind. If you don't have that you're not really free, no matter how many castles you build or how many slaves you take. He is very firm in this opinion.

And yes, he is very aware that he's taken that freedom away from her.

He kisses her again. And while he's kissing her, he thinks about how he's going to arrange for her to leave this car completely unaware of his magical powers.

First he should put all her clothes back. (He does that, a little regretfully, running his fingertips down her chest.) And then he should hide her new tattoo. (But he can't resist leaving it just faintly visible, the barest shadow of a mark, so light you could think you'd imagined it if you didn't already know it was there.)

And then...

He breaks the kiss, humming thoughtfully. Yeah, there's an idea. He'll put her back in the front seat just as she was, and himself just as he was, and take her memories of this whole encounter away, and leave her with her original personality, without even the compulsion to tell the truth. And then he'll rape her, force her to suck him off, and the moment she tastes him he'll activate her devotion again. This is a good plan. He likes this plan a lot. He's interested to see what she thinks of it.

Valerie chafes at his dismissal, she can see what he's thinking, and understands where he's coming from, but he doesn't seem to see that he's not really free. But well, she can also tell she's not going to manage to convince him. Maybe at the very least this conversation will plant a seed so that he can think of fixing it himself, or something. There's nothing more she can do.

And it's still so very very hot that he has taken that freedom away from her. Controlling her so completely and utterly, and the power to do it to others too, it's intoxicating to think about. She'd love this power for herself, so very very much, but watching him in action is still, so very... nnnnnf. She presses her legs together needily and kisses him back, enjoying how much he can just take, and take, and take...

She watches and feels his thoughts as they kiss, savoring his regret, knowing that it means he loves her body, that he finds her hot, that he wants her. And she loves that he enjoys the mark, that symbol of his ownership and power over her, wanting it to be always there for him to see if he goes looking for it, to know that it means she belongs to him, and him alone...

She watches as the idea forms, and grins back at him as he breaks the kiss (pressing her legs together at the fact that he has so much control over her very mind, to take it all away, to make her forget, nnnf). And the idea of being broken for him, again, it's so hot. So very very hot. She'll fight and scream and struggle and try to hurt him and then when she realizes he's in control (so very, very in control) and she has to do what he wants, she knows she'll rediscover this little fetish she never knew she had. And if that wasn't enough... well, he can just make sure of it. Will just make sure of it. The old Valerie will be inescapably his. Devoted to him, and thinking it's because he's just stronger than her. Which will of course, be true; she just won't ever realize how deep the control goes (so very very deep). She can't wait for him to remind her how deeply he controls her, it'll be such a rush to remember everything.

Mmmmmmm one more kiss. Because it's incredibly hot how into this she is.

Then he leads her into the front of the car again, fixes his clothes back to how they were when she got in, restores the space behind the seats from 'torture closet' to 'small cargo area', lightens the windows from opaque to merely tinted but keeps the soundproofing—

Cuts off the projection of his thoughts to her, but leaves her mind open to him.

Wipes her memory back to the moment she got in the car.

And reaches over, grabs her by the hair, and drags her head into his lap with one hand while the other hand opens his fly.

(He didn't do this on purpose, exactly, but it occurs to him at this point that from her perspective she would've just gotten abruptly ten times more turned on. That's pretty hot too, and maybe it'll help sell the illusion that this is all her own kinks at work.)

Valerie opens her mouth, ready to tell him about this great pizza restaurant she found (a lie, of course, but she's sure she can teach this poor boy how to enjoy proper food, and buy it for her). But before she can get a word out, he grabs her by the hair. She shrieks and struggles, strangely nervous and turned on, trying to get away from him. Apparently she'd misjudged his interest in her (which of course, made perfect sense, how could he not want her, he was just being sly). This wasn't the first time she'd had to deal with, well, overamorous boys, but this is the first time it's been so sudden and in such a contained space. And he's so much stronger than her (which is strangely appealing). But he needs to learn his lesson about who's in charge here. She'll play along, a little, turn it around, and punish him properly when he's well and truly his. He'll be begging for forgiveness when she's done with him.

"Oh, goodness, aren't you all eager and excited," she says, cooing sultrily over his cock, stretching out languidly, no longer fighting him. "But there's no need for any of this. I wanted you the first moment I saw you, and I'll be ever so glad to suck you off. And you'll enjoy it so much more if you let me do it on my own." And he would. Right up until the moment she stopped ever so short. But he didn't need to know that yet.

His hand is still tight in her hair, holding her head down. She can't look up at his face, only down at his cock as he forces her mouth onto it without even bothering to acknowledge her words.

And at that moment, right as she gets her very first taste... his eyes flash gold, and he restores the magic that makes her devoted to him.

She gags a little on the cock, as this overeager boy continues to ignore her (the gall!) and continues to try and use her like this. But... it actually feels really good. Valerie finds that she wants to please him like this, that it's fun to have a boy (or a man) who will grab her and use her how he wants, and won't take no for an answer. She licks and sucks and tries to do her best to please him, suddenly feeling devoted to serving him properly, and it feels so good. She's spent her entire life controlling others, she's never tried to see what it's like to be controlled.

Really, though, she's never actually found a man who could control her, that was clearly the problem. No one else was strong enough to resist her, even when they wanted her they were balked by her charms, but this man simply doesn't care. He just takes what he wants. And it's so very right that she be devoted to someone as strong as this, that she should want to serve and please him, and give him the pleasure he deserves. She wants ever so much to please him more, to find out what he wants her to do and do it. She continues sucking on his cock as best he'll let her, feeling aroused and delighted at his power and control, sliding a hand down between her legs and up her dress so she can touch herself, pleasure herself, feel how hot it is to be controlled for once.

This time he does, actually, let her suck his cock, instead of just forcing it down her throat. But his hand stays in her hair and every time she moves her head she can feel enough resistance to know that he's letting her move, and could stop anytime he liked.

When she starts touching herself, he lets her do that too. For now. It's pretty hot, after all.

She's really really happy to show him just how much pleasure she can give him, having been allowed (allowed!) the freedom to do so. Some part of her thinks that now would be a good time to pull her usual tricks, to get her control back, but she pushes that aside; he deserves better than that. Normally, here, she'd tease him and bring his pleasure up and down in waves, teasing and slowing and teasing and slowing until they begged her to let them cum.... but he was far too good for that, far too strong and powerful, and deserved better. Instead she slowly builds the pleasure up in him, enjoying the sensation of feeling him respond as she ramps his pleasure up more and more, making sure to let him savor it, enjoy it, the feeling of a willing, loving, devoted girl's mouth and throat on his cock, almost certainly like nothing he's ever felt before. All the while knowing he can grab her hair and pull again, whenever he wants, finish off inside her whenever he wants. She continues to touch herself to the thought, moaning and gasping and sucking and licking pressing her legs together around her hand, pushing on her clit again and again as she embraces these new and unexpected and wholly erotic feelings. No wonder her old pets fell so strongly for her before, if this is what it was like for the weak to kneel (kneel!) before the strong. And now there was someone even stronger and hotter, and she couldn't help but kneel before him like this. To do whatever he wanted and obey him like she should.

She brings him closer and closer to his climax at the thought, doing the same to herself, getting ready to enjoy the taste of a strong man's cum inside of her, for the first time in her life, ready to cum hard to giving someone deserving pleasure.

He comes, moaning softly, and pulls her head up and lets go...

(and exerting his will just a little, to make sure she can't come just yet, even though she's trying to time it that way)

...and immediately reaches over to grab her wrist and yank her hand away from her crotch.

Valerie whines. He... he... she whines and swallows and shakes with need and tries to tug her hand back but he's still so much stronger than her. And. And he doesn't want her to so, so, she shouldn't. He controls her pleasure, as is only right and proper (and that just turns her on even more, she almost presses her legs together in instinctual need at the thought but holds back with effort). She relaxes her hand, still whining as she shudders and pouts at him, wanting to cum so badly, but knowing that it was no longer her choice. Which only made it worse.

"P-p-please, sir," she says, with a moan and a pout. "Please, let me cum, I need it so bad, it felt so good sucking you off I want to cum to it, I need to, please, sir!" She shifts her body needily, to try and convince him (not needing to do much pretending for once in her life, she's never felt like this before, never ever been denied, always took pleasure for herself whenever and however she wanted, and now she can't).

He lets go of her wrist once it's clear she understands the situation.

"Mmm," he says. "You're gorgeous when you're all squirming and desperate. I like it."

He leans over a little to run his hand up her leg, stroking her inner thigh with his fingertips, pushing her dress a little higher. Then he tugs the dress back down.

"But we were going to go on a date, weren't we? And fucking in my car in front of your apartment building isn't much of a date. I think we should go have dinner, and you should spend the whole time thinking about how much you want to get off, and then I'll drive you back here, and then you should invite me up to your apartment to fuck you senseless. Sound good?"

Valerie whines with desperate anticipation and delight as he strokes her thigh, hot and ready, so ready, and then moans in despair when he moves his hand away. It's all she can do to keep her legs apart to keep from cumming when he tells her how he wants tonight to go. How tonight is going to go. It's so hot when he takes charge like that. She wants to cum so badly but she wants him to tell her what to do even more. She just can't help but do what he wants.

"Y-yes, Sean, sir, whatever you want. Anything, anything you want." She shifts in the seat, aroused and needy, shifting her body to show herself off for him. Gods she wants him to just fuck her so bad, but, but, he wants a date. A date. The restaurant. Oh no.

"I... I'm sorry sir but I may have, um, lied about some aspects of this date. I was, um, planning to take you to a very nice Italian place that, um, technically has pizza. And convince you to buy something other than pizza." She holds her head a little downcast, making herself look sorry. She is, actually, sorry. (A strange and unusual feeling.) And there's no need to mention the bit with the alley, she's too ashamed of that and he doesn't need to know. "I... I don't know if you still want to do that. Sir. I'm sure I could figure out a real pizza place to go instead. If you wanted. Or if there's anywhere else you'd prefer to go."

He rests his hand on her head and pets her hair a little, casually, because he can and he feels like it.

"I honestly don't care either way about the pizza. Sure, we can go to your very nice Italian place."

Valerie breathes a sigh of relief. She does in fact have a credit card on her (the one she keeps around for emergencies), and that's a good thing because there's no way she's going to make him pay for this dinner like she planned. Not in a million years. Just like when others paid for her, because she was better, he deserved to have others pay for him. And she would. Gladly. Gleefully. He deserves that and so much more. And he certainly doesn't need to know that she intended for him to pay.

"I, I can put the address in your GPS, if you want, Sean? That's what I was planning to do. Before." (Eventually, that is, but she really doesn't need to say that either. It's amazing how everything is different now. Fuck she wants to cum so badly.)

"Mmhmm." He pets her hair again. "Go ahead."

Valerie does so, trembling at his touch. He told her to think about how much she wants to get off, and she can't get off and when she's not distracted by anything else it's really hard to not think about anything else. About how he controls her now. Controls her pleasure. How he can do with her as he likes and it makes her so hot to be controlled. And how that makes her want to cum so badly. But she can't. And thinking about it is making it worse, but he wants her to. And... he gets what he wants. Because that's what he deserves. So she keeps thinking about it, shuddering and occasionally moaning with need, as she sits back, address entered. She's so hot and wet and horny and needs to cum so, so badly.

This magical slavery thing is even better than he expected. And his expectations were high.

He puts on his seatbelt, and then puts her seatbelt on for her, and then—paying careful attention to her thoughts and feelings and sensations—reaches down and pulls up her dress, touches her inner thigh again, runs his hand sloooowly up to her crotch, strokes her, teases her, slips a finger into her—

And then pulls his hand away, licks his fingers, and starts the engine. "Make yourself presentable," he says, not bothering to look at her. He doesn't have to look at her. She's going to do what she's told either way.

Valerie gasps and moans and whines as she feels his touch on her. Teasing her. Playing with her. Using her like the stronger more dominant more superior being he is. He touches her where he wants because he can and runs his hand up her thigh because he can and puts a finger in her because... Valerie gasps, and moans, involuntarily lifting her pussy towards him, whining pitifully as he pulls it away. S-so, so close. So fucking close. He's so hot. So strong. He's better than her and she's so very happy to be his and, and, she wants to cum so, so badly. How long is the dinner going to last before he takes her home and finally lets her cum. She cannot wait.

He... he told her to become presentable. "Yes, yes sir," she says, shaking herself out of her reverie. She's a mess. There's no way she can up to her usual standard by the time they get there (certainly not with her wetness still running down her thigh, she really really needs to cum, fuck), but she can be, as he said, presentable. After all, it's not like it's hard for her to be what other people consider to be presentable. She straightens her dress, fixes her hair as best she can, using her reflection in the window as a mirror. She still looks smoking hot. She always looks smoking hot, even overwhelmed like this. Better than that... well, he must like her for some reason, but he went on a date with her and not that annoying nerd from before. And, being better than her, being his first preference, winning over that stupid jerk, even in a much less than expected way, is so hot. Everything, everything is so hot right now. Winning, being taken and controlled, doing what he wants. She really wants to cum so very badly.

He's going to have to deal with the jealousy thing at some point but right now he only has one slave anyway so it doesn't matter. And this is incredibly hot.

He drives to the Italian place. Occasionally, at red lights, he reaches over and pets her hair or strokes her face. Once he reaches under the top of her dress to touch her breasts. It's all very casual, completely unconcerned with asking permission. Like he owns her. Like he owns her and they both know it and he's just playing with his toy as is his natural right.

Valerie was told to make herself presentable and she is doing her best to stay that way because she wants, desires, needs to make him happy. To, to, to do what he wants. Whatever he wants. But every time he touches her, just, casually, reaching over to pet her hair. Or touch her face. Or play with her breasts. Every time it sends her into a shuddering spate of arousal and desire and aching need. He, he just does what he wants with her. Whenever he wants. Because he controls her. And can use her. Do with her as he likes. And she can't stop him even if she wanted to. And thinking about that just makes her need worse and worse, making her sweat and wrinkle her dress and frazzle her hair and she has to, to keep fixing it. And, some part of her wants to complain that she's trying to do what he wants, and he's not making it easy. But, she, she knows how she would respond to such a thing. It isn't his problem. He has expectations of her, and it doesn't matter what gets in the way. It's up to her to obey. Fuck, obey. The word feels so good. She's, so, so, so controlled. She'll do anything for him. And fuck she's so hot and wet and needs to cum so bad she could almost cry. But that would make her less presentable. Fuck. Being controlled like this is, is, so hot. It feels so good to submit. To.. to obey. She shudders with need again. 

What a perfect state for her to be in when they arrive at the restaurant!

She pauses to catch her breath as he parks and exits the car, and then opens the door to follow behind him. At a respectful distance. Of course. Trying not to think so hard about needing to cum so she doesn't feel overwhelmed about needing to cum. It doesn't work very well. It'll be ok, though, they have a reservation and they'll have dinner and she'll take him back and then he will fuck her and it will be so good. Fuck, she's so fucking hot. 

Wow that's incredibly hot.

He leads her into the restaurant, and slows down a little as they enter.

Shit, he doesn't know about the reservation! Before the hostess can open her mouth Valerie blurts "we, we have a reservation! It's under Valerie." She catches her breath, regaining her composure. "Sorry about that. We have a reservation for two, under Valerie." She shifts back and forth, a little uncomfortably. 

The hostess looks down at her sheet, and back up at them. "Right this way, please," she says, grabbing a pair of menus, and leading them to a table towards the back. Valerie waits for Sean to go first so she can properly follow behind. (She is so, so, so fucking horny). 

(So hot.)

He waits an extra half-second as the hostess sets off, just because he likes the fact that Valerie is waiting for him to lead her; but then he follows the hostess to the table, sits down, and accepts a menu. And smiles at Valerie. Because he likes looking at her and knowing what a complete mess she is and that it's all because of him.

He's smiling at her because she's hot (because of course she is) and normally that would make her smile back all enticingly all turned on at her power but right now he has all the power and she's turned on for an entirely different reason. Valerie shifts uncomfortably in her seat, trying to ignore the wetness in between her legs. And how hot it feels to be smiled at like that at by him. How hot he makes her. How she, still, still can't fucking cum. She needs to. 

"I, I. I can make some, some suggestions? Of what you might, like, if you want? I... still expect that I can suggest good things even if I had. Different motives. Before. Sir. Or, there is pizza. If you want it. Sir. Or, or, you can just look at the menu. Whatever you want, please, sir." She's such a horny mess she can't think straight. Or talk straight. She's, so, so his. Valerie whines with need. 

"Sure, I'll hear your recommendations."

She opens the menu and looks over the things. It's almost strange, thinking about what she'd actually want to eat on a first date, instead of getting the most expensive thing on the menu and making her date pay for it because she could. Now... what's actually on this menu.

It was pretty clearly a seafood restaurant, one with things like lobster and crab on the menu. She might've ordered those, once, but they took forever to eat and she really didn't want to get them now, and she really didn't want this meal to last longer than it had to. Fuck. She was so, so hot being controlled like this. She didn't want it to last a minute longer than it had to. And, honestly she'd had more than enough of it over the years. She wasn't really so much a fan anymore. 

"The, the linguine with mussels and clams is probably really good, I, I like those. Them. That. And, and the seared scallops and pasta are most likely really delicious. Seared scallops are really good. And, and, if you like that sort of thing, the squid ink pasta tastes like the ocean." She'd had it only a few times, but, honestly, she really enjoyed it. She'd probably order that for herself. If he let her order. Or eat. Fuck, he controls her so much. She's sit here wriggling with need because he doesn't want her to cum yet. Fuck it's so hot being controlled like this. 

Valerie takes a moment to catch her breath, and continues. "And, and if you like fish, salmon is always really good, but sole is really soft and tender and mild. If, if you want that instead." She blushes. "And, and, there are appetizers, too, if, if, if you want them?" She really doesn't want him to get those. But, but, it would... she needs to make him happy (fuck, she's so fucking needy and hot. She wants to touch herself so fucking badly). And hiding that from him, would, would be... wrong. "I can recommend some of those, too, if you want, sir." She puts down the menu and blushes and squirms in her seat. It's so intoxicating being controlled like this. She needs to cum so badly and he won't let her. 

"Hmm."

He pauses, thoughtfully. Because he can.

"I think no appetizers," he concludes, reaching across the table to close her menu and pull it into a neat stack with his own.

Valerie squirms in worry and fear and anticipation and need. Watching him deliberate. Watching him choose her fate. Fuck, it's so hot watching him hold her in his hands like that and, and, deciding what to do with her. Deciding how long she'll have to wait. Deciding what she'll have to do to please him. He has such strength and confidence. It's so hot watching him just, exercise his power over her.  She really really really needs to cum. Fuck. She struggles to keep herself calm, feeling a wave of relief wash over her when he passes on the appetizers, tinged with desire and gratefulness at his generosity. Fuck, fuck fuck. He has her controlled so well. It makes her so needy and wet. And she can't stop thinking about it. 

She winces a little when he takes away her menu, realizing immediately what that means. He will be ordering for her. She'd wanted the squid ink pasta, but, well, it is his choice what to do with her. He controls her. He can tease her and use her and make her squirm and ache and, and, she'll be happy to eat whatever he gives her, and pay for it with her own money. He deserves whatever he wants, and she'll give anything, everything to make sure he gets it. Just like her toys would do for her. She'll crawl and beg and give him all her money just so she can be with him a little longer. So she can feel his hands on her, feel him tease her, use her however he wants. Fuck, the feeling is so hot and wet and electric. She loves every second of it. And she really needs to cum.

Wow, she is a mess. He kind of loves it.

Okay, as tempted as he is to drag her into a dark corner and fuck her immediately, it'll be so much more satisfying if he sticks to the plan. As soon as their server appears, he orders the seared scallops for himself and (after a tiny pause to build anticipation) the squid ink pasta for his date.

Fuck fuck, he's so, fuck. She's not sure how he guessed what she wanted but holy fuck it's incredible to see him take charge. And give her what she wants. She's, so, grateful to him, as hot and needy as she is. She'd never treat her pets like this. He's such a good, strong, powerful person. And she's so incredibly thankful for him being so good to her when he could be so much worse to her. Maybe it was the need talking, the needy squirming wet desire to cum that makes everything fuzzy and warm and desperate, but. She wants to show him how thankful she is. Somehow. 

She kicks off a shoe and reaches her leg out towards him, under the table. "Th-thank you, sir," she says. "Thank you for ordering for, for me. For being so kind, to me. When you could do anything to me. I, I would love to show you how grateful I am. Sir. Please. If you'll let me?" She moves her leg closer, pressing her bare foot against his leg, so he can catch her meaning. 

"Hmm." He smiles slightly. "Nah. See, the game right now is, we're on a date. A nice, normal date. Where you have to act like nothing's wrong as much as you can while you're barely holding it together."

Fuck, that... makes sense. He's, he's toying with her, and enjoying watching her struggle. Enjoying the power he has over her. Enjoying how everything he says or does makes her into more of a needy squirming mess as he treats her like she's his (which she is, and just thinking about it makes her hand twitch towards the bottom of her dress for the thousandth time that night). He's having fun getting off on how much power he has over her, and, well Valerie can understand that. She understands that perfectly. And Valerie is glad to be giving him such a delightful show. 

But, but, he said he wants a nice normal date. And well, Valerie isn't doing a very good job of that, (which is the point, of course, him enjoying her not being able to keep it together tying herself in knots getting drunk on his power, and... no. Breathe). 

She takes another breath. Well. Maybe she can be a little bit less of a pushover. And maybe find something else to think about that isn't her aching wet cunt all the time. (Nff.) And give him something a little bit closer to a date, like he wants. And if she does, well, Valerie knows he'll enjoy making her cum at the end of the night all the sweeter, if she shows him a little bit more backbone. 

Valerie grins at him, still shifting in her chair, but eager to show just a little bit of spirit. "Well, then, if you want a normal date, sir," she bites her lip for a moment, holding back a shudder. "Or, Sean, perhaps, if you prefer. Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself, then. And we can spend some time getting to know each other. I-If that's what you're looking for, of course." 

He laughs softly. "Sure," he says. "There's not really that much to me, though. I like power and straightforwardness and making people feel things. How about you?"

Hmph. Well that doesn't give her much to go on, to distract her from her constant sense of arousal. (If anything it might make things a little bit worse, knowing what he wants and that he takes it. But she is starting to catch her breath. This might be a little bit easier than she thought now that he's not constantly asserting his control over her. (Just, well, doing it occasionally, whenever he wants, continuing to put her into a bit of a lustful spiral, and watching amusedly. Nnnnf.))

"I'm, well," she manages, realizing that, being on the other side of this for the first time in her life, she has nothing to talk about. What do her pets normally do? Babble on incoherently about things she doesn't really care about, while she nods and pretends to care? Somehow, that doesn't seem like what he's after. But... but she'll do the best she can. "I, I also like power, and, and control." Like the kind you have over me, she doesn't say, and certainly doesn't press her legs together when she doesn't say it. She wants to, though. "I, I like it when I can make, other, people do what I want. Not nearly as, straightforward about it as you are, though." There, an almost sensible set of words and ideas. She smiles sweetly back at him, not quite sure what to say next, hoping he'll fill in the void with more conversation and give her more to distract her from her simmering pussy. 

"I noticed that," he says. "It was pretty annoying how you kept trying to lie to me. I like you much better now that you've figured out that's a bad idea. Or are you just too horny to keep a story straight anymore?"

Valerie feels a sharp stab of dismay and shame at having aggravated him before. She doesn't want to make him unhappy, now that she knows how strong he is and how right it is that he should be happy. And hopefully, that she can be a part of that. She'd love to be a part of that. And when he mentions how horny she is, she gives into temptation (a little bit, not enough to cum), and presses her legs together, closing her eyes and letting out a very soft moan, so no one else can see or hear. 

"I'm, never too horny to keep a story straight," she tells him, opening her eyes and making herself more presentable (like he told her too, before. Nnf). "I've... I'm pretty much always horny. Not usually, well, not ever this horny before. But." She closes her eyes and takes a breath to steady herself again. "But, I... I don't want to disappoint you, sir," she says, intentionally adding a bit of a seductive purr to her voice, at the end, looking up at him with her usual smirk and with a playful twinkle in her eye, teasingly, before letting the, the act fade back away. "I... I really don't. I've never had anything like this happen to me before. I don't want to disappoint you, I enjoy belonging to someone so, so strong and straightforward, I don't want this to end, and I really would like to be allowed to cum for you. Soon." She bites her lip at the thought, breathing to keep herself steady. 

He smirks slightly. "Oh, I'm definitely keeping you. As for letting you come... we'll see."

Her immediate elation at his pronouncement is quickly dashed by the revelation coming a second later. Wait, what? Fuck. "I, sir, but you said, that tonight, we'd, we'd..." she takes a moment to breathe. "Sir, you can do with me, as, as, as you'd like. But. But I thought you said, that, tonight, in my apartment, we would..." She tilts her head. She isn't entirely sure now. Maybe he hadn't actually promised. Just implied. Fuck. "I'm sorry sir. Maybe I misunderstood you. What, what did you say, earlier tonight. In the car. About coming back into my apartment?" 

"I said you should invite me up to your apartment to fuck you senseless."

Shit. That did sound pretty familiar. He might be lying to her about what he'd said before, to manipulate her, like she might (and totally would. And has) but he doesn't have any reason to. The fact that he doesn't have to lie to her, to manipulate her, just show her his strength and prove that he's better than her makes Valerie shift in her seat. That he can simply take her if she resists, and there's nothing she can do about it. Her usual blandishments and charms do nothing to him. Fuck, she's getting turned on again. She, she should change the topic. Think about something else. 

"Th-thank you for reminding me, sir. Um." Fuck, how do normal boring people talk? "How, how's about the weather?" she ventures, feeling immediately foolish, blushing bright crimson and shrinking in her seat a little. 

He laughs. "Oh, it's cute how much of a mess you are."

Valerie beams at the compliment (well, at pleasing him, at least, which gives her such a rush), and blushes a deeper red. (And presses her legs together, thinking about how she's a mess because he made her that way. He's just so strong and powerful, and knows it.) 

"I. Um. I'm glad you're enjoying it, sir." Ok, well, she still needs to think of something to talk about instead of staring at him and thinking about how incredible this feels. So she doesn't get stuck. Thinking about it. Again. Um. How about... "Is. Is there anything you want to talk about, sir? Or anything you'd like to ask me? About myself?" 

"Hmm." He smiles. "How true was all that shit you were saying about how your dad's fantastically rich and he'd do anything for you and he could buy and sell the whole school if he felt like it?"

Gulp. "I... not entirely. I, I can generally convince daddy to do what I want him to, but even he would balk at buying the whole school. I'm not sure even how he'd go about it, or if he'd have enough money. But he, he has bought entire restaurants for me before. So I could fire a stupid waitress who spilled champagne on me. Or that one annoying piece of trash that caught Johnny's eye for a moment. Or if I didn't just like the food." She grins wickedly. "Have you ever done anything like that before? It's such fun to show the little people how they should act around people like us." 

"Nope," he says. "I pretty much don't care about petty shit like that. Also I hate my parents. But I was originally hoping to use you for your money, so it's convenient that you can get your dad to buy things for you."

Besides the slight warm glow at being convenient and useful, Valerie is a little bit confused. How can someone as strong and powerful as him not gone about... well, flexing his strength to prove he's better than the others around him. Like with her? Clearly he's enjoying doing it to her (and fuck she's so glad she turns him on like this, it feels so good to make him happy, to please him like this, and makes her so fucking wet), but why hasn't he done it to the lowly disrespectful peons who fill his life? He's rich, or at least his parents are, and even if he hates them he has to have access to some amount of money to have amassed the strength of will that he has, to make her kneel like this (or is he just that strong without it, fuck that would be hot). Has he just... never thought to try it before? 

"I'm glad I can be useful to you, sir," she says. "But... have you considered... caring about it a little more? It's a lot of fun to do, to watch them scamper in fear, and it makes them give you what you want so much faster when they're terrified of what you might do to them. They should know to whom they owe their respect, after all," she says, ramping up her sultry voice and looking at him longingly as she says the last sentence. "Someone as strong and rich and powerful as you deserves the that kind of respect."

"Don't see why I should bother," he says, leaning back a little in his seat. "That's not the kind of fear I like. And anyway, some things are easier when people have no idea they should be scared of you. I bet you wouldn't have asked me out if you knew what I was going to do to you the moment you got into my car."

Valerie can see some of what he's saying. Maybe. It's a lot easier to see things from his point of view when she's so devoted to him (she presses her legs together again at the thought) for some reason. She's honestly not sure what she would have done. It... probably would have been worse, not getting in the car, not getting to feel this electric sensation of devotion and control and obedience from a side she's never felt before, making her drip even more into her dress, and that would be awful. And he's probably right that she never would have submitted to this before, never would have made the date and got into the car and been taken and controlled so strongly right off the bat which was... nnf, The most erotic sensation in her life. But... at the very least he could try taking revenge, right?

"I... think I might see where you're coming from," Valerie says very slowly. "But... haven't you ever wanted revenge, or to punish those who disrespect you? Not out of fear, but out of, out of a sense of justice? That they deserve to be hurt for doing something you don't like? I... think you should try it, at least once. If you haven't. It might be a lot more fun than you'd think. If, if that's ok with you, sir." He's strong, he deserves respect, it's almost an affront to the world that he goes around pretending to be so normal all the time. If she could show him what it could be like, maybe then he could see and take even more (and wouldn't it be so very hot to teach him, to see him learn and watch him use his own power just the way she would? Fuck, it would be so hot).

"Oh, when I want to hurt someone, I hurt them, whether they 'deserve' it or not. Unless I have a good reason not to. But when I can get away with it? Yeah, I'll take revenge, when I feel like it. And not when I don't."

Valerie smiles a little. Well, if that's the case, then, well, clearly he's already doing what he wants to do. Which he should. Which is right and proper and the way of the world.

Also, him talking about hurting someone makes her shiver and breathe sharply again, even though the conversation has helped her calm her arousal down to much, much more manageable levels. She no longer feels like she's going to explode with need. She's just.... very turned on. And still very much wants to cum (and he won't let her, which is still so very hot), but it's nowhere near as urgent. She'll be able to make it through the dinner just fine if things continue like this.

The waitress arrives with their food. His is a steaming bed of seared scallops, about half a dozen, on linguine with a clear sauce. Hers is the squid ink pasta she wanted (and she still can't help but feel a pang of gratefulness that he got her something she wanted, even as he ordered for her), with a spicy tomato sauce, with shrimp and mussels spread throughout. Valerie waits for the waitress to leave, and looks up at him with a patient and submissive and slightly steamy look, waiting for him to try his food first (and very surreptitiously rubbing her legs together under the table at the fact that she's doing this because she knows he deserves it, and it's so hot to submit to him like this).

He tries his food. It's pretty good. Also, it's really hot that she just waits for him like that. Maybe he'll let her eat her dinner in peace while he thinks about further ways to mess with her.

Once he takes a bite, and seems to be happy, she'll take a bite of her own, still feeling and happy and grateful that he got her what she wanted, somehow. It's delicious. If not interrupted, she'll be perfectly happy to eat her meal in peace, still squirming occasionally but much more relaxed and together, making sure to look up at him more than often enough to make sure he's still enjoying himself. And if he has anything else he wants her to do. Anything at all.

He finishes eating a little before she does, and politely waits for her to be done before he says, "So, it turns you on to think about me hurting people?"

Valerie looks up at him in surprise and sudden hope and desire and feels the arousal that she'd managed to quiet to a low simmer for the past while start to ramp back up into a boil. Fuck, did he want to hurt someone for her? Would she get to watch as, as he hurt someone in front of her? Or maybe... fuck, she'd get to suck him off, or fuck him, urging him on to hurt them more, and more, showing just how much she appreciated his superiority. His strength. His power. His control, fuck. The image feels intoxicating. She closes her eyes and breathes carefully, willing her hands to not slip under the table. Even if she wants them to.

"That, that, yes, yes it does, sir," she tells him, adding as much seductive purr to her voice as she can. She knows he doesn't like it when she acts or lies but this isn't act it's not pretend, she wants this. "It really, really does. I... I would be ever so grateful to you, if, if I could get to witness it. Watch. If that's what you have in mind, sir. I'd be really happy to please you as you did it, too." Fuck, how is she getting so wet again already. "I'd please in any way you want, sir~."