[This is a direct sequel to Dress Off 3. Special Agent Tess Trueheart, captured just before the start of our previous story, is still the unwilling guest of her arch-nemesis, Harrington. Special Agent Stacey Shackleton and Agent Erin Masterton are leading a rescue mission, but now find themselves naked in the middle of a cold Vancouver night, and at the mercy of an unseen tour guide. At stake may be the very future of the secret spy organisation known simply as Decider Enterprises.]
Tanya Munro shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and tried to focus her attention on the legal document in front of her. Beside her, sitting stiffly in a chair and making a point of ignoring Tanya's presence, the prim and proper Sarah Lowell was experiencing similar difficulties.
Tanya waved a hand vaguely over a couple of clauses, and then looked up at the woman reclining comfortably in another chair before them.
"This, this seems..." Tanya started, before trailing off and looking back at the contract with conflict etched on her face.
"Final?" the woman smoothly said, completing Tanya's sentence for her. The woman, who looked to be in her late thirties, carried herself with a calm, composed confidence. She exuded a level professionalism and self-control that was complemented perfectly by a perfectly tailored business suit, and a clearly expensive watch that she now made a show of checking.
"This little feud," the woman continued, indicating Tanya and Sarah with open palms and a thin smile, "this little conflict, it is so destructive wouldn't you agree? It can destroy both of you, or just one of you."
Tanya glanced sideways at Sarah, who was studiously trying to stare at the woman talking. Tanya couldn't tell if Sarah was less nervous or more nervous than she was about what was being proposed. She fancied for a moment that she saw an involuntary twitch in Sarah's eyes, and just for a fleeting second Sarah seemed to steal a look at Tanya before returning her eyes to front and center.
"Let's focus on what we all agree on." the woman said, putting her hands now on her lap and leaning forward slightly, "I think we can all agree that each of you feels aggrieved for what you each perceive to be past injustices. We offer a solution that I think we all agree will put bring a note of finality to your personal conflict. Not only that, but to the winner we also offer a lucrative, fulfilling, jet-setting job opportunity that any sane woman would jump at the opportunity to have. As well as that, can either of you look me in the face and say that they wouldn't want the other to be the loser in our little proposition? There is literally no downside to this, unless of course you lose." The woman leaned back at this point and looked expectantly at the contracts nestled into Sarah and Tanya's laps.
Tanya was suddenly very conscious of the sensation of the pen resting in her right hand, and she would have sworn that at that exact moment it felt like the pen became extraordinarily heavy in her grasp. Only half looking at the contract, she started to sign her name in a jerky, almost involuntary motion, before finally throwing the pen on to a nearby table and stiffly extending her arm out, the contract firmly gripped in her hand. The woman leaned forward slowly, a bemused smile gracing her perfect features, and she gently reached out and took hold of the contract. For a few seconds, both Tanya and the woman held on to the contract, the woman making direct eye contact with Tanya, before Tanya faltered first. Looking away, Tanya let go of the contract, and took a couple of deep breaths.
The woman cast a brief glance at the signature to satisfy herself that all was in order, and then reached out to take the other copy that was now being proffered by a similarly conflicted Sarah.
"Excellent ladies. I look forward to working with the winner of our little wager, and I trust that whoever may be the unfortunate loser honours the spirit of the endeavour."
Tanya looked up at the ceiling, as a dozen different voices scrambled for attention at the front of her mind. Total, complete humiliation. That's what faced the loser. Left to pick up the pieces, left to get over the fact that her mortal enemy now had an infinitely more exciting, more lucrative life to enjoy. Sarah deserved that humiliating fate, didn't she? Tanya looked at the red-headed, fidgeting woman that she'd known for half her life, staring down at the carpet, wide-eyed and unblinking. The bitch deserved it, right?
********
Sarah Lowell half-ran, half-walked through the campus, her heart racing at a million miles an hour. She desperately spun the latest clue around in her mind, trying to find some angle that she hadn't explored yet, trying to focus with all her willpower on solving that clue rather than worrying about the state of her clothing. Her track pants were long since gone, and for the past twenty minutes she'd been sporting a rather inappropriate pair of skin-tight bright yellow hot pants. Normally that would have been a more than sufficient source of embarrassment for Sarah, even allowing for the fact it was the weekend and the campus wasn't at it's busiest. Today however, any discomfort from the visibility of her well-toned backside was well and truly taking a back seat to the ongoing show her athletic, perfectly proportioned chest was putting on. The discrete white t-shirt she'd started the afternoon with had - two missed clues ago - mischievously revealed a transparent rectangular viewing window in the material that fitted perfectly across her breasts. For a short while, there was at least the comfort that her yellow brassiere had the appearance of a fairly decent sports bra that seemed more functional than lewd. That tiny blessing had lasted until about 5 minutes ago, when the cursed earpiece had broken the silence of her dash down a deserted corridor in the Earth Sciences building. The earpiece had smugly informed her of Tanya's discovery of the next clue, and she hadn't even processed this new piece of unwelcome information when she began to feel the brassiere reforming and remodelling itself around her boobs.
The bra had pushed her breasts together and upwards, and the once solidly yellow material had contracted and become translucent, so that her cleavage and nipples were now partly visible through the viewing window in her t-shirt. Even a conservatively dressed Sarah represented too great a challenge for some men when it came to not-staring-slack-jawed-at-her-rack when she walked into a room. The current state of her chest pretty much ensured that she could have been shooting laser beams out of her eye sockets and none of the male staff or students would have been any the wiser.
Down three clues to two, Sarah knew that Tanya would at least be feeling some discomfort from exposing her ass to the faculty and fellow students. Sarah just hoped that the discomfort would nag at Tanya enough to delay her from realising that the recreation centre building was the next pit stop. At least she had that on her side. At least she knew where this was now all leading too.
Sarah ran on through a courtyard, and disappeared down a path, startling a couple of engineering students who'd been in the middle of an animated discussion.
"What..." said one of the students to the other a good two minutes after the yellow-clad backside of Sarah Lowell had receded into the distance, "... what the hell were we talking about again?"
*******
Tanya Munro stood outside the University pool at the recreation centre and pointedly ignored the open-mouthed gawping that numerous swim meet audience members had treated her to. She'd been staring, mute and unmoving, out through the clear glass doors at the entrance and out on to the courtyard beyond. She couldn't have told anyone whether she'd been there for thirty seconds or thirty minutes, but she noticeably inhaled deeply when a flash of yellow appeared suddenly in the distance. Holding the intake of breath for a few more moments, she then slowly exhaled, rubbed a hand through her long blonde hair, and turned on her heels, striding quickly towards a side corridor of the main entrance hall. She seemingly paused at the door to a storage room, and rested her head on the door frame before glancing back towards the main entrance with a conflicted expression of victory and regret. As a pair yellow hot pants ran into the building, worn by the red-headed, red-faced beauty she'd known simply as "the hated bitch" for too long, Tanya entered the storage room and waited.
*******
Sarah Lowell stood in shock at the open entrance to the discrete storage room, and looked in on the smiling face of the raven-haired woman in the business suit, and the unreadable face of her despised foe.
"Sarah, come on in, please do." the woman said, and took Sarah's unresisting arm. Half dragging her into the room, the woman positioned Sarah in the middle of the room and made a quick show of smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in Sarah's now skin-tight clothing. Sarah didn't protest the woman running her hands over the torso, but instead looked silently at Tanya.
"Sarah." the woman continued, taking Sarah's chin and guiding her head so they made close eye contact. "Sarah, as you know, this game is about finality, and I do so fear that merely jogging through the campus on a semi-deserted afternoon in that modest ensemble may just feel slightly anti-climatic. So, I've prepared a little something that I think you'll both agree lives up to this game's billing." The woman smiled again, although there was absolutely no warmth to the expression.
Sarah shrugged almost imperceptibly, and went back to looking at a distracted-looked Tanya.
"As you are both fully aware, this esteemed institution is celebrating a meet for it's famed swimmers, and I dare say a decent section of the staff and students are in attendance. In fact, in about ninety minutes this fine University will unveil a glittering monument to it's swimmers success in recent state competitions, and we all have the privilege of being with that monument right now."
The woman turned and walked over to a two meter high object that sat on wheels and was covered completely by heavy black sheet that appeared to have a pull cloth on the side.
"I believe we have around a hour before some over-paid, minimum wage employees come and wheel this impressive exhibit over for the grand unveiling at the end of the meet." At this point the woman paused, as if a sudden thought had occurred to her, and she raised up a finger to correct herself. "Except of course those unfortunate underlings are going to wheel away entirely the wrong exhibit."
As her final words caught Sarah's attention, the woman yanked the pull cord and the black sheet fell gracefully to the ground. What the sheet revealed was no ordinary monument to a swim team's modest success, but rather a shining, silver x-frame with cuffs at each of the four corners. Between the two bottom corners, the small metal figure of a free-style swimmer - just less than half the height of the frame - stretched upwards, as if swimming against gravity and escaping the water. As Sarah's dazed eyes tried to take in what she was seeing, something at the back of her mind couldn't help noticing that the leading arm of the swimmer was outstretched enough that the finger tips weren't too far away from the middle of the X.
"Sarah, I want to thank you, deeply and sincerely." the woman said, fondly running one hand over the metal of the X frame, and then casually walking over to the vanquished red-head. "I came to this city to find someone with the steel in their heart, the ruthlessness of spirit, and purpose of mind to warrant being part of my organisation. Today you helped me find that person."
Looking over at Tanya, the woman held out a beckoning hand.
